So the Dementors didn't bother him in Azkaban because he had gone madly in love with either a specific one of them or what he believed to be a specific one. How he can tell them apart is beyond me, but I suppose I haven't spent as long among them, being driven mad by their happiness stealing waves. We know Crouch met her through Voldemort, so either she served the same Dark Lord or she was a prison guard he met as a result of his service to him.

In the same sentence we learn that he has less affection for his lover than his lord, so either he's some kind of authoritarian type or this characterizes his love as an obsessive one, one that, as stands to reason, would be hard for the prison guards to make him forget. I begin with this unraveling not as a complaint for want of clarity, as we should expect to have to work things out whenever we have an absolutely mad narrator, but as a test to see if I had been right about any of it.

I find his response to Voldemort's physical form remarkably uncharitable for a man in love with a Dementor, though I suppose that's fine because he's mad. When presented with an unreliable narrator I usually try to figure out just how reliable he is. Is it just a matter of weird notions and judgement of the world around him or could we have been on a beach in French Indochina? As a rule, I assume the former, though it introduces the possibility of the latter. Consider the following:

This isn't a sentence, but I suppose I should be glad I can read it. A strict notion of grammar is usually beyond the scope of the near-soul-death ramblings of a madman.

This is where I was temporarily led to believe the unrevealed lover was literally female, which I suppose is still possible; the source material doesn't tell us whether or not the creatures reproduce sexually presumably for the same reason we don't know the students at Hogwarts have any interest in sexual reproduction.
Since we only do overall ratings out of five on this forum, I'm going to give this a 3.7, rounded up to a 4.

 

I spent the bulk of the story guessing at who she was, so in that regards you crafted a mystery that I cared about. However, the whole time I had the nagging feeling that I was going to be trolled the reveal, which I was. I think the ending didn’t have quite the punch I wanted nor was it, truly, a romance. It’s more a character piece of Barty, his insanity and his inner workings and I’m sorry to say I don’t think you sold him well enough. I did not at any point care enough about Barty. I think you did not show enough. It’s a story told – not a bad thin necessarily. But if you’d shown more of Barty doing thing, expounded perhaps on his frustrations helping Harry or his difficulty pretending to be Moody then we, the reader, might come to care about him more. In regards to prose, it was alright. I wasn’t blown away by it and it was technically readable, but it lacked a certain flow. Somehow, and I hate to be vague, the prose wasn’t smooth.

Edit: I'm not sure why my post format is all odd, but oh well.

 

I guess that, like Halt, my problem here is that Barty wanting to fuck a Dementor (Dementhot?) isn't really shocking enough to merit the rest of the story.

Basically from the second he mentioned he was in Azkaban, I thought to myself, "There are three ways this can go", those being Bellatrix, a Dementor, or some other metaphysical concept. Physical descriptions pretty much ruled out the third option, other things ruled out Bella fairly quickly as well. You don't do very much with the metaphysical nature of the Dementors. They're beings of pure depression, but I dunno, I didn't really get that sense from the story.

That in itself wouldn't be that much of a problem on its own if the journey, from beginning to end, wasn't retreading canon except occasionally reminding the reader that, oh, Barty's insane and in love with a Dementor. There's several ways you could've shown that he was insane, but instead you basically just told us that he was, and then hammered on the obsession button some more.

In my opinion you very easily could have skipped most of the scenes we know from canon, and instead written about things that we didn't see. For example, there surely must have been meetings between Dumbledore and his new professor, or the professors discussing their courses, things like that. I figure things like that could be used to show Barty is very much not in his right mind, while also letting you flex your writing muscles somewhat.

I like the idea, but the execution could use some work. 3/5.

 

For me, this story‘s biggest detractor is easily the dissonance between Barty’s original thoughts and the retread of canon scenes. While this helps the veteran reader to find their way in the narrative, it also contributes to the fact that the narrative and its execution are just not that interesting, together with Barty being a surprisingly reliable unreliable narrator – I‘d have expected a bit more… demented flamboyance in his general tone, I suppose? As it is, it‘s mainly rants about his current circumstances interjected by the occasional episode of semi-erotic fantasy.

