I'm looking for a fic that was kinda like Ascension of the Scorpion Sorcerer. Harry decides that the Ministry is hopelessly corrupt and needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. He doesn't agree with the Order's stun-only policy, and decides to become a dark lord in his own right with the intention of making a meritocracy where everyone gets the same laws and the same treatment under them regardless of birth. In this one Harry acknowledges that he's basically a Dark lord.

IIRC in the story I'm looking for, he read some muggle books, and grew fond of Patton's famous quote that "No poor dumb bastard ever won a war by dying for his cause. The way to win a war is to make the OTHER poor dumb bastard die for his cause.".

Does this sound familiar? Normally I'd post this to another fic search group, but given this forum's name, I figured it was the best place to look.

 

The phrase "Never judge a book by its cover." comes to mind. And I sincerely doubt anyone here would read that. It sounds godawful.

Dark Lords, as a rule, don't do things for good reasons such as "Reform society" or giving Equality. Your typical "Dark Lord", if you want a real life comparison to clear this up, would be Hitler.

 

From what you described, slick, it sounds like every other generic independent!dark!Harry fic. And there are literally thousands of those on FFN. Any other descriptors you can give us besides Harry's interest in a Patton quote?

 

I actually remember one, possibly the one you wanted.

Harry's reminiscing about how he came to power, and we get lots of little snapshots - his two horcruxes (I think he called them Tom and Richard, but can't be sure), him redesigning the Ministry building in a competition, and winning because his was the only one that wasn't underground; and him adopting a bunch of kids.

But I can't remember what it was called.

 

You may have two stories mixed up there. One of the is The Power by Darth Bill and I think the other is The Birth of Evil, by Disobedience Writer.

 

Birth of Evil was the one I'd meant, so yeah... I did get them muddled.

Which is odd, because I recognize nothing else from The Power.

 

Stalin was as much a 'Dark Lord' type as Hitler, and he was chief of the whole Communist world, which was fundamentally about [unnaturally enforcing] equality.

A Dark Lord modelled on Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, or any commie nutcase (in the way Voldemort clearly channels Hitler) would be interesting to read. The Dark Arts don't necessarily have to be used in the service of pure-bloods and anti-Muggle-born movements. They rely on cruel intentions, which can just as easily come about in someone who utterly hates or is jealous of the elite and the privileged as it can in someone who scorns those he considers his inferiors.

 

The thing I recall is that he wanted to revolutionize the society and make a revolution, but the only way he could see to do so was by basically doing some ethnic cleansing and destroying all the bigots and corrupt officials.

What was unusual was that he acknowledged that he would be labeled a Dark Lord himself since the Ministry considers people like Lucius Malfoy and Deloris Umbridge as model citizens while he is treated like scum or at best a second-class citizen.

Still, his goals were to try to make a fair society, rather than just a desire to rule. His methods were total warfare however.

I haven't read many "Dark Harry" fics because most of the ones I've seen either have him joining Voldemort, or sucking up (or worse, shacking up) with Snape and/or Malfoy. So, I can't speak for this being a "Generic Independent Dark Harry fic". I've read plenty of "Independent Harry" fics, but most don't have him acknowledging that he's becoming a Dark Lord, they at best have him insist he's grey.



One final note, I agree with the other poster that a Marxist Harry who adopts Stalin or Mao's tactics would be interesting. Not what I was looking for, but it would be something I'd like to read too.

 

Don't know about "equal society" (Aren't any Dark Lord's goal is personal power?) so - Ibex Time travelling Harry off's Voldemort before his attack on Godric's Hollow and takes it from there..

 

No. Voldemort's goal was personal power, but that doesn't necessarily apply to all Dark Lords. A Dark Lord is any extremely powerful wizard who embraces the Dark Arts and has followers. Their motives mustn't necessarily be selfish, though they well could be. Just because Voldemort promoted an elitist, prejudiced society doesn't mean all other Dark Lords have to follow his example. They could aim for very different things.

As I already said, trying to enforce equality where there is no natural equality is tyrannical behaviour, fuelled by jealousy and hatred, and could definitely be something a Dark Lord would do.

 

Hitler would be a bad suggestion. He was a narcissist but not really the sociopathic prototype I would expect from some Dark Lord. Here I think Stalin would fit far better if you really need some example from the top. People truly feared Stalin personally while they feared the german system but not really Hitler personally. The system was carried out by Himmler and Heydrich.

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Too bad the story took it nowhere as it felt more like some balloon which lost all its air.

 

Stalin is a bad example if you're going on Hitler being a narcissist. And Hitler's not "really the sociopathic prototype"? LOLWut? Have you simply never read a history book or do you simply not know the definition of sociopath? If its the later:

"A person with an antisocial personality disorder, exhibiting antisocial behavior that usually is the result of social and environmental factors in the person's early life."

Yeah, I'd say Hitler qualifies. And of course, the fact that he was able to captivate an entire country and convince them that the Holocaust was a good thing counts him out, right?

Stalin, more than Hitler or anyone else, is probably the least likely to genuinely believe in the drivel of Communism. I'd wager, more like Hitler used what he had, Stalin used Communism as an in to power. He's far more of a narcissist than Hitler was, considering he had himself written into the national anthem.

But in the end, they both are very good examples, and yeah, the idea of a Stalin, who I would probably equate to Scrimmy, over Voldemort's Hitler impersonation, would be far more interesting, it wouldn't work out so well.

 

I don't know - if any author like, say, Joe, tried the 'Harry as a Communist-esque type Dark Lord' over the 'Voldemort as a Hitler-esque type' Dark Lord, I'd read it, because it'd, most probably, be a good read.

(Sort of expecting Noxed to be drawn to this topic, due to the mention of Communism, like flies to shit).

 

This talk of Stalin makes me wish there was a communist-Harry fic out there. It doesn't need to have him be a tyrant, they could instead do something like Fire did a decade ago in the Sailor Moon crack fic "Red Moon"

(a link for those unfamiliar with it. Be warned, it is a Sailor Moon fic, and has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Back when this was first posted, I'd not read HP and probably hadn't heard of it, even though at least book 3 was out by then, I think book 4 was published in 2001, so it was probably out then too.)
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/435276/1/Red_Moon

Make me wonder what ever happened to Fire. He just disappeared and abandoned his stories, and his website eventually went down. No warning, nothing.

 

Why would Harry want communism?

He isn't poor.

 

He is once Dumbledore and those pesky Weasleys do him out of the 30120210772 galleons that were stored up in the Potter Family Vault.

Oh, wait, this isn't 2006 anymore? Never mind.

 

Perhaps Harry could be an enlightened Dark Lord... I mean despot.

 

I think the word should be Tyrant, not despot.
The original tyrant described by Plato was an enlightened philosopher king.
Or so they mentioned in my philosophy and ethics classes back in [community] college and university. I never actually read The Republic, but I believe there was an exert or two.