200: The Mystery Story – One Shot
Posted: March 27, 2012 Filed under: Harry Potter, The Mystery Story, The Mystery Story, Wrinkle in Time | Tags: Addicted Reader, Book, Friendship, Harry Potter, Movie, Wrinkle in Time 11 Comments »Title: The Mystery Story
Author: HB17RJO
Media: Book / Movie
Topic: Harry Potter / Wrinkle in Time
Genre: Friendship
URL: The Mystery Story
Critiqued by Addicted Reader
Hello readers. I’m really sorry for missing last week, life just got crazy(ier). For this week, I’ve decided to venture into the world of crossover fanfiction, and I found a weird little story on my first try.
Now, the writing mechanics in this story aren’t so bad. Certainly not down to our usual standard. What make it snark-worthy, however, are the author’s laughable attempt at mystery, the abuse of two different canons in one story, and the outrageous timesquiggle that makes it impossible to take this seriously as a piece of fanfiction.
I found this by looking in the Wrinkle in Time Trilogy crossover section, since I had some good luck in the Wrinkle in Time Trilogy section before. Once there, I clicked on Harry Potter, and there this was:
This is a mystery story! Luna meets a stranger at the store, and they become fast friends? Who is this girl? It’s your job to guess.
Anyone want to guess who Luna’s going to meet? Just in case you’ve missed it, I’ll play along and not give it away. Let’s look at the story and see what the hints are.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Harry Potter, or my Mystery Character. The whole point of this story is for you to guess her name. If you figure it out, Review! If you guess right, I review all your stories, or write something for you. Whatever you want pretty much. Hint on the character: She’s not from Harry Potter! But she is fairly well known, or at least her book is.
Anything I want? How about smacking you for being so ridiculous?
Be careful what you offer, there, author, the internet can be a very weird place. Just look at us.
Luna Finnegan walked through the supermarket. At the moment, she was looking at different cans of tomato soup. She really wanted to learn how to make it herself, but she hadn’t quite figured out how to do it. She was so focused on the cans, she ran into someone.
Wait, what? ”Luna Finnegan”?? When did that happen? Post-book canon has Luna marrying some guy named Scamander, according to this interview with Rowling. And even if you’re too lazy to do the 2 minutes of research that lead me to that site, why choose Seamus of all the guys in HP? Luna forms something of a bond with Dean Thomas when they’re staying at Shell Cottage after escaping from Malfoy Manor, and the movies hint rather strongly at a budding relationship between Luna and Neville Longbottom. So I ask again, “Finnegan”???
Walking into someone because she’s not paying attention to where she’s going does seem in-character, though.
“Oh, I’m quite sorry! I was looking for tomato soup.”
Here’s another question: Why is Luna in a Muggle supermarket?
“Me too! Isn’t it really good?”
What a co-inky-dink!
“Yes. When my mom was around, she used to make it homemade. I need to figure out how to do that. Do you know?”
I bet Luna’s mother used magic, and I doubt this “mystery” Muggle knows how to do that.
“No, actually. My mom was more interested in science.”
Since I know who the “mystery” character is, I can say that her mother did cook, she just tended to do so in the lab while doing experiments. So I think it’s unfair to Mystery Mom to imply that she didn’t know how to cook because of being a scientist. Whether she knew how to make tomato soup specifically is a separate issue.
Luna was surprised. “My mom was a scientist too! Kind of. She studied the moon. That’s why my name’s Luna. Luna Finnegan.”
I don’t think the moon thing is canon, but it doesn’t really contradict anything, so I’ll let it slide.
Mystery girl laughed. “Aren’t experiments crazy?”
No, they’re annoying. And a bitch. And time-consuming. And I hate them.
Sorry, that was my own feelings slipping through there.
Luna agreed. They talked about all the things their mothers did, until the store manager asked them to leave.
So is Luna just avoiding the mention of magic? Or is this some version of the HP world where wizards have gone public? Seeing as the only canon information we have on Luna’s mother is that she liked experimental spells, it’s a little hard to imagine how Luna could explain that to a Muggle.
“My name’s Meg by the way.”
Well, that will certainly make it harder to guess.
“Well, Meg, would you like to come over to my flat tomorrow?”
Yup, invite over the random stranger you just met at the supermarket. Sounds like a great idea.
Actually, it sounds exactly like something Luna would do, so I guess there’s that.
Meg said that would be a great idea, and Luna gave her the address to her and Seamus’s flat. Tomorrow would be a good day.
Don’t witches and wizards usually live in out-of-the-way sorts of places? Some apartment in a Muggle building sounds odd. And not odd in Luna’s way of being odd. Odd in an author-isn’t-making-sense way.
“Hullo, Meg!”
Who’s speaking?
“Hi, Luna. I hope you don’t mind, I brought my fiancee along. He insisted on coming. So Luna, this is Calvin. Calvin, this is Luna Finnegan.”
That is actually rather rude, to bring an extra person without asking. Also, the name is going to make it harder to maintain the “mystery.” If you Google “Meg and Calvin” (without the quotation marks), the first few hits all point straight at the original character.
“Nice to meet you, Calvin. Please come on in! Excuse the mess, we’re in the middle of getting a baby room ready for my son, Connor. Speak of the devil, here he is, with his daddy.”
Ok, time to discuss timelines, which means I’m going to go ahead and tell you who the “mystery” character is, in case you’re denser than a wet bag of sand and haven’t gotten it yet: Meg Murry of the Wrinkle in Time books. (Shock! Surprise! OMG!) Now the exact timeline of those books is a bit hard to pin down, but it’s safe to say that Meg and Calvin are married by the end of the 1970′s.
