Hey hey heeeeeeyyy! Don't hate on Nye! My love of Science! comes from my High School teacher, Michael Poe, Bill Nye, and Mr Wizard!

That was completely uncalled for! :|

 

Updated. I wonder what is the reason (according to the author) for the pronunciation of Wingardium Levioza being important. I've read a theory in some fic that said that spells were imprinted into the fabric of the universe by a cabal of powerful wizards and after that was done, the spell would work for everyone, but only in the way the imprinters designed it. So the universe is enforcing a quirky pronunciation for the spell to work, but it is man-made, not a consequence of some universal constant like the speed of light.

 

That was my favorite hypothesis as well. Magic is still magic, but it wouldn't be too crazy. (Where did that pop up first anyway? Was it "Sound of Sorcery"?)

 

Perhaps it is not the magic itself that fades, but the created spell imprints that do. If many powerful spells were created over a period of a couple hundred years, then the civilization that did so collapsed, the spells would slowly (and probably erratically) stop working over a similar period of time.

It's also possible that more powerful spells require larger imprints, and this causes them to decay faster somehow, meaning that a drought in spell creation would result in only weak spells being leftover after the strong, short lived ones had decayed.

The second theory would explain how Snape was creating a new, powerful, useful spells at such a young age: "good" spells like those have short shelf-lives, so there is never a population of them large enough that amateurish work by an intelligent High Schooler isn't useful.

 

If this is so, why isn't it widely known? At least to connected people like Malfoy? Or is it known but not mentioned because "magic is becoming weaker" is such a powerful propaganda prop? Is there a conspiracy that suppressed the information on how to imprint spells and that old spells need to be periodically re-imprinted, to keep the population weak? How did Snape know how to create a new spell? Or how did Voldemort create Morsemorde?

 

Well, like I've mentioned in IRC, I decided to start a new project, the "Methods of Rationality Sucks" blog. After seeing the TvTropes page, I decided I just couldn't let this nonsense go on unabated. xkcdsucks inspired me on this. So, now I've posted the first chapter review, so I'll be releasing the link.

Enjoy guys: http://methodsofrationalitysucks.blogspot.com/

 

I'm not sure how I feel about the newest chapter... it's a little different is about all I can say.

 

If that were the case, then I bet that's what the Ministry for Magic was founded on; keeping that secret, and attempting to solve the problem behind it.

I think that Snape's spells could be considered their own catagory, in this case. They were created with modern spell-making techniques, which are different than the older, stronger ways.

 

I don't want to read a fucking academic journal report. That is all.

I didn't like the last 2 chapters, the first was just boring, the second pissed me off because Draco's reaction was just plain stupid.

Guess these are the miss chapters, hopefully there are a few that'll hit off well.

 

This is the best thing to come out of this fanfic, post moar Mordac, well as soon as that Joshua guy stops trying to Philoso-punch you in the comments.

 

I don't think the story merits enough derision to devote a website to it. TVtropes gives fanfic pages to... horrific stuff. It's just not that important.

 

HAHAHAHAHA!

 

Yeah, updated.

The last 3 chapters have just been really terrible. The Harry/Draco stuff is just way too fucking melodramatic.

Hopefully it gets better.

 

I don't know if I should laugh my ass of or cry at the death note insert.
It's not acceptable you don't put random anime in a fanfiction if it's not a crossover and if you do, you don't use japanese names (even more so if the original name is actually english, it's Light dammit...).

 

Eh... that part's not that bad, given that it's not "anime hijinks" (e.g., facefaulting or sweatdrops) or just random anime that comes along for no reason other than to be there. There is no real reason to rail against the fact that it's based on anime rather than any other fictional work from some a foreign culture.

And it flowed a lot better than the increasingly bludgeon-worthy lectures--the chimp aside might have worked if it was maybe 1/4 the length that it was or the melodrama in their interaction (I doubt there's anything to help that, though).

P.S. His name really is Raito (same character as moon, 月). It's not English; that's just a pun the series makes use of. But yeah, given the setting it really would have been better to use Light instead.

