Or not.

The usual DLP interpretation of "too canon" would be that Harry is not independent, dark or powerful enough. Let's face it - JKR gave us a playground, but for DLP community the toys within it are broken and need to be fixed to make them enjoyable. That's one of the issues with this fic(or even more so, since this Harry is so blatantly emo, especially in the earlier chapters, that it's barely bearable). However that's really a matter of taste and preference and not a bad side of the fic itself.

"Too canon" here means however that there's very very little original stuff in this fic. It's just canon, only better - the characters are training, we know that Harry is more powerful than his canon version, there are a few more subplots blah blah blah. However, major events still happen similarly to how they did in Canon. There are just too few differences. If I could skip 3/4 of the fic and still get most of what is going on - then what's the point of reading it anyway?

NoFP is very well done, no doubt about it. But if you sculpt a piece of crap into a beautiful statue, it's still going to be a piece of crap(my opinion on this story is not that negative but I think you get what I mean).

I stopped reading this a long time ago so my memory may bit a bit hazy. I could stand the endless amount of self pitying that Harry did. I could stand the endless amount of crying, inner pain and all the emo-isms of this fic. However Harry loosing to Ginny in a dueling club, no matter how unfavorable the circumstances were, no matter how injured he was and no matter how tired he was is just a big fat NO(and I'm exaggerating here - his injury was mild IIRC). A thirty year old, extremely powerful war-veteran loosing to a kid in a dueling club? Ugh, just no comment.

To be honest the first - or one of the first - "Harry goes back in time" fic(also one that was outstandingly popular and basically started the whole "Goes back into younger body" cliche) was "Mirror of Maybe" by Midnight Blue(DLP: In spite of the fact that it's a excellently written fic and that Harry really is a *war veteran* in every meaning of the word, it's still Slash; you have been warned if you look for this fanfic). jobriath if you want to understand why am I complaining about NoFP being too canon-ish, take a look at this fic. Absolutely 100% original content with no plot supplied by JKR whatsoever - with the same basic "Goes back in time" idea.

 

I agree with most of what Ttt is saying (though the comparison is more often called 'polishing a turd' rather than 'sculpting a statue of crap'). This fic is very canon-friendly and for that reason it is loved by the masses and unreadable by many DLP members.

But I don't agree that Mirror of Maybe is a "redo" fic. It's one of only a handful of slash fics I've recommended and actually meant it. And it's one of the best ways to power up Harry, but it's no more a "redo" fic than Ruskbyte's Backwards Compatible.

I suppose it's a quibble over whether redo means future knowledge put into a younger body/mind or accepting the events of canon and actually redoing the known canon years. In those two fics (MoM & BC) all of the 'future' knowledge is original content, unknown to a reader and the characters never really travel through time. In what I consider a redo fic, part of the story is about rehashing and 'fixing' the events of canon.

Two of the simplest and older "redo" fics I can think of are feanor's Ashes in Our Mouth and Lady Foxfire's Death, Destroyer of Worlds. Both of which redo things without much conflict but utilize the same idea (and supreme advantage) of a Harry going back to fix things.

And if anyone does wish to read an excellent super!Harry fic with slash (I won't mince words: there's a Snape dry-hump scene that I have to banish from my mind every time I think of this fic) Mirror of Maybe is here.

 

You know what I love about this fic? How utterly fucking Slytherin Harry acts.

He's humiliated Snape and Malfoy; kicked them out; hurt Dumbledore's trust in Snape; captured the Horcruxes; manipulated his friends to have absolute trust in him and become the strongest in Hogwarts; manipulated Ginny to fall in love with him; manipulated Ron and Hermione to fall in love; manipulated the Weasleys to accept Percy; become the most popular kid in school; destroyed up Voldemort's plans in PS with no effort; given Voldemort misinformation there; destroyed the livelihood of the Dursleys; manipulated some random people to become his friends when they didn't know him before; manipulated Luna's life in Hogwarts by putting her in Gryfindor; kept his Occulmency, power, and nightmares natural; nearly turned popular opinion in support of Sirius; captured Pettigrew; fortified the Burrow; sent an unwilling Slughorn back to Hogwarts; gained McGonagall's unwavering support; humiliated Lockhart; attacked the Ministry with success; used his celebrity for Quidditch posters and made sure the entire team was photographed there; shocked Voldemort speechless in CoS; destroyed Voldemort's graveyard in GoF; etc.; ad infinitem.

And he's done all this without one person thinking that Harry's unbelievable or strange. Harry's been thinking of ways to manipulate everyone and everything around him for the whole entire story. I love watching that. And honestly, I can't imagine a way for Voldemort to come back now.

 

It's a great story, with some interesting plot twists. I'm really looking forward to Harry's dealings with Slughorn... and the explosion.

Anyone think that bit of foreshadowing was supposed to be literal? I'm inclined to believe that it was figurative, but considering his problems with accidental magic... who knows.

 

Hmm. I think you misunderstood me so I'll quote what I said about MoM.

