I thought about trying to get back into this, but my earlier posts (from 4 years ago) in the early 300's have reminded me why I shouldn't do that. If I was that critical of the story back then... I've only gotten more cynical in that time.

 

I've spent the last few weeks making my way through this again. It is still the same as it always was; a bit pretentious, a bit overdone in parts, a bit fascinating - especially the paganism aspect of it, something I've rarely seen in such detail, and never as well done as it is here - and all in all the best AU ever done, and the best portrayal of Voldemort I've ever seen. The fact it's been left where it is for so long is a total gut-punch. I can't imagine putting that much work into something and not seeing it through to some sort of conclusion.

I can definitely see why some people don't like it as much, but it's still one of the very best things I've ever read in the FF world. I only hope the author is still planning to carry on with it eventually.

 

You have to respect the sheer amount of work that has gone into this undertaking. The actual writing and editing must have taken forever, not to mention the significant world building and character arcs.

Its also one of my favourite works, despite containing a lot of things I dont particularly like such as the vaguely incestuous relationship between Harry and Voldemort.

 

As a mathematician who has worked with many intellectuals, I must say there is such a thing as cleverness exhaustion and yes different people have different endurance different curves their cleverness follows. Hell cleverness even changes very vastly in the same person depending on where he or she is applying it. And there are people with more cleverness points who end up completely outclassing others with better plans.(You will be surprised at the things that are quantifiable in fields around math)

Seriously, to anyone reading this story, I would like to tell you that you will have a tough time with this story if you see things very clearly(I would argue the clarity here as a personal opinion). To anyone who has a strong sense of morality or have an ability to see things in black and white, you will have a difficult time with this story. This story is frankly very insensitive to personal sensibilities and shamelessly challenges them.

The true beauty of this story is the economics, social structure blending in together with individual persons and personalities. The story handles economics of personalities very very well. This feels like reading an amazing history book, and I think you have to read it as such at least to enjoy it. There are so many connections to make from what are referred as side plots.

If you are looking for anything specific, the story will annoy you.


This story is like that one paper you grade among many thousands that has absolutely brilliant ideas and novel approaches to problems but does in fact make silly mistakes. The mark of such a student tell you nothing about the student.

4/5 with way better recommendation than any story I give a score higher than this.


I really hope author continues it. It is very rare to find so much awesomeness in such a small package. You have to read many papers of a topic to get a picture as amazing.

 

:lol: A 4-year reply, that's the longest I've seen!

Maybe it's just my sense of morality obstructing me, but I have a difficult time understanding your review.

Care to explain how cleverness exhaustion differs from mental exhaustion? Or give an example to illustrate cleverness points? Or how a sense of morality can make reading this fic difficult? Or how an ability to see things in black and white can do the same?

Personally, I greatly enjoyed this story, and I believe I have such an ability.

 

I was just browsing the thread after my third read and found the comment very relatable in its absurdity but still something i noticed was true. I had to comment

Cleverness exhaustion and metal exhaustion might be related but are a bit different the way I look at them. Usually cleverness exhaustion comes way before mental exhaustion. As for how it differs is mental exhaustion the way I see it is a point after which thinking becomes a chore and is awfully difficult. Cleverness refers to choosing unconventional ways to think. Cleverness exhaustion is when one does think without an issue but never ventures in uncharted territory. Cleverness would be required for solving puzzles. Just thinking(crazy endurance) is required for research.


Well having morality connected to reasoning is usually not strong, and by strong I mean immovable. The usual or more common sense of morality comes from culture or social perceptions. While the schools of thought might have a large intersection today, they are different in their approach. This story does create characters without concern for relatable ness working more on consistency of the character. The relatable ness is left for the reader. As a result it creates an irritable conflict among the other approach when a character or scenes are relatable in some senses and not in others. Ability to see something in black and white (this does not mean shades or grey) usually mean inability to distinguish between other colors very well as each color is either assigngged white or black to it. This is different from having the ability to see black and see white.

 

All mental metrics such as IQ, decision fatigue etc. are abstract generalisations. They are accurate representations, but that's what they are: representations. They do not, nor do they purport to, describe the actual processes going on in the brain.

Actual mental activity is highly complex and involves a wide range of different neural processes, with any given activity engaging a number of different "modules" of the brain, each one specialised for certain tasks.

Intelligence may be measured in points, but nowhere in the brain will you find a structure that those points directly describe.

This is the contrast I was making to the magical core idea. Magical cores are as if somewhere in the brain there was a literal reservoir of IQ points which you spent to perform mental tasks.

 

I am with you on the first 3 paragraphs.

OK I do not understand how magical core idea translates to that as in is a contrast to that. Especially since it is a word always used qualitatively. Unless I missed something in the story which means I will have to read it again I guess. Also isn't quantification in some sense possible even for endurance (as points) applied to different tasks dependent on your skill. I mean all tests for such a thing will be extremely situational and overall data unreliable nonetheless, with some fair assumptions we could even talk about it with not too bad error in the error estimates.

