@Sesc. I think I see your point. Basically, Harry from Canon wouldn't, and you know this, but since the premise seemed interesting then this infraction was forgiven for the sake of this story, not the Canon story up till then.

Which actually leaves me at a crossroads with the fic. If the author did this intentionally, then he knew the awkwardness of canon and chose to omit it. If this is the case, then I'm not giving the author near enough credit. Then again, it could be a sign of laziness. Not sure.

I guess the solution would be to just read and see.

@T3t. At a younger age she may not have had the motivation or the opportunity. An opportunity presented itself, plus she may have been old enough to know what she wanted. It could go either way.

Y'know, for someone who said he wouldn't follow this I sure am defending it. Should I backpedal faster, maybe?

 

Na, don't backpedal. This is acceptable as a guilty-pleasure fic for some, but the writing is too sloppy for me to really be able to enjoy it at all.

 

Interesting enough to keep following (that, and I'm a sucker for Daphne), but not really expecting anything great to come of this.

2.5/5.

OH! And updated about a minute and a three/fourths after I made this review.

 

I agree. It's just fricken boring. The characters are way too out of range for me to even like.

 

^Despite the thin attempts at the start(I am backpedaling), this author is actually pretty decent at characterization. The interplay between Harry and Daphne is consistent, and I can definitely see why I thought the forced isolation was necessary. Forced, but it really did further the plot. The Killing Curse was a perfect way to cement that as well.

Which means the premise of the story, or the hook, is integral to both the plot and character growth.(My words taste rather bitter.)

I really am liking Daphne. She came off very sauve with Harry and full of herself, but those walls came down with Tracey. I however don't really like Harry's character, considering the author is trying fit him into a Canon mold he can't quite get right.

Also...dialogue is a little over the top in places..."Pandora's box." Really?

I'm also hoping for more reasons behind Daphne's interest besides social-climber. It almost seems like she is furthering his isolation on purpose. That would be awesome, though to make realistic, I hope it fails. Just because I think her and Harry's characters would change each other.

Still won't rate, but it's looking good.

 

Whatever, haters gonna hate.

And I've made enough points (and in enough threads of HP/DG stories) that my fanboyness has led to me being irritated moreso than HP/x by shitty stories. So yeah... nice try.

/dances with Sesc over meadows of green grass into the sunset.

This story is awesome for the ideas it presents. I've read better technical stories, but the writing is more than good enough and the rest of it's just awesome. It's still too short to really rate, but it's like Zephros' Daphne or Excentry's Romilda - a story can have flaws and still at the end of the day be a damn good story.

So 4/5 still stands.

 

After reading the newest chapter, I'm convinced that this story is a perfect example "A for effort, D for execution".

I'm really liking Daphne's characterization and I like the premise of this entire story, but everywhere I turn I'm finding reasons to dislike this story because the author's attempts at writing just keep falling flat.

Harry's character has changed from canon!Harry at the beginning of the story to OOC!Harry when he starts practicing the unforgivables then back to canon!Harry when he gets all pissy saying how he'll never use them again and finally back to OOC!Harry when he's trying to justify himself to Daphne (""The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin! I understand more than you think!"). While OOC!Harry may the characterization that the author chooses for this story, it doesn't change the fact that the transitions between them feel awkward as fuck.

From a writer's point of view, almost everything Daphne said to Tracey was completely redundant. All that she said was stuff that any competent reader should have picked out from the narrative. And that's not counting the fact that he mentioned everything she said in the author's note in the previous chapter. Why would you say something like this:

and then have one of your character's say the exact same goddamn thing?



For the most part, the author doesn't seem to understand how contractions work, spelling "won't" as "wont" and "let's" as "lets". He butchers homonyms, using "its", "it's", "there", "their", "they're", "your" and "you're" seemingly at random, swapping them out whenever he feels like it. Sentence fragments can be found in every other paragraph and they stick out like sore thumbs. His choice of words is really strange too, with stuff like "skewered champion ideas" and "Harry drawled" (Harry drawling, seriously?).

The saddest part in all of this is that I generally like HP/DG stories and I want to like this one but all of this retarded bullshit keeps getting in the way of my enjoyment.

 

Definitely a guilty pleasure fic for me. In fact, if it wasn't for Daphne's awesome characterization, I wouldn't have made it past the first chapter due to its less than sterling writing.

Still, a fun read if you don't take it too seriously.

3.8/5 because I'm a member of the same fanclub as Sesc and Vlad.

