The Hunt fic that was put forth in the library a little while ago has me craving some more Anita Blake. Has anyone come across any that doesn't suck?

 

"Balancing Act" by mhalachai
It's an SG1/AB crossover

Remember the teenaged Jack O'Neill clone which Loki made? He moves out to Saint Louis and has a run in with the preternatural crowd out there.

The story is tightly paced and can be read in an hour or two. It has a proper narrative structure and would seem to fit well as a film. The protagonist is interesting as a highschooler with the life and combat experience of a veteran Jack O'Neill, though he's notably less assertive in a couple of situations than I'd expect him to be. The action kicks in for a sustained climax which is satisfyingly resolved. It feels like a pilot movie which desperately needs a sequel.

Mhalachai's written a lot of Anita Blake fics. Some are great, others not. Stay away from the epic Inevitable (AB/HP fic) unless you're prepared to wade through some bad writing early on and a whole lot of emo. There are some fantastically gripping scenes in Inevitable, but it's a struggle to reach them. It will never be finished.

 

Yeah, I've read Inevitable. I think it's four chapters away from completetion and has been so for over a year.

 

Mhalachai! God, don't mention her. I've been craving an ending for Inevitable for almost a year, and she has writer's block. It's four! bloody! chapters! Argh!

So yeah, pretty much all her stuff is really good and worth reading. Dawning Light, her AB/Buffy crossover, is pretty cute while also being a little bit angsty.

It's hard finding quality AB fics, because the fandom seems to encourage...a different kind of fic. *cough*

 

I admit I've starting writing AB several times but then the 'rage' takes me and before I know it I have a very bloody one shot on my hands.

I recall reading Balancing Act. It's a good one. I wish there was more of that. Typa isn't around much anymore but she was a big AB fan and is the one who got me reading Hamilton. I bet she'd have some recommendations.

 

Lulz. Yeah, it's been out long enough that there are author commentary tracks available as mp3s for the first few chapters, as well as a WIP comic version of the story, both on Livejournal.

It's the fic that got me started reading the books... Shame that not long after the first boxed set, they turn into an object lesson in how many times one can type the word 'cock' in a book, with as few words as possible in between, and still get people to buy it.

Been there, done that, except replace "rage" with apathy induced by the knowledge that I'll never finish it.

 

It is somewhat tragic that Hamilton went insane so quickly into the series. I only just managed to kill my hope and stop purchasing the new books last year.

Chapter after chapter of sex--sometimes beastiality.

Anita became the most agressive and intolerable bitch ever.

 

Good luck finding quality Anita Blake fic out there. Personally, while I read the books (and 'cry moar' at each subsequently worse shitfest), I only read the fanfic if it's a Potter crossover (which is how I discovered ABVH in the first place).

I've read one or two ABVH/Buffy crosses, but only because I was trawling TTHM for HP fic and a random summary caught my eye.

At least she hasn't quite devolved into the complete maniac she's protrayed as in most HP/ABVH slash fic. Those people seem to have an especially deep and abiding hatred for her. Which makes sense, seeing as how she has a vagina instead of a surging fire hose.

The M.O. for the typical slash author is to make Anita go 100% certifiably apeshit wacko kazoo, so that they can chuck her loony ass aside and have all her guys take turns boning sub!Harry (so passive he'd probably stop breathing if someone didn't remind him to).

I suppose, since I'm not even reading the stuff anyway (slash just isn't my bag and, at a glance, the quality seems to take a nosedive), that I shouldn't care but for fuck's sake, can't Harry be a top once in a while?

Seriously, they write a Harry who needs to take daily Skele-Gro supplements because he lacks his own skeletal system.

Anyway, they usually conveniently ignore the fact that any attempt to eliminate Anita in such a way would likely kill her AND Richard, Nathaniel, Jean Claude, Damian, Micah...

...and the Size-Queen Fairy would probably commit suicide at that point, along with several bed sheet manufacturers, and the CEO of the company that produces Secretion-B-Gone laundry detergent.

