So as expected, this fic was written to blue ball. Literally nothing is resolved, and Harry is written so generically now. The arguments in the ministry were just retarded, with both sounds floundering about like idiots. I knew the author wasn't great at dialogue, but it's extremely clear when he's trying to make everyone sound smart. Harry comes across as an edgelord weeb who spent decades honing his sword skillz in Japan or some shit and Fudge is predictably retarded in all aspects, because in this story the real villains aren't allowed to be anything other than generically evil.

Grindelwald is also now apparently a problem because he just randomly has an elixir of life laying around? Lmfao. What the fuck is that.

 

Yeah that was incredibly pointless to add to an *epilogue* unless he's setting up a sequel which... meh. I don't think he's doing that, I'm not sure there's a story there to be told, and I'm not sure it would go well anyways.

 

Wtf? This was a terrible epilogue. There's just... no answers. No resolution. It's horrible. And what the hell was with Fudge and that lady asking Harry why he was wanting the job if he didn't want it? Wtf? Harry very obviously states he doesn't want the job for eternity, and Fudge says "Then why are you here if you don't want the job?"

Wtf?

And then Harry answers him, and then someone else asks the same fucking thing after Harry already gave his answer. Why do authors do these? Why do they make people just beyond idiotic? Was both Fudge and this woman just zoning out or are they schizophrenic or something?

 

This describes every TheEndless7 epilogue.

 

The validity of your other arguments can be debated, but this one makes me face palm.

Really really hard.

 

I feel like either this epilogue is a belated april fools thing, or the author consciously decided to make the ending as shitty as possible.

 

I read the epilogue out of morbid curiosity to see if it could be worse than Harry's epilogue in Princess. I must say I'm impressed; TE7 have outdone themselves.

Also, Miner, I don't understand how you can like it so much. I mean, taste is something personal, but... c'mom

 

There's a lot of things that I like that a lot of people on the forum patently dislike. And there's a lot of 5/5 stories on the site that I patently dislike.

But I mean, if you take a look across my posts (hopefully you'll be able to filter out the mafia games), you should see that I prefer slice-of-life stories. The stream-of-consciousness of Princess. The tragedy that was Vitam Paramus.

Trust me I was plenty skeptical about this fic at first. But somewhere around a park bench in London I changed my opinion. And the Chicago chapters told me I was right to change my opinion.

Am I biased? Defibitely. But you try being unbiased when you've known the author for longer than your time on this site and exchanging 3000+ messages. Its pretty difficult.

Did I like the epilogue? Eh. There were parts that I recognized from before. Parts that seemed to be superfluous. But there were certainly enjoyable parts of it that I could appreciate as something that had been set up throughout the story. *Cough* Elixir of Life *Cough*

Yeah, its not an end. But it's a tossup if it'll be continued.

 

I understand. For what it's worth I liked the slice of life too.

But, Miner, you can't be like that because the author is your friend. Specially when they are your friend. There are some aspects - technical even - in which TE7 can improve. You can't coddle them, telling they're doing great just because they are your friend. My honest opinion is that TE7 think they're doing great because they have so many followers telling they are amazing. And we know we can't trust that. Quoting Halt again, the author must want seek improvement themselves and take criticism humbly. And from what I see from their posts in reddit, TE7 seem think they're already great (yes, I know they've turned their back on this forum). Perhaps you, as a friend, may be the voice they'll listen to.

 

Created conversation so that poor Sesc doesn't have to merge this into another thread titled "Criticizing the Writing of your friends" or some shit like that.

 

I can only assume you're facepalming because the idea of this story was to take an extremely generic villain and write them as a real character, but that's the point isn't it? Emily is no longer the villain. Fudge is the villain. Dumbledore is the villain. Emily is a misunderstood anti-hero at best. Hence why I said the real villains of the story are generically evil. They are written like morons and have paper thin motivations. In his effort to write Voldemort, he completely assassinated their characters. (Admittedly, Fudge was already weak as fuck, but Dumbledore doesn't deserve this retard treatment. She's evil because... she just is. Duh.)

 

No, Emily is the villain.

If you'd realized that Harry was a very unreliable narrator, then you would've figured out that Emily was the villain a long long time ago.

 

As someone who stuck with this story for all the wrong reasons, I still feel let down by this epilogue. It really didn't do anything with all of the build-up it had. Voldemort manipulates Harry extremely well, and then does almost nothing with it? He literally abandons all of Britain to go search for himself, allowing Fudge to create a stranglehold on the Ministry, and comes back to be Headmaster of all things?

