792 Dumbledon’t.

by

I think it’s safe to assume that when Pottermania hit the store it was probably Nina’s fault.
I was introduced to the series about the time the 3rd book came out. A coworker convinced me to try the first book, which I bought in paperback. I read it in probably 2 sittings, then bought the hardcovers for it and the rest the next day. The paperback was passed to a friend, who also became a fan, and I hope they paid it forward as well. XD

The strange thing for me about Harry Potter was that I just read the books. After I was done reading them I didn’t sit around thinking about the intricacies of the world in which it was set. Every other thing I was in to to that time I always devoted time to imagining the expanded universe for. In fact I only started thinking about the larger Potterverse when I started writing this part of the comic. I’m not sure what was different about HP, but my guess would be that the books do a pretty good job of making the world seem finished. There’s an intuitive logic to it all that doesn’t spark my brain to want to fill gaps.

At the same time, if I was presented with further materials, licensed of course, I would want to see them. Which is why I have a copy of The Tales Of Beedle The Bard.

It could just be that I got over fanfiction when I started writing my own stuff, and it just happened to coincide with starting to read Harry Potter. I guess it doesn’t matter. Part of why I stopped, for sure, is that there’s no money in it. Unless you get hired to write for a franchise. Which is why I think a lot of Star Wars and Transformers stuff reads like fanfic.

I once read a script online that was to do with He Man. It was presented as a lost script for the old show. It was far more complex than the show tended to be, but the general idea was good. A short while later they remade He Man and late in the show’s run a nearly identical episode aired. I always wondered if the script I had read was written by the guy who wrote the episode. That’s kind of the endgame for fanfic. The hope that the brand will see your work as superior and pay you for it.

Just before they started the newer wave of Transformer comics a friend of mine and I got the brilliant idea to restart the franchise ourselves… and do god knows what with it. Thankfully the comics started to appear before we sunk much time into it and broke us of the idea.

I see pretty much all fanfic as a waste of time now. Mine or anyone else’s. If you’re good enough to write good fanfic you’re good enough to write something of your own. Of course if you can only expand upon the ideas of others that doesn’t rule out success. It’s just hard to get in. I suspect getting in must be harder than starting from scratch, but I have no data to back that up. It’s just a feeling. Plus, I like owning my stuff. Having someone else holding the purse strings has never sat right with me.

27 Comments

To me, the ‘revelation’ of Dumbledore’s homosexuality didn’t impact his character a single bit. Dude still rocked when it came to magik. Still kicked ass when needed. And honestly, his homosexuality, to me, never came across even a single time in the entire series. And I believe it may have been more a joke to the author to blurt that out than for it to be fact. After society created such a huge, overblown deal out of it, the author thought “what the hell, why not?” and went with it. Could be wrong, but it obviously doesn’t matter to me cause Dumbledore was still a great character.

3PO… I’d say that one was out in the open with flashing neon lights. Then again… do we really need to label a human emotion or mental state or sexual preference to something that doesn’t even have a gender and it supposedly artificially made? Then again… star wars fandom HAS turned ‘Jedi’ into an actual religion in Europe.

Love the introspection and deep discussions over small things you have in the comic. Reminds me alot of Calvin and Hobbes and was one of the things that made that comic so great!

HEEEEEERmione. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywGw3XWysYo

also, three of the 29 webcomics I watch, had artist’s who are now also writing for Marvel. So it must be somewhat easy, I guess you just gotta know the right people.
Christopher Hastings of Dr. McNinja, is writing for Deadpool, David Reddick of Legend of Bill is the second one, and I can’t remember the 3rd..

I didn’t even have to watch the video to know what you were talking about. I’Ve got it on a wrock CD O__O Is that bad?

nope. I don’t think so. I have various 8-bit video game techno mixes (mostly Tetris and Super Mario,) as well as the original songs themselves, on my Ipod… is that bad?