I did not catch the twist from the very start, only when Barty mentioned his fondness for Voldemort and the reason for it did I start to connect the dots. However, the point remains that with options as limited as we have here, the mystery was perhaps telegraphed a bit too heavily.

As mentioned above, the story‘s biggest flaw is its predictability, which extends not only to the target of Barty‘s desire, but also to its overall content. It lacks the small moments, the gaps in the knowledge we have of Barty‘s activities during his imprisonment(s) and later as Moody, instead focusing on safer grounds with disappointing regularity. As such, it is hampered by a corset that is altogether to tight, allowing for little freedom except in the occasional mentioning of Barty‘s not-so-mysterious lady friend.

The final paragraphs and the somewhat graphic descriptions of the dementor‘s looks, while a perfectly serviceable counterweight to Barty‘s waxing lyric about his paramour, struck me as somewhat heavy-handed and dissonant in tone and content. While I guess this is an intentional choice, it also somewhat undermines Barty‘s well-established views.

All in all, an interesting concept that actually delivers an enjoyable story, despite its flaws.

 

Written in reaction style, because I feel like I can contribute best that way.

The beginning of your story is great. I was interested immediately, especially because I wanted to know who “she” was. In retrospect, I don’t understand, though, why the Dementors can’t take positive feelings towards themselves from their prisoners. You simply tell us they can’t, and move on.

Then, we get to see his father freeing him from Askaban, and you had my utmost attention at that point. I was ready for untreaded paths, for seeing his struggle and his journey, for witnessing the thoughts of a crazed man.

You instead chose to stay on the well-worn threads of canon, which I found a bit disappointing, as these scenes added literally nothing, not even to Barty, because his point of view doesn’t present us with anything new.

Afterwards, you proceeded to break either the rules of the Imperius or your own POV rules. Barty is under an Imperius. As soon as he looks for a “way out”, as you put it, he has already broken it. He can’t think about his unfortunate fate without ripping through his fathers control – as soon as he’s unhappy obeying, as soon as he even thinks “why”, the Imperius no longer works, we saw that in GoF, if I’m not completely mistaken.

Also, you sometimes tend to mute Barty’s feelings by using very lifeless and tell-y descriptions of his feelings and thoughts, like here:

(on a side note, I don't see a single reason why a man who loves a Dementor would be disgusted by the sight of an ugly baby)

Also also, I think you’re doing Barty’s devotion for his master a disservice here. First, you write this:

Then, this:

This makes it look as if he mainly accepts because he wants “her”. Which is OoC compared what you’ve established three sentences before.

Apart from that, we get even more canon rehash and everything that isn’t canon rehash or could make for a potentially interesting scene is summarized. I’m not sure what you need all of this for and I feel like it could’ve been either expanded or concentrated in one or two sentences instead of several scenes. The only thing that’s really new are the sentences with “her”, and they add just a different obsession than the one he had in canon to the scenes. To be honest, after the beginning, I expected more than a middle part that was basically devoid of any original ideas.

It’s basically nothing more than the literary equivalent of a queue we have to line up in until we get to know who “she” is.

The scene at the end is good, if not outstanding. The reveal was well done and it would have come surprising, if I hadn’t read about the planned pairing on IRC a few days before.

However, this scene also has one sentence that’s exemplary when it comes to what’s fundamentally wrong with this entry:

This doesn’t read like something he’d be thinking. This reads like, from time to time, Barty’s insane thoughts are supported by a neutral narrator, and it makes him feel more distant, less lively, it makes the whole story less intense.

The ending sentence, however, was brilliant, that was my personal highlight of the fic, because it fit perfectly.

In general, this fic is basically nothing more than “Barty is obsessed with a Dementor”, and it never tries to be more than that. It does not try to be a portrayal of his madness, it does not try to have anything resembling an own plot. And its “Barty” part is sadly muted quite a bit, because you don’t rely on him as a narrator.

I'm not sure whether this is a missed opportunity, because you executed "Barty is obsessed with a Dementor" in an adequate way. But this could've been something special if you had put more thought in it.

