Title: A Champion's New Hope
By: Rocag
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/General
DLP Category: Independent Harry
Pairing: Harry/Daphne
Statue: WIP, now Complete -Sesc
Summary: Set during the Goblet of Fire, Harry looks to different friends for support after both Ron and Hermione refuse to believe that he did not put his name in the Goblet. Including one unexpected friend: Daphne Greengrass.

Link: Click Here

Well, I have been following this story since the first day it was posted on fanfiction.net. The story is very good, the characterization is very well done. The plot is quite good, add the Ron bashing and this story gets a 5/5 from me.

The grammar seems fine to me, but than again I am no grammar Nazi. Characterization of Daphne was quite surprising, it's damn near perfect. This has got to be the best Harry/Daphne story, I have read, ever!

I can't wait for the yule ball to happen, read the story to fond out why. :banana::banana:

fairly original, but done before.

 

First impression is he needs to show, not tell. Edit when I'm done reading the whole fic.

 

While the author isn't an illiterate moron - and since it was you who recommended it, I half expected them to be, to be honest, this is far from a good story.

Five years ago, this may have been a decent story. Since then, I like to think the fandom has come a long way, while this author has not.

Harry/Daphne is characterized is the typical - one might say cliched so much that I am actually turned off from Slytherin girls - manner. She tries to "bring out the Slytherin" in Harry, of course, and the whole of it makes me want to cut myself.

There's also the way that Harry gets past the first task -

Spoiler

Parseltongue

- and that is what made me click the little red 'X'.

Congratulations, author 'Rocag', you made the challenges to Harry trivial; what an exciting story. The way he breezes through adversity really makes me sit on the edge of my seat. *yawn*

Harry makes it through all the Fourth year spells from every class in the first chapter - it seems all he needed was a swift kick in the pants from Daphne, shockingly - and blah blah blah...it's been done before, by better authors, years ago.

When Harry/Daphne started, it was a breath of fresh air; H/G and H/Hr were around and terrible, and sweet H/Tonks had just been corrupted by fangirls. Harry/Daphne, too, had its flood of horribleness, and this story seems to combine many aspects of them into something greater and worse than before.

2/5. It's only above a 1 because grammatically, it was alright.

 

What kmfrank said.

It wasn't eye-bleedingly terrible, but it was a chore to read. The grammar and dialogue would have been ignorable if the plot and characterization were good, but they're not, which makes every mistake stand out. Daphne is so cliche you might as well stitch 'Mary Sue' on her forehead, and this type of plot has been so overdone that it makes me fall asleep.

The thing about Harry/Daphne fics that we like is that Daphne is an empty slate; a skilled author can do pretty much anything with her character. Unfortunately, her lack of character allows unskilled authors vast opportunity for Mary-Sueism, self insertion, and other general faggotry. Luckily, this author went with only the first failure. But it's still goes fail.

Add in the general lack of interesting things, and I give it a 2/5, only because there are fics far more deserving of 1/5 out there.

NinjaEdit: So, everyone, who wants to bet that Rocag is really royalduke in 'disguise'?

 

I wish, I can't write like that. Anyway, if you think this is such a bad story, why not tell me about one REALLY good Harry/Daphne you read.

Please give me links of GOOD Harry/Daphne stories!:banana::banana::banana:

 

English class must have been fun for you.

I'm not sure there are any REALLY good Harry/Daphne fics out there, but there are a few decent ones. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Harry Potter and the Marriage Contracts, but that's a mediocre example.

Sorry Roca- I mean, royalduke.

 

Bah, I didn't like Marriage Contracts either. Readable, but not great.

Perspicacity's anti-romance 'The Game is Afoot' is in my opinion brilliant.

Measure for Measure, the early-middle at least, is fairly lulzy, but a sort of guilty pleasure than a true measure of 'good fic'.

Traitorous is perhaps the closest to the dark!Harry/Daphne fanon Daphne fapfic genre that is not only readable, but actually good. I would recommend it.

I am reading and will continue to read this story. I don't expect it to really be outstanding - the justification for their friendship is vague at best, and like has been said, the marginalization of the tasks thus far was irritating.

However... I think this story deserves at least a 3. It's not great, but it's not bad. Nothing has popped out that makes me unable to continue reading, and while it's not particularly different or exciting, the author seems to be making an honest attempt at keeping the story rational. I think 'salvageable' is perhaps too harsh a word, but I think this story could be library worthy if a few things were tweaked and the backstory strengthened.

I don't know how to come across as not utterly wishy-washy, but the framework for a good story is here, it's just lacking a bit in depth and presentation. I'm going to withhold voting in actuality for now, because I'd like to give the author a chance to bump it towards a 4 before I vote.

