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Pannic2012-06-30 18:18:12

For fuck's sake, it BURNS! I don't know how you stand it.

Honestly, to me the funniest part was the paragraph-long sentence last chapter. For everything else I can see a person—who doesn't understand a thing about storytelling—writing these words, but I don't even understand how that sentence was possible.

I see you have a fondness for choosing stories with sociopath protagonists. And I can usually read the story bits you quote, but this made me give up before the halfway mark on any of the longer parts.

"The train piled on the steam," George Orwell does not approve of this metaphor. You can't pile steam on things; it's a vapor.

"It was a very subdued school who met for the Welcoming Feast in the Great Hall, and though the Headmaster's declaration that Harry would recover did serve to improve the mood somewhat, it never did become a festive atmosphere." Come to think of it, why aren't the dementors removed from the school if this happened on the first day? You could brush it off when it was just that Harry had a worse reaction, but with them trying to murder a student? Then again, apparrently attempted murder isn't expulsion-worthy in this story, given the Malfoy thing.

" 'Fudge's term of office was over before ten o'clock that morning, as public outcry was nearly insane. His senior undersecretary Dolores Umbridge and most of his administrative staff were removed with him, as his term of office came to an abrupt and very nasty end.' I don't think politics works that way." Do they even have a parliament? And why would this be a no-confidence level fiasco?

"The dementors got withdrawn from around Hogwarts by the interim Minister as detrimental to the very purpose they'd been placed there for, and were gone before Fudge was even out of the country." Okay, I was wrong to assume that some of the major plot points and interesting things about the book would be carried over. Silly me. Wait . . . why's he leaving the country? He lost his job; was he deported, too?

"Harry himself was ill prepared for conflict. Having been maltreated and abused his entire life, he did not have a strong sense of self to rely on." Possibly because he had just discovered and adopted a new identity a few weeks ago?

"If the blood magic of his mother's sacrifice had been functioning properly, a victory by Voldemort's soul fragment would have been impossible." "Functioning properly." Also, "blood magic." It wasn't anything she did intentionally, and I thought the relevant factor was that she gave her life for love, not that they were related.

"But that was scarcely any guarantee of victory as Harry's mind had to learn to defend itself on no warning, finding itself thrust into battle where it had to fight for it's very survival from behind steadily disintegrating shields. " Is it his mind or his soul? Is there still a difference? Make up your mind (soul)!

"And it was not exactly well-outfitted to do so. Having discovered much about his parents that summer gave Harry a sense of belonging for the first time ever, really, and having studied so long and hard had done something for compensating his prior weakness, proving he had a drive if only he wanted to use it." Fuck. That. Noise. Because he _never_ felt belonging with Hermione or Ron, or the rest of the Weasleys. He never did shit to get ahead or solve anything. Nope.

"Harry's background made him so weak to start with, while Voldemort had such an edge on strength and experience, that phoenix song alone could not guarantee Harry's triumph." "Background" just comes off as weak here, and I loathe the simple application of "experience" in general, but here it's made worse by the fact that it doesn't make sense in the first place.

Also, does Harry even know that Voldemort's original name was Tom Riddle at this point?

"Actually, the prophecy may have had a hand in that. Voldemort was supposed to "mark him as an equal," not give him a guarantee of Harry's destruction." Why is the narrator spouting crap Harry doesn't know yet? Did it read the script? What's that on the ground?

"As Voldemort's soul fragment dissolved under the attacks by Light energies upon it, the personality of it was utterly vanquished, while the skills and abilities simply went fluid and became absorbed by the victor, in this case Harry, making him, at last, Voldemort's equal in a very magical way. " Way to miss every single point. Conflict? What's that? REAL protagonists don't need to grow over time or face adversity!

"The boy had also done a substantial amount of growing up, mentally speaking, as part of their conflict. Underdeveloped places in Harry's mind had been a favored target of the dark lord, as weaker than all others. The only effective counter for those attacks had been to develop those weak points until they were as strong as the others, even if he'd had no other option but to copy the pattern for those developments out of Voldemort's own mind." Growing up that we never get to see. Growing up that might just have been an interesting story. Glossed over with a dull, vague paragraph.

Okay, I guess Harry did know that stuff. That fact does not, it turns out, make things any better.

"No. It didn't," Harry interrupted. "According to Hogwarts founding charter, I have two weeks into the term to decide whether or not to change classes. I first gave you notice weeks ago in the summer, then again a couple of days ago." He handed back the list. "Please return with my correct schedule." This is stupid. First of all, that doesn't seem like the kind of thing that belongs in a charter. Second, it could be revised. Third, assuming it's still valid, why did it become a plot point, and why doesn't everyone know about that?

"His friends were both staring at him, shocked to find him so assertive." I think he got the wrong word starting with "ass."

""I don't want to take Divination, as I'd rather take the same courses my mom did before I was born. They sound more useful, and I'm no longer interested in easy grades." Ron started shaking his head. "You're giving up an easy O, you know that?"" Did the author forget what he had written the paragraph before? If he needed the "easy O" line, why not split Harry's part so that the "no longer interested in easy grades" is a response to that?

""No." Harry shook his head. "It's good until next year, and I'd really rather keep my options open in case you decide you'd really rather not live up to your end of our deal, or in case you pull some other stunt that demands a change. So I'll just hold onto it."" Why? You got it in the course of a day this time. How would needing to fill out some paperwork and abuse your owl one more time really serve as a meaningful obstacle to transfer?

"His expression collapsed further when Harry stood, and saying, "Oh, and I was the one to recover this, not you," took the sword of Gryffindor, and left the office." I couldn't tell you when I first wanted to punch this Harry; I think it was before you asked. But this is the exact moment I started wanting him to choke on the sword.

Here's a story for all to enjoy.

Once upon a time, I saw this over on Bash.org, in which somebody took excerpts from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and replaced the word "wand" with "wang". This amused me, so I did the same to literally every use of the word throughout the entire series.

And that's how, despite not even being a Harry Potter fan, I came to know everything about it and also burned myself out on it pretty well, explaining why I really don't have much to say about these blog posts.

I noticed that in addition to all the horror, the story uses and mentions in narration stuff that wasn't revealed until the endings of tomes 4 and 5, despite supposedly happening during tome 3.