It does make for a decent time waster. That said, I'm dreading the chapter when 3/4 of the girls decide that they're lesbians and/or Harry somehow turns into a girl.

 

How many tries does JoeHundredaire need to get the shit in that story in order?

He ignores the fact that when Harry arrived in the other dimension he displaced the other one. Lily in this story is a terrible mother too, easily dismisses her own Harry. That's just cold.

Also, the entire plot is painfully antiquated. Retread with minor differences and a different roster of friends picked at random for Harry doesn't cut it anymore.

 

Umm, what? I think I'll give this one a pass.

Not that I was going to read it anyway, I've already read pretty much the same thing a thousand times. Doesn't help the original wasn't particularly good, either.

 

Actually, I understate how absolutely despicable Lily is in that story. Not only does she not give a damn about her only son, but when he stumbles upon her affair (that she's been carrying on for years and years behind James' back), her first instinct is to attempt to kill Harry before he can walk away as a witness, and only stands down once it's apparent that this Harry is too tough to get murdered so easily.

It's brushed off and their relationship resumes cordially.

Fuck you Joe (Not Joe, the cheaper version of you Joe).

 

..and then Harry gives fem!Draco a foot massage..

 

*Sigh*

I had a rather lengthy post in response to this (I can almost feel the 'not surprised' radiating off of DLP's server), but a rogue video player locked my computer up, forcing me to reboot. :facepalm

So, since the will to post anything about this subject has pretty much been sucked out of me, I'll just say that I want to like Joe's stories.

Really, I do.

I want to like Joe's stories. He seems to have some interesting ideas, intriguing scenarios, and unique characters... but he's always trying to cram them all into one story.

Out of all the multi-chaptered HP stories he has to his name, he's finished all of one (1)(ONE!!!), Savior (and if anyone 'corrects' me by mentioning Your Horoscope for Today: Death, I will laugh in your stupid face, and you will look stupid while I laugh, and you will deserve each and every ounce of scorn and derision heaped upon you). It was a little over 8k words, so it could have been done as a one-shot, and Harry was barely present in it (Savior, not Horoscope).

In fact, he was mainly included as a mere afterthought.

Spoiler

He was more or less included in the Illyria/Luna pairing at the end, but whatever. If one were honest about the portrayal of Illyria, this was probably because Luna felt something for Harry and, after Illyria essentially merged part of herself with Luna to keep her toy from dying, she realized this and allowed Harry to be included to keep her pet happy.

This is par for the course with his attempts at HP fic.

The actual main character wasn't even an HP character, she was a somewhat little known character from late in the last season of the Buffy spin-off, Angel, whose main trait is looking down on every member of the human race as weak, ignorant, pathetic scum that should be worshiping her (since she was, at one time in Earth's distant past, a "god king").

Even with the people she "likes," you get the impression she could barely care whether they live or die.

You can imagine how cuddly and likable a character she is. If she develops past this initial characterization at all, it is almost imperceptible.

In fact, she starred in the first JoeHundredaire fic I ever stumbled across, which was Harry Potter and The Shell of The God King. While it was set in the HP world, Illyria was the main character, with Harry more or less being along for the ride. The story began meandering at some point... a pirate ship was involved... and then it simply stopped updating at 19 chapters.

Like pretty much ALL of his stories, it suffered from Too Many Lesbians syndrome.

Remember the scene near the beginning of The Matrix, where Neo first meets Trinity in that dance club? Remember the girl with the white rabbit tattoo and all the other tattooed, leather and/or vinyl clad extras in spikes and piercings who were in that club?

Good. Now imagine, if you will, that, instead of just serving as background decoration, all the women in that scene followed Neo around for the rest of the movie, monopolizing Trinity's attention, looking fantastically unique, acting superior to everyone else, and preventing Neo from doing much in the way of heroics or developing any kind of meaningful relationship with Trinity.

Welcome to Joe's Hogwarts, where the women are all better than everyone else, they're all bi or lesbian, and they don't need a male main character stealing their screen-time or outclassing them.

Now, I don't have anything against lesbians. Hell, I love 'em (I'd might as well, since loving the straight women is often a pain in the ass, and nearly as thankless :awesome), but Wizarding Britain is a small community, so why is there such a disproportionate number of gay women coming out of the woodwork at Hogwarts? Where did all of these schoolgirl Sapphos come from, and why are they ALL clustering around Harry?

