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HP Next Genaration RP 12
Since the other...
Since the other roleplay was *coughs* a little long, I thought we need a new thread. By the way, are Bellitrix, Voldy, etc. still attacking Hogwarts? I was going to make a post, but I was feeling sort of laz--er, homework--lota homework.
submitted by Chloe, age 11, CA
(October 3, 2009 - 6:35 pm)
(October 3, 2009 - 6:35 pm)
Can I just join this one right now, or is it just a continuation of the other one? Because if so, I'm afraid I can't join. But if you could just fill me in....?
(October 5, 2009 - 7:44 am)
((@Mango: It's a continuation, the 12th one in fact, but you can join if you want. Basically, the story so far: Hogwarts term starts. Wolfbar Rangon plots to resurrect Voldy and is soon joined/terrorized by Bellatrix Lestrange. RP dissolves into BellaxVoldy fanfiction. Most people drop out. Voldy takes over the Ministry and Hogwarts. And... that's about it, really.
Feel free to join...))
(October 5, 2009 - 4:34 pm)
((Er, you neglect to mention a couple major details, such as "Harry dies" and "majority of non-evil characters die or become largely underused"... and, um, the fact the Bellatrix turns out to be alive, or that Harry's son turns evil... And as TNO (umlaut) said, she made BellaxVoldy canon... but yes. Anyway.
And yes, feel free to join... (Though the eleventh thread seems to have died recently?) ...))
(October 5, 2009 - 6:55 pm)
Ummm... so basically, evil has taken over the world? Doesn't sound very hopeful... *sigh* Sorry, but I don't like being a bad guy in a world of bad guys. I'd much rather be the only bad guy in a world of good guys.
(October 7, 2009 - 3:13 pm)
*shrugs* Could I join?
(October 7, 2009 - 7:14 pm)
Hazel scowled at Albus. She'd thought he was her friend, and now he was looking at her disspasionately, probably wondering if Lestrange would let him torture her. "Albus, what is wrong with you?" she whispered, tears starting to run down her cheeks. "We were friends!" she yelled abruptly, startling everybody, including herself. "You were GOOD, Al, you were! What has anyone done to you, that you could be this way?" she added slightly softer than the first, but still quite audible to all in the area. "Why, Al, why?"
((About right *now* we could have Voldy, Bella, Wolfbar, and Albus reforming and becoming good? Or else the Admins may zap us for eternity.))
(October 8, 2009 - 1:24 pm)
I would like to submit a comment for no apparent reasonbut if Miss( I know she is married, but I call every girl married or not 'Miss')Rowling wanted Harry dead, than she would have killed him herself, Voltomort (spelling is wrong, I KNOW) is the antagonist, your not suposed to like him he was put in the story for an obstcal for the main charecter, I know every one has their own oppinion, but I honestly do not get why every one is infaturated with the dark side, it just dosen't seem like somthing Miss Rowling intended to happen. Now someone is going to write and tell me about ensembal darkhose(wrong spelling) but don't I have known about that for centries(figuritive) I just wanted everyone to think about what I have written, I know this is a pretend story and Miss Rowling will probiby never see any of what you have wrote, but still, would you like it if you wrote a book , just to find out that everyone hated the main charecter(good or evil)
just think about it
(December 3, 2009 - 11:34 pm)
It isn't just the HP series in which I like the villains. It's basically EVERY story that I read. Evil is Cool, after all. Evil is several other things as well, that would probably get zapped.
You see, villains have the freedom to do basically whatever they want while heros are hampered by their little moral codes and such. A villain doesn't have to act according to what'll keep them from sliding over the Moral Event Horizon; a hero does. Villains are, almost to a man, cleverer, crazier, and generally more BA than the heros are.
Quite simply, a moralistic, "good" hero (such as dear little Harry) can never *hope* to be as awesome as a Chessmaster villain who pulls off a Xantanos Gambit or Roulette. It doesn't help that villains ALWAYS get the better costumes. And better lines, usually.
Let us take, for example, Lord Havelock Vetinari from the Discworld series (I know he's *technically* good but he has all the trappings of villainy and he's awesome, so...):
Ankh-Morpork's current Patrician is a thin, incredibly intelligent (bordering on omniscient at times) man with a talent for manipulation and an astounding grasp of human nature. He rarely (if ever) sleeps and has no apparent vices. His only real "flaw" as a leader is a hatred of mimes, who if caught within Ankh-Morpork are hanged upside down in a scorpion pit opposite a sign reading LEARN THE WORDS. He is unfailingly calm and never raises his voice; he doesn't HAVE to because people always listen.