 

This doesn't do anything for me. The retread of canon, as stated, does no good here. Barty's perspective doesn't add enough to these scenes to justify their presence, given that we're already quite familiar with canon and how these scenes go. Found it all rather boring. This piece would be strengthened a lot by cutting some of the more useless ones out (the World Cup scene is pointless), and don't retell anything we already saw in canon (except the conclusion). Flesh out what remains, tune up Barty's perspective, and make sure they tie back to his love for the Dementors to keep them relevant.

Then there's the "twist" of Barty's infatuation being with a Dementor which... I'm sure there's a way to do this well but this wasn't it. The biggest thing is that I don't get why Barty's in love with a Dementor. Sure, he's insane, but that's more of a how than a why. What about a Dementor is he attracted to? Is it just a death wish? All I see is the attraction and I never learn anything about it. This isn't a traditional romance story, but regardless of that if I don't care about the main relationship then you've failed the genre. While I'm certainly supposed to find the concept revolting and alarming, instead I just feel nothing because there's nothing there.

 

I am afraid that this story simply does not work for me. The "trick" used here, the constant usage of "her" and "she" in ambiguous ways, made it clear that there was really nothing holding up the passage to the final line, which was a cute turn of phrase, but the manner in which the story got there was not particularly interesting, primarily because Crouch is already mainly a cipher of insanity in canon, thus here as a "crazy" POV there wasn't much added to the characterization of Barty, and not only that, but I feel like the story, as it exists, truly relies on that final line as a bit of a shock to make you think "ah, of course!" but if (or when) it fails to do this task, the story feels like a bit of a narrative cheat or cliche.

Now, I noticed only one "error" in the technical sense, but the true weakness here is the dryness of the narrative style, which followed a specific pattern: Retelling a story from canon in a slightly different way, insertion of "crazy" POV style, and ambiguous references to "her". This pattern repeated itself without much divergence, so I began to get a little bored reading it because I could tell how the next mini-sequence would go.

So here's my question for myself: How would I improve this?

I think you could go different ways. Make it a weird, darker narration style, more fragmented or unusual. Really confuse the issue with actual dialogue that may or may not be accurate. Maintain consistency in switching perspective styles, clarity versus insanity, and perhaps consider other avenues of Barty's obsession with the Dementor. Have the Imperius parts of the story feel different, like canon in brief, then more elements of the same pattern I mentioned. Just a few thoughts.

 

This is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall a fair attempt. The writing is decent, on the whole; there's a few technical errors here and there, but nothing major that leaped out at me. The two main issues I had on that side of things were the phrase "man in a mission", which should - presumably and more commonly - be man ON a mission, but to be fair he is in a mission, so...and the lines like "he had stolen a wand from some kid...annoying twats" and the like, which didn't really feel like they fit the tone of the writing, overall. A fairly mild issue, as these things go. There's a couple of nice turns of phrase, especially the last line, but on the whole it's decent writing, not amazing.

As a concept...well, I see some of the other reviews have said that it's predictable, which honestly isn't something I'd say about it. I didn't see it coming at all. Initially I was thinking that it was supposed to be about Barty and his mother (in a maternal bond sense, not incest), but that quickly fell away (obviously). I spent most of it thinking that it was going to be Bellatrix, reciprocated or otherwise. In retrospect, the title is a bit of a giveaway on that, I suppose. Still, personally I was surprised, and it's certainly a memorable reveal, if not entirely effective; Barty just doesn't read crazy enough to have fallen in love with a Dementor. I'd also say that I'm not entirely sure whether this was supposed to be a genuinely shocking twist or a bit of a troll, but I suppose it doesn't really matter.

The biggest failing here is in what the fic is trying to be. As a romance piece, it doesn't work because, well, there isn't any. We get some briefly sketched and repetitive signs of Barty's obsession, but nothing on the Dementor, which presumably is incapable of reciprocating, so fair enough, but that lack shifts it from a one-sided romance to not romance at all. As a character piece, it's a nice idea, but there's just not enough to it to really work. Take it further, expand the canon review with more 'behind the scenes' sections, and this could be really good. As it is, a nice idea, but the execution is a little underwhelming.

