The Ariana Black Series
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The Ariana Black Series was a series of seven fanfics, written by "Ariana Black". (The main series itself had seven stories, but the author also wrote several side-stories about Ariana's mother, and one about Ariana's rival, Maria. Technically they don't count as part of the actual series.)
Over the course of seven fics, Ariana comes to Hogwarts, befriends all the characters that the author likes, discovers she is an "Empath," which therefore makes her very special and powerful, Voldemort decides she's more important than Harry and focuses on alternatively killing her or stealing her powers, and...that's really all there is. Except the author also decided to throw in Wangst out the wazoo, sappy scenes in which the main cast talks about how they'll be together forever and ever (for Ariana's sake), love melodrama...anything to pad the story out to seven fics.
All the stories have been taken down because the author was tired of people telling her Ariana was a Mary Sue, but there is an on-going spork of all the fics starting here, the sporkers being fortunate enough to still have copies of the original fanfic.
Tropes used in The Ariana Black Series include:
- Attempted Rape: Draco tries to rape Ariana on several occasions.
- Big Brother Instinct: Harry, taken up to Edwardian levels of frightening in his reactions.
- Blessed with Suck: While Ariana's Empath powers are genuinely useful, she rarely gets enough use out of them (see Useless Useful Spell below) to justify the horrible side-effects:
- Being near mood-altering spells or potions send her into potentially lethal fits.
- She can't help but feel the emotions around her. If the emotions are strong enough, they start to override her own, leading to a point where she effectively roofies herself when her friend confesses his love for her.
- Oh, yeah, and Voldemort wants kidnap to use her blood for an immortality potion, or so he can erase her will and use her as a political puppet, or various other excuses.
- Body Horror: At one point, Neville's nose evidently ends up smeared across his face.
- Bound and Gagged:This happens to Arianna and friends just about every fic.
- Changeling Fantasy: An unusual case. After her mother's death, Ariana was raised by a witch named Mita. Ariana immediately dumps her to live with Sirius once he's pardoned, and even comments that it wasn't until she started living with Sirius and Harry that she had a real family.
- Chickification: Oh yeah...
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: See Disney Death below.
- Demonic Possession: A rather short-lived example.
- Disney Death: Ariana drowns and is dead for at least five or seven minutes. No spells attempted work in reviving her, but CPR does. The sporkers have pointed out in their MST that this is just not possible, as if no spell could have revived her, then CPR wouldn't have a chance, and if she was dead for at least seven minutes then she's staying that way. And on the off-chance that she was revived, then she would have been brain-dead.
- Damsel in Distress: For as much as she claims her powers are incredibly strong, Ariana falls into this role a lot.
- Driven to Suicide: Multiple times.
- Interrupted Suicide: Of course. Probably the best example is when eleven-year-old Ariana jumps off the roof of the school...in front of Hermione and Ginny, two skilled witches who always carry their wands with them. Hermione just levitated her back up.
- Expy: Maria, Kitty, and Patty are basically Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle with boobs and cattier personalities.
- Flanderization: While Maria once had some semblance of personality and at least seemed to actually care about her friends, the sporkers point out that in later stories she is completely driven by her hatred of Ariana and now doesn't seem to care about Patty and Kitty at all.
- Flat Character: Patty and Kitty have no personality outside of "Maria's lackeys."
- Freudian Excuse: The seventh story gave Maria one--apparently she hates Ariana because Ariana has an adopted family who loves her, while Maria's rich parents don't give her the time of day. Of course, we never get any evidence of this elsewhere, it's just stated out of the blue and never brought up again.
- Friend to All Living Things: Ariana reaches Disney Princess levels with this one.
- Heel Face Turn: Kitty gradually starts to fall for Ariana's "charm."
- Hot for Teacher/Hot for Student: After graduating, Neville becomes the new Herbology professor. He and Ariana still date.
- Informed Ability: Apparently, Maria is a very skilled flyer and Quidditch player. But we never see her flying or playing Quidditch before the fact.
- Also, Ariana is supposedly the top in all her classes (she cites it as a reason for Maria to hate her), but we rarely see her doing any sort of schoolwork and have no indication of her being smart.
- It's All About Me: The universe revolves around Ariana.
- Probably the best (and most infuriating) example is in the first story. She's angry at Sirius, her uncle, and hates him for supposedly killing Harry's parents not because he may have murdered innocent people, but because she's being bullied for being the niece of a criminal.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Some of the things Maria says actually make a lot more sense than what Ariana does--for instance, that it's wrong for Ariana to date her professor.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Filch, evidently.