Joe's typical modus operandi is basically to add as many quirky bisexual females to a story as he can possibly cram on the page, and then KEEP them on the page as much as possible, no matter how much that gets in the way of telling a story that makes sense or progresses in any meanginful way.

These girls ALL must have one (or many) of the following traits:

• odd colored hair
• uniquely colored eyes
• strange ancestry
• rare magical talents or abilities
• possession of a rare/powerful magical artifact
• a pronounced accent
• worldly knowledge far beyond that of their peers
• a general ability to be/look/act better than everyone around them whose carpet they aren't hoping to clean
• bisexuality or lesbianism (Nearly all of whom are "out, proud, and out loud," as opposed to doubtful, insecure, and scared of being found out, which would perhaps be more realistic for a tween/teenager trying to figure out their sexuality, without being thrown out of the dorm or shunned by their peers/family. It would be nice to think one could discover and explore their preferences without fear, as Joe's characters apparently are, but, in a world where you can be killed for not being born to magical parents, I have a hard time buying this Good Ship Lollipop ideal.)

And when he runs out of canon characters to mold into this pattern, he adds a good baker's dozen or so more OCs to round out the number of characters monopolizing the page (for a good three carnival's worth of sideshow escapees).

I get that Uru/Second Life are alternate realities. I get that Hermione being a 12-year-old lesbian in them is part of that. I get that also making her into a jock was done mostly for the shock value, since it's in direct contrast to her canon presentation as a largely cerebral character.

I even get that stereotypes tend to have a core of truth at the center, or else they wouldn't exist. Still, her characterization falls into the "butch sporty dyke" stereotype, which may or may not turn some (gay) people off.

This being one of Joe's worlds, she's also still a brainiac bookworm, in addition to having considerable athletic prowess, because his female characters are either villains (to one degree or another), or Nietzschean Übermensch (yes, I DO see the irony of what I just wrote), capable of doing all things, and doing them better than the lower lifeforms by which they're surrounded.

In Draco Malfoy and the Enlightening Experience, Draco gets turned into a girl. Luna befriends him and he proceeds to return right back to a life of attempting to belittle and humiliate the good guys, especially Harry. This time around, though, being that he is now possessed of a XX chromosome, he's actually very successful at these examples of total douchebaggery.

Luna more or less lets Draco's treatment of Harry and company slide because, hey, Draco's got tits now and Harry doesn't. Sorry, Harry.

I mean, forget that Draco's an asshole and a villain; he's a girl now! With Joe at the keyboard, that means he's GOT to be better than Harry.
--

In the crossover (which apparently no longer exists online) Hermione Granger and the Rider Pass (a bizarre choice of HP and Kamen Rider), Hermione gains a myriad of new powers, and another being, an Imagin, riding around in her body (not to mention a fab' new wardrobe).

In a totally unexpected twist (savor the sarcasm), Hermione ends up with a second Imagin in her and another set of powers, while at least three other girls (Luna, Fleur, and Daphne) also get Imagin and powers similar to Hermione's.

Make no mistake, despite most of the Imagin being male, this is an all girls party; guys thinking they might get some of these powers, or even aspire to one day be worth half a damn, need not apply.

Harry pretty much gets reduced to Ron's level of intelligence and usefulness, with the two of them being relegated to the role of staring in dumbfounded awe each and every time Hermione does something amazingly awesome with her new abilities... which is pretty much every couple of paragraphs.

Well... not that there are that many paragraphs that actually have Harry and/or Ron in them, but they gawk like stunned monkeys when they are present.

Hermione generally spends a lot of time looking, acting, and feeling superior to everyone and everything around her, and since one of the spirits within her is apparently a horny man, she basically gets to act like a lesbian by proxy. If memory serves, she ends up going on dates with Luna while that spirit is in control of her body. This is something she willingly allows... for whatever reason.

Oh, and her name comes out of the Goblet of Fire instead of Harry's, and when Snape starts his usual screed about rule-breaking show-offs, Dumbledore actually calls him down for it, instead of all but totally ignoring it, as he would have if it were Harry. Another big pair of shockers there.

