Title: The Tinkerer
Author: wickwynn
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Friendship
Library category: The Alternates
Pairing: None So Far
FFN Link: The-Tinkerer
Summary:
The Dusley family, who valued normalcy above all else, would of course never dream of keeping their orphan nephew in a cupboard, or of making a spectacle of him. That isn't to say they wanted to spend all of their time and money on him, however. From the salvage of broken toys and unwanted junk, left alone to his own devices, Harry built dreams.

Yes, the beginning is likely to make some of you do a 360 and moonwalk away from the story. It certainly made me do the same a few days ago when I first tried to read the story. But having recently powered through that turd of a story sesc posted here I was willing to read some subpar works just to have something new, from the Harry Potter fandom, to read. This story came to mind so I gave it another chance with the thought that if I turned off my brain maybe I could enjoy the fic somewhat and started reading the first chapter. A couple of chapters later, to my complete surprise I ended up discovering that this story is actually a gem, flawed though it may be, of a story.

Let's get the bad out of the way first. Yes, Harry is a genius programmer who at the age of eight or so can completely shit on Adobe's Photoshop with a superior product. Yes, Harry meets Bill Gates and ends up earning millions by selling him his betterthan!photoshop program. Yes, he ends up being known as a genius in the muggle world to the point where young brats actually give enough of a shit to even learn about him. But what the hell, it wasn't too long ago that I could enjoy Harry discovering a hidden ninja village in Gringotts and finding a sweet demon sword with a trapped god inside of it. Forgiving genius!programmer!Harry isn't difficult at all especially since the muggle shenanigans only have had a minor role so far in the beginning.

Now lets move onto the good stuff. Harry here is good at magic and its various branches such at potions. Even better, he is perfectly willing to experiment and modify magic/potions. His strength/talent is more along the lines of Harry in Santi's wbwl!fic than say in a turd like Defiance where the height of epic in a duel between Harry and Dumbledore is an epic kamehameha style clash. Like with Santi's Harry I get the same kind of joy watching watching Harry experiment with magic. Yes, Harry cheats like a motherfucker with his bullshit mental!magic shit but it doesn't come across as egregious. Especially not with it being described as being similar to occlumency which offers many of the same benefits. Harry just twisted it to a more specific purpose and occlumency does offer solid protection that Harry's mind magic doesn't. Or at least not yet.

But what truly made me love this fanfic is the characters and all the cool world-building stuff that we get. It's small nuggets like the story behind the creation of the Nimbus brooms to wizards trying to promote their books in bookstores that make this magical world feel real and lived in. On its own a shop assistant wistfully telling Harry to go to Hogwarts if he was accepted and how if he had gone to Hogwarts he would not be working as a shop assistant isn't much. But when taken together as a whole there is a sense of genuineness to the world and characters that many authors simply fail to achieve. From snippets of how Lisa Turpin's personality is shaped by Voldemort's rebellion and fall to the small bits of jealousy/bitterness that some of Harry's friends feel at his talent while still remaining likable to Harry's personality to even how Fudge is as a character I ended up thoroughly engrossed by them all. Heck, even Draco isn't half bad here. Snape is fabulous as his canon self who has to deal with a talented potioneer!Harry. No bullshit frothing at the mouth Snape or overtly helpful Snape to be found here. And Hermione is a gem. Pretty similar to canon Hermione but actually more sociable. We end up with a rather awesome female lead which is great since the story is likely to end up Harry/Hermione at some point. Also, probably the only time that I've seen both Harry and Hermione in Hufflepuff. Normally I would instantly drop of a Hufflepuff!Harry but this works thanks to some rather great characters/interactions.

As for the plot...so far it mainly focuses on Harry and him going through his classes and generally interacting with the variety of characters at Hogwarts. We even get a dreaded pranking scene which actually ends up going way too far for Harry's tastes once he realizes the prolonged mockery and scorn this brings on his target. We luckily will never get another one of these and this wasn't even that bad given that we get treated to some experimentation with potions as Harry tried to work out how to get the intended prank to work by modifying some potions. Despite the focus on slice of life style stuff so far there are bits of a greater plot specially with the last few chapters. Our lovely DADA professor encounters a speed bump due to Harry and Dumbledore's long term plans regarding Harry are likely fucked with how the Ministry now learning about Voldemort's survival and Harry's status as a Horcrux. Bestest Amelia Bones and goofball Fudge are on the case and they'll surely wreck both Dumbledore and Voldemort...probably. But rip book 5 plot. One small flaw that I can see growing is the pace. We are 100k+ into the story and we are only a few weeks into Hogwarts. Hopefully it will pick up speed and I'll certainly try to convince the author to do so but it isn't horrible so far.

