Title: The Tale of the Three Brothers
Author: IdSayWhyNot
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General/Time-Travel
DLP Category: General
Pairing: None
Words: 3,143
Published: August 15, 2010
Status: One-shot
Summary: One-shot. A brief story of what could happen if Dumbledore, Voldemort and Harry had different ideas and the will-power to see them through.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6240960/1/The_Tale_of_the_Three_Brothers


This is a little brain-fart that came in the form of a challenge presented by neren in the Challenge sub-section, Fanfic Discussion section. It's not the longest or most polished thing I've ever written, but I kind of like it and think it has a place in the library.

Longer summary? Alright.

The world is in the brink of annihilation, brought by Harry, Dumbledore and Voldemort. Each of them possesses one Hallow and a different view of how the magical world should be. In this short one-shot Voldemort calls Harry and Dumbledore to share with them an idea he has to end the conflict and bring peace to their world.


EDIT: I fucked up the thread title. It should include "by IdSayWhyNot" and the "PG-13" for the rating. Or at least most of the stories for review include these things. If a mod feels up to changing it, thank you. If not... well, sorry. My bad.

EDIT2: Thank you to whoever changed the thread title.


Checked by Minion, July 29, 2013

 

Ahh, the inspiration for mah necromancy fic.

I loved this. Srsly. 5/5 all the way.

As I said in my FFnet review:

This isn't like an ordinary story. It's like a myth, or a legend, or a parable of some kind. :awesome

 

Me thinks you may have a chrono-boner.

It was... ok. It was more of an idea than a story, and so I don't know if it's library worthy. I just found myself intrigued, not caring.

Problem was, if it had been written in anything aside from third-person omniscient it would have cheapened the idea that the men were equal, making the perspective too biased.

I dunno, I just don't think a story of this nature can be this short and be library worthy. It reads more like a prologue than a one shot.

3.4/5, 3/5 for rating purposes. An interesting piece, but not library worthy.

Also, shouldn't Dumbledore's line have gone something like this:

Just seems weird to have a Hallow that makes you unbeatable, yet you'll live forever because death can't find you. Meh, small detail, just kinda bugged me.

 

I give it a 4/5, but for almost the same reasons as Phantom of the Library. Although I think that, were this written in a fairytale-esque format, like from a mother to child story, it would be better, because we would get all the same information but in a real world, where we could apply how these efforts effected(or didn't effect) the world.

Good, but could've been narrated better. A solid Library work to me. Also, better than I expected; I was really hoping this wouldn't be based on the three original owners of the Hallows.

 

The idea of a dystopian world created by the unlikely trio of Voldemort, Harry and Dumbledore is one I can definitely get on-board with. There's something perfectly bittersweet and chilling about Harry and Dumbledore essentially causing the destruction of the known world, and that this dreadful "trio" are caught in a never ending cycle. That said, I agree with Insane Juggler in that it could have been narrated a little better and your description a bit tighter, but the overall idea is what makes this one shot something special, so it's a 4/5 from me.

On a personal note, I would love to see this idea taken further as I think there you have the makings of a truly brilliant multi-chaptered story here.

 

I agree that it isn't particularly well fleshed out. Just a brain-fart, I suppose, and one not terribly polished.

I also agree that this could be the start of an interesting, longish fic. But as it is I've got too many things on my hands and little time for anything else. Plus I've got two other ideas for fics that I'd like to do in the future.

So if anyone feels like taking this and making it into a full-length novel, let me know and I'll happily give you permission.

Thanks for the comments and feedback, everybody.

Nick

 

Then you don't need to submit it to the library. I don't think much of knowing it's not good and consciously posting it for review on the off chance that it'll slip in. It still might, but it's not a good thing.

2/5. No substance, and the opening (all the more crucial in a one-shot) was poorly done.

I realized I had tried reading this before. The very dry exposition made me stop despite the brevity of the one-shot. You could have used the fairy-tale framing device suggested earlier, or had one of the three on the way to the meeting, with introspection narrating the backstory, then anxiety over how their meeting will play out. Something to draw the reader in.

