I love Wastelands of Time, and its one of my favorite fics. And yet, somehow the actual pairing aspect between Harry and Fleur has zero interest to me in it. Harry could have been paired with Tonks, Hermione, or even Ginny, and I don't think it would have really changed the awesomeness of the story at all.

If Tessa was written out however....*shudders*



Despite the way everyone else seems to hate Letters, I still loved it. Sure, critically speaking it has a lot of cheesy cliches, but somehow it just stood out to me. Most HarryFleur don't draw me in at all like it did.

The Lie I Lived is the other obvious one.

 

So, what's that in VALVe time?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Time#Valve_Time

 

I was reading a ficlet a few days back that mentioned something (semi) interesting - Pansy being conditioned from birth to be the perfect wife to Draco (or someone else, it doesn't really matter too much). All her 'bedtime stories' and such were told with Draco as the honourable, brave, and awesome hero.

Basically, her own parents groomed her from the time she was born. They had signed a marriage contract, so there was no escape for her. Pansy would marry Draco, the only exception being death.

But having read through this thread (and now having sore eyes), it developed into a bare-bones plot idea:

But I don't know where to take this, or even what the plot could be. I just felt it would be an interestingly different premise. Dumbledore could be anywhere on his usual scale, but it would be the Delacours who took the positions of Puppeteers, both for family, albeit different reasons.

TL;DR Delacours are manipulators. Fleur was raised to love Harry. Then have some plot.

I think this could be an interesting way to investigate and talk about Veela culture, and the MagicalFrench legal/political system. But I'm a terrible writer, and already working on something else that I'm trying to make good.

Thoughts on the bunny?

 

I can see a Dark!Harry story, in which Harry torturing someone with the Cruciatus or something crazy like that puts Fleur off him.

It would be sort of tragic, as manipulations on all sides pull her closer to a Harry who loves only himself, and marries her, ultimately, for the riches of the Delacour family to build his empire.

And she'll kill herself or something, and Harry will figure out that he did love her, and thus we'll have part two - redemption, in her memory. Or perhaps he'll grow even darker.

 

Delacours aren't rich. Not living in poverty, but certainly not rich. He was raised thinking he'd inherit a stupidillion amount of gold, and she was raised in what I imagine as a weird hippyish priesthood/cult based around good of the species. Neither is particularly money savvy.

Also, Fleur couldn't NOT love him. And I'd thought he would fall for her, even though they both realise they've been manipulated into it, they're happy with it. Harry finally has someone who will, and this bit is important, UNCONDITIONALLY love him. She was raised to be perfect for him, and, no matter what he is like, she will always idolize him. So him using the cruciatus on Johnny B. Random means he deserved it, as he was obviously an evil man. Harry using it on her, well that would be a sign she did something terribly wrong, and he needs to correct her because otherwise she'd have failed him.

They'd both be incredibly damaged. Which I guess could provide some form of conflict. But as I said, I don't plan on writing it. Just an idea for a potential H/Fl that didn't follow all the cliches.

 

Honestly, that doesn't sound like much fun to write at all. There will be 0 conflict between Fleur and Harry :X

 

Very true. But you'd have Harry's internal conflict. He is, after all, rather a gentlemanly figure (sometimes). You also have the Voldemort situation. And the being manipulated by the Delacour family/veela.

One thing I've wanted to see in something like this would be 'a stupid order'. Gabrielle mentions in Jeconais' Hope, that if Harry told her to go away, she would be unable to stop walking. I've seen plenty of equivalent situations (Darth Marrs' Defense for Two, based on the prologue done by Perspicacity; for one), but yet to see Harry really ballsing up an order like that.

Heh, you could have Harry trying to program Fleur with the equivalent of Asimov's Laws... Could doing a crack!fic on that save a veela-bond story?

 

This plot bunny is lame imho.

 

User CP > Edit Ignore List > Add a Member to Your List > "Luckylee" > Okay

/wipes hands/

Ahhh. There now.