In either case I only wanted to point out the cleverness points part. Not disagreeing that the story has faults. Hell its faults are the common faults.

 

Interestingly, one theory of working memory, a process which can be said to somehwat approximate intelligence, proposes that it does have a finite resource of 'attention' which is portioned out to activities as selected by an executive process higher in the brain.

It might be that for HP, a similar resource of magical attention might be required to cast spells. So certain spells might require very little attention, and others demand nearly all of your capacity. Practice would allow you to perform some spells with virtually no attention.

Your 'core' might actually be what capacity for magical attention you have innately, before any practice or knowledge. This ability might be related to your capacity for attention in general.

I agree that sometimes this mechanic of cores can be abused, and features in a number of bad stories. But its not an innately bad concept, I kind of like it as an origin of magic. Something produced by a mutated gland or something makes more sense to me than like, some kind of random super force in the universe that people tap into.

 

I really am struggling to parse your exposition on morality and reasoning. Is this your first language?

For me, saying someone has the "ability to do X" is not normally meant to exclude all other abilities. Strong does not normally mean immovable.

Anyway, I still don't really agree with what you're saying. Whilst my 'morality' in your sense is reasonably flexible, I still didn't find this story much of a one for pushing the boundaries, there. And I don't know where you are drawing the idea from that there was an inconsistency in 'relatable-ness' when compared to any other work of fiction.

 

English is not my first language though very few have pointed it out to me.

In general that is true that the ability to do X does not mean exclusion of other abilities. This case however (again exceptions are there just very very few when viewed in comparison to the whole group) the ability to see in black and white atleast (statistically) would and does mean the map that you have from colors to black and white is widely similar to one another(you can form large groups (usually religions but sometimes even region) ).

So now we have canon a series in which we see the story through glasses that paints Voldemort as evil without going into how why or what evil. We have Fenrir Greyback a character depicted as one goes around biting anyone he can and again without any definitions evil.
This story does not remake the characters at all. Though many people here say that, those characters are the same ones put in a different situation and well given the overused term 'depth.' Putting the same glasses as canon on you see that they are the same characters. This is not just true about these 2 characters.
Another thing of note is that the book does show characters makes decisions that are judged by the consequences on the whole population rather than very specific individuals. This kind of thought completely challenges the usual innate sense of morality. A good example of this would be the WYRA a child abduction agency which is very much useful and a very sensible thing to do on a large scale.

There are justifications to things traditionally considered wrong in this book.
Another major thing we see is Harry going from traditional morality to a bridge in between that and 'economical' model of morality that ens up challenging the conventional.


Also I think I may have conveyed something that I did not intend at all. I am not saying there is inconsistency in relatable ness but that the author went for consistency over relatable ness. Most -bad- works end up going completely for relatable ness in some sense. Mary sues are relatable in that you have a strong desire to be like them and that is how you would picture yourself if you were them. The good stories run a good story around consistent characters with adding in relatable characteristics or chracters to the story so that the story does not end up appreciated by a few. Example would be say Sherlock Holmes where we see everything from watsons perspective. Another would be the fullmetal series where you break the consistency of the charcters like and especially greed to make him relatable as a good guy. I am pretty sure you know many examples. This story however does not try to do that, either by giving you a single pair of glasses or in many other possible ways.

It is one of the reasons I like this story as much as I do.

 

Is the author a DLP member? Is there anything more to come of this story?
I read about 70 chapters, but then I noticed the lack of completion and that the latest update was more than a year old.

 

The author is not, as far as I'm aware, part of DLP, and there's certainly no version of it in the WBA. Hopefully an update will come, but we know no more than you.

 

I think the author has abandoned this one, and is re-writing it under the title The Black Prince, which has already surpassed The Prince That Was Promised in word length, and was updated a little over a week ago.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11098283/1/The-Black-Prince


EDIT by Minion:

Err.... what kind of drugs are you doing? Oh, and don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

And to the rest of you: If you answer to this post, I'll kick your ass.

 

This is the first Harry Potter story I have ever read. I was board cause I didn't have any fics and my brother has been trying to get me to read it. I read up to the fifth book. I am thinking about finishing it. This story was great and had correct culture customs(I think). I don't have any constructive criticism so all I have to say is great story!

 

Just finished reading this story. Have to say I was amazed. A brand new universe, dozens of new characters and the alternative end to the war. Love Voldemort and Harry especially his animagus crow brother, not too sure about Dumbledore though as we haven't seen enough of him. Fenrir Greyback is actually shown to be a good alpha instead of the mindless beast that most stories portray him as. All the bits about pagan are interesting and the notion of Harry being the reincarnation if Callaghan is actually pretty interesting. Though have to admit I'm quite bummed that the story may be dead as it hasn't been updated for so long.

 

The author recently posted an update saying they are working on an original work that uses Prince as a base as well as continuing/reworking Prince. First news out of them in almost 7 years.

 

It's the next thing to original fiction anyway, shouldn't be too challenging to adapt.

 

Great to see it come back in any capacity. Hopefully the author hasn't degraded in quality if he hasn't been writing much in 7 years.