i feel like this is the heart of most people's objection to what dumbledore was up to, since the fidelius charm and unbreakable vows exist. the books make it clear that harry's parents were only discovered because they were betrayed by a friend— have dumbledore be the secret keeper for harry's hide-out and everything would be just fucking fine. like, it's arguably unhealthy to raise a boy in a warded estate and maybe never let him out until he's 11. but dumbledore dumping harry with petunia instead seemed a lot more like 'i'm raising a sacrifice, he'd better have completely terrible self esteem' than 'every surviving member of the order of the phoenix just didn't want to deal with the hassle of living behind wards'. also, it says in the first book, a couple wizards did find harry when he was a kid. and shook his hand and thanked him and stuff. so... what the fuck. eta: sorry, i know this isn't the HP thread, but that feels like something people keep harping on, 'dursleys or death!!!' when there turned out to be a number of plausible workarounds.
Fanfics never take into account that it would need to be worked around, though, and that's the problem.
Point. While on the topic of Harry Potter fanfics, I've seen many that disgusted, disturbed, frightened, and offended me. This is the only one that ever enraged me so much I had to punch my mattress while reading it.
@LadyNighteyes care to divulge the title of that unreliable narrator book you mentioned earlier? it sounds really good!
Spoiler: I gave away a giant plot spoiler, so vague version first It's one of the Dragaera books, by Steven Brust. Spoiler: Specifically... Orca.
i actually read a "harry raised in narutoland" fic when i was a small that was (so it seemed at the time) pretty good i vaguely consider looking for it again someday
Undertale-specific bitching again, but: fontcest. I hate it. Haaaaaate it. It's fiction and people are allowed to ship what they want without getting harassed, so I don't say anything about it when I see it, but I hate it so much and it's everywhere aaarrgh. So I just wind up sitting there, saying nothing to be polite, and internally getting more and more pissy about it. I really wish the tagging system was more consistent about catching it whenever I'm trying to screen it out on AO3, I'd probably be way less cranky about it if I had a reliable way to avoid seeing it every three fics. ...Actually, I'm gonna go ahead and make this a general complaint about people not tagging things properly. Your kink is not my kink and that's okay, and same with your OTP being my NoTP, but it's not okay to tag things so vaguely I wind up halfway through the first chapter before having to backspace while cringing. I mean, at least put up a 'this author chose not to use tags' warning, goddamn.
For one of my fics on AO3 I agonized for ages about how to tag it because the narrator has a non-explicit but VERY VERY OBVIOUS crush on another, dead character, which isn't the focus of the story but is fairly important. Plus the ship is moderately weird, and so since my fandom is so small no one had touched it before. I ended up marking it as both Gen and M/M and not tagging the ship. Where would your opinion on that fall re: appropriate tagging?
Hmm, that's a tricky one. I think I personally would have tagged it something like '[ship] implied, does not appear in story'. Unless the ship was important because it was a major plot spoiler, in which case it'd probably be best to just go with the 'author chose not to use warnings' tag and be done with it, so anyone who has something they want to avoid knows enough to tread lightly without having to get too specific. I'd definitely consider what you did a solid effort, but while it would work for people who wanted to avoid gay pairings or pairings at all, it wouldn't really help much for someone who'd be grossed out by the specific ship in question.
What I would do is "one-sided A/B". Or "implied one-sided A/B", if that distinction is important to you. And then categorize it just as Gen so it's clear that it's not a shipping fic, the aforementioned ship is just a factor in it.
The main reason I didn't do that is because... well, you've read the fic, the pine-er is a minor character I didn't entirely trust the average fan to remember in detail without prompting, who not only doesn't have a portrait in canon but doesn't have a unique sprite, and who I think has only even shown up in one other fic in the entire fandom. (Unless Catteries wrote him into her one fic that I can't read because the premise makes my brain panic.) I was really torn between making sure I was properly tagging and trying to make sure I didn't promise something it wasn't going to deliver, especially since it was such an oddball pairing.
I think my ultimate annoyance of all time is woobification, especially of adults who do not, in fact, act like helpless little kittens in canon (coughjohnfuckingwatsoncough) Like, it's possible to show someone being vulnerable, or afraid, or show a softer side of them without needing them inept and clueless about life. (Shocker but you can even have them be cute without woobie-ing... my boyfriend is adorable AND is still able to function like a grown ass man. Huff!)
Character/Reader fanfic. I just. Do not understand it at all. And I especially don't understand why there's so damn much of it clogging up certain ao3 fandom tags (looking at you, Undertale). I mean I get having a crush on a character, but... why? Why this? why
i though that was just a deviantart thing why the worst reader insert ones are the ones that take effort to describe what you look like and ur just like "damn =/ this writer makes me look all hot and shit" and ur sitting there lookin like you just crawled out of the 7th circle of hell
I assumed that the prevalence of that in Undertale fandom was for similar reasons to why there's so much second-person Homestuck fanfic.
I'd assume some of that plus a lot of there being less clear options to ship Sans the characters people are into (and therefore want romance fic of) with than usual. It's the kind of thing where most of the time those fans would probably just default to shipping him with the protag, but since Undertale's protagonist is a kid a significant amount of them feel uncomfortable with that idea, so they just straight-up write in a partner. (See also how, e.g., lots of Bill Cipher fans default to shipping him with Dipper as the easiest option.) Plus, once the practice catches on, it feels a lot more socially acceptable for other people to do the same thing, even if they'd have been too embarrassed about it before or in other fandoms.
I'd posit that Character/Reader does make sense for Undertale fic sometimes... when it comes to porn. Like, say you wanna write about some Mettaton sexytimes... but you're not into furries, or skeletons. Who's left? Undyne, who people prefer to be with Alphys? Frisk? I have nothing against aging up characters for shipping/porn purposes, but that would probably make at least some writers uncomfortable. In general, the pool of major Undertale characters is small, and if you're not into skeleton boning (snerk) and/or furries, or if you're just picky about ships, then you might be left with just Character/Reader, or Character/OC. And since Undertale fic goes for 2nd person POV sometimes (in the grand tradition of Homestuck)... ...But then, this logic really applies mostly to porn, I think. I don't really claim to understand the plotty shipfics that are Character/Reader.
it's weird reading a character/reader fic and having the reader do something i wouldn't do. i mean, seriously, I DID WHAT?!
