I second this. I tried reading the trilogy based on recommendations in this site. The world building in the fic was decent

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(no significant holes except for maybe the ignorance of everything east of Euphrates and Tigris for such an international fic arc)

, the plot was good, but the moments of suspense were very unnaturally stretched out. Furthermore, I felt that those moments of suspense were not so captivating. Instead I felt put off by them.

Also, all three fics in the arc followed the same pattern of build-up and partial resolution.

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The author consistently has characters tell Harry is powerful, but he has very few such moments. Much of the plot and world is told through conjectures of characters. I fear the author exacerbated my hatred of Ginny by not showing progressive maturity in her character( it still felt like a school girl who can do feats of magic almost as awe inspiring as Harry).

It definitely had its good parts though.

Timely Errors is my favorite fic.

Wastelands was a tiring fic. I was put off by

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the extension of canon because everything was newly inserted by the author and there were not many hints of it in canon. So,almost everything could be explained off very easily. Initial interactions between Harry and Fleur felt unnatural too.

Altered Destinies was one of my favorites. Balanced Destinies horrified me even though I was pretty tolerant of cliches at that time...

I used to like To break thy chains and cycles by Wise Silver, but after a recent update, I found that did not enjoy the whole fic.

PS:I was going through a MOD! phase at that time...

 

Huh... I am not sure how I got ScottP confused with you Zombie. Sorry.

 

Silens Cursor's works are still very much enjoyable. Very hard to find a better dark!Harry than in Renegade Cause, and as a crime thriller I'd say it's unmatched.

 

Horses, moose. They’re all the same.

Another one I just thought of. What would Slytherin Harry do? Definitely aged well. The humour just clicks.

 

You take that back.

 

.
.
.
I thought it was a donkey.

My bad.

 

I know. It's difficult to pin down exactly what @ScottPress is. ^_^

OT, another one I loved and I definitely re-read from time to time: Thief of Hogwarts by Bluminous8. Bloody amazing fic. Perfect incompetent adults. Great humour.

 

If you like @Silens Cursor as an author, he's apparently also got some original work out.

 

Thanks for the shout-out there - genuinely appreciated, especially as I think my writing got markedly more streamlined with an actual editor...

Which brings us to Renegade Cause. Look, I'm still proud of actually pulling it off (although leaving so much of 'Criminal Limit' unfinished still bothers me, I ought to just pound my way through the outline of what I had put together and finish it... provided I find the time), but the story is FLAWED. For as much as I had an outline to tie up loose threads, there were a lot of arcs that got away from me and the entire damn thing is way too overcomplicated and overloaded, especially when I started putting in abstract symbolism that I think I was the only one who cared about.

Frankly, if any of my stories are to be remembered, I prefer the side stuff ('Speak Softly Love' for Renegade Cause, or the two Su Li erotica stories - 'Point Game' held up pretty well too, even if it was just a conversational exercise). As much as there are great segments of Renegade Cause, there are interspersed by stretches I can't really recommend to anyone.

 

@Silens Cursor Renegade Cause is flawed for sure, but it's still one of the best stories in the fandom. It deseves to be just for being an incredible achievement in plotting.

 

For curiosity's sake: what were those symbolisms?

 

Some dream sequences with Luna, I think. I skipped them every time.

RC is great, but yeah, not perfect.

 

The one exposing me for plagiarising and/or ripping off Renegade Cause? Lol. I think we'd need to get Silens to read my fic to truly judge whether it's a ripoff. @Silens Cursor, fancy reading 250k words mate?

 

To quote myself from 2008 back when we still did introduction threads for new members:

Dear sweet Jesus what was wrong with me?

Summer of Change is a cliché ridden mess that fails to employ contractions (which has become my biggest pet peeve in non-academic writing), resulting in the prose being awkward and stilted, the dialogue even more so.

Nightmares of Futures Past isn't terrible, it just hasn't aged well. It captures the trends of a very particular time in the fandom that have since been moved past (at least here). That and it remains, like the vast majority of 7-year redo fics, unfinished and stalled out right as the conflict starts moving beyond being a canon rehash.

I've come to the conclusion that I have no taste.

 

Haven't we all?

Now I can see extremely clearly that I absolutely despise everything I'd enjoyed years ago.

 

Oh god we used to do that right. Let me look back what it was like for me back then;

Erhm... Ugh.

It is too painful. If I saw some newbie write stuff like this I would shit all over it but here is the proof that I as a 18 years old knew neither English nor good writing.

So lets not go back there. I want to bang my head to walls for how I butcher the English in this first posts of mine..