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edenfallingHere's something I've wondered about for several years, in a vague way:
Why do people write so many Super!Harry stories? This occurs over all genres of HP fanfiction -- second war stories, time-travel stories, AU stories set in worlds that still include magic (or mutants, or some sort of 'powers'), romance (het, slash, trios, whatever) -- so clearly it's something that runs deep in the fandom. Super!Harry is often accompanied by the assumption that he knows or learns some sort of martial art, learns swordfighting, learns to use guns, etc.
Okay. I can see the basic source of the idea, I guess. It goes like this: Harry has some power that Voldemort doesn't know, can't fight, or can't use himself. The obvious interpretation of this is LOVE, but love isn't particularly useful for fighting an evil, semi-immortal wizard. So Harry must have some really special magic. Also, Harry is the main character, so it makes sense for him to be special. The martial arts and weapons training probably come from the same source, since Harry, as is, doesn't seem to have many of the relevant skills needed to fight a war.
However!
Super!Harry and Martial-Arts!Harry are completely out of genre.
Super magical powers don't fit into the theme of JKR's world, especially when she makes such a point of insisting that parentage and inheritance are not the important things. She builds up the importance of choice; super magical powers are not something a person can choose. Love, on the other hand, is a choice. So is self-sacrifice.
Martial arts and weapons don't fit into the tone of the wizarding world. On one fundamental level, the Harry Potter books are part of the British boarding school genre, in which nothing too terrible ever happens. The dark fantasy modifies that somewhat, so people do die and horrible things do happen, but the tone remains whimsical despite that. Gritty is just not on. Furthermore, not even Aurors or members of the Order of the Phoenix seem to know or care much about physical combat. War in the wizarding world is a matter of spells. To introduce martial arts is to break the understood rules of JKR's world.
I grant you that new Super!Harry stories seem to be a bit less common these days -- after all, he's had six whole books to develop special powers, and has yet to show any sign of them beyond a modest flair for Defense and a knack for flying -- but I keep running into Gritty-and-Warlike!Harry stories when I venture back into HP fandom. And I just don't understand them. It's one thing to write an AU with a setting where physical violence makes sense. It's another to graft that onto the wizarding world, where it stands out like a sore thumb. That jolts me out of stories that are otherwise fairly decent.
Let me make one thing clear. I am not talking about dark stories about the second war, which may be much nastier than canon will ever go but which retain the underlying logic of JKR's world. What I'm talking about is the introduction of concepts -- like the organization of Muggle armies, or martial arts -- that simply don't exist in the wizarding world, and which Harry himself has no particular way to know. Look, if he'd shown an interest in self-defense, or working out, or studying armies, he probably would have done it already, after either GoF or OotP. That sort of thing is just not on his radar. To have him develop those interests, without a hell of a lot of in-story groundwork, is very OOC.
Um. The one point I'm willing to be flexible on is swords. Clearly, they exist, and were used at some point in the past. But just as clearly, they're not really common anymore, and Harry's idea of swordplay is canonically limited to 'stick the pointy bit in the thing you're trying to kill.' So for someone to pull out a sword in a climactic fight scene is on the near side of believability for me, but only just. And if it degenerates into a swordfight duel, I am so outta there.
ETA: Yes, I realize that I skated close to this line in the beginning of Knives, but the reason I was able to write that without pinging my 'something's fishy' button too badly was because I'm basically okay with swords. And, well, it helped establish the tone of that story.
Why do people write so many Super!Harry stories? This occurs over all genres of HP fanfiction -- second war stories, time-travel stories, AU stories set in worlds that still include magic (or mutants, or some sort of 'powers'), romance (het, slash, trios, whatever) -- so clearly it's something that runs deep in the fandom. Super!Harry is often accompanied by the assumption that he knows or learns some sort of martial art, learns swordfighting, learns to use guns, etc.
Okay. I can see the basic source of the idea, I guess. It goes like this: Harry has some power that Voldemort doesn't know, can't fight, or can't use himself. The obvious interpretation of this is LOVE, but love isn't particularly useful for fighting an evil, semi-immortal wizard. So Harry must have some really special magic. Also, Harry is the main character, so it makes sense for him to be special. The martial arts and weapons training probably come from the same source, since Harry, as is, doesn't seem to have many of the relevant skills needed to fight a war.
However!
Super!Harry and Martial-Arts!Harry are completely out of genre.
Super magical powers don't fit into the theme of JKR's world, especially when she makes such a point of insisting that parentage and inheritance are not the important things. She builds up the importance of choice; super magical powers are not something a person can choose. Love, on the other hand, is a choice. So is self-sacrifice.
Martial arts and weapons don't fit into the tone of the wizarding world. On one fundamental level, the Harry Potter books are part of the British boarding school genre, in which nothing too terrible ever happens. The dark fantasy modifies that somewhat, so people do die and horrible things do happen, but the tone remains whimsical despite that. Gritty is just not on. Furthermore, not even Aurors or members of the Order of the Phoenix seem to know or care much about physical combat. War in the wizarding world is a matter of spells. To introduce martial arts is to break the understood rules of JKR's world.
