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Abandoned Years of Rebellion by Full Pensieve - T Epic Length Supposed H/Hr

Discussion in 'Almost Recommended' started by arkeus, Jun 21, 2006.

  1. Kalen_Darkmoon

    Kalen_Darkmoon First Year

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    Talk about a perfect example of a story just "spinning its wheels." There seems to be little, if any, real character growth and this isn't what I would describe as an independent!Harry fic. This story stars a weak!, meek! and deferential!Harry. He's supposed to be the bloody hero, not a wimp.
     
  2. Aekiel

    Aekiel Angle of Mispeling ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    You know, I'm only gonna start reading this cos there were more 3 paragraph posts in this one than in most of the other fics on this forum. I'll give my review after I'm done.
     
  3. Lorelei of the Sea

    Lorelei of the Sea Unspeakable

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    This was one of the first fanfictions I read when I got into Harry Potter Fanfiction. I made it to where he got to HQ, saw Snape and started crying or something. I think that nothing is worth the trauma this fic does to your brain.
     
  4. Lady Lana

    Lady Lana Guest

    I've read this a while back so I can't really remember the specifics. Although from what I remember, I liked Luna in this one. Her character, in my opinion, was spot on and had more depth than most Lunas I've read. It's a decent read but it's simply too long and dragging for me, not to mention the angst was a bit overdone.
     
  5. Kanthanaan

    Kanthanaan Guest

    I'm actually I fan of this series. The style of writing is very good and the characterisation of all but Harry is well done, and Harry was close. But that's just me.
     
  6. bjs1111

    bjs1111 First Year

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    i read this story a while back like in 2001 under a different author name on Fanfiction.net
     
  7. ip82

    ip82 Prisoner

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    Err... yeah, that's good to know. Thanks for the info, I've been wondering about that for some time.....
     
  8. The Fine Balance

    The Fine Balance Headmaster

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    The sheer class of this story is astounding.

    Chapter 37: The Typhoon Tycoon


    The Redux is astoundingly well-written and thought out. Much more than the original.

    A must read.

    5/5
     
  9. The Fine Balance

    The Fine Balance Headmaster

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    Hmm... the starting is changed greatly, and those were the only consistently weak parts in the original for me, so no, Harry isn't a bitch.

    And anyways, I'd read this if only for the Intermezzo.
     
  10. Croaker

    Croaker First Year

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    I gave up reading this somewhere around the part where Harry runs away from his birthday party and Hermione gets him to take her. The ship drama level was getting way too high.
    That and the parts where Harry gets ranted at and folds like a bitch are in the Redux version. The worst one is still the one where he guilt trips himself over the Department of Mysteries incident.

    I did like that Dumbledore wasn't trying to interfere with Harry attending the reading of Sirus' will. I did go "What?" at the caveat that Harry would never harm Draco unless in self defense, though. And at Harry calling Draco and Narcissa murderers, can anyone tell me what that was about?

    I give it a 3/5. -1 for so much goddamn ship drama, and -1 for "everything is my fault"!Harry.
     
  11. Rahkesh Asmodaeus

    Rahkesh Asmodaeus THUNDAH Bawd Admin DLP Supporter

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    ... I'm not an idiot, I know that. But I seem to remember hearing something about this guy taking a turn for the worse a while ago.
     
  12. Niffler Lord

    Niffler Lord Headmaster

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    Am I the only one who thought that picture was really really freaky.

    Anyway can't say I like this fic too much. I skip the greater parts of the chapters. Most of it seems to be over dramatization and angst.

    Just to play devil's advocate Sree, writing could be his way of dealing with reality. I mean if he does have terminal cancer then this could be what brings him some peace.
     
  13. Ched

    Ched Da Trek Moderator DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

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    Edit: Here's a link to the repost on ffnet by the way.

    Well, I saw several references to this story around the forums lately (though some of them were in older threads I was reading) and decided to give it a try.

    It's pretty good, though I'd say that the writing tends to fluctuate a bit more than is normal. And that really bugs me sometimes. I'll read something that I think is reasonably well done, clever, and worth a 5/5. Then it's immediately followed by a paragraph or two that makes me twinge with how amateur it seems. It's jarring and makes me irritable. (Edit: The good parts become rarer as the story goes on).

    Otherwise given the age of the story it's held up reasonably well. There are various things that I see as cliche here and there but again... this was written years ago and they weren't quite as cliche then.

    I can't decide what I think about the pace. I'm a fair ways into the story (which is 170k words long) and we're still in the summer after 5th year where we started. But we've had some characterization for the Dursleys, Harry has moved, there's been bits with Goblins, Scrimgeour made an appearance and I quite liked him, Dumbledore is interesting but a bit too cliche in places, and we're dealing with the will left by Sirius (which emancipated Harry). So it's not like Harry is just twiddling his thumbs. But I am starting to wish something more would happen. (Edit: The pace is slow and does begin to feel that way not long after I wrote the previous paragraph).

