Thank you, Illusive One. It appears to be extremely difficult for me to illustrate that point.

 

I just read this fic and the first thing to come to mind is ... damn that's different. But I really liked how much you changed the system for magic around. Honestly, it makes a great deal more sense overall. The way you actually made magic have a system, not to mention a price (exhaustion has an actual effect on someone and it isn't this ridiculously high threshold) was brilliant, but I do have one minor issue with your story.

The whole 'code' concept. Very unique, not even close to the only other comparable structure dubbed MMail by Jeconais and used by a few other authors. I liked this a great deal, but it was a bit weird for my tastes. It sounds too much like you have been playing too much WoW and are trying to give you characters a chance to play too; I know you are not, but that's the thing that popped into my head when I read about it: MMORPG for Harry Potter! Sure, it makes sense and all, but I am so used to the Wizarding world being so backwards and out of date that it's a hard pill to swallow: believable and well written, but hard to get used to. Continue to mention it and it'll be easier to get used to, I guess.

As a note, you have created a lot of OCs and changed some of the canon characters greatly (Snape, Hagrid, etc); while I don't have any problems with that, just make sure you maintain the characterization you portrayed them with earlier on and don't neglect them.

Two major kudos points for your fic: The points system is much better than anything that I have seen in other fics, and quite honestly JKR's system is shit, so I have to complement you specifically on this aspect. Secondly, the explanation as to why there are so few witches and wizards at Hogwarts while the wizarding world has a decent sized population. THANK YOU.

Overall, very nice job on originality and revolutionizing HP magic. 4/5

 

Jeconais didn't come up with MMail. The author of The Nekkid Quidditch Game did, I believe.

 

Updated, finally. My apologies for the wait.

 

Whilst yor gutter vocabulary is impressive, it is far more extensive and esoteric than any 11 year old would know. I don't know how you grew up, or what 11 year olds you know, but the average one doesn't swear every third word, and when they do its basically restricted to fuck, shit or damn. At 11, children are generally still in the stage of "Oh, its baaaad word."

But apart fom that it was interesting, I liked the interaction with Daphne at the end. I had been wondering where you were going with his lack participation and general dissatisfaction with things.

 

Well, I'm sort of assuming that eleven is around the age at which it's suddenly cool to curse. I've noticed that it's different depending upon your generation (for example, you might have a cursing paternal grandfather, but a non-cursing father, or vice versa) and this is a heavily cursing generation. They're all smart, so basically the only way to show superiority over another kid is to show that you're more worldly, which they do through cursing, or comparing heights/ages, which they probably see as stupid and immature by this age. Hermione is the only child in the story who curses legitimately.

I haven't interviewed any children about my hypothesis, so I'm just going to hope that I'm right. If anyone has more information about cursing when you're eleven that proves me wrong, then MAGIC! Just kidding. If anyone has any information that proves me wrong, then I'll edit out the cursing, except for Hermione's.

The Daphne bit was hard for me to write, since I couldn't imagine them as eighteen/twenty year olds to make myself more comfortable, since that would have thrown things off, and eleven year olds seducing each other is weird. Makes me glad that Harry isn't a horny adolescent yet. Not sure what I would have done.

Thanks for your input, (if there are non-Hogwarts kids, I'll remember to cool it with the language)

JJ

 

I'd agree with you that for a lot of kids, excessive cursing at 11 is accurate, though I wouldn't attribute it to alternating generations. When I was 11, I was made fun of for not cursing, because at that age, everyone began cursing because the middle school teachers usually wouldn't fuss at you (so long as you didn't say it in class), where as the elementary teachers would. So cursing was a kind of coming-of-age thing; you did it to show that you were old enough to.

However, I had a substitute not too long ago who was telling us about how when he was younger, all the guys would curse and whatnot when they became teens, but they would never curse in front of a girl. He's 80, so maybe that throws your theory off, maybe not. But it is interesting.

Anyway, I think I'll go give your fic a shot now, heh.

 

Er, what? Did you grow up in a Pleasantville-esque area, or something? 11 year olds cuss more than most adults. They may not know what a lot of the words mean means, but they don't exactly have pristine mouths.

Edit - Wait, updated?

w00t!

 

OMG new chapter!!!

This is one of the few fanfics that I can't seem to forget...

I read a lot and never found a AU as good as this one. As someone pointed out Rowling magic system is like a inept children attempt if compared to this one..

I really do hope that japanese-jew can find more time to write because, as ip82 said, this is a story for 150k words just for the first year...