Dumbledore probably wished he could take back his help, since Hermione ended up lifting him by his robes and threatening him, not a minute later.
--

In Holly, Phoenix, Diamond, and Elm, Harry is the main character... but he's also a girl, having had his genes manipulated by, essentially, a kidnapper (X-Men's White Queen, Emma Frost) who took him from Godric's Hollow right after his parents were killed.

And you thought Dumbledore felt entitled to do whatever the fuck he wanted to Harry!

Girl!Harry is, as Joe's other female characters, possessed of many, many powerful abilities , and surrounded by other females who are also possessed of many, many powerful abilities, and can pretty much get away with whatever she wants, more or less.
--

I'd be remiss in not noting here that strong female characters are great. However, much like we often see that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the ability to cope with it, perfection is not strength; in the absence of real flaws, there can be no real strength. That is the way of the gimmick-laden Mary-Sue.

Quiet My Heart doesn't have a listed pairing, but it gets major points against it both for being a Marriage Law fic, and for Harry himself being one of the people getting ready to willingly pass said law. Sadly, this outweighs, by a wide margin, the pleasant surprise (for me) that Harry and Pansy are paired together.

Odds are, it will focus entirely on Hermione. I predict that a major plot point will revolve around her slipping through a loophole that the Ministry (being largely made of typical dumb males, hurrr...) stupidly left in the law, that will allow her to marry a girl instead of a guy -probably Luna, since that's a theme in Joe's work.

Oh, and it's apparently a Hellboy crossover, who knew (so, if she isn't with Luna, I'll lay odds that she thinks she can marry her pet cat and give the Ministry the finger, but ends up meeting Abe Sapien and marries the fellow bookworm instead)? I can't poke at it for being unfinished, since it was first posted this July.
--

Road Trip is, allegedly, a BtVS/HP crossover (no HP characters thus far, though), centered on Illyria and Dawn. It was first posted in '06, updated with a second chapter this April.
--

Maybe the multicolored lesbians aren't to blame for the string of unfinished, shark-jumping, abandoned, rewritten stories, though. Maybe it's the Harry Potter setting, in and of itself.

After all, it doesn't seem to matter whether Harry is a main character or not, a girl or a boy... Soundtrack to Your Life stalled at 6 chapters, and it was Hermione/Luna. Rider Pass crapped out at 13. Holly, Phoenix, Diamond, and Elm hasn't updated in a while and it had girl!Harry... Maybe the setting just isn't as inspiring to him as his usual fare.

Witness: He has finished some (lengthy) non-HP stories.

I'll always be of the opinion that a fan fic writer must constantly be wary of changing too much from canon, all in the same story, and especially all right from the start.

Warning: Tangential rant ahead.

Spoiler

Fic authors (and their immature, thinking-impaired, easily entertained, pap-addicted fans, who, like tethered pit bulls, furiously defend their beloved authors from critical reviews), angry that you didn't love their story of hackneyed clichés, will often latch onto a reviewer's complaint that they changed too much and spout the tired old battle cry that "The whole point of fan fic is you can change whatever you want!"

This is true... if you want a steaming pile of shit. If you change too much, it rapidly begins to cease being the universe the story is supposedly based in, and starts being the hack author's own bastardized thing. You have to introduce changes relatively slowly, space these changes out, and explain why something changed... in the context of the story, not a fucking author's note.

Aside from the complete and total absence of LOGIC, is it any wonder 99.99999% of Dramione is Grade A horseshit, when the author makes Draco knowledgeable enough about the muggle world to function in it, actually give him the desire to do so, make him a veela/creature, make him fall for Hermione, ignore that he's a racist, make Hermione a pureblood, make Hermione the heir of some important family, make Lucius a good guy, make Hermione the subject of her own prophecy, make Draco the subject of HIS own prophecy, or make a prophecy with both of them in it, or turn Harry and Ron into total assholes...

OR ALL OF THE ABOVE! ALL IN THE SAME STORY!

And with zero explanation as to why any of it is happening.

Let me catch my breath...

That's a recipe for worthless shit, with a side order of stupid shit, topped with annoying shit.

I'm not saying the author indignation or rabid fans apply to Joe, and certainly not the Dramione, but the above IS an example of what happens when you change a ton of stuff at once. The kitchen sink approach to fic writing rarely results in quality reading material, and...