Vetinari takes an interesting approach to politics. Early in his career as Patrician he legalized the Thieves' and Assassins' Guilds, on the theory that if there's always going to be crime it might as well be organized crime. When the Theives' Guild went on strike, crime in Ankh-Morpork actually increased. He also frequently enlists unwilling young men to perform what he feels to be necessary functions, i.e, forcing former Arch-Swindler Moist von Lipwig to first become Postmaster General of the floundering post office, and then to become Master of the Royal Mint (Going Postal and Making Money, respectively).
He stays in power mainly by making certain that the city with him is a little bit better than the city without him, and that everyone dislikes him a little bit less than they do his competition. He has done this so effectively that the Assassin's Guild has refused to take out contracts on him, because they know Ankh-Morpork would collapse without him.
In his earlier days he was educated at the Assassin's Guild, where he took a particular interest in the arts of concealment and camouflage; he flunked his final exam in that subject because the instructor marked him absent. Think about that for a minute.
He nearly assassinated a former Patrician; however, when the man saw him walk into the room, he actually died of fright before Vetinari could kill him. Vetinari actually scared a man to death. Think about THAT for a minute.
Now. You can't tell me that Vetinari, while possibly unlikeable, is a generally awesome character. And yes, he sounds an awful lot like a villain. That doesn't make him any less awesome.
Now take Voldemort. Despite his flaws (egocentric, megalomaniacal, impractical, temperamental, violent...) he is still a vastly more awesome character than Harry, who always in the end has to do what is right. Not saying Voldy's in the right, not saying he's the sort of person I'd look up to or want to meet in a dark alley, but nevertheless he's a better character than the good guys. Ditto Bellatrix, ditto Draco.
I am not "infatuated with the dark side", as you say. I simply find it easier to sympathize with the villains that the heros. After all...
Snow White's evil stepmother danced to death in red hot iron shoes. Scar got pitched off a cliff and eaten by starving hyenas. The Wicked Witch of the West melted; her sister got smashed by a house. Ursula was impaled on the broken figurehead of a ghost ship. The evil stepsisters in Cinderella cut off parts of their feet and were probably severely crippled despite living in the palace. The big bad wolf fell into a cauldron of boiling water, TWICE. Voldemort was humiliated, killed, and then humiliated and killed again. Victoria's love interest was torn to pieces and burned, and she later met with the same fate.
I mean, come on! You have to at least feel sorry for these people! Sure, they do bad things (although in Victoria's case this is debatable), but look at the HORRIBLE FATES they all meet. Villains have it EXTREMELY ROUGH in the fictional world, they deserve, at the very least, some SYMPATHY.
Yes?
(December 6, 2009 - 2:41 pm)
Oh yes, and in my stories I generally end up liking the antagonists better than the protagonists, so I wouldn't give a whit if any readers felt the same. Yes?
(December 6, 2009 - 2:43 pm)
But you see, dear, that's the beauty of fanfiction. It's just a fun thing. *We* don't like Harry but we *do* like Voldy (actually, TNO (umlaut) thinks he's flat without Bellatrix, but still). And you say we're not supposed to like Voldy--- but why not? It's literature (of a way) and one can interpret literature however one wants. Also, we are not infatuated with the "dark side." But it's interesting to comtemplate the "what ifs." You say JKR would've killed Harry if she wanted him dead, but because she never really went that far in the story, again, it's just for fun.
If I wrote a book and everyone hated my MC, that's my problem not theirs. I mean, if I create a Gary Stu character, what d'you expect to happen? Although in JKR's defense, very few people actually hate Harry. I don't hate him; I just don't particularly like him, though he has his moments (especially Movie Harry: "She only likes you because she thinks you're the Chosen One!" "But I *am* the Chosen One.").
And, well, yes, Ensemble Darkhorse...
It's nothing to get all worked up about; you don't have to read/partake in it if it annoys you (though after evil took over we sorta killed it anyway).