The few stories that address the problem of the Marks usually make it go away with a casual wave of the hand, lest some depth or logic taint their story.

My typical response to seeing this standardized plot is to bail out as soon as it's confirmed that the story is slash. And you'd think, with what I've said above, that I'd have to read awfully far into a story to know all this...

However, this is usually what occurs in the first three paragraphs of any given HP/ABVH story.

Literally, paragraph one sees Harry arrive in St. Louis and run into one of the main male AB characters, who in turn introduces him to the other main male characters.

In paragraph two, they all decide he'd look absolutely, bloody, insanely, gorgeous with each and every one of their cocks in his ass, and since he's usually fleeing an abusive situation, he's ripe for being taken advanta- I mean, for some 'comforting.'

Because nothing says comfort like pulling a train for a cavalcade of weres and vampires with foot and a half long dicks. I mean, they do have the Anita seal of approval, which means they measure their wedding tackles in 'board feet' instead of inches.

Then in paragraph three, Anita finds out someone is stealing her collection of big-dick life support syst- I mean boyfriends, and confronts Harry and her stable of man-whores, usually while screeching incoherently, foaming at the mouth, and waving her gun around threateningly with any hand that she doesn't already have wrapped around an erstwhile horse cock. The guys tell her to take a hike, possibly while wearing Harry's lower intestinal tract as a novelty condom.

And it's on to paragraph four, or as I prefer to think of it: The point at which my brain shuts off its higher functions in an attempt to save itself, and my primitive reptile brain kicks in and hits the red X, thus saving me from an almost certain aneurysm.

Are all bad shipping fics such transparent exercises in mindless public masturbation, or is it mostly the slash that tends toward the 'even worse' side of the spectrum?

Or is it just the ABVH slashers? Or perhaps it's merely indicative of the quality of crossovers.

Or all of the above.

I'm hardly an impartial observer, so that is undoubtedly coloring my own perception...

Ah, glorious, glorious train-wrecks.

---
The only HP/ABVH crossover I'm really familiar with, aside from Inevitable, is The Domino Effect. It was apparently abandoned ages ago, since it hasn't updated since the late Mesozoic era.

It barely qualified as a crossover (as it was left), mainly being HP, with weres and Blake style witch covens thrown in on the muggle side, and one or two ABVH characters making an appearance before the story died on the vine.

 

I think it's partly the fact that the books (after Obsidian Butterfly) make it very easy to make a case for every single character being nothing more than a vehicle for poorly-written sex scenes, and partly that the a good deal of the fandom is fucking insane.

I can't read slash - not because of the gay sex, but because almost all slash is about the slash. And when it comes to characters such as Harry, who we see as fairly unambiguously heterosexual (given that he's the viewpoint character), it comes off as ridiculous and forced. I'm fine with fanfic that warps or moves characters along, but I like to read fanfic about the work that theoretically spawned it. Poorly-written gay porn about people that happen to have the same names as fictional characters should be posted somewhere else, because it sure as fuck is not fanfic. Not by any rubric I use.

Sturgeon's Law: Ninety per cent of everything is crud.
Brown's Law of Statistical Likelihood: The smaller the fandom, the more likely it is that all of the available fic will be unreadable slash fics.

Edit: I just realised that Butterfly, my favourite of all the AB books, contains no (in-person) appearances of Jean-Claude or Richard - in fact, there's no sex in the entire book. Coincidence? I think not.

 

That's actually one of the most profound statements I've read in ages.

Or at least, the one that resonates the most with me. I've just never thought of it in exactly those terms, but that phrase sums it up rather nicely. Most slash isn't about anything except the slash.

By that same token, a lot of shipping fics, that is to say stories that exist solely to put two (or more) characters together, are also more about the pairing than the plot. Any plot that is included is ancillary to the pairing and takes a back seat to it in every regard.

Which is a bad way to go. It's very unlikely that this approach to story writing will result in anything worth reading (not unlike building a story around a power/gimmick instead of a plot, which is almost as bad and which I have done repeatedly).

