103: Harry Potter is Jade EvansMunroe WHAT THE HELL – Chapters 4 and 5

Title: Harry Potter is Jade EvansMunroe WHAT THE HELL
Author: Immortal Wolf Lover
Media: Television / Movie / Book
Topic: Harry Potter / X-Men Evolution
Genre: Drama / Family
URL: Harry Potter is Jade EvansMunroe WHAT THE HELL – Chapter Two
Critiqued by Ghostcat

I’m back with the second installment of the truly terrible fanfic with the surprisingly descriptive name of Harry Potter is Jade EvansMunroe WHAT THE HELL.

For those who did not read last week’s installment, here’s a quick recap – Ororo Munroe (Storm) revealed that she is a witch as well as a mutant by sort-of saving a girl who had fallen down some stairs and then healing her broken bones with her magic stick. The author took three whole chapters of vague hints to reveal the deep, dark secret of why Storm gets upset on Halloween – several family members died on that day. Storm collapses into tears after the big reveal and is consoled by her nephew Evan (Spyke), which is where Chapter Four picks up.

A word of warning – the first three chapters were more or less coherent, but from here on out the story degrades sharply both in grammar and plot.

I hope everyone has their headdesking pillows fully fluffed.

Chapter Four – Truths and lies and Sirius Black

Something tells me we will see the first appearance of a Harry Potter character in this chapter – call it a premonition.

Chapter Four begins with Spyke consoling his aunt, which is right where the last chapter ended, so at least there’s a shred of continuity to cling to. Storm thanks her nephew, who manages to look both worried and protective at the same time, for his concern, but he is interrupted when he tries to reply.

“No prob Aunty. After all you’re the one who is hurt worse by all-” Evan was cut off by a large ‘CRACK’ that echoed through the mansion as a man known as Sirius Black appeared from seemingly out of nowhere.

Yep, I was right!

Harry Potter fans will recognise this as Apparating, nearly-instantaneous travel from one point to another via magical means, although from what I remember of the books Apparating is pretty quiet – there’s usually only a slight popping sound, nothing like what is described here.

Storm immediately placed herself in front of Evan and the others with her wand in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other her teeth were barred and she was growling low in her throat.

Now SuperStorm also has the powers of Zeus, as she is able to hold a lightning bolt – which is composed of electricity and has no physical manifestation – in her bare hand. She might want to see a dentist about her bar-teeth, that sounds unpleasant.

My OOC Sense is tingling again – meh, it must be the lighting bolt.

“Why are you here, Black? Come to kill the rest of my family? It isn’t enough you sold out where my brother-in-law, wife, and fifteen month old daughter were to Voldemort is it?” Storm asks her hair flying around her as her eyes glowed white and her wand began shooting sparks dangerously.

Wow, a fanfic author who used an Oxford comma correctly – I am impressed! If only the rest of this made sense, which it does not.

Spyke isn’t “the rest” of Storm’s family – she has a non-mutant sister who is Spyke’s mother, and several other relatives. (She also has a husband in some versions of the canon.)

I can figure out who the “brother-in-law, wife, and fifteen month old daughter” are supposed to be based on the context – James, Lily, and Harry (or Jade) Potter – but I’m not really clear on what sort of familial relationships the author is trying to describe. Is Lily supposed to be Storm’s wife?  If so, then James would not her brother-in-law since Lily and James were not related in any way.

Harry (or Jade) didn’t die – that’s why s/he’s referred to as The Boy (or Girl) Who Lived. He (or she) is actually fairly famous in the wizarding world for this and if Storm had any contact with the wizarding world (which she would if she had things like cauldron cakes, which are referred to in previous chapters of the fic) then she would have heard that there was a survivor of the attack.

Sirius tells Storm that it was a trick and she demands that he explain what happened, leading to a very abbreviated summation that draws heavily from Prisoner of Azkaban –

“I wasn’t the secret keeper! I was the decoy! It was Pettigrew. He was the secret keeper and a Death Eater. He sold out Lily and James. He then outsmarted me on the street. He blew it up with a silent curse and cut off a finger before he transformed into his rat form and ran into the sewer. I was in Azkaban for twelve years before breaking out and tracking down Peter. He got away the second time because Moony was with us and it was a full moon. Jade’s not dead either. The ‘Avada Kedavra’ rebounded on Voldyshorts.

:snerk: “Voldyshorts.”