Does anyone know of any fic like this one? I mean, almost all the fics you can find a lot of other fics that have some common points. Some have original points or breakthroughs, but they always have lots of similarities with many others fics...


ps: sorry for my english, it's not my mother language.. and I'm not really good at expressing myself either, that's why I just read and not write...

 

A Second Chance at Life by Miranda Flairgold. I haven't read the sequel (the word on the street is that Harry has become almost unbearably gay, and I was trying to cut down on my fan fiction consumption to work on writing, and what did it get me? Eight months without an update. Good job JJ, good job) but ASCaL is pretty much the most inventive story I have ever read, with the possible exception of . . .

Elemental Genesis by Raven Dragonclaw. She swore ten months ago to update, which I'm very excited for, but more importantly, this is pretty much the only really enjoyable "Elemental" story. Harry is ridiculously overpowered, but I feel like it works. He's not the only overpowered one. It even has a workable good!Tom Riddle (Voldemort is still bad, but Tom Riddle is good). It is pretty much my favorite piece ever, with the possible exclusion of Harry Potter and the Nexus. Anyway, she doesn't change magic, but she adds onto it quite a lot. There's muggle magic, spirit magic, blood magic, dark magic, soul magic, elemental magic, and I think I'm missing a few kinds. She apparently borrowed from Dragonlance, but I am still wildly in love with it.

Faith by Dragongirl16. This Harry is really gay, and worse, he's gay for Draco, but I was able to push through it regardless because the magic fascinated me. She did research (or just knew a lot about) Celtic gods and managed to incorporate them into the story in an interesting way, and I stole my magic system where there are tiny bits of magic that you inherit from people from her.

The Saving Connor series by Lightning on the Wave. This Harry is the gayest of them all (making it pretty much unreadable post-book four--I much preferred it when I thought he might end up with Millicent, I must say) but her magic system is magnificent and has fantastic large scale-ness, as well as a coherent explanation of light and dark magic.

 

Just started reading this. I'm quite fond of the magical system, it seems to be very detailed, and original.

I did find the explanation of potions drawing magic from the maker's body. I always took canon to be the opposite, where the ingredients used were inherently magical, which was enough to create the desired effects.

AU for a reason, certainly.

 

I completely forgot about this. I remember when it was first released. I loved it. I have now re-read it up to the latest chapter.

Whilst there is good detail surrounding the spells etc, I find myself not actually understanding some of their applications. Jak, for example is looped to help harry give the impression of being able to cast weaker spells. How does this work? The introduction of the Jill spell was weird. Dumbledore gave no explanation as to what it did. I think it was the same as Jak but with water. There was also an incident when Harry controlled the strength of his Lumos spell by looping it with the water obscuring spell, Tor. Not really sure what this is supposed to do and how it dilutes the Lumos spell. It isn't explained.

Regardless

4/5

 

Re-read this morning. 4/5. My only real problems with it is the nice-severus, and the somewhat odd applications of magic.

 

4/5 from me as well. The magic system was interesting and the errors are almost unnoticeable. Very creative and well executed.

 

Oh, I know that one by Miranda Flairgold! It's really good also ^^
I'm following the sequence too. And about Harry being gay... well, he may be, as he may not be... while it's like that is ok to me.
The last two you mentioned I wont try to read because I really don't like to pass my time reading gay stuff..
I'll certainly try Elemental Genesis though.. and if does have some dragonlance in it then it's a bonus!!

What I would like most though is that you don't take so long on updates
It's a pain to wait...

 

I'm certain that I marked this thread as "tracked" so it irks me that I didn't notice that this had been posted on. My apologies for the wait, I try to respond to all reviews.

Voice of the Nephilim: I just decided that I needed a reason why machines couldn't make potions.

Randeemy: You make excellent points! I will remember to have Harry explain the spells more in depth to someone else soon. A problem that I frequently face as a writer is not remembering what I have written already. I don't want to re-explain important things, but I also don't want to not explain them. It is helpful to me to know that I poorly explain how those spells work.

Veritas: I must confess, I like the character Severus Snape. He's an asshole, and I dislike the person himself, but he is an interesting and multifaceted character. JKR did some things poorly with him, but she also did some things well with him. Of course, my Snape is completely different from her Snape--mine is more Alan Rickman than Snape, really.

Korisovra: Glad you liked it!

Lightless: On the updates front, sorry, but no dice. I'd be writing now, but for the dull ache in my teeth from getting them pulled. Instead, I'm clearing out the backlog of stories that I intended to read and checking up on forums like these. However, I have a fairly not demanding job over the summer, so with any luck, I'll be able to pull out at least one other chapter this summer.