    I'm only on Chapter 5 right now, but given that there's 18 chapters in a 170k word story I'd say that's enough to rate. I'm gonna go with a tentative 3.5/5, rounding up to 4.

    TL;DR? I find myself raging sometimes at the mix of 5/5 writing and writing that doesn't even manage to scrape a 3/5 (in my book). That said it has aged reasonably well and probably deserves it's spot in the library.

    Edit2: After reading Chapter 5 I'm going to revise my rating to 3/5. That was bloody ridiculous. I suspect it will be mostly downhill from here, which is disappointing.

    Edit3: Tried to keep reading. It appears to have descended into an angst-fest with few redeeming qualities. Stopping at ch9 unless someone tells me it improves drastically.
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2012
  14. thebrute7

    thebrute7 High Inquisitor

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    YoR is ponderously slow. It does crawl up out of the angst and get better, peaking during the OC romance as I recall and then dropping again. Which was a pity, I had such high hopes for a really well written H/Hr after the OC romance, but sadly it wasn't to be.

    I've never gone back to reread it because the pacing is atrocious.
     
  15. T3t

    T3t Purple Beast of DLP ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Reread this a few weeks ago. As Cheddar said, some of the early stuff in Part 1 is really annoying (characters just having bizarre reactions to everything). That said it does get better, Part 2 is 95% fantastic, Part 3 is a little boring but necessary, and Part 4 is very.. interesting, especially if you like world-building.
     
  16. Perspicacity

    Perspicacity Destroyer of Worlds ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    By today's fanfiction standards, YoR is indeed difficult to read--it's not well paced and most fanfiction readers' patience for angst has waned with exposure to far too much bad writing (see the million+ word turd that is Bobmin's Sunset/Sunrise). YoR has some brilliant scenes, some of the ones that stick with me most in fanfiction, but the story loses momentum often, particularly as the author takes long, occasionally tedious excursions into world-building infodumps. To be fair, back when he wrote the story, when speculation on what directions the HP series might take was fresh and new, readers ate this stuff up. There's far less tolerance for this nowadays, however.

    I still find YoR to be an incredibly ambitious effort, a sort of grand world building on par with the likes of Cygnus Crux, who began writing fanfiction around the same time (her Existence After Life series began in early 2002). It's notable that FP's story is nearly a decade old now and was arguably the first true Indy!Harry piece (I'm not counting Ruskbyte's OOTP, which is more of a Super!Harry), one that influenced the direction of HP fanfiction as much as anything Jeconais, S'TarKan, or Bobmin ever did. So much of it feels tired today because so many of his ideas have been copied over the years.

    @thebrute7: Regarding FP's H/Hr stories, I prefer Harry Potter and the Last Horcrux. It's still rather slowly paced and contains a generous helping of angst, but pays a bit more attention to dramatic arcs and storytelling. Apparently, the author posted a rewrite of the series not long ago, which I have not gone back to read.
     
  17. thebrute7

    thebrute7 High Inquisitor

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    Last Horcrux is a great one, among the best that the pairing has to offer. Which isn't a lot to be honest.

    But yeah, I've read last Horcrux a couple times, it's at least easier to get through the angsty stuff in it than it is in Years.
     
  18. seraph7221

    seraph7221 Disappeared

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2014
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    This is why I kept reading fanfiction after OoTP came out. It is entirely worth reading, though the ongoing edits make it feel faker and more stodgy than in days gone by. As said in another post, "your trip to hp fanfiction is not complete without a bit of YoR."

    In the end it seems the YoR outlasted Mike FP himself. A cancer thing as far as I know, but he was a quality/experienced writer (and really good guy, no joke) in a world of teen hacks and it showed. Perhaps not surprising that the fandom has a similar feeling these days.

    Placing this in its time is important. The only other comparable fics of the day were BarbLPs Psychic Serpent which was being passed around as OotP on Limewire prerelease, (that's pre-torrent for you youngsters) and Joe991, some also rans(I never like wastelands take for what you will) and that's about it. The best slow burn(ie feasible, reasonable, semi-meaningful) HHr ever, a Harry that could actually defeat Voldemort pre-horcrux dues ex machina(which even JKR failed to bring to life, hence our little obsession), a real follow up to the series that didn't let you down with each succession. Probably why he never finished it apart from mortality and whatnot.

    It's great, anyone who never read it should. Anyone w/o didn't like it probably didn't read it or fails to understand why HP fanfic exists, and/or is the toys.

    It's just my opinion though, try it for yourself. Right now.

    You can trust me, I'm a doctor.
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2015
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