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WIP The Brightest Witch and the Darkest House by Belial666 - T

Discussion in 'Trash Bin' started by najex, Oct 29, 2015.

  1. najex

    najex First Year

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    Title: The Brightest Witch and the Darkest House
    Author: Belial666
    Rating: T
    Genre: Adventure/Supernatura
    Status: WIP
    words: 232,898
    Library Category: Dark arts
    Pairings: Non so far
    Summary: What happens if the 'brightest witch of her age' is very different than Hermione? Would there be a golden trio? Would the fate of Britain be brighter, darker or unchanged? What is dark and what is evil and how much do choices matter? Slow break from canon initially, full break at book 3. Lots of magic, action, reasonably competent Harry and friends, PoV is potential dark witch.
    Link: FanFiction.Net

    Muggleborn OC that takes the place of Hermione and ends up in slytherin.
    You can probebly guesse how well liked she is over there so expect lots of bullying.
    Lots of focus on how the magical world and magic itself works.
    Occasional PoV's from Harry/Severus/Dumbeldore but the focus stays with the OC.

    Story is currently in 3rd year

    The story reminded me a little of jacobk's Applied Cultural Anthropology FanFiction.Net (that is a good thing imo) so if you liked that you will hopefully like this.

    3/5 stars
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2015
  2. Halt

    Halt 1/3 of the Note Bros. Moderator

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    It opens with an info-dump paragraph. Author has a habit of telling instead of showing. She sounds nothing like an eleven year old and I mean it's really bad. This OC is pretentious, almost as bad as MoR Harry imho. The author also manages to misspell several canon-HP words and has an ongoing love relationship with semicolons. Have I mentioned it likes to infodump? Because it does. A lot.

    1/5. Could not read past chapter 2.
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2015
  3. Anarchy

    Anarchy Half-Blood Prince DLP Supporter

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    I've seen this story pop up at various times through my FFN trawling, and I cringe everytime I see it. It's really bad.
     
  4. NuScorpii

    NuScorpii Professor

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    I started reading this because of the comparison to Applied Cultural Anthropology. Now, it irks me that the comparison was made in the first place. This story is nothing like ACA, which is actually written fairly well.

    I'm not going to rate it since I couldn't even get through the first chapter.
     
  5. Miner

    Miner Order Member

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    I couldn't stand the summary, let alone even opening chapter 1. Not gonna rate it because never touched it.
     
  6. najex

    najex First Year

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    Oh come on is my taste in stories realy that bad?
    I will be to scared to ever post another story at this rate.

    Also its a bid unfair to rate it if you haven't read past chapter 2 don't you think? its not like they are especialy long chapters. I urge you to atleast wait until it gets to hogwarts until you bring the pitchforks.

    And yes grammer and spelling are not as important to me as to most people. I care a lot more about whether I can get invested in a story than the amount of misspells.
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2015
  7. Ankan

    Ankan Professor

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    The problems doesn't end after chapter two, tried to read through a couple of chapters but it didn't get better.
     
  8. Anarchy

    Anarchy Half-Blood Prince DLP Supporter

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    The general rule of thumb, and in 99% of cases it's been correct so far, if you're new to DLP, then don't post stories for review. Chances are that it's going to be shit. That's not saying you can't, but freshies from ffn generally have shit taste.
     
  9. Plotless

    Plotless High Inquisitor

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    What Anarchy said is right, though put a little bluntly. When you first start reading fanfiction, you don't really care about quality - you care about concepts, and since you haven't read anything else, you don't know that that concept has been used thousands upon thousands of times until it's unbearable.

    I started reading fanfiction in 2011, and my taste in it was pretty shit. If I remembered my ffnet profile, I'm sure I would cringe at the titles on the favourites list.

    So check the library, find the top rated posts, and try those, see the difference between good quality fics and this.
     
  10. ScottPress

    ScottPress The Horny Sovereign –§ Prestigious §– DLP Supporter

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    najex, it's not really unfair to judge a story early when it presents itself as poorly as this one does in the very first chapter. True, some stories pull themselves up from the bottom later on, but it's not hard to tell that this one most likely won't.

    The extended summary flat-out tells me that the author will strive for a canon-rehash. If you enjoy that stuff, more power to you, but I don't.

