Harry Potter trends on AO3

[beatrice_otter]

I read Harry Potter fic, even though I'm pretty sure I've never managed to read any of the novels all the way through, or watch any of the movies start to finish.  Whatever, that's fandom.

Anyway, I periodically go through looking for new fic on AO3, and the best way (imo) to do this is to click on the Harry Potter works tag, sort by date, and then put "kudos>100" (or whatever other kudos threshhold you choose, today I picked 1000 because it's such a huge fandom) so you only get stuff a lot of people have liked.  (If you just go "sort by hits" or "sort by kudos" in a fandom as old as Harry Potter, you only get the oldy-goldies, which I've mostly read already or know I won't like.)

I also have AO3 Savior, a greasmonkey script added on to my browser that allows me to blacklist tags and such.  Items tagged with stuff I don't want to see show up in Works lists as blocked, with reason for blocking.

I went looking for Harry Potter fic today.  Apparently, a VERY high percentage of popular fic right now has either character bashing or Voldemort sexytimes.  Also!  I have "*/Tom Riddle" and "Tom Riddle/* both blacklisted (the asterisk tells it to block anything there, so I don't have to go through and list alllll the possible Tom Riddle pairings).  But apparently, if I want to block threesomes with Riddle, I have to ALSO blacklist "*/Tom Riddle/*"

Why do so many people want to write and read about Voldie sexytimes?!?  I do not get it!  I'm not judging, you do you, but gah.

(The bashing is, alas, a Harry Potter trend of longstanding.  Thank you to everyone who a) realizes that that is what you are doing and b) tags it properly.)

Comments

[c_carol]

AO3 Savior sounds like a great idea, I'm going to have to give it a try.

[beatrice_otter]

It is! You don't have to waste time reading through the tags and summaries of fics you're not going to want to read, but if you are in the mood for something you normally aren't, it's still there to unhide if you want.

I love it because I am polyfannish, and regularly look for new fic by clicking on a tag (wing!fic, say) and seeing what comes up. Even being polyfannish, there are a lot of fandoms that I won't read for one reason or another. Blocking those makes it easier and quicker to find the stories in the fandoms I will read.

Also, it means I never have to stumble on fic from my notps. Like Voldemort/anyone.

[ratcreature]

I don't read Voldemort pairings often but with him in the mix you can indulge in a lot of disturbing non-con and torture kinks without it being ooc.

[beatrice_otter]

Ah! It's the Hydra Trash Party of the Potterverse. Makes sense!

[ratcreature]

Yeah. Though of course there's a whole spectrum of Voldemort fic, including various forms of more or less subtle death eater apologia fic. And not just the Voldemort as woobie variants starring young Tom Riddle but actual "blood purity is a real thing in HP magic" types of world building to reframe canon. Which for me is a major turn off and having encountered that too often made me wary of seeking out death eater fic, although I can really enjoy the kink possibilities as long as the author perspective remains sort of clear on them being the bad guys.

[beatrice_otter]

Wait, what? And even if "blood purity really affects magic" (which is SO COUNTER TO THE WAY MAGIC ACTUALLY WORKS IN THE BOOKS AND EVERY THEMATIC PART OF IT EVER), if it requires you to do the sorts of things that the blood purists do in the books, then the medieval Christians were right and magic really is evil.

[ratcreature]

Well, it's been a while since I last read one like that, but I remember one that was quite well written, that was Malfoy centric, and the world building premise was something like that the purebloods were gentry whose magic connected them to their land and it was facilitated through blood magic and inheritance or something, and it didn't exactly cast Voldemort as good (he being half muggle too) but iirc it was more a thing that old pureblood families aligned with him against modernity that came in form of the Ministry. It was interesting world building and if it had been framed as their beliefs it would have been one thing, but throughout the fic it became clear that their view of magic was valid. Unfortunately I can't remember the author as I read it on ff.net over a decade ago.

I mean it was far from the most disturbing thing I've read in HP, that still goes to a fic in which Voldemort won and part of his post win breeding strategy was to use potions on kidnapped muggleborn wizard toddlers to age up their bodies, rape and impregnate them and use as breeding machines, all lovingly detailed so basically you had traumatized pregnant toddlers in adult bodies, closely tied with a Voldemort/Harry fic in which Voldemort visits Harry at the Dursleys pre-Hogwarts, grooms and sexually abuses him, and the sex was written like porn not child abuse -- it squicked me so hard in part because the sex writing actually worked on a porn level for me when I expected it to be a child abuse dark fic at which point I backbuttoned and wanted to bleach my brain. I sometimes wonder what Tumblr would make of it if that was posted today. Probably cheer the deletion of pornish_pixies (that was where I encountered the latter two iirc) in strikethrough rather than rally around it.

[swingandswirl]

Ugh, character bashing. It's a huge part of why I stick to rereading my old favourites; I just can't deal with fic where Hermione and Ron aren't Harry's Persons, or where the Weasley family is bashed. My one exception to this rule is Dumbledore, as I really do not like or trust that man as far as I can throw Hagrid.

I wonder if the popularity of Riddel!fic has anything to do with the hotness of the actor who played young Tom Riddle? God knows Tom Felton and Alan Rickman (RIP) had huge amounts to do with the w00bification of Draco and Snape respectively.

(BTW, if you want a rec, and you haven't read it yet, Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past is amazing. It's a WIP, but. Solid worldbuilding and characterisation, and a huge amount of fun.)

[alexseanchai]

Re Christian Coulson as Tom Riddle: yeah, I'll totally buy that. (I haven't seen the HBP movie, though.)

Don't start NoFP if you're not into WIPs that go years between updates, mind you. It's great, bar one pretty massive chronology oops (dear author, if someone witnesses a particular occurrence in an earlier chapter, they cannot truthfully say they have never heard of the occurrence actually occurring in a later chapter), but.

[alexseanchai]

On a totally different note, are you (openly) autistic or am I mixing you up with someone else with a B name? I ask for reasons that I'm happy to explain in PM, and that may not end up happening but I'm making a list of potentially interested folks in case the thing happens.

[beatrice_otter]

I am indeed autistic! What can I do for you?

[alexseanchai]

PMing :)

[sulien]

Thank you for mentioning AO3 Savior, I really need to see if that will work with the Safari browser. I filter my searches on AO3 for things I don't want to read, but people don't always use the damn warnings.

Also, it's good to hear that I'm not the only one who will read fanfic in fandoms where I don't care much for the canon. Harry Potter is definitely one of those for me. :)

[beatrice_otter]

Well, there's so much interesting scope for worldbuilding in Harry Potter, you know? Much of which ... JK Rowling set up but then either didn't do much with or went in a less-interesting direction. (Or a more racist direction.) And there are a lot of fandoms where the fic is better than the original canon.

Hope AO3 Savior works for you! It really does help.

[monanotlisa]

Ohh, clever blacklisting! May need to do that to (not in HP fandom, though).

[beatrice_otter]

I search for new fic by tags a lot. So, I read a wing!fic, go "hey, I would like to read more wing!fic!" and click on the tag, getting lots of fic in lots of fandoms. I've blacklisted a LOT of stuff to make it easier to sort through and find the stuff I actually want--fandoms I know I'll never read, tropes and pairings that squick me or whatnot. It greatly reduces the chaff so I can find the stuff I really want easier.