I really liked the scene with Hermione's parents. The rest wasn't good, imo. Katie was annoying AND off, the Harmony direction really isn't doing it for me. The chapter in question lacked cohesion, disappointing.

Low 3-ish for this story, 4/5 for the series.

 

This chapter was kind of a let down considering the amount of time between updates. I get the feeling that Hermione's mother was introduced as a man hater because Hermione's father will eventually be unveiled as a wizard - I honestly hope that's not the case, but it's plausible. The Lockhart scene was annoying, and Katie must have been on her period at the beginning of the chapter.

I think it'll pick up once they return to Hogwarts though, and I'm still looking forward to the next update.

 

I agree with most of your post, but your saying that Hermione's real father was a wizard? Or the one Ms. Granger is with right now. And how is that situation even plausible? Did I miss something, or is that just a guess you made.

I didn't really like the way Hermione's parents were introduced/portrayed, especially the mom, but I assume that it is meant to be that way :/

Hopefully another update comes soon.

 

Updated. Harry just dropped the Idiot Ball, hard. Granger family in previous chapters is really strange. I have not seen such portrayal of it in canon yet.

 

I'm surprised there hasn't been more commotion over this. Perhaps they are having the same problem as me. I read the two stories quite a bit of time ago, so I figured I would have to reread it to know what is going on, but honestly I'm struggling getting through Vincet again. It's not as engaging as I remembered it, or perhaps I'm burning out, I don't know, I'm finding too many flaws that wouldn't have really bothered my just a month ago. Probably started when Harry's hair changed color within the first minute of the story, and I know this is a good story, I just can't muster up the will to reread it I guess. This is a case of there being way too much time in between updates.

 

The latest chapter begins with a plot summary for people who don't want to re-read.

 

I've just read VINCET and its sequel in a single shot, for the first time. Overall I've got a mixed opinion of it.

The writing is delightfully error-free and readable. Its relation to canon is very nice; it shares enough to have some points of familiarity to ground oneself against, yet is different enough to remain interesting. Dumbledore is decent, though I'm more fond of their version of Snape, at the moment. Harry's lesser acquaintances are still uninteresting, but it's early in the story's development.

Harry himself, on the other hand...meh. It's not that I hate his character, really - there has been a bit of interesting character growth here and there, with Harry seeming to warm up to the idea of having a friend, and learning more about the maintenance of political power. But Harry's combination of attributes at age 11-12 is simply absurd.

He's got an intelligent adult's grasp of language and nearly unparalleled magical ability among his age peers. This isn't the problem. Harry is prodigal, and there are plenty of real-world examples of such.

But real-world, 11- and 12-year-old geniuses don't tend to have an adult's cultured understanding of...well, the exact art and subtle science of social interaction. Kids of that age certainly might know the basic rituals of adult socializing by then, if they've been properly trained in them. But knowing enough to wield them with precision, and consciously plan out their accumulation of socio-political clout for years in advance?

Harry, at age 12, is doing this. He's made his own personal Slug Club. Except what he's doing actually seems more meticulous than anything Slughorn ever did in canon: he's simultaneously building the connections and preparing to train them in dueling, along with God knows what else. Though we don't know what canon!Tom Riddle's first two years in Hogwarts were like, I'm of the opinion that even he never quite got that far along, so early.

It's just very hard to stomach sometimes. And it's a testament to the overall quality of the story that I still give it a 3.5 out of 5.

 

I think you attribute too much naivety to children. Certainly modern children are naive as you say, because we coddle them and try to artificially retard their growth so as to keep them in line with our cultural notion of the innocent child.

But children can be cunning and evil little devil-spawn if you put them in the right (or rather, wrong) environment. Children learn to manipulate at a very early age. Emotional blackmail, unruly behaviour, the threat of unruly behaviour, bullying of both their peers and their family. I saw a 5 year old girl bullying her own weak-willed mother on the bus the other day. Children do these things habitually and instinctively, and it's further reinforced by success. You just have to watch a 7 year old girl trying to organise her entire social group according to her liking to witness it in action. To them, their friends are like an elaborate set of dolls. They try to dictate their friends every action if you let them. They have very little empathy. They have to be trained out of it.