I brought up MoM as a fic that *absolutely isn't* a "canon, but better" redo and recommended for jobriath to read it to truly understand what's exactly wrong with the "Too canon" complaint. Oh and as for H/Snape slash there... If my memory serves me right it wasn't dry-humping - *it* was far far worse and Must Not Be Named. But you can't honestly expect me to reread that chapter to check, can you? So yeah, straying a bit into the offtopic area I have to say that for all the awesomeness in this fic, you have to skip quite a bit of it to retain your sanity.

As for turds and crap English isn't exactly my first language

Belerdorhan the way you put it it makes me almost want to reread the fic. However the memory of Harry-Ginny duel and the fact that all of those awesome things are buried beneath a ton of fluff and wussiness discourage me from doing so.

 

Emofapping aside, the biggest peeve I have with this one is Harry degrading from an 'adult in the body of a child' mentality to 'kid with adult memories' mindset.

Now, were he to hem and haw between those two states in a troubling manner, then it might be redeemed.

As it stands, I'm finding his OC HP fic more interesting

 

I hate that an 11 year old is doing all of this unbelievable shit and everyone just takes his explanations at face value. It just bugs me that they don't see anything wrong other than "Oh i guess he's just pretty smart heh heh hurr". It would be stupid for the adults in the story to guess that he had time traveled but it doesn't exactly take a genius to see that Harry isn't acting like a 11 year old boy who wasn't even raised as a wizard should.

I don't like that the whole story is from Harry's point of view. It gives him better characterization, sure, but at the cost of reducing the rest of the characters to two dimensions. Neville seems to only pipe up when the author feels like he hasn't spoken in a while, and Hermione is just around to be "smart" and guess impossible shit. The bits of characterization that the supporting cast gets is buried under ridiculous amounts of Harry fluff.


I can read this story for a while before these things get to me, so it's good for what it is. To be honest, I don't really like Super!Harry fics in general. They're really boring.

 

I agree with you that Harry truly is a powerful, manipulative genius here, and that's where my problems lie. There's no real conflict in this story, I want to see a protagonist who is human.

Sure manipulative!Harry is great, but I'd prefer a characterization that makes real mistakes, basically someone who's human. This Harry's pretty much a Gary Sue with no real challenge, manipulating the shit out of everyone even people much more wise then him, and it's just not realistic. The characterization here is faulty at best- when he does make so-called 'mistakes' it seems like it was just made just to distinguish that Harry's not a Gary Sue- but he still is.

I will continue reading this, though I find that the lack of any real conflict is terrible.

EDIT- Of course this is Super!Harry so this is more of a rant against Super!Harry than anything.

 

He finally updated!

 

What's interesting is that the next chapter published after you say this reveals that there is a murderer in Hogwarts who may or may not be a student, and it's possible the Ministry is out to silence Harry in his third year rather than trying to discredit him in his fifth. I think the false lull in this story is finally over.

 

Yeah, the Longbottom family scene was clichéd fluff of the worse kind. Scenes like that transform the story into average fangirl-stuff.

"Worst part" or perhaps quite interesting part was that Harry deliberately hid in the room to listen. That's manipulative!Harry in a way I picture manipulative!Dumbledore. He deliberately changed the timeline and now is observing and monitoring the results, perhaps comparable with the 'Mirror of Erised' scene in book one.

Really good is the development of the original plot concerning Slytherin and the Ministry of Magic.

 

I want to continue this story for lack of anything else to read. I stopped when Harry found Sirius Black at Ottery St. Catchpole, I think.

To anyone still reading: Is the story still laden with blatant pedophilia and child romance?

 

It isn't as bad as in the beginning, but it is still there. The last two chapters focussed a bit on Neville/Luna with the occasional 'usual' R/Hr and H/G moments. They are 12 to 14 now (third year and second year students), so that's not that uncommon, but nevertheless out of character.

 

one of the best fanfics i have read. the author actually tries to pair the characters off with the correct person, aside from neville and luna. harry is far advanced for his age, but not super harry or some kind of arch mage. he is smart but not another hermione, and he is not above an occasional mistake. basically it avoids most of the pitfalls that would be easy for an author to fall into, like making harry too powerful, making dumbledore too evil or manipulative, or changing harry's set of friends. my rating: 9.5/10

 

Meh - I was halfway through writing a serious comment on that post, but it's not worth the time. It's not even worth a flame war. The guy is just a canon!whore who only registered to troll and ignored the shift-key to emphasis his message.

 

yay! i got flamed. actually you have me pegged perfectly as a canon whore, but i registered to try to find more quality fanfiction, not 'troll' or whatever that is.

 

I liked this story when I first read it, and I still keep up with the updates, which come out every once in a while. I like long updates (who doesn't?)Though it feels like it's been dragging along lately, and it doesn't seem like it will end any time soon, if at all.
Still, the writing is good, which I can't say the same for most of the stories that are on the first ten updated story pages.

On the other hand...

Harry should angst less.

Harry should get over his problems.

Preferably sooner than later.

 

Well, like it or not it's been updated to chapter 35.