Harry Potter-OOC or was it the Horcrux? long format
Disclaimer-this chat log has been edited-names have been changed to the appropriate LJ titles and lots and lots of comings and goings, and yes and *nods* and have a good days have been deleted in an attempt to create something of readable length. I have not intentionally changed any statement and they should still all, with a little luck, be correctly identified as to the author. I have occasionally correct an obvious spelling or formatting error such as ANd or jsut. If you don't want to slog through the discussion and all the tangents and rabbit trails-go to short format and it is just the Harry bits. Enjoy!
The whinging about the individual that thought the title of "Modern Prometheus" was "random" and "pretentious" and "made no sense" that turned into discussion of Harry
thanfiction: BTW, did anyone get the title of "Modern Prometheus"? I just got a WTF email saying it was "random" and "pretentious" and "made no sense." The title, not the vid.
m_oquinn: peoples must not study mythology anymore
thanfiction: Or read classic horror.
angakkuq_10: Let's see... Prometheus stole fire from the gods, brought it down to humankind, and ended up punished for it.
thanfiction: The original full title of a famous book: "Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus"
m_oquinn: I didn't know that
faeriegal713: Yes, it was referring to the fact that they were doing what they should not have been doing, at least not by themselves.
thanfiction: Creating a monster.
kate_lb: Not pretentious...people are just too lazy to look it up.
thanfiction: Yeah. One cannot exactly call Mary Shelley obscure.
thanfiction: It's, IMHO, not really possible to have sub-secondary characters five years after the end of the novels be particularly OOC.
m_oquinn: lol, um yeah
kate_lb: A name and a setting does not canon characterization make.
thanfiction: Yeah, it basically boiled down to "The title made me feel dumb, and that is bad, and the ending of HP was happyshiny rainbows, so how dare you say a tertiary character and an OC had a shit time of it."
m_oquinn: well then, their opinion is the only one in the whole wide world that matters
angakkuq_10: There's nothing in the epilogue to suggest that things were all happy shiny rainbows for anybody but Harry and his family.
There are still problems. Harry just doesn't have to worry about his destiny anymore.
ceirdwenfc: I personally didn't know the reference, and I chose not to look it up - I managed okay without whining to the author about how pretentious he is when the reality is I was too lazy to look it up.
There are other things to whine at the author about
:P
angakkuq_10: Nothing to indicate the wizarding world doesn't still have at least some of the same problems.
Just saying.
thanfiction: There are plenty of things to whine at the author about ;) Like killing Ernie.
ceirdwenfc: That wasn't whining - that was forming a deep bond over an emotional upheaval.
lonelyflutterby: or killing..../everyone/
thanfiction: No! Everyone was happy and ever after and babies and shipping and win and sparkles!
ceirdwenfc: There is nothing wrong with that!
NOTHING
kate_lb: And death glares and wank to anyone who says otherwise!
ceirdwenfc: Except the sparkles
Sparkles suck
thanfiction: There are 'ships. Most of the DA winds up marrying each other.
angakkuq_10: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a happy ending. The canon kind of has one foot in fairy-tale-mode, as Ryan put it once.
kate_lb: What do you have against sparkles?
ceirdwenfc: They're...very...sparkly
angakkuq_10: After Twilight, nobody can ever say "sparkles" unironically again.
kate_lb: Point.
thanfiction: It's just a matter of how you interpret a happy ending. There seems to be a feeling it means nothing bad ever happened to anyone ever again, not even a hangnail, and that everyone skipped away from the battlefield with no scars, inside or out.
angakkuq_10: Yeah, pretty much. Life does not work that way.
thanfiction: angakkuq_10, have you ever done any daydverse meta?
angakkuq_10: Not yet. Have considered it.
thanfiction: I would love to see someone tackle Sluagh in meta form. Not to be egotistic, but the mythology tropes alone are some heavy duty metafodder there.
faeriegal713: The problem with that version of a happy ending is that means there was no character development what-so-ever. We all come out of the difficulties in our life with a greater understanding of ourselves and the world. If we don't, that's where we discover we're all quite capable of being mean and nasty with envy and greed as our leading sins.
thanfiction: People tend to shy away from Sluagh in daydverse fandoming, I've noticed. Writing, art, meta, etc. I think that AD is the only one who has touched that era at all.
lonelyflutterby: sluagh scares me shitless
thanfiction: Well, there is that. And I think a lot of people are intimidated by the Irish stuff.
ceirdwenfc: I like that book the best, so I don't play with it
faeriegal713: I think some great portion of that happens to be because none of us /know/ the mythology like you do and we're quite afraid of messing it up.
anywhere_but_nj: The mythology in Sluagh confuses me. I skipped over some parts of it in my first read and is one reason why my re-read is going so slow. Exactly faeriegal713.
ceirdwenfc: That's just how I read it anywhere_but_nj
faeriegal713: I love me some good Celtic fantasy and mythology, but I don't know it well enough to make a believable tale.
anywhere_but_nj: Also with DAYD and even AP, the characters deal with more "normal" things, and especially in DAYD when we know the side stories of everything going on, it's so much easier to work with
thanfiction: I did my best to write it in a way that it still made sense if you didn't know the mythos. Like the Morrigan. I will openly admit that figuring out how to describe a triune in prose was one of the toughest technical parts.
angakkuq_10: Well, I've read the canon, most of the interviews, and quite a bit of meta by others. My talent seems to be putting together pieces of different sources to make a coherent whole, filling in the gaps with my own experiences, thoughts, and speculation.
ceirdwenfc: And for us writers, it's pretty much there - unless you want the angst while they were in the Oweyganet or the alternate universe (which I've thought of toying with), but for artists, I think it's easier to tackle
angakkuq_10: Slaugh is... intimidating.
