I kinda like Hermoine.

'Her-moh-uh-knee'

It's ghetto-fabulous for Harmony.

Perhaps the Harmonians came up with it.

 

What sort of nonsense is this. JealousBitch!Hermione is the best Hermione ever! Right?

...

Meh, whatever. I still believe that H/Hr was the way things should have been, and I am perfectly happy in my delusional little world. So there.

Which, despite being totally unrelated, reminds me that I have a story I should be working on instead of mindlessly wishing for good stories to read.

 

So in the beginning of your first paragraph, your complaint is that Hermione, shocking, has human flaws. But by the end of that same paragraph your complaint is that she's a mary-sue catch-all plot device to solve all the problems.

Then in the next paragraph, you jump off a cliff into a paranoid conspiracy theory of the girl masterfully manipulating these two boys as if she's the second coming of Tom Riddle. Hell, you even pull out that the silly Slytherin-as-an-adjective, when anyone who read canon knows that Harry grew into a more instinctive manipulator than anyone short of Dumbledore himself.

I don't care that you don't like Hermione; plenty of DLP doesn't and is more vocal with screeds and diatribes about the character. Just don't say she's one way at the start of a paragraph and something entirely different before you hit Enter again.

Even more on-topic:

I don't think that Harry/Hermione is necessarily more or less believable than Ron/Hermione overall. Harry's and Ron's personalities have a lot of similarities, after all.

They can both be stubborn to a fault, digging their heels in when they think they're right. Guess what? I want that in my friends and I like that in my wife, though like anything, it can be trying and it can be taken too far.

Ron likes to argue more than Harry, which is a lot of what people case their like or dislike of the Ron/Hermione 'ship on. Those for it say that people who like to bicker will do that and be all the happier for it, just as those who don't support R/Hr say it's unhealthy, yada yada. I'ev seen couples both ways and there's really no way to predict UNLESS you knew tham before they were a couple. If, for example, the girl was not prone to arguments before being with that guy, it could very well be that the tension isn't all that good and it'll fall apart. Still, it's no guarantee.

Harry *does* like a good argument on occasion though. He just never seeks it out with his friends, preferring to spin up the likes of Draco, Snape, the Dursleys, Umbridge, etc. Still, Harry has so much conflict BUILT IN to his life that to say he wouldn't enjoy an argument with a friend LATER IN LIFE is something I can't support. After all, his life is in turmoil throughout canon, so I imagine he's going to prefer to avoid conflict with friends whenever possible just for the peace and quiet. Who's to say that after DH, a young Harry wouldn't like to spin up his friends and coworkers or get into philosophical or political or ethical or [insert topic here] discussions, now that he's finally able to take a deep breath and think about something other than ZOMFG I HAVE TO DESTROY A LOAD OF UNKNOWN AND UNBELIEVABLY DANGEROUS PIECES OF AN EVIL ASSHOLE'S SOUL AND OH BY THE WAY THEN KILL THAT IMMORTAL EVIL WIZARD ASSHOLE GENIUS PRODIGY HIMSELF!!1!

So yes, as they are written thru DH, Harry and Hermione are not the most compatible characters, but EVEN SO, a good author could write them as being together and in conflict, trying to change each other, failing to do so, staying together and trying to compromise (like a real couple), meeting partway, having some successes and some failures and some setbacks, wondering if it'll work, more friction from events a, b, c, etc., etc. I mean, have you never read a story where the characters had problems and still stayed together, or at least tried to because they had real feelings for each other? Shit, that's called Marriage, and even before getting married, people have fights and disagreements and have to reconcile being different people and having been raised differently or having at least somewhat different goals and dreams.

Ever heard the saying "If two people never disagree, one of them is unnecessary"? My wife and I still disagree - not as much now as when we first got married, but we've both mellowed and along with having new, common goals, many of our old individual goals are now complete or nearly so. We understand each other better than I ever thought possible, and neither of us is the same person we were when we got married, let alone the persons we were at 17 or 18.

TL;DR If I were going to write a H/Hr story, the first rule would be that the 'ship would be secondary to the plot. The second rule would be that I would start with their canon selves at the end of DH (whether before or after the Epilogue) and go from there. And the last rule is that I would not make it smooth or quick, because that is not how real life and real love works.

