Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness/YMMV

""BAM! Other side of his face goes, and Alecto was so furious, she kicked him out of the class. Said he had lost the privilege of learning from Belsen. So that's when I raised my hand and asked if I could lose the privilege too, and Belsen just gave the whole class this long look, looked back at Alecto, and told her that he had been under the impression the teachers controlled Hogwarts, not the students, and he left." -- Jack Sloper describing the surprisingly quick defeat of Nazi torturers."
 * Alternate Character Interpretation: The DAYDverse is just full of this, affecting every significant character and even some very minor ones.
 * Angst? What Angst?: Tons of death. Everyone keeps going.
 * Author's Saving Throw: A common complaint about the first story is that Crucio is demoted from being a nightmarish torture to the equivalent of flogging - the students take to bragging about how often they get cruciated. As if catching on himself, Thanfiction wrote a scene in Chapter 21 of the first story where Neville, facing Bellatrix, gets hit with Crucio - and thinks to himself, just before he whites out from the pain, that the Carrows never did a proper Crucio.
 * Canon Fodder: DAYD expands on barely-described scenes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and provided characterization to people barely mentioned in the books; the Fan Verse expands on it.
 * Complete Monster:
 * Severus Snape. As Headmaster, he inflicts his sadistic whims on the poor students and regularly blackmails the D.A. by punishing eleven-year olds in their place. He even ordered an eleven-year old flogged and left in chains for thirty hours. What Snape did to as a punishment for freeing this kid was completely unforgivable: he had the poor guy tortured in a nightmarish way, prolonging the agony to the point where his best friend Terry tried to put him out of his misery with Avada Kedavra. The author has been criticized for portraying Snape as way, way too evil.
 * The Carrow siblings, Alecto and Amycus. The former makes her students repeat hateful anti-Muggle propaganda in classes and tortures them with the Cruciatus curse if they refuse. The latter is even worse: he over-uses the Cruciatus curse as a punishment to the point where students are not afraid of it anymore. And let's not forget how he forced Hagrid to throw Neville, Ginny and Luna to the werewolves.
 * All villains from the canon are portrayed as even more monstrous, since this story is Darker and Edgier. Of course, Complete Monster villains like Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange are way, way worse in this story.
 * "Professor" Hans Belsen, named for the Belsen-Bergen Concentration Camp. If Grindelwald is an Expy for Adolf Hitler, then Belsen is an Expy for Josef Mengele.
 * The Diabhal Dubh in Sluagh. He makes all the previous villains seem like Care Bears.
 * Critical Research Failure: Recent rape victims are usually not receptive to male-initiated sexual acts as the post-Sluagh one-shot More Realer and the end of the scene in DAYD describe.
 * If Thanfiction knew enough about Demiguises to include them in DAYD, he should have known enough about them to not portray them as invisible goats when they're invisible apes.
 * Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Sluagh, and even more so A Peccatis, for different but related reasons.
 * Ensemble Darkhorses: Terry Boot and Michael Corner.
 * Ho Yay: The author was astounded at the number of people asking whether Michael Corner and Terry Boot were together.
 * Hype Backlash: In-progress. Much more criticism of the story has been seen as of late, including on our own recommendations page. Criticisms include the sexism, Marty Stu-ing Neville, other people acting Out of Character, the Darker and Edgier content being gratuitous, characters carrying the Idiot Ball, and flagrant violations of canon.
 * Jerk Sue: This is the heart of the Fandom/Hatedom split.
 * This story's Neville never thinks of his friends as friends, just as assets to be used in the war. This is supposedly why he's such a good leader - but it's completely the opposite of the Neville we know from the books.
 * Everyone fawns over him. Even when he's acting violent and irrational. Hell, even in chapters where he's evidently meant to be in the wrong, others apologise to him.
 * For example, at one point, he's literally killing himself through pushing himself too hard, and is lashing out at people left and right. The rest of the Dumbledore's Army leadership decides to tell him he needs to step down for a few weeks, and that they won't take no for an answer, carefully explaining that it's for his own good, and that they look up to him, admire him, and look forwards to his return in a few weeks. Cue several chapters of Wangst, constant whining and despair that he's lost Dumbledore's Army! How could they do this to him, etc, and throwing as big of a temper tantrum as he can. The other people apologise (with much suppressed eye-rolling) for having dared to look after his health. He never apologizes to them.