You could build a whole 'verse around it by itself.
thanfiction: She's one, but she's three, and they're all the Morrigan, but there's one aspect that is specifically the Morrigan, and...oh, fuck it.
ceirdwenfc: I think it worked without knowing all the intricacies, but I also had you explaining a lot of it for opinions and such
The Morrigan was the easiest to understand - we also don't see it the way you see it - we're not in your head
And thank G-d for that!
thanfiction: angakkuq_10's genius is for themes. I'd love to see him tackle the themes of vengeance, retribution, and redemption in Sluagh.
angakkuq_10: Canon's relatively simple and straightforward.
faeriegal713: thanfiction, you did a pretty good job with describing and explaining her through the eyes of a man who had never really had any exposure to any version of the triune goddess.
ceirdwenfc: You can't tell him the themes - he needs to find them himself - maybe he sees different themes and you've just corrupted the essay
angakkuq_10: I think I'll reread DAYD first. Along with DH.
ceirdwenfc: Those are your themes as you wrote them, but as a reader, we may see other themes
I agree with faeriegal713, what she said about the explaining
thanfiction: A Sluagh itself is a gray vengeance spirit. Neither living nor dead, neither mortal nor truly Faye, neither good nor evil, trapped eternaly in Between, usually the spirit of a warrior seeking vengeance for the unjustly fallen, but after that is done they kind of go crazy and freelance, either alone or in packs. Hence why I chose that as the title.
angakkuq_10: The main theme of canon seems to be choice, and taking responsibility for said choices. There are other subsidiary themes, but that's the main one.
thanfiction: It's a concept that really encompasses the entire book, not just Seamus.
angakkuq_10: There's also the condemnation of bigotry and small-mindedness, and emphasizing that there's more to people that what's immediately apparent. A theme you could argue DAYD continues and expands on a bit.
thanfiction: You could say that theme runs through all ten books, actually.
angakkuq_10: True.
faeriegal713: *nods* Choice is a huge theme in Sluagh as well, even if sometimes it's a character's inability to see that there is a choice.
angakkuq_10: There also seems to be the theme of the cycle of prejudice, jealousy, and vindictiveness. A cycle that Harry, fortunately, breaks.
thanfiction: I don't know if you can call choice a theme in a work, though, because LIFE is a series of choices, as is every story.
angakkuq_10: Well, it's the choices Harry has made that show how unlike Riddle he is. And, paradoxically, how LIKE Riddle he is.
thanfiction: I think, if you go Daydverse, that there's a lot of untapped comparison, if you want to look at the difference love and friendship makes, between Terry and Riddle as well. Maybe even moreso than Harry, because Harry had love in infancy and he didn't have the kind of genius Riddle did that helped feed the superiority complex.
angakkuq_10: Harry was a prodigy in his own right, really. Give him a good teacher in any subject and the incentive to succeed and he excels.
thanfiction: Yes, but give anyone who is reasonably intelligent a good teacher and a good motivation and they can do most anything. Terry and Tom both have that self-driven prodigy element. They were both doing advanced magic very early, and both driven to understand the roots of magic, find its full potential, and advance it further.
angakkuq_10: Point.
Harry does pretty well, though, for someone who grew up with a family that actively discouraged him from developing his imagination and creativity.
thanfiction: I think if he hadn't found Mike, Riddle would have found that Harry Potter was the least of his problems in that year as far as a challenge to his authority.
ceirdwenfc: He still had an active imagination - he needed an escape somehow, and isn't that the perfect fantasy for an abused child - this isn't my family - I have family somewhere else, and he had Sirius and Hogwarts.
thanfiction: I'm not saying anything against Harry. There's a big difference between saying "he's not a once in generation prodigy" and "he's nothing special."
faeriegal713: I think it would be interesting to explore the differences between Terry and Tom Riddle, they were much alike if you look closely at their back history, the only true difference being that Terry found Mike just before it was too late. They're both incredibly powerful with their magic and it's intuitive to both of them to explore and try to understand it like no one else had. Again, Mike kept Terry from jumping in over his head and gave him a steady ground and most importantly, a human contact who loved and understood him. Tom never had that, much as his top DE would have liked to argue against.
thanfiction:And thus he was meddling in deep Legilimency at 14 rather than Horcruxes.
ceirdwenfc: Yes, but most of those kids were prodigies (except the Weasleys) - only children or one of two or so
angakkuq_10: You could write loads of meta on Riddle's motivations alone. The man is damaged, but believably so.
thanfiction: It depends on how you define prodigy. It's like how someone who is the most amazing student at the public highschool in Assfart, Nebraska discovers when they go to Oxford that no one is quite so impressed with what got them considered a genius back home.
angakkuq_10: And I can't help but think cutting your soul to ribbons would have an effect on your, well, psyche.
thanfiction: Hogwarts is the cream of the crop.
ceirdwenfc: Going to Oxford has nothing to do with who they were in class with in NE
angakkuq_10: True.
ceirdwenfc: The smartest idiot wouldn't go to Oxford
faeriegal713: Everyone there had to be just a little extra special.
ceirdwenfc: *agrees with faeriegal713*
thanfiction: Unless you have your ticket bought by a Malfoy, you're automatically in the highest percentile, so the curve is skewed.
