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Complete The Ten Plagues by Lord Jeram - M

Discussion in 'The Alternates' started by Nuhuh, Aug 1, 2007.

  1. Nuhuh

    Nuhuh Dastardly Shadow Admin Retired Staff

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    Title: The Ten Plagues
    Author: Lord Jeram
    Genre: Adventure
    DLP Category: AU
    Pairing: None
    Chapters: 11
    Words: 77,382
    Updated: Jan 7, 2015
    Published: May 1, 2007
    Status: Complete

    Rating: M
    Summary: AU PostHBP. Harry begins his search for the secret of Horcruxes, but stumbles into a secret war that is struggling for control of reality and magic itself. But who's lying? Some DH later.

    FF.net link: Click me and hear me squeal!
    DLP WBA link: Touch me there.

    As the summary says it is post HBP and there may be some compliance to DH.

    However it is a very new and unique take on Horcruxes and what effects creating them can have other than splitting the person’s soul. The plot is pretty complex and not easy to predict which is a major plus. Writing style and quality is excellent in my opinion and it is definitely needed to execute the involved plot of this fic.

    Harry’s characterization flows from canon, so it is not an abrupt change into what we at DLP would like Harry to be suddenly. That is a positive because there is a growth here, not a jerk into Indy/Dark/Having Balls!Harry. So far Harry is proactive and is employing more of his brain.

    Odd positive point, it has got me curious about Harry/Cho again. The author has not revealed any pairings though and the fic is definitely not relationship centered.

    If you’re looking for something very creative but connected to canon magic, ideas and history this is very recommended.

    5/5 for me.


    Checked by Minion, August 3, 2015
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 3, 2015
  2. Ragon

    Ragon Dark Lord

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    Harry/Cho now I gotta read it.

    Okay I finished it and its one of the best fics I have read in a long time. Not the best but definitely one of them.

    The idea for the Horcruxs is new to me... Hell the whole idea is good.

    Need a few more chapters
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2007
  3. Wisdom's Mountain

    Wisdom's Mountain Sixth Year

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    Very interesting, creating a whole new aspect to magic. I like the story, the writing is excellent, it flows nicely and it has the making of an interesting plot.

    It's just one thing, Harry completely at the mercy of this new group he encounters and though it is not written out, it is implied that they have power and knowledge way beyond his own.

    I like Cho just as much as the next guy, but I don't like her more powerful and knowledgeable than the hero of the story. But I know, the story just started, there's time for Harry to develop. I just don't like the power balance at the moment. 4/5
     
  4. Ragon

    Ragon Dark Lord

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    Thou Shall Not Bash Cho.

    You get points for H/Cho even if it wasnt this good. Good H/Cho fics are rare Dakaath: Prince of Darkness hasnt been updated in one year 7 months and 16 days. So you probably get props for my favorite H/Cho Fic
     
  5. Mindless

    Mindless Big Boss DLP Supporter

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    Yeah, this belongs in the library.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2007
  6. Andro

    Andro Master of Death DLP Supporter

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    Nice, I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. The only thing that even resembled a cliche was the Egyptian necromancers being the hitherto unmentioned group considered dark because others were afraid of their power. I liked how you brushed past that part. It was tactfully and well done, as was the rest of the story. 5/5
     
  7. Myst

    Myst Headmaster

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    I found this story on ff.net a few days ago and honestly I had a hard time getting into it though I cant remember why.

    Oh well... the writing itself was solid and the ideas were interesting... but yet it just failed to grab me.

    4/5
     
  8. Andro

    Andro Master of Death DLP Supporter

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    Just curious Jeram, what will you name the chapters once you run out of plagues that God sent on the Egyptians, or are you planning to have ten chapters?
     
  9. Myst

    Myst Headmaster

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    I went through and re-read the story to remember exactly why I did not like it.... oh and thanks to whoever neg repped me with the comment "Lulz niggah what." to my first post in here....

    Anyways heres my more in depth review.

    Chapter 1:

    The spies. Seriously? if there were spies somehow, they wouldn't have continued talking.. so that makes no sense. Ginny's characterization came from no where. It didn't really make much sense.. plus the lack of warning from the Ministry for her using magic.

    The quotes at the beginning of each scene sometimes throw me off and make me think they're part of the story.

