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WIP WIP - Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches - Revenge is Best Served Raw

Discussion in 'Almost Recommended' started by froper98, Mar 31, 2017.

  1. Fudoutoku

    Fudoutoku Fourth Year DLP Supporter

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    Your taste is shit, but that's ok.
     
    sfu
  2. Dubious Destiny

    Dubious Destiny Seventh Year

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    The funny thing is that I like stronger-than-canon Harry(especially MoD). I used to read fics only if they claimed to have a powerful Harry. I realized after some time that most of these stories were shit. It was some fic called H J Potter which made me aware of just how nauseous and simple these fics were.
    Political !HP and Bad!Dumbledore are often mundane, with far too many friendly or co-operative goblins. I never did like Bad!Dumbledore fics anyway.
    This is pretty much a use of the basic betrayed!Harry outline. Triggered me by this point. I might have read it if he had bothered trying to be different, but I see no indications.

    I guess others must have persevered through the relentless cliches and have seen light. I am not going to bother with it.

    Rating revised to 1/5
     
  3. sfu

    sfu Squib

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    From your quotes (and ctrf+f) I determined that you never made it past chapter 2.

    You could try to get to finish up to chapter 6 at least (by the end of chapter 6 you'd read around ~20 to 25k words, not much time wasted by any means). If you don't like it at that point, then stop reading it. The first three chapters are some kind of build-up anyway. Harry gets sent back plus info (chapter 1), gets his wand (chapter 2), and last earns some money by selling opiates(chapter 3).

    With chapter 4 the actual plot begins by Harry meeting his first potential allies. Chapter 5 or 6 is where the Hermione part starts and where I began to genuinely enjoy the story. Before I was undecided because I actually did not want to read it at all. Too many bad stories with similar setups.

    And yes, I agree, H J Potter is wrong on many many many different levels.
     
  4. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  5. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  6. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  7. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  8. Hymnsicality

    Hymnsicality Seventh Year

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    Location:
    On the wild plains of Africa
    It’s marketed as a primal power trip where one steals girls away from his evil brother and gives them a righteous dicking. What it delivers is a well polished but rather dull dissertation on the wizard of world full of weird incongruities like the grangers being praised for being able to build magical submarines.

    I still stand by what I said a while back. This is basically just sexual grooming. Why it feels less egregious is because there’s zero sexual chemistry whatsoever. Reminds me of that protagonist from the black mirror episode USS Callister. Who knows? Maybe the author is just biding his time for this weird power trip to backfire on Harry altogether where he’s revealed as the chess master and all his harem girls desert him. That would be interesting but pretty much a betrayal of everything the fic is.

    I’ve read 90% of this fic and I stopped reading it when I caught up and updates started taking months. There are some neat ideas. But I wouldn’t recommend unless the above appeals to you on some deep level.
     
  9. James

    James Unspeakable

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    768
    I’ve checked it out when I saw it updated - jumped to the end to see where it’s at - and after 560k words it’s at the first quidditch game of Harry’s SECOND YEAR. What the fuck.
     
  10. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  11. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  12. Sesc

    Sesc Slytherin at Heart Moderator

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    I've read this over the last weekend and love it to bits.

    I think the biggest problem I have is that it's too long. By which I don't mean full of filler -- there is some, but if you cut that out, it'd still be too long. Rather, there's simply too much plot. All of which I enjoyed, but nevertheless, at some point, it's unavoidable to kill some plotlines or move them to later years in order to maintain just a hint of momentum in in-story-time and progression. Where that point is is debateable, but if you need 600k words for 1.5 years, you've clearly passed it.

    That aside, the result is that story is an all-you-can-eat invitation of my favourite unhealthy food. Like vlad noted on the first page, it's full of things that should be terrible but aren't. It's definitely helped by above-average writing and above-average story-telling; it's full of clichés, but they are sleek and polished and shiny, and not retarded -- just used before (and most times much, much worse).

    So when you have eleven year old kids dividing up the Hogwarts Express into Light, Gray and Dark, and holding court in their compartment by delivering speeches in the name of their parents to further assure their alliances, when you have Heirs and Heiresses running around everywhere, when every action is considered through the lense of political intent and results -- then that is kinda shit because they are eleven year old kids, but y'know, fuck that, I love it so much I wanna hug the story, because I just read politics done in a moderately interesting and hugely entertaining way, and just ignore they are eleven.

    And like that it's with every other cliché. I dig the pureblood culture stuff, the Lords and Ladies, the Heiresses that are raised prim and proper, the clear class differences that are shown and handled with nuance and competence, I get angry when Daphne is supposed to be wedded off to some ugly fuck and cheer when with Harry, she learns what freedom means, I dislike Alex but suffer with her, when she tries so hard to break out of the expectations her society has for women and yearns to be equal to men -- all that is there. The story gives depth to the clichés, and the characters touch me.


    I could write a dozen more things, but the thread covered most, and the short of it is, if not for the pacing, I'd give it a 5/5. As it is, it's a 4/5 for me. However, this is perfectly clear as well -- all of this is very much contingent on you liking these clichés and only disliking them done in retarded ways. If Slytherin Politics and Pureblood Culture and the kind of world and world-building that comes with it isn't your thing, what's left is only an extremely slow Super!Harry-and-his-girls story that might struggle to keep your attention. So objectively, it's quite comfortable where it sits -- a 3/5 Almost Recced.
     
  13. Longsword

    Longsword Banned

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    @Sesc
    You have at times a bizarre love for awful fiction, that is why I ask : did you forget an /s ?
     
  14. Sesc

    Sesc Slytherin at Heart Moderator

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    @Longsword: Not at all. I just edited in the last line -- a 3/5 (the thread rating) objectively is probably fair, it's the definition of Almost Recced. But personally, it had an entertainment value a lot higher, and that's what I described and rated.
     
  15. Donimo

    Donimo Auror

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    Entertainment value higher than quality is a great description.
     
  16. Niez

    Niez Seventh Year ⭐⭐

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    Location:
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    This fact is probably expanded by the Harem aspect of the fic. The writer spends thousands of words on each potential love interest, trying to turn them into real characters, instead of charicatures, but because there are five of them, the story is incredibly bogged down by a myriad of subplots that frankly are not that relevant. I agree that it's very entertaining, assuming you can stand the cliches already mentioned, but it can never rise above a 'guilty pleasure' as it is right now.
     
  17. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  18. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  19. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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  20. Xion

    Xion Robot Overlord Admin

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