Title: The Jump
Author: SynthesisSurge
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure/Romance (altough I must admit there isn't much Romance yet atm)
Chapters: 9
Words: 61,625
Updated: Aug 1, 2015
Published: Jan 4, 2015
Status: Work in Progress
Pairings: Girl!Harry/Sirius
Summary: Helena Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived, finds her life turned upside down, when a spell goes awry and sends her twenty years into the past. Suddenly she is surrounded by people she has long mourned dead, along with people she had never hoped to know. With no way to return to her own time, what should a witch do? Girl!Harry, Smart!Harry, Metamorphmagus!Harry, Girl!Harry/Sirius.
Link: ffn FanFiction.Net

This story is maybe slightly new but it (and the author's other work) is good enough that I am following the author on facebook to check on her progress (never done that before).
The author hopes to update this story once a month.

Alright how to convince my illustrious peers to give this story a chance...
The main character is interesting, funny and does what she believes is right regardless of what anybody else thinks. She doesn't believe dark magic is evil though she doesn't (or rarely) uses it herself.

I like how she doesn't immediately get along with Lily because:
1) She is suspected to be just like James (whom she still hates at this point)
2) Steals the top student spot from her
3) Sets Snape on fire (it was a duel in DADA) thus reinforcing point 1

I like how there is little to no bashing in this story.
I like how the MC at least tries to get along with the Slytherins.
I like... ehm I ehm... I just plain like the interaction between the main charackter and everybody else!

I would give it a 4/5 stars only because I don't give 5 stars to someting that isn't finished or has over 100k words


First post, not a native English speaker and dyslexic. PLEASE HAVE MERCY!

So... did I do this right?


Edit by Minion: Yes, you did. I only had to clean it up a bit.

 

I looked at this, saw the Girl!harry/Sirius tag, and almost noped out immediately. That sounded fairly horrid right off. But I am a sucker for a well-written time-travel fic, and I'm dealing with some very long-running code at work, so why not I said?

I am pleasantly surprised. There are a few tropes in there that I'm sure if I said them out loud here, it would make it rain 1-stars. But they're very brief, and once said are mostly left alone immediately after. Bit of angst here and there but not overpowering at all, and to me (someone who hasn't published anything, so YMMV) it's pretty well-written.

The big plus in this, for me, is the way the characters are written. We have a man character that has been through the war already, but is old enough to still fit in with the students she eventually ends up with, and the students are some of the best written I've seen in a while. It's marauders-era, and they all just feel... real. 16-year-old young adults. Not all kids that already act like they're in the order or the death eaters, not like old aristocrats, not lord-fuckwit of the house of douchebag, or anything else. Well-done characters are my favorite thing, and these ones make me smile.

Solid 4/5 for me.

 

Managed to read through the story, though the first few chapters weren't really that great. I just didn't like the language, the way the characters interacted. It was all overly sweet. "My pet. My Jamie. My dear."

I also don't like that the author decided to include the typical gender stereotypes - female virgin and man whore. Sirius making suggestive comments while Helena/Harry blushes all the time. James saying Helena shouldn't kiss anybody because she's his sister, when they've known each other for all of a week and she's 18, two years older than him. I didn't like it with Ron (and Ginny) in canon, but at least it was more understandable where he was coming from then.
Thankfully that gets a bit better in the later chapters.

Other than that the story uses a few cliches I found hard to stomach, but thankfully only mentions them briefly.
I have a feeling the chapters so far have been a preparation for more interesting future chapters, so I think I'll wait for the next one before I rate it.

 

This fic straddles the line between terrible and boring.

I'm cringing at every main characterization so far. James Potter comes across as a dumbshit frat-bro and Sirius as the douchenozzle holding him upside down so he can guzzle a keg - on several occasions James says lines I could only imagine Peeves saying, like addressing Dumbledore as "your Professorhead."

Their interactions read like a pair of monkeys having a nose-picking contest:

...and it's some of the stupidest shit I've seen since I stopped reading about magical trunks with training montages inside them.

Sirius' lecherous playboy routine was funny when A Black Comedy did it back in 2007, but it comes across as tired and hamfisted here. His tendency to address Helena as 'love' makes him sound like a shit stand-in for Jack Sparrow. Sirius is barely sixteen. Charming is fine, playboy is too far. Super pervert is so far out into left field it's jumped the shark, broken the fourth wall and crossed genres.