    Grindelwald's diary. I'm trying to figure out how German AND Japanese got mixed into English. I noticed the word "baka" in there, which is Japanese. Plus he spells all these complex words correctly but fails to spell cannot? o_O

    Not to mention the diary itself makes no sense to the reader... at least to me anyways. I read the text to try and understand and I only come up with a "???". Usually people give up reading when they don't understand it so... unless Harry understands that jibberish... o_o

    Then at the very end of Chapter 1, we, as well as Harry, gets thrown into the deep end with something worse than Voldemort.

    I didn't like the sex dreams... mostly out of personal preference... I'm one of those rare dlpers who does not like smut.

    Chapter 2:

    Cho? Really? That was completely random and maybe just a tad out of character for her.

    Chapter 2 is better than Chapter 1 but I'm still not getting why Harry didn't go crazy after being kidnapped, even if it was being kidnapped by someone he knew.

    Chapter 3:

    .. its like Canon all over again. Keep secrets from Harry and hope he reacts well.. Meh.

    Oh and whats with every spell being long and complex and Latin? That just doesn't make sense. The phrases don't need to be exact. Combine Latin words to make it fit better. Really its a pain to read all these Latin phrases.

    Basically it makes Dark Magic out to be "uber powerful" and only these long complex forms of magic can get rid of it.... Whats the point of DADA if you need complex advanced magics to combat Dark Magic?... in fact how the hell do you save yourself against Dark Magic if you constantly need these long drawn out ways to counter it?

    Basically.... what the hell is stopping Dark Magic users from owning everyone?

    The relationship itself seems pointless and almost filler... almost as if the author want Harry/Cho to happen. Its not happening naturally at all.

    ... and then the author went all Matrix on me. Seriously.. "What you see is not real... there are several sub-realities" I half expected the bloody Blue Pill and the Red Pill to be offered to Harry.

    I'm not sure sure how the author gonna pull this off either... since Harry is rather weak and he has to basically "hop worlds" to go Horcrux hunting. He'll get himself killed within a day in a new world.... especially since he's so damn clueless about magic as well as all these "uber powerful monitoring spells." are able to keep tabs on Harry.

    --

    I still stand by my original rating. While it could have been presented a bit better, the story itself is still decent enough to warrant a place in the DLP Library. The theories themselves are sound and the idea is nice... it just could use a tad more fixing up.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2007
  10. InfernoCannon

    InfernoCannon Seventh Year

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    It's good, but I just can't get into it for some reason. I'll probably try again later but reading what little I did, I'd give it a 3/5 (will rate it properly later).

    If I remember my Ancient Egyptain mythology right, Baka is the spirit.

    EDIT: Just finished it, and so far 5/5.

    The set up in my mind is great. You haven't explained it entirely which leaves the idea of these shadowy figures waging war for Reality and it's sub divisions is interesting.

    The only problem I see is sometimes it's hard to follow, which whilst adds to the mysteriousness of the story also detracts from the overall enjoyment.

    I personally thought it made perfect sense.

    Slughorn said that once a Hocrux was destroyed, the spirit inside fled into the nearest human. Quite obviously it didn't flee into Harry, so it must of fled into Ginny. As such she's been possesed by the spirit of Tom Riddle from the diary and is ofcourse going to be evil enough to write unknown evil runes and obliviate Ron.
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2007
  11. Sanctimonius

    Sanctimonius Guest

    Alright, I essentially enjoyed this story for the most part, but there were parts that made utterly no sense to my sleep deprived mind.

    The whole thing with switching to first person and paralleling the story to the 10 plagues were, while admittedly cool, lacking in the department of sense. Perhaps an explanation? And the romance with Cho was far to rushed. He just got an obsession curse taken off him, and suddenly he's macking Cho? What's up with that?

    Overall the ideas are interesting but lacking in detail to flesh themselves out further. Its one new idea after another without sufficient detail for the reader or time to absorb. Not that I didn't enjoy it, I just feel its rushed and the writing is lacking.

    3.5/5 for the interesting ideas.
     
  12. Jeram

    Jeram Elder of Zion ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    I just want to first thank everyone for their comments - I appreciate all feedback people have given.

    Well, sorry about that - considering you rated it 4/5, that doesn't seem quite fair.

