Fanfics to Avoid

[Bob Schroeck]

Here's a thread I'm surprised we never needed before (or if we have, I've long forgotten):  Fics that are so bad they're bad -- they're not entertainingly bad, and they're not so bad they're good, they just suck and nothing rescues them.

I'll start off with a fic I gave a good long chance to, but have given up on as of this morning:  Mastermind Hunting by "Louis IX" (600K words).  This is a Harry Potter fic with a godlike!Harry, but I have never seen godlike!Harry written so dully.  

Okay, let me back up and give a little background.  In this story, Petunia has a miscarriage while carrying Dudley and as a result can't have children.  For some reason Dumbledore doesn't just leave Harry on the Dursleys' doorstep, but actually takes the time to talk to them, with the result that they agree to raise Harry in exchange for magical healing for Petunia.  Raising him proves a delight and fills a hole in their lives, so they formally adopt him, and soon he's the older brother to another boy and a pair of twin girls.  (And I've just given you about 75% of all the characterization his siblings get.)  

When Harry has his first bouts of accidental magic, he investigates and experiments with it for several years and becomes adept at doing a lot of things with it.  When a covert CIA agent operating in Britain catches wind of one less-than-subtle incident, it starts an odyssey that takes up most of the first 15% or so of the fic, where Harry and his family are split up and scattered around the world, and in an adventure worthy of James Bond Harry enlists allies, vastly improves on his abilities, discovers wizards and their culture, briefly serves as an avatar for Quetzalcoatl during the fulfillment of a prophecy (no, really), thwarts the CIA and several other organizations, and finally rescues his family, just in time to enroll in Hogwarts under an assumed name.

At least, it would be an adventure worthy of James Bond if it were written at all well.  The author has either never heard of -- or rejects as useless -- the fundamental writing advice "Show, Don't Tell".  Just about everything in Harry's life before he's 11 is drily, dully recited third-hand, with so little dialogue even in scenes where people are having extended conversations that you wonder why the author's bothering to tell you they're talking.  "Harry did x, while he thought y, and someone said z".  He also is prone to ridiculous malaprops, or perhaps he trusts his spell-checker far too much; I suspect he might not be a native speaker of English, as he writes things that I don't think anyone raised speaking English would do or say, like referring to a team of special ops forces as a "Commando", singular.  When Harry gets to Hogwarts, the writing improves a little, with more dialogue, but everything still just plods along, one thing after another, to the point that there's nothing making me eager enough to find out what happens next to keep reading.

Frankly, I am amazed that I stuck it out as long as I did.  Having done so, though, I can save other folks the effort.  Stay away from this one.

[classicdrogn]

referring to a team of special ops forces as a "Commando", singular

That is in fact the correct usage of the term, or was until Hollywood and spy-thriller writers got their mitts on it. I'll agree with the rest of your assessment, though.

[Bob Schroeck]

It is? Color me surprised, as I have never heard that usage.

[classicdrogn]

Etymology

The word stems from the Afrikaans word kommando, which translates roughly to "mobile infantry regiment". This term originally referred to mounted infantry regiments, who fought against the British Army in the first and second Boer Wars.

It is also possible the word was adopted into Afrikaans from interactions with Portuguese colonies.[2] Less likely, it is a High German loan word, which was borrowed from Italian in the 17th century, from the sizable minority of German settlers in the initial European colonization of South Africa.[1]

The officer commanding an Afrikaans kommando is called a kommandant, which is a regimental commander equivalent to a lieutenant-colonel or a colonel.

The Oxford English Dictionary ties the English use of the word meaning "[a] member of a body of picked men ..." directly into its Afrikaans' origins:[3]

1943 Combined Operations (Min. of Information) i. Lt. Lieutenant-Colonel D. W. Clarke... produced the outline of a scheme.... The men for this type of irregular warfare should, he suggested, be formed into units to be known as Commandos.... Nor was the historical parallel far-fetched. After the victories of Roberts and Kitchener had scattered the Boer army, the guerrilla tactics of its individual units (which were styled ‘Commandos’)... prevented decisive victory.... His [sc. Lt.-Col. D. W. Clarke's] ideas were accepted; so also, with some hesitation, was the name Commando.

During World War II, newspaper reports of the deeds of "the commandos" led to readers thinking that the singular meant one man rather than one military unit, and this new usage became established.

Source

So, apparently it was the newsies who were to blame.

[DHBirr]

I first heard that use of "Commando" decades ago when researching mercenaries in Africa. And as Wikipedia puts it, in an article about legendary merc "Mad Mike" Hoare:

In 1964, Congolese Prime Minister Moïse Tshombe, his employer in Katanga, hired Major Mike Hoare to lead a military unit called 5 Commando, Armée Nationale Congolaise (5 Commando ANC) (later led by John Peters; not to be confused with No.5 Commando, the British Second World War commando force) made up of about 300 men most of whom were from South Africa. 

Notice by the way not only two unrelated units called "5 Commando," but an "ANC" that doesn't mean "African National Congress." Recipe for confusion, anyone?

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, I stand corrected. However... it's off-topic for the thread.

[Dartz]

I can't be the only person who CTRL-f'd their own user name here.....