6.5 KiB
[WIP] Death By Water: A Crossover fic between Harry Potter and The Culture.
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Author: u/Prezombie *
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URL: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/death-by-water-harry-potter-the-culture.44788/
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Score: 62
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Created: 2018-02-08T16:38:56
Post:
Comments:
u/Prezombie [+11] (16 minutes later)
There are surprisingly few fanfics of The Culture, and fewer still that introduce new ideas rather than rehashing old plots and details. Death By Water does both pretty damn well.
u/ricree [+5] (a day later)
Can I take this as an opportunity to link my favorite Culture crossover. It's a relatively short Reddit post exploring the aftermath when a Culture GSV accidentally discovers and wakes Azathoth.
u/Escapement [+8] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (40 minutes later)
Discussion from a couple days ago on this subreddit. I (still) strongly recommend the fic.
u/okaycat [+6] (3 hours later)
I started reading this fic because it was recommended a few days ago on this subreddit.
It's great, I love how the author manages to treat both sides of the crossover fairly. The story has a whimsical irreverent tone that reminds me positively of Lily and The Art of Being Sisyphus.
u/Prezombie [+4] (3 hours later)
Both the Potterverse and The Culture have layers of whimsy with different flavors, and the author has mixed them both together to make a wonderful blend.
u/callmesalticidae [+8] writes worldbuilding books (4 hours later)
Wow. The writing sure is, uh, something...
They fucked for a while, with all the creativity and vigor that modern science had endowed their kind with. Gaiane orgasmed half a dozen times, each lasting over a minute.
The conversations are stilted and thinly-veiled infodumps:
“I could make myself immortal anyways and fall into some pleasant, diverting habit to pass the millennia. But that static routine is not a person I want to become. I could Sublime, leave this universe behind for a kinder, better one, where I could grow to become more for all infinity. But that’s just static immortality inverted. If I spend all eternity growing, who I am now will quickly become irrelevant, and as far as I’m concerned that’s death as well, just one that happens when you aren’t paying attention. I could place myself in suspended animation until something interesting happens, but that’s just putting the problem off until later.”
Maybe the story improves in later chapters, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone based on the writing of the first chapter.
u/Green0Photon [+5] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (11 hours later)
Try skipping to the second chapter quickly, and maybe skimming it if you don't like it. Then read the third normally. If you can't do it, it's not for you.
I will say, I was laughing so much at a ton of different things. It's actually quite good. It's really the first chapter that's iffy.
u/JustLookingToHelp [+2] (13 hours later)
It reads well to me as a gloss of ideas presented in the Culture series in more depth. Are you familiar with the Culture series?
u/callmesalticidae [+5] writes worldbuilding books (13 hours later)
I'm familiar with the Culture. What I am saying is that the writing is poor.
The first section isn't that much better than "They had sex and it was really good" and the second is a bad infodump.
u/earnestadmission [+3] Singular "they" user (14 hours later)
You’re right. I suspect that (like HPMoR) the poor writing at the start puts off people who could enjoy the meatier interactions between Harry and his peers. Like MoR, harry is an outside context problem who stomps all over the established characters and has yet to be faced with a true obstacle.
On the other hand, there are some really clever passages and I found it a relatively quick read during a part of the day when my focus was too frayed to do anything productive. I’d call it the fan fiction equivalent of a pulp fiction novel you might find at a grocery store.
Like a crack fic, except without the patina of early 2000s “random humor”
u/None [+2] (22 hours later)
Yeah, I had that problem too. It only happens once, so far as I can tell, and I think its taking stylistic cues from the Culture novels, though it's a bit of a pastiche for those passages at least.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+5] Godric Gryffindor (2 days later)
Surprisingly good, even after considering that most authors literate enough to write Culture fic are usually good enough to make their Culture fic work surprisingly well.
u/Makin- [+3] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (a day later)
Whoa, this was so much better than I expected. Must read. I hope it doesn't die.
u/immute [+3] Secretly Awesome (2 days later)
Reading this is like seeing the standard webcomic thing where the art style starts out crappy and gets progressively better, except accelerated; impressive growth. But the first chapters are so bad that frankly they should be rewritten.
u/boomfarmer [+2] Trying to be helpful (2 days later)
This reminded me of another HP/Culture crossover. I can't find the link, but it had a similar idea: Harry was teleported to a Culture ship and raised as one of them. Magic drew from the Grid, but only in one direction. Harry, having grown with the Culture, could draw from both directions of the Grid. He could cast without a wand, and opposite-direction-Grid magic was OP. Harry had a knife drone and a neural lace, and used them both. Harry's "Mom" was a named character from one of the books, and the Culture faked magic using effectors and drones for as long as possible.
This one is better, in that it doesn't make the Culture immediately OP and that Harry at least has some constraints on his power. The OCP angle is something that wasn't happening in the other story, and it's a nice addition.
u/PeridexisErrant [+3] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (3 days later)
Culture Shock, by Ruskbyte.