Title:Weapons Free
Author: angelicxdiscord
Rating: M
Genre: Action
Status: Completed
Library Category: Alternate
Pairings: N/A
Summary: Summary: We’ve been fighting this war for a long time. They call us “Muggles.” We know them as wizards and witches.

They struck first. We don’t know where they came from. We don’t know why they attacked us. What we do know is that they were winning. England was the first to fall. Then France. Spain. Italy. It took ten years of tactical withdrawals, delaying actions, and air strikes to halt the wizard's advance. It cost us millions of lives to stop them just short of the Rhine.

Now, it was our turn to push back.

Link: Weapons Free
FF.net Link: Weapons Free

This is a complete AU from the canon timeline. Basically a world war erupts between the magical world and the normal world. The only way for the humans to survive and fighting back is by the help of witches and wizards that have escaped the regime of their once strict civilization.
I have to give this a 5/5.

EDIT by Minion: I added a link to fanfiction.net. There it is listed with 4 chapters and 35.000 words, while on Mugglenet it only has 3 chapters and 21.000 words.

 

I was ready to bitch at you about posting another shitty Wizards vs. Muggles story, until I started reading it. Not done yet, 3/4 of the way through chapter 1. That said, writing is good, though a bit heavy on the weapons/military tech details (coming from somebody who's somewhat familiar with it).

And while it's technically HP fanfiction, it's really more suited to be original fiction, given the perspective. Not bad, though I'll hold off on rating it till I finish.

Follow-up: Ok, so I have to say I ended up liking this a lot. The introduction of canon-characters at the end was well-placed, in my opinion. I can't really say much without spoiling the story. Basically, if you don't mind Muggle vs. Wizard conflicts in principle, you'll probably like this. If you don't, you can find a few excuses to pick this apart (completely ignoring the wizarding population outside of Britian, for example).

 

Mhmmm, no.

You feel sort of obligated to notice certain things the author tried to do. It's obvious he knows how shittily this plot has been implemented in the past, and so he's tried to take steps to make his story better. So he makes the Muggles suffer dearly, but there's still the crucial fundamental flaw: they're still fighting.

Sniper teams and butllets should be useless, wizards should have some way to make bombs vanish before they detonate. Apparently, the wizards are serious about trying to destroy the muggle governments, for whatever reason. All of the presidents, etc., all of their guards, literally every single Muggle of importance should have been silently murdered in their sleep. The wizards would repeatedly kill replacement officials and authorities, and keep killing them. Hidden? Find out where they are and kill them.

However, apparently they still live.

You can make all sort of arguments like "Oh, the Muggleborn defectors could do the Fidelius charm to protect them, and I'm a faggoty bitch!"

in which case the response is, "Well, my flamboyant friend, the wizards, since they demonstrate no compunction against mass genocide of innocent Muggles, would simply threaten to mass-exterminate entire cities and communities of Muggles, forcing the leadership to emerge lest millions of lives be on their heads."

If they wanted to force a surrender, it is that easy. Or destroy the Muggles entirely, just as easy.

Well, this means that it wouldn't be possible for a story to exist, so you have to make some concessions to the muggles and cripple the wizards in some way, such as their failure to find out the military secrets and secure their munitions. However, that would make the wizards fucking retards, and then the conflict of the story is based on the antagonists' stupidity.

They're holding the Idiot Ball, to borrow a TVtrope term, as much as I loathe that site.

Again, the fundamental flaw inherent to this plot. The writer has to resort to handicapping wizards with things like Impervious spells that mysteriously vanish after a single bullet. It's written so matter-of-factly it's funny.

The narrator is supposed to be a female, but is a man. It's really fucking bizarre that the writer decided to go with a first-person female protagonist. One of the least credible efforts of this sort.

The writing is what you read all time on space battle forums, or fanfiction for Halo and the like. It's okay, but is not special.

1/5. A mess of Call of Duty wankery.