 

Don't know if this has been discussed yet and can't be fucked with sifting through 80 pages worth of posts.

I just finished reading "Letters". It was, to put it mildly, a gigantic disappointment. When I picked it up I was initially charmed. For once in oh, ages, I was met with a fic I couldn't put down through the night. Oh, it had its flaws, definitely. The pacing was all over the place at points (I'm not saying that as a writer you should do a word-for-word rehash from the book you're spinning off from, but a lot of the plot-points from GOF were really glossed over for no good reason), and occasionally the long build-ups went nowhere and the writer had to force things, to awkward effect (see Roger Davies suddenly going psycho and trying to rape Fleur, who didn't have her wand with her for some unfathomable reason, so Harry could conveniently stumble in and save her).

But I could look past these flaws. Save some hiccups, the characterizations were excellent - I loved Fleur and Daphne, and Harry stuck close to his canon characterization, which I like. After all, fics that tend to mess directly with who Harry is as a person infallibly veer off into OC-in-all-but-name wankfests, though I'm sure some people here would disagree with me. They're wrong.

Krum was actually likable, as were Lilly, Hermione, and Harry's other Quidditch teammates. The author did a good job making me actually care for these people. I cheered for Harry when he flew against Krum and grit my teeth when he had seconds to go on the Second Task. For the split second on Chapter 18 were it looked like Fleur was going to die, I was in absolute despair.

Then the author completely blew it.

Harry takes a Killing Curse for Fleur. By all rights, he still had Lily's protection (and the whole Prophecy thing, if you put stock in that being magic and not simply self-fulfilling hearsay) and it was shot by Wormtail, it should have rebounded (correct me if I'm wrong, my canon's quite rusty). Instead, it destroys the Horcrux inside Harry, and we're treated to a wonderful reunion scene with Lily and James.

I'm generally skeptical of Harry meeting his parents and actually holding a lengthy conversation. Canon took 7 books and an immensely powerful magical item to make it remotely believable, after all. But goddamn, was this crap. Lily and James spend most of their time going about how proud they are of Harry because they've been watching him from afar, all this time, going so far as to reference recent events like his relationship with Fleur and his Quidditch games. Now, the thought of dead people watching my every move isn't touching. It's creepy. During the entire reunion scene, which lasted nearly half the chapter, all I could think about was 'Harry, all this time, your dead parents have been watching you masturbate.'

After that, Harry wakes up, and single-handedly defeats Nagini, Wormtail, and captures Voldemort. Alive. After disarming him. Alright, so Voldemort is, at this stage, still an undead fetus. But fetus!Voldemort could still strike fear into Wormtail, competently cast magic, and was holding his original wand. Am I supposed to believe he couldn't cast a shield charm and Apparate away? Apparently.

I gave up and closed the tab as Voldemort started throwing threats worthy of a cartoon villain and Harry stunned his fetus ass. 19 chapters and 170,000 words, and all I get to show for it is a rushed ending where every problem in the series is solved forever, just like that? No final conflict? No real fighting? Barely even two lines by Voldemort, the main villain of the entire saga?

Screw this, I'm going home.

 

Most people didn't get as far as you did into Letters :x

 

A bit off topic (though honestly I don't think Letters is worth any more mention than it's already garnered), but I found this a couple days ago and was pleasantly surprised:

Title: Harry Potter and the Male Veela
Author: marciejackson
Summary: Harry's life is going through a major overhaul - from changing homes to finding a family, this summer is looking to be very different from the last one. But why does he keep waking up all achy in the mornings? Long lead up to the action - set up for part4

Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6051874/1/

The summary does a poor job of describing this story, I think. If you can get past the dodgy title and several painful cliches in the first chapter (the first paragraph is letter-from-Gringotts, Harry remembers Griphook etc), this is a surprisingly good read, much better than the typical depressing drivel found in the Harry/Fleur category on ffnet. It's much more of a political story than a Male Veela one so far (Harry's made head of the House of Black but in this story actually has to deal with the political ramifications of this), but the author handles the politics so well I actually think the story would be better off without the whole male veela thing. The first chapter is freaking huge, too, which is always nice. Harry/Fleur is in its early days yet but is definitely present. I would even go so far as to enter this in For Review, but alas, last update was in February and who knows when she'll update. What's there is really good, though, a pleasant change from the usual nonsense, and definitely worth a read.