One thing about Harry that I've never seen personally explored in Meta is how much of that tug of war he always seems to have going on between the "white dog" and "black dog" so to speak, and how that's so often at such an exaggerated level, particularly in OTP, might have to do with having a fragment of LV in him. It can't just have been the Parseltongue, and it's just coincidence that Harry was an erratic, borderline schitzo asshole when that connection was being actively plucked and fucked?
angakkuq_10: Up until HBP came out, people assumed that Harry was going to stay like that for the rest of the series. Hell, a lot of fanfic writers seemed to actively hope for it.
faeriegal713: Oh... that is an interesting thought indeed. Will require some thinking.
ceirdwenfc: Well yes, he was torn between good and evil, probably more because of the connection that he just didn't understand - not to mention the wrath of puberty
angakkuq_10: People even screamed OoC when Harry wasn't as moody about Sirius' death as he had been about Cedric's.
thanfiction: There's how Harry reacts, and then there's how his little passenger reacts. He's just this side of Quirrell, really, but fandom doesn't seem to take that into account. All of Harry's actions, thoughts, and feelings are his alone despite the knowledge that he was a carrier for a fragment of LV.
angakkuq_10: But it is obvious that Riddle spent most of OP in Harry's head.
ceirdwenfc: Sirius died in battle - Cedric was a complete shock - young kid - his reaction was normal, being that everyone's reaction would be different
ceirdwenfc: I mean to say that Cedric was a young kid and no one expected him to die (none of the characters)
angakkuq_10: And Dumbledore knew it, and tried to prevent Riddle from overhearing any new information through Harry, which only exacerbated the problem, with Riddle's anger reinforcing Harry's.
angakkuq_10: The movie had a nice angle on it, I think.
ceirdwenfc: Absolutely angakkuq_10, I never thought of that - the less that Riddle was allowed to see, the angrier he got, the angrier Harry got also
faeriegal713: *nods* Especially since Harry was already at the stage of "Why won't they /tell/ me anything! I'm doing half the dirty work here!"
thanfiction: Horcruxes have also been shown to have a strong self-protective factor. Yet I haven't seen anyone speculate as to whether Harry's uncharictaristic paralysis in DH and the need to take a chapter and a half and a handful of ghosts to pump himself up for self-sacrifice (when he'd been throwing his life on the line casually at least once a book since he was 11) may have had to do with the Horcrux kicking and screaming and trying not to die.
angakkuq_10: And Harry has a legitimate point--"If I'm the one who's at the top of his hit-list, shouldn't I be involved somehow?"
anywhere_but_nj: While I didn't like everything about the movie, it really did have a nice take on the Voldy-Harry mind battle
Thanks to numerous factors, Harry doesn't really care about himself as long as those he cares for are safe.
ceirdwenfc: I hated that book - the movie let me understand it better
You could argue all day about why this is.
Harry would prefer to go down fighting, I think--this involves just letting Riddle kill him... or so he thinks
When it's about fighting back, Harry jumps into it with both feet.
thanfiction: Except that the wangsting isn't about the "I can't die in battle" it's "OMG I'M GONNA DIEEE!" Which is totally OOC unless you take into account the Horcrux clinging like a hysterical Sumatran Ratmonkey to his cerebellum screaming its head off.
angakkuq_10: I guess that makes a certain amount of sense.
faeriegal713: That would actually make the entire last book make a whole hell of a lot more sense than how we've all been perceiving it the last few years.
thanfiction: I think that once Harry actively got Horcrux hunting, the one wrapped around his head started going "Oh no you don't, bitch!" and so every step from there on was mentally and emotionally more and more like fighting your way uphill through knee-high Jello with a batshit Troll attached to each ankle.
And Harry went more and more erratic, more and more OOC, more and more introverted, more and more selfish, more and more obsessive and concerned with his own survival...more and more RIDDLE, with Harry himself fighting through here and there and occasionally breaching the surface.
angakkuq_10: That does make sense.
faeriegal713: *nods slowly* it makes a lot of sense.
thanfiction: So by the time he was actually going to destroy the piece that was in his head, the second to last piece, and had given orders for the destruction of the last one, it took not only ALL his own willpower, but some serious outside help to drag that Horcrux kicking and screaming to IT's death.
thanfiction: We've seen Harry face death. Time and time again. It's not like that.
ceirdwenfc: Are you saying that JKR had more subtext than she's given credit for?
angakkuq_10: AND Horcruxes are notorious for yanking on one's chain.
thanfiction: Nor is it like him to avoid the battle, nor to shut out so much happening around him. Unless it was one on one combat from Little Hangleton onward, when Voldemort "activated" his soul fragments by returning (and Harry's characterization took an abrupt left turn) rather than from the point Harry dropped the cloak in the Great Hall.
thanfiction: Could Harry Potter walk over the bodies of his friends and classmates mourning how awful it was that he might have to give his life? No. Could Tom Riddle? In a heartbeat. Could Harry Potter shut out everything else around him, including fallen friends, to drag Tom Riddle kicking and screaming towards a metaphorical cliff to throw him off? Yes. That he could.
faeriegal713: It would be very interesting to know whether JKR meant to write it that way or if the characters have once again, taken a life of their own.
angakkuq_10: I'm glad Skype is saving this conversation; I might make an essay out of this. You make a very good argument.
thanfiction: Because JKR herself has been confronted about the OOC and plotholes and never offered that, I don't think she saw it.
angakkuq_10: Or maybe she didn't get why it bothered them so much; it made sense to her, after all.
thanfiction: I think it's like Draco and the DA fidelius. That patch makes several huge plot holes go away and it all clicks together, but that doesn't mean she intended it.
ceirdwenfc: I think that's true - what angakkuq_10 is saying if I'm understanding correctly - I know that I'll write something and then the beta will ask a question and I'll think, 'isn't that obvious?'
angakkuq_10: Yeah, exactly.
thanfiction: Except people HAVE asked, and she hasn't said "Isn't that obvious?"
ceirdwenfc: For her, she didn't' so much create a world as wrote a book.
