Title: Taking Control
Author: Fake a smile
Rating: M
Genre: General/Adventure
Ship: Harry/Ginny
Status: Completed, sequel WIP
Word Count: 517k
Link: ffn.net
Summary:
Author:It's the summer before Harry's 6th year, and Harry is wracked with grief. But what happens when Harry makes a vow to himself to take control of his life? Harry's life takes a sharp turn when he gets an unexpected visitor one night


My personal opinion about this fic is that it's a great one. I mean, really, I don't favor a Harry/Ginny ship, but it hasn't got so much scenes of both of them cuddling around, so it's tolerable.
Basically, this fiction starts after the 5th year, and somehow Sirius can visit Harry in his dreams, where both of them can do magic.
Harry definitely gets independent and there are a lot of cool things in it- wandless magic, animage, and so on.
So, short:
+ Great writing style, everything beta'd
+ Good plot
+ lots of nice action, bit of violence
+ no smut
+ no slash
+ slight Hermione bashing (at the end)
+ no great part in the story for Hermione/Ron

- H/G
- Rather slot updates for the sequel to be expected (about every 1,5 months a 10-15k chapter)
- Maybe not the best story for this community

I was pondering for a while whether I should post this or not, but alas, it's a to great story to put it into the H/G bin.

Please excuse any butchering of the English language, not my native one ;-)

First of, all of you that absolutely DISLIKE H/G and can't read a single piece of it, even if it is beside the whole of bull**** out there a really great written story, back off, I tell you.

For all those of you who might want to give it a try, read on.

 

...
.............................

Even if it's H/G, you don't hide a story review. If it's that horrible that we shouldn't look at it, don't put it on review =/

 

Just protecting the weak

 

I liked this a lot when I first read this. It's in my Favourites on ff.net. However, it updates too slowly and after my initial reading of it I never read an update, because whenever one came out I would have forgotten everything about the story.

Still a good story though. 4/5.

 

DLP above anything is to encourage quailty fics and enjoy them. Very few memebers will mind H/G if it well done

 

I thought this was already in the library... or review'ed and not put in. But anyway, I tried reading this back when my H/G days where coming to a close. The author pisses me off, the story has many a cliche and I just don't like it. 1/5

 

>-> I am dying to read an HPxGW...

 

Searched for it and did not find anything, so my apologies if it was allready in it.

The Spoiler is not for those of DLP who are nice, normal people who favor good fanfiction, and quality above all other facts.
It was for those idiots (sorry to be said) that are only at DLP because they think it's cool to flame other opinions.
I like the community very much, but there ARE some assholes here, and there never was sense in provoking a troll ;-)

 

True to everything minus the 'It's on my favourites'. I actually think this is like, the second fan fiction that I've actually read in the HP fandom, first being the supposed 'leak' of the 7th book.

That being said, I'm not sure if this is just nostalgia goggles tinting my view, so I won't give it a rating. And I'm not really one for re-reading fics, so uh... I'll re-read it after I finish the 3 other stories that I have backed up.

 

EDITED THE FIRST POST.

We don't take exceptions in the Library. We don't want "only the nice people review please" crap. H/G bashers may well bash, but they'll look like fucking idiots if they've not even read the fic. Almost as stupid as trying to hide the entire post in a spoiler tag because you don't want to get flamed.

Getting back on topic, I read about three chapters and of this way back and left the author a long review. Because the start, if I remember correctly, was well-written but terribly unoriginal. Like cookie-cutter post-OotP H/G stuff.

The hesitation comes from not just that this is a H/G fic, but it's massive, long, and unless those first few chapters have improved, doesn't hook or interest much at the start.

I just found that old review (where I even plugged DLP!) and I use a lot of words when this line would have sufficed: "I know we're only 3 chapters into this, but we are nearing fifty thousand words... of nothing but a regurgitation of cliches."

Now that it's done, I should probably give it another try. But knowing I'll have to grit my teeth for the canon-friendly pairings/plot through half a million words (and still the storyline is unresolved) makes me want to wait for some more ringing endorsements.

I can say it's definitely better than 99% of the H/G fics out there. And yet I still need to hear more reasons to read it (and therefore rate it).

 

The best thing about the fic is the realistic romance. Once you get past the cliches the romance is the most realistic progression I've ever read in fanfic. 300k words to the first kiss, and you really do feel triumph when that kiss finally occurs. And once they've got together, the romance doesn't just stop there like most fics. The dynamics of the relationship is explored properly too, unlike the usual "now we're together everything is perfect and we're already having amazing sex every 5 minutes" crap you get.

Secondly, Harry's power progression is steady but realistic. He's not an uber magic user and duelling master straight after a summer of training. Great for his age, but still has a long way to go.

 

The irony is people are using this as one of the fic's strong points when I remembered listing a slow, gradual buildup to romance as a pro for one of the H/Hr fic that I recced but got cut down because while DLPers don't like instant romance, they apparently don't like waiting 100k words before even the first kiss too. A dislike for extremes, I believe.

Not to mention 300k words for this one.

 

How can you forget 500,000 words?

 

Thanks for editing nonjon ;-)
And you hurt my soul so much that I gotta go and cut my wrists to relieve the pain


Lulz.
Okay, was just trying to protect those that don't like to read that sort of stuff, but if you want to have it this way, so be it

 

Dear Lord no. Nononono NO. I started reading about a year and a half ago, and found it to be a horrifically cliche-ridden pile of crap.

Now bear in mind, I tried to read this long before I joined DLP, when I would still lap up H/G and thought that "Nightmare's of Future Past" was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Even then I found this story to be atrocious.

So what caused me to go off this like a forgotten bit of stinking bishop? Well first of all, almost all the characterisation is entirely one-dimensional. "Slight Hermione bashing at the end Trulle? As far as I remember, for the entirety of the fics beginning Hermione is asininely characterised as a irritating head-up-Dumbledores'-arse-bitch, who constantly moans at Harry for being to Indy and not listening to authority figures of for hiding his guilt over Sirius' death or some other boring crap. That would be fine if it was going to be used to snappily develop a meaningful conflict between Harry and Hermione, but instead the author just uses it as a device to show Ginny to be the only reasonable female character around Harry. I could go search the fic for some more poignant example, but I think this excerpt should suffice to summarise what Hermione spends the fic doing:

No shit, eh?

Oh, and Ron has entirely excessive angst up The Arse:

But don't worry, Ginny won't let that sort of thing stand;

because she's small but feisty, right?

In fact, chapter 2 is basically all just irritating angst with the badly written side characters. It's supposed to be Independent!Harry Potter fanfiction, what possible reason is there for giving two shits about Ron and Ginny arguing? well, other then to demonstrate how effing perfect Ginny is, of course.

Oh yeah, also Sirius is able to communicate with Harry from the dead, but after he helps him become a fucking cliched animagus he just does jack shit for the next 100,000 words. Great use of one of the major characters, there.

My apologies, I realise how badly structured this review has become, but that's because as I read back over "Taking Control" I was continuously assailed with examples of its bad writing and utterly uninteresting story. So, the Tl;dr version is that it's a pile of angsty, boring, overly-long crap, full of the same old cliches and with boring flat characterisation.

This fic is simply not worthy of being in the library. Fine for ginnypotter.com, not for here. 1/5.

 

Doesn't the author half way through this fic start bashing DLP in his Author's notes?

Though I might be thinking of another H/G Author.

 

You could find and replace the name Ginny with Daphne and the rating for this fic would shoot right up.

 

Taure has a point