Ne 12 července 2020

(my comments on “the thread on reddit”)

First of all, you should avoid the dark trap of all adventure/fantasy stories: my story must be more dramatic than the previous one, my heroes and my antagonist must be more significant than the previous one. It is not enough to save hero’s girlfriend, now you must save whole village. It is not enough to save a village anymore, now you must save New York. Next time it is whole nation, whole Earth, universe, and some stories went even beyond that. The end result is a disaster like “Avengers: Endgame”, which is just the catwalk show of all of their heroes and antagonists without any story and any characters. And yes, it is just an evidence of the total depravity of humanity (as if we haven’t got enough of them) that this silliness was the highest grossing film of the series (well, I haven’t seen any other of them, so I can still keep hope that other ones were less stupid than this one).

So, whenever you read “worse than Voldemort”, run away, somebody is victim of this syndrome. Even “Inner Demons by serendipity_50” fell into this trap, and it is the first fanfiction story I’ve read, which persuaded me that it is possible for amateurs to write for free literature worthy of reading. Fortunately, the adventure story there is just in the background keeping Harry busy, it is not central of the whole story. And some sub-stories of it are genuinely good.

My point is that you don’t need literally the Earth being shattered to carry on your story, because the story is the only thing which matters. Who cares for the fate of Romeo and Juliet other than few of their bereaved relatives? And couple of hundred millions of happy viewers.

Having said that, there is still a lot of what could be the plot of post-war adventure story (like any time in the human history):

• hunting runaway Death Eaters (e.g., “Hunters and Prey by Northumbrian”),
• other resolving some post-war issues: I hoped for somebody to rewrite “Augurey” into something like that … (ignore the inane Harmony-related discussion below, that was not the point),
• you still can have regular detective stories like “Friends and Foes by Northumbrian”, “M.I.T.: Muggle Interface Team - Haunted House: Dead by Northumbrian”, it is actually what “Strangers at Drakeshaugh by Northumbrian” is all about as well,
• and any other plot for any other story you can imagine.

Category: literature Tagged: review harryPotter blogComment fromReddit storyPrompt