The book is done, and so is she.
Except for Dumbledore is gay
thanfiction: Even though Increasingly Useless Paralyzed Wangsty Harry has been the biggest critique of her books from fans and professional critics alike from OotP onward.
angakkuq_10: She's likely to come back to it eventually.
ceirdwenfc: And no one else ever dies again
angakkuq_10: TBF, Harry did the best he could with what he was given. Dumbledore told him the bare minimum and he didn't get much from Riddle's end.
ceirdwenfc: Only to keep others from doing it (like the encyclopedia)
My feeling and I've said this before, I think she's done, she doesn't want anyone else doing it, so she says she'll do it and maybe she will to shut people up, but it's...idk
thanfiction: I don't think SHE realized it, at least not consciously. Just like I was *blink blink whu?* when people said there were homoerotic overtones to Mike and Terry in DAYD.
angakkuq_10: True.
ceirdwenfc: I'll give you the mike/terry thing, but for her that was a huge underlying theme is the balance of good/evil, Voldemort/Harry, etc. She had to know on some level but to you, you didn't see mike/terry because you saw the other gay characters and in your mind, they just weren't
thanfiction: No one's saying that Harry didn't do his best. The thing that's on the table is why his best suddenly changed so radically OOC in book 5. The kid who stood up to Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets IS the same who stood up to him in Little Hangleton but NOT the same who stood up to him in OotP or DH.
And I personally think it's MORE heroic that Harry managed to slog it through with a Voldecrux hanging from his back like the limpet from hell and getting heavier and heavier, more and more hysterical, impinging on his thoughts more and more than if it was a connection that gave him headaches and visions and parseltongue but was otherwise passive.
angakkuq_10: Yeah, definitely.
thanfiction: Harry's a great flyer, right? It's a major facet of his character from the first book. We all agree there, yes?
ceirdwenfc: It wasn't passive - it was struggling for survival-the horcrux was struggling
thanfiction: To use an analogy, the fans have been demanding why, after flying circles around dragons and ace Quidditch players twice his age for the first four books, Harry's suddenly howling about how hard it is to get off the ground and struggling to pul off the most basic maneuvers on a broom. That's OOC, and when it's been pointed out to JKR, she's said "no it's not," which has made fans and critics both decide it's bad writing, because you don't call someone a flying ace for four books and CONTINUE to praise their amazing broom skillz when for the last three books, they can barely take off. UNLESS in the last three books, they're flying with a massive iron weight on each leg. In which case it IS consistent with mad broom skillz that they can take off at all, and the whinging and howling stops being OOC at all.
None of the Horcruxes we see are passive. They're ruthless and manipulative as you would expect for fragments of Tom Marvolo Riddle. Why should the one in Harry's head be any different?
But that's why we see a very different Harry in Sluagh and AP. The Voldecrux is gone...and with it, a lot of what he thought he was from the end of GoF onward. You really have to look there and back to see HARRY alone, and who you see is heroic, competent with certain areas of brilliance, a little lazy unless it's something he loves and then a little obsessive, fiercely loyal, with an inferiority chip on his shoulder thanks to the Dursleys and a massive hot button about being kept in the dark.
faeriegal713: Huh, you actually make me like him as a character again when you write it out like that.
thanfiction: Which makes him a damned good Auror, someone who is still learning leadership but working on it, and who also has a temper for which the biggest button is making him think you're brushing him off.
anywhere_but_nj: lol faeriegal713. I never really thought about it like that before. usually with books I just...read them.
thanfiction: And the relationship with Neville is particularly tense because what Neville did in the last year is what Harry wanted to do, what he felt like it was his right and his place to do - especially since the DA started out being his - but between the Horcrux and being driven out of school he wasn't allowed to do.
faeriegal713: Oh, ouch.
ceirdwenfc: And the Da was forced on him by Hermione and he took up the mantle and they were just a homework club, but what Neville did...
kate_lb: There would be some massive resentment issues there.
thanfiction: Neville did what Harry thought the Chosen One was supposed to mean. It was not supposed to mean wrestling with schitzohorcruxia in a tent until you barely managed to drag yourself across someone else's battlefield.
liebedance: Wow... I never thought of that.
m_oquinn: *swallows*
thanfiction: There was a truce of sorts when they worked together in the Auror Department because HARRY was in his element there, but that all the ex DA still called him Commander, still deferred to him was enough of a sting when they were young, and when Neville calls the entire department away - INCLUDING HARRY'S WIFE - and deliberately doesn't tell him because he "wasn't in the real battle"? Yeah, he still comes to help. Because he's cool like that. But he also shows up with a hella chip on his shoulder and the temper just below the surface.
And when Neville left the Aurors, the whole DA Issue and Chosen One Issues stayed the white elephant in the room between them. They were friends, sure, but it's That Thing We Don't Talk About. In AP, they're having to confront that head on, and Neville's come back into Harry's turf - the department he's not only head of now, but keeping above funding water by the skin of his teeth - and instantly it's "Commander! We've missed you!"
Hear that noise? That's Potter headdesking in the corner.
angakkuq_10 laughs
m_oquinn: I love angakkuq_10
angakkuq_10: ?
m_oquinn: because you are win
and laughing
and angakkuq_10
kate_lb: Just the fact that they still defer to him would probably be a huge isue to Harry. Very Lord of the Flies with the whole "you can't talk unless you have the seashell" thing. And then throwing a huge fit when everyone starts talking anyway.
thanfiction: No, Sluagh Harry and AP Harry aren't DH Harry. But Harry wasn't Harry in DH. The last time we saw Harry Potter clearly - with the exception of the last chapter of DH and the epilogue - was the Third Task. He's mature enough not to throw a fit about it, but it still makes him wince a little. AP is Harry's story of finally getting past DH as much as Sluagh was Seamus'.