 

Just promise me that he doesn't sprout wings.

 

It's named "Harry Potter and the Male Veela" that is more than enough of an indication to stay away.

 

Believe me, the title really doesn't do the story justice. I had numerous doubts going in, but in the four (very long) chapters present there's not one mention of wings, nor, frankly, of male veela, which takes me back to thinking that the story would honestly be better off without it. What's present is an engaging, politically-inclined story that could a much better title.

 

The title does the story justice, but in a different way that its intended.

I went into is expecting a few cliches, as you noted in your review. I can deal with a few cliches as long as the story is good overall as they are hard to avoid in School-Year fics. However, it's not the presence of the cliches that made me want to go on a killing spree.

It's the basic copy/paste job from every indy!Harry fic in existence. I swear I've read this before, not because it is plagerized from someone else's story, but because it's a rehash of every indy!Harry fic out there almost to the word.

It's not a handful of cliches, it's all of them.

Letter from Gringotts
Call me Remus or Moony
Griphook
Polite Goblins.
Blood Rituals making Harry, Sirius' son.
Lord Baron Harry James Potter-Black!!!!!11!
Family Ring!
Being gentlemanly to Narsissa and her being cordial back
Sirius's Will
Offing a place for unmarked Death Eater Families to Narcissa (wink wink)
Aunt Andi
Uncle Ted
Nym
Reinstating the Tonks' in the Black Family
Uber-rich!Harry
Multiple houses around the world
More letters to everyone and we get to read them! Yay!

It would have been a dandy fic five years ago, if we hadn't read them all already.

I bailed before the obligatory Diagon Alley Shopping scene. Tell me, Does Harry buy tons of defense books and a trunk just like Moody's, before becoming Uber-politicalWizengamot!Harry or after?

Back to my original premise of the title doing the story justice. It says it all: Unoriginal cliche title = Unoriginal cliche story.

tl;dr

I couldn't help it, I had to go back for more cliches:

Portkeys! Everyone's got'um even just to go shopping, or to the bank!
Wanting to see Nym's REAL looks because he's just a great guy!
Chef!Harry
Let's Hire Dobby, He'll clean everything!
Child Abuse charges leveled against Dursleys
Charges against Umbridge
Harry joins the Order!
Call me "Potter-Black!"
Wandless Magic with a pencil!Harry
Bad French Accent !Fleur
Motorcycle riding!Harry
Blood ritual's activate latent stud genes. (God, I hope he gets an earring and a tattoo)

Okay, I give up
BTW all of this is is only 3/4 of the way into the first chapter.

 

...

Jesus-fucking-Christ.

 

Haaaaaa hahahahah ahahaaaaaa hahahahahaha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

fuck

Does he at least have a magical animagus form and moving tattoos of lions/grims/dragons?

 

Not yet...

I skimmed chapter two, because I obviously have a masochistic streak.

Cliche count much lower here, but that's just because it's a shorter chapter.

Narcissa divorces Lucio... Lusi... Mr. Malfoy (I can't believe I forgot how to spell his name) because Draco is becoming a Death Eater to save Mumsie!

Harry defends Draco 'cause he can, yanno, relate.

Snape grudgingly admits that Harry is awsome and then insults him so nobody will think he's human.

Then straight out of every Narsissa/Harry fic: Political coach!Cissy takes up the rest of the chapter.

You don't have to read this, just look at the cliches and rerun the Indy!Harry stories in your mind. It goes much faster that way.

 

...

Alright, point taken. I suppose my excitement at finding a legible story made me oblivious to all its flaws - I am still fond of it though, cliches or no. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.