 

Sorry, I was a little exaggerating in how irritating it was, early mornings and oral exams tend to make my mood a little sour.
My biggest problem was that the reference was not cleverly inserted and the raito part hit the readers in the face with the force of a sledgehammer breaking your tooths and nose while at it. I mean in case you haven't seen death note I don't think you get a lot information with the reference. Overcomplicated plans how? And hoping that all readers know DN seems a little unprofessional even as a fanfiction writer( I'm sure that if someone would try it here in the w.b.a. section they would get told off.)

Would it have been so difficult to make some plot based on DN but changing the names to something more fitting? Well at least the note became a ring.

I wonder does there exist an evil jewelry(,or ring) trope?

Also his name is Raito(Japanese phonetic version of Light) because Light can't be spelled in hiragana, katakana or whatever the hell it's spelled with, but I'm quite sure it's supposed to be Light rather then Raito. Light itself is kind of a pun on what he's doing.

 

The gratuitous Dune reference in the prior chapter was equally jarring.

Crossover shit tacked on for no apparent reason pisses me off somethin' fierce. It's not "cute;" it breaks the fourth wall and leaves readers shaking their heads.

I went from liking to hating nBSG in the span of thirty seconds with their "All Along the Watchtower" non sequitur insertion at the end of S3. The only good thing I can say is that the scene blunted the /facepalm fail of the Douglass Adams series finale. It seems that the author is channeling his inner nBSG writer.

 

Just read the whole story to latest chapter. Some positives and lots of negatives. Entertaining at parts and incredibly frustrating and embarrassing in others. As someone said previously in the thread, it feels very schizophrenic. It's certainly deeply flawed, but I strangely keep hitting the button for the next chapter even when I read things that make me go WTF, NO!

I'm going to keep with it, but in the end I don't think this is truly library worthy. 3/5

 

You guys are complaining because he mentioned the plot of another fictional work in the story... by what sane definition is that a "crossover" or "breaking the fourth wall"? I guess any work in which a character mentions the plot of Hamlet or Blackadder or some Asimov story or whatever is suddenly a crossover. That the ultimate source material is an anime seems like a very shallow complaint, especially its setting and details were changed to wizarding Britain.

It doesn't matter; the how of overcomplicated plans in the play is completely irrelevant to the point. Draco needs to see Harry's plan as stupid, and (by the constraints of the nature of the story) he needs at least a minimal amount of insight as to why instead of simply dismissing it as such, i.e., "my father says such plans never work" doesn't cut it by itself. He's also eleven, so he can't have plausibly had much experience or even a particularly deep understanding, so a lesson from his father as a moral drawn from a story is actually very appropriate.

Perhaps they would, but that wouldn't mean that such a complaint is justified. There is really nothing important about the details of the play, so it's in fact much better that the author only had a small paragraph on them.

If you see this less as a justification to the reader that overcomplicated plans are bad and more as about how Draco himself came about such insight in the first place, then it's a fairly clean way of doing so. What matters is that the author of the play creates the illusion of intelligence by making overcomplicated plans, whereas other details reveal stupidity. The details of how simply don't matter here, and so they shouldn't be mentioned.

Hell, the author pulls exactly the same trick at the end of the chapter. Only there, it really is unnatural in both flow and the usual failure to "show, not tell" as it drags on and on into a reader-bludgeoning lecture. Both as information to the reader and as a set-up for the cheap joke afterward, it could've been in a fraction of its size. I think that's about ten billion times more sinful than a reference to a play adaptation of an manga/anime work.

That's confusing the symbolism intended for the reader with in-universe fact, since there really is a native Japanese name 'ra-i-to' with several different kanji versions, that are not just loan-words from English. In any case, something I think we can both agree on is that the DN author clearly intended the connection to the English light (and perhaps even right, just to make a double-pun) and that since the MoR play adaptation is about Slytherins, it would just make a hell of a lot more sense to call the character Light. Like in the title of the play.

____
As an aside, I think I've actually derived some amusement from the inclusion of the DN critique as it can be taken to be either very ironically or self-deprecatingly (depending on how much slack one gives the author) meta. Because the other, less plot-relevant, moral of Lucius' lesson is that an author can't realistically write about characters that are much smarter than he is, and so is forced to resort to unrealistic contrivances when trying to do so. Ho. Ho. Ho.

 

Having read the first 8 or so chapters, I find that the story is really quite enjoyable as a light, humorous fic, but it looks like the author is trying to push the H/Hr a bit much.


Overall, 4/5 - 3 for H/Hr, rounded to 1/5