Title: Twist Of Fate (misuse of title case by author)
Author: James018
Rating: T
Genre: Friendship
Status: WIP (23k words, 7 chapters)
Library Category: General
Pairings: None (yet)
Summary: The effect a twist of fate can have… Instead of Malfoy, Harry meets someone else at Madam Malkin's, someone who causes him to question the wizarding world more. What happens when Gryffindor boldness meets Slytherin shrewdness? A tale for the ages, of course. Eventual political!Harry, undecided pairings, no bashing.
Link: FanFiction.Net

It's probably on the early side to post this, but it's demonstrated some good qualities. If a mod thinks it's too short, please move to Almost Recommended.

Premise is fairly standard fanon - Harry meets Daphne and they become secret friends (fic actually gets the Friendship genre tag), Daphne begins to teach him wizarding politics and customs and finds their friendship starting to influence her own worldview along the way. No official pairings, although we can probably guess the endgame.

Where this story excels is in its character interactions and their development - dialogue and especially body language are well-written, and the main characters have already exhibited some changes over the first seven chapters. Daphne and Harry are not immediately best friends, and each has their own agenda (as do other characters, such as Dumbledore and Daphne's parents), which adds some political realism. The author also does a good job of avoiding some common pitfalls within this genre, including bashing Ron or Dumbledore. Harry is actually friends with Ron, they're just not as close as in canon.

There are weaknesses as well - the author could stand to be a bit more original and stray further from canon or fanon cliches, but there's plenty of time for that. I'm not crazy about the use of first person POV (which has also begun to rotate), but it sort of works because the author writes plenty of thoughts. Also suffers from a case of Serious!11-year-olds.

Overall the story doesn't blow you away just yet, but it definitely has potential. Worth a read/follow, and a good candidate for the Library as things progress. I'd give it a 3.5/5, with plenty of upside.

 

I enjoyed reading this. Harry's inner voice works fine for me and it's adding another perspective than just a rehash of the old scenes.

I voted 3 for now but with potential upwards.

 

There are a lot of things I don't like about this. It's first person, and relies entirely too much on telling rather than showing. No effort is made to paint a picture of the magical world, and it's a straight up canon rehash with one difference (the aforementioned friendship with Daphne). Most damning is that it's using one of my least favourite fanon inventions, pureblood society - lords and all.

On the other hand it's technically well written, if a bit bland. No typos or grammar errors that I could see, and the last chapter (chapter seven) is where things really seem to be picking up. Chapter seven is the first has left me interested to see what happens next. As of right now I'd say a tentative 3/5, with a potential to be higher if the quality of the writing continues to improve. It's still too early to say definitively.

 

It's hard to decide when to put a story like this up for review. On one hand, it's 23k words long. On the other hand, it really hasn't given us enough material to decide how good the story will be.

So far it's a basic story that's been done a thousand times before in Harry learning pureblood etiquette from someone else, this time Daphne Greengrass. Whoop-de-doo.

The fic shows promise however with it's character interactions being well done, nothing special but definitely nothing bad. The fact that this type of fic has no bashing so far is a rarity. No muggle vs magicals bashing, no gryfinndor vs slytherin bashing.

Daphnes character and psyche is well written as is the brief glimpse of Dumbledores. Everyone else is a generic cookie-cutter build from canon so far. That will change, but you can tell the emphasis has been on Daphne and it has been done well, but not enough to hold a story by itself in the long run. So far the fic is closer to a character piece than a story.

So, as it stands, 3/5 and not worthy of the library if it was abandoned today. It's decent and shows promise, but nothing special. However if it continues and the author diverts from canon and actually gets a story going beyond the Daphne interaction it has a lot of potential to go up. Maybe that's a case by itself why it's too early to review, because it's too early to tell how it will end up.

 

Yeah, I think the story's real strength is its neutral presentation of the characters, giving us a window into their thoughts and motivations without any judgment, which is somewhat of a rarity.

I agree that despite the 23k word length, it's hard to put a rating on it. The author's done a good job avoiding mistakes thus far, but he's still deciding what kind of story it's going to be. It could remain a ~3 (not likely to get worse), but has potential to improve considerably. Still, I think it's definitely worth a follow and deserves the additional eyeballs.

 

I agree it's to early to really know.
It's canon rehash but at least the author doesn't take us step by step through things we already know, they're more mentioned in passing. I hope things will diverge more as the story progresses, and that at that moment the author will do more showing.
No bashing is definitely, definitely a plus.

As things stand right now, I feel it's to early to rate (I want to see how the end of Year 1 plays out for example at least), but I'll definitely keep an eye on it.

 

I was told by a reviewer that this story was mentioned here and wanted to check it out. I'm glad I did! All your thoughts on this fic are very valuable feedback, which I must say I don't really get on FF.net. Most of my reviews are either "good chapter, keep going" one-liners or rants against Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Joe Bloggs and everyone in between. Please don't hesitate to put your thoughts in a review rather than just leaving them here (or in your own heads). If you don't tell me what you like or dislike, I don't know!

In saying that, most of the stuff that's been brought up here I'm very aware of:
- First person POV: I know it's divisive, but it's what suits this story best. I'm trying to get into the character's head and show the meaning behind their actions.
- Lack of deviation from canon: that will come, I'm just trying to measure my pace a little.
- Serious!11 year olds: a definite issue, I'd honestly appreciate advice on how to avoid this.
- And of course the cliches: I'm using plenty of plot devices that are common to the point of overuse/misuse in fanfiction. I don't think ideas like lordships, etiquette, etc are bad ideas in and of themselves, and I'm hoping to use them better than most. If you're really picky about originality, this fic may not be for you.

