It's working though, isn't it?

 

I'm with you on that one, dude.

 

I don't think it is. :/

 

I read comments about manipulative!Dumbledore...
I read Halfblood Prince and Deathly Hallows...
I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

The difference between canon!Dumbledore and manipulative!Dumbledore (other than the average writing ability of the typical fanfic author)?

In canon, Harry didn't do jack shit about being manipulated... unless you count saying, "Good game, headmaster." by naming his kid Albus Severus. :facepalm

 

Well, to be fair, is Dumbledore being manipulative actually a bad thing? Sure, he was gambling with Harry's life right from the start; I'm pretty sure that it's all but explicitly stated in the first book when he drops the Boy Who Lived with the Dursleys.

The thing is, despite some downright bizarre leaps of faith on Harry and Dumbledore's respective parts, everything turned out fairly decently. Or at least the vast majority of Wizarding Britain (including our apathetic hero) was fairly okay with how the cookie crumbled. He's a hell of a lot more competent than just about any other authority figure shown to us in the series.

So really, who cares? Albus Dumbledore is a manipulative bastard with a twinkle in his eye, a mind like a magic eight ball, a heart at least somewhat close to right place, and he has enough style to pull it off with a fabulous wardrobe filled with epic shoes and purple.

Bravo Albus, bravo.

 

Oh, I never made any comments as to whether it was good or bad. I merely stated that the complainers should remember that it is canon, and the only difference is the quality of the writing.

It is canon that Dumbledore, rather than being up front with Harry about his fate and preparing him for it, chose to keep everything a secret and send Harry jumping through various hoops, conditioning him to respond to the threat of Voldemort in a specific way.

It is canon that he knew Harry's life at #4 Privet Drive was shit, and did nothing about it.

It is also canon that Dumbledore had not originally planned for Harry to survive; Harry's continued existence was just a happy accident. The original plan involved destroying the horcruxes, then Voldemort... which meant Harry would bite the dust one way or another. While Dumbledore may have suspected, as early as the closing chapters of GoF, that there was a remote chance Harry could survive having the horcrux removed from his person, he had never planned on it.

His goal was the destruction of Voldemort, and Albus was certain that this could only be done using Harry, whether the boy lived or died as a result was largely immaterial, and the former highly unlikely.

Fanon tends to add other aspects to manipulative!Dumbledore (continuing the pro-wizard racism of his youth, using the Potter money to fund the war, secretly influencing who Harry can and cannot date, et cetera), and none of these aspects are really any better or worse than the others because, as with everything else, it is the talent of the writer and the effort they put into their story that determines whether something comes of as a hackneyed cliché or a cleverly implemented element.

The genre, in and of itself, makes sense because many of the fanon elements are natural extensions, extrapolations, or interpretations of canon Dumbledore.

Manipulative!Dumbledore is canon.
Good fic is quality fic is good fic, regardless of the clichés the writer used.
Bad fic is shit and the writer should feel bad, regardless of how many clichés the author avoided.

I'm sure if canon!Dumbledore thought the only way to steer Harry toward fighting Voldemort and meeting his destiny was to obliviate the shit out of him and start from scratch, he'd do it, even if it meant calling up that insufferable twat, Lockhart.

 

Interesting, I hadn't considered that possibility yet that Lockhart could have been planned as a fall guy.

 

Yeah, because if I was in Dumbledore's shoes, I would totally going to explain how Voldemort accidentally embedded a shard of his soul in your forehead and how that means you have to die to save the world when you're older, to an eleven year-old. That's a great way to drive Harry toward Voldemort, not indoctrinate him against what is basically Magical!Hitler.

Also, the sense I kind of got from the books was that Dumbledore thought he had all the bases covered at the beginning, and then everything quickly went completely haywire, to the point where he must have felt he was tap-dancing on an avalanche. Basically Dumbledore had his hands tied by the Ministry, right when the shit really began to hit the fan. A bit of a Perfect Storm, really. Philosopher's Stone could also be construed as a gigantic SNAFU, depending on whether or not you really believe that lump of red rock was the real Stone.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we can actually blame Cornelius Fudge's incompetence and corruption for Voldemort even getting a shot at re-establishing himself.

Basically, the only reason that Book 5, 6, and 7 happened at all was thanks to him.