I grant you that new Super!Harry stories seem to be a bit less common these days -- after all, he's had six whole books to develop special powers, and has yet to show any sign of them beyond a modest flair for Defense and a knack for flying -- but I keep running into Gritty-and-Warlike!Harry stories when I venture back into HP fandom. And I just don't understand them. It's one thing to write an AU with a setting where physical violence makes sense. It's another to graft that onto the wizarding world, where it stands out like a sore thumb. That jolts me out of stories that are otherwise fairly decent.
Let me make one thing clear. I am not talking about dark stories about the second war, which may be much nastier than canon will ever go but which retain the underlying logic of JKR's world. What I'm talking about is the introduction of concepts -- like the organization of Muggle armies, or martial arts -- that simply don't exist in the wizarding world, and which Harry himself has no particular way to know. Look, if he'd shown an interest in self-defense, or working out, or studying armies, he probably would have done it already, after either GoF or OotP. That sort of thing is just not on his radar. To have him develop those interests, without a hell of a lot of in-story groundwork, is very OOC.
Um. The one point I'm willing to be flexible on is swords. Clearly, they exist, and were used at some point in the past. But just as clearly, they're not really common anymore, and Harry's idea of swordplay is canonically limited to 'stick the pointy bit in the thing you're trying to kill.' So for someone to pull out a sword in a climactic fight scene is on the near side of believability for me, but only just. And if it degenerates into a swordfight duel, I am so outta there.
ETA: Yes, I realize that I skated close to this line in the beginning of Knives, but the reason I was able to write that without pinging my 'something's fishy' button too badly was because I'm basically okay with swords. And, well, it helped establish the tone of that story.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 12:50 am (UTC)Yeah, those new abilities I could have done without...
But there was one new ability, one that's scarcely been noticed: Side-Along Apparation. HBP introduces the concept to the reader (thereby resolving a long-standing fandom debate as to whether it's possible): we see Dumbledore S-A Apparate with Harry when they left Privet Drive. Then, near the end of the book, Harry S-A Apparates with Dumbledore to leave Voldemort's underground lake and return to Hogsmeade. Wonderful... except those are the only two instance of Side-Along Apparation in six books.
Why doesn't Arthur Weasley S-A Apparate with Harry to the Ministry for Harry's trial, in OotP? One must assume that the skill is beyond Arthur's abilities. Okay, no problem, in many ways Arthur's an average wizard... but when Moody, Tonks, Lupin et al arrive at Privet Drive to escort Harry to Grimmauld Place, none of them seem able to S-A Apparate with him, either. Lupin doesn't even mention it: just says Harry's too young to Apparate, Floo's not secure, and Portkeys are illegal. Either all those wizards and witches were unaware that Side-Along Apparation was possible -- or else it was beyond their abilites.
But Harry can do it, first time he tries.
Almost nothing Harry does is unique: Others can see Thestrals, others can conjure Patronuses. And some of his skills are of dubious value in the fight against Voldemort, true. It's just that, every book, there's been something new that Harry can do, something out of the blue, something that few other wizards can do (or do as well). It's perfectly consistent for a fanfic to have Harry develop some new skill as part of the story.
(I did it in Restitution, after all; you have to admit Harry's new powers were integral to the story line!)
But Super-Harry? I don't know that it requires bad characterization, or a wizard-worldview at odds with Rowling's -- I only know that conflict, be it physical or emotional, drives a good story, and it's hard to get a good conflict when your hero's that powerful.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-06 01:19 am (UTC)(Sometimes I try to reconcile inconsistencies within the story universe. Other times I just give up and call it authorial error or oversight. Most numerical issues in HP fall into authorial error/oversight, for example.)
I don't object to the development of a new ability. An ability, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily solve anything. It can also come with quite a number of negative side effects, either intrinsic (Tonks's probable identity issues) or social (Parseltongue). Super!Harry stories don't tend to work like that. They ditch realism (insofar as fantasy can be realistic) and skate blithely off into wish-fulfillment fantasies. They're less about what Harry would do if he suddenly had some spiffy new ability, and more about what the author thinks would 'fix' JKR's world.
I did it in Restitution, after all; you have to admit Harry's new powers were integral to the story line!
You did the 'new ability' thing pretty well. Being able to hear the dead, and dreaming of the earth, were not things Harry had much control over, at first, and they were damned irritating and/or inconvenient at times. He also, IIRC, tried to ignore the issue -- which very few Super!Harry stories let him do. And he never realized he was doing Legilimency, which seems very IC to me.
It's hard to get a good conflict when your hero's that powerful.
When you have a very powerful character, you need to either create equally powerful opponents, or shift the story to a type of conflict that straight up combat power cannot resolve. Few Super!Harry writers are willing to make the second choice, which leaves them with pretty limited story options.