The Trials of Revisiting Old Fiction

[tree_and_leaf]

I read an early 2000s set Harry/ Draco fic set in Westminster (Harry is a Lib Dem MP, Draco is a peer. No, it's not a mundane AU) which someone was reccing on one of those forgotten fanfic classics blogs. The reccer warned for ancient politics, but - well, there's something quite relaxing about looking back on the pre-Referendum era, right? Those happy, innocent days.*

It's not a bad fic. I'm not a Harry/ Draco shipper, but I'm willing to suspend scepticism for the duration of a fic, and I like well done political settings - which this was. And it was a pleasure to note the little bits of detail they'd thrown in, like an encounter with David Blunkett's guide dog Sadie, Tam Dayell's retirement, and various jokes at John Prestcott's expense.

However.

The reccer did not warn for the fact that they'd made the - positively portrayed - Minister for Magic Boris Fucking Johnson (moonlighting as the editor of the Speccie). If ever a warning was needed - it rather spoiled the whole thing for me...


* Yes, I know. And yet...

Comments

[perennialanna]

Brain bleach. The only answer. Rinse and repeat.

[tree_and_leaf]

But I don't have a big enough bottle!

[white_hart]

Ugh! I'm pretty sure that Positive Depiction of Boris Johnson is fairly near the top of things I think should be warned for.

[nineveh_uk]

I think I've just found turned exception to my staunch support of CNTW.

[tree_and_leaf]

Lol.

[ankaret]

I'm pretty sure that Positive Depiction of Boris Johnson is fairly near the top of things I think should be warned for.

True words.

[legionseagle]

I had an epic fandom meltdown at someone (in the US) who recced as "charming" a British politics AU of Temeraire in which BoJo was thejust-hatched Temeraire.

[tree_and_leaf]

.....

Words truly fail me. Although that 'flames... flames on the side of my face' gif seems quite apt.

[legionseagle]

What's more it was someone from the most Social Justice end of fandom, but because it was someone else's politics it suddenly didn't seem to matter.

[tree_and_leaf]

That makes it infinitely worse.

[antisoppist]

Eek. Back button.

[tree_and_leaf]

So hard I almost broke the backspace key!

[nostalgia]

BURN EVERYTHING.

[tree_and_leaf]

Where's my flame thrower when I need it?

[sir_guinglain]

A story from a naive past, is the best gloss that can be put upon this.

[tree_and_leaf]

It explains the fic. The rec was recent, however....

[lokifan]

Wow. It IS a different POV because I read that fic as a teenager in probably the mid-to-late 2000s - a point where I definitely had negative opinions about Boris, but nothing close to now - and I didn't even REMEMBER he was in it. Eesh.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I never particularly liked Boris - I always thought he was a sleazy git - but he was somewhat amusing and didn’t strike me as more politically dubious than any of the rest of the Tories (though of course it turns out he spent a lot of that period telling flat lies about the EU), so it wouldn’t have struck me back then either!

[toft]

FUCK BORIS JOHNSON. I would have had to nope right out at that.