Title: The King
Author: seraph orion black
Genre: Mystery
DLP Category: Alternates
Pairing: Harry/Fluer
Status: Work in Progress
Summary: Harry Potter was executed thirty five years ago in a case of brutal multiple murders. No one knows why. But Alexander Potter, the boy-who-lived, knows something the others don't and he's finally decided to talk about it
Link : http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5327824/1/The_King

 

Stop putting shitty stories up for review. Its not funny anymore

 

Seriously, why? Why? If you're not a terribad troll then you just lack any sort of bullshit filter, judgment center and critical thinking ability. Do the literate world a favor and desist immediately.

 

Right, I'm going to do this old-school and write as I read.

First of all, my obligatory extra-story scan. Chapters. 10 in total, 58k. Good. Began two years ago - not good. Chapter 10 is called 'My Harem', which isn't promising. Other chapter titles include 'Say WHAT!' 'YOU WANNA TALK! and 'Catnip!', which is less promising. Author is called 'seraph orion black' and I see a pattern emerging. Author profile - he/she can write coherently.Loves Ron, Hates Hermione. 1 other story, not completed. Premise - strange. Vaguely original.

Alrighty.

Story Start - interesting beginning. Long, awkwardly worded sentences but grating style is ignorable. Some thought has gone into the prologue with regards to logistics, and the author has a clear vision. Repeats words and phrases occasionally, like 'scanned everyone in the room as if he was judging everyone in the room' - guys needs an attentive beta. Harry is apparently a body-builder. He is uber powerful, within a thousand words, and many quake at his mere presence. Author emboldens, not italicises; pet peeve #23. First real grammatical mistakes start appearing. It's very... melodramatic. Harry obviously isn't quite as smart as he thinks he is, nor as the author thinks he is. End of chapter - by far the strangest interpretation of Harry I've seen in a while. Prologue probably doesn't quite have the awesome factor the author was aiming for. I am not enamoured.

Onwards - Everyone has a double-barreled name, of course, taking your partner's name not existing in the wizarding world. Just like canon (owait). We're presented with everyone's CV before any actual story starts. The grammar at its worst;

Everyone talks and behaves like teenagers despite them being 60-odd. In fact, everyone has the exact same speech pattern and set of expressions for the duration of the single-scene chapter. Eurgh, slang in the narrative: 'but Alex shut them up real quick.' End chapter, how fucking short was that? Why split a prologue in two? I am not enamoured.

Onwards - Format of the fic is 'storytime with various hashed together ooc characters'. This feels like a cheap way of jumping into a very shallow mixed-pov 1st person narrative - the entire thing is monotone chunks of 'speech' punctuated by MEMORY flashbacks, which are the only places the author uses italics. The content is thought-out without being particularly inspiring. I've just witnessed the worst fanfic romance scene since that Dumbledore/Whomping Willow oneshot. Oc's galore, but in past tense and vaguely referenced - it's a copout. A way to avoid too much in the way of characterisation and simply shit narrative onto a paper. I've reread from the top again and still can't keep track of what is actually happening in the ambling, flat, past tense saga that Tonks is telling. This was an interesting idea, in how to tell a story, but is massively flawed in execution. End chapter. I am... not enamoured.

I think I'll stop here. This really isn't for me. A brief Verdict; characterisation is nonexistent. There are some interesting ideas in here, somewhere. Spelling is actually pretty good. Grammar less so. It feels... like there was something engrossing on TV in the background for the half hour the author spent cobbling this together. More importantly, it feels like it was written by thirteen year olds, for thirteen year olds, as an alternative to fics like Dumbledore/Whomping Willow oneshots and intended to be an edgy, alternative piece that makes you 'think' ('battle of the three egos' I'm assuming was supposed to be a Freudian pun?).