I did get a chuckle out of Sirius wearing Helena's bra on his head, though.

Dumbledore comes across as a muppet with a rather inept puppeteer's hand shoved up his ass. His dialogue is so scripted, all of his catchphrases so bolted on, it's clear he's only there to move the plot along during the initial info-dump about Helena's time-traveling. Any character could come along and say these things and still serve the same purpose. It's not easy being green – it's not easy being muppet!Gandalf. It's not quite so bad in chapter eight, but that's probably because the author actually bothers to write out an interaction between characters here, instead of merely telling us it happened.

Once Dorea gets done doing her, “there, there, pet” thing in the first two chapters, she's almost tolerable. Some of her moments are pretty apt for raising a teenage boy, like when Sirius got scratched up after the bra incident:

… but they just get drowned out by the author's tendency to tell instead of show.

James' insistence on calling Helena his sister is baffling. Cousin, I could easily see given Helena's falsified background of being related to the Potters. But sister? Too contrived and cutsey-patootsy.

Helena is... a self-described Hermione Lite. Soggy, to boot, considering she's been mentioned as 'in tears' or 'near tears' in almost every fucking chapter. Also, Helena's wandless magic makes me want to staple her wand to her jugular - not to mention the constant fucking awe over her nonverbal casting grates after the third time it's mentioned.

This fic is supposed to be Sirius/Helena, but their chemistry is tepid at best. It's like asking if the bowl of chicken broth is attracted to the cup of tap-water. Zzzzz... But considering how bolted together the rest of the story is, I imagine the majority of their relationship will be told through passive-tense exposition paragraphs. Totally cuts out the need to write complicated human interactions to make it seem anywhere near believable, well done.

Jump is not about Fem!Harry at all. It's a story about the Marauder's era characters starring an OC and not a very interesting one either. Helena (sorry – Helichrysa – which doesn't sound at all like Satan choking on a Scrabble tile) bears no resemblance to Harry Potter. Sure, she looks like him. Sure, she was friends with his friends. She was related to his awful relatives. She went on his adventures. Supposedly, she defeated the same villains too. But that still doesn't make Helena into a female Harry. There's just nothing recognizable that makes me say, “Oh right, yes of course this is Harry.”

The story itself is a rambling connect-the-dot of cliches. Magical cores. Most Noble and Ancient Houses. Serious Sirius jokes. Goblin Nation etiquette. Super-Sue main character pwns ALL THE CHALLENGERS. Sure, it's not terribly overt, but linked together it feels... pointless.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't a problem with cliches. In fact, I love it when an author re-makes them shiny-new and awesome again. But here? No fucking way. Jump needs a lot of improvement – this same story could be told in half the number of words. Several times, Jump gets close to a funny or emotional or interesting moment and then loses it amongst the cliches and passive-tense exposition. The author tells all of the important stuff in plodding paragraphs, wasting too much time on insipid dialogue that means nothing and goes nowhere. It gets better in later chapters, but it's excruciating to slog through.

Here's the Spark notes version in case you're too lazy to read the fic:

Spoiler

Chapter One: Helena fucks up a time travelling spell and cannot go home. The first time we see dialogue from Dumbledore. Mark it on your calendar.

Chapter Two: Helena mopes as she's introduced to the Potter Family circa 1970s.

Chapter Three: Shopping trip to Diagon Alley and Sirius wears Helena's bra on his head. Oh and there's a bonding moment between her and James at the very, very end.

Chapter Four: Exposition, exposition, a birthday party, and O.W.L.s results. And then another shopping trip where she meets Hedwig the Younger, which is the only worthwhile moment out of the entire chapter. Quite heartwarming, really. Yes, it's still the 1970s. It's convoluted, okay?

Chapter Five: Packing James' trunk, an extremely long train ride, and a sorting. It's Gryffindor, btw. Because that really needs a spoiler alert.