This fic also paints Dumbledore as generally incapable of emotional intelligence. The way he deals with Emily is mostly ridiculous. He gives very little reason for Harry, or the reader to trust any of his actions. Also does absolutely nothing when it's found out that Harry has a total trove of her memories? Doesn't offer any counter argument to what is being shown to Harry, and doesn't even really investigate at all honestly.

Percy and Fudge are literally cardboard cut out villainous politicians. Also, they almost come off as autistic when they're speaking to people.

Is female Voldemort seducing Harry by accident interesting? I thought so. The big issue is almost nothing really changes outside of Harry getting a power-up through osmosis, and the Death Eaters get mostly neutered as villains. Instead, they're replaced by Ministry sycophants being whiny and incompetent. I just don't see why this had to be written. It had no real point. Canon didn't really change even though you'd think something would've been more dramatically different outside of Voldemort committing suicide by Harry.

Also, did I miss somewhere that it was hinted that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had an Elixir of Life? Also another example of Dumbledore being mostly idiotic. He dies and now Grindelwald can easily escape prison on his own? Sweet, that makes total sense.

I just wanted more out of this, and instead I feel like I got given half of a mediocre handjob.

 

I was actually a big fan of this story until the so-called epilogue. What a disaster! If this epilogue was to be the set-up for a new story, it failed. Too many issues remain unresolved such as the nods to touchstone episodes in Emily Riddle's life (eg, the mention of Nagasaki), Avery's role, the deus ex machina of the Elixir of Life and Grindelwald, etc. To trot out a cliche, this story ended up being a Titanic as it hit an epilogue iceberg and sank.

 

I'm someone who has stuck with this story and I like many aspects of it - including the fact that Harry is, indeed, a very unreliable narrator. But... if the writer was trying to write Emily as the villain, he/she didn't do it very well. She is far too helpful and likeable for the majority of the fic, in direct contrast with most of the 'good' characters, who as Lynnx says play the role of villains far better than she does. Then, when the double-cross finally comes in chapter 29... a few paragraphs later, bam, Emily's dead, and it just doesn't matter. The reader is still left far more sympathetic to her than to Dumbledore or the Ministry, and the last chapter and epilogue only reinforce that sentiment.

The bit with Grindelwald does give me hope for a sequel, in which some of these things might be better resolved, and we might see a jaded Harry deal with a real villain. If no sequel is planned, it is probably the worst ending ever.

 

Emily is human, that much is for sure. But you're forgetting the murders that she perpetrated, the fact that she killed her parents, and her general lack of remorse or morality for murder.

And, to be likable isn't the same as being a villain or hero. A likable character does not equate to being a hero, nor does a dislikable person equate to being a villain.

I sympathize with Emily's plight, but at the end of the day she's still the villain. It should be clear that the way that Harry views her is almost entirely false. And with that a lot of Emily's draw as a "good person" goes out the window.

 

Yes, I understand all that. Emily is certainly a villain from an objective point of view.

But the way this story is written, she is not the villain. She is not the one Harry - the protagonist - is fighting against. That role is given to the Ministry, and the Order to a lesser extent. A lot of the problems with this fic could have been fixed if the 'good' side acted in a less aggravating manner.

I point to the summary which says "...[Harry] never thought he'd understand both sides of the conflict." Therein lies the problem. He doesn't. He, and the reader, are set very firmly on Emily's side. The fact that Emily has done terrible things does not change that fact.

 

Mate.

If he didn't understand the Ministrys side of the conflict Emily would've won the war a long time ago.

 

That aligns pretty close with my sentiments. Obviously Emily has done some things which definitely qualify as evil or at the very least, not good, but the issue remains that while she may be villainous, she isn't the villain in my eyes. That's just semantics but whatever.

I actually remarked in an earlier comment in this thread about how Emily and Voldemort don't mesh for me. I suppose the whole mind influencing thing is supposed to be super evil and we should hate her for it, but when did she ever actually use it for evil? Hell, Harry walks away from the whole thing better than ever. It seems to me Emily was nothing but compassionate and kind the entire fic, yet Voldemort is just an evil war criminal who murders babies and tortures people. They never once feel like the same person.

If he wasn't so adamant about using canon Voldemort's level of evilness then I'm certain this wouldn't have been as much of an issue, but there's hardly any good excuse you can come up with to justify the way he treats his followers and everyone else really if you're trying to make anyone sympathize. He's just a power hungry megalomaniac. That's basically his entire character. Trying to slap a sob backstory onto his actions doesn't really cut it.

 

You’ll have to elaborate on this because I don’t see the logic behind it.