No superheroes!
(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):
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On bashing
Bashing and similar are not the cause of poor quality of their
stories, but they are just a symptom of the author being lead by
the poor design of his story into areas, which would be
impossible to resolve or it would be too difficult, so bashing is
then just …
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Harry Potter and Dorothy Sayers
(my comments on the thread “Overused tropes” by
u/Aa11yah)
OK, I will suggest a very weird book for reading. The Mind of
the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers (yes, the author of detective
stories with Lord Peter Wimsey) is one of the best books on the
art of writing …
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Another comments on the Accidental Animagus & al.
(my comments on the thread “What are your thoughts on the
direction taken by 'Animagus at War' by White Squirrel?” by
u/SnobbishWizard)
I have already (many chapters ago) wrote a review, which
included my comments on this story, and so far I stand behind it.
On top of that …
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Note on Luna
(my comments on the thread “Best Luna fics” by
u/jasoneill23)
I like Luna in the Northumbrian’s stories, but there she is
not very central to the story (perhaps, aside from Yggdrasil by
Northumbrian, but it is not his best story). Actually, the
chapter 3 of Tales of the …
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Cepl’s Introduction to fem!Harrys
(my comments on “LF Fics to introduce me to fem!Harry by u/frostking104” Reddit thread)
There are two types of fem!Harry stories:
Where Harry (with a different name, of course) is naturally
a girl, always was and always will be. Usually, I guess, the
motivation is that the …
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How redeemable is canon Draco Malfoy?
(originally posted on Reddit)
Yes, everybody is redeemable. I believe redemption stories of some
former SSmen (and SSwomen), guards in the Nazi concentration camps, etc.
Redemption (or let’s use the old-fashioned term “conversion” or
“penance”) however doesn’t mean to somehow excuse previous deeds. It
requires true acknowledgement that …
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Augurey or loosing of sanity
(my comments on “The Augurey” by La Matrona, originally
published on Reddit)
What is my pet-peeve is when the characters behave like idiots
just to keep the plot together. Let’s see. I have just deleted
“The Augurey” from my computer.
First of all, just let me state, I have …
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Harry and Ginny as siblings
Originally published as “Harry & Ginny are brother and sister” on Reddit.
I see it like this. Lily was already pregnant with her second
child (it is slightly over a year between Harry and Ginny so it
is biologically possible), when they found out about the Prophecy
and need to hide …
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Religionless universe of Harry Potter
(my comments on the thread “Probably gonna catch some hate for
this. Religion and Mythology and its place in fiction.” on
Reddit by RhysThornbery; edited for this blog)
The question is about the role of religion in the HP
universe, and it is very interesting one. I am a …
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Terms of Matrimony
(my comments on “Terms of Matrimony” by Galad Estel)
First of all, this story has broken link on Fanfiction.net, so
I have had to look up and down all over the Internet to find that
only working copy known to me is at ff2ebook.com link shown
above. Even …
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