 

I think everyone, when they're a kid, must have those little bits of ignorance, those little nuggets of misinformation that lie in wait to trip you. Some titbit where you've grabbed the wrong end of the stick and it boomerangs back to you at the worst possible moment. For me, one was 'A Tale of Two Cities', by Dickens. Some of his various novels were mandatory reading at school and I knew that he was a man with a lot to say about poverty, children and London.

Anyway, I had always assumed, for no reason that I can fathom, that a tale of two cities was a metaphorical title - that it must be a story about the underclass and the privileged. And in front of a hot English lit student, it became apparent to me at one point that it is, in fact, a story about two literal cities, London and Paris.

What I'm trying to get at is that sometimes the biggest twists aren't. That sometimes the answer is the one that stares you in the face and waggles its eyebrows, and what the reader brings with them is what does the work. In this story, I didn't realise it was a dementor until just before the end, and for that reason I kind of like it.

However, even with that in mind, although the surprise came at the right narrative moment, I feel as if we didn't reach it by entirely honest means.

With a twist, you need to feel as if the story will now make sense with a different perspective. That all the facts were there and they just needed to be put together. Certainly, they might not be eye-catching clues, but they should not be lies. They should never directly hide, only mislead.

Looking back, once I had reached the end, I feel like your establishing scene doesn't satisfy this criterion. There is a clear delineation between the Dementors and her.

Otherwise, the opening is fine. It establishes where we are, who we're dealing with, what the focus of the piece will be, and a hint of threat - just from the setting of Azkaban, that ambience is created. It doesn't have much in the way of flair, and it lacks some crystalising opening line that hooks immediate interest.

It signals romance well, but this is misplaced. Ultimately, it's promising a genre that it isn't. I'm not sure what I'd actually call this, but for me, it resembled nothing so much as a mystery. But a mystery for us, not the POV.

So, with that in mind, we should discuss foreshadowing and mystery writing.

Foreshadowing was discussed well in the most recent update of Halt's excellent writing thread, based on a video that's linked in his post, which covers it more extensively.

In this fic, almost all the foreshadowing is overt, based on character assertions. You repeat italicised pronouns a lot, and how his motivations revolve around her.

I think you could have improved this story by foreshadowing more than his interest in her. As a dementor, she is an incarnation of despair, she's also associated with death and injustice. She's also something he only met after the fall of Voldemort, which isn't the initial assumption. By acknowledging and foreshadowing that some of the common assumptions would be wrong, the pay off would be greater and the narrative would feel more genuine.

In particular, I am thinking about how you could have contrasted the tone and stability of Barty in Azkaban against the tone and stability of Barty prior to and after Azkaban. It feels like a missed trick, to not show a recovering man who relapses at the moment of his doom or to show a well man prior to Azkaban who's admiration for Voldemort or whoever is completely squandered into an obsession.

As well as this, you missed the chance to write conflict between Barty's canon motivations and his obsession.

Instead, you've attempted to squash both motivations together into a simple whole, where doing one also achieves the other. It doesn't ring true though. If Barty is desperate to see her again, then why is he doing this, why is this the most sensible thing to do with his wand in his brief moment of freedom from Winky? In canon, he wishes to scare the Death Eaters who forsook their master and went free. He certainly wasn't trying to get help, he was instead trying to intimidate.

This lack of conflict doesn't foreshadow that his paramour is someone who he could easily reunite with (even if it means returning to prison). Instead, it intimates that it is someone in Voldemort's ranks (for most of this I thought it would turn out to be a fem!Voldemort).

For mystery writing, I found this quite useful. Essentially, even though you're not writing a mystery here, the same techniques can be useful in hiding your answer amongst your writing from your readers. Foreshadowing is essentially using the same techniques as a mystery, so I think it's in keeping.

Hiding one most important detail amongst a list, or describing things in vague terms rather than more common terms can be effective. It means that you're using a reader's attention against them, while at the same time remaining honest. Furthermore, you can use a scene that will parallel a more crucial scene later on. Not necessarily book end, but have something that shows the outcome of a later scene, or hints at the conflict and the novel solution without it being something the characters or the reader will notice. I'm thinking of Stranger Things here: at the opening of that first season, the climactic battle plays out in miniature in their dungeons and dragons game, while we're relatively distracted by learning who the characters are and what their differences are.