Overall, this story is a solid 4/5 so far. If any of you have sense you'll help me bring this author into the DLP fold. So far Tinkerer is a solid fanfic with some great potential. It isn't anywhere near as awesome as that nuhuh oneshot where Harry unknowingly fucks his half-sister but then again nothing is. Beggars can't be choosers.

 

Son, you forgot to link the story.

 

Well shit. Fixed.

 

Wow. This has fourteen chapters already? I am a few chapters behind. I must've read it at least three times too when it had six chapters, so I am not going to rush into it. From what I remember, it is rather good. Although I don't know what happens at Hogwarts, it is 4/5 for sure. I will read it and revise my rating later when there is more of it to read.

 

Reminds me a lot of Blindness and not in a good way. Getting really sick of Hermione as an MC especially when she is written so badly. 3/5

 

I really like this story.

There are a few things wrong with it:

1) Yes, the initial premise is pretty cringe-worthy. (Later on, the author demonstrates a sufficient understanding of polymorphism that it's clear they're at least passingly familiar with software development, but that doesn't change the ridiculousness of the set-up.)

2) The characters are 11-year olds in stated age only. This isn't a problem because I like reading about 11-year olds who actually act like they're 11, but because there are occasionally dissonant moments where they do act their age. I'm not sure there's a good solution because aging up the characters would introduce a lot of other problems, but that doesn't change the fact that it can break my immersion occasionally.

3) Despite the unusual grace with which this fic handles most of the tropes it touches on, some bits in chapter 12 are simply too similar in the way they're handled in other much worse stories for me to appreciate them here. If there's a subversion coming later I'll consider it a partial recovery, because that won't have stopped it from being irritating while I read it.

4) The story gets a bit carried away with its own cleverness at times.

Despite these problems, I like it for all the reasons digitalstorm mentioned, but also because Harry reminds me a lot of myself in some very specific ways. Also, problem #4 listed above also reminds me of what I do when writing, so I can't help but like those bits of the story as well, admittedly in a slightly different sense.

If I was being forced to rate it from behind the Veil of Ignorance I'd be giving it a 3.5, but I feel absolutely no shame in admitting this pressed a lot of good buttons and give it a 4.5/5.

 

I love this story. In my opinion, the few flaws it has are that Hermione retains very little of her core characterisation and that most of the children don't really behave like eleven years old. Apart from that, the story is pretty good.

 

I don't wanna be a dick, but you've linked to the mobile site. Not very impressed with the story. Not terrible but nothing impressive. I give it a 3/5, almost entirely just because I was excited to finally see Harry in Hufflepuff. Really, for the novelty of that alone I'd recommend giving this fic a shot.

 

While this story has some redeeming qualities, it has a lot of flaws - magical exhaustion, children not characterized as children, amazing Unspeakables, Dumbledore being shady, etc. The biggest flaw is pacing. 160k words and first year isn't even close to being finished. Come on.

I can forgive Harry being a genius programmer since that seems to be the basic premise of the story.

3/5

 

I really wanted to like this one. It's technically well-written and the author has a generally engaging voice--I'd say he's a talented writer with the potential to write a good story. But the pacing of this one absolutely kills it for me. It's not interesting enough to keep my attention for 160 thousand words.

2.5/5, rounded up for the quality of the prose. It's textbook Almost Recommended for me.

 

Like silentclock above, I tried to like this story. I really did.

From a technical standpoint, it's okay. There aren't many grammatical issues, the semantics are acceptable, the writing is cool overall. The biggest problem that this story has is that it's boring.

There isn't any... oomph factor that'd hook the reader instantly and keep the attention all the way. It feels mechanistic at best and is just bland. I dropped this several times to go do something more interesting that didn't make me want to sleep after 5 minutes.

3/5. It's not trash, but definitely nothing special either.

 

The premise of this is quite bad and the execution doesn't make up for it. Characterization is especially poor. I don't know if the library quality is slipping because of the lack of anything decent being written, or if I just never noticed before, but it seems every awful fic posted here gets 3/5. To me average fics are good, just not good enough. This fic certainly isn't that. I'll give it a 2/5 since the author manages to tell his (lackluster) story well enough.

 

Are you sure your ratings aren't a bit too harsh? Nonetheless, it's certainly dependent on personal standards. The Library rating scheme and mine correlate, wherein

1/5: Terrible/Trash.

2/5: Bad/Barely readable, but still trash.

3/5: Average/Readable, but rife with issues that prevent it from being good.

4/5: Good. Definitely worth getting back to sporadically.

5/5: Excellent/Perfect (or as close to perfection as possible).

You claim that you define average stories are good, just not good enough. I'd think that this story is a textbook example of that. It's certainly not good, far from it in fact. The story isn't executed in an especially engaging manner, but it's done well enough that it manages to evade 2/5 territory and warrant a 3/5 rating (albeit at best).