I think we all have something we’re not sure is socially acceptable, because it’s not. To each their own…
find what you love, and don’t be afraid to share. It’s how the Renaissance got started after all…

Not that it’ll matter, but I actually got sick of Harry Potter pretty quick… or rather “halfway through”. I really liked the notion of “person new to new world (world of magic in this example) and having to go through it’s motions” thing, but the more and more it was less about “SURPRISE, MAGIC WORLD!” and more about “cliche evil trying to take over/destroy the world and we must stop it” I lost interest. I believe this was around book 4. I like Goblet, but Order I was more and more “eh”. I never even finished the 6th book! But I did see it’s movie counterpart (for what that’s worth).

I just couldn’t get back into it… in a way.. I’ve actually come to despise it. The way *I* like magic, the way *I* see magic working, their magic is WEAK! Needing a wand? Needing to incantate? Not even having PROPER spells (Davidicus Proper= Fireballs and healing magic.. YOU’D THINK THEY’D HAVE HEALING MAGIC?!)… it just bored me.

So to sum, to each their own, and I wanna test them Sorceror vs Wizard sometime, and see who comes out on top! They can sample my Petrify and Fireball Hell! *.*

SERIOUSLY!!?? They didn’t have ANY healing magic??? HOW UTTERLY LAME!!! Now I am glad I never got into it! And usually sword and sorcery fantasy is my personal genre, I just had this feeling about Potter and decided not to bother. Even if healing was rare and hard to come by there ought to be at least one person n the group that has it! Even if they are weak and have to be protected by the entirety of the rest of the group! That is why I quit final fantasy 7 half way through once I found out they were killing aeris off. With out a healer you are just playing a giant game of chicken, it becomes who’s spell won’t miss or be countered or will actually be fatal…bleh!! it leaves all magic in the story as destructive and a menace to all peaceable sentients in that world.

REALLY? In FF7 the standard rules don’t apply since the characters can multiclass. By the end of the game, if you go hardcore, all your characters can have the same abilities. For instance when i played and fought the final Jenova/sephiroth fight all my characters had master summon, magic and skill materia with a few attachments to those. So any of my characters could heal their allies, cast powerful spells, summon monsters or just wail on sephiroth. (and yes i am aware that the easiest way to beat the final boss is to use a master knights of the round materia with a “double cast” materia on each character.

They actually have “healing magic” in Harry Potter, but it’s mostly single-purpose spells for mending bones or the like, and they’re easy to mess up. You’d have to spend a lot of time learning about them and probably be pretty good at magic overall. A bunch of teenagers isn’t likely to do something like that.

I originally didn’t want to read Harry Potter because it was fantasy. After reading it, I loved it and actually did develop an interest in fantasy. Looking back, I realize that had I first read it now with my current mindset, I wouldn’t consider it all that great, but I’ll always remember it as what got me in to fantasy and what I was obsessed with for a while.

Now, when I learned that Dumbledore was gay, my thought process was something along these lines: “Huh, I really don’t see it, but whatever.”

Yeah, yeah, healing magic. There’s a reason for why the cleric of the group is usually refered to as “health battery”.

One of the most interesting concepts of healing magic I’ve ever read was by Michael A. Stackpole (one of my favourite authors anyway). There, you could theoretically heal every wound in a few moments. But the healed person would experience all the pain he’d been in if it healed naturally in that short timespan. Which would usually make them pass out or, with grievous wounds, could even kill people.

whoa whoa whoa, back up a few blocks, at what point in time in the books or any other recognized continuity did Dumbledore “come out” i don’t recall that at all, and its only been a year or so if that since i last read/listened to them(Stephen Fry FTW!)

Dumbledore never really came out. J.K Rowling revealed to the press that Dumbledore was gay. Don’t remember the date. Don’t remember why. Didn’t really care, but it did answer a question or two about some of his possible motivations in before the first book dealings (specifically the dark wizard who had possession of the undefeatable wand some fifty years before Potter was conceived. And yes, that was a Harry Potter sexual reference. You may shoot me now…)

Yeah, I’m on the same page as you when it comes to fanfic. I’m not gona knock it, ’cause in many ways it’s an early way to get people to start writing, but I dunno why anyone would completely focus on it. Like you said: if you’re good enough to write a cohesive story with someone else’s characters, then you’re good enough to make your own. Personally I’ve always wanted to make my own stuff; characters, stories, games, etc. Never had any skills in those areas beyond being able to write words, so I ended up doing that and melding many of my favorite themes together to make stories (though the early stories are so obviously based on the stuff I was watching and playing back then; not really copies, but using all sorts of ideas from wherever).