(December 6, 2009 - 6:58 pm)
Look, I said everyone was entiled to thier own opinion, did I not? I don't have a problem with you liking the dark side. I do not entirely like Harry Potter, I just find it easier to sympathize with him, seriously, if some person killed your mummy and daddy, I suspect you would hate him, no matter what you say now, you would, you would hate his guts, no matter how cool you think him now , you would be mad at him, you probably would have done a similar thing to what Harry did. I think Mrs. Rowling spent a lot of time building this wonderfull story around Harry, and probibly did not try to make him top perfect. One of my faults is liking the protagonists better than the antagonists (except for in fairy tales, i.e.: Cinderella) because I see the whole thing through their perspective, so I like them better. I can't exactly explain it tonight, I'll try tomorrow to tell you in a better way. I honestly do not care if you like the dark side or not, but usually, the intent is not for you to like the bad side. I do feel sorry for Voldemort; he woulden't let go of his past, he diden't make friends, he blocked them out, he diden't love, he built a wall between himself and others. Had he just accepted his past and not tryed to seize power, not trying to find comfort and revenge in the dark arts, it's like seriously what has happend has happend, let go of the past and keep moving (positivley) forward into the future, he would have had a much better life. I pity Lord Voldemort, I do not like him. I'm not the kind of person that will be like, oh I feel sorry for you, you messed up your life bloody bad, ok, I like you now because I am sorry for you (not saying that you are doing that). I am very sorry that Voldemort did not make the right choices. That is his problem, not mine, so quite frankly, I despise him for the person he became because of these choices. Voldemort did to his life what the wizard in the harry heart (or somthing like that ) from the tales of the Beetle the Bard (the y do exist) did to his heart; he locked it away so no one, including him could see/use it. They (the wizard and Voldemort) both ended up dead. Mrs. Rowling must have liked Harry, she wrote 7 books about him. Do you think she would have kept at it if she lothed him? It would have probably driven her insane (figuratively) to write 7 books out of Harry's eyes, trying to make the reader like him, if she hated him. I'm not exactly sure how it came about that she wrote the HP books, but most of the stories are similar, Harry Potter started as stories for her kids. She must have liked Harry to be able to think up a story of his life to tell to her kids.
Once again, THINK about what I have written.
(December 7, 2009 - 11:36 pm)
Whoa, whoa, WHOA.
Okay. I am not saying that I want to grow up to be just like Voldy or Bellatrix or something. That would be... somewhat touched of me. Now, I understand what you are saying about protagonists, because I had this one long story (hundreds of pages) I wrote once about this girl (TNO ((umlaut)) may remember her--- she was the one you suggested become obsessed with dead spiders and all? You saved that story, for the record, until it... became unsaved...) and then I realized I hated the MC. Also, she was a little annoying. Well, I didn't hate her, I adored her, yes I know I take this sort of thing too seriously. But she was a bad character I disliked, so I killed the story. Anyway, my point is, I know that JKR liked Harry. I don't give a whit that JKR liked Harry; I think she liked him too much, like I did with the MC I mentioned up there. But I don't like Harry, and I prefer the bad guys (like Draco, for instance, who is awesome). And that's my opinion.
Oh yes, don't get me wrong, Voldy killed Harry's parents. But, let's think about this:
1. Harry then killed Voldy. A LOT. Destroying all the Horcruxes? Those were fragments of his *soul*. I would imagine having your soul killed is sort of crummy, wouldn't you?
2. Harry did not just kill Voldy; he also killed a bunch of his followers. Creeps, yes. But also people.
3. And he wasn't very nice period to Voldy.
4. And he devoted his life to, what, destroying Voldy and the Death Eaters completely. That is a little mean. I have people who hate me, obviously, a lot, but I don't think anyone's ever devoted their lives to complete destruction of me. Yet.
5. And then he whined about it all for good measure. See: "AHHHH!!! MY SCAR!1!!"
More later; dad needs the computer.
(December 8, 2009 - 8:36 pm)
I am THINKING about what you have written, and I can see your point. If someone killed my parents I'd want to hunt them down with a flame thrower.
So, yeah, I guess I can theoretically sympathize with Harry (to the best of my knowledge). However, I can sympathize a lot more with Voldemort (not that I've mutilated, maimed, or destroyed! Honest!). I find it easier to sympathize with villains because often they are a lot more cynical and/or realistic about the way the world works; they don't see the world through rose-coloured lenses as many heroes tend to do (not Harry, though, really). It's... difficult to explain. But with Voldemort, I do, yes, feel horribly sorry for him, but that isn't why I like him. I like him because he's, well, it's difficult to explain.
It's like... *thinks* Ursula from the Little Mermaid. The theatrical version, mind, not the original movie, because she didn't have much of a personality besides EVIL in the movie.