EDIT: After reading the last chapter, I can put my finger on what's really holding back this fic.

1) The story needs to diverge more. A good PoD should look like a 'Y' where the story breaks from Canon and goes its own way. It can follow the ideas, but what we have here is more of an 'C' where the story follows canon, breaks away for a tiny step (the parseltonguesque Dragon solution) and then curves pretty much right back into canon. I'll hold off on this though, as it's possible that the author is waiting for Yule to really do this, and this is just setting the scene.

2) Too much telling, not enough showing. If the author is reading this, my best advice is to look at some top of the line stories and see how their descriptive scenes differ from yours. Usually, if you have the main character having to have massive internal monologues, then you're doing something wrong. A lot of chapter six isn't bad in theory, but instead of showing us the training, or Harry doing stuff, your just having him tell us about it. It's not as interesting. 'Tell' only when absolutely necessary to set the scene, and then get to the action.

The latter half of chapter six (Harry/Hermione at the lake) was much more enjoyable than the first part (and that shouldn't be the case, with Daphne being involved ) because of this. It was much more active, much more entertaining to read.

3)

My guess is it's lines like that that subconciously make people want to hit the red x in the sky. It's complete filler, it's obvious, and it insults the reader in two utterly unnecessary ways:

- It assumes that we have never read the Harry Potter books, despite reading Harry Potter fanfiction. While there are possibly people like this (I've read expanded Star Wars fics that required me to use the wiki because I've only watched the original films once about ten years ago) it's going to irk 99% of the readership and is still utterly useless to the remaining 1% because...

- Anyone with any ability to make logical connections is going to realize that Voldemort wants Harry dead because Harry showed him up. It's all in there in a nice tidy monker, the boy-who-lived.

Two stylistic changes and a cropping of filler. Even only doing the former two, I think this story would become a fair 4.

 

Marriage contract.... Failed, the end.

 

I haven't read the story yet, and will later, and edit this when I do, however, I just want to come in and say that your abuse of the dancing bananas is fucking annoying. Your sig is bad enough as it is.

Not to mention, your defensiveness is annoying.

Either you don't get the hint that you are annoying people, or you just don't care. Not sure which one is worse.

 

Harry Potter and the News. That'll get your banana dancing.

 

I didn't mind this one so much. As a romance fic it was pretty good.


The Grass Is Always Greener

 

Will you stop using those fucking bannanas? It's irritating to the point of disbelief. They're even in your sig.

 

I've been following this for a little while now and it's not terrible. It seems to me just another rehash of GoF with Daphne inserted. Though seeing as how i'm a huge Harry/Daphne (or any non Pansy slytherin girl for that matter) I don't mind. The story is not poorly written but it's not going to win any awards either. It does help kill time though. I'll reserve my review until it gets a bit longer.

Oh and the 1st task was kinda interesting, at least I had never seen Harry attempt to talk to the dragon, it was pretty new and different.

 

It's been done countless times. Usually it ends in Harry splitting with Ron & Hermione because parseltongue is dark (which apparently implies evil) and they cannot condone that.

Will edit here when done with reading.

edit:

Meh, while in most cases narrative is grammatically and orthographically correct, its flow is really poor. Dialogues lack realism, but they aren't too bad. Plot is anything but original, but the premise is still rather good.

I liked the fact that the author tried to avoid unnecessary character bashing and kept characters relatively close to their canon characters.

Overall the story is nothing special, but it's not as bad as some people make it look to be.

2.5/5 rounded up to 3/5

 

What kmfrank said.
&
Dialog really sucks. I couldn't even make it through the first chapter. It felt like a teenaged afternoon special ripoff. Totally unrealistic.

2/5 and that is only because of spelling saved it from going lower.

 

Meh. The beginning of the first chapter sucked too much (too wordy and didn't show me enough for me to be invested in the story) for me to want to continue reading it.

No rating yet, and unlikely to get one since I didn't read enough to justify scoring it. I *may* give it a second chance if the story maintains its 3-ish rating.

 

Those bananas WILL get you banned.

It's happened before.

Got 2 chapters in, bout as far as I could go...

 

Average in every department. Grammar is mixed - sometimes fine, sometimes awful. It's a recycled plot, just a different catalyst character.

Parseltongue was reasonable the first time it was used, but it's far from a good idea in 2009. In my read of it, there's nothing keeping me coming back.

2.5/5

EDIT: Got bored. Read more. Wish I hadn't.

Read it all before, just with Daphne replaced by a different girl. Nothing truly new to contribute. No tension. Not even any drama, really. Boring. 2/5.

 

Even the title of this story made me cringe away.

Everything's been said.

2/5

 

Incredibly boring, this story has no redeeming qualities.
1/5