Luna is born in 1980-81.
I’ll let you think about that for a bit. We’ll move on in the meantime.
Seamus walked in, holding Connor in his arms. “Wotcher. My name’s Seamus. You must be Meg and-”
“Calvin. Calvin O’Keefe,” Calvin piped up. “You must be as lost in their friendship as I am.”
And by now, author, any pretense at mystery is gone.
Seamus laughed. “Right you are, mate. Luna comes home last night, going on about tomato soup and science. Then she decides to tell me she has a friend coming over. I sometimes wonder if I married a nutter. But I love her.”
Isn’t that sweet? Doesn’t really sound like Seamus to me, though. ”Sweet” wasn’t one of the first dozen words I would have used to describe that character in the books.
Calvin agreed, and told his version of what Meg told him. The two men walked into the living room, chatting about several things at once. Their wives walked into the kitchen.
Aw, yay, double friendship. Isn’t that convenient.
Luna and Meg told each other their stories over the course of about four hours. Meg and Calvin stayed for dinner that night, then went home.
I have to ask again – is Luna revealing the magic world to a Muggle? That’s a pretty big no-no, especially someone she barely knows. I bet the Ministry of Magic is just about ready to break down their door.
“Tesser well, Meg.”
Do they really need to tesser to get home?
Oh, which makes me wonder – have Luna and Seamus moved to the U.S.? Does Meg regularly tesser to the U.K. to do her grocery shopping? The distance issue is not nearly as big a deal as the timesquiggle issue, but it’s yet another reason to find the whole premise ridiculous.
“Apparate safely, Luna.”
So yes, she’s told her about magic. I guess the MM is slower to respond to violations than the DRD.
And even more so than above, Luna is home. Why Apparate?
The two men just looked at each other and rolled their eyes at their wives antics.
Needs to be “wives’.” Not to nitpick, or anything. And technically, Meg isn’t even Calvin’s wife, since he’s introduced as her fiance. (Thanks, Ghostie.)
“I quite like them,” Luna told Seamus after they left. “What did you think of Calvin?”
“Seems like a nice bloke. I invited him to watch the soccer match this weekend.”
WHY IS SEAMUS WATCHING SOCCER??? He routinely mocks soccer, and Dean for being a fan, throughout the books. This story has lost any sense of canon. Or really, any sense at all.
“Sounds great to me.”
It was a beautiful friendship, and their children continued it to the next generation.
Do we need to go over the ages/generations thing again? Because just to remind everyone, Luna and Dean are more or less the ages of Meg and Calvin’s kids. NO SENSE.
I know, it’s freakishly short, but I really wanted to get this idea out of my head, and this was about as far as I could carry it. If you figured out who the mystery girl is, tell me! I owe you guys something for being such great reviewers.
Well, you’ve got “freakish” right. And the reason you couldn’t carry the idea further is because you’re doing it EXTREMELY POORLY. I’m not saying a good crossover of these series can’t be written, but this is NOT the way to do it.
Eat RedVines, drink Squirt, watch Starkid,
HB17RJO.
Write well, use punctuation, get a friend to edit before posting anything on the internet,
AR.
You made me laugh! LOL!!! You sure know how to review fanfics. I’m afraid I might not want you reviewing mind, i might just get laughed at as well.
Hey, at least you’ve mastered the dialogue transitional comma. You can be proud of that.
I’ve read some of the Joanna C. fic, and while it has it’s problems, a lot of them are fixable and not to the level where I’d consider it material for the Library. Plus, it being set in the Harry Potter universe pretty well disqualifies it from my pool of fiction anyway, since I never made it past the first book.
I will say that your chapter 1 needs to be gone over. The very first sentence of the chapter is a grammatically incorrect double negative that says exactly opposite of what you’re trying to say. That’s one of those bad first impressions you might best avoid. There are plenty of other little issues like that in chapter 1, and a cursory look at the next two chapters shows they need grammatical work as well. That means they really need work as my ability to detect grammar problems is pretty weak compared to AR’s proofreading prowess.
Ah yes, chapter 1. LOL. You should read the later published posts. I got the message that my initial writings had problems from my readers. But hey, it looks like ppl weren’t turned away :) They stayed, and im glad they did. Heck, more ppl subscribed, so i guess i am improving. (and yes, i did not caps the ‘i’s’ cause im too lazy to.)
I have to admit, the only reason I didn’t get the identity of the mystery character immediately was because it has been a long time since I read A Wrinkle In Time. I got it once Meg came onto the picture, though.
I wish Luna had asked her what the square root of seven is. That would’ve made this fic so much more entertaining and less mind-bogglingly canon-breaking.
Not only is Seamus watching “soccer” when he shouldn’t be, he’s calling it “soccer.” He’s British. Say it with me, everyone: “Football.”
:coughs:
“Throat-Warbler Mangrove.”
Did I do the accent right?
Perfect!
Ah, yes, that’s right! I thought about that earlier, but… dang it, why didn’t I say anything.
Everyone, say it with me:
“Football > American Football”.
If they moved to the U.S. before he started watching, maybe that’s the excuse?
Maybe, but I doubt they’d call it anything other than “football” if they’re UK natives. They’d probably just differentiate it from American football by using the term “American Football.”
Or, alternatively, they may use a sort of double-naming when speaking to Americans about it. “We’re going to watch some football .. ah… soccer football.” I work with some people who came here from Bosnia and that’s what they do when talking about the latest soccer match. They call it football, then specify that they mean soccer.
It’s possible that as a U.K. native unfamiliar with Muggle sports, he didn’t really pay attention to what it was called until he became a fan?
I dunno, I’m just arguing for the fun of it here.