Do you have any idea just how off-putting that sentence is?

 

If you're gonna rec a story, you could at least write something about it to tell us why it isn't as terrible as it sounds.

 

Here's the summary for that fic.

Essentially just replace Harry with Draco and tadah pretty much every "Independent" fic nowadays.

 

It could have been worse, he could have mentioned that it was building towards a Draco/Ginny Harem.

 

I'm pretty sure I died a little reading that.

Never again. Just...don't.

 

Alright. I admit that I trolled with my summary. Anyway, I found the story readable and hence suggested it.

Here is another story I found good enough to read: My Reflection by quaquaquaqua.

And the summary isolitical!Harry - Uncouth, disrespectful, disillusioned, Harry Potter carves his mark in the Wizarding World as the prince of Slytherin and youngest leader of the Wizengamot. In the near future, James Potter will rise from the dead and ruin a few things.

The story is about a slytherin Harry Potter who tries to live up to his BWL image.

Link:http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6245804/1/My_Reflection

 

Can we please have a rule that if you post a fanfiction in this thread to recommend it you have to have at least one sentence saying why it is recommendable. Because the description of the last fic has nothing setting it apart from any other Slytherin Harry.

You could say that the prose is beautiful, or the characters are true to canon yet well developed further, or the idea is done in a new way that gave you ideas for your writing. Or even that its a guilty pleasure you think others may like as well.

But just giving the summary and Adjective!Name tells me fuck all. The extra last sentence just tells me what happens and not what makes it recommendable.

 

Alright. The inner workings of Slytherin are portrayed in a very believable way. The story basically is based on the concept of 'there is no good or evil'. Portrays the shades of gray in a believable manner.

The comedy was very well done and you actually enjoy the subtle barbs the characters exchange.

Also, Severus Snape is my favorite character in this story. I generally hate the greasy haired bastard.

Cassiopeia Black shrieks "Did you think Dark Lord Voldemort became the wizard he was without reading books?"

"No" muttered Harry.
"He became who he is by reading too much".
My fav dialogue.

Anyway, read the story and tell if it's library material.

 

Yeah, I know. But give it a try. The story diverges from canon from Diagon Alley itself. My thoughts were more or less the same when I read the first two chapters. The story gets better from the fourth chapter.

Trust me, you will enjoy the story as you go deeper into the plot. I enjoyed this story as much as I liked "On the way to greatness" by mira mirth.

Give it a try.

 

No sir, it's absolutely not. And I will dare to say it's not even Almost Recommendable material, at least after reading the first chapter.

Let's start with the short author note:

Yes, yes. We should ignore the prologue itself.

Moving on to the material itself.

And that's the second line of the story.

She has guarded the house diligently just to see if the house is suitable for Harry to live, and she is still not sure if anything has happened to the Potter household.

If I remember correctly, Dudley was of same age as Harry.

But leaving aside those few incidents(which were too many to count), the grammar and punctuation was horrible. Absolutely horrible. Sentence structuring was bad, really bad. It was almost unreadable. Throughout the whole prologue, Minerva just sounds like a bitch. There are only few words from Dumbledore and apart from that it's all McGonagall bitching.

It felt more than enough to leave the story then; but for sake of proper review(which the one who recced the story clearly doesn't understand), I looked through this story's review on FFn and found:

And I cringed really bad.

Edit: Ninja'd by Cheddar.

And also, I didn't use the spoilers because there were no important information divulged in those quotes. The guy seems to think that the story has improved from Chapter 4 onward(which I seriously doubt), but I read only the first chapter and it was more than enough for me. So whoever reads till the good part, please post your opinion.

 

The author note on chapter 4:

The fact that the author needs to use a poll to determine the pairing warns me that this story will be terrible.

 

My dear fellow DLP users, never judge a book by it's cover. Go over the entire story and then comment on it. The story really improves from the fourth chapter.

I liked the story and recommended it. It's your choice whether you read it completely or read the mediocre beginning and flame me for suggesting the story.