The piece actually made the idea less interesting/intriguing. I approve of it on the conceptual level. Except in these characters, there's no struggle with morals, aside from a token line of dialogue from Dumbledore, no weariness of the conflict, Voldemort is defined solely by his madness (which you'd think would make Harry and Dumbledore less likely to consent, and Harry's just really stiff and speaks formally. So the "bittersweet"-ness doesn't reach the reader effectively, if at all. They might recognize that it should be bittersweet or what have you, but not by virtue of the writing.

Try the almost recommended thread, or post your other story for review.

 

I actually hate this sort of writing. It's far too used, because for example, when I'm going to a party, I'm not thinking of all the circumstances that led me here, I'm usually not thinking at all.

I like a solid resolution as much as the next guy, but it's sometimes better if the story lets you draw your own conclusion/biase from it.

 

That's your problem, and it's an unusually stupid objection. If Voldemort's on the way to confront his greatest rivals, then he's going to overclock thinking trying to convince Dumbledore and Harry to forget years of conflict and bloodshed. He's not going to improvise this extremely important shit like you would at a party.

You don't realize this applies to the summary-type writing a hundred times more. Every other story begins with "The war was over, but won at too high a price. First, Ron died. Then Hermione..." A full after-action report of casualties. Something being overused because it's more effective, creates better immersion in the AU world, and requires better writing should be overused.

Sure, except you aren't responding to it. I was speaking of bittersweet as a sentiment, which should be generated by making the characters recognizable. My conclusion is that it could be much better.

 

I didn't put this for review in the off chance that it'd get in the library. Lol, it's even worse; I thought this would make it into the library. Not guaranteed, but I was pretty confident.

Apparently not, but that's alright. I'm not desperate, as I think my other story has a better chance of making it. This one-shot did get more attention since I'd posted it here though, and I've received at least 5 or 6 review in ff.net, all of them praising and encouraging.

I guess you like it or you don't. The almost rec thread is definitely an option, but I honestly didn't even think about it at the time.

 

Conceptually very interesting; the idea has plenty of potential. Or at least I thought it did, until I read the last few lines. If using this chapter as a starting point for a story that just describes how they keep doing the same thing over and over, and resetting it…well, it just feels redundant.
On the other hand, I have to agree with some of the earlier replies that suggest it as a prologue to something, but I also think that it may be suitable as the last chapter in a series of vignettes revolving around how the world you're trying to describe came to be.

The OOC-ness abounds, which is also another reason this doesn't do too well as a stand-alone (wtb character development) but could do well as the last in a series, as I suggested above.
I would rate it a 4/5, but the language you used just doesn't do it for me…I feel the atmosphere you're trying to create (at least if I've interpreted the mood of it correctly) but the - at times - insufficient literary reflection of said mood is just enough to make it slip away…sadly. Another fact that brings my rating down is the characters, and that we have no introspection that would explain their relatively peaceful and polite interaction, where much of them are OOC.

Conceptually a very good idea. Practically…doesn't quite do the idea justice. But polish it a bit more, and you can really make something out of this. 3/5

 

Someone's in a mean mood today. Did you wake up on the angry side of the bed, Andro?

Emphasis mine.

And, once more.

That's the point. It's SUPPOSED to be my problem, that why I pointed it out with an I, not 'This is wrong'.

I said that I don't like that writing because it doesn't create better immersion for me, and is less effective. A requirement of writing doesn't make quality better or worse; it just makes it harder or easier to write. The amount of quality fiction generated from an idea does not correlate to the amount of difficulty required in producing it in high quality.

I don't trawl through ff.net looking for stories because I know that 'every other story' will be garbage like that. I don't like that stuff, and there's apparently an overabundance of it. Maybe it helps you visualise the world better with an after-action report, but I prefer to use more of my imagination when I'm seeing an AU(not sure how to word this as if I don't sound like a dick, though).

tl;dr Sturgeon's Law

I'm confused. Did you not understand that I said that I was pointing out that I felt that it was bittersweet, even if you didn't?

And on that, I found the characters very recognizable. It's easy enough to see how Dumbledore got to how he was, and it wouldn't be stretch to imagine how Harry and Voldemort got to where they were.