Chapter Six: Exposition, exposition – just keep scrolling it gets better – a short conversation with Lily and roommates about morning people, oh look here's mum, where Helena gives a curious lack of fucks or exposition about the woman who died for her when she was a baby. My god, why? You wasted exposition on everything else. Or maybe its Lily who doesn't care about Helena? Dunno, the passive exposition makes it all very murky. I'm choosing to believe it's mutual. Then everyone marvels over Helena's Hermione Lite class schedule, Helena and James decide to grow a Venemous Tentacula for their Herbology project, more exposition, this time about Snape. I'll be honest, at this point I put a straw in the wine bottle and kept on scrolling. Cheap red to the rescue! And then there's DADA class where where Helena's there to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and she's all out of bubblegum. Scene's fun, except for the dialogue which makes me wish all participants would get hexed with acid enemas. And then Helena curbstomps Snape.

Chapter Seven: You guessed it! Moar exposition! No, actually, they play Spin-the-Bottle. She kisses Remus. James tries to flip his shit, but is not very successful. And then there's exposition. And then Sirius waits up for Helena in the common room where they have a conversation like normal people. After 49,842 words, here's the moment where Sirius stops reading like a poor man's Hugh Hefner and starts sounding like a flesh and blood teenage boy. Momentous occasion: here's the second time we see dialogue from Dumbledore, despite Helena having met up with him all summer long. Mind-numbing conversation with Remus where she teaches him the Patronus charm, which could have been a cool scene if it hadn't been written by this author. And then Quidditch tryouts. Helena becomes the new seeker. I'm sure you needed a spoiler alert for that one, too.

Chapter Eight: After eight paragraphs of exposition, Helena attends a meeting in Albus' office, because she's totally allowed to call him 'Albus'. Kids these days, no respect. Here marks the third interaction with Dumbledore containing actual dialogue. Holy fricky-fraky, Batman. Discussions of memories, the accuracy of memories, and somewhere along the way, actual plot begins to happen in regards to Helena's time-travel. Cue bad sleeping patterns for Helena who resolves this issue by having tea in the kitchens. How very English of her. And then exposition, where she escapes after class into the Forbidden Forest and plays with the hippogriffs. Afterwards, Marlene McKinnon apologizes at dinner for being such a frigid bitch. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Chapter Nine: In a welcome change of events, chapter nine drops us straight into a conversation between Helena and Dragomir Greengrass about the legality of bloodmagic. Helena doesn't believe in dark or light magic, just light and dark wizards and that your choices are what's important. The concept of sacrifice negating the darkness of killing another person. She arranges a covert meeting to continue this tentative friendship/opportunity to spy on the Slytherins later. Mindless chatter happens at the Gryffindor feeding trough – no indication of what meal it is which is typical of the author's descriptions. Lots of words; not a lot of substance. Sirius brings up Helena's commentary from class about magic not being inherently dark and the two wade in on it. Wow, he's a real boy now! With opinions and everything! It's riveting enough to bring Lily into the conversation. She agrees with Sirius' assessment of dark magic being evil and Helena. Is. Not. Happy. They disagree. And then it comes out that Helena had been successful in casting the Cruciatus Curse on Bellatrix Lestrange after the death of her godfather. Needless to say, it doesn't end on a pleasant note. If only the rest of the story had been so interesting.

We're nine chapters into the story – 61,625 words – and nothing has happened. How much set-up does a story need? You could easily skip the first five chapters and not miss anything of importance.

The most notable thing about Jump? The adverbs. The motherfucking adverbs. Jump would make a great drinking game if I weren't concerned about sacrificing my liver on the alter of alcohol poisoning.

That said, it is getting better. Each chapter makes a slow progression towards improvement. It's not just the wine talking, I promise.

2/5

 

Swim, that review kicked ass. A+ for effort, solid A for humor.

Loudly AND jovially. There ought to be a law against doing that to the English language.

I kind of wanted to like this fic, because it's a premise I've never really tried before and just on a casual skim the writing didn't look awful, but this is just... dull. Swim basically said everything there is to say. It's not going anywhere. It's like the author had an idea for a setup and then forgot that stories have conflict and plot.

Didn't read enough to rate. Wouldn't be high, though.

 

I agree, like the Cadmean... thingy, a kickass review both told me what I needed to know and gave me incentive to check it out myself.

It's truly, terribly bland. The only groups who I can see it appealing to are those who are new to fanfiction and don't know better and those who have secretly longed for fem!Harry/Sirius. I didnt even know the latter group was a thing.