Subject: Yes, I believe you can.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-11-08 18:52:00 UTC
In the hands of a good writer, anything could be made better.
For example, there's a story fixing My Immortal on Fanfiction.Net, and it's actually pretty good.
So, I had some free time to just relax for once, and I (for some reason) decided to binge through the Rose Potter Septology again. I have read it through a few times, and it got me thinking critically about it.
Yeah, it is pretty bad. But as I may have mentioned at some point in a different thread, it does have some potential, which, unfortunately, remains untapped. There are some decisions in the story that make no sense, like one point in the second story where the Mary Sue, the titular Rose Potter, teleports into Hogwarts (which, for those who don't know, is supposed to be impossible) only to deliver a letter and then teleport back to the same place she was just stuck at, despite the fact that she was trying to get to Hogwarts in the first place. And then there is an annoying and pointless pro-naturist message that permeates throughout the whole series. But then there are several plot points that are tantalizing, such as a hinted bitter enmity between the sect of Druids the author invented and a group that never makes it into the story, the Necromancers. This presents an incredible opportunity for someone who wants to build some new aspects to the Harry Potter universe, and it never gets used! And finally, there is the excessive underage sex, underage even for the wizarding world, which allows people to come of age when they are seventeen.
For those who have read the Rose Potter series themselves, I have this to ask you. In a hypothetical situation, could this series be fixed so that it is actually good? If so, how would you suggest it be improved?
Why am I asking? I'm going to challenge myself to rewrite this series (maybe, just maybe, with some aspects of my own), and I'm going to eventually submit it as an "alternative work" alongside my own series, Imaginations Collide, which, yes, is still in development. (Note: I might not actually do anything with this rewrite of Rose Potter, but I would like to at least try my hand at it as an exercise of my own skill. You know, to help me improve myself even more than College can help me with.)
In the hands of a good writer, anything could be made better.
For example, there's a story fixing My Immortal on Fanfiction.Net, and it's actually pretty good.
I don't know how to do links here, but it's on Fanfiction.net and is called Of My Immortality.
Full disclosure: while I have read a fairly in-depth sporking of it, I have avoided the original. What I saw was enough to make me ill as it is.
Do I think that a female Potter could be well-written? Absolutely, although none I've ever seen manage to (see: Holly Potter the woobie). But one of the problems with the Rose Potter series was, I believe, exactly those plot points you find tantalizing. I found they absolutely take focus away from the actual world of Harry Potter by shifting focus to things which make no sense and which in fact often supplant the canon precisely as Sues do (i.e., Let Me Take A False Name As An All-Powerful Druidess So I Can Make The Wizengamut Cower Before Me, Dumbledore being impressed by this, etc.)
The problem with female!Potter stories is that it is almost impossible to do without regurgitating so much of canon that it could get quite boring. I do think it could be done well, and even do so in ways that explore things not shown in canon, like what it means to be a witch in that universe when, while there is not as much overt sexism as Rose Potter claims, there is no reason for it not to parallel the real world to some degree. Frankly there are absolutely gender issues which could be explored--it's even called the Wizarding World, what about the witches?--although if you are male, as your handle suggests, and you want to handle this, please get a woman (and even potentially a British woman as cultures may vary) to consult with on this. The other thing which it could do is explore the little-explored aspects of canon. Harry Potter is known to have plenty of holes, undeveloped parts, and any number of dimensions to explore without adding entire magic systems to an already dubiously developed one. For instance: explore international relations in the Wizarding World more. There might even be ways to work in some of what you liked out of Rose Potter without inventing things that have no place in the canon and which frankly upstage it.
Adding Druids and Necromancers and the like honestly feels to me like adding Uncanonical Cities With Non-Elvish Customs which claim to be Elvish or Users of Previously Unknown Magic Type to Arda, or random Generic Monasteries to canons that have none and no reason for them, and that almost never ends well. My policy is that in the hands of a sufficiently talented writer, there is almost no Bad Idea (TM) which cannot be deftly handled. Doing so simply takes care, lots of beta-reading, and consideration for the worldbuilding. When you're playing in someone else's sandbox, respecting that still matters.
For some fics, adding whole things like that could easily work if there are outright unexplored areas of the map, of the magic, etc. One of my favorite canons I default to absolutely has this, because of the directions canon can grow, particularly post-plot. Harry Potter doesn't seem to have that much unexplored, at least not in the immediate region of Britain. Working new groups in from Africa, Mesoamerica, Oceania, India, or other places we just don't know much about could do this. Locally, however, things are fairly complete.
If you think it's so incomplete that you need to add entire things with your own rules and history and interactions, honestly? Try making an original world instead. Develop it into something no one's seen before, and make it fantastic. Personally, I would rather see the results of that than Harry Potter turned into something it isn't.
So, it theoretically can be done. Okay.
