Agreed. I haven't read this fic since the Dreamscapes arc and I decided to reread the whole thing a week ago to play catch-up. It's a lot smoother when the side-plots are still in your head.

Spoiler: Prophecy theory?

Also, are we in agreement that the story that has been told before is that of the Naga, and Voldemort's goal is to become a Naga-like creature that can control the wild?

 

Fuuuuuuuuck, I'm hoping the author just jumps straight from the QWC to the Hogwarts Express. There's a million POVs with a million thoughts about the whole attack. I just want one chapter of school before we get into the TWT, not ten plot dumps!

I personally find the code names pretty easy to remember, but then again, I re-read the whole thing after waiting a year and a half for new content. Maybe that changes my experience of things, but fourth year has been much more fun than third year.

Year 1: 1/5
Year 2: 5/5 (might be a little high, but I really enjoyed it and rarely cringed while reading, so fuck it)
Year 3: 2/5 (jumps up to a 4/5 if we get rid of the boring shit, like Bellatrix's pointless escape. Also, the summer chapters were great)
Year 4: 4/5 (Took way too long to get to Zabini's prophecy discussion, but everything since then has been refreshing and exciting)

 

I gave up on this fic some time ago, but some of those ideas are stolen (uncredited, unless you call TSM out) from other authors. For instance, I'm pretty sure the Ultimate Sanction is lifted from the webcomic Unsounded, and the legillimency fusion in the DoM comes from the webcomic Erfworld.

 

I don't see a problem with lifting concepts from other authors, that's pretty par for the course in creative activities. Taking other's ideas and integrating them seamlessly in your work has merit on its own, if done well.

My comment was more of a caveat, since you mentioned uniqueness, that this author's most original plot points aren't probably his. Nothing wrong with collecting and propagating good ideas. I do think he could be more open about crediting sources, though.

For those who aren't familiar with it and like webcomics, Unsounded is pretty good, I think it was reviewed here some years ago. Chapter 10, IIRC, is a magnificent climax for the first arc of the story, and the author is clever in taking advantage of the medium, inserting the occasional GIF and playing around with the frame of the page.

Erfworld, unfortunately, is on a long, probably definitive hiatus for grave RL issues. The author locked it under a login screen, so only old followers of the comic can still access the archive.

 

If he's even aware that he's using ideas other folk have come up with. Its entirely feasible that he's read the webcomics you're talking about, but hasn't consciously used the ideas. They're in his head and have naturally become part of his writing.

I genuinely don't see it as a valid criticism, ideas and concepts are shared between works of fiction all the time. I'd be shocked if someone came up with a truly unique idea.

The fact remains that, as Ched said, many of the things he's doing in this fic are unusual or unique in the context of HP fanfiction. He's not just retreading old ground.

Perhaps I'm biased though, since I've never heard of either of the webcomics you're saying he's taken material from.


This update was interesting. A bit of a random direction to take the Goblins in, I'm not averse to it, but it adds yet another entire dimension to the story that'll need to be explored and explained at some point. I think he could probably have done with no adding yet more world building, and instead working within the confines of what he's already created, or at most expanding it only a little bit.

Also his AN makes me wonder if we're about to see this fic spiral downwards into abandonment. In my experience an AN saying "I've just started X new thing that has me super busy, so my update schedule might suffer", especially after a several month break in updates, is never a good sign.

 

That's happened before, and he came back.

It will probably just be a bit of a slow few years. He had a very regular update schedule for a bit there, but that was after quite a long while of sporadic updates. If memory serves, it took a good two years before year three proper even began.

I'm tempted to jump back on this, cos I stopped somewhere around when the attack at the world cup began, but I know I enjoy this story more when I've a big backlog to catch up on, so I might just wait another two years, ha!

Odds are you're bang on here, but if there's one story I'm at least somewhat confident about, it's this one. TSM really seems to need to see this through.

 

Certainly feasible, but some ideas are too strong, original, recent in time and literally copied to have forgotten where they came from. I called him out on it once in a review to a chapter and he added a footnote acknowledging it in the following one he published.

Again, fair game, I guess, but credit to sources is important.

 

Citing sources or the origin of ideas in fanfiction is always interesting to me. Like obviously you need to note that this is a fanfiction not something you own but in some ways I care less if say you borrow from other major well known works vs if you borrow from fanfiction or smaller creators and don't mention it.

 

I'm reading it for the first time and am about half way through. It's pretty good overall. The first year is pretty weak but it does improve a lot. You can tell he really likes his world building and that could be cut back a bit but the plot is actually rather good. It does branch out from the typical Harry is a Slytherin trope.