Well, Newcomb, the Dark Lord took it pretty seriously, so I think it's okay for authors to still make it important. It's not the be all to end all that Voldemort makes it to be (see: insanity as a result of ripping apart one's soul repeatedly) and obviously Dumbledore explains that, but there is still some significance. Trelawney's second prophecy comes to bear without Harry actively doing... well, anything.

"It will happen tonight. The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight... the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..."

Sure, you can make the case that prophecies aren't serious, but I choose to think otherwise. (See what I did there?)

 

No. Way.

Can't be real. This tops anything I've found a disliking to recently.


On Prophecies.
While the interpretation that they mean nothing unless someone chooses to take meaning from them is good and fitting for HP. The Prophecy being real can be a good plot device, forcing events to occur no matter how hard people try to avoid them etc. Perhaps they occur because they try to avoid them though, who knows. Still, I don't mind it.

 

Choice is at the heart of the story, which is why Dumbledore told Harry to disregard the prophecy. 'Do what you do because you choose to attack/defend/sacrifice/kill. Don't be fooled into thinking you're under any obligation except to follow your conscience.'

That was Dumbledore's message to Harry. That wasn't entirely what he believed. When advising Snape to present the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry, he insisted that Snape make it a circumstance of dire need- not just 'Oi, you left this behind ya git' but 'AND LO, the sword shall come to the hero, where to cleave from this Earth the very tether that holds the evil one to its living surface'.

If Harry wasn't the chosen one of prophecy, Dumbledore wouldn't have protected him, guided him, left him to suffer but give him plenty of freedom to explore and get experienced. He'd treat Harry like just another wizard who might be useful to the struggle.

 

- fics with OCs that are ripoffs of canon characters

- when authors write characters whose personalities they don't have a good grasp on.

- When an author writes multiple fics all with the same basic premise and is seemingly incapable of finishing one. I'm not screwing around, I know an "author" on ffn.net who has 50+ stories that are all just minor variants of the same premise and they are ALL ABANDONED. And to make matters worse she has an OC that she uses in each of her fics. She uses the OC so much that I actually thought he was a canon character who I'd forgotten about.

- fics where Harry has a sibling who isn't his twin. I have always seen Harry as being unplanned but wanted (aka a 'happy mistake'). I can't imagine Lily and James having a second child even after the Dark Lord himself is after them or having a child right after graduating school.

- authors dropping bombs without warning. I was reading this fic that I was really into. It had a competent Harry and everything, and then in the second chapter it was suddenly revealed that Harry has a sister. WTF?! This fic didn't even take place in a alternate universe. Needless to say I hightailed it out of there.

 

CookietheRookie, I agree with Newcomb here. One of the reasons for that is just sense, because if future is fixed (as in by a prophecy), you have to write the story in a way that still includes free choice, because otherwise there is no point of the story if everything is already fixed.
But even had I not agreed with him, the prophecy states that 'The dark lord will mark him as his equal'. It doesn't say that the dark lord will give him a curse scar on his forehead, unless you think the dark lord has the exact same scar & giving Harry a curse scar on the forehead is how he marks him as his equal, do you? The prophecy is open to interpretation here. And so my original point stands, a curse scar isn't a sure shot sign of the real BWL.

 

This is often handwaved by saying the roof fell on the other twin and gave him/her a scar. Pretty stupid explication, but I don't expect much better from most WBWL fics.

I agree in theory, but saying "You have to fight because the prophecy says so" or "You have to fight because the prophecy says so and Voldemort believes it" isn't much different in my opinion. And IIRC, Dumbledore says basically that in HBP, in addition to the "do what is right" speech.

What I don't like is people (in or out of story, really) saying things like "Harry didn't risk anything from Death Eaters, he was protected by the Prophecy" like it has some power. A prophecy tells you what will happen in the future, nothing more. Either you believe it and you know a few things in advance (if your interpretation is right) or you don't, and you don't care. But thinking that the prophecy somehow changes the rules of the world (by making Harry immortal, for example) is completely retarded.