In your fic, your major thing is hiding from us the identity of the Dementor. In longer fiction, where you want it to be clear at a later date, it's useful to give a character one to three key features. Snape has his hook nose, Dumbledore has his half-moon glasses. Focusing on the Dementor's aetherial cloak, or its inhuman mouth, or its sores might be a common descriptive term to imply continuity throughout. Probably its sores as it doesn't give away the magical nature. By repeating these features when we know who we're dealing with you can then hide their identity while still using their key feature.

As well as this, your story suffers from a few other key concerns.

As has been discussed, the bulk of your story and prolongation of the mystery is just a rehash of Crouch's canon actions. It has not been significantly changed. Your story begins not so much at a jumping-off point as a jumping-on point, and your beats are cribbed from canon for minimal effort.

You also don't really follow the idea that character change is the point of a story. That character evolution or regression equals story. I don't want to repeat myself if you've already read it, so I just refer you to my review of entry three and four where this idea is discussed. Essentially, a character arc, whether for the main character or for the supporting cast is vital for making sure the story has an impact. For making it feel like it has a point.

You overuse repetition of hackeneyed phrases in this piece. Repetition of a line can be effective, but here it fails, I believe. I think it fails because it's worn out. I'd suggest using something you've come up with for yourself if you want it to be repeated several times within one scene. Otherwise, a more conventional axiom should be spread out over a longer piece.

I have to admit that this sentence was very enjoyable. You can believe that this was the reason the story was written, for this punchline. That said, it doesn't justify the entire premise. This is a similar criticism that I levied at an entry from last competition round. When writing for one specific line, you need to get out of your own way. I'm not saying that this piece was overly long, but if it was written for the purpose of this line alone then it would've been more effective if you'd cut to the chase and tried not to bloat it to an entire year-long narrative.

Chuck Palahniuk has a series of essays called ‘nuts and bolt’s where one of the essays discusses names vs. pronouns (pm me if you wish and I can send you a link), and he emphasises that going with just a proper name or just a pronoun undercuts the experience. Some different terms of varying levels of complexity would improve on the tedium of referencing the same idea again and again.

By the time you said her the third time, I could see what you were swinging at. At that point, it might be more appropriate to switch track and use some more unusual references, 'his abiding obsession' or 'missing love' or whatever at all.

In conclusion, summing up, I think this story had an interesting take, but it over-relied on one good line. It's central premise didn't manage to create a story, instead, it was an interesting idea with a readable writing style. It didn't create a journey. There was no abiding impression to carry forward. Just an answer to question that took a while to get to.

 

Well, that's an idea I haven't seen before: falling in love (or simply lusting after?) a dementor. The idea is a good one, but I don't think this story sells it.

TL;DR: good idea, bad execution.

I rather liked that it was unstated at the beginning, but pretty much nothing else works with the idea. I'm not sure how Barty wanted to reunite with his love if she was already at Azkaban. I'm guessing it was a specific dementor who had a peculiar effect on him? Anyway, it doesn't play with the GoF plot (which is covered so quickly that I don't even know what the point of it was). Was Barty trying to get caught?

Or have I completely misread the premise and there was some other unnamed "her"? Because it really does seem like he's crazy about a dementor. The plot has nothing to do with Barty's desire, which is clearly communicated to be his obsession. I understand the effort to try to do something new and creative with a background canon character and fit it into canon, but it doesn't work here imo. If Voldemort promised help in wrangling Barty's zombie-love somehow, then it wasn't communicated in the text. Even a short story should aim to have a coherent structure--unless you're trying to be incoherent on purpose, I guess--and I don't see it here. You went to the GoF plot instead of developing your premise.

I didn't personally like the italics on every mention of her/she. I understand it's an artistic choice, and serves to highlight Barty's obsession, but it just boinked the flow of the text for me when I mentally put the accent on the italicized words.

On the technical level, the writing would be average, but I knock off points for mistakes: man in a mission was repeated several times (should be: man on a mission) and several instances of misuse of the word "such"; accustomed with instead of accustomed to. And a few punctuation mistakes besides and funky sentence structure in a few places.