I'm a sucker for romance, but without a plot to support it, you often end up with garbage. uke:

Also very true.

 

Well http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-20751/CrazyDan+The+one+who+sees+dead+people.htm
has little chance of the sex before plot that destroyed the books.

Xander end up Anita's twin brother and it is a bit sueish only because Xander tends to have the author's ideas that fall into the KISS system of thought.

 

It's one of the bad uber-Xander-centric fics. The only reason I read it last year was because of the dearth of Anita Blake fics about the place.

 

I don't know why Buffy fanfic writers see a need to give Xander superpowers. It sort of defeats the whole point of the character, that he was an ordinary guy doing the best he could.

 

Probably for the same reason many Harry Potter writers decide to make Harry intelligent, contrary to canon.

Just as making Harry Potter highly skilled defeats the point of JKR's books... not that I agree with her point or anything.

I haven't even read this story, I'm just saying I can see the appeal of improving glaringly deficient characters. Like it or not, in a world full of slayers, witch's, and vampires being a regular human is a deficiency. As long as they tell a good story, I don't see the problem.

 

Except for most of the series Xander wasn't the "Badass normal" towards the end of the series he was turned into a joke while 'newguy McSlayerson' was respected more then him.

 

I didn't watch the final seasons, but what's your point? That changes nothing. If anything I would imagine it'd give even more reason for fans of the Xander of the early seasons to change his character up a bit.

 

That was me agreeing with you about what was done to the Xander character being bullshit... you're kind of slow aren't you?

 

You quoted me and then started with "except". That implies disagreement. Choose your words more carefully.

 

The big difference being that Harry is the title character of his own series, whereas Xander was included in Buffy for two reasons: To have a guy under forty in the main cast, and to get shit on every week.

Xander's reason for existing can be discerned from one of his own quotes: "I'm sick of being everybody's butt monkey."

Xander is an unwilling and unwitting court jester, performing pratfalls for a cruel audience.

In short: Xander's the one that gets the 'funny syphilis.'
Harry, however 'Joe-Everyman' he's supposed to be, is still the hero of a series that bears his name.

I can only assume that super!Xander fics spring from the fact that there are few, if any, male characters for male Buffy fans to write as the main character for a self insert/wish fulfillment fic.

They can choose one of a number of emo vampires, wimpy males that couldn't hack it as Buffy's boyfriend, or Xander.

Xander...

And then they desperately use ANY excuse from the show's canon to make him super in any way possible. Prime examples being the soldier knowledge he gained in the infamous Halloween episode, and even the Hyena traits from way back in the first or second season.

 

That doesn't matter to me. The intent of the creators for their characters doesn't concern me in the slightest when I read fanfiction, outside of history and personality at the start of the story. Main characters, side characters, I don't care.

So no, I don't see a difference in changing Harry for a story versus changing Xander for a story. So JKR made Harry the main character of her story... so what? He was still a lazy idiot, but many an enjoyable fanfic changes that. Similarly, so Xander was a normal human side character, it's possible for an enjoyable fanfic to change that.

I'm not saying most Xander fics are good. In fact, the vast majority I've come across are crap and are just like you describe; I've only read two good one's and they were both by the same author. I'm saying if someone wants to write a Xander centered fic and give him powers it doesn't bother me, so long as the story itself is strong... and by strong I mean the characterization is consistent, well written, has a plot, main character isn't an idiot, etc.

And for the record, I'm sure plenty of people and writers think of Harry Potter as a self insert for themselves too. Him being the main character wouldn't change that.

Quite frankly, I don't understand why people care. I'm in favor of entertaining stories of quality, regardless of who the main character is. I'd read a story about Severus Snape if it was any good. Unfortunately, I've only ever come across one Severus Snape story worth reading.

Of course, the crap to quality ratio is so low for most characters it's simply a waste of time to look for good fics, especially for Xander and other side characters such as Hermione, Snape, etc. But finding quality Harry Potter centered fics would be almost as bad if it weren't for this site.