from what i remember of the fic in question, i think it was meant to be something along the lines of the tvtropes term, though that fic was bizarre and unclear enough that i can’t be certain. (said badfic is also the one with multiple “the redhead”s)
YOI Badfic Friend is now reading HP fic, and apparently the fic they are currently reading has the plot point, "Voldemort decides he doesn't have to worry about Harry Potter all 6th year because he thinks Harry will be too busy sleeping with girls to think about the prophecy." Just. What.
In a fic that was exploring Voldemort's lack of understanding of humanity/people who aren't him, that might actually work. Especially if Harry was, like, ace, or smoopily kissing Ron in between anti-Death-Eater adventures, or something. As I recall, in canon Harry spent that year being ineffective because he was obsessed with teenage Snape, so it's not as unreasonable as all that.
One of Voldemort's defining traits is absurdly complicated plans based around the very small number of people he considers meaningful enemies, though. If anything, I think Voldy's lack of understanding of people who aren't him would be more likely to go the other way- like, he sets up some elaborate trap assuming Harry would pursue a weapon against Voldemort over everything, but Harry's 16 and more interested in the people around him and Voldy's plan self-destructs because Harry just ignores it in favor of his social life. Or, closer to the spirit of this fic, "Voldemort establishes elaborate Harry-neutralization plan, which turns out to be entirely unnecessary because Harry's fixated on making out with people, Voldemort makes fun of Harry when this is reported to him." Voldemort NEGLECTING to make a plan on an assumption that incredibly chancy is... not a thing I can ever see him doing.
unrelated but does anyone else ever sorely wish that ao3 tagging system either had a slot for “the main/focus characters of this fic” OR that people refrained from tagging every char that briefly appears in their fic bc like. with some minor chars, you can browse a ship tag with them to try and avoid getting hit with “lol they’re only tagged because THE ENTIRE CAST is tagged,” but others don’t really have any big ships or ships you care about i just wanna read fic with certain minor chars as the focus/main character(s) of the fic??? what i’m saying here is: who do i gotta sell my soul to in order to be able to click a link and get a simple list of every drv3 fic with ryouma hoshi as a main character god dammit
sliding in late to say that, while I am generally okay with epithets if used well, I get face-meltingly uncomfortable when writers use ethnonyms as epithets. Like, a character who knows another character should not be thinking of them as "the Latino." nope nope nope (It's a little better if it's in a fantasy/spec fic setting, and the ethnonym is, like "the Appellaxian" or something)
Yeah, I can only see that working in situations where his being Latino is relevant ("Maybe we should ask someone who's lived there and speaks the language." After a pause everyone turned to look expectantly at the only Latino in the room) and most times it still sounds wrong. Not as bad as, say, Norman in Rose Madder who decides what kind of person someone is and then constantly refers to them with derogatory language, but a character who constantly refers to even friends by ethnicity is still...
Isn't he one of those patented Stephen King everything-phobic everything-ist irredeemable abusive sadists? I'm sure the effect there was intentional.
ooohhh boy, speaking of both cringeworthy epithets and the questionable Harry Potter fic YOI Badfic Friend is currently reading, YOIBF just sent me the following quote: Yes, that was apparently a dialogue tag.
here's a terrible epithet for you all, hot off the presses: a fic that's written in third person limited focusing on Rey's thoughts and emotions referring to her as "the ingenue". Bonus points, it referred to her as a stock female character defined by being innocent and wholesome while having her be openly contemptuous and sarcastic towards someone, like come on, my dude.
To be fair to them, I did just look up ingenue, and apparently it can also just mean "young woman" and not the thing what that made me mad and all. If so, it's just someone being fucking pretentious, not Wrong about Rey's character.
Even if it can technically just mean young woman, the connotations are still bringing all of that unwanted baggage to the fic anyway.
It just confuses me because that word is like only used in things like film analysis for me. Unless it's like something old school when the word was used differently I guess. Otherwise using it the way it was in that fic you're talking about just screams wrong because No That Is A Film Studies Word Please Stop This Are You Gonna Call The Romance Scene A Meet Cute Though now I kind of want to see a fic written using film studies lingo. Like just normal ass sentences of narration but we're using terms like mise en scene constantly.
Well it definitely was theater lingo before it was film lingo. It´s used in Dorian Grey, for example refering to theater. (because film wasn´t a thing in Dorian Grey)
Oh I know it is used in other things, theatre in particular. I was speaking more about non-art analysis and art usages of the term. I simply move towards film first because film is the media analysis tradition I'm most familiar with, so it's what comes to mind first when I see the term. Essays about movies.
