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That was...wow...I'm speechless...

Keep going!


Checked by Minion, January 5, 2013

 

Very nice start, serious potential here.

5/5

 

Very very good. The description was vivid and the writing was engaging. I think it is a signigicant improvement over the previous version. Looking forward to more.

 

What he said.

 

Very good. Although less obvious, this has the same pecuiliarity as I noticed in the earlier version, that of an over emphasis on physical combat and using a wand as a melee weapon. Not bad, just odd

 

Quite good, your writing has visibly improved since the The Other Side first made an appearance.

No complaints as to style. Description, speech, characterisation, pacing: they're all done very well.

I only have two complaints really, and they're partially linked. Firstly, the demon is too powerful. Harry is our hero and an accomplished, powerful wizard. If we start off the story with a random foe that beats him fairly easily, then creating a "big bad" villain - Harry's opposite - is going to be tricky. Also, if this is a Dresden demon, then the magic Harry is chucking at it should be enough to destroy its body.

Secondly, the magic is all rather normal. I mean, you've got some powerful spells in there, as spells go, but they're still pretty straight forward. Harry was casting Confringo in DH, after all. Admittedly it's a powerful spell (I still maintain that it's the same spell Wormtail used to blow up a street) but its also a spell with a lot of variation in terms of how much destruction it wrecks. If you're going to use it, at least show that its a powerful casting of the spell.

As well as that, try to use some more powerful magic. I mean, Harry isn't aware that this is the beginning of a story. He doesn't know that he should be saving his most powerful magic for the dramatic finale. All he knows is that he's losing a fight to the death. He should be pulling out all the stops. Think Fiendfyre, think animating the forest to aid him, think Dark Arts, think BIG. Lol. This is our hero, after all.

The fighting in this chapter is okay, but its the kind of stuff I'd expect from an average Auror, not these feared "Sentinels", and not the defeater of Voldemort.

 

Big, got it. Will work on that sometime later today. My main problem with fighting is that I tend to ignore transfiguration and charms. Never cross my mind until after I write the scene. I'll work on it.

 

@SamBlack

After reading this I went back to read your other attempt at this story line. Now what I found jarring in your other attempt was the pacing. It was too quick, too easy. The reason I am critiquing that version here is to warn you off from doing the same to Sentinel.

Harry adjusted quick as hell to being in another dimension and then going off to fight necromancers. I found situations like him being able to navigate Chicago without every being there difficult to maintain my suspension of belief in. When the Gatekeeper gave him a picture and it helped him apparate, sure, that made sense. When Mac gave him an address, and he knew it wasn't too far, it made me go 'what? come again?'

Harry's characterization is another thing. There is nothing bad per se about his characterization in the other one or this one. It's just that it isn't pushing the envelope.

Consider it from this angle: Your Harry is an interpretation of the independent, confident, armed with witty repertoire, like any other interpretation.

It's the same Harry, different circumstances.

What I want to see is "What does SamBlack's Harry look like, act like?"

You follow?

You're creative enough in your stories, so I think this is only because you like all of us have read enough of the Harry dlp likes and unconsciously internalized the same Harry for your own stories as well.

Again, this characterization critique is based on The Other Side, more than the Sentinel. Not enough of the Sentinel yet to make that call.

Like I said before, nothing wrong with the way you're characterizing him, it's just that it's nothing different.

On the subject of your Outsider: At the peril of derailing this thread by disagreeing with Taure I will say this, the Outsider is supposed to be supremely badass. Little is known about them besides they are servants of Old Gods, were banished to the Outside, and are resistant to Dresden magic. That gives you a lot of room to make them badder than the average demon, which they are. And that is something I really want to see.

A "demon" and an "outsider" are in vastly different classes, according to Dresden. Which is awesome from a story writer's point of view. Because while you can have Harry punish Nevernever demons to the point they can't hold their ectoplasmic bodies together, when the big bad Outsider rolls in he's gonna have to do something exceptional.

 

I follow. Thanks, as well. The ease and speed with which I had him reacting to everything wasn't working. There wasn't a real challenge, which is why I dropped it to work on other things.

 

Agreed, Outsiders >>> Demons. But the fic says this is a demon. Admittedly we're in the HP world so the terminology may be different, but I did say "if this is a Dresden demon" to cover my arse there

 

Lol, yeah... Right now Harry thinks it's just a run of the mill demon, or any kind of regular nasty. HP world doesn't know about the Outside or Outsiders... I don't remember, but I think I put a line in there about how demons normally just appear, how rips or holes in the fabric of reality don't normally appear.

 

Ah okay. I was assuming that the rip was a tear into the Nevernever.

 

Awesome! Cant wait for the next update!

 

This was pretty good. I found the descriptions to be fairly vivid, and the action scenes to be reasonably tight. Be careful with the dialogue, though... "trying my patience" and all that can slide into cliched territory if you aren't careful. Sometimes you don't fully describe things, like that last line about apparition - "a hundred times more painful" doesn't really tell us much. I don't even remember apparition being painful anyway.

But I'll keep an "eye" on the story, anyway.

-J

 

Thanks, one of the things I was going for when I was writing the Outsider was a slight cheesiness. When I write him, I mostly use Fallen Angel's as an inspiration. You know, beings extremely old, look down on mortals.

I forget the fallen's name, the one in Small Favor who had the green ribbon spell. His whole spiel to Dresden about 'you dare to attack me, an angel? blah blah mortal blah die.' seemed corny in a way.

Regular people won't speak like that, so you don't need to worry about that.

 

I think this fight scene was a definite improvement. It captured the urgency and sense of desperation fairly well. What is the effect of transfiguration directly on Outsiders?

 

Well done! There were a couple of grammatical errors and a typo or two, but nothing major. My only gripe with the revised battle is the demon's sudden collapse and subsequent miraculous recovery. I assume it was a display of cunning, but why not have the demon charge Harry, thus forcing him to withdraw the fire or risk crispifying himself. Yeah, this is nitpicking in the extreme. Feel free to disregard.

Looking forward to the next bit.

 

This looks excellent, Samuel. The pacing is much better than in its predecessor, and I really like the Sentinel backstory--and fully expect to learn more as the story progresses.

The battle scene was terrific. Crisp and tight, descriptive and easy to picture. I especially liked the addition of Fiendfyre, and the way you let us know Harry is skilled enough to control it.

Like Antichrist, I'm wondering what effect direct Transfiguration would have on an Outsider; even moreso, I'm wondering what lasting effects you think the Outside will have on Harry. Great work, man. Can hardly wait to see more.

Edit: Just a bit that stuck with me over the last several hours, and feel free to call it nitpicky if it comes across that way, but--why would Harry use Transfiguration with the tree as a sort of holding cell AFTER Fiendfyre seems to have little affect? Maybe an order reverse would work better here?

 

This is definitely a huge improvement over the previous incarnation of the story. Not much I can really say that hasn't been said already.

One minor suggestion though:

Maybe change the word "spit" to "spat," it seems to sound a little bit better to me.

 

Every story in here should have its own review thread. This constant updating of the story thread is annoying me to hell.