I'll be honest, while I love jbern's work I haven't read it (yet). Because of the Harry/Luna tag. I should get around to doing so though.

 

Harry/Luna isn't really descriptive of what happens. If the reason you haven't read this yet is your dislike for that pairing, then don't despair. I won't spoil it for you, but this is one of the most awesome fics you'll ever read. Lots of badassery going around. A lot of OCs too, but again, they're badass.

 

Well it was partly that, also the fact that when I first opened it (years ago) I swear I read that Harry was in the Amazon with an AK47 and closed it almost immediately because that was taking AU to new levels.

Or am I confused as to which story that was.

 

That's the one, though he had a shotgun. (The goblins were the ones with the AK47s.) The story opens in media res, then rewinds to the events that led there. I won't bother with spoiler tags since none of this is particularly specific or spoilerish...

Some plusses of Bungle/TML: it was the first story to have a decently fleshed out Bill-as-mentor, curse-breaking as a thing, Amazon adventures, a badass foe far more dangerous than Voldemort, and (for its time) a unique take on the Indy!Harry thing that was popular back in the day, but had started to show some wear. Jbern's fortes in fanfiction writing are his novel and creative interpretations of characters and plot elements. What you read will be different from the thousands of other stories you might have already read.

Some minuses: the second tense narrative is offputting, the writing is clumsy and poorly edited in spots (this was one of jbern's first stories and it shows, particularly in the early chapters), and many of the Indy!Harry themes--love potions, asshole Weasleys, Dumbledore raiding his vault, etc.--are tedious by modern standards. Jbern's foibles are the quality of his prose style and his Harry protags, who often aren't particularly likable or convincing as teenagers. (He gets a pass for TLIL.)

For awhile it was fashionable to hate on jbern on DLP. I think it's toned down a fair bit now, largely because he seems to have left DLP and fanfiction for other pursuits.

On balance, I enjoyed the story and would recommend it.

 

I thought he was almost unconditionally loved here? Also while his writing IS amazing I must say the only fic I'll probably ever read again (again again) is TLIL. Because while To Fight The Coming Darkness was brilliant, it rubbed me in the wrong way in some areas, but those bits were also part of what made it so great. Conflicted...

That's another reason I've put it off though, I don't want to feel disappointed while being unable to put the story down.

 

At best, it was a love/hate thing, with a group of prominent members of the site at the time and their acolytes actively despising him and those with whom he associated (including most members of AFC). Couple this with jbern's being the type who seemed to enjoy (and occasionally foment) the public fights and it was a source of much drama on DLP.

TLIL, his most popular story, was born from a writing challenge with one of these detractors.

(My apologies for the off-topicness).

 

Jbern writes way too many OOC characters. Is there a single person in-character in Bungle? Plus , why on earth would Harry trust someone he barely knows ( like Bill) when even his closest friends have betrayed him? It took me a few tries to get past the first few chapters and although it gets much better later on, I could never truly like this fic.

TLIL is very good though , The Sorting Hat is one of my favorite characters in HP fanfiction.

 

Male Slytherins raping female Slytherins.

Commonly seen in Slytherin!Harry fics when Malfoy and the rest of the house isn't given a pair of leather pants. For some reason when the writer wants to make Slytherin feel dangerous they turn most of the males into rapists and have them having their (forceful) way with every female in the house - usually with the assistance of Pansy Parkinson or some other Bellatrix wannabe.

I just can't see it. Sure, I can see a few Slytherins if they're feeling bold raping and then obliviating a muggleborn or doing it openly under the Carrows in seventh year being young aspiring Deatheaters and all but I can't see them raping a member of their own house or anyone with power.

Why? Well, Slytherin seems to me like the house of connections and family ties. If you rape someone you pretty much destroy any present and future dealings between those families. Commonly these fics also like to see women as to some degree as property. If that's the case then a family won't let the 'damaging of goods' so to speak a slide.

 

It goes along with those retarded gender roles, which make absolutely no fucking sense since the gender disparity, in this particular situation, is quite frankly obliterated with magic.

Some people think that just because the wizarding world is a bit behind on times in fashion and home appliances that they must also be horrible, raping monsters who frequently sell off their children into marriages for a cup of sugar, and naturally the poor, poor witches can't fight back in any way.

I mean, it's not like they have magic or anything.

 

It's pretty disgusting tbh, actual rape isn't something to take lightly and just throwing it in your fic so that Slytherin seems filled with "bad people" is wrong. Don't even get me started on how sexist it is.

 

It's not sexist. It's just unimaginative. Rape is undeniably one of the most evil acts one can commit.

To show how 'evil' these antagonists are, they have them rape everything.

 

Well it is sexist, because it's always the entire boys dorm while the women are helpless angels who would never even dream of such a thing. It's sexist for both genders, it portrays one as evil and the other as helpless.

 

It's stupid, not sexist.

 

Can't it be both?

 

Yes, yes it can

 

Manipulative Dumbledore. God this shit's everywhere now. I can hardly read a fic without dear old Al being decried a monster by everyone and their mother. And the list of crimes people tack on to him gets more absurd by the day. I can hardly move for reading such comic evil that would make even Voldemort take a step back and say "steady on there".

Where are the attempting to do the right thing and perhaps not always succeeding Dumbledores, but certainly trying his best? Why do people persist in taking the heroes and making them out to be the biggest villains of all?

It's like Voldemort and the Death Eaters in reverse. If you go to the front page of ff.net I can pretty much guarantee you'll find a fic of Harry that ,despite the many actual atrocities these people have committed, that he's seen with his own eyes, he chooses to disregard this and shack up with any number of people who've outright attempted to annihilate everything he holds dear.

Why are people so fucking shit at writing these days?

Furthermore, I hate stories where Harry fucks off to some other country. I doubt he even knew there were other countries before GoF beyond probably some statements made by Vernon. He wouldn't know how to live in for example, France. He doesn't speak French. Or America, that one's popular too. He was born in Britain, everything he knows is there, he's not gonna just go; fuck it and piss about in some other place. he might as well go to a different planet.

 

When an author decides that Voldemort must have only 1/128 or 1/7 part of his soul left because he tore it in half each time he created a Horcrux. Quantifying something like the soul just seems laughable to me and the only source we have that this is the case is a sentence by Slughorn who isn't exactly the most reliable person in the world.
Some then take this further by making Voldemort magically weaker because he has mutilated his soul which is ridiculous given his level of power in canon.

 

Agree, just mentioned that in another thread. When I started reading FF I never even thought of it like that until a bunch of fics started pushing the idea that his soul was cut perfectly in half like an orange every time he made a horcrux, and therefore they had different strengths.

I just was of the idea that it was a part of the person who made it at the time, part being unquantifiable. It simply is a part of a whole. I guess you could say I believe they are all 'equally' strong, though I do believe that newer ones would be 'stronger' in a way, because the person they were made from was more knowledgeable and experienced by then. Which is somewhat supported by Chamber of Secrets. They are not magically stronger though (because that's not really a thing), just intellectually.

 

Although, while Voldemort isn't weaker, his soul is less stable. Which is why he can accidentally make a psuedo-horcrux, and doesn't feel when his horcruxes are destroyed.

 

Not sure if serious, but this happened recently. Admittedly, it was a catholic school, but at the same time, one of them wasn't underage, so I could completely see Harry (the 16 year old) being expelled for sleeping with and getting the 14 year old girl pregnant.