 

First person makes this incredibly hard, as you see the characters thoughts leading to his actions. An 11 year old does not have many "logical thoughts" compared to an adult, but in your fic you often show him being logical due to it being first person. Harry and other 11 year olds should be dramatic, speaking without thinking and overall, going with their feelings rather than any sort of logic.

Pretty much, your character thinks too much and therefore it makes him seem like an adult than he should be. First person also allows you to do more "telling" instead of "showing". To make him seem younger, get rid of all the logical thoughts but instead make him emotional and show his reaction (not his thoughts) on a certain subject. Everything you do is Harry Potter "thinking" instead of showing his movements in the world.

Plus, HP is popular because of the child-like wonder when HP first enters the wizarding world. You are missing out on that amazing moment where everything is different and Harry can barely keep his eyes on one thing. New clothes, culture, signs and magic EVERYWHERE. It made you feel like you were there, or this is where you wanted to be. By having your character think all the time, you lost that wonder that is magic. HP ages because he learns more about this "wondrous place" to see the horrors within. He starts to become jaded in certain aspects and has experiences that causes him to grow up. Your Harry seems already jaded from the first line and less open to the wonders of the wizarding world.

You should post your chapters in the Work by Author forum and you will probably get better/deeper review with examples.

 

I'm not a fan of first-person narrative in fanfiction. This is doubly true when the author tells rather than shows. In this story especially it feels tacked on, with no real purpose. I feel like the dialogue is a tad flat.

The changing viewpoint is interesting. I like how the author gives Harry and Daphne different thought patterns.

There are no glaring grammatical errors that I've noticed.

3/5

 

I just gave it a shot. As far as technicalities are concerned it's all good. I like the premise it could turn out to be a good HP/DG romance. My biggest problem is the canon rehash. It's Harry meets Daphne in secret while following the original story. It definitely deserves 3/5 because there is no bashing so far, but we haven't gotten to the meat of the story yet.

 

Agree with the above. It's a bit early to decide, since it's still in buildup mode, but there's a lot of potential there. I'd say give it enough time for a few more updates and then come back to it.

Nothing wrong with it from a technical sense, but some more excitement and emotion from Harry's end could push it from "solid" to "exceptional". First person in and of itself is not a problem for me - but it is a lot harder to execute.

I gave it a 3/5 because it's not bad by any means, but it's not amazing, either.

 

I quite enjoyed reading this, and look forward to another chapter. As has been mentioned it is nothing groundbreaking plot wise, but Is written well and I look forward to seeing where the author takes it. For an eleven year old Harry definitely seems a little mature, this is highlighted by the use of first person narrative. I do not envy authors tryingto avoid this as it must be difficult to achieve without the reader shaking their head at the poor decisions an eleven year old would surely make. One very small thing that I didn't understand was Harrys refusal to call Daphne by her surname, surely this is a small concession to make for a new friend.


3/5

 

Just a list of thoughts that occurred to me as I read through.

- Talking in monotone doesn't quite have the effect that I think was intended. I imagine what was desired was an impression of remoteness or emotional distance. But monotone doesn't really demonstrate those. Daphne speaking monotone makes her seem autistic or like she has some kind of speech disorder.

- Very short chapters. That's fine so long as updates are frequent. Otherwise problematic as you forget what's happening between updates.

- It's actually common in real life Britain for people to call each other by their surnames and not considered rude at all. I have a number of close friends who I've known for over a decade whom I (and everyone else in our social group) call by their surnames.

- FYI, in canon Susan's parents weren't killed in the war. It was her uncle and aunt and their children. Not sure if canon matters to you but in case it does, there you go.

- Daphne explaining things to us that we already know isn't too exiting. There needs to be some other aspect to Harry and Daphne's exchanges to keep the reader interested, because info-dump alone isn't going to do it.

- Harry seems to enjoy learning magic here more than in canon. However, it's not made clear to the reader whether or not he is actually studying magic more than in canon or if this is simply meant to be a first person take on canonical events that makes Harry seem more enthusiastic but with the same results as canon.

- Largely disappointing taking on wizarding nobility, because of the way it clashes with canon (we know that the Malfoy family has a noble title given to them by William the Conqueror, i.e. a Muggle title), clashes with the general idea of nobility (which requires a fount of honour i.e. an issuing authority, generally a monarch) and (worst of all) seems overly simplistic. The great thing about real history is that it's so messy, and there's a historical story behind every weird constitutional practice and irregularity. The way to make a political system seem authentic isn't to make it logical and coherent, it's to fill it with irregularities and uncodified conventions which each have a historical event behind them.

- Nice divergence having Harry follow Snape to the third floor. But what will have become of Hermione...?

- Oh. That's disappointing. Wasn't the only reason why Ron even thought to help Hermione in canon because Harry brought it up? Harry's absence should have meant Ron didn't go.

- Daphne's PoV chapter is great. It adds complexity to the political situation and her character and comes off as nicely balanced. She's a bit too self-aware, but this is a problem that runs through the fic as acknowledged above and to be honest, I think there's no way to avoid it if you want to have kids discussing politics in any terms other than "X group is the bad guys, Y group is the good guys, X is stronger or weaker than Y".

- Dumbledore interaction was top notch and has absolutely made the fic. It has instilled a lot of confidence about the direction you're taking this (how a person writes Dumbledore is often a very good measuring stick of their general ability to write decent HP fanfic).

- Loved the "fairy tale logic" approach to magic with the mirror acting in unpredictable and spontaneous ways, almost having a personality but with no suggestion that it is actually sentient. Very much in the tone of canon magic.

Looking forward to more.