Ironically, one of my favourite fics does exactly that, the prophecy gaining a tremendous power from being believed in by the two most powerful wizards alive, and ending up warping up reality in a way that ensured Harry would be alone to face Voldemort (making him more "equal"). That fic had a very interesting take on magic, but it's clearly not HP magic.

One could argue that a happy mistake can happen several times (in my headcanon, 4 Weasleys are like that). Or that many people choose to "bring joy in these times of dakness", or something like that, in the same way Bill&Fleur and Tonks&Lupin marry and the latter have Teddy. I don't think we know enough about James and Lily to decide one way or the other.

 

Hmm. I don't think Dumbledore did what he did for Harry because he believed in the Prophecy. He did what he did because, whether the prophecy was ultimately 'true' or not, he knew that Harry would be the focus of Voldemort's attention.

Which, again, is the point, I think, that Dumbledore was trying to make. He didn't protect Harry because "the prophecy said this was the one," but rather because once Voldemort decided to go after Harry and give him a piece of his consciousness, treating him as anything different would have been a disservice to Harry.

The way I see it, if you take magic out of the equation it's basically the same. Say a serial killer hears a prophecy about a certain child destined to kill him, believes it, and selects a child for slaughter to the best of his ability based on the clues given, trying to kill it and failing the first time, then escapes, and it is thought that he will try again at some point, for whatever reason.

If you then decide to prepare the child for a life where he will presumably be repeatedly targeted and attacked at any given time by a particularly skilled murderer, it is not because the prophecy must be true - of course the prophecy isn't true, and the murdering jackass is fucking crazy for believing it is - you prepare the child because there is a murderer after him, convinced that this child is the one he HAS to kill no matter what.

Unless that's what you were saying in the first place.

 

My brother and I were both "happy mistakes" 16 months apart. I can't say I particularly wanted to know that when my mother drank far too much at my 18th but it shows it can happen.

 

At this point I think everything interesting with that idea has been done, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with it as long as it's presented as an AU thing, and other than some crack-humor shorts it nearly always is.

 

Which four?

------------------

- fics starring Hermione because 99% of fanfic authors can't write her.

- fics where Harry has a long lost sibling or family member, or worse, ones that make a fellow canon character a long lost (close) relative.

- fics that redeem Petunia and not Vernon, or fics that have Vernon abuse Petunia. In canon Petunia is in charge of child raising. SHE is the one who comes up with locking Harry in the cupboard and she is the one who primarily abuses Harry.

- fics that have Ron be an evil abusive bastard towards Hermione. Sure, he's a jerk but he would never hit her. Hermione is the one who attacked him with birds, Ron never physically attacks her in the books.

- fics that have a female character repeatedly punch or kick her boyfriend and face no consequences, and yet when he lifts a finger to defend himself or retaliate he is treated like woman-abusing scum.

- fics that try to redeem the Malfoys. Fuck the entire family sideways with a chainsaw. They DO NOT deserve redemption. And until Draco :

• Walks up to Hagrid, drops to his knees and begs for forgiveness for putting him through a year of emotional torment and almost killing his beloved pet,
• Apologizes to the entire school for being a cunt
• apologizes to the house of Slytherin for making them look bad
• Apologizes to his parents for being a disappointment of a son
• Apologizes to the world for his very existence
• Actually thanks Harry for saving his miserable life,

he will NEVER be redeemed.

 

Depends at what point in time the redeeming occurs. It can definitely be believable, actually interesting character development. But not when it happens out of the blue for no reason at all other than, "Harry told him to think on things".

 

I don't know, it seems Lucius Malfoy used one as a weapon.

---------- Post automerged at 03:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:39 PM ----------

Um, okay, except at least two of the three were partially redeemed in DH. One can argue Draco recognized Harry and chose not to say anything. In fact, since his voice probably didn't change, nor would his posture or mannerisms, there's a fairly good probability he did recognize Harry, even with his face hit by Hermione's spell.

