Title: your voice in silence
Author: FaithUnbreakable
Rating: FR15
Genre: Angst
DLP Category: Unsure
Pairing: Ariana/Gellert
Status: Complete
Summary: anyareine asked for BtVS/HP, Buffy/Gellert, Buffy is Ariana Dumbledore.

Since I was the one that requested this for the authors 2010 Christmas wishlist, I figured I should put it up for review here. Best present ever.

NOTE: Because this does crossover with Harry Potter, I presumed it would be okay to post here instead of the Other Fandoms > For Review.

 

What is up with the intentionally uncapitalized titles lately? Did this spontaneously develop some hidden artistic meaning that would be lost otherwise?

This is going for that angsty, introspective, darkly immersive style. It doesn't really work. The transparency is too thin. Looking at a piece of writing, I instinctively know the author thought: "Okay, I need to writing this brilliant, brooding one-shot. Naturally, I'm going to use the present tense and throw in these run-on sentences and try to draw in the reader with them. But it'll be intentional so no one can criticize me for it."

Have you noticed these types of stories usually are written in present tense?

A character actually says that in real dialogue.

The author gives a second-person perspective, and tries to portray Ariana's fearfulness and vulnerability by portraying her an infant, with long-winded, rambling sentences. You either buy it or you don't, but

I would have given this a 3/5 if this was a one-shot of Ariana's role in canon. It's an important moment of the Harry Potter mythos that deserves a good one-shot, has lots of creative possibilities since it offers a unique view of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, but the Buffy thing comes out of nowhere and blows this out of the water.

The Buffy crossover is crack. WTF? Ariana and Buffy are arbitrarily linked? Where did this come from? How does this get past the brainstorming page?

How do you get from Ariana's death from canon to waking up as Buffy? :facepalm "The universe willed it" is not acceptable outside DC comics. I'd rather writers not try to justify themselves instead of feebly BSing me with a premise this flimsy.

Too nonsensical due to the Buffy and the overblown writing style drag this down to a 2/5.

Also, Dumbledore's body didn't fall into pieces. He fell off the Astronomy tower, he didn't get shoved through a cheese shredder.

 

I'd give this one a 2/5 for the same reasons mentioned above. Too much..."flair", not enough research into a plausible way to create the mechanics necessary to make it much more palatable.

 

I felt that it could be a very good one-shot if you were to rewrite it in the simple past tense and end it with Ariana's death.

As for the second part, I can't see Ariana as Buffy. It didn't strike the right pitch, when I read it. I would recommend changing the way she speaks in the first and second parts, if you wish to highlight to the readers the differences between the first and second incarnations.

 

Which shouldn't of been possible anyway; the killing curse doesn't send you flying away like superman - it makes you drop down, dead.

But, yeah...the mental image of a cheese shredder shredded Dumbledore...hm. :awesome

 

See my impression was that he was already standing on the edge of the tower. When people die, they fall down. Hence, AK kills Dumbledore, his body collapses; body is standing at edge of tower so the collapse sends him tumbling over the side.

Problem solved.

 

Did the book say that he was on the very edge of the tower roof, and not a few feet away from it? It's been a while since I've read HBP...

 

Not a clue. Haven't read it in forever and don't have it handy to check. My fuzzy recollection though, was that it never said exactly where he was standing. His falling off the roof thus leads me to assume that he was standing close enough to the edge that the momentum of his collapsing body took him over.

 

Found these:

So, he was supporting himself against the wall, but then did get blasted off of the tower.

Sounds like Superman!Dumbledore, to me?