General question for DLP-ers. I noticed that a number of people said, "I reread it." Would it be helpful to preface my next chapter with a synopsis of what has been going on so far? Or would you not mind rereading the story every time I post every nine months? I actually wrote out a general synopsis for chapters one to eleven, and then forgot to add it, so I figure I'll do it for chapter twelve.

Thank you,

JJ

 

A synopsis actually would be pretty helpful. For the more complex fics that aren't updated regularly I have to go back a chapter or two and read it until the light bulb goes off and I get to say "So that's the one this is"

 

Updated, with synopsis.

A pretty short chapter although we are seeing the "group" fall apart. Sadly I think this will lead into a Harry/Hermione team where the "misunderstood" character of Hermione will have to warm up to Harry before she trusts him. I would personally rather see them as rivals, being the "smartest" in their year so far, although the introduction of the English (is there not a better name?)group could lead to a faction v faction (either Harry&Hermione v English gorup or v Neville's group) type deal.

That being said, I enjoy the fact that the magic is kept at a realistic level for the first year students. Although I do get the feeling that the story is progressing a little slow. They need to start showing some serious advances in the magic they use.

Good chapter though.

 

I'll be honest, if only because some days thats all you can be... I'm a bit of a JJ-Fanboy. The first time I read this fic, it was only about two chapters long... and I was very thrilled by such a... different system of; frankly everything.

Your portrayal of Severus is both blunt and very gritty. He's honest, yet at the same time you can just see the gears at work... thinking up new plans and scheming up what he will or won't do next.

The merit system is believable, as well as easy to follow.

The entire redefinition of how magic works... is needed. It's very complicated, there is no getting around it. Magic is a very huge thing, and this world makes that known. You can't just lump magic into broad groups and just tumble it around. As new concepts of magic are introduced, I find myself nodding and going, "Oh... I see how that pieces in with these previous comments."

Religion? Not ignored? Wonderful! You actually showed that religion doesn't exist on just intangible outward level... but is actually the cusp of power for a true magic-user.

Love the new chapter... and I'm glad to see some fairly regular updates... no more 8-month No-Updates, uh?

 

Carnival: On the English front, all of the "ladders" are named after civilizations. For example, Harry's group is called the Vikings. The problem with having cool names for groups is that a lot of names sound dumb. I guess I could have turned it into a fraternity, or called them by Norse runes, but civilizations work pretty decently, I think. There are obvious stereotypes about a lot of civilizations (and I'm not thinking about, "oh that civilization has large penises"), and they make my life easier in terms of remembering things about each ladder. The first Harry and Hermione as rivals story that comes to my mind was this James Bond Crossover. Pretty good, but not really the kind of thing that I could read. Besides, why beat them if you can join them?

With the magic thing, I am going to give a couple more classes (there's at least one class in dueling, for example) and then I am going to mostly just use the age-old tactic of discovering new spells in study hall, coupled with pulling spells out of my ass whenever I need a spell that I hadn't thought of earlier. Keep in mind that Harry doesn't really think of himself as a Hunter, more of an Herbologist. This will change though, because Herbologists are boring.

Kept Close: Wow, I have fanboys? Pretty cool. I'm sorry you had to read it when it was only two chapters long--both of those chapters were really quite mediocre. My stuff now isn't perfect, but it's far better than those pieces of shit. Again, I apologize.

Glad you like Snape--for a while, I went through an angst binge, and Snape is frequently portrayed as not a douchebag in those stories. I still felt that Snape was a douchebag, but had the potential to be not a douchebag if I tweaked a few things, and so I am able to write a pretty fun Snape.

I had a lot of fun with the magic system--I think I have mentioned this in this thread before, but L.E. Modesitt has really fascinating magic systems, if you feel like reading some published fantasy. Not my favorite author, but damn are his magic systems cool.

Ha, I actually thought I took the rather wimpy route with gods, but it's nice to know that some people see the merit in it! The problem with religion is that it can make people do really weird things, so if I made religion too serious, sort of like what we have in real life, then I would probably have to write about a holy war. And holy wars are scary, and probably hard to write, because it's hard for me to get too into the religious mindset. Pretty much as close as I have ever gotten is understanding why some Christians think that atheists don't have anything to live for.

Well, hopefully no 8-month long spans for no updates, but I had intended to spend three or four hours on writing tonight and ended up replying to reviews and helping a friend find some good slash (not exactly my favorite pairings, so it took a while--finally got her to read Lightning on the Wave's stuff, which is the only story I can think of that I wished was Harry/Millicent). I had hoped to stockpile chapters this summer (and got a laptop for that express purpose) but it might not work out. We'll see.