The whinging about the individual that thought the title of "Modern Prometheus" was "random" and "pretentious" and "made no sense" that turned into discussion of Harry
thanfiction: BTW, did anyone get the title of "Modern Prometheus"? I just got a WTF email saying it was "random" and "pretentious" and "made no sense." The title, not the vid.
m_oquinn: peoples must not study mythology anymore
thanfiction: Or read classic horror.
angakkuq_10: Let's see... Prometheus stole fire from the gods, brought it down to humankind, and ended up punished for it.
thanfiction: The original full title of a famous book: "Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus"
m_oquinn: I didn't know that
faeriegal713: Yes, it was referring to the fact that they were doing what they should not have been doing, at least not by themselves.
thanfiction: Creating a monster.
kate_lb: Not pretentious...people are just too lazy to look it up.
thanfiction: Yeah. One cannot exactly call Mary Shelley obscure.
thanfiction: It's, IMHO, not really possible to have sub-secondary characters five years after the end of the novels be particularly OOC.
m_oquinn: lol, um yeah
kate_lb: A name and a setting does not canon characterization make.
thanfiction: Yeah, it basically boiled down to "The title made me feel dumb, and that is bad, and the ending of HP was happyshiny rainbows, so how dare you say a tertiary character and an OC had a shit time of it."
m_oquinn: well then, their opinion is the only one in the whole wide world that matters
angakkuq_10: There's nothing in the epilogue to suggest that things were all happy shiny rainbows for anybody but Harry and his family.
There are still problems. Harry just doesn't have to worry about his destiny anymore.
ceirdwenfc: I personally didn't know the reference, and I chose not to look it up - I managed okay without whining to the author about how pretentious he is when the reality is I was too lazy to look it up.
There are other things to whine at the author about
:P
angakkuq_10: Nothing to indicate the wizarding world doesn't still have at least some of the same problems.
Just saying.
thanfiction: There are plenty of things to whine at the author about ;) Like killing Ernie.
ceirdwenfc: That wasn't whining - that was forming a deep bond over an emotional upheaval.
lonelyflutterby: or killing..../everyone/
thanfiction: No! Everyone was happy and ever after and babies and shipping and win and sparkles!
ceirdwenfc: There is nothing wrong with that!
NOTHING
kate_lb: And death glares and wank to anyone who says otherwise!
ceirdwenfc: Except the sparkles
Sparkles suck
thanfiction: There are 'ships. Most of the DA winds up marrying each other.
angakkuq_10: Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a happy ending. The canon kind of has one foot in fairy-tale-mode, as Ryan put it once.
kate_lb: What do you have against sparkles?
ceirdwenfc: They're...very...sparkly
angakkuq_10: After Twilight, nobody can ever say "sparkles" unironically again.
kate_lb: Point.
thanfiction: It's just a matter of how you interpret a happy ending. There seems to be a feeling it means nothing bad ever happened to anyone ever again, not even a hangnail, and that everyone skipped away from the battlefield with no scars, inside or out.
angakkuq_10: Yeah, pretty much. Life does not work that way.
thanfiction: angakkuq_10, have you ever done any daydverse meta?
angakkuq_10: Not yet. Have considered it.
thanfiction: I would love to see someone tackle Sluagh in meta form. Not to be egotistic, but the mythology tropes alone are some heavy duty metafodder there.
faeriegal713: The problem with that version of a happy ending is that means there was no character development what-so-ever. We all come out of the difficulties in our life with a greater understanding of ourselves and the world. If we don't, that's where we discover we're all quite capable of being mean and nasty with envy and greed as our leading sins.
thanfiction: People tend to shy away from Sluagh in daydverse fandoming, I've noticed. Writing, art, meta, etc. I think that AD is the only one who has touched that era at all.
lonelyflutterby: sluagh scares me shitless
thanfiction: Well, there is that. And I think a lot of people are intimidated by the Irish stuff.
ceirdwenfc: I like that book the best, so I don't play with it
faeriegal713: I think some great portion of that happens to be because none of us /know/ the mythology like you do and we're quite afraid of messing it up.
anywhere_but_nj: The mythology in Sluagh confuses me. I skipped over some parts of it in my first read and is one reason why my re-read is going so slow. Exactly faeriegal713.
ceirdwenfc: That's just how I read it anywhere_but_nj
faeriegal713: I love me some good Celtic fantasy and mythology, but I don't know it well enough to make a believable tale.
anywhere_but_nj: Also with DAYD and even AP, the characters deal with more "normal" things, and especially in DAYD when we know the side stories of everything going on, it's so much easier to work with
thanfiction: I did my best to write it in a way that it still made sense if you didn't know the mythos. Like the Morrigan. I will openly admit that figuring out how to describe a triune in prose was one of the toughest technical parts.
angakkuq_10: Well, I've read the canon, most of the interviews, and quite a bit of meta by others. My talent seems to be putting together pieces of different sources to make a coherent whole, filling in the gaps with my own experiences, thoughts, and speculation.
ceirdwenfc: And for us writers, it's pretty much there - unless you want the angst while they were in the Oweyganet or the alternate universe (which I've thought of toying with), but for artists, I think it's easier to tackle
angakkuq_10: Slaugh is... intimidating.
