Er. That's exactly the problem. Harry's not being badass anymore. He's just being an idiot. Badass!Harry would already be teaching her the finer points of killing, maiming, and torture. And properly teaching her how to swear, too, as opposed to this half-assed incompetence we've been given so far.

Really, Shezza, you've done some great work before, but the quality of this is really falling to pieces.

Narion

 

Do you guys not remember just how old Harry is? To believe that he would act like a father to a child that he wants nothing to do with is naive at best. No one should be able to react that well to fatherhood, especially someone as selfish as Harry.

yes, he's being an idiot, but no one is saying that the main character can't be without flaws.... Unless of course you all want Hary to be a Gary Sue.

I'm fine with Harry's behavior, as long as he develops and maybe this is just the thing that Shezza is using to make Harry much more mature.

 

The problem is that he's really fucking things up and Meciel is doing nothing to stop him, despite the fact that she must be aware of his mistakes and their impact.

I'm perfectly alright with him being more than a little bit displeased with things, and irritable, and that's fine. I'm not fine with him regressing into a half-wit almost on the level of Ron Weasley, and Meciel not stepping in to stop him. She does, after all, have something of a stake in all this.

The story is starting to look like a series of screw-ups on Harry's part, capped with an ending where he succeeds by sheer luck more than anything else - not that the sword wouldn't give him the means to do so, of course, but Harry's becoming alarmingly like canon!Harry.

Narion

 

I disagree Kai Shek.

It's good to have a badass Harry, yeah, but not a stupid one. There's... acting like a badass and acting immaturely, and right now, Harry's acting like a 8 year old. Having a very very old entity in his mind should at least have matured him a little.

I think many people mistook Harry's attitude with 'cruelty' (mixed with some idiocy and mental retardation). Sorry, but however twisted his morals are, he's not a cruel person. He wouldn't torture or kill innocent childs, or exploit them, at the very least.

We don't ask Shezza to write Harry as a good father, just not to write him completly out of his personality.

 

I don't think that Shezza's going to let this situation last for more than a page or two more. We've already seen twinges of either Meciel, Harry's vestigal conscience, or both.

 

Okay, I liked that a lot better.

I was a bit confused though. Is Harry still telling Amanda and Hermione that she is his daughter, because Hermione's line reflects that, though a moment later, Amaris calls Harry 'cousin'.

Basically, who knows the truth, and who doesn't?

 

See! It's all your fault (not you Shezza but other DLP members)!!!. You HAD to talk about Lord of the Rings, now he had to put references in it! Well, unless I'm mistaken, it reminds me of the Gollum thing from LOTR. Or, I'm crazy.

Anyway, it's much better.

I've thought a little about the father thing: actually, Harry CAN be a good father. All depends of your definition of a good father.

A good father is someone who cares about his child, teach them about life and help them overcome their problems. I can't see many conflicts in that case.

Though, it doesn't really matter. Harry's great as it's in this latest edit.

 

Ok I liked that better than the first draft but why the frozen food?

 

Ah, I see where you're coming from. At the end of Ch23, I've put it so that Harry declares Amaris his ward, that he's looking after her for the rest of the school year. In other words, he's her guardian.

So only Dumbledore and Harry knows,

 

You forgot to change that line.

His fingers were still, but trembling?


-----------

~Edit~ I changed my mind.

 

I liked many of the changes you made but some caused new problems aswell.

For instance, it made sense for people to blame Harry when they thought he had ordered his daughter to sleep on the hard floor. But if you have people think Amaris is just Harry's cousin then it makes less sense for them to be so outraged at Harry. He should have far less authority on the behaviour of a cousin afterall. Add to this the fact that people around Harry really should not react so badly to Harry after Amaris publicly announces that he actually liked the floor. I mean surely when people found Amaris sleeping on the floor the obvious question to ask would be "why arent you sleeping on the couch?" which would be followed by Amaris answering about his preference to the floor clearing Harry of all wrongdoing in this matter.