- Karma Houdini: Maria and her friends try to kill Ariana at breakfast one morning, lock her in a closet on the last day of school and plan to leave her there all summer, et cetera. All they get away with is a slap on the wrist. Not that some of us are complaining...
- Draco attempts to rape Ariana twice early on. Dumbledore only threatens to expel him. Yes, you read that right--Draco only gets the threat of expulsion for attempting to rape an eleven-year-old.
- Lolicon: Not only were Neville and Draco attracted to eleven-year-old Ariana when they were fifteen, but seventeen-year-old Dudley is attracted to Ariana the next year, and Neville's Uncle Algie comments that he would steal Ariana from Neville if only he were younger--at the time, Ariana is twelve. Ew!
- Loophole Abuse: In one of the stories, Voldemort curses Ariana so she no longer has her Empath powers, saying that "the curse will be on you til the day you die." Guess what.
- May-December Romance: Ariana and Neville fall in love when she's eleven and he's fifteen. They continue to date throughout the entire fic.
- Moral Dissonance: Whatever Ariana does is good, right, and heroic. Anything and everything Maria does is bad and sign of her bitchiness...yes, even leaving class as she was told to, instead of standing around and worrying over Ariana.
- Taken Up to Eleven in a quidditch game where Maria tricks a bludger into hitting a chaser on the opposing team (who happens to be Ariana's friend). Instead of seeing this as a perfectly legal and rather clever move, Ariana claims this is the lowest thing Maria has ever done.
- MST: The only format the fic exists in anymore.
- Muggles Do It Better: See Disney Death above.
- Never My Fault: Anything bad or stupid Ariana does is never her fault. According to her (and usually the other characters as well), it was someone else's fault for goading her, or because of her Empath powers. A great example occurs in the seventh story, when Ariana makes out with another boy behind Neville's back--twice, and both times she claims she didn't fight back because her Empath powers reacted to his love. She does say that it sounds more like she's making excuses, but then she never really tells herself it wasn't her powers either.
- Not Blood Siblings: Averted. Harry and Ariana are both adopted by Sirius and immediately start acting like they were biological siblings.
- Once Per Episode: Almost every year involves Voldemort kidnapping Ariana.
- Similarly, once she's introduced, Maria makes an appearance during every single train ride.
- Parental Abandonment: Ariana's father ran out on the family before she was born, and her mother died of an unnamed disease shortly after Ariana's birth.
- Rape as Drama: Draco makes multiple attempts to rape Ariana.
- Remember the New Guy?: In Ariana's second year, we meet Maria and her cronies. Their antagonism towards Ariana is treated as though it was already established, despite not being present in the earlier fanfic.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: The cause of a "Slug Malfoy" in part 1, "Hell Malfoy" in part 2, and Dumbledore evidently not being Headmaster yet. And that's just the start.
- Shout-Out: To Disney's The Little Mermaid, as Ron and Hermione dance to "Part of Your World" at their wedding.
- One of the members on the Quiddich team is named Susie Derkins.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Ariana and Neville
- Soap Opera Disease: Ariana's mother dies in the backstory of a mysterious disease that isn't explained in any way.
- Super Drowning Skills: While swimming to escape one of Voldemort's strongholds, Ariana manages to get tangled up in completely mundane seaweed and drowns.
- The Aurors Who Don't Do Anything
- Title Drop: Many chapter titles come from lines of dialogue in said chapter...and 99 percent of the time, the chapter title doesn't actually fit the chapter's content.
- Too Dumb to Live: Ariana receives a (fake) letter from Sirius, telling her to meet him in Hogsmeade near an alley, alone--she believes it and does so. And then when Sirius himself never shows, Ariana wonders what's taking so long, right before getting kidnapped. This is done after Voldemort has made several successful attempts to abduct her in the past, including last year, when Draco kidnapped both her and Harry the moment they left the company of their friends.
- Took a Level in Badass: Dementors are apparently capable of scaring away Patroni in this fanfic.
- Useless Useful Spell: A rare non-video game example. Ariana's ability to sense emotions doesn't seem to help any time it's particularly needed. She can sense her friends sneaking up on her (some of the time), but always misses when somebody with hostile intentions is preparing to ambush her. She can sense how much Neville loves her, but was completely oblivious to Reginald's feelings until he confessed.
- Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: Hilarity Ensues if you take everything written at face value, as the above sporkers regularly point out.
- Write Who You Know: One of Ariana's friends, Reginald, is supposedly based on a friend of the author's whom she claims has a crush on her. Reginald also forces himself onto Ariana several times despite her saying she doesn't want to, which speaks very, very badly for the real-life person...
