God, now I'm imagining my unreliable narrator fic with constant narrative disclaimers and cringing. "BUT LITTLE DID HE KNOW they are actually best friends and care unconditionally about each other!" "WHAT HE DIDN'T KNOW was that not everyone has as terrible a relationship with their sibling as he did!" "[Character 1] must have been being blackmailed to get into a romantic relationship, OR SO [CHARACTER 2] THOUGHT."
i recall that little me did those narrative disclaimer things 'cause i was worried that people wouldn't understand my stuff if i didn't
Meanwhile I'm over here giggling evilly to myself because no one but me will ever know how many of the deaths in that fic are actually suicides, because the unreliable narrator is astoundingly bad at judging feelings.
What can work well though is having your first-person unreliable narrator inject stuff like that especially when they're plain wrong in their guesses
I can imagine certain characters saying 'At least, that's how I see it' in their internal narration, but that's certainly not appropriate in all cases.
@roach He is an excellent snarker. I recommend you check out his sporkings on his own blog and at the LJ comm das-sporking, if you haven't already. Speaking of das-sporking, here's another gripe: As we all know, there’s a certain genre of Potterfic that misses that the entire point of the series was that Harry defeats Voldemort by being a better person rather than a more powerful wizard, and so load him up with superpowers out the wazoo while stripping away any and all likable traits. It tends to go hand in hand with another genre that, disliking the canon Dumbledore, either demonize him, make him totally incompetent, or both.
UGH. Those. I see that sort of thing--that is, the making the likable teenage boy overpowered and uninteresting--in other fandoms too. Pretty much anything where in the end the character wins with something other than superior firepower, so mostly YA novels and more optimistic shounen series. I dunno if the authors are writing these fics with cues from the HP fandoms or if it's just a phase a lot of people go through, thinking that kind of story is the most interesting. Also, I'm aware this is stereotyping to some extent, but I notice those stories coming from authors who identify as male a lot of the time. Like, I feel like there's a certain gendered appeal to that particular power fantasy.
It depends on what sort of first-person it is, though. If it's the form of first-person where they're narrating to someone later and that's pretty apparent throughout the narrative, it could work. It'd be a lot weirder if you were doing the form of first-person where it's like there's a chip in their head and you're hearing their thoughts as they go, unless this is someone who qualifies a lot more of their thoughts like that than just the ones the author thinks are wrong. "Death Eaters are jerks, or at least, that's how I see it." :::PPP
I'm reminded of TVTropes' comparison of My Immortal with Thirty Hs; very similar, but the former was allegedly written by a wangsty thirteen-year-old girl while the latter was allegedly written by an ax-crazy thirteen-year-old boy.
Oh, I've been reading das-sporking entries, and found one where... well, this is the least of the WTF but it's hilarious. So, skinny Aunt Petunia kicks Harry hard enough to break his ankle; he then runs an unclear distance on said broken ankle, to the nearest movie theatre, is instantly hired, sleeps a night and works a shift, then is picked up by Draco and walks two miles to Malfoy Manor (which should be a lot further away). Then we suddenly get it retconned in that Petunia also stabbed him, and only after all this has happened does the alleged stab wound start bleeding.
Obviously, she had super-spy knife-shoes and stabbed him in the ankle by kicking him with them. With time travel spells on them that make the wound only appear later. It's really very simple.
as long as we're on the subject of 'let's change harry to totally win easily' fics, i hate the ones where sherlock is involved. like he gets raised by BBC's sherlock (and watson and they're a cute gay couple who love each other so very much) and winds up being super brilliant at mysteries and/or running a criminal empire. like imagine quirrel going 'troll! in the dungeons!' and harry standing up very calmly like 'this is the last piece of evidence i need to prove you have voldemort stuck to the back of your head'. come on. cut it out.
idk, I always thought the hellsing crossovers were MUCH WORSE because what harry potter really needed was an overpowered super vampire to solve everything through murder. and guns. so much gun.
My favorite is the fic my friend briefly liveblogged at me, where Harry is actually Sephiroth from FFVII and... well, I don't remember much detail beyond that, but then do I really need to? (Apparently there was an author's note along the lines of "I know I'm not the first person to write a fic with this premise but I wanted to try my own take on it anyway". Well then.)
Most of the "Harry is adopted by X crossover parent or parents" fics tend to bug me, for one reason or another, but I am (perhaps irrationally) fond of the Addams family edition.
"Harry gets adopted by someone other than the Dursleys" annoys me in itself, because it never ends with "And then the Death Eaters killed them all because he was no longer under the blood protection".
I will admit a weakness for bad HP crossover fics that I know are bad, at least when the bad parts largely emerge from the fact that the plot is a poorly built scaffold for angst. That's the kind of fic I like to read in the small hours of the morning and the HP fandom is so large that there's a lot of it. I still notice all the issues but I enjoy the fic nonetheless. (edited for clarity)
In all fairness "BLOOD PROTECTION" always struck me as a copout/excuse because. How exactly does that work. What does it do. "Oh, it protects him!" HOW. Give me details. What exactly does it prevent and why can this not be achieved any other way.
Disclaimer: I literally set down a Brandon Sanderson novel one minute before making this post. I may have an agenda.