There are also still also several sections that still refer to Amaris as Harry's daughter. Hermione actually says daughter outright and Harry wonders whats the point of having kids if you cannot treat them as slaves (Another cruelty towards Amaris that I missed before actually. Remember that with her way of taking things literally, she probably would not view this as a joke or a smartass comment) obviously implying that Amaris is his kid.

Other than that however, I liked it that you toned down Harrys cruelty towards Amaris. The retard thing still annoyed me slightly and I wonder if you could have lessened that a little too by having Harry do something like roll his eyes and say it was just a joke when Amaris takes it so seriously?

On the whole I thought this was a big improvement. The nitpicks/illogicalities that I found were mostly fixed and Harry was generally smarter and more like _Harry_ that we have come to know. Very cool!

EDIT: I forgot to say this. You constantly refer to Amaris having soulless eyes? Is this just somekind of appearance thing or are you actually implying that as a changeling Amaris has no soul? It is my understanding that changelings actually have a choice eventually of becoming either purely human or purely sidhe(or maybe they can remain changelings?). If a transformation to human is possible then surely they must have a soul, atleast until they make their final choice. Besides she is half-human so you would think she would have half-soul atleast

 

Ah! Thanks, I understand now, though I am a bit sad we won't see Amanda's reaction to the evidence of Harry's copulation, at least, not yet.

Anyway, you turned this chapter from a 3 to a 5, Shezza.

 

As for what everyone's saying:

All Shezza needs to do is change everyone's reaction from shock to confusion. Harry can order his daughter around like he has been, just under the guise of "cousin". I will seem odd, but everyone will simply write it off as Harry being his bossy self.

Hermione's retard comment can be changed so she sees it as outrageous considering Amaris very a young, "innocent", and obviously sheltered, child.

 

I think I liked the old version better. Why does everyone assume Harry can just take it all into stride without a problem. As far as Harry knew, his daughter was mostly out of touch with him and He'd pretty much ignore her existence. Now all of the sudden (even after rescueing her, I assumed he thought Maeve would be taking care of her) Harry has to take care of some eight year old brat, who has little to no real world common sense. The whole "paralysis shoulder" especially proved this. If she did that to anyone that touched her, especially in Hogwarts people would see something is off. Even more then that, who does Harry have to look at for good parenting experience? Maciel is letting him deal with the child on his own, so he's pretty much winging it. It doesn't suprise me that Harry is being cruel, that's one of his defense mechanisms, if you are mean to someone as a rule of thumb they stop talking to you, which is prtty much what Harry wants.

 

Much better. I do apologize if I gave you the wrong impression - I tend to be highly critical of things, particularly rather good things. Or, put another way, I was perhaps overly harsh because I have a distinct interest in seeing this story continue to be of the highest quality.

To clarify my points, the stupidity I was perceiving was more of the long-term kind. Letting Amaris present herself as his daughter makes her a prime target for Voldemort, Vesper, and the Ministry. Needless to say, Maeve would likely kill Harry painfully if Amaris were to suffer significant harm.

Likewise, failing to suitably educate her in the proper methods of swearing could be troublesome in the future - not dangerously so, necessarily, but it would have been an unnecessary annoyance. In particular, I'd have expected Meciel, given her previously established dislike of Harry swearing in the presence of Amaris, if nothing else, to have provided him with some means of clarifying his statements on the matter.

Finally, Harry teaching Amaris combat-related skills has several uses: first, it helps keep her alive - see above - and healthy. Second, it provides a potential vector for establishing a(nother) debt from Maeve and the Winter Court, and possibly from Amaris herself, though I'm uncertain as to just how bound she is by those practices. Finally, it provides a means for Harry to establish some degree of good standing with Amaris, which could prove quite useful in the future: half-fae she may be, but she's still part human, and having that part actually like Harry to some degree is potentially an incredibly potent advantage.