 

For me 3/5 are things I enjoy reading but that have significant flaws that keep them from being rated higher. For instance the Dodging Prison fic. It's well written, and the premise with two time travelers is compelling. Yet the fic has characterization issues, magic theory issues, and muggle wank. So easy 3/5.

However for someone who doesn't like that premise as much as I do it becomes a 2/5. Since for them it wouldn't be good, but it would still be well written.

1/5 fics are things that make me begin skimming almost immediately and then close the tab. This is 90+% of fanfiction, and it isn't harsh it's just the reality of bad most things are.

4/5 Are things that are good but still need large improvements.

5/5 Are things that don't need any significant improvements.

This is all mostly in line with what you said, but it isn't reflected in what I've been noticing.

 

I stopped bothering to even check what a story is rated on DLP. Finicky bunch. I imagine at the moment, the original Harry Potter book would only receive 3/5 stars here.

That's not to say I'm white knighting this story. The beginning has problems, and the last few chapters seem to drag on. The current rating of 3.25 actually seems fair; maybe even higher than I would have rated it. I imagine it won't last.

 

I see. Perhaps it's because fanfiction as a whole isn't as popular as it once was. When I first started reading fanfiction (about 4 years ago), I had a new (relatively good) story to read daily. Nowadays, I'm hard pressed to find a tolerable story. As a result, stories that wouldn't have merited 3/5 stars are receiving such ratings. It could also be that DLP's tastes have been tempered by repeated exposure to the same drivel. Either way, I see your point now.

Yup. DLP does tend to have rather polarizing tastes, based on what I've observed.

 

I had found this story a long while back on FFN, but I gave up on it a while back with no intention of returning unless something actually happens in it. If it does, please let me know.

Pros-
~ Next to none grammatical errors or annoying writing habits (+1)
~ Very well written, flow-y language. Just as the doctors prescribe (+2)
~ Interesting OCs. (+1)
~ Clever magic mechanics (+1)

Cons-
~ Biggest one of all: There is no point to this story. There is no plot in sight. All the plot so far is that Harry is a millionaire genius and he does some things. That's basically it. No conflicts, no aim, just a rudderless ship cruising on the waves without any direction. You just read and read and read and there are all these clever mechanics and we see Harry working his genius but nothing concrete ever happens. (-1)
~ Harry is basically a perfect human being in the story: is a genius, makes friends with everyone including Draco and doesn't fail at anything ever. Well done Garry Sue-ing the shit out of one of the most iconic and believable characters in fiction. (-0.5)
~ Since no character in the story behaves like they would in canon, all characters are OCs. This defeats the purpose of fan-fiction. I want to read about canon-ish Harry an other cannon-ish characters please. Some changes are usually forgivable (sometimes they even make things interesting) but this one is a no. (-0.5)
~ The author has fallen in the trap of including everything he has thought of into the story. Most of the time I was reading it, I had to actually skip paragraphs and paragraphs while thinking to myself: Yes, we all know how clever this idea is, but can we move on to the actual story now? (-0.5)

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh in the critique considering how rare readable ffictions are these days, but the lack of story-substance and concision only makes the loss of what could have been a great fic all the more glaring.

2.5/5 ~ 3/5

 

I've added The Tinkerer to my PtR some time ago and though some things mentioned in this thread made me wary about it, with the ratings being pretty high I've decided to give this and read four chapters today.

Contrary to my worries, Harry's programming exploits were actually believable enough. But the other, real problem became apparent very quickly. The Tinkerer commits the worst sin the piece of fiction can commit - it's terribly boring.

There are a few reasons for this, with the most obvious one being a glacial pacing. Nothing interesting actually happens in the fic and the chapters pile up, pile up and pile up. It's not even about slow time progress, you can even write day-by-day fic and keep things interesting - Persona 3 Remix being the proof. No, it's the terrible blandness of everything that happens and wasting words on things that are completely unimportant.

Really good example of this is the anxiety - Harry has attacks, and this is it. The descriptions in no way capture his confusion, I can't see any real attempt to make this anything other than some random flaw, so Harry won't be perfect.

There is also stuff like the self-introductions. Even despite this being the path of least resistance in terms of introducing characters to readers, it can be done in interesting ways. It may be funny, it may show some quirks of the characters, etc. But all we got was blandness of the introduction that reflected the blandness of the characters. What is the point of introducing so many characters when there are barely any differences in how they behave?

The other problem I have with the writing is all the information being basically thrown straight at Harry and in the effect - reader. If we are introduced to something then it's by someone telling this to Harry directly, or Harry thinking about it and explaining this in his mind.

I jumped to the latest chapter and it seems it stayed the same - boring and medicore. I can't give real rating to this, but let's give this three stars for now because the Almost Recommended is the right place for stuff like this. Well, that's assuming that it won't become canon rehash in terms of plot.