The worst thing isn't that

Spoiler

Harry dies.

Nor is it the worst thing that it came out of nowhere.

No, the worst thing is that it's completely at odds with the rest of the story, which is a fluff-fest with a bit of political drama on the side.

Giving a fluff story the ending of a tragedy is just weird.

 

Like Daphne being raped, off-screen, every evening for the entire duration of the winter hols, in Harry Potter and The Magical Marriage Contracts... a story that was, up to that point, played for laughs? :facepalm

And, since I looked at the preceding spoiler, thinking something so short must surely be innocuous, I may rethink reading this. :| Oh well, my bad.

 

It almost feels like MM did the same as Clell did in his concubine fic - changed the ending to spite the readers for questioning him. Or at least, that's what I heard happened with Chattel.

I enjoyed the first part of this, it wasn't great, but it was readable fluff, with a bit of plot scattered here and there. Then the ending comes out of nowhere, everyone picks up the idiot ball, and it all goes even more mehish.

 

I liked the story, for the most part. But when he got to the point Voldemort storming the castle, it turned retarded. I'd give it a 3/5 for it.

 

So thinking it through, one part of the whole chapter 25 clusterfuck caused me more anger than the rest: Harry tackling Voldemort and snapping his wand. I mean, seriously.

I'm not totally opposed to melee combat having a place in Wizarding duels, especially in crossovers. People like Hagrid, or Buffy, or even Teal'c on a good day, are easy to imagine wading into combat and fucking up a Death Eater's day. But this isn't some melee monster, it isn't even someone who fights in melee at all; it's Harry Fucking Potter, and he just tackles full strength Voldemort and fucks up his shit.

With regards to the three wasted opportunities mentioned, I thought of three cool things that could've happened:

1) Fudge and Umbridge confront Harry, Dumbledore, and Snape in the office over the Blood Quill. Dumbledore is about to wuss out as usual, but Harry makes the argument that the ministry is going to fall anyway and it might as well be to them fairly bloodlessly instead of Voldemort. Dumbledore had been fairly open minded in this story so far, so it's easy to imagine him listening and going through with it. Fudge and Umbridge are captured and proceed to the next arc.

2) Harry's Christmas rebellion is uninterrupted by Voldemort or Dumbledore and the students rise up and seize the castle from Umbridge, as the professors stand by and let it happen. McGonagall semireluctantly activates the castle's ward defenses and Harry prepares to be sieged by the Ministry. Proceed to the next arc.

3) Voldemort invades the castle on schedule, but is too leery of the prophecy to risk killing Harry, or in fact doing anything too rash. He instead merely takes over and locks up Harry in the Chamber of Secrets. Later, Tracy, Ron, and the whole gang somehow get loose in the castle, Ron does his parseltongue impersonation trick, and they break into the chamber and steal Harry back under Voldemort's nose. Then, the whole gang escapes through some secret passage. Now the kids are fighting a war on the run while in the middle of a teenage hormone fest; proceed to the next arc.

It felt like there was 20 chapters of buildup and 4 chapters of real story, with a shitty one chapter epilogue. Really, so much wasted potential here.

 

So munkeymaniac did a Rowling?

 

No, Rowling had the decency to write a (fairly) good ending.

 

After reading the ending, it... Substantially worse.
I think this:

sums it up almost perfectly.



And - munkeymaniac didn't pull a Rowling, he pulled a Bioware.

 

He's posted an alternate ending, titled "alternate ending, if you want happy". Oh.

This is the worst thing he could have done. Alternate endings are a copout. God, I remember how annoyed I was when Project Dark Overlord did it.

 

This was going to get a 4/5 for 20-some-odd chapters of relative enjoyment.

Then the ending crashed and burned, so I'd say a 2/5.

But then there was a happy all around ending that makes me want to give it a 1/5.

I'll average it out and give this story a somewhat undeserved 2/5. That should have been higher, but if you're planning to write a surprise/tragic ending the entire time you're writing, at least stick to your guns.

 

This. If you have the guts to kill the main character on your story, at least stick with it.

 

Um, I for one believe in Alternate Endings, and Darkest Timelines...

 

I've been following this story since chapter one, but it has always been generic at best.

I usually enjoy a well written Harry/female Slytherin story. I enjoy stories with an intelligent Harry, and a Slytherin girlfriend helps in that regard. This is probably the reason why I like those fics that focus on the lack of common sense in wizards.

This story is just meh. I could easily forgive the unlikely premise, but the romance felt totally rushed. There was no real interaction, way too much show and not enough tell. A well written romance fic has to make the reader like both participants in my opinion. Due to the lack of 'tell' this never happened.

The chapters that took place at Hogwarts were just average, nothing exciting, nothing original. The idea of students rebelling against Umbridge is interesting, but the author sadly didn't elaborate on that.

I could excuse the ending, no matter how pathetic Harry beating Voldemort to death is. The abruptness of all of that is okay-ish, using physical force to overcome one of the greatest wizards of all time is just ridiculous.