Hm. Take focus away from canon... Good point. Could redo that, though...
Yeah, I remember that part. It actually made me side with Fudge and Umbridge! Fudge and UMBRIDGE!!! We're supposed to dislike them (or hate them, depending on which you prefer). If Rose Potter is going to work as a character, those actions need to have negative consequences and/or people need to raise aggressive objections. Mary Sues don't get that, so the Sue needs to eliminated somehow. Preferably in a creative, ironic way... Okay, I'm going to stop before I go into a full blown rant.
Yeah, it's a tradeoff that people tend to mess up. At least My Immortal had Harry Potter's gender correct (if not his sexual orientation).
I know someone in the UK I could get in touch with. She recently had a rant on Facebook about some scandal in Parliament over budget funds disappearing, or something.
I understand that completely. As this is, however, it's not much more than an exercise in the writing process so that I can see how well I could make a disaster like Rose Potter work. I could make an entirely different world- in fact, you have given me some ideas that I could use for my own stories in the Pit. It would be interesting to see how Wizards live in the United States, for example.
(If I'm not careful, I'll have too much writing to get done in the span of a few years. Not that I'm complaining, but that's a lot of writing I'm giving myself.)
I really am trying to be constructive, and sometimes that means directness. I spent a lot of time thinking about your opening of, ‘So, technically it can be done.’ After a lot of consultation and consideration I formulated my actual response based on that, because I do not want my name on a belief I don’t hold.
To answer your original question:
Do I think that a genderbent!Harry could be written well, if proper care were taken? Absolutely.
Do I think that Rose Potter can be rewritten into something good?
Frankly, no.
Here’s why:
- As I’ve said before, the things you mentioned enjoying have nothing whatsoever to do with Harry Potter canon. This would, I reluctantly admit, not be an inherently incorrect thing in and of itself. However, those changes weren’t actually made to explore and broaden the world, they were made to make Rose more Super Speshul, to allow the nekkid girls, or to create teh sexytiemz. As far as I can tell, the world of Rose Potter shares little more than window dressing with the world J.K. Rowling built, especially as all the characters are wildly OOC. It isn’t fanfiction. It’s original ideas under the veneer of fanfiction. If those original ideas were what you liked, write original fic and wow me with it.
- I don’t think it can be rewritten and remain a Harry Potter fanfic at all. The sporking—more MSTing, as I seem to remember being subjected to those parts of the series which weren’t copy-and-pasted straight from canon--I read indicated that Halcyon left off rather suddenly after chapter 7 of Rose Potter Year 6. More, while the reason for stopping is somewhat debatable, it looks like it’s either a simple a shipping rage-quit or possibly to do with the irreconcilable differences with canon established by Deathly Hallows. Even leaving aside the many, many ways the fic broke canon rules before and bizarre mix of destruction of and yet slavish adherence to canon plots beyond all sense of logic, that is a clear indication the concept has nothing to do with Harry Potter.
- Halcyon is also known for having plagiarized from other fanfic and lifted things straight out of games he/she liked in a rather blatant manner, to say nothing of the early stages being almost word-for-word canon until it diverges so wildly it isn’t even recognizable anymore.
- Rose Potter is one of the most overpowered God-Mod Sues widely remembered on the internet, and does so in ways that blatantly flaunt canon. For instance, she is able to cast Unforgivable Curses by somehow powering them with ~love~--which is in direct contradiction with canon and frankly undermines the emotional impact on the reader. This is to say nothing of the ninja business or any number of other problems.
- My main reason, though, for believing that it cannot actually be salvaged: What do you get if you strip away the inconsistencies with canon, if you excise all the horrifying underage nudity and sex, if you erase the plagiarism, if you make it all fit logically, if you somehow make the additions plausible, if you remove all the grossly God-Modding extra powers? What are you even left with?
Unfortunately for all concerned, you’re left with Rose Potter.
Rose Potter is a horrible, horrible person who starts murdering people at the tender age of eleven. She carves words into Ron’s forehead after flinging him around the room. She actively learns dark magic, she is eager for genocide—in short, she is a terrible person who is more akin to Voldemort than Harry Potter.
So then what happens if you take that personality away as the last vestige of Halcyon’s screw-up?
You get… well, genderbent!Harry Potter.
In conclusion: you can write genderbent!Harry Potter. You can try to add the original elements and keep anything recognizable as Harry Potter's world. You can write unexplored parts of the Harry Potter world—go ahead, explore the United States, but then it’s not Rose Potter anymore. You can original fiction with druids, necromancy, and magical schools.
Girl Who Lived itself, though? No. No, I don’t believe it’s salvageable, and I don’t know why anyone would try.
It's way more popular than Quidditch here, at least according to my copy of Quidditch Through the Ages. Kind of like how Europe is more focused on (soccer) football and we have American football.