On bashing
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:date: 2020-04-24
:category: literature
:tags: review, harryPotter, blogComment, fromReddit


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 a cheap cop-out from the bad situation. From bad to
worse.

E.g., I really liked (ultra-cheesy, teeth rotting, true) setup of
`A Different Halloween by RobSt`_: Lily Potter meets Emma Granger
at the paediatrician, and they go the Grangers’ for tea, so when
Voldemort calls, James Potter is on the phone with Lilly, more
alert, and he doesn’t have a problem of defending Lilly and
Harry; thus he manages to escape. The problem of this story was
that all problems were (in a rather elegant manner) resolved in
the middle of the third chapter (when Voldemort truly completely
and irrevocably died). The author had two good options what do in
that situation: he could just finish the story right there, and
it would be a nice short sugar-sweet three-shot story. Nothing
against that. Or he could really sit down on his behind and
develop the new completely original storyline. He went the third,
poor, way: by the ridiculous amount of the Dumbledore bashing he
tried to make a villain out of him and the result was ridiculous.

And no, it is possible to write Dumbledore as a bad guy, I am not
claiming he must be a saint, but it is a hard job and the author
must really write a long persuasive story to get from the most
positive to a negative character. `There Will Be No Foolish Wand
Waving by kgfinkel`_ made an almost good job in this area.

.. _`A Different Halloween by RobSt`:
   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6439871

.. _`There Will Be No Foolish Wand Waving by kgfinkel`:
   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13137899