 * Ron the Death Eater: Snape is portrayed as being considerably more evil than in canon in this story, with this essay by the author interpreting him as an unrepentant sociopath looking for an excuse to murder and torture students. Even considering that he's a rather unpleasant Sadist Teacher in the books, the logic taken to reach this conclusion is... somewhat debatable given the textual evidence.
 * Tastes Like Diabetes: One of Hannah Abbott's aunts.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot / Shaggy Dog Story: Chapter 18 of DAYD. Hans Belsen, basically an Expy of Josef Mengele, shows up to the school because he wants to torture children. When Neville and Jack Sloper insult him later that chapter, he immediately leaves the school instead of, you know, torturing them.


 * Wall Banger: The speed at which the Hogwarts students involved in Dumbledore's Army mature and suddenly become total adults makes no sense. First off they manage to develop solid, professional military discipline and how to run a military-style training program with no help from outsiders or a society with anything vaguely resembling a military force. While you would have Muggle-borns in Hogwarts none of them would have anything remotely resembling the experience necessary to train the DA into being prepared soldiers as quickly as they did especially since the bulk of military training revolves around breaking down the moral objections to killing and building up the necessary suppressed yet controlled rage to kill people. Also the speech out of one student's mouth for joining the DA to fight Voldemort sounds like they swallowed a polysci textbook and puked it back up, certainly not something most teenagers would come up with especially in a school that doesn't even teach political science and the history class is explicitly stated to be really boring.
 * Also, this is the fic series where on two occasions rape victims comforted by sexualised acts initiated by men. It's a throwaway line in DAYD itself, where, just after her rape is avenged - without consulting her, and ignoring her fears about her family - by the men, is found having sex with her boyfriend. The one shot More Realer is worse: In DAYD's sequel, Sluagh,   spends about 5 chapters being tortured and raped, described in graphic detail, finally setting herself on fire to escape (she got better). In the one-shot,   basically forces himself on her, and she accepts this, because up to that point, he'd been patient about her request not to have sex. She's flinching away, but he just keeps massaging her shoulders, applying sensual kisses, and all sorts of things, all without her consent. Ugh!
 * Let's take another look at that "vengeance". Neville calls in Ernie, Sean, Terry, and Michael. Notice who's absent: any women at all. Not even Ginny, his own lieutenant (or, if you're going by canon, the one actually in charge). When they actually barge in on Crabbe and Goyle (because of course only ugly people are rapists), is hardly mentioned by name. The boys simply take turns showing off their muscles (literally!) and taunting the duo being punished. The rape seems less an avenged act and more a justification. How much more trivializing can you get?
 * Oh, and let's not forget Hannah. Not only does Thanfiction claim she only looked a bit plump in the books because of the school robes, and she's actually supermodel thin; but he makes her psychotically crazy, attempting to kill Neville because she thinks he's dating Ginny. This is before her first date with Neville.
 * And another thing: Snape. Having agreed to kill Dumbledore because someone would need to keep the students safe when Voldemort took over in Half-Blood Prince, in DAYD, he attempts to murder multiple students, and tortures them and others to the extent that someone tries to mercy kill one of his victims. Completely Missing the Point, and derailing his entire character arc.
 * Chapter 10 is especially bad. Colin Creevey was splinched after he apparated with his brother. In canon, Ron passed out seconds after losing some of his skin. Colin loses a hand and not only does he cover the wound with duct tape, he is able to contact the Army and hide the wound from everyone. And instead of getting help, they decide to do a blood transfusion. Death Eaters come to the place that they are hiding, at the house of a Muggle friend of the Creeveys, who they leave to die instead of a Sidealong Apparition. And then Neville berates him right after he recovers.
 * Hell, even Thanfiction seems to have realized the beratement went too far - when Neville leaves the room afterwards, Arthur Weasley slams him against a wall and tries to unmask him as a Death Eater.
 * The DAYD-verse is just full of Wallbangers.