 

Authors who do the 'Harry takes Hermione to the Yule Ball' trope, on FFn, would disagree with you, Portus.

 

So it's settled then -- Portus needs to write a realistic H/Hr fic.

 

Clear evidence that the majority opinion isn't always the strongest argument- just the most palatable. See VHS vs. Betamax, Edison's Direct Current vs. Tesla's Alternating Current, etc.

 

I'm confused. Care to give an example?

To elaborate: I don't attack your argument, I'm just curious. (As to the agrument, frankly, I agree with you both.)

 

I would love to, though if I'm honest I don't think I have the writing chops to pull it off.

The first and best example to come to mind is Harry viewing Slughorn's memory of teenage Riddle and realizing the level of skill both Riddle and himself have at alternating between feeding the person's ego, feigning innocence, and subtly pushing for more info.


Harry learned early on how to work the emotions of people, whether it was the Dursleys' shame about him or their need to feel superior to their neighbors, or whether it was playing on McGonnagal's bias toward him and Gryffindor. Of course it didn't always work and sometimes backfired but what I mean is that he had a very definite feel for it that only got better thru canon.


Harry was able to play Hagrid (not unique or a surprise), able to work Snape into a frenzy (yes, Snape was easy for Harry but Harry made it an art in HBP), and he had Pomfrey and even Pince giving him more leeway than any other student could've expected.


I admit that much if this was a combination of his genuine self and their knowledge of him over time, but when Harry needed to convince people to help him - especially by he time DH rolled around - he could ratchet up the charisma and earnestness and make people come around to his way of thinking. Just look at the conversations with Ollivander and especially Griphook in DH. Sure, Griphook eventually betrayed them but the way Harry operated was full of charisma, bravado, and determination, and that's the kind of thing I mean.

 

Pretty much. I honestly don't know or see much of Slytherin cunning or manipulation- some of them have plots, sure, but the immense majority don't, and even those who have plots usually sucks at manipulating people.

 

Some of you may know that I'm a big Hermione fan. I just found a well written Dark!Hermione fic on ff.net and thought I'd share it with those of you who might be interested.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7245657/1/The_Willing_Descent_of_Hermione_Granger

I wouldn't call this a great piece of fanfiction, but it's technically sound, has some fresh ideas and takes its time to develop Hermione's descent. The TR/HG just got started in the last chapter and I hope it doesn't get too shippy later on.

3.5/5

 

Umm... no. The story is just bad. Like, I don't even know why the hell I read it. The dialogue ebtween Hermione in the diary is a contrived plot device of rampant stupidity as far as I could tell. And the diary "making sense" to her happens way to often when they have diametrically opposed opinions... like 3 or 4 times in just the first two chapters! Absolutely frickin bad.

Dark!Hermione is, perhaps, a decent idea, but not the way it was done.

Hermione is an obsessive personality with a strong respect for authority (in general). There needs to be an extrememly significant impetus for her to disregard everything she has been told (and read) about Dark Magic (whatever you believe about its nature).

In fact, the only story I've read that ever did it in a semi-believable fashion, was one thats name I can't recall at the moment, but it was on a Hermione-centric site iirc. Anyway, it dealt with a wizarding world that wasn't changing from the bigoted world that it was before quickly enough for Hermione. Muggleborns that had been thrown in Azkaban were not being let out, the Ministry was dragging its feet, pureblood legislation not being repealed etc. and Harry left Britain, not wanting to deal with anything.

Anyway, Hermione resorts to Dark magic in order to break the muggleborns out of Azkaban and to sort of force forward her "forward thinking" views on the populous.

Or something to that effect. There was more meat to it that made it believeable, but I think that was the gist.

I seem to recall it degenerating into some sort of BDSM-fest between Harry and Hermione when he returned to Britain at which point I said "screw it" and left, not willing to trudge through shitty self-insert smut to get the meat of reasonably interesting story.

