I could see the trope being subverted well though. Have a teenage James drag the gang along to see Holy Grail, or Star Wars, over the break because he got it into his head that it would be the perfect way to have a muggle thing to talk to Lily about... and leave it at that.
They don't become experts in cinema, they just see that one movie and James absolutely bloody runs it into the ground quoting and referencing it to Lily trying to impress her until she snaps and tells him that just because she's a muggleborn doesn't mean she's in love with the one movie he's ever seen, so he can shove off.

That, would actually make for a funny story for Sirius/Remus to recount to Harry.

 

I am sorry, but I am absolutely going to make sure that this will always be in any story on one of the various ways James tries to charm Lily and it backfires spectacularly when it happens and Sirius and Remus always make fun of him because of it.

 

Umm, Harry Potter takes place in the 90s.

I do agree about how lazy it is to have seemingly every story feature a pureblood seeing a movie for the first time and having it be Star Wars, even worse if they go see it at a movie theater any year before the Special Editions were released in 97.

It would be kinda funny to have the pureblood complain about that weird looking CG slug in the badly reinstalled Jabba scene, as if that ruined the whole movie for them. Or even worse, the abomination that is Jedi Rocks from RotJ.

 

Cinemas from time to time will reuse old movies for promotions. With Phantom Menace released in the summer of 1999, I would not be surprised if some theaters reran the OT to hype people up, and I could see some post-Hogwarts fics taking place in '99. That said, going to movies in general would be an odd thing for wizards to do, though the author did not create an on-color alternative, like wizarding theater, which I would imagine would be good with the assistance of magic.

 

@zugrian

LotR movies: 2001-2003

HP: 1991-1998

Can't see LotR in the 90s, unless it was the animated film.

 

I could, but not with such great special effects; I see it more like late 90's sci-fi movies, like Independence Day, or possibly series such as Stargate: SG-1...

Also, where can we ask Q's about Harry Potter W.I.P's; is there a dedicated subforum, or should we just tag the author, if they are a member...?

 

"High" Elves. Any mention of non house elves is a red flag so massive it can be seen from Canis Major.

 

Surely only to Wizarding bigots? After all, WE know who the High Elves in Middle Earth are...

 

Yeah, I read his post wrong-- I remember when they came out.

 

One of my biggest frustrations with fanfic has been the fact that the main character's inner monologue is way too long or overbearing.

Something along the lines of:

"Harry saw the sadness in Tonks's eyes. She looked like she wanted to say something, but couldn't. Her face was closed off, and distant. It reminded him of his previous summer, when he'd been so close to telling Dumbledore the secret of the brown duck. Unfortunately, he had missed his chance and then Dumbledore had left them all when he plunged off that tower. He could still recall his scream of rage when he watched Dumbledore fall. It all came rushing back to him. All those missed moments with the headmaster. All the things he could have said, questions he could have asked. He never wanted to feel that feeling of loss again. Harry vowed to not let this moment with Tonks slip away.

'Tonks, what's wrong?'

She looked up at him questioningly, tears welling up in her eyes...."
​

Where it's just the narrator describing Harry's "thoughts" about absolutely everything he sees. I'm struggling to find fics that strike the balance where they provide enough detail so that it's not just a list of events that happen, but don't drone on and on for thousands of words about character's facial expressions.

Also fanfic seems to have people yell and scream a lot more than they do in real life.

 

I think screaming frequency can be put down to the frequency of situations that characters in fanfic encounter that warrant screaming compared to the average real person.

 

Why do people make point of view switches unclear?

 

Harry making incredible leaps of logic and hitting a plot point exactly on the head.

 

Would you prefer:

Instead?

 

To fool readers for a moment into believing something is done by a different character than it actually is?

I instadrop any fic that does that.

 

GRRM does this in ASoIaF at the beginning of every chapter. He just doesn't put "POV".

Not that I approve of it. I'm not a fan of POV changes in the first place. I think that's why I dropped that series after the first book.

 

Especially if the fic is in First Person. It's already difficult to do it right with one character, but while POV-hopping? Oh boy.

 

Multiple POV fuckup collection:
Only one of them is actually told by an interesting, thoroughly developed character, the reader has to slog through the others.
Only one of them actually has a decent plot.
The others could be cut out without the story missing anything, except unnecessary plot spoilers.
All POVs have interesting, thoroguhly developed characters AND plots, resulting in a massive story bloat (looking at you, ASoIaF).

To be fair, it's basically impossible to handle them well.

As an author though, I like them. I tend to get bored of writing the same character's story twenty chapters straight. As a reader ... eh.