Title: Hero of a Thousand Retreating Backs: Harry Potter
Author: Chibi-Reaper
Rating: M
Category: General
Summery: Featuring a Harry modeled heavily upon a wizard commonly believed to be as important to magic as the number 'zero' is to mathematics.
Link:http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3991107/1/Hero_of_a_Thousand_Retreating_Backs_Harry_Potter

Chibi happens to be one of my favorite authors and, up until this story, he has written nothing but anime. Anyway I thought somebody might like this. Its only got one chapter as of right now though.

 

Please, I ask for you to stop posting stories without enough content to judge.

 

Oh, I can judge it just fine.

2/5 if those fucking annoying numbered asides are done for more than the first chapter.

 

Footnotes are highly annoying, but the story is amusing. I like it for now.

 

I'm looking forward to more. So won't rate it for now.

 

I'd be more interested if he actually finished one of his fics...

 

Hmm. He's trying to (rip off/duplicate/pay homage to) Terry Pratchett's footnotes, and not doing too well. Overdoing them horribly, he is. Not to mention that footnotes are damned hard to do in electronic form - do they go at the bottom of the document? Of the paragraph? Of the chapter? And I don't know if FFN supports superscript, which is why he has to settle for (x).

Still, I enjoyed it. And it continues the streak of fics that are both enjoyable and feature an anthropomorphised Death(1). Coincidence?

(1) Sure, the streak is only two fics long so far, but streaks have to start somewhere.

 

4/5

I liked it. I'm an alright fan of the Discworld series and the humour of this is enough to keep me engaged. Like Tehan said, the footnotes part is quite hard to do in electronic format but apart from that, I enjoyed them.

It's always good to see something relatively original in HP fanfiction.

 

I liked this a lot. I never quite got to know this author's work, but if this story is any indication, I should definitely see what else he's put up that's not too anime-ish.

 

I really liked it. A very amusing look at how Harry could have turned out.

4/5 (5/5 without those fucking footnotes)

 

This is actually quite a promising start - I haven't read any of Pratchett's books (nor will I), but the footnotes may end up being not that bad, although the structure is a bit jarring. I think I'll hold off on a rating until the next chapter or so, but I'm leaning towards an almost 4.

-J

 

I thought it was so so. It needs something to pull the reader into the story more. Plus the humor is off. When you read a Prachett footnote, you get a chuckle or two.

"Comedy is not pretty" Steve Martin.

 

Well, kinda amusing.

I really hope he is going for the comedy angle because with Harry being nearly (for now) a squib, somewhat a coward everything else would be autofail.

But it's really too early to say more. So wait and see.

 

it certainly is interesting. Below average magic user and a coward. But then again he is just a kid with more near death experience then Death himself can probably count. Besides, i like the change where Harry isn't powerful at such a young age.

Interesting, amusing, refreshing. 5/5 And the foot notes, i like it. Again refreshing.

 

I like this fic so far. Far to often weak or abused or handicapped Harry becomes stronger and crueler by overcoming adversity, or an emo little bitch that is bemoaning his terrible fate. This Harry is a paranoid little shit, but he has every reason to be so.

I shall be watching this story as it developes.

 

I know I'm bringing nothing new to the table by saying this, but the Pratchett-esque footnotes make the story hard to read. At each footnote, I found myself wanting to scroll down which is a bit annoying. When I got to the section with the footnotes (which listed eight for the first set), I found myself thinking “which joke does this belong to” and I had to scroll back up, find the footnote to see if it was funny or not. Perhaps it'd be a better flow if the author would put the footnote at the end of the paragraph where it was listed – yes it’s not a true footnote, but a true footnote is difficult to do in html format without confusing people (with the Pratchett books, all I do is glance down at the end of the page and get a chuckle; here I have to scroll up and down. DAMN IT! I'M LAZY! GIVE ME MY CHUCKLES NOW!). Hell, I had a throwaway joke footnote in the first chapter of “Sword of Gryffindor” and I don’t think anyone caught it.

Had some funny bits. But I think the author’s entire shtick is footnotes and they rely upon them to tell most (if not a majority) of the jokes.

One nitpick, the author has a problem with possessive words. Skimming over it I’ve noticed two cases (so far) where he has:

And

And since there are contractions in the text (such as “can’t”) I can guess that it’s not a formatting error that has removed the apostrophes.

Overall, not that funny honestly. Some cute bits like the Daily Prophet owl attacking him, but other than that, not too much.

 

Meh,

Personally I thought that the fic had an interesting premise but a mediocre execution.

The fucking Pratchett-esque footnotes are just plain fucking annoying. This author needs to learn that they aren't Terry Pratchett and that while trying to pay homage to his style is okay... that the footnotes aren't.

That said... too little content to actually rate it but I'm leaning toward 3/5 or less right now.

Now if he can get Death to go tap a few people on the shoulder and have them keel over dead... now THAT would get my interest.

 

I feel that he's trying too hard to be funny, and in the process the humour is lost as it feels forced. Maybe it's because it's almost-Pratchett but not quite.

 

Pratchett's a bloody hard act to follow, though. I only know of one author who's ever managed to write decent Discworld fanfiction.