The author needs to go with something a lot simpler and practise short-form writing, scene by scene, making it as good as possible, before attempting anything more. There's too many shortcuts taken here to be palatable, and where the author doesn't take shortcuts the content is bland and uncompelling. The characterisation is the worst thing about it and it doesn't seem to make much sense because of that.

This is a true example of what would really happen if you put a thousand monkeys in a room for a thousand years and expected them to write Shakespeare - you might eventually get it, but there'd be so much shit flying around it would hard to see your hand in front of your face.

I am a little disappoint. In myself, that is, for bothering to write a review. 2/5

 

I'm just moron, so please delete this thread. I'm missing Santi story so much, that reading about Durmstrang in-betweens and exam session just fuc*ed my brain. DELETE

 

Feanorrr, you posted this fic in For Review fourteen minutes after Sirius009 posted it in Harry/Fleur.

You didn't think you'd maybe wait and see if it got a moderate response first?

Did you even read the fucking thing?

I'm seriously annoyed. You've just hung a relatively young semi-newbie author out to dry in one of the harshest review-panels in the fandom, because you're 'missing Santi story so much'.

You know you could just go ahead and delete yourself, right?

 

Although you were stupid in reccing this story, I agree that Santi shoulders some of the blame as well. If he updated his story more often perhaps we wouldn't have idiots spamming the For Review subforum.

*hint hint*

 

Santi said he's working on it. Don't pressure him. We don't want subpar work.

 

After originally looking through this when it was posted somewhere else (Almost Recommended, maybe?) I thought it had an interesting idea with some pretty shoddy execution. The time jumps all over the goddamn place, there's unanswered questions everywhere, and I just don't care about the characters. Harry In Name Only (Hereafter referred to as HINO, to save on space,) is intriguing, but he's intriguing as the older HINO at the beginning of the story. The flashback style leaves openings to skip all the boring parts of the story. The author instead appears to be skipping the action. I'm pretty sure that's the wrong way to go about things.

The idea of HINO being a monster to the public, but for good reasons would be interesting, if we ever saw it. At the moment, though, the author is too busy recounting parts of HINO's life that, quite frankly, nobody here will care about. Hell, this is stuff nobody with a brain will care about. It feels like there's thousands upon thousands of utterly wasted words that neither develop characters or move the plot. Hell, can someone even explain what the plot is?

I thought, at the beginning, that the plot was something like this: Harry turns himself in, is executed, and Alex explains his life, and why he did the things he did. Honestly, just from the way Harry acts to start the story, that sounds interesting enough to warrant a read. However, the plot seems to have become "Alex tells everyone Harry's entire life story, including the bits that nobody gives a shit about."

As for HINO, why bother with this character at all? Or, in detail, why create a copy of Harry to replace him, and create an OC to call Harry? There's just an extra step in there that bothers me. The HINO character is obviously the character the story revolves around, so in theory it's about Harry, but the story isn't about Harry. It's about HINO. Nonetheless, I'd find it interesting if I got a chance to see more of the older HINO, or at least the actions he's being executed for.

I really liked the idea of the beginning of the story, and trudged through some less than exemplary writing to see how HINO got to where he was. However, the story was killed by the author. It wasn't killed terrible writing, but instead murdered by poor plotting. An interesting beginning killed by an impossibly boring middle. Assuming, of course, that it's not over yet. I for one won't be checking back in.

 

I've read some pretty stupid things on this forum over the years but that rates highly among them. Die in a fire you cunt.

 

Tis was a light hearted comment showing my appreciation for Santi's work. Calm down a tad will you.

 

Seratin's axe-wound is dribbling again, ignore him.

PS: Story is terribad. 1/5

 

Seriously, guys. There's like, a percentage of this forum that, everywhere they go in unrelated threads has to bring up The Santi and his fic. Stop sucking his cock, it's getting annoying.

Yes, it is a good fic. Yes, it should be well reviewed.

But it is hardly the end-all of HP fanfiction. It is unnecessary to continue bringing it up in threads that have absolutely shit to do with it.