And then, there's Narcissa, who, at the point of Voldemort's final ascension and within an hour or so of his ultimate victory, lied to him about Harry and by doing so, kept Harry alive. What she did was utter betrayal just a few feet from Voldemort, and in front of every last Death Eater. I'd think that would earn her just a little redemption, at least.

 

In my eyes they'll never be redeemed.

 

Not quite. To use your analogy, he knows the psycho killer will be coming after Harry and that Harry by his nature will want to give it everything he's got to win, but there's no way to prep a teenage kid to go head-to-head with a scares-special-forces-with-his-skills psycho. The proper strategy would be to make Harry a target and then surround him with invisible bad-asses for when the psycho comes for him.

Instead, Albus defers the killing of the psycho to Harry- not to offer him a personal victory or a chance to grow as a human being but simply because no one else can do it. If Dumbledore wanted to kill Voldemort in the Ministry atrium, he would have, but he believed that it would only make things worse.

It's a bit of conjecture but I think Albus does understand the value and use of Divination, and when he sought to figure out how to defeat Voldemort during his first rise, the signs said 'You can't.' Albus then cast some big magic or gave up his bowling shirt collection or something and got an answer with a bit more hope to it: 'You can't beat him, but inevitably there will be a counterbalance to Voldemort. Resign yourself to losing before the new one can win, or the balance swings too far the other way.'

Voldemort also was a superstitious one, as he took the idea of a prophesied Kryptonite lad coming to defeat him quite seriously- almost as if he knew such things could and would happen and was waiting to hear what it would be.

So, I believe that Fate is a factor in all this. It doesn't grant powers, but it does affect probability for those anointed with the Mark of 'Fate's favorite new action figure'.

[Excerpt from an upcoming chapter of Holly Polter]

Spoiler

"Miss Evans, I hope you haven't been filling Harry's head with notions of predestiny and undeniable glory."

"Um, sir?" Harry said, "To be blunt, Hols -- Holly has likened it to being stuck with a venereal disease."

"Yah- you can't get rid of it, but you hope it doesn't hurt too much when it flares up," Holly said with a grin.

 

- fics where Luna is shoehorned in. I don't even like Luna in canon, but if you're going to involve her in a story actually USE HER, don't just have her there to show off her quirkiness.

- fics with either too much or too little action.

- fics with letdown endings; where there's a ton of build-up and then the conflict is resolved in the lamest way possible.

- Fics where characters are wearing fashion that are out of place for their time period. Girls in the 70s didn't wear chains and black leather all the time.

- Fics where wizards (esp. purebloods) wear muggle clothes. I blame the movies for this one; they even had Draco Malfoy wearing a muggle suit. The average wizard doesn't know all the muggle fashions.

- Fics where everyone is a master dueler.

- Supposedly rare arts that everyone knows. I blame canon for this one.

- When an oc or minor character's patronus is any one of these: a lion, tiger, stag or doe, phoenix, wolf or fox, werewolf, or snake.

 

This thread is becoming a minor peeve for me.

 

Heh, Holly sounds a bit like Marwyn the Mage, the way she talks about prophecy/fate.

 

- When a fic either constantly changes character POVs or constantly changes from 1st to 3rd person POV.

- when a story is written in first person pov. This is hypocritical of me because 1st person pov is the only one I can write in, but for the life of me I can't read it.

- If a fic's chapters aren't proportional to the amount of words I can't read it. For example, an 18 chapter fic needs at least 18,000 words for me to be able to read it.

- when people get the heights of characters wrong.

 

Tempus.

I don't know why it grits me so much, but it does.

 

Stories that spend too much time on Harry having a happy childhood. I'm not against Harry having a happy/normal childhood - it just isn't interesting to read ten chapters of sappy emotional childcare crap.

This especially shows up in stories where Harry is adopted by anyone other than the Dursleys.

Ignoring how boring it is, I feel it lowers Harry as a character. The fact that he came out of a bad situation as a good person is an inherent part of his character. It provides a good inverse to Voldemort who came out of a bad situation as a bad person.

I don't want to see a Harry who given everything and comes out strong - I want to see a Harry that's faced with an overwhelming amount of challenges, and overcomes them with strength of character or something.