Eh. I don't judge people based on what they read or write. Heck, I don't completely judge people even by their spoken words.

But I will admit that there's a distinct lack of emotion and/or situational extrapolation in that particular writer's stories.

I'm more inclined to believe that this is due to a serious lack of writing talent and a lack of desire to improve himself/herself, rather than some deep psychological issues.

Its also quite apparent that he/she tends to write a rather skewed version of the original universe of whatever fandom he/she is writing in. But then, that is pretty much an integral part of fanfiction isn't it?

What I would be very interested in seeing is a semi-talented writer picking up some of the more off-kilter ideas in those fics and take it from there.

There are some genuinely good ideas there. Or at least genuinely good material for fanfiction.

 

Damn, it's been 2 or 3 years since I've read that one... It's just so out of fucking nowhere kind of stuff. I mean Hermione and her house elf fetish (suits her right for this kind of shit).

Let's just say that it took me a lazy evening and a 6-pack of random brew to go through it again... Heh, EBF4 soundtrack helps...

 

Lily-and-the-Art-of-Being-Sisyphus

Lily is not quite a normal little girl. The Dursleys always say she's a freak just like her freakish parents, her uncle Death seems to be convinced she's the grim reaper, and her ever political and invisible best friend Wizard Lenin just thinks she should take over the world. On top of all that the secret society of wizards think she's Jesus. AU female!Harry among other things.

A very entertaining crack story which incorporates some funny philosophical theories.

 

Title: Fraterculus
Author: bloodsox88
Pairing: Harry/Daphne probably
Rating: M
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7353678/1/Fraterculus

Story Summary: It may be Harry's little brother's destiny to save the world but it's up to Harry to make it so. Follow Harry as he struggles to keep his family safe while trying to have a life of his own. /Check out my profile for more details.

Interesting take on Harry being the older brother of the 'chosen one'. The first 5 or 6 chapters are a bit draining, but once Harry get's to Hogwarts it improves greatly. James and Lily are around and the don't hate Harry but aren't treated as uber-powerful adults that solve everything.

'Danny', his brother is has the 'uber - powerful' wizard abilities and a prophecy about him that have devastating effects on his family until he learns to control them. After the Dark Lord goes missing, the family goes into self imposed exile against the wishes of Dumbledore.

The Harry and Daphne characters aren't cannon at all, which takes a bit to get used to but is done well.

The story hits a bit of a stride in the Hogwarts Year, both school and world politics are introduces, Harry is an asshole, that is obsessed with learning and trying to protect his brother, and the author does a good job of keeping my interest and wondering what is going to happen.

The story is a bit slow, has not the fasted update rate, not a lot of current direct conflict(stuff happens but it's mostly subtle), and still a bit on the boring side. I'd rate it a 3 or 4 and that could be library worthy.

 

[IMGUR]http://i.imgur.com/le633cN.jpg[/IMGUR]



Edit - Nevermind. My Imgur skills failed me.

Edit 2 - There you go.

 

Pretty cliche, but writing is decent and story is entertaining.

 

Don't read it if poorly written female characters are a peeve. Author is a dude and Fleur is turned into an insecure maiden. Otherwise...meh.

 

God, that's fucking annoying. Why are people so hell bent on making her like that? Why not just make her this sexual predator who's well aware of what she does to the male sex and completely exploits it when it suits her?

And it's even more annoying how somewhat decent Ron was written up until the night of the drawing of names from the Goblet. You can plainly see the author did it only to further the OC/Hermione thing he's got in the character tags. What a load of cack.

 

The Legacy By: storytellerSpW
After Sirius' death, Harry stumbles upon a book which opens his eyes as he delves into the mysteries of magic, learns about the realities of a war, and shifts towards the Grey. Life could be so easy if only there wasn't that scheming Slytherin entering his life in an unexpected manner. And in the end, there is always a price to be paid for everything. HP/DG Contract, 6-7th year
Rated: Fiction M - English - Drama/Friendship - [Harry P., Daphne G.] Ron W., Hermione G. - Chapters: 46 - Words: 446,958 - Reviews: 1,492 - Favs: 1,553 - Follows: 2,127 - Updated: Jul 25 - Published: Oct 18, 2013 - id: 9774121

I am not sure what to think about this. On the on hand it is some what well written on the other hand it has lots of clishê's in it. On the third tentackle those clishês is actually done well. SO I read this story and liked it but I would like a 2nd opinion.

Pro: Compatently executed clishês. They make sense in story and don't warp the story around them.(no over 9000 moment.)
- grammer didn't jump to me so not bad
- compelling plot
- no hurry for HP/DG and some realism.
- characters are somewhat IC
- Character voices
- It is over 400k words
Cons: clishês. There is a lot of them. like Magical cores, gifts beyond grave, marriage contracts, and ... wait don't run away it is not that bad-
- Harry's character goes OOC as you go further in story. You might call it character development tough it bothered me.
- Veeeeeeeeery slow romance. Just do it already.
- Fail summary. It reads better in story tough.
- Daphne's character isn't likable at some parts and in some places it feels forced.
- Pacing. It is somewhat slow.
- It is over 400k words

SO DLP tell me what dou you think?