The author manages to condense the plot of an entire book down to just a few sentences, and then decides adds her own “special” touches.

Jade is still disguised as a boy named Harry. It’ll wear off any minute now which is why I was trying to track you down. You have the ability to tell if I am lying or not so use it to see the truth for yourself!” Sirius said staring at Storm steadfastly while several others got their powers ready in case of a fight while the others were merely watching confused.

I’ve checked the list of Storm’s mutant abilities and “lie detector” is not one of them, so this is probably another situationally dependant super power the author has decided to give SuperStorm – because being a powerful mutant as well as a powerful witch isn’t enough for one character.

Chapter Four ends with Sirius’ babble and some of the X-Men readying their powers, which makes no sense to me – their mutant powers are inherent abilities, they don’t need to “ready their powers” any more than I need to stretch thoroughly before I take a nap – and the rest are as confused as I am as to what the hell is going on.

This does help narrow down when in the hell this is supposed to be happening – some time after the end of the third book but before Sirius’ death in the fifth book. As there have been no more references to events in any of the books yet, I can’t narrow it down more than that.

We shall move directly on to Chapter Five, titled “Scaring Sirius and getting to know Jade”, where things start making even less sense.

Storm ends the little staring contest she was having with Sirius by “negating her powers” before giving him a great big hug followed by slapping him “upside the back of his head” several times. I’m not really sure how you can do that, but I’d love to practice on the author.

Sirius reacts to the physical assault in the same way a teenage boy punched in the arm might –

“Ouch! Knock it off already! You haven’t slapped me so much since that one time I flirted with Lily.” Sirius said covering his head trying to keep from being slapped.

Why would Storm care if Sirius flirted with Lily?  It almost sound like … Uh-oh. My OOC Sense is tingling again.

“Several things. One, never telling me that you weren’t the secret keeper. Two, not killing Pettigrew for me. Three, not telling me that my daughter is alive. Four, for copping a feel when I hugged you.” Storm said slapping him again only with a smirk this when Evan and a few others looked murderous.

1.  Telling you that he wasn’t the Secret Keeper would have defeated the purpose of using himself as a decoy, which he just explained to you.
2.  Sirius also sort-of explained why he didn’t kill Pettigrew – it was a full moon and “Moony was with us,” implying that he transformed into a werewolf and the other unnamed members of his party (which included Harry/Jade) were in danger.
3.  As I mentioned earlier, the fact that there was a survivor of Voldyshorts’ attack was not a secret in the wizarding world and Storm should have been able to discover where her son/daughter was quite easily.
4. Storm is an emotionally unstable SuperSue (and strongly implied lesbian) who was just holding a lightning bolt in her bare hand – is this really an appropriate time to make a grab for her goodies?

Spyke reacts to the news that the strange man who suddenly appeared out of thin air tried to grope his aunt in about the same way you would imagine –

“No way! Uh-uh. Keep your hands off my aunt, dog boy. Try anything again and I’ll nail you to the wall with these spikes.” Evan said going into a protective rampage as he grew several spikes out of his arm and aimed them at Sirius as he stepped in front of his aunt who merely laughed.

How can Spyke step between the two of them? They were just hugging and Sirius is still in slapping-upside-the-back-of-the-head range.

Someone really should develop some kind of word-check feature that can help stop the rampant thesaurus-plundering that shows up in so many fanfics. Spyke is not on a “protective rampage,” as the word “rampage” implies violent or frenzied activity.

:slaps author upside the back of the head:

Bad author! Stop it right now!

This passage also implies that Spyke knows that Sirius is an unlicensed Animagus, something that is not general knowledge. Like many fanfic authors, this one seems to have the mistaken belief that the characters have read the same books she has and already know everything without having to bother with all that pesky “exposition” business.

“Padfoot meet my nephew, Evan Daniels. Also called Spyke because of his mutation. Evan meet one idiot who doesn’t know how to take a hint.” Ororo said while several students stood in between her and Sirius with their powers active and ready to be used in a nanosecond.

“Active” is a poor word choice in this situation – it implies exertion or action. As many of the mutants have abilities that would be very dangerous if they were active (such as Cyborg’s concussive energy beams) it would be a very bad idea for them to do so inside their own home.

:slaps author upside the back of the head:

Learn how to use words properly or you will continue to sound like a jackass.

After four and a half chapters of doing almost nothing, several X-Men emerge from their situationally dependant quantum flux to issue vague threats towards the man who magically appeared from out of nowhere.