 

Andro, dear, as much as I respect your opinions on writing style and such, there's no canon evidence for how magic stands up to muggle munitions, no matter how much Taure wishes there was. And while killing the leadership of the Muggles would indeed be the smart thing to do, nobody ever accused the wizards of being logical - indeed, canon supports that the leading figures of the wizarding world often make bizarre, unrealistic, and often incredibly stupid decisions. Add to that the wizarding world, as far as we know, doesn't go to war nearly as often as we do, there's no reason to doubt that they haven't picked up basically military tactics.

 

That speaks to the "conflict based on the antagonists holding the Idiot ball" problem. The Muggles exist and the conflict is perpetuated by the wizards being stupid enough to not cripple the enemy, and then continuing to be stupid for so long as to let the Muggleborn defectors organize some way of protecting all of the muggle governments' leaders.

It's no better than the manipulative!Dumbledore story where Harry is made to seem smart only by impairing Dumbledore.

 

I completely agree with you - except that the wizarding world, as a collective, does hold the Idiot Ball in canon. There's a case to be made for this scenario playing out, given that.

 

I really doubt they can do as you said they do Andro, since I'm guessing the defected wizards and witches would be putting up layers of wards from such cloak and dagger tactics against important and powerful men.

Besides which, trying to contemplate logic in a wizarding society is stupid. They don't play by our rules, not when they can cheat their way through.

 

T3t, ABW, you give the reason for the Muggle leadership's continued survival as being the wizarding world's lack of logic...I can't really fathom this line of thought. Do you believe that in the entirety of the wizarding world, or even just the government, no one has an ounce of common sense? Even looking at a few of the courses offered at Hogwarts, a shred of deductive reasoning seems to be required--Arithmancy, Potions, Runes...

Also, what about the French, Bulgarian and the rest of the European Ministries? Are they in on this and just decided England would be a good place to start their 'march across Europe' or do they not exist?

The summary also seems to infer that the Wizards and Muggles are involved in open warfare. Why the fuck would the magical world commit to fighting a war on Muggle terms?


In regards to the 'millions of lives lost' to stop the Wizards advance at the Rhine, is this a war of genocide? If not, why kill such numbers? Invisible dude Apparates to an Operations Centre, throws a few Imperio spells around, and bam, instant victory.

Giving the wizards ability to 'cheat their way through' things using magic as a reason to rob magicals of basic common sense in order to further a storyline or propogate a conflict is poor storytelling.

You talk about the lack of logic on the side of the wizards; I'm not seeing the logic in the belief that Muggles would stand a chance against a conquest-minded Wizarding world.

 

Well I read the first chapter, thinking it would be crap. And then I lost the rest of the hour reading the whole damned thing.

It was intriguing to read, as it did cover several of my normal complaints about wizards vs muggles (surely you'd have some 'traitors', like the Vichies in this; muggles not being awesome at everything/nothing), and wasn't from the POV of a main (or even canon) character. But it still suffered from the rest of the normal wizards/muggles war!fic problems - the wizards don't show ANY sense in actually starting the fight, anywhere except England seems unimportant, and military words are everywhere.

Also, from the hint dropped in chapter four on ff.net (which, for some reason, has an extra 13000 words, and was published almost a year after being finished on mugglenet), it ISN'T finished, or at least, there's a possibility for a sequel.

On the other hand, so much changed from canon, with no clues as to how we got there. I'd assumed Ariana was Luna until we were told otherwise, and we didn't gain anything from this inclusion except one or two lines from Dumbledore. I'd assumed a deviation in fifth/sixth year, and this being set after that - instead, we get a complete AU, and no notes on when the change happened.

And chapter four is a mess. It reads like the author tried to put in every single 'epic line' from book seven, as well as all the occurrences and deaths. After how good the previous parts had been, this was a MASSIVE disappointment.

3.5/5, rounded down to 3/5. I definitely recommend it, but the mess of military jargon, the massive changes without explanation, and the balls-up that is the second half of chapter four stop it from being awesome. Although the best wizards vs muggles I've yet read.

 

If the Ministry of Magic ever planned to do this, I am pretty sure they wouldn't tell any muggleborns. They have muggle relatives so telling them would be a risk they have no reason to take. So how would they defect, by the time they found out I am pretty sure the Wizarding World would of killed everybody important.

 

It was interesting when I first read it, now I'm not going to reread, but there are a few things to be said.

