FimFiction Link - Short ID: 461780/on-the-implications-of-parallel-worlds
Published: Feb '20 — Jul '21
On the Implications of Parallel Worlds (i.e. The Gate's rewrite, Hailey Potter 2.0) - It's far less interesting than the original. In The Gate, the viewpoint character jumped frequently and you'd be lucky if any given arc lasted 3 chapters. In this fic, you get intense focus on the main character of any given arc and said arcs easily break 10 consecutive chapters. It's for this reason that I struggle to think of this as anything other than "The Silversong fic". It has other arcs, but that dominates my memories of the fic. This arc structure is likely a deliberate choice by the author; Even they thought that The Gate's madness was unacceptable. However, we all know that you'd rather have a bad writer write a crack fic than a serious fic. A side effect of this is that the cast also feels a lot smaller than The Gate's.
The first block of chapters (lets say 1-16) is spent with the author desperately trying to not write a crack fic while also having thousands of ponies in Hogwarts. I'll give the author some credit for originality: Doing The Sorting from the Hat's perspective or the first sight of The Hogwarts Express from Hermionie's is a good twist. However, so many words are spent setting up the later arcs and justifying the fic's madness (it takes a lot of work to get this premise going without breaking the world) that the pacing is a total failure and not a lot of fun stuff is going on. If you're going to drop the fic anywhere, it'll be here. Chapter 10 is a prime example. It's half "let's do arithmetic to make sure that we've not broken the world" and "let's set up Draco's interest in the ponies". It should be no surprise that it takes about 25,000 words to get to Hogwarts.
The second block (17-32) would be the Silversong arc. Conventional wisdom is to not judge any HP work until they're at Hogwarts, however, even this isn't all that good. Silversong's arc is probably the best thing in the whole fic, but without the madness of The Gate, it largely comes off as an unremarkable Harry Potter TF/TG fic. I've also argued that The Gate did the TF/TG better than in The Gate. In The Gate, it was a much slower process than spanned the first two canon books and had rising action as Draco's dad tried to work out what's happened to his son. This allowed for reasonably paced character development and Draco's slow acceptance of the Equestrian life. In this fic, it's an illness that compresses all of Draco's development in to about 15 consecutive chapters, only for chapters 31 and 32 to suddenly abort the arc. I don't even think that the stuff with Draco's dad happens.
The next few chapters tie up loose ends from the earlier bits, but a heavy focus is on Hermionie becoming stupidly overpowered. I don't have much to say on it.
cont
Continuing from >>39042194.
The rest of the fic is Ginny's big arc. Her romance is even worse than HBP. Fans of the book series will know that's really saying something. On more than three occasions, she falls in love at first sight. She also has a marriage contract (part of Dumbledore's Plan™) and quickly becomes interested in polygamy. The last few chapters have what would be major issues in any other fic, e.g. Hermionie's limitless magic, the Ariel plot coming from nowhere and giving Ginny a daughter (don't ask, you won't get it unless you've read The Gate), and the school nurse knowing about Horcruxes. I find these easy to forgive on the grounds that the author killed the fic soon after. In fact, I can almost blame canon. The canon Chamber of Secrets plot relies on nobody asking Myrtle many questions. Once the author made the mistake of resurrecting her, the canon plotline was doomed, so it's no surprise the author killed the fic soon after. Speaking of, I've not found many of the author's reasons for cancelling this fic. The best that I can figure out is that, due to not following their outline, they were stuck with scenes that they wanted to happen but no longer had the groundwork to justify, resulting in crippling writer's block.
As for trends that arc specific to certain arcs, I'll say the following:
>The author has done a good job of toning down the pony magic from The Gate. It's still overpowered, but it's not as apparent. The PT magic, on the other hand, is still insanely powerful. Hermionie performs several miracles.
>Reckless use of Lyra's magic continues to be a theme. She PTs Draco without asking for consent.
>The focus on Dumbledore's plan is pushed to the point of insanity. I mean that more literally than usual. Dumbledore goes insane because the ponies have completely destroyed his plan. He has several periods where he can't even get out of bed. Furthermore, the specificity of his plan is past the point of parody. He has everything planned down to how Ginny needs to act around Harry and how the Weasleys should break him out of his house. Lyra learns of the plot for Harry's martyrdom in book one. Pick any chapter in the early 40s and you'll see plenty of this.
My overall opinion of the fic is that it should absolutely be skipped. I'll maybe remember some of the Silversong arc, but that's it. Even that is an average HP TF/TG. At least with The Gate, you could enjoy the insanity. Here, it's just unremarkable writing. I'm not particularly looking forward to reading the author's next fic. To write a good fic, the author would either have to improve significantly or snort crack. Neither is likely.