PoA Thought

[lightofdaye]

So I've been listening to audio book of Prisoner of Azkaban fo the upteemth time and this quote leapt out at me: "you're the cleverest witch of your age I've ever met." - Remus Lupin

It seems to me that that quote gets shrunk down to 'the cleverest witch of the age' a lot. Or at least it seems like a lot in fanfic and I can't remember if gets referred to very often again in canon.

But... that ommission completely changes the meaning to me. With it it means something like 'wow, you're really smart for 14.' without I always read it as 'you're literally the cleverest witch of your generation'

And its not just Hermione, lots of fanfics will refer to Harry by some variant of boy-who-lived, modified to account for his later victories, far more than canon does, or at least so it seems to me.

Not sure what i'm concluding here beyond 'fandom loves nicknames' and 'poor ron: why doesn't he get a moniker?' but I thought you might appreciate my ramblings nevertheless.

Comments

[torino10154]

I do think it's a good point. I am not sure that suggesting she really is the cleverest witch of her age full stop really is that far out there but that's not what he's saying there, no.

As for fandom, well, yeah, we love tropes and cliches... except when we hate them. LOL

If you really think about it, there have been far more words written in fanfic than in canon. So it's sort of natural that you'll see something repeat (endlessly) if you're reading, say, a lot of Harry fic.

[lightofdaye]

That's true enough. And I'm sure there are lots other statements about Hermione's intelligence out there but they all tend to be more like 'cleverest in the year' rather than 'cleverest evah.'

True! And sometimes its just that we like it when we're the ones using it lol. Or don't realise how often it has been used in fandom at large.

i do tend to read more harry fic than anything else. Tends to skew my view.