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Drawn too long
##############
:date: 2020-01-04T10:31:09
:category: faith
:tags: review, harryPotter
(Major spoilers follow, I am sorry, but I cannot explain my
opinion on the story without revealing most of the plot; if you
haven’t read the story, finish it first.)
I have followed `To All the Wizards I’ve Considered Before by
FullofWrackspurts`_ first with excitement. It seemed like
refreshingly “normal” story different from the pervasive cliches
of most Harmony or Romione stories. Hermione which is as confused
by the intricacies of love as we all are, who is not
a super-heroine, not super-confident, and … well, the word is
“normal”.
It starts as a classical comedy of errors: letters are sent to
number of Hermione’s male classmates making an impression that
they are some kind of her love letters to them. Farcical
dialogues with those affected happen and in the end, she agrees
with Dean to pretend to be dating so that they may evoke jealousy
in Ginny and Ron, and persuade them to renew (or ignite) romantic
relationship. Obviously what follows is that the pretended
relationship between Hermione and Dean starts to change into
something real and both of them are too bound by the pretence to
reveal their true feelings to each other. So far so good,
certainly not worse than three quarters of all successful
Hollywood romantic comedies.
The obvious problem is the end game. Whole charade about purely
contractual and pretence nature of their relationship started to
break down around the Christmas, when Hermione visited her
“boyfriend’s” family, and all Dean’s siblings are quite not
believing their pretence. Since that moment, the clocks started
ticking for some final showdown to happen. Two chapters or so of
them resolving their problem and it would be a sweet romcom.
Unfortunately, that is the sixth chapter of the story, and it
seems like just half of the story (in case the chapter fourteen
is the last one). I guess, the author read somewhere in one of
those “How to write a novel” guides on the Internet (or perhaps
even in a book), that unresolved tension can keep readers
attention for longer time, so she went with it. The problem with
this advice is in my opinion, that it can keep such attention
just for so long and it creates a debt to the readers. Longer you
keep their attention with this artificial gimmick, bigger return
on their investment they expect. With more than half of the story
spent on observing how our two heroes behave like idiots, we
expect something super profound to happen. May in the end the
author go AU and Dean returning to Ginny letting Hermione hang
out dry with the morale being “If you don’t snap them, they may
go away forever”? Will they agree to be together and go for
liberation of house-elves together (or whatever, Dean with his
Black American heritage may have an unique opinion on that)? Will
be there some super dramatic scene with for example Dean being
seriously hurt after The Battle of the Astronomy Tower (kind of
equivalent of the Bill-Fleur scene, or perhaps really dying)?
The result was that the author haven’t managed to do anything. In
the chapter sixteen our heroes kiss (again, the previous tease
was completely useless in the story development) and they still
haven’t said a word about the nature of their relationship.
Perhaps it is assumed they are boyfriend/girlfriend now, but it
seems like after the betrayal of our expectations the author has
left us hang out dry on the top of everything else.
After so perfect start the end is a huge disappointment.
.. _`To All the Wizards I’ve Considered Before by FullofWrackspurts`:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/17777138
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