I had heard so much about PoU that I broke down and read it last year. While it was very good, especially to someone like me who happens to like H/Hr, in the final analysis, I wasn't impressed enough to continue into the second story.

Saying a story has better writing than canon is like saying Red Baron pepperoni pizza is better than Lean Cuisine microwave pizza - technically true, but not exactly a ringing endorsement, either. The books JKR wrote have several nice plot twists and clever creations (Animagi, Time Turners, Portkeys, etc. come to mind) and the misdirection in several books was very good, but the actual writing was pretty bland and uninspired, to be frank. I mean, I enjoy Dean Koontz novels, but he's no wordsmith. Same goes with the formulaic books from John Grisham - they can be fun, quick reads, but Shakespeare they're not.

There are rules?!?

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but you have a point.

Spoiler

The way Harry is Remus' boss in this super-secret spy organization, and Hermione is in this dead-end job all smacks of an AU of an OC in an AU, who happens to have a Harry Potter-like name. The redeemed!Tanned!Buff!Dreadlocks!Draco (who happened to have been fucking Hermione for a year under a disguise! For the Greater Good, no less!!) is another FAIL aspect, and if I'd known that beforehand, I'd never have read the story.

All that said, I liked the story overall, mostly because I like the 'ship and the story was exceptionally well-written, in spite of its flaws. Someday I may read the followup stories, but I kinda doubt it since I know the series is left unfinished. Maybe that's a copout, but there it is.

 

There is an actual plot to the story and it's decent, but there is a lot of fluff. However in this case the fluff actually moves the plot along rather than detract from it like in many other stories.

Understandable, the post-Hogwarts motif doesn't appeal to a lot of people.

Well JKR's writing is actually quite good in the first 4 books, but really falls off in the last 3 with the 6th and 7th being especially bad. Though you are right, it's not Shakespeare but in this case the writing is significantly better than 99.9% of fan fiction out there (including most of the stories recommended at DLP).

Err, yeah I though everyone knew about them?

Hence why I said it breaks numerous DLP rules.

 

You realize nearly EVERY fic in the library probably breaks potter law in places right?

Those aren't rules, you could maybe see them as very faint guidelines, but mostly the whole point of potter law, at least as far as I can tell, was just fun. They aren't exactly set in stone.

 

PoU was my introduction to the Harry Potter fanfic world.

I wouldn't say that it's the best H/Hr fanfic though, ever since Ruskbyte wrote Backwards Compatible. And anyway the protagonists are too OOC. They just have a name like Harry Potter, Hermione Granger etc.

I agree the writing was excellent. And, the first story was much better than the second one, with a MPD!Harry in part two and the introduction of some angels and other worldly villains. There is also a high amount of angst in the follow up stories.

Though, the story is unfinished, Lori has written what the ending would have been like. I think it's in her Yahoo group.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. Try Jbern's stories or Joe's Wastelands and their are plenty of other well-written fics that you will find in the DLP library.

 

Yeah I know most of them break the rules or guidelines as you say, it's just that people here are quite specific about what they do and do not like in comparison to other HP fanfiction websites. Fics that are loved elsewhere are absolutely hated here. Fics that are heavy on fluff don't seem to have a lot of respect here either. Then there is the general dislike for Hermione post OoTP though I tend to think that is more because the last 2 books sucked so bad in comparison to the other 5.

POU is the story that started my obsession with HP fanfiction. I had read a few stories previously but I kind of jumped around and read fan fiction based on numerous different video games or books. However when I read POU it opened my eyes to the world of HP fanfiction. I've been voraciously devouring stories ever since (I probably read 5 or 6 novel length stories a week now...good lord I just realize I read a lot).

I'll admit that they are a little OOC, but then again they are nearly 30 years old and have been living together for a decade since Ron "died" so I would expect them to act a little different. If they were still exactly like their characters from the books, it would be a little weird since it would indicate that they haven't grown up at all.

As for Backwards Compatible, I thought that story was good but not great.

Yeah I figure the higher beings aspect probably put some people off, but I thought it fit the story since it made it more epic. I don't mind angst at all when it's done well like in POU, but I absolutely hate it when it's so obviously done just so the author can put of have the main protagonists get together. That's one of the fastest ways to get me to stop reading a story (well that or have Draco involved with Hermione in any way because it's simply not realistic at all).

I've read some of Jbern's stuff, I loved Bungle in the Jungle. Though I hated the sequel because I thought Harry was a complete arrogant ass for virtually no reason at all. I was expecting there to be some semblence of a ship between Harry and Luna since that's how it was advertised but after 1 entire story and like 10 chapters into the second one absolutely nothing had developed between them, so I felt a little put off by the advertisement.

I'll check out some of Joe Wasteland's stuff, what do you recommend for his stories?

 

It's not Joe Wasteland's stuff. The story's name is Harry Potter and the Wastelands Of Time. The author is Joe.

 

LOL, well don't I feel like an idiot.