You could build a whole 'verse around it by itself.
thanfiction: She's one, but she's three, and they're all the Morrigan, but there's one aspect that is specifically the Morrigan, and...oh, fuck it.
ceirdwenfc: I think it worked without knowing all the intricacies, but I also had you explaining a lot of it for opinions and such
The Morrigan was the easiest to understand - we also don't see it the way you see it - we're not in your head
And thank G-d for that!
thanfiction: angakkuq_10's genius is for themes. I'd love to see him tackle the themes of vengeance, retribution, and redemption in Sluagh.
angakkuq_10: Canon's relatively simple and straightforward.
faeriegal713: thanfiction, you did a pretty good job with describing and explaining her through the eyes of a man who had never really had any exposure to any version of the triune goddess.
ceirdwenfc: You can't tell him the themes - he needs to find them himself - maybe he sees different themes and you've just corrupted the essay
angakkuq_10: I think I'll reread DAYD first. Along with DH.
ceirdwenfc: Those are your themes as you wrote them, but as a reader, we may see other themes
I agree with faeriegal713, what she said about the explaining
thanfiction: A Sluagh itself is a gray vengeance spirit. Neither living nor dead, neither mortal nor truly Faye, neither good nor evil, trapped eternaly in Between, usually the spirit of a warrior seeking vengeance for the unjustly fallen, but after that is done they kind of go crazy and freelance, either alone or in packs. Hence why I chose that as the title.
angakkuq_10: The main theme of canon seems to be choice, and taking responsibility for said choices. There are other subsidiary themes, but that's the main one.
thanfiction: It's a concept that really encompasses the entire book, not just Seamus.
angakkuq_10: There's also the condemnation of bigotry and small-mindedness, and emphasizing that there's more to people that what's immediately apparent. A theme you could argue DAYD continues and expands on a bit.
thanfiction: You could say that theme runs through all ten books, actually.
angakkuq_10: True.
faeriegal713: *nods* Choice is a huge theme in Sluagh as well, even if sometimes it's a character's inability to see that there is a choice.
angakkuq_10: There also seems to be the theme of the cycle of prejudice, jealousy, and vindictiveness. A cycle that Harry, fortunately, breaks.
thanfiction: I don't know if you can call choice a theme in a work, though, because LIFE is a series of choices, as is every story.
angakkuq_10: Well, it's the choices Harry has made that show how unlike Riddle he is. And, paradoxically, how LIKE Riddle he is.
thanfiction: I think, if you go Daydverse, that there's a lot of untapped comparison, if you want to look at the difference love and friendship makes, between Terry and Riddle as well. Maybe even moreso than Harry, because Harry had love in infancy and he didn't have the kind of genius Riddle did that helped feed the superiority complex.
angakkuq_10: Harry was a prodigy in his own right, really. Give him a good teacher in any subject and the incentive to succeed and he excels.
thanfiction: Yes, but give anyone who is reasonably intelligent a good teacher and a good motivation and they can do most anything. Terry and Tom both have that self-driven prodigy element. They were both doing advanced magic very early, and both driven to understand the roots of magic, find its full potential, and advance it further.
angakkuq_10: Point.
Harry does pretty well, though, for someone who grew up with a family that actively discouraged him from developing his imagination and creativity.
thanfiction: I think if he hadn't found Mike, Riddle would have found that Harry Potter was the least of his problems in that year as far as a challenge to his authority.
ceirdwenfc: He still had an active imagination - he needed an escape somehow, and isn't that the perfect fantasy for an abused child - this isn't my family - I have family somewhere else, and he had Sirius and Hogwarts.
thanfiction: I'm not saying anything against Harry. There's a big difference between saying "he's not a once in generation prodigy" and "he's nothing special."
faeriegal713: I think it would be interesting to explore the differences between Terry and Tom Riddle, they were much alike if you look closely at their back history, the only true difference being that Terry found Mike just before it was too late. They're both incredibly powerful with their magic and it's intuitive to both of them to explore and try to understand it like no one else had. Again, Mike kept Terry from jumping in over his head and gave him a steady ground and most importantly, a human contact who loved and understood him. Tom never had that, much as his top DE would have liked to argue against.
thanfiction:And thus he was meddling in deep Legilimency at 14 rather than Horcruxes.
ceirdwenfc: Yes, but most of those kids were prodigies (except the Weasleys) - only children or one of two or so
angakkuq_10: You could write loads of meta on Riddle's motivations alone. The man is damaged, but believably so.
thanfiction: It depends on how you define prodigy. It's like how someone who is the most amazing student at the public highschool in Assfart, Nebraska discovers when they go to Oxford that no one is quite so impressed with what got them considered a genius back home.
angakkuq_10: And I can't help but think cutting your soul to ribbons would have an effect on your, well, psyche.
thanfiction: Hogwarts is the cream of the crop.
ceirdwenfc: Going to Oxford has nothing to do with who they were in class with in NE
angakkuq_10: True.
ceirdwenfc: The smartest idiot wouldn't go to Oxford
faeriegal713: Everyone there had to be just a little extra special.
ceirdwenfc: *agrees with faeriegal713*
thanfiction: Unless you have your ticket bought by a Malfoy, you're automatically in the highest percentile, so the curve is skewed.
