Usually an SI is written vaguely enough that even if it is the author you can’t tell. Once you’re past the first chapter the fact that they’re an SI rarely matters to the story and it’s just a Mary/Gary Stu OC to act as the reader’s avatar.

Meta knowledge usually acts as the motivation to accumulate power and be prepared for inevitable war etc but is rarely deployed in the sense of changing the timeline. Usually the SI tries to stick to the stations of canon and not interfere until they have accumulated enough power to be untouchable, as changing events results in butterfly effect that makes the world unpredictable.

 

When I read fiction, the protagonist is someone I empathize with, root for, feel bad for and so on, but I don’t usually consider them an avatar for myself. My favorite protagonists are more like people I’d want to be friends with, and reading is like hearing about this crazy thing that happened to them.

 

I'm only a few chapters in so far, but it's an incredibly well written fic. That alone would probably raise it up to a 5/5, but additionally we have some strong world building, lots of interesting character work, and some uniquish takes on magic, and how it feels to use. I'll hold off actually rating it until I've finished, but I think it's looking good.

 

Read it over about a week - an interesting facet of this fic is that it never actually felt like it hooked me, but I was always relatively happy to pick it back up. I think that's due to the author's overall writing skill - the prose is tight and easy to read, grounded, good pace, just overall high quality writing without having any major strengths or weaknesses.

I've got some minor quibbles. The author lets some characters really fall by the wayside. The SI, Tracey, Daphne, and Sally are this 'circle' of a friend group, and Sally gets practically no development - she's there but extremely undefined.

The biggest issue for me is the classic SI interacting with a known plot thing. I can see how the author's trying to kind of... play with it, with the whole threads of fate thing and the SI's status as a... creature hybrid of some sort. It's a self-aware thing to do, but the end result is still kind of contorting around the stations of the canon in a way that strains believability. The SI is like... grounded, fairly shrewd, fairly careful, but when it's time for end of the year wackiness it's just like.... ok time for Canon Events let's throw caution to the wind.

I just need more to keep me invested - I need the SI to have a real goal to strive for, something over and above what a realistic normal grounded actual person would have, or else like... what's the point.

4/5, it's really quite decently written. I'll probably check it in a year or something and see where it is.

 

Much like most fics, this suffers from the "Why not just tell Dumbledore about everything you know?" approach.

It's good on the technical side of things, and it has its moment, but ultimately, there's no pull, nothing to get you looking forward to what's gonna be written next.