While the canon explanation is that the Dursleys could power the Blood Wards, the cynical part of me wonders what exactly they were protecting Harry from. I've always had a pet theory that the wards weren't really to protect Harry- they were to contain the Horcrux in his forehead, should it take him over. However, there is no concrete evidence to support my theory.

Honestly, I think he was trying his hardest to avoid having to kill Harry. If he felt he really needed to kill Harry, Harry would be dead, probably back when he was an infant. It wasn't until he got himself cursed and he found the Resurrection Stone that he saw any way to keep the boy alive.

Yup. I bet he didn't feel all that great about the plan, but the important thing was to kill Voldemort. For the Greater Good.

What it really is is that the vast majority of people have no idea how to handle a mentor character that is completely willing to screw over his protege, if that's what gets the job done.

Pretty much. I think we're all on the same page at this point (or at least ones in the same chapter). Of course, Harry is a pliant, agreeable sort of fellow- even if he does have temper problems and horrible luck. There really isn't much Dumbledore had to do to get Harry on his side and under his thumb.

 

There is a middle ground between full disclosure the minute Harry steps out from under the Sorting Hat, and keeping everything a secret (unless forced to explain) until both of them were dead.

I really don't see where knowing that he had a piece of Voldemort stuck in him would make Harry any more or less likely to join him. When discovering one is dying from a viper bite, the natural inclination isn't to dive into a pit of vipers.

Why would the knowledge that Voldemort has zero reason to want Harry alive drive Harry toward him? Other than Suicide by Dark Lord, I see no reason to join up with the one person in existence who has every reason to want you dead and gone.

Wait. Don't answer that question; we're posting in a thread derail.

Well... He was really more of a fake mentor, wasn't he? We saw pretty much every single second Harry ever spent with the man, and the most interaction they ever had was when Harry was trying to bring Dumbledore's office down around his ears.

He didn't really do any mentoring at all, and it's a measure of how isolated and in need of parental figures Harry was that he felt as broken up (and subsequently conflicted) as he did about the man and his death. In that vein, the same goes for Sirius, really.

Other than a few after-action debriefings, and the necessary pacification masquerading as answering Harry's questions, Harry and Albus barely spoke to each other. That's without even mentioning how they scarcely even saw one another during Harry's fifth year.

He was never a mentor, not with the paltry bit of interaction we saw in the books. His relationship with Harry (from Albus's side) was closer to that of a scientist observing a test animal. They may feel some vague attachment to the creature, and it would be nice if it survived the project... but that cure for cancer is way more important.

Albus paid about as much attention to Harry as Snape would to a difficult potion: Follow the plan, observe, stir it up when necessary, then use it when the time is right.

That Harry may have been more emotionally invested in things should, again, be chalked up to desperation on his own part. Any 'mentoring' Dumbledore did, in regard to Harry, amounted to saying what he needed to say, to keep Harry reasonably pacified and on track.

And now I should probably stop going off-topic until I have more to say about the story at hand. :?

 

It has been over a year since the last post on this thread and the author updated November 2012 so I am bumping for those who may like it after encountering. I was going to put this up for review but searched and boy, am I surprised at the negative response to this fic.

Check it out if you haven't. Give it another shot if you have. On chapter 15 ATM and well worth a read.

5/5 from me for being the most refreshing fic I have read in a while. Share if you have anything similar.

 

While it's hardly a 5/5 work, it certainly rates out if the Recycle bin, or at least it should.

A solid 4/5.

 

So I guess this story finally got it's yearly update. It's probably less than 2000 words, which is very little, like 6 words a day lol. I'm not even sure if that's better than having no update at all, as nothing really happened. Still, an amusing story for what it is. The author's notes hinted that he forgot where he was taking the story so he's sort of changed it and taking it out into the 'world above' now.

 

It updated, again... God forbid

And it's... crap? Not much to say about it really, will have to wait for a real full length chapter to give my opinion on this one.

 

Yeah. Also, wanted to give a thumbs up to Warlock but can't. Interesting premise, Dinosaurs. But if that's the only main draw...

 

Sorry for the necro, but I thought it is important to let anyone that remember that this existed that (I) it is officially dead (thanks useless stupid updated with 200 words) and (ii) it got a new rewrite who was just posted.

Here's the link:. https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12465245/1
Unfortunately I didn't have the time to read it, so I can't give my opinion on it just yet. Please don't ban me. I remember the original being decent and having an at least mildly competent Fleur who wasn't a secretly insecure weeping little girl, and dinosaurs. So, fingers crossed.