So 15 června 2019

(my comments on “What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?” by angua9)

As I wrote elsewhere, I am not a big fan of Harmony stories (stories, where the main pairing is Harry/Hermione), but when they happen, I usually don’t discount them automatically, and some of them are really nice. Linked story, “Escape by SingularOddities” is rather nice, but as with all stories, when the author moved from rewriting JKR books into her (his?) own story, the quality dramatically improved in “Mr and Mrs Percy Weasley”. The biggest problem I had until recently with Harmony stories is relentless bashing of most interesting characters in stories (mainly Weasleys, but Mr. Dumbledore, as well).

However, then I read this excellent essay about problems with Harmonians, and my first reaction was rather negative. There are some problems with the stories I read, and I have described them in the linked review above, but the essay seemed to be too dramatic.

And then I read “Notebooks and Letters by chem prof”. The main idea of the story is very interesting: Hermione tells to her daughter how it really happened, and it is AU since “The Order of Phoenix”. Of course, Hermione here is not happy with JKR (they sold rights to the story in the Summer of 1997 to have enough money for the hunt of horcruxes) for many reasons (and many of her particular criticisms are completely valid), but mainly because of JKR’s shipping Hinny and because what she considers degrading description of her in “The Half-Blood Prince”.

As I said, the setting of the story (its metastory) is rather nice. The main story itself is just an average not too much over the top super!Harry & super!Hermione story (in the end most DeathEaters, including Lucius & Draco Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, are killed by few Dumbledore Army members including naked Hermione (naked because she was going to be raped) and Harry).

And yet. Harmonian traits of the story killed it for me. Bashing is actually not that terrible, but general blandness of their relationship persists.

Actually, it was not just Harmony that killed it. It was sticking two mostly unrelated stories together which made it even worse. I won’t get into details, but after the main story (more or less standard Harmony, slightly better than others) there is suddenly completely new unrelated post-war tragic story pasted to it, which has no point other than to pull some tears from the reader.

I don’t know whether to recommend this story or not. Probably just for really hard core Harmony lovers.

Category: literature Tagged: review harryPotter blogComment