Now. I don't know if you've heard the OBCR of the Little Mermaid, but early on Ursula/Sherie Rene Scott sings a classic I Want Villain Song, basically explaining her past (she is Triton's brother and formerly the queen of half the sea; when she started to grow overly ambitious and started using too much black magic for her brother's liking, he banished her and took control of the whole of Atlantica) in the first verse. She goes on to detail her motivation for the rest of the play; quite simply she "wants the good times back" as well as revenge against her brother ("if only I could find his Achilles heel... The soft, quivering underbelly beneath all that armor, haha, I'll dethrone him/Debone him!" and "if only I had a way/To make him pay/I'd settle Triton straight" and "But most of all I want old Triton pinned/And wriggling on the rack!").
It's got a lot of character development, some obvious (she's driven by revenge and desire for the "good times" rather than plain ambition/evilness as in the movie), and some more subtle, and (a rarity for villains) she's confident enough with herself that she doesn't try to justify her evil deeds with paltry excuses like "it's for the greater good" or "I know what's best"; she is evil simply because it is fun). And just in that little Villain Song, she provides a good deal of "hooks" (for lack of a better word) for me to sympathize with her character.
Yes, I feel sorry for the theatrical version of Ursula (she got kicked off the throne and banished by her own brother), but this is, again, not why I like her character. She's powerful and she knows it and she isn't afraid to use said power; most importantly, she sets herself apart from other villains by being unafraid of coming right out and admitting that she doesn't give a flying fish about what's right or good or whatever, she just ENJOYS making other people miserable so she's BLOODY WELL going to do it.
Later on, we get a full dose of what I Want the Good Times Back gave us only a taste of; the theatrical Ursula is *funny*. IWtGTB gave us a handful of funnies (the "shucked" pun, the handbag line in the Denver trials, "just a tad"); when we hit the introduction to Poor Unfortunate Souls we get positively bombarded with them: "'Father banished you, why?''The... ocean wasn't big enough for the both of us? [shrug]'"; "Don't be shy, Ariel darling, IT'S ME! Your Auntie Ursula. I've known you since you were a minnow."; "Mm, yes, this prince fellow. [fake giggle] He's quite a catch"; "NONSENSE! ...We're *family* [smirk]". And then, in Souls itself, we have such gems like "Trust me, darling, your vibrato, your legato... even your belt...", "sort of a SQUID pro quo" (this Ursula likes puns, apparently), "LAWYERS! Don't you just love 'em!", "Oh look, small print!", "Do you want princy poo or not, five four three two-", and so on. And Deadpan Snarkers, like Ursuala, are great characters no matter what they are.
In Souls (reprise) we get "Gorgeous! Such a gorgeous sunset! TIME'S UP YOU LOOSE!"
And- though this only got as far as the trials- there's Her Voice (reprise), in which the theatrical Ursula allows herself a brief thirty seconds of gloating time; the song itself is a Crowning Moment of Awesome what with the eerie accompaniment and eel backup, and the lyrics themselves ("now at last my plan is on its way to its delectable conclusion/only one more sunset and then finally I'll own the little beast/soon I'll have my brother just exactly where I want him/and I'll be unstoppable as long as I have this...").
Basically, my point is, if a character is snarky, intelligent, has interesting motivations and/or justifications (or lack thereof), and manages to be mean on top of all that, it's basically guaranteed that I will think they are an awesome character.
With the exception of the interesting motivations and possibly snark (though he has his moments), Voldy fits the above description to a T, even if he is idiotically megalomaniacal at times. And that is why I like him as a character (though certainly not as a person, heh). Same goes for Bellatrix (again, minus the snark).
Am I making sense?
Also, re: going insane because you hate your protagonist: there's a reason for the saying Do Unto Your Characters the Most Heinous Things Humanly Possible, you know. You don't have to worry about making them likeable.
(December 8, 2009 - 9:30 pm)
*screams* SADISTIC! AHHHHHHH!
*head asplode*
*listens to We Can Do It from The Producers*
*calms down*
Hem. Yes. Things got deleted. *goes cross-eyed*
(December 9, 2009 - 12:55 am)
@ TNO (umlaut):
Re: deleting: yes. Same here. Grr.
Also, it made sense to *me*, but that might not be normal...
And also, "Do Unto Your Characters the Most Heinous Things Humanly Possible"... *likes this* I'll keep that in mind... post-NaNo characters are uncooperative...
And more on-topic, I agree with everything TNO (umlaut) said above (see Long Post) and really cannot think of any better way to phrase it.
(December 9, 2009 - 3:50 pm)