Basically the premise is interesting and the idea of revealing the history part by part, only slowly showing who the white hats are exactly is intriguing. Yet, there lack some explanations to collect all the dots together - we finish the fic with a basic outline of what has happened before and there are lots and lots of unanswered question.

Also, after realizing that mugglenet has less chapters and has branded it as complete I understand the main flaw.
There shouldn't have been a chapter four.
We are shown the war, given hope and it could be left at that.
The three chapters raise some questions, but not that much and not answering those might work - we are shown a piece out of the whole, and the imagination fills the possible beginnings and endings. And that's ok.
By giving us the fourth chapter, which raises some more questions (beside living Arianna, we have Lily and James) (should I have hidden that?) and wraps it all up - we are shown the winning move of the war, the lack of back story imbalances the scales and the questions become more painfully glaring.

I don't know - the first three chapters get 3.5/5 just because of the style and orginality. The last one gets 2/5. So maybe a 2.75/5?

Nauro

 

It's readable, and better than the majority of muggle/wizard war fics out there, but that's really it.

The writing itself is technically sound, but the amount of missing information suggests that it either isn't finished or that the author was just terrible at writing backstory.

I'll also echo Andro's complaints about the female protagonist. Interesting idea, but poorly executed - I had to consciously think about the fact that she was a woman to keep my mental image of her from turning into a man. It does get used in one or two instances later on, but not in any story-altering way.

The wizard stupidity is a tad overdone, but without it, there wouldn't be a story. In this case, it's not too blatant.

2.5/5, rounded up to 3. Decent, but not library-worthy.

 

Story reads like it was written by Tom Clancy and JK Rowling's lost love child. Which, for me atleast, is good because I like both authors. That being said, I have a hard time reading this Clancy!Potter story. You would think a story with the subject of a Magical war, would invoke a lot more feeling in me.

Good, but not great 3.5/5

 

Hmm... The shield breaking bullets work almost exactly the same as ones I put in something I was writing (bullets inscribed with runes and coated in a magical substance).

But I've come to terms with the notion that, by the time I make any of my writing available (heh, if...), all of my original ideas will have already been thought up by someone else and used in their fic.

Probably a shitty one, too. :facepalm

 

I couldn't really get into it because of all the military jargon. It read more like an expert showing off his impressive knowledge of all things modern-military rather than like an actual story.

 

Over all, a decent way to waste time at work, but not much more.

I begin to think you have begun to strive past moron, to the lofty heights of oxymoron with that name.

 

This story is pretty weak. The sheer volume of acronyms and military jargon made me groan out loud. Other than that, I had to keep reminding myself that there was a narrator.

So really, about 1/5.

Andro's posts: fail/5. You have no argument because you have no hard data. There is no canon evidence anywhere about how magic interacts with modern military weaponry that I'm aware of. Got to say, your post reads like a Young Earth Creationist's pamphlet- it's kind of amusing.

 

Still a better love story than Twili... I mean, Still a better story than Weapons free. :awesome

Seriously though, like I said. I enjoyed reading it, but its not library quality. Would work best in the Almost Rec thread. Or one of those Muggle v Wizard wankfests Taure loves to start.

 

Sadly... both are true.

Oh god, no- I had the misfortune to read through one of those. They get so stupid I wouldn't even want to troll them with this.

 

This story is kind of a mixed bag for me. I read the ff.net version, because I just skimmed through some of the comments before reading and saw there was an extra chapter there. The story is quite interesting as long as you are able to suspend your disbelief when it comes to the whole conflict. It builds up decently up to the end of chapter 3 and I got quite pulled into it after I was able to get past all the military jargon I don't really understand.

Then I got to chapter 4 and it really feels like the story took a nose dive there. I really liked the AU feel of the first three chapters, but this chapter seemed more like condensing a lot of the original books into a chapter and mixing that with this AU world than an actual conclusion to the story. Like somebody said the story really should have ended at chapter 3 or the last chapter should at least have been written in a way that doesn't make it embarrassing to read.

The first three chapters would be something like 3.5/5 and the last maybe barely 2/5. So going to give this a 3/5.