We're long past that point already. Between this and Culture War, we've reached the full extent of shitpostery.

 

So what do you guys think of a war between wizards and muggles?

In all seriousness, I just read the other three chapters for this story. It doesn't get much better. The fic still comes across as both wanting to be serious and wanting to be humorous, and it just doesn't work. Emphasis on the wanting to be funny. It isn't. It tries too hard. Which is a shame, because the idea of Grindelwald bringing a bunch of European countries into the war could be interesting.

Edit: Because I don't want to add another reply, Sauce Bauss, I was just messing around, since that topic tends to start a huge discussion that gets pretty annoying to some on here.

 

Not to be overly glib, but https://forums.darklordpotter.net/threads/wizards-v-muggles-megathread.32717/

Tl;Dr without introducing non-canon restrictions, wizards stomp.

 

At first I thought it was an amusing crack/gimmick but then he rode this gimmick until I could only see a dead horse.

It gets stale really quickly.

 

I read the first two chapters, and it seems clear that there's only really one joke. You know, the one where someone suggests that they all do something paranoid or bloodthirsty, and is confused as to why everyone else has a problem with it. Honestly, if you're going to do a crack fic that's not a oneshot, I think you need to either add a serious plot to it, or else corrupt the joke into something serious that takes the reader by surprise.

Take Jeram's Far Too Many Time Travellers - it would have gotten old pretty quickly, except we get that twist where one Weasley twin time travels, and the other essentially loses their other half, replaced by an intrusive stranger. That kind of thing brings pathos right when the comedy was in danger of running its course. I don't really expect anything like that with this story, and I also haven't seen any indications that there's a plot besides Grindelwald and his buddies intruding on the main characters and trying to do their job for them, so even though I've got an alternate history account, I don't see myself seeking out the rest of this. 2/5.

 

This is a valid point, TRH (and one I heeded in my own story)… but to be fair I think this story is at least trying to have its additional value aside from the main jokes — and there are two, I think: there's the one you describe, and thre's "Grindelwald is convinced that Dumbledore planned absolutely everything and gets it almost completely wrong". In this case I think the "main plot that takes you by surprise" is supposed to be the wider diplomatic war against France and Prussia. We'll see whether it does manage to keep up interest or… not.

 

That hardly matters if we're not given a reason to care about France and Prussia. What's Harry's stake in any of that?

 

Ah yes, well, I wrote that before Chapter 7 was posted, assuming there were quite a few more chapters left in the story. To be clear, I wasn't proposing that France and Prussia were interesting all on their own (although, fanonical and soon-to-be-rendered-moot-by-Crimes-of-Grindelwald it may be, but I do find Starfox's take on Magical France entertaining), but rather that the secondary appeal of the story would be in the tactical and adventurous relation of a full-scale war between several magical nations.

Of course, that didn't come to pass; it turns out RRaRT was only a short seven-chapter-and-epilogue romp. And… looking back, my thoughts are: it's not much, not much at all. It doesn't do as much with its premise as it could have, either narratively or comedically. But in the end it's (for me; previous posts on this thread indicate this was not the case for everyone) also too short to get stale. I'm happy I read it rather than not, though I probably won't reread it anytime soon.

My final score would be 3.5/5.

 

Well, that's two hours I'll never get back. There's not one memorable thing in this fic.

1/5

 

Apart from the merits of the fic itself (I found it rather enjoyable, but my tastes are rather gauche by the standards of a lot of people here), I think its existence alone does raise an interesting point. Why never Grindelwald?

I've read a lot of HP fanfic over the years. Definitely too much of it. And yet, across all that fanfic, I've never seen Grindlewald do much of anything in the present day until now. Let's just stop for a second and consider the enormity of that statement, when projected across the breadth, weirdness, and outright perversion of the HP fandom. It's not like Grindlewald is dead like James Potter (we see him all the time), or a figure of history like Salazar Slytherin (his portraits appear often enough), or someone totally insignificant like Herpo the Foul (who nonetheless has a tag on ffnet), a crossover character like Willow Rosenberg, or even some kind of psychotic figment of Harry's imagination. He was important, and powerful, and is just sitting in jail. Yet he never, ever gets out. You see him in fics that take place in the past sometimes (rarely) or in full AUs (also rarely), but never in mainline HP divergences where he's just busted out of jail.

It just seems sort of weird, in retrospect. Almost like some kind of memetic taboo.

 

There are some, but generally they were abandoned before Grindelwald got to shine. For example, I suspect that Santi's BWL was going to feature Grindelwald prominently.

 

I quite agree with all of this. And I've used him in my story, as an alternative 4th-year D.A.D.A. Professor in a world where Barty Crouch escaped earlier but couldn't find Voldemort.

 

Alright, finally got around to taking a look at this.

Well, this is easily the best Starfox5 story I've read, but his stories are near universally shit, so maybe that's not much.

The humour of Grindelwald grossly overestimating the Order was funny about twice, then it quickly got grating. Taure sums it up in the OP pretty well. I'm having trouble giving a dawn about his Storm Wizards because nothing about them interesting has been presented. The whole work is just annoying.

2/5 carried by the concept. And I am immensely disappointed that the concept is not properly explored.

 

Repealing the statute seems like an extremely bad idea. From every possible angle. Who is going to be happy with this?

Considering that Christianity had a long and steady rise when wizards weren't in hiding yet. It's very likely that christianity actually makes more sense now that wizards are out in the open again…..