 

at rapscallion:

I haven't read the chapter, so I'll assume that most of your criticisms are pretty fair, but two of the lines you complained about (the kicking down the street, and the rumour about the potters) are lifted pretty directly from the first book. by all means slam him for doing a very lazy opening chapter, but any plot holes are surely JK's fault.

Edit: having checked, those lines, and most of the chapter, is lifted verbatim

 

Hello gs17, welcome to DLP. Use the quote option to select the portion of an earlier post you wish to argue against.

Yes, yes. The opening was horrible. I don't know why she hasn't edited the chapter. But the story gradually improves. Anyone who bothers reading the story before flaming the shit out of the first chapter will realize the fact.

*Sniff* Sadly, no-one was interested in going deeper into the story. The 11th chapter, especially was very well written and is my favorite.

 

I read the concerned chapter and I do concede that you are right. But the rumor part is still sticky.

In the canon, it is said that Minerva knew what had happened or she had an inkling to what had happened, but she wanted to hear it from Dumbledore himself, just so that she can finally accept it and move on. It may not explicitly stated but as the mental state of Minerva is given in the canon, it went with the flow. But when I read the recced fic, it straight away irked me. There were no prior information as to what was McGonagall thinking on this aspect. And also it has been a long time since I reread the first book, so I didn't pick it up.

Though as I said earlier, you were right on both points and it is lifted from Canon itself; as a matter of fact the whole first chapter is just the summary of first chapter in canon. :| (another thing bad about this fic)

 

Thanks for expanding and explaining why you're recommending it mohan. But... it has some really big problems.

For example in chapter 2 Harry teleports a snake that he's not touching dozens of miles by wishing that some glass disappears. He then decides to teleport himself and that snake across the Atlantic ocean. To somewhere he's never seen before and knows nothing about. He knows he can do this by wishing really hard because earlier by wishing really hard something different happened. He succeeds. This is thrown away in between paragraphs. Later on in the same chapter, Harry knows he can teleport between continents but is astounded by the idea of magic.

The author has the wrong priorities. That right there is the plot of an entire fic. A boy and his snake, and his continuing adventures of trying to escape the zookeepers and get to Brazil. You can have the snarky comments and comedy that the author is supposed to be good at (although I didn't really notice them), you can have Harry slowly gaining control of his magic through necessity when sneaking aboard trains and ships, friendship and emotion, heartbreak when they part, adventure on the high seas, completely new magical wildlife to meet in the rainforest of Brazil, running around the favelas of Brazil shooting terrorists, firing nukes above America to stop a Russian invasion... oh, wait, thats CoD2.

But seriously, you have a Harry that is on the one hand emo as fuck, on the other is an omnipotent!Harry who shrugs off killing curses, and is both supposedly extremely smart yet is also so stupid that he knows he can teleport around the world as an afterthought at will yet chooses to live with people he absolutely hates. His main fucking motivation is hatred of the Dursleys, yet he tortures himself by staying with them.

Thats not to say that its all bad. The fact that there is extended Black family alive that Harry meets is extremely nice. It's almost worth recommending the chapter of Arcturus' funeral to show how fanfics don't have to just use characters that had explicit screentime in the books. How often are the Weasleys put across as the only members of the Weasley family with Arthur being Lord Weasley or some shite like that? Or Neville being the sole Longbottom when he has lots of relatives who tried to kill him off when he was young?

And the fact that the non-Harry children are written as children is good. Well, their vocabulary is too adult, but their focus and their relationships with each other are petty and small but true to life rather than adults in small bodies. I also like the fact that Harry is sometimes actually wrong.

Its almost recommendable since while it has some nice stuff too many of the stupid cliches are there like stupidly helpful goblins, Harry is both omnipotent and a stupid emo fuck, the author wants to do a seven year epic but doesn't even always have the plot of the current chapter done, the first two chapters are horrifically bad, etc.

 

Despite all the flames and critical comments I was intrigued enough by the redo- aspect of the story to give it a try. And I didn't regret it! It gets better after the setting up of the plot elements- both Reformed!Draco and Manipulative!Dumbledore were done well enough considering the average quality of fics using those overdone and oftentimes terrible cliches.

3/5

 

Nothing makes me close a fic faster than kids scolding adults.