    Well, no - Slughorn's point was that he couldn't talk about specific things without alerting the spies.

    Well, I thought adding the author of each quote would make it easier to differentiate it, but I do it every scene break. It seems like you figured out they were quotes, though :).

    Actually, I used Egyptian, German, Japanese, French, Italian, and Dutch words in there. But Grindelwald WAS supposed to be a genius, wasn't he? And yes, the spelling mistakes are there for a reason.

    Hmm, I thought I made it clear that Harry did not understand it at all.

    I don't really know what to say, honestly. I don't like smut either - and I really didn't think I was writing it. And I certainly wouldn't call those "sex dreams".

    Well, he is a tad disoriented. Now that he's gotten back his bearings a bit, he'll be getting quite a bit angrier.

    Yes, they're hoping he will - isn't that the pattern they would expect?

    I think the problem here is that it's not like these long phrases are meant to counter specific hexes like the Entrail-spilling curse or something, they're meant to cure very complicated enchantments and curses. Specifically, curses that are above and beyond what "normal" wizards could perform - which I kind of mentioned.

    Yes, that does seem to be the classic problem of writing a story about Harry when you want him to succeed.

    Thanks, I'm trying to improve things in the next chapter.

    Well, don't forget - one of the symptoms was that he lost "all attraction to other girls" - to me, it's partially overcompensating, partially due to Cho throwing herself at him.

    That's right, I'm planning for ten chapters (and maybe an epilogue).

    Thanks again everyone who commented! Please let me know if you have any further comments or questions, I'm always interested in improving.

    -J
     
  13. Ragon

    Ragon Dark Lord

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    My only suggestion is to update as often as possible without going down in quality
     
  14. parselmaster

    parselmaster Sixth Year DLP Supporter

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    I found this story's concepts to be intriguing but overly complex. There are too many sides to this. Unless they all get worked in, what was the point in revealing them?
    Though the fact that many things can go wrong for Harry has created a sort of tension I like. I like a resistance in stories I read. Harry also has a bit of a brain to, not too much and not too little, good work on that. And Grindlewald's journal, interesting encoding. References to the Stone?
    Though I find 'Baka no oni are fools of the highest caliber' to be highly redundant. And what does Small fire have to do with anything? Birefringence I can see, splitting of realities. It seems Crucio does a bit more than it seems. How many languages did you stick in that journal anyway? Did you pick the languages because of their references geographically, or just randomly?
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2007
  15. Mors

    Mors Denarii Host DLP Supporter

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    Always the good ones that never get updated. Always.

    5/5. Even though I'm confused as hell.

    If it makes any difference; Jeram: UPDATE MOTHERFUCKER D:
     
  16. Korisovra

    Korisovra Headmaster

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    QFFT! I'll rate this one with a 4.5/5
     
  17. Inziladun

    Inziladun First Year

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    Very interesting, I'm concerned though that Harry isn't a bit more paranoid, of course, he doesn't have many skill being a postHBP_Harry, but he was thinking about Grindelwald's diary inside a room full of people that its supposed to be very powerful, someone was probably reading his thoughts. Even if the Balancers seem to be the good ones right now even Harry knows that they want to use him. And another matter is that he has yet to realise that even if they've blocked the monitoring charm, they've probably had another one on and if they hadn't they surely do now, after all they've admitted that theirs is much more subtle.

    Lets see where this goes from here, right now 5/5.
     
  18. Jeram

    Jeram Elder of Zion ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Eh, what's this now? Well, gee... now you really have made me want to write more - I was getting a bit annoyed at my most recent chapter (which is about halfway done), because it just wasn't coming out quite right. Mainly because I had lost a bunch of my notes, and I couldn't remember exactly what I had thought of the first time.

    Eh, screw it, I'll just finish it and post to WBA to get notes on how to fix it up.

    But as for your specific comments - yes, this Harry is not uber!smart or mega!powerful, but he is also not an idiot. He's human - and he gets some things right, and some things wrong. I doubt that mind reading would even cross his mind as a danger, and he was not exactly in the best situation to begin with. Thanks again for your comments.

    -J
     
  19. Aekiel

    Aekiel Angle of Mispeling ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Did anyone else get the feeling that the lust curse was not completely destroyed? That the target was merely transferred someone else, like say... Cho, perhaps?
     
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