    Second, the author doesn't seem to know what the name of the main character is. Valerie or Valeria? I understand spag mistakes (I make them myself), but this? Come on.

    The first impression I got of the Hermione replacement from two chapters that I read was that the story was trying to be MoR or something. Valerie/a exhibits exactly the same obnoxious, high-brow attitude that Yudkowski's MC did. When she started arguing with a goblin about prices of precious metals I literally rolled my eyes.

    On top of that, the writing style is unpleasantly choppy. The author makes an effort to build elaborate sentences when it's obvious it's not their strength. The result is the same as when someone who never learned tries to play the guitar. Nothing worth listening to. Perhaps it's cruel of me to expect them to improve immediately, but fuck it, I'm not a professional reviewer, I have no obligation to leave my bias at the door.

    Won't rate because I read only two chapters. It's not worth my time to read ahead enough to rate.
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2015
  11. newageofpower

    newageofpower Professor DLP Supporter

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    I've read all the way up-to-date on this fic.

    My TLDR Review:

    It's not WBA worthy.

    Long version:

    It has some interesting concepts.

    For example, we see that Shield Charms can reflect Legilimency probes; the Mary Sue SIOC (Because, frankly, that's what she is) exploiting this has a helmet charmed to be invisible; then layers it with other enchantments and protections, and wears it around like a sort of multi-functional magical HUD/Legilimency deflector.

    Fascinating. Innovative. Original. And it doesn't really contradict canon, instead applying canon in these new ways.

    The problem is the sheer amount of baggage it carries with it. Neville confidence trope. A little teenager (even worse, a girl) being able to shop in a den of criminality.

    While slightly less common than Harry - Daphne marriage law fics; the "Marry the youngest unwanted son of another pureblood family to leverage keeping my name alive" plot is something I've already encountered. Urgh.

    The writing itself is quite readable compared to FFnet, but not nearly good enough to propel it into the Library.

    2.5/5.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2015
  12. Zel

    Zel High Inquisitor

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    I'm not too picky over hp fics since I got tired of hunting down the ones that suited my tastes, but this one's first chapter had way too much infodump and it felt like the OC was a SI (few can write a good Self Insert btw) and she didn't sound like an eleven years old kid at all, prodigy or not. Perhaps it gets better in the later chapters, but I can't muster the willpower to go further.
     
  13. Freed

    Freed Squib

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    There were several points at which I was either supremely annoyed with this story and once or twice I almost out right dropped it. Thankfully more often then not these points of contention ended up being one off lines. Trudging through these, the story ended up being a rather enjoyable time waster with some very interesting interpretations of (more or less) cannon magic.

    For this reason, 2.5/5 over all. Rounded up 3/5.
     
  14. Miner

    Miner Order Member

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    I think it's better to say that you can post things for review, but don't complain if people call it shit. I personally haven't put anything up for review not because I follow your rule of thumb, but because I have rather different tastes than most people on DLP. So I'd rather not put something up that'll wind up in the trash bin anyway.
     
  15. newageofpower

    newageofpower Professor DLP Supporter

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    If you read my review, I read the entire work. My problem with it isn't minor or even significant grammatical or spelling errors, but the issues listed in my review.

    That being said, make sure what level of quality is accepted in the library before you try to push a fic into it.

    This is possibly my favorite fanfic ever. Even though it ended before it even started, despite it's (relatively minor) characterization issues, though it's hardly 'a flawless victory', few on DLP would claim it's a shitty fic.

    Read a dozen DLP 4+ star fics. You probably won't like half of them (I didn't). But even the ones you dislike, will find are vastly more readable than 99% of ffnet flotsam.

    We're not criticizing Belial666 or your taste because we hate you. We're criticizing it because we want to see fanfics get better. Because we want a higher percent of FFnet fics to be Library worthy, or even Almost Recommended worthy.
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2015
  16. najex

    najex First Year

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    I made that post befor you posted your review. I don't mind your review at all.

    And yea I learned my lesson. Just because I like reading a story does not make it good.
    I also recently learned by going trough the liberary that just because a story is well written doesn't mean I will like it.
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2015
  17. ScottPress

    ScottPress The Horny Sovereign –§ Prestigious §– DLP Supporter

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    To be clear, we're not saying that things suck unless they fit DLP's specific tastes. The basic idea of this fic could maybe work, but the execution here doesn't.
     
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