SPO, you aren't the only one who does this, and I get it was supposed to be a lighthearted joke. But still, come the fuck on. Feanorrr clearly wasn't and it makes him a huge ass retard.

As for this fic - terrible. And yes, Feanorrr, please jump off a cliff somewhere. Or at least burn your computer - you're too much of an idiot to understand how to use it properly

 

^ shit always happens for the flavor of the year. Denarian Series, Wastelands of Time, Jbern's work, all of them have had it done. And throughout all of this time there have been people like you saying shit like that.

The cycle continues!

 

So let's stop it here, shall we?


And for the story that Feanorrrr recommended:

Writing isn't too bad, although there are some errors, repetitive sentences, and ridiculous use of vocabularies. But still, it's 'readable'. So, I give it 'P' for 'Poor'

Story is confusing. I tried to understand it for a while, but it's so boring and uninteresting, so I stopped trying. A bit of humor here and here, not all of them funny, though... 'A' for 'Acceptable'

Characters are bad and laughable. 'D' for 'Dreadful'

Total Score: (2+3+1)/3 = 2. So, it's 2/5

PS:
- Dreadful=1 ; Poor=2; Acceptable=3; Exceed Expectations=4; Outstanding=5
- Troll=0

 

Pretty much what ficfan said, I'll add 0.5 pt for the idea that I find interesting and the potential of the story; the author should really start the plot instead of wasting time with useless chapter like the last one and this could be nice.

So 2.5/5 from me. And I think you are a little harsh with the story because Feanorrrr the Dumbass posted it.

 

I read most of it. I'm not sure it's as terrible as GL made it out to be (that's honestly the worst fanfic romance scene you've read since Dumbledore/Whomping Willow? Really?), but it wasn't good either. I'll echo most of GL's gripes - poor grammar, poor characterization, etc - but it does get a little better moving on, and there were a few moments that made me chuckle a bit. I don't think it tries to be smart (GL is overthinking the "Three Egos" thing; it just refers to three people with big egos - Voldemort, Dumbledore, and Harry), and I'd probably classify it as a guilty pleasure fic.

On the characterization front, I especially take issue with Harry's character. He's similar to the Harry in MoR in that he talks like an adult and stands up for himself like an adult. He's not nearly as hyper-intelligent or pretentious as MoR!Harry, but he's got a lot of the same mannerisms (fighting Dumbledore on going to Durmstrang at 10; 11 if the author's timeline is to be believed? Bullshit.) At the same time, I'll say the same thing as i say for MoR: if you can get past the fact that an 11 (12?) year old talks like he's in his twenties, then it's at least readable, and not utterly terrible. The other characters aren't developed enough to really have characterizations yet. Which is, I suppose, another point against this fic. Harry's the only character with any sort of development. The other characters are only there for brief interludes, and you never get a sense of being able to understand them.

Also, this (from the Harry/Fleur thread):

Apparently, in this world, Hogwarts starts the year you turn twelve. (Harry was born in '76, starts school in '88). I know he's going to Durmstrang, but it's implied that he would have been going to Hogwarts that year, and not the year before.

I'd rate it a 2.5/5.

 

Nah, I was talking about chapter 9, where apparently Harry goes to sleep on July 2nd and wakes up on June 30. That's fucked up. But if we're talking about the 'going to Hogwarts age' thingy, it's also fucked up, because Alex Potter apparently goes to Hogwarts in 1991, at age 11. Author needs to get his maths straight.

Oh, and rating. Probably around 2/5, since it's a fairly original idea, and I can actually read it and understand most parts.

 

About the age, Harry is born in September/October/November, I think. So he is 11 nearly 12 when he starts school, like canonHermione.

 

Honestly tried to read it. Only made it through a few chapters. 2/5 is generous and 1/5 is far more realistic. Found myself just skimming the chapters I did read looking for something interesting. Never found it and didn't continue reading.