As echoed earlier, it does seem like a prologue of sorts. Seems closest to one of Amerision's stories, if anything.

 

Andro is always in a mean mood.

But seriously, he made some good points. Because we're so disconnected with the characters we feel no attachment to their world. So when they look back on how their ideals had destroyed everything, it doesn't affect us, the reader, enough to feel emotionally connected ('bitter sweet') to this ravaged timeline.

As for my own preferences, they fall in line with Andro's. I personally like to read stories about a man's (or woman's) struggle. The world building, the magic and the ideas should just be props to further accentuate this.

And while that's still just my opinion, I'm not arrogant enough to assume that I'm the only one in the world who's ever felt this way (Spoiler Alert: I'm not).

My point is that that's why a story of this nature can bore the reader. A great deal of them simply need that emotional attachment to the characters to feel even remotely interested by your story, no matter how interesting your 'props' are. And, quite frankly, this story doesn't deliver on that.

 

The characters were not differentiated from each other, despite your emphasis on the vividness of their respective eye colors. The speech of each sounded exactly like the others.

Other than that I liked the implication that they were the original three brothers, now going back in time where, perhaps, their fairytale begins.

This probably only works as a one shot but even there you could do with a rewrite in certain places to make the impact stronger. For one if you could tone down the sermon about ideas causing misery it would be easier to suspend disbelief and get more 'in to' the story.

 

I thought that this story worked better with this sort of disconnected, disinterested type of tone.

The legend is about their actions and ideas, not about the people, so I don't think that characterizing is very necessary.

However, like Nuhuh, I think you should try and make the distinctions between them in terms of how they speak and their general attitude.

Still,to me that's minor. If the story centers on Harry, you expect characterization. If the story centers on any character you expect characterization, but if the story centers on the narrative and plot, then characterization is secondary.

In this case the characters aren't so much individuals so much as ideas in human form. Its a unique twist(in my opinion).

 

I didn't really care for this one. Too short, and the characters (except maybe for Dumbledore) seemed bland and not really in character. I'm also not at all sure what the idea really is - a bit TOO ambiguous for this type of thing. It could work more as a prologue, but as a oneshot, it didn't really have an ending that made sense. But I appreciate the concept.

2.5/5

 

I thought the writing was interesting. There was a certain mystic quality that allows a reader to be immersed into the text. From the beginning of the prose when the room of the three meeting giants was described, the obvious power hung in the air. You knew that something climactic was heading your way.

The build-up again was impeccable IMO. For those who think it wasn't a one-shot, I guess I see where you're coming from, but I find it fits a one-shot because its cyclical writing with a similar-styled resolution, not linear like a longer story. It definitely ended the story and still began it again. The writing was not stellar but it was still quite effective and appreciable.

4.5/5 from me. I'm reducing the .5 for the simple reason that the OOC-ness of the characters seemed a bit more than normal (then again, war changes people in untold ways), but it just left a bitter aftertaste character advancement-wise.

 

WBA>Reviews on ffnet.

I liked it, personally. 4/5.

 

This sequence is at the point where you blend over to the great hall of Hogwarts, but it doesn't make any sense to me. Actually, not many things in this oneshot make much sense:

- The introduction fails to interest me. Why should I care about those three anonymous goons and their unnamed ideas?

- The concept of three leaders in a civil war meeting under the described circumstances is ridiculous. Why would any of them trust the others not to ambush him? Or did they swear an unbreakable vow and you just forgot to mention it?

- There is a snowballs chance in hell that Harry and Dumbledore would just spring on Voldemorts bandwagon and accept the strange idea that somehow "defeating" death would enable them to travel back in time. What about the Flamels?

- Anyway, how could you call timetravel "cheating death" when the biological body of each traveler stays unchanged? Or will their souls somehow be transported into their younger selves? The three protagonists act as if every permutation of their timetravel has been thought through, although two of them have just heard of it. It`s rather absurd.

- Finally- what is the result of the timetravel? Either every one of the three gets their own world, or they end up in the same one. Here you have a contradiction between the dialogue of the three and their thoughts at the end.

The technical writing is ok, but the plot is like a plane crash in slowmo.

2/5