“Keep your paws off Storm unless you’re prepared to get hurt.” Jean said her telepathic and telekinetic powers making her blood red hair float behind her ominously. Storm laughed loudly at this while Sirius looked scared as Logan let out his claws with a feral growl and the normally calm and peaceful Beast cracked his knuckles as he too growled at the man.

Telepathy is the ability to read minds, not make you hair blow around in a dramatic fashion – I don’t think there’s a name for that particular ability.

I could see being scared of Wolverine, since he has giant blades protruding out of his fists, but why would Sirius be afraid of Beast? He can turn into a giant dog and has recently fought a werewolf, which Beast superficially resembles.

“Calm down, guys. If you fry him then we won’t be able to find out where my daughter is. Padfoot, where is Jade?” Storm asks staring at Sirius seriously (no pun intended.) while the teens slowly ‘defused’ their powers.

:headdesk:

Make the randomly inserted Author’s Notes stop! For the love of all that is holy, if you need to explain something in an Author’s Note in the middle of the narrative then you have failed as an author. And this one doesn’t even make sense – that’s not a pun!

A pun is a form of wordplay in which one word that has a similar pronunciation to another is deliberately substituted for that word. There are numerous ways you could make a pun using Sirius’ name, but this is not one of them so there is no need to inform the reader that there is no pun intended – one does not exist.

I also have objections to the apostrophes placed around “defused” since that is exactly what the kids are doing – rendering themselves less dangerous.

“She’s at Hogwarts disguised as a boy named Harry James Potter.” Sirius said snickering slightly when Storm closed her eyes in exasperation.

“If James wasn’t dead I’d kill him myself for that.” Ororo said breathing deeply before snapping her eyes open.

Why does SuperStorm immediately blame James? It could have been Lily’s decision to make her little girl into a boy and give him that name. Not likely, but odder things have happened. Harry Potter being turned into a girl, for instance.

:puts on Ranting Hat:

This has been bothering me since I first read this fic – what possible reason could there be to make an established male character secretly a girl? It couldn’t be for his/her protection – Voldyshorts would be just as likely to kill one sex as the other. It would be known to Voldyshorts that Storm and Lily had a female child, so the sudden appearance of a male child of exactly the same age whose parents are supposedly Lily and James would be highly suspicious. In the canon Lily and James are an established couple from the time they are in school, presumably Storm and Lily would have a similar type of long-term relationship established in Bizarro World so the appearance of this mystery boy would be puzzling to other characters who are aware of Lily and Storm’s relationship.

There just isn’t any rational way this would ever make sense – all it would do is set the stage for some serial-killer-level psychoses to develop. I can think of no logical reason behind this sudden gender switch other than “I’m a girl and want my favorite character to be a girl too, but I don’t want to go through the trouble of re-writing the entire canon so I’ll just randomly turn him into a her.”

Wait … this is a fanfic. Logic and reason have nothing to do with it.

“Flipsy!” Ororo called out to seemingly nothing before a small ‘POP’ was heard and everyone saw a female house-elf dressed in a beautiful made outfit.

:headdesk:

That is just what this fic needs – a house-elf. And it is named Flipsy. Wonderful.

It has been a few years since I’ve read the series, but even I know that house-elves do not wear beautiful clothing – a well-dressed house-elf implies that said elf was given clothes, which is how you fire a house-elf.

Oh, look – the author has made an attempt to render the speech patterns of a house-elf!

“Mistress calls Flipsy! Flipsys happys to sees hers Mistress agains. Whats does Mistress needs Flipsy to dos?” The house-elf now known as Flipsy asks excitedly while the teens who haven’t seen Flipsy before looked at the creature in shock. Ororo merely smiled down at the excited elf as if she were used to this, which she probably was.

And by “attempt” I mean “added an ‘s’ to almost every word.” As I’ve said, it’s been a while since I’ve read the series, but I don’t remember the house-elves sounding like Gollum.

“Flipsy. I need you to go to the manor and make up a room for my daughter. It turns out that Jade is really alive and at Hogwarts at the moment. She’d have recently turned fifteen so make sure it isn’t a little kid room please. Then you can alert the other elves that Jade is alive and that I will be bringing her home in a little while. I know that Jade will have mutant powers like me so if it is alright with the Professor I need you to fix up a room for her here as well.” Storm told the house-elf gently smiling when it almost literally bounced off the walls in happiness.