 

Just for the hell of it, I compiled a list of all the suggestions so far. I’m surprised at how many of them I haven’t read. It also looks a bit like a “Greatest Hits” list, even though that wasn’t really the point of the thread. I left off Memory King’s H/G suggestion of Intromit’s Fate’s Debt, as I *think* he was joking.


Abraxan, Refiner’s Fire
AngieJ, The Paradise Series
Antosha, Back to the Garden
Anya, The Naked Quidditch Match
Arabella and Zsenya, After the End
Barb, The Pyschic Serpent Trilogy
Big D on a Diet, HP and the News
Cassandra Claire, The Draco Trilogy
Charlie –dashdot- Blue, Malignant Objects
C. Night, Getting Out or Dying Trying
C. Night, Inquiring Minds
C. K. Talons, The Human Condition
Cygnus Crux, HP’s Existence after Life (and sequels)
Dethyl, They Shook Hands series
Dzeytoun, Here Be Monsters
Dzeytoun, Daddy’s Favorite
Fayr Warning, Reign of Power
Full Pensieve, HP and the Years of Rebellion
Full Pensieve, HP and the Last Horcrux
Giovanni and Chuck, The Office
Jamesaddict, Extracurricular Activities
Jbern, Bungle in the Jungle
Jbern, To Fight the Coming Darkness
Jeconais, Hope
Jeconais, This Means War!
Jeconais, White Knight, Grey Queen
Joe, HP and the Wastelands of Time
Jon3776, HP and the Litany of Blood
LordDwar, HP and the Summer of Change
Lori, The Paradigm of Uncertainty trilogy
Lorien829, Resistance
Master Eldryn, his deleted fics
Master Slytherin, What Lies Beneath
Naia, Anarkia
Nonjon, Browncoat, Green Eyes
Nonjon, Where in the World is Harry Potter?
Rorschach’s Blot, Lord of Caer Azkaban
Rosswrock, HP and the Power of Time
Ruskbyte, Flying without a Broom
Ruskbyte, HP and the Order of the Phoenix
RustyRed, Ectomancer
Sakyra Saisaka, Seeing Beyond the Veil
SerpentSannin, Knowledge Is Power
Sheyda, Curse of the Banshees
Shezza, The Future Remapped (and other old stories)
SilverAegis, HP and the Girl Who Lived
SilverAegis, HP and the New Life
S’TarKan, HP and the Nightmares of Futures Past
Thalarian, Queens of Darkness, Ladies of Light
ThorNaida, Shadow Play
Vash, Bluer Than Indigo
Vash, Oedipus Flower


What else belongs on the list? Are we missing anything obvious?

 

You're missing Make A Wish by Rorschach’s Blot

Only Enemies by Leave this World defines the H/Bella genre, imo.

 

Main Entry: sem·i·nal
Pronunciation: \ˈse-mə-nəl\
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or consisting of seed or semen

The Office certainly meets that definition, but I don't think that's what this thread was about...

2 : containing or contributing the seeds of later development

A lot of that list doesn't really qualify as "seminal," due to being produced too recently.

 

Is there a HP-meets-Fae realm in there somewhere? Just for future reference, so I can plan assassinations to get Grimm up in the books.

Also it'd be nice to see others of that vein, if they're around.

 

Oh, time to break out the favorites list with stories from when I started reading in 2000 or something. Kind of strange to think about how long we've all been reading fanfiction.

When I used to browse favorites lists for interesting stories, I remember seeing the same stories so often that I could recite the author's name just by glancing at the title. These are, to me, the seminal HP stories, the ones that influenced almost everyone in some way. The ones that almost everyone knew and can remember.


Elemental Genesis, with memory loss and elemental powers, was one of the first of its kind. Well, as far as I can remember, at least.

I know a couple of other Ruskbyte stories were posted, and I think a third is in order. Backwards Compatible was a time travel story that got me interested in the genre. It may not have been the first, but I think he did it best.

Vocare Prabia was one of the first and most memorable "Harry goes to another universe and Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived" stories. I recall it being pretty decent, but I don't know how well time has treated it.

I know this probably wasn't as popular as some other stories mentioned in the thread, but Allusions of Power was the first manipulative Dumbledore fics I ever read, before anyone ever really got into the cliche. This was one of the first stories I enjoyed when I started getting interested in Harry Potter fanfiction.

Ha, I'll probably get yelled at for this one, but Fifth Year? I Haven't Done my Homework! was awesome when I read it. Abusive Dursleys, Parseltongue writing, and other cliches abound here. Back then, though, there weren't as many of these types of stories as there are now. "Would you rather freeze to death...?" is still something that crosses my mind every once in a while. Strange, I know, but I really liked this story when it was updating and I was incredibly curious about what that phrase meant.

Harry Potter and the Phoenix's Flight. You know, I can barely remember what this one is about. It probably shouldn't be posted as something seminal, I just figured I'd throw it up here and see if anyone else remembered it. The sequel was Harry Potter and the Ankh of Khepri.

 

Noticed that Joe's older fic, Harry Potter And The Sword Of The Hero hasn't been mentioned yet, I think it's a better fit than Wastelands.