One thing about Harry that I've never seen personally explored in Meta is how much of that tug of war he always seems to have going on between the "white dog" and "black dog" so to speak, and how that's so often at such an exaggerated level, particularly in OTP, might have to do with having a fragment of LV in him. It can't just have been the Parseltongue, and it's just coincidence that Harry was an erratic, borderline schitzo asshole when that connection was being actively plucked and fucked?
angakkuq_10: Up until HBP came out, people assumed that Harry was going to stay like that for the rest of the series. Hell, a lot of fanfic writers seemed to actively hope for it.
faeriegal713: Oh... that is an interesting thought indeed. Will require some thinking.
ceirdwenfc: Well yes, he was torn between good and evil, probably more because of the connection that he just didn't understand - not to mention the wrath of puberty
angakkuq_10: People even screamed OoC when Harry wasn't as moody about Sirius' death as he had been about Cedric's.
thanfiction: There's how Harry reacts, and then there's how his little passenger reacts. He's just this side of Quirrell, really, but fandom doesn't seem to take that into account. All of Harry's actions, thoughts, and feelings are his alone despite the knowledge that he was a carrier for a fragment of LV.
angakkuq_10: But it is obvious that Riddle spent most of OP in Harry's head.
ceirdwenfc: Sirius died in battle - Cedric was a complete shock - young kid - his reaction was normal, being that everyone's reaction would be different
ceirdwenfc: I mean to say that Cedric was a young kid and no one expected him to die (none of the characters)
angakkuq_10: And Dumbledore knew it, and tried to prevent Riddle from overhearing any new information through Harry, which only exacerbated the problem, with Riddle's anger reinforcing Harry's.
angakkuq_10: The movie had a nice angle on it, I think.
ceirdwenfc: Absolutely angakkuq_10, I never thought of that - the less that Riddle was allowed to see, the angrier he got, the angrier Harry got also
faeriegal713: *nods* Especially since Harry was already at the stage of "Why won't they /tell/ me anything! I'm doing half the dirty work here!"
thanfiction: Horcruxes have also been shown to have a strong self-protective factor. Yet I haven't seen anyone speculate as to whether Harry's uncharictaristic paralysis in DH and the need to take a chapter and a half and a handful of ghosts to pump himself up for self-sacrifice (when he'd been throwing his life on the line casually at least once a book since he was 11) may have had to do with the Horcrux kicking and screaming and trying not to die.
angakkuq_10: And Harry has a legitimate point--"If I'm the one who's at the top of his hit-list, shouldn't I be involved somehow?"
anywhere_but_nj: While I didn't like everything about the movie, it really did have a nice take on the Voldy-Harry mind battle
Thanks to numerous factors, Harry doesn't really care about himself as long as those he cares for are safe.
ceirdwenfc: I hated that book - the movie let me understand it better
You could argue all day about why this is.
Harry would prefer to go down fighting, I think--this involves just letting Riddle kill him... or so he thinks
When it's about fighting back, Harry jumps into it with both feet.
thanfiction: Except that the wangsting isn't about the "I can't die in battle" it's "OMG I'M GONNA DIEEE!" Which is totally OOC unless you take into account the Horcrux clinging like a hysterical Sumatran Ratmonkey to his cerebellum screaming its head off.
angakkuq_10: I guess that makes a certain amount of sense.
faeriegal713: That would actually make the entire last book make a whole hell of a lot more sense than how we've all been perceiving it the last few years.
thanfiction: I think that once Harry actively got Horcrux hunting, the one wrapped around his head started going "Oh no you don't, bitch!" and so every step from there on was mentally and emotionally more and more like fighting your way uphill through knee-high Jello with a batshit Troll attached to each ankle.
And Harry went more and more erratic, more and more OOC, more and more introverted, more and more selfish, more and more obsessive and concerned with his own survival...more and more RIDDLE, with Harry himself fighting through here and there and occasionally breaching the surface.
angakkuq_10: That does make sense.
faeriegal713: *nods slowly* it makes a lot of sense.
thanfiction: So by the time he was actually going to destroy the piece that was in his head, the second to last piece, and had given orders for the destruction of the last one, it took not only ALL his own willpower, but some serious outside help to drag that Horcrux kicking and screaming to IT's death.
thanfiction: We've seen Harry face death. Time and time again. It's not like that.
ceirdwenfc: Are you saying that JKR had more subtext than she's given credit for?
angakkuq_10: AND Horcruxes are notorious for yanking on one's chain.
thanfiction: Nor is it like him to avoid the battle, nor to shut out so much happening around him. Unless it was one on one combat from Little Hangleton onward, when Voldemort "activated" his soul fragments by returning (and Harry's characterization took an abrupt left turn) rather than from the point Harry dropped the cloak in the Great Hall.
thanfiction: Could Harry Potter walk over the bodies of his friends and classmates mourning how awful it was that he might have to give his life? No. Could Tom Riddle? In a heartbeat. Could Harry Potter shut out everything else around him, including fallen friends, to drag Tom Riddle kicking and screaming towards a metaphorical cliff to throw him off? Yes. That he could.
faeriegal713: It would be very interesting to know whether JKR meant to write it that way or if the characters have once again, taken a life of their own.
angakkuq_10: I'm glad Skype is saving this conversation; I might make an essay out of this. You make a very good argument.
thanfiction: Because JKR herself has been confronted about the OOC and plotholes and never offered that, I don't think she saw it.
angakkuq_10: Or maybe she didn't get why it bothered them so much; it made sense to her, after all.
thanfiction: I think it's like Draco and the DA fidelius. That patch makes several huge plot holes go away and it all clicks together, but that doesn't mean she intended it.
ceirdwenfc: I think that's true - what angakkuq_10 is saying if I'm understanding correctly - I know that I'll write something and then the beta will ask a question and I'll think, 'isn't that obvious?'
angakkuq_10: Yeah, exactly.
thanfiction: Except people HAVE asked, and she hasn't said "Isn't that obvious?"
ceirdwenfc: For her, she didn't' so much create a world as wrote a book.
The book is done, and so is she.