Anyway, I understand fanfiction about franchises that have many, many gaps….but I don’t get it when people just make thier own stories with stuff like Harry Potter. Like you said, the story is pretty clear in the ways of the world and how the people feel about each other. However, we still get massive amounts of fanfics (just like with anything else) displaying people’s desire to see the stories go in different directions. I gotta agree with you again: if you can write, why REwrite someone else’s stuff? Especially if your end result doesn’t even get the FEEL of the characters right. You can see a similar thing in some superhero movies, or movies based on some franchise or another. Ya know, when the movie takes everything that has been established and just doesn’t something else entirely. Why make a different story with someone else’s chracters? People are going to see that movie to see those characters, not your personal interpretation of them.

I personally think it depends on how you approach it. When I was about 13 or so, I set out on the task to create a story that stretched the definition of what a “fanfic” was as far as it could go. As in, the story was temporally so far removed from the original canon, that the original didn’t matter except by way of some references; the cast was entirely made up of original characters, and the story itself, while not terribly original as far as story conventions go, didn’t directly involve most of the characters or plotlines of the game series it was based on in any way. So why post it on a fanfiction website? After all, I had so many reviewers pointing out that my approach was so weird, I may as well have just started an original story from scratch.

To answer that question, I’d have to point out that despite everything said above, the story and the game series on which it was based DID have one thing in common: they shared a universe, and the plots of the games informed the history of the setting I had created. So while it was ostensibly an original story, it still had a background in a property which I did not own, and would gladly make reference to. Sure, I could’ve made a new universe completely from scratch, but that wasn’t the point. As I said, it was partly an experiment to see how much original stuff I could place within the context of a pre-established universe and have it still be called a fanfic, and partly there was just the simple fact that the Mega Man universe was so fascinating to me that I just wanted to set a story in that world.

In retrospect, I wish that I had actually gotten around to finishing it. I had a ton of cool ideas for how the story would play out…

I like Nina’s hair-over-eye look in the second panel. I *love* her surprised look in the third panel. Actually, if it wasn’t for the dialogue, I would think that Thomas just goosed her. XD

Fanfiction is an interesting point for writers, from what I’ve seen. Some people do it to get into writing period, but that doesn’t mean it can’t serve other purposes either. Some of the most brilliant stories I have ever read were fanfiction because the author had a neat story, but no characters. And for some people, that’s just the biggest hurdle in writing. Making your own characters can be one of the hardest things to do.
And again, some of the best stories I ever read never used any of the characters in the original setting and would be completely original if not for using the setting. Which would make the story not work anyways without serious problems.

I’ve had many problems with the “Potterverse” i overall enjoyed the books but there are some glaring problems with it. The Dragons in the series are supposedly very common but are not intelligent and the amount of their confundus and obliviate spells that they would have to perform would leave the entire country of norway at least insane according to their own rules, though my main problem is the fact that the dragons weren’t intelligent at all i’m used to dragons being as intelligent as wizards and there being a great duel of either magic or riddles to see who comes out on top. Also WIZARDS DON’T FLY ON BROOMS ONLY WITCHES DO, wizards fly on magical creatures or teleport or use their magic to make themselves fly in some other manner.

The thing with writing a book is that you can write whatever you want, just like a certain someone had a witch riding a vacuum. There are many things I don’t agree with (like anything ‘Meyer’) yet it is her right (and anyone’s) to invent. =D I’ve thought much worse than a wizard riding a broom :p

My only real complaint about the HP universe is that it can’t be reduced to numbers like most other universes, so it can’t be gamed in. It’s the “Cops and robbers” style bs all over the place, and it’s… annoying. If you’re going to build a universe, start with how it works, mechanics and physics (I love Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and General-Fantasy universes done right~).