 

I think that was already rec'd a while back. IIRC, most people found it lacking.

 

Woah! Watch those accents there, bud. Try cliché instead. Or just use cliche if you can't remember which one it is, most people recognise it.

 

Legacy has been recommended at least two times that I know of in this thread. Probably a lot more if you go further back.

It's not all that good. It's not good at all. I mean, from what little I can recall, 200k words in, probably more, and Daphne still hasn't shifted from her original stance of trying to remain neutral, though she'd been cursed and chased out of Hogwarts.

Has that changed in the last 200k words or so?

 

God I hate The Legacy so much for what it could have been, had the author not been so stubborn. He's one of those authors who replies to concrit by telling you the reasoning behind his bad decisions. After threatening to stop reading for several chapters, I have now finally lost the will to even super-skim the latest chapters.

Pros
- Regular updates
- A few decent world building ideas (e.g. the different types of occlumency)
- Good action, on the one occasion the author actually put Harry in a combat situation (wedding)
- Strong Harry
- Harry/Daphne that isn't insta-love
- Okay character voices
- Slightly above average characterisation (e.g. no absurd caricatures)


Cons

- Pacing. Good god, the pacing. This fic could easily be rewritten down to about 40k words without losing any of the plot or characterisation points. The author just lingers endlessly on plot points. He seems to think that forcing the reader to stew on the same idea for 10 successive chapters is the same thing as realism. Yes, in real life things take a long time and progress in tiny increments. But fiction isn't real life. Realism isn't achieved by replicating real life (else conversations would go on for pages and pages without moving anything forward), but by capturing some essence of real life and distilling it in fiction form.

- Rambling. To make the pacing worse, the author often goes off on rambling technical tangents on the most boring topics imaginable: sub-clauses of marriage contracts and the legal principles guiding their interpretation, for example. If you took all the talk on that topic alone from this fic you'd probably have at least 15k words. Which brings us to the next point...

- Repetition. The author just rehashes the same conversations again and again, often between the same damn characters. The "explanation of the marriage contract" conversation was had about 20 times in the first 10 chapters. We got it the first time. We also had explanations of occlumency and magical theory being repeated again and again. Then there was the trust issues with Daphne in Grimmauld Place. Then there was the "killing in war" discussion, which is still going on (and is completely retarded; there is almost no moral dilemma in killing enemy soldiers in a war). That conversation has been had every chapter for the last 7 chapters or so. This comes back to pacing: the author wants to make things take a lot of time, but he doesn't actually have any content to fill that time, so he just has the characters have the same conversations ad infinitum.

- Lack of story direction. The story feels unfocused, like it hasn't been planned much. The pacing contributes to this: 400k words with almost zero plot progress. But another big factor is plot advancements that make previous plotlines completely redundant. Harry absorbing Voldemort's memories, for example, makes the previous endless chapters of Harry studying magic pointless. The author may as well have cut them, because the end result is the same.

- Romance. For all that the author tried to make the romance progress in tiny stages, they failed miserably. When the romance did finally arrive, it arrived with all the elegance of a car crash. So what we're left with is 370k words of Harry and Daphne hating each other, then suddenly bam! In just a few conversations they're opening up to each other. The author wrote himself into a hole, really. He went too far in the opposite direction from insta-love. By the time we got to the point where Harry/Daphne was happening, he'd made the reader absolutely hate Daphne and made all possibility of a relationship look absurd.

- Inconsistency. The author pulls off a lot of the classic fan fiction error: making things happen in a certain way because the author wants them to happen that way, not for any rational reason. E.g. Harry has adsorbed Voldemort's memories, including his skills and instincts, but nonetheless needs Hermione's help with arithmancy, didn't know how to obliviate someone, and doesn't completely smash Daphne in a duel.

- Shitty magical theory. Magical cores. Direct access to horcruxes. Nuff said.

TL;DR: The best thing about this fic is talking about all the ways it sucks major ass.

 

Good voices? Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought this was the fic where all the Hogwarts students spoke like 40 year old politicians?

 

I was mostly thinking about Dumbledore when I wrote that.

 

Lol, isn't that the best part about all the bad fanfic out there? In fact, wasn't DLP founded on that very thing?

edit: having read your rant, I might just give thing a go

 

Agree with all Taure said although I picked this up:

Really? :facepalm One of the worst parts about a fanfiction review is those who threaten they will stop reading if they don't change the story, no matter how valid their reason is.

 

Read it as:

 

I've reviewed saying why I've stopped reading before.

It's essentially the 'purest' of *reviews*.

Basically, it's telling the author why you think their story isn't good enough. There's nothing wrong with that if it's constructive, or at the least, polite.

Demanding for change though is something different and pointless imo.

 

The frustration level with that story drove me away too. Wouldn't be surprised if the writer is trolling everybody for a long time. The "romance" angle with Greengrass is as wrong as it can get and the "let's talk about it...again...again...again...." is numbing. It's a 1/5 now just for the out of scale annoyance factor.