Except for Dumbledore is gay
thanfiction: Even though Increasingly Useless Paralyzed Wangsty Harry has been the biggest critique of her books from fans and professional critics alike from OotP onward.
angakkuq_10: She's likely to come back to it eventually.
ceirdwenfc: And no one else ever dies again
angakkuq_10: TBF, Harry did the best he could with what he was given. Dumbledore told him the bare minimum and he didn't get much from Riddle's end.
ceirdwenfc: Only to keep others from doing it (like the encyclopedia)
My feeling and I've said this before, I think she's done, she doesn't want anyone else doing it, so she says she'll do it and maybe she will to shut people up, but it's...idk
thanfiction: I don't think SHE realized it, at least not consciously. Just like I was *blink blink whu?* when people said there were homoerotic overtones to Mike and Terry in DAYD.
angakkuq_10: True.
ceirdwenfc: I'll give you the mike/terry thing, but for her that was a huge underlying theme is the balance of good/evil, Voldemort/Harry, etc. She had to know on some level but to you, you didn't see mike/terry because you saw the other gay characters and in your mind, they just weren't
thanfiction: No one's saying that Harry didn't do his best. The thing that's on the table is why his best suddenly changed so radically OOC in book 5. The kid who stood up to Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets IS the same who stood up to him in Little Hangleton but NOT the same who stood up to him in OotP or DH.
And I personally think it's MORE heroic that Harry managed to slog it through with a Voldecrux hanging from his back like the limpet from hell and getting heavier and heavier, more and more hysterical, impinging on his thoughts more and more than if it was a connection that gave him headaches and visions and parseltongue but was otherwise passive.
angakkuq_10: Yeah, definitely.
thanfiction: Harry's a great flyer, right? It's a major facet of his character from the first book. We all agree there, yes?
ceirdwenfc: It wasn't passive - it was struggling for survival-the horcrux was struggling
thanfiction: To use an analogy, the fans have been demanding why, after flying circles around dragons and ace Quidditch players twice his age for the first four books, Harry's suddenly howling about how hard it is to get off the ground and struggling to pul off the most basic maneuvers on a broom. That's OOC, and when it's been pointed out to JKR, she's said "no it's not," which has made fans and critics both decide it's bad writing, because you don't call someone a flying ace for four books and CONTINUE to praise their amazing broom skillz when for the last three books, they can barely take off. UNLESS in the last three books, they're flying with a massive iron weight on each leg. In which case it IS consistent with mad broom skillz that they can take off at all, and the whinging and howling stops being OOC at all.
None of the Horcruxes we see are passive. They're ruthless and manipulative as you would expect for fragments of Tom Marvolo Riddle. Why should the one in Harry's head be any different?
But that's why we see a very different Harry in Sluagh and AP. The Voldecrux is gone...and with it, a lot of what he thought he was from the end of GoF onward. You really have to look there and back to see HARRY alone, and who you see is heroic, competent with certain areas of brilliance, a little lazy unless it's something he loves and then a little obsessive, fiercely loyal, with an inferiority chip on his shoulder thanks to the Dursleys and a massive hot button about being kept in the dark.
faeriegal713: Huh, you actually make me like him as a character again when you write it out like that.
thanfiction: Which makes him a damned good Auror, someone who is still learning leadership but working on it, and who also has a temper for which the biggest button is making him think you're brushing him off.
anywhere_but_nj: lol faeriegal713. I never really thought about it like that before. usually with books I just...read them.
thanfiction: And the relationship with Neville is particularly tense because what Neville did in the last year is what Harry wanted to do, what he felt like it was his right and his place to do - especially since the DA started out being his - but between the Horcrux and being driven out of school he wasn't allowed to do.
faeriegal713: Oh, ouch.
ceirdwenfc: And the Da was forced on him by Hermione and he took up the mantle and they were just a homework club, but what Neville did...
kate_lb: There would be some massive resentment issues there.
thanfiction: Neville did what Harry thought the Chosen One was supposed to mean. It was not supposed to mean wrestling with schitzohorcruxia in a tent until you barely managed to drag yourself across someone else's battlefield.
liebedance: Wow... I never thought of that.
m_oquinn: *swallows*
thanfiction: There was a truce of sorts when they worked together in the Auror Department because HARRY was in his element there, but that all the ex DA still called him Commander, still deferred to him was enough of a sting when they were young, and when Neville calls the entire department away - INCLUDING HARRY'S WIFE - and deliberately doesn't tell him because he "wasn't in the real battle"? Yeah, he still comes to help. Because he's cool like that. But he also shows up with a hella chip on his shoulder and the temper just below the surface.
And when Neville left the Aurors, the whole DA Issue and Chosen One Issues stayed the white elephant in the room between them. They were friends, sure, but it's That Thing We Don't Talk About. In AP, they're having to confront that head on, and Neville's come back into Harry's turf - the department he's not only head of now, but keeping above funding water by the skin of his teeth - and instantly it's "Commander! We've missed you!"
Hear that noise? That's Potter headdesking in the corner.
angakkuq_10 laughs
m_oquinn: I love angakkuq_10
angakkuq_10: ?
m_oquinn: because you are win
and laughing
and angakkuq_10
kate_lb: Just the fact that they still defer to him would probably be a huge isue to Harry. Very Lord of the Flies with the whole "you can't talk unless you have the seashell" thing. And then throwing a huge fit when everyone starts talking anyway.
thanfiction: No, Sluagh Harry and AP Harry aren't DH Harry. But Harry wasn't Harry in DH. The last time we saw Harry Potter clearly - with the exception of the last chapter of DH and the epilogue - was the Third Task. He's mature enough not to throw a fit about it, but it still makes him wince a little. AP is Harry's story of finally getting past DH as much as Sluagh was Seamus'.