This fucking everyone-is-happy ending changes that. This author seriously needs some sort of backbone. Many people didn't like the conclusion? So what? Stand by your fucking decisions and show some backbone.

This is just pathetic as it is.

2.5/5

 

The worst thing is, we've all read it. Most of us have semi-enjoyed it or at least acknowledged it as a guilty pleasure and deep down we all know its fucking shit. It's a terrible piece of fan fiction and when we have a plethora of incredible stuff still popping up in WBA with decent frequency, the disinterest in the series in terms of fan fiction seems to be leading us to lower our standards.

 

Wow, if you'd be so kind as to write something like these, it'd be awesome.

 

I can't stand the focus of this writer on some vapid college romance with dozens of characters and weird character deformations like in Ron's case. It annoys the hell out of me and his other stories have the same theme. It's as if the writer's idea of romance is as some kind of backdrop which changes every few weeks with no closer look on the details. In the end just filler text with no worth.

Furthermore the story's plot is really shallow and the integration with the old OOTP concept doesn't work for me. The end feels rushed with ignored plot branches which makes the story even more pointless than it appeared at the beginning. I can't give this more than 1.5/5, rounded down to 1 to counter the ridiculous 3/5 median.

 

It all started out so well... Just think, take the idea of Harry losing the horcrux in the graveyard, have an open minded and helpful Dumbledore, a open rebellion against Umbridge... There was so much potential here, but it all fell flat somehow. At times I feel like he was writing this via a Harry Potter FanFic Checklist or something.

And I was fine with it all, hell I was ready to give it a 3.5/5 and YMMV. But then he adds on the alternate ending. No, fuck that. If you go and cater to the fucking morons that inhabit the ff.net comments section, then you lose all respect from me.

1/5, so close, yet so very far

 

Some good, some not so good in this story. I'm not bothering with spoiler tags on everything, but will try to keep things fairly vague.

Some of the good:

• The story premise was different from the cutout "Harry meets ice queen Slytherin" story type, which usually revolves around some kind of rescue from sexual assault and/or an improbable exchange of witty banter between Harry and the romantic interest. (That said, Abraxan did the "Harry falls in love with next door girl" thing better in Refiner's Fire).
• I found the initial romance refreshingly lighthearted and promising. Harry was reserved and intelligent and didn't fall into rage/angst mode.
• Tonks in the introduction.
• I liked the way Tracey's mother was done.
• Neville's responses to things seemed about the most natural in the book.
• Snape's reaction to Davis and Potter dating one another was interesting.
• The promise of a much hotter resistance to Umbridge and a real infighting in the castle.
• The events in the graveyard had a lot of promise as a plot element. Likewise for the intrigue with the ICW.

Some not-so-good:

• Despite the promise of the whole Greenglass Sr./ICW angle, nothing came of it. Why was it even in there?
• Lots of typos and errors abound; reading in places is like parsing a bad OCR scan.
• Inconsistent tone; lighthearted romance, followed by darker themes and a tragic ending not telegraphed at all.
• Students sucking face in front of teachers--lack of decorum strains credulity.
• Ron's 180-degree turnaround was far out of character: he suddenly and unbelievably acquired adult maturity and self-realization that are completely at odds with his canon self.
• Lengthy exposition getting into the heads of Ginny, Draco, and Umbridge was annoying. Like the mustache-twirling evil-Dumbledore trope, it takes away any mystery from characters' motivations and rather than add depth, makes them seem more shallow.
• In particular, Umbridge's motivations and reactions were unbelievable, inconsistent, and inappropriate for the situation. She's a far better politician in canon than she showed here. Cancelling Christmas hols for all of the future leaders of magical society? Right. Likewise with how she rapidly escalated the conflict with Dumbledore to a final showdown.
• Vernon's and Petunia's reactions to the reveal that the Davises are wizards: you don't invite someone over to your house for tea and then fly off the handle at a moment's notice, screaming "Freaks!"
• The Battle of Hogwarts chapter was horribad.
• The epilogue was worse; alternative endings are to be avoided.

On balance, I rated it 3/5, rounding up. Had the ending been excellent, it might have warranted inclusion in the Library despite its flaws. As is, I think the Recycling Bin is appropriate: a flawed story with a dozen or so good chapters, several that are so-so, a bad ending, and many loose ends. It gets a point for being Complete.

 

I agree with you on the Pro's of the story. I really liked how he was hit with the AK in the graveyard, and the students uprising against Umbridge. I also like his Dumbledore. I think he wrote DD pretty well. I like a open-minded and "willing to help Harry" type DD instead of what he was in the books, and how he treated Harry in the books. I much preferred DD in this story than the books.

Though I do like reading about an Evil!DD once in a while (and well written), similar to that story on Ficwad "Flames of Betrayal" (though I don't think DD was that well written in the story, it was an interesting idea, to say the least).

 

Wow, that ending... Wow.