 

Third chapter is marginally better than the first two, but...

Holy adverbs, Batman!

The writing is simply too weak. His profile says that he's 18, and he's managed to write 400k words in the last year and a half, but it reads more like the ramblings of an 8th grader scratching away on paper than a high-school senior with access to a decent word processor.

 

What's wrong with touchy feely Daphne?

Why can't you think that Daphne is trying to use her time with Harry to seduce him or something like that.

I think that this is going to be one of the greatest HP/DG stories ever

4/5 (-1 for shitty english)

 

So, Daphne becomes ever more awesome. On the other hand, the dialogue and grammar mishaps are only getting worse.

This is getting really really really frustrating to read. I want to keep reading on, if only to see how Daphne and Harry's interactions play out, but the technical quality of the writing makes me want to punch the screen. Repeatedly.

Does this lad have a beta?

 

This story is something unforgivable. I have an irrational liking for H/Daphne as much as the next guy, but even this fic tests my patience for shit I have to wade through to get it. The dialogue is stilted. Daphne's characterization, while avoiding many major cliches, is annoying and comes off as too knowledgeable. The ease at which Harry casts the AK, and his general disposition, while somewhat justifiable, shows the markings of a bad Indy Harry fic.

2/5 and that's only because it is, technically, readable.

 

Cons:

First and foremost, ugly formatting. It doesn't take much to format your story properly and it makes easier for the reader to read it. As it stands, the author's notes can hardly be differentiated from the main story body.

Secondly, the author's notes are almost as long as the chapter itself. And I find it annoying to have them both at the beginning and at the end. Decide on one place and stick to it.

Thirdly, writing is bad. Grammar errors abound and sentence formation is clunky at best. Punctuation quotes for dialouges are missing.

Lastly, and most importantly there is no story in here. There is a plot definitely, but the author doesn't seem to have taken the extra step to turn it into a properly framed work. I have seen plenty of works, some based on fairly good plots which have been ruined only because the author was not able to form a story around it.

Pros:

Interesting plot and somewhat non-cliched characterisation of Daphne.

 

I'm amazed this isn't seen more often. It's such a simple and obvious detail that's always overlooked.

As for the fic, it's kinda shoddy at this point. I like Daphne as much the next guy, too. We have just over 12k words at this point (for God's sake, stop recc'ing fics too early people!), a quarter of which is author notes. The writing would be acceptable (even good) if it weren't for the constant and persistent errors (commas, apostrophes, missing words). The plot idea is passable, though another author did something similar in Work by Author a few weeks back (which ended with Harry not using Unforgivables on the dragon much to everyone's disappointment). The execution, however, is seriously flawed.

I totally agree with most people in this thread: the absence of the scene or scenes with Daphne convincing Harry to use the Killing Curse is hurting this fic, character and plot wise. Nobody is asking for much from it. Just show how Daphne managed to convince canon!Harry to use the Killing Curse. This is the crucial point in the entire setup. There's no excuse for not devoting 500-1000 words to at least providing a bare bones representation of this moment.

That aside, Daphne's characterisation is interesting enough. However, we need some motivation from her. As it is, it's the typical interested-because-he's-the-BWL shtick. Everything, for that matter, suffers from the early recc'ing: nothing is developed enough.

At this point, this deserves no better than a 2.5/5. The iffy writing and lack of crucial scenes (and actual lack of content) makes this story unsuitable for Library at this point.

 

Well, I just read the first chapter and was incredibly disappointed.

Harry finds a dragon attacking him amusing, after two paragraphs of how scared and angry he was when walking out? Rubbish.

2/5 for being slightly better than trite.

 

This doesn't seem right to me, the killing curse is instant death, not 'muscles flailing momentarily trying to figure out what the hell was going on' and it is most certainly not ugly, it is the most effective way to give someone an instant painless death.

 

This is ridiculous...

I got through most of it because it has Daphne in it, though her draw didn't last long.

Bad writing, poorly constructed characters, utter tripe.

1/5

 

I'm always a sucker for Harry/Daphne, but I realize that comes with the knowledge that Daphne will need a ton of character development to avoid Mary Sue-dom. While this Daphne avoids the Ice Queen cliche, which is nice, she also doesn't receive any decent characterization.

On top of that, Hermione is thrown to the wayside without anything more than a sentence explaining why. I like the plot idea, I've seen it done successfully, but this fic doesn't deliver.

2/5 for keeping my attention past the first chapter, but not much else.