But that’s because I don’t enjoy the storyline in books per se, but also what those storylines show us of the universe. Where and how are more important to me: I prefer to visit these places on my own as I can. RPGs drive my reading, and I’m ok with that. Much more a part of the action on my own than as following someone else’s story~

To that end, I suppose I’m quite the fan-fic writer, though I rarely deal with the main cast of any series (I have had a crew playing Stormbringer encounter a deranged, psychotic Elric, but only because they went searching for the bastard~). I have done a lot of works in the Dragonlance realm, as well as in the Phantasy Star (2-era) universe, and I’ve used lots of works to influence my characters when I’m on the other side of a screen (Played a Louis de Pointe du Lac-inspired cyborg in a CP2020 campaign, a tortured priest with a demon to be carried for his god’s intentions (ala Johnny Mnemonic) in my AD&D 1.0 campaign, etc.), which I suppose counts a bit too.

I’ve done a lot of my own writing, as well as writing within other universes, for novels/short stories. I suppose the biggest draw for me to work in someone else’s universe is that it’s a challenge to fit someone else’s rules, and seeing my characters push those rules is always something that’s fun (Similar to Parson Gotti in Erfworld, if you read it… playing with the rules, learning them, fighting them… it’s a great deal more interesting from another angle~).

But I’ve rambled enough. I love the art in this, as well as the dialog… especially the human interactions, doubly so since you say you haven’t really had them yourself to learn from~

I love that you wrote that people who write good fanfic should be able to write good stories. I used to be so deep in writing and reading fanfiction (of many things) now I just read it because I try to write my own original story. I wish I could draw it out like you do! Anyhow, love the comic and this story too!

when I read the HP books, I never got that Dumbledore, the same could be said of the stars wars books even watchign the movies i neever saw C3PO as gay a bit more a worry wart and feminine yes but thats what makes him funny

umbeldore was probably gay. It really is the only way the backstory of the Harry Potter series makes sense, most especially in light of the last book when you chart out a timeline of what happened regarding the Hallows. There are also other, very couched and minor intimations in the other books.

I also point out that the books we got here in the states are NOT the same books released in Britain. I only read the first and (I think ) fifth of the British releases, but there are differences. Personally, I think the U.S. Dumbeldore was toned down in comparison to the original, but still it A) doesn’t really matter to the plot at hand and B) isn’t exactly played up as anything other than the old man’s a little bit odd at times. And let’s face it here, Dumbeldore put Machiavelli to shame with his schemes. The man set up a boy to go seven years before realizing at the last minute what Albus D. had suspected from book one, but never said anything to anyone about until book six. Hell, the arrangement for Hermione to get teh tales of the Beedle and the Bard so she would pick out one story based solely off her not having been brought up with those stories was nothing short of…. Okay, in actual-like realities a hellacious longshot, but in Potterworld it was freakin’ brilliant.

The closest thing I’ve come to fanfic is an article I wrote suggesting a buddy cop procedural starring River Tam and River Song. I ended up describing the opening scene of the pilot, but that was it. I actually find it difficult to get the tone and voice of the characters on the page. It’s almost easier to write your own characters.

An almost totally different twist on HP fanfic I believe is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality…

Rewritten based on the premise the Petunia realised how horrible life was going to be married to Vernon Dursley being the best she could get as unattractive as she was as a teen or whatever she persuaded Lily to make her pretty in a lasting manner.

Then she married a successful science professor and trained Harry in the Scientific Method and rational thinking from a young age which totally changed everything else.

Apart from that the whole thing is written as very logical and scientific and is how HP should have been except that then it would never would have sold any where near as much etc.

Best fanfic I have read even though I don’t read a huge amount of it.

I like the first few books of HP, 5 was okay, but in 7, when Harry started acting like a jerk, I just lost interest because it seemed eally out of character to me. Another problem I have with the series is that one of it’s main appeals (at least for me) was the parts of the books where the characters just hung out, kind of like KOTLC. But in the last few books, it just kind of became all action all the time, and kind of ruined the series for me, so now, when people talk about how good the series is, I just tell them to read The Inheritance Cycle. (which I enjoyed way more)

I feel like the stuff with fanfics is similar to covers & remixes in music, sure if you can make a good one, you probably also make nice original piecec, but sometimes you just want to make your own spin on existing piece of media art. And honestly, I am thankful for such artists, cause experiencing them in such a variety is usually quite fun for me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.