Glad I dropped it.

 

I see a lot of 3/5s in this thread, but personally I'm scratching my head at that.

Breaking it down like many people have, I suppose I could understand a 3/5 rating when looking at all of the story's merits and failings individually, but the fact remains that I would never recommend this story to anyone.

The ending is so ungodly bad and out of place (not even taking into account the alternate ending) that to be honest I would actively discourage anyone from starting this story simply to avoid wasting time on it as I did. Honestly I feel as if I've been trolled.

1/5 for shocking disappointment. Do not read.

 

To be fair, many of the ratings were made before the climax came out of nowhere.

 

You can change your vote. If you click on the stars you see your first vote and you are able to select anew.

 

No, he pulled a Bioware.

3.5/5 for the majority of the story

1/5 for a bullshit ending.

 

Thieving bastard....

 

Oh shit, sorry mate. Didn't even see that in your previous post. My bad.

Great minds and all that.

 

Yeah, none makes me scratch my head more than Pers's, especially the bolded line:

No no no, fuck that shit. We don't give points for stories ending. We give points to those stories that end satisfactorily, and not how this ended. I know completed fanfiction is apparently a rare breed nowadays, but celebrating an ending as bad as this one is simply because it actually ended and there's another fanfiction out there with a Completed tag (Which is apparently so rare we're giving freebies out like this), is complete and utter shit. I was pretty shocked and all that when so many people were like, "An actually complete fanfic?!" with Incorruptible, but I didn't know it got so bad that people will give points for mere endings, even if they know it's crap like this one is.

(And yes, maybe I'm overreacting there, but come on.)

Onto this story itself: Somewhat good fluffy timesink guilty pleasure type that didn't decide to extend itself to something more, and shot itself in the face with the abruptness of the ending. Trash Bin.

 

Yes, you're overreacting. Bitches take this rating stuff too seriously, especially when splitting hairs for stories that won't make it into the Library. I was being figurative more than anything, the question in my mind being "Should I rate it a 2/5 or 3/5?", not saying "Herp derp, it gets a whole entire extra point because someone gave it a bad ending to put it out of its misery." Yeah, I could have been a bit more clear, but whatever. When I rate, I use whole numbers rather than chickenshit "2.5/5" fractional ratings and my system is pretty simple, based on where I think a story belongs:

5/5: C2; 4/5: Library; 3/5: Recycled Bin, 2/5: I never want to see the story again; 1/5: the OP should be ashamed.

In the end, I thought it probably deserved a 2/5 or 3/5 and the difference came down to the question, "Could someone on DLP enjoy reading this if they came across it?" I thought they could if they had advance warning of a sub-par ending and knew to avoid any Wayne's World variations. (I didn't read the second ending myself).

I'm not as picky about stories I know won't make it to the Library--every story in the Recycling Bin has serious flaws or it wouldn't be there. Knowledge is Power and A Second Chance at Life are two of the better stories there, after all. I think someone on the hunt for guilty pleasure fluff or some such could find reading the first several chapters as interesting as anything else in the Recycling Bin if they knew what they were getting into (which this thread manages) and didn't have unrealistic expectations.

 

I enjoyed it, but it was only worth a 3/5 from me.

 

Fixed that for you.

 

I read the alternate ending and it is much better. That doesn't change the fact that after 20 or so chapters of reasonable and fairly entertaining build-up we get one or two chapters of poorly written action out of fucking nowhere. If the author had the guts to write a happy ending in the first place, I'd probably give it a 2/5, but as it is now, I can only agree with my previous rating of 1/5.

Now I understand why people were so apprehensive of anything written by that person.

 

I think in every story he pulls a Britta.

Yeah, I enojoyed the story enough as a timekiller. Will I ever re-read it? Most likely not. The author writes decent fluff, but his stories simply fail when they progress beyond "Harry is dating *insertSlytheringirlname*".

Actually, if he were to retool his stories to simply focus on the fluff it would probably work better. Because he sure as hell can't manage action or tension in a story properly for me.

2/5