Plus Hr/TR is a no-no. Just like TR/anyone at all. (Except for in Erised Burning, that shit still makes me crack up)

Most of that commentary on Dark!Hermione is bare-bones type stuff. There is a lot that would have to happen, and I believe it could be done well, but that diary-thingy isn't it.

 

^ I didn't say it was perfect, but I liked it enough to put it in here.

Yeah, "Dangerous" was a brilliant fic, a true inspiration for everyone interested in Dark!Hermione. It didn't make it into the DLP library though:

http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=12887

 

I found Willing Descent to be interesting if not spectacular, but then again the one other TMR/HG story I tried to read was so crappy I stopped after a few chapters, so it has the advantage of being pretty new ground. After chapter 8 I think the story could rapidly turn to suck if mishandled though, so we'll see how things go.

 

There aren't many good ones, that's true. I rather liked this fic:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5034546/1/Ultima_ratio

It's huge, complete and the writing is ok. Too much angst and fluff for most DLPers though.

 

This story barely makes it in here... it is a rewrite of "The Sorting Hat's Stand" and seems to be slightly better than the original. I sent in a pretty intense review hoping to push the author to do better, but we shall see. Only one chapter, and he has a dangerous tendency to go over the top.

The Power of the Mind
Author: Landstradd PM
The Sorting Hat serves more purposes than is apparent. One of them is as a safe guard against abusive families. What changes might be wrought from this? Rated for coarse language and mild violence.
Rated: Fiction M - English - Harry P. - Reviews: 74 - Words: 9,883 - Published: 06-24-12
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8253087/1/The_Power_of_the_Mind

 

I honestly couldn't get passed the very lengthy A/N. It just seems generic and rather boring.

 

I couldn't stop laughing. My god this is hilariously bad.

Spoiler

"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid fat, rat yellow."

Harry stared and tried not to gape at the idiot. And then he started silently praying to whatever being would listen that he would not end up in the same classes as Ron. He may not be too partial to his life given how bad things had gone in the past ten years, but he still didn't want to die in an explosion caused by an idiot.

That would just be an ignominious end. So all ties to the git would have to be severed and all bridges burned at Harry's earliest convenience. The gormless buffoon was now classified as a danger to himself and, more importantly, others. Harry shuddered at the thought of having potions, a class which all the course books recommended caution for, with Ron.

Harry was just winding up his thoughts as the girl finished some sort of spiel he had only half listed too as she practically gushed about the books and she finished with introducing herself as Hermione Granger, with which he could do nothing else but introduce himself, and she then started citing books and chattering on about the texts she had read about him in, he entire bearing being in such a way as to lead Harry to a couple of conclusions about her.

Firstly, she absolutely adored books. Adored them in a way in which it seemed she believed they could do no wrong. Adored them more than could really be healthy for her. Truth be told he wanted friends, and she seemed nice enough, and definitely met his brand new minimum intelligence standards, but if her company was ever going to be tolerable to him, she would have to be introduced to a series of concepts that he had found very useful.

Secondly, and as a possible correlation to her obsession with books and general manner of beating a person over the head with facts, it would probably run a high end probability that she had few, if any, friends.

Thirdly, and as an extension of both of the aforementioned, she would probably hold any and all authority figures as being paragons of some sort.

The first and last of this could be fixed by introducing the concept of bias into her life, which would help curb her over reliance on books and topple authority figures form their high pedestal.

If one listened to Harry's thoughts, one might wonder why an eleven year would think things out in such away. To which Harry would point out that shite he had been put through would most likely make anyone grow up far faster than they should have to.

From the very beginning. It's like all the worst parts of FFN authorship in a neat little package. Well, perhaps not all, but it's still pretty damn bad. And funny in a train wreck that you can't look away from sort of way. I am going to go read some more of it now.

 

The first chapter is embarrassingly bad, but it is still an improvement over the original. The original story became decent once it forgot about the initial premise, so I guess there's hope for it.

 

This was what I saw when reading that passage.

 

So, yeah. Ron and Hermione 'bashing' in the first chapter. :facepalm

It does, however, make me want to read a decent cynical!Harry or drastic A/U, like the Thief of Hogwarts - maybe a Ravenclaw Harry.

Anyone know of any?