Anti-Harmony or Notebooks and Letters
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:date: 2019-06-15T18:17:42
:category: literature
:tags: review, harryPotter, blogComment

(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.

.. _elsewhere:
    {filename}singularoddities-review-escape.rst

.. _`Escape by SingularOddities`:
    https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1191624

.. _`Mr and Mrs Percy Weasley`:
    https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12373273

.. _`Notebooks and Letters by chem prof`:
    https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3867175/1/

.. _`What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?`:
    https://angua9.livejournal.com/204545.html