Granted, it's quite likely she's familiar with killing in more than self-defense by this point - as very well indicated by this last scene - but surely there must be something a Denarian and a wand-wizard can teach her, and, if Harry's resistance to her powers is by virtue of his being a Denarian and not related to his being her father, teaching her a means to bypass or otherwise beat such resistances is definitely on the table. It shouldn't be too hard to extract an oath or agreement from her not to use such techniques against him, of course, except in self-defense - though, again, just how bound she is by those things I'm not certain.

Query: pull a Vorlon?

Narion

 

Vorlon's the guy who wrote Ascension of a Scorpion Sorcerer. Good stuff, though with a lot of annoying things. He stopped writing for maybe two years, and posted a new chapters a few months ago when we thought he was dead; and seems like he stopped writing again.. Actually, I'm not sure what he meant, though if I'm not right, "pulling a Rosswrock" would have worked just fine. Exactly the same situation.

About the teaching part; why does Harry have to teach only combat-related things? He can teach her stuff about sexuality even Maeve doesn't know about, for example. Or, how to scare first year Hufflepuff, and other funny things. Denarian Renegade/Knight is good because it's not an overly serious fanfiction, but has some humour in it. Keep it that way.

 

Because he's comfortable in combat, and it's something useful to teach her. She might be offended if he tries to teach her something not that useful, like how to scare first year Hufflepuffs. Information on sexuality might be useful to her, but I suspect that Harry's a bit too uncomfortable with the whole she's-his-daughter issue to deal with something like that. I'd expect him to leave that part of her education to Maeve and the fae; she's too young for anything but theory, anyway.

Narion

 

There is a big difference between being a good and experienced father and being maliciously cruel. I atleast have got the impression from ch23 and even this one that Harry is a bit shellshocked and confused about Amaris's entry into his life. That confusion does not have to translate into cruelty however.

I mean I don't think Harry is all that cruel/mean. I mean sure, he insults people and generally acts like a bastard but is that actually cruelty when you consider the targets?

I mean he insults Hermione to be sure and has managed to make her angry in several occasions but Hermione has no actual connection to Harry. His insults would not deeply hurt her, more like annoy her and make her angry but no more.

Harry also insults Amanda constantly. But not only is Amanda a balanced and well raised teenager, but Harry is constantly showing by his actions that he does not truly mean them. He insults her and then saves her. He makes fun of her and then decides to spend a lot of his time teaching her in self-defense. Infact when Amanda was insecure after the whole effodio incident and when she confessed that she wanted to impress Harry, his reaction is to be kind and compliment her on a good first attempt.

Has Harry actually been truly cruel to anyone without justification?
He insulted and mocked Snape but only after Snape started it.
He has sacrificed people to demons but we get the impression that they were all rapists and pedophiles and other human monsters.
He tortured that one guy to death but we know that he tried to kill Harry and steal the coin.

Of the top of my head I cannot recall anything in the series where Harry would have been as nasty and cruel to anyone as he was Amaris in the first revision? That is why it was so jarring. I might be forgetting something though so if you can point one out?


@Shezza:
Harry acts as though he thinks Umbridge has just gained the courage to start using the quill again when he sees Neville and he wonders if he should tell Dumbledore. However in chapter 15 Amanda tells Harry that Umbridge has used the quill on her already. And that there is infact a public educational degree that allows it. Thats why I think the whole thing is so very strange. I mean Fudge has essentially publicly given his support to the torture of children with dark magic items? And it is apparently common practise on her part. Why the hell is Dumbledore not using this to his political advantage? For that matter why arent the parents demanding Umbridges head?

EDIT: Oh! And one final thing before I go to bed. Harry says that the reason Amaris is with him is because her step-mother is having renovation problems. I dont think it makes sense for something so small to make a mother send an eight year old child to totally strange place to be raised by a 15 year old. There are such things as hotels and rent-apartments. I think it would make more sense if you said that the step-mother was suffering from some serious medical problem or some other really serious thing like that.

 

Yeah...Hermione saying 'Daughter' threw me off.

I'm hoping the next book is MUCH more serious as Harry gets to dealing with shit, not that I don't enjoy the humor I feel you right high tension scenes a lot better.

On another note. People in this thread need to calm the fuck down o.o