Look, author – I know you know where the comma key is on your keyboard – I’ve seen you use it. What I don’t understand is why you don’t use the damned thing as often as you should.

:slaps author upside the back of the head again:

Stop it or I’ll turn AR loose on you.

Having a mutant parent is no guarantee that the child will have mutant abilities, something Storm should be familiar with – her own sister has no mutations.

SuperStorm’s reaction to being told that her only child, whom she had believed horribly murdered, is actually alive is to … immediately call her house-elf to have a room fixed up for her/him in her manor? (Of course she has her own manor – she’s a Sue.) Wouldn’t she be more interested in going to see her beloved child rather than picking out wallpaper for him/her?

I didn’t even know there was an all-purpose decorating scheme for fifteen-year-old girls who, until very recently, believed they were boys. I bet there’s a lot of neutral colors involved.

If Harry/Jade has just turned fifteen and his/her birthdate is the same as established canon, that narrows down the timeline a little bit more to mid-1995, during Order of the Pheonix when Harry/Jade is going through a lot of very difficult emotional stuff. Finding out his outie is really her innie would probably send him/her over the deep end.

SuperStorm gets around to asking Professor X, who actually owns the mansion they are currently standing in, if it would be all right for Flipsy to fix up one of the rooms there for her son/daughter. He agrees but suggests that s/he share a room with Rogue and Kitty, asking them if it is okay only after making the suggestion.

Let’s see what the two mutant girls have to say about it –

“It’d be like awesome to have like a roommate that like doesn’t always like complain about my like music. Like plus I can’t like wait to like meet her. Like its fine by like me.” Kitty said making the little elf stare at her confused.

:headdesk:

Bloody hell. Flipsy isn’t the only one who is confused. It can’t possibly get worse.

“Ah don’t mahnd as long as she doesn’t touch mah stuff wahth out askahn’.” Rogue said in her southern drawl. Storm smiled at the both of them before turning back to Flipsy just before Sirius butted in.

Once again, I am so very wrong.

That is not a Southern drawl – all she did was replace the “i”s with “ah”s. As a native Southerner, I feel a little insulted that there is someone out there who thinks Southern people talk like this. Many of us are fairly articulate and can even count to twenty without taking off our shoes first. (And not just because we have a jar of spare toes on our mantelpiece.)

“Jade is kinda shy but she doesn’t complain about anything unless it’s something big that annoys her nonstop. She was royally ticked when she found out that Dumbledore didn’t let her friends write to her over the summer. We could hear her yelling at them through the soundproof spells. It takes a lot to make her mad but when she gets mad she’ll let you know.” Sirius says rubbing his ears in remembrance.

Harry/Jade does go to his/her Angry Place when he finally arrives at the Order’s headquarters and does quite a bit of yelling at Ron and Hermione, but s/he is easily angered throughout most of the book – this is probably due to the trauma s/he experienced at the end of the previous book. There don’t seem to be any soundproofing spells in place to prevent anyone from hearing this rant – the twins even mention that they can hear him/her yelling from another floor. This isn’t an annoyance, Harry/Jade is genuinely upset about the fact that s/he has not heard from anyone during the summer. To me it seems to be a pretty understandable reaction – if my two closest friends suddenly cut off contact with me, I’d want to know what the hell was going on.

“She has a temper then? Whose temper did she inherit? Mine or Lilys?” Ororo asks wanting to know more about her daughter.

So now you start showing some personal interest in the child you thought was horribly murdered over a decade ago.

Wait … That seems to imply that Jade/Harry is the biological child of both Lily, a woman, and Storm, who is also a woman. That’s not biologically possible, two women cannot conceive a child.

Maybe they adopted him/her.

“Both. It’s like she added Lilys temper to yours and she is one scary witch. Especially with those hexes of hers.” Sirius said shuddering in fear, he loved his goddaughter and all but she was one scary witch.

Okay, so probably not adopted. I am going to refrain from making the obligatory “They must have done it with magic.” joke and pummel the author with this Biology textbook instead.

:THUD!:

I cannot recall a single instance in the entire series when I said to myself “Wow, that Harry guy sure is scary!” Part of the character’s appeal – to me at least – is that he is a more or less average person who just happens to be a wizard.

Despite the tease in the chapter title, we do not get to know Jade/Harry – that will have to wait for another chapter.

Join me next time for the last two “exciting” chapters when we go even farther down the rabbit hole.

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