Hermetic Alchemist posted a comment on Saturday 11th November 2006 5:50am for Well That's All Right by Me

I LOVE Kwan's objectionable teaching methods!!

What a great story!

HA

JBern replied:

Thank you for the review!   Kwan is a special breed of mentor isn't he?   Thanks for appreciating the story for the way I wrote it. ~Jim

jgkitarel posted a comment on Saturday 11th November 2006 4:53am for Well That's All Right by Me

*snort* You actually manage to make this a combinations of sarcastic and humorous, while keeping the overall tone serious. That's not an easy balance to maintain.

Good job, I haven't laughed at so much humor in fic that managed to be serious at the same time in quite a while.

JBern replied:

Well thank you for the compliments.   Harry's mind is a terrible thing to waste.   I wanted to go deep into his mind and let the readers follow along with his development.

How many people would willingly sign up for the Kwan school of Magic?~Jim

ShadeHawk posted a comment on Saturday 11th November 2006 4:12am for Well That's All Right by Me

First, quick note about Kwan method of teaching silent casting. I really, really hope that he would provide Harry with instructions (like to some extent with Apparating), and not use "Snape's method for teaching Occlumency".

I like "Bungle in the Jungle" very much: both the second person style, and actual plot. While I didn't like "To Fight the Coming Darkness" plot and break as many cliches as you can attitude, I liked the way that it portrayed characters: both good and bad sides of them, their motives etc. - I hope that it would be the way in this story with respect to characters we left behind: Dumbledore, Weasleys, Hermione,...

Will Harry be learning non-accidental wandless magic (besides Apparition and changing into Animagus)? A'propos silent casting: in HBP it was described as using invocation only in your mind. Will Harry be able to understand cats (and perhaps other animals) "body language" even in humand form? (I wholehearily recommend BBC programme about domestic cats' behaviour as a basis for this; it explains for example why cats usually hop into the lap of person who doesn't like cats ;-) Would he learn about proper, not field version of cursebreaking (for example surrounding warding rune by counter-runes).

A bit of nit-picking: "runes" (or rather runic alphabet) in Mundane world are letters formerly used to write Germanic languages (or Hungarian language). So talking about non-european runes (at least in Mundane world) hasn't much sense. On the other hand it looks like runes in magical world are just another way to use magic, like "instant" spells using wands (using pseudo-Latin invocations; I wonder if New Orlean wizards uses pidgin-French for casting), or like potions, or like rituals. One uses symbols (glyphs, sigils, seals) to cast reactive magic (BTW. portkeys are example of non-runed reactive magic). Here Chineese characters, or ingenious Korean alphabet Hangul, or even some mathematical geometrical symbols (joining runic way of casting with arithmancy) might be used.

I wonder if all wizards uses the same focus: wand, and not staffs (with crystal on top instead of material within), rings (with stone) or alike.

Chaingun... the only way to use Vulcan rotary-minigun by single person would be to use serious enchantments (Technomagic) to reduce recoil and to load it. Odinary grenades with banishing charm would be a good idea. Or ordinary or magical version of Claymores.

Enough rambling...

Thank you very much for this wonderfull story. Keep up good writing!

--
ShadeHawk

JBern replied:

Wow!   Thanks for all the insightful commentary.   As for the Dragon's breath, it was the same reason they weren't supposed to use fire spells.   That'll pop up in the next couple of chapters.

With only Harry's perspective, you'll only really know what's going on in his mind.   It's doubtful that you'll ever completely understand the motivations of the others.   I don't know how much I'll go into wandless magic.   I'm pretty busy in this one with Animagery and Cursebreaking.  

Magic is and should be different all around the world.   You already saw Kwan's Origami bombs, Goblin Worg, and Native American Animagery.   I'll try to work new stuff into it, but not at the cost of bogging down the plot.~Jim

DrT posted a comment on Saturday 11th November 2006 2:50am for Well That's All Right by Me

I'll be interested to see how you deal with Harry's semi-girlfriend/mistress, but I hope you keep this H/L, and continue the story on to deal Dumbles & the Weasleys. Don't be TOO harsh on Hermione. I'll likely only review on one site from now on, whichever I read first.

"T"

JBern replied:

That train wreck is coming...   It's filed under H/Luna, but that's more for the sequel.   Same goes for any treatment of Dumbledore, The Weasleys and Hermione.   I promise not to be any harsher to Hermione than necessary...

Jim

Jim_xinu posted a comment on Saturday 11th November 2006 2:47am for Well That's All Right by Me

Kwan is cool. Cruel, but cool. :-)

I know the Karina plot line is important to the story, but everytime she comes up, I get that 'I know something horrible is going to happen' feeling. I hated the entire movie Titanic because of that feeling. :-)

On the down side, this chapter has a lot of little typo and edit errors. None bad enough to prevent understanding, but there's enough of them to be noticeable.

I'm glad to see you over here on fanficauthors.net, congrats! I'll review over here most of the time now.

Great chapter, thanks for sharing it with us.

--Jimm

JBern replied:

I'll go back and look for the errors you mention.   You're right to get a sinking feeling about what's coming with Karina.   I was seriously considering deviating from my use of Bungle in the Jungle's lyrics for Chapter titles in favor of using Locomotive Breath for the train wreck that is coming.~Jim