The only usual thing about Harry is how conscious he is of what he is doing, rather than doing it by instinct. You could pass that off as a quirk of narration, or you could call him a sociopath.

 

Children do wield social power, of course, but it is unconscious, as you say. They do it with all the subtlety of an idiot swinging a sword around. And they do it with a mind to their present desires, rather than the nebulous time years in the future.

12-year-old Harry wields his social power like a scalpel, and already with few lapses (and I expect to see the number of these continue to drop sharply). Like I said previously, I think he's already got Slughorn's instincts, combined with even more focused ideas on how he wants to use his connections.

In short: Kids are crafty little bastards. And VINCET Harry is a social adult in nearly every meaningful way except for pubescent status (and associated emotions related to that).

 

One of the problems is Harry starts it from the very beginning. From the very first chapter Harry got Ron to read, Neville a confidence boost, doesn't dislike Percy, made friends with Cedric during his little political speech about his dad, and knew right away to trick Daphne to lock her out of the compartment. The whole train ride reeks of forced character changes, and Harry acts more mature than adults for no real (realistic) reason other than the author wanting Harry that way, and I think if he went back and reread it himself, he would realize that it's quite disjointed, clumsy, and awkward. Too many changes in too short a period of time, too early on, it just doesn't give a good vibe, entertain, or read well.

Still, I have not stopped rereading it, but I've been taking it in small doses. I'll get to the new chapter eventually.

 

I had read VINCET not that long ago, so it wasn't too difficult to get into VULTUS SERPENTIS again. I initially could not bring myself to slodge through the parts that featured Harry/Katie/Hermione interaction, but it was okay once I got down to it.

To me, the characters in this story sometimes seem like unintended caricatures--some of their personality traits are exaggerated out of proportion with the others, and they feel rough around the edges, for lack of a better expression. So, for example, I found myself having to suspend disbelief when second-year Harry assembled his own version of the Slug Club in the latest chapter, or in the scene with Hermione's parents in the chapter before.

But this does not prevent me from enjoying the story. The writing is good overall. The descriptions also tend to have a rather verbose, circuitous, and sometimes even sarcastic quality about them. (I mean phrases such as "Emilio's tendency to be in the periphery", "his presence was transitory", or "giving an overgrown mountain troll testicular trauma".) Though usually not outright funny, these choices of language do amuse me; they also shine through when Snape or Dumbledore are shown to speak.

So I do give the story 5 stars. I am very happy that this was updated, and I hope to see more soon. (Incidentally, does anyone know whether the author reads DLP?)

 

It's authors. And yes. They are deliberately secretive about their names.

 

This doesn't hold up as well upon re-reads for a lot of reasons; LA mentioned a few above. While I still hold this higher than 99% of fanfiction, I'd probably have to downgrade my original rating of 5/5 to 4/5.

Like others have said, the slug club thing irritates me to no end. I wish the author hadn't went in that direction.

I'll still be following this, but with a bit less enthusiasm.

 

The main guy is in irc every day, he's said that there's only 2 of then now because the mysterious unknown guy with a bat shaped avatar and an illogical love of Daphne and Romilda has dropped off the face of the planet.

My biggest gripe, above everything else I've said about the story, is that this doesn't read like Harry Potter. Harry shares almost nothing with canon Harry, so he's essentially an OC with the same name. I just finished Vincet and am now on the sequel, and none of my opinions have changed, but obviously, the story is still very much readable, even if has to be done with many distractions.

 

The main guy? He never said that.

 

I totally NEVER said that, not even close. XD

I said that I write the base, and Rob takes that and makes it readable. We talk about the end result, he listens to some of my suggestions, ignores others, and then we post.

 

The secret's out, guys. :fire:fire:fire

 

This was totally not my fault at all, Klael.

 

Lol, your the main guy, because I've never seen the other guy He's a super secret crime-fighting stealth writer.

 

Everyone knows the other guy is Kinsfire. Hence the big secret.