I wonder if this can be attributed to the fact that JKR (a woman) was writing a story from a boy/man's point of view. This isn't me being sexist, I'm genuinely curious if this had an effect. I believe she even stats in an interview that she wrote Hermione as herself, but she never mentions, but I can't recall her ever mentioning her muse for the character of Harry Potter.

 

Yeah, but even though JKR doesn't specifically mention things like what an Order member is doing or what Ginny Weasley is like, people assume things like the whole 'Ginny is slut' idea or the Order is pointless, even though they have no actual basis to believe either of these ideas.

 

Yes, but people who think like that are idiots. Did anyone ever actually think things like Ginny is a slut, my perception of her was always that she was just a normal girl. She dated the normal amount for someone of her age, it just seemed like more because of the trio's social ineptness around the opposite sex.

Honestly, I prefer the limited third person POV in these books. It might not be the best for world building but the books were never about that, they were about Harry and his friends. The books were about a very limited part of the world so a lot of world building was never necessary. It is also the reason that the Harry Potter world is so good for fanfiction, there are so many holes in the world for people to exploit.

 

I probably should have just wrote this. It's basically what I was trying to say.

 

Did you just call more than a half of DLP idiots?

 

Yes, I believe I did. Although I don't think that the Ginny hate around here is as severe as it seems to have been back in the day.

 

Yeah, we're refined now. We've moved on from hating a fictional character and now we watch My Little Pony in between stints of either driving off newcomers or corrupting them.

 

I don't think there was ever much actual Ginny-hate. I think it was all JKR-hate for fucking up the romance in the books. At the time HBP came out, H/G fan fiction had stories with romance done much better than canon. And the fandom has only improved since then. While reading HBP and DH, I kept thinking how much I would flame this if it were fan fiction. All the ritualistic Ginny kill-offs were just an outlet to express deep dissatisfaction with canon.

 

That was part of it but I remember after 30th vomit inducing H/G story I had actually started look for kill offs just to release stress.

also 4 years ago I was 16 which means I was easier to anger. I think it has an effect as well a lot of DLP crew grew older.

When I see shitty H/G stories I simply close the window nowadays, instead of flaming it.

 

The books weren't nearly gritty enough for her to use a 3rd person perspective that wasn't limited to Harry. The only characters you can place the narration in are those that take the role or main protagonist or main antagonist- or very minor characters who often die by the end of the one scene they are in to introduce some mysterious menace. If you do otherwise, you bore the reader to death and confuse them.

So, she could have used Harry (or someone else in the trio) or Voldemort (or Snape or Bella). As this is a children's book, the reader wasn't expected to truly understand the minds of Lord Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange. Gritty novels often place you in the minds of the antagonists when they kill or harm in some way. This allows you to first despise them, then understand them, and finally often pity them. Voldemort wasn't meant to be a character that we look at with any emotion other than hatred in the present. In the past, we could pity Riddle, but the evil, pale snake-man was not to be reviled.

Snape, interestingly, could have been someone whose POV could have been explored. He took that middle role of 'the traitor' or 'the double-agent' which can be interesting to read. Unfortunately, his true nature was a mystery for plot purposes, so we weren't meant to truly understand him either. He was always supposed to sit as a mystery, even as we gained more knowledge of his actions, past and relatively present.

 

Okay, another pet peeve...

Harry goes to some Alternate Universe/Time Travel/Crossover/whatever; the moment he arrives there he spills his whole life story to *add whomever finds him, etc.*

I like seeing other characters thinking who the hell is he/how the hell is he doing that/..., you know, trying to come up with their own conclusions. Not Oh Puh Your Parents were killed by some dastardly evil dark lord/ you were abused by your relatives(because abuse victims go around and yell around they were, well, abused)/ how could your headmaster allow something like that to happen in his school, etc.

That's usually enough to make me stop reading.

 

I like that too, but one of my biggest pet peeves is when all the other character decide to get together and discuss all the different things they've learnt about the main character and talk about how awesome he is. Crossovers are the biggest perpetrators here, but other stories do it too.

I was recently reading 'Terminal Justice' (somebody mentioned it in the DC crossover thread I think) and literally half of every chapter are the characters talking about the latest thing Harry has done and how much of a badass he is. It does make sense in the context of that story, but it reminded me of how much it annoys me when this happens.

 

Or when they all sweatdrop DBZ-style from the tales of his amazing escapades... ugh.

 

It would be awesome if, when Harry is transported to an alternate universe/timeline/whatever, he spills his guts to Dumbledore about everything and Dumbledore, being the sharp motherfucker he is, immediately goes with Harry and helps destroy all the Horcruxes.

It would be a rather short story, but it would be a good read.

 

That is just one of a million different ways to "fix" canon in 24 hours. But it requires magic not being useless and at least one competent character. So it will be AU and OOC. But I'll read it.

 

... Em. In what way would that be good to read? That would just be the last two books with absolutely no conflict whatsoever. That's the exact opposite of what I would call a good read.

 

The point is that it would be short and not full of people whining about bullshit. I assumed, of course, that it would be written competently, but maybe that was too much to ask.

 

Fixed that for you there.

 

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of parody.

 

Nowhere did you say that it would be a parody. A good parody is when you take something common, which this isn't, and turn it on it's head, which this doesn't. It's possible that a really good parody writer may be able to make something of it, but I doubt it.