I do think Joe's stories suffer from adding too many flashy gimmicks, which not only serve to dilute the real substance of a story and distract from it, but prevent the creation of more substance and keep the story from progressing, as well.

And, completely ignoring the ridiculously skewed amount of lesbians, why so many perfect and/or outlandish characters? In canon, Harry's friends are a talented, smart, but socially retarded and abrasive girl, and an average guy who had a tendency to shit on his friends (and a determined fangirl, a pudgy kid with low self confidence, and a nice-but-weird outcast).

Even in Joe's beloved Buffy series, Buffy was surrounded by people who, quite frankly, were neither unique looking, nor all that useful in combat. Xander was an average geek. Willow was a shy computer nerd. Cordelia was a pretty, popular, snob with little substance. Giles was little more than a source of information...

It wasn't until many seasons later that her friends and compatriots became more than ordinary people. And for the most part, even then, the changes tended to take the form of training and experience shaping them into people who were finally no longer completely useless in a fight, with the exception of Willow's becoming a witch.

Buffy wasn't joined at the hip, 24 hours a day, with an entire legion of neon-eyed, freaky-haired, beautiful, smarter than everyone else, perfect people, who all bat for the other team.

Yet, somehow, shit still got done, alternative sexualities were still represented, nearly everyone got at least one moment to shine, asses were kicked, quips and insults were traded, and awesome things still happened.

I can't help but feel there's something to be learned there, perhaps something about moderation and pacing one's self.

Anyway, in short: If Joe finishes Second Life, I'll be shocked.
If Harry doesn't get outshone at nearly every turn by his motley crew of rainbow-colored female costars, I'll be shocked.
If Harry doesn't get relegated to near-background character status, I'll be shocked.
If Harry doesn't end up playing second fiddle to another girl vying for the affections of whatever girlfriend he gets paired with (if he even gets to have a love life), I'll be very shocked.

On the other hand, if he somehow gets turned into a girl, I won't be surprised to see him quickly become one of, if not the, wisest, smartest, prettiest, strangest, most skilled and powerful character, with the most lovers, in the story.

If you're into sapphic schoolgirls with a strong sense of superiority and a Harry that is damned near useless most of the time, you may find yourself entertained by his HP story fragments. I think a pair of quotes from Hermione Granger and The Rider Pass nicely sum up Harry's typical role in Joe's stories: "Harry Potter was very much out of his league." "Harry had the vague feeling he'd just been insulted..."

A ridiculously outclassed Harry who is too dim to ascertain whether or not the girls around him think he's a sub-creature. Fan-Tas-Tic!

If you'd prefer your lesbians with more super powers, fewer wands, and starring in complete stories, try one of his fics set in non-HP universes. I can't vouch for their quality, having not read them, but there are some fairly long ones that claim to be finished.

Well, look at that... I still ended up writing a book (Again, I can feel the 'not surprised' radiating off of DLP's server).

I still want to like his stories.

 

@Warlocke. That wall of text is most impressive. Higher quality that most stories recommended in this thread as well.

 

But seriously, you summed up pretty well the problems that I had with his fics - well, what I read of them, which is basically Wand of Uru/Second Chance, and a couple others, but it still describes them perfectly.

 

So, Warlocke, you ever thought of writing something other than awesome posts laying the smack down on people?

EDIT : Do continue your awesome post smack downs though.

 

Argh! You madman; don't ruin a good thing!

 

You wrote over 3,000 words for a forum post.

I....hm.

/wanders away.

 

Yeah. I've never been able to write that many words on anything except baseball, aside from my terrible forays into fanfiction. Let alone write that much on something I don't actually 'like'.

But kudos for you for providing us with quality entertainment, as well as pretty insightful analysis, here. I'm in the same boat as you in that I'd 'like' to enjoy this dude's work, but I can't bring myself to do so. I don't even bother reading his stuff anymore, unless I see people mention that it's vastly improved from his usual fare.

 

Illyria can actually be interesting in stories where she isn't just a pre-packaged JoeHundredaire Super!Puppet. From the series (and to a greater degree, in various fanfics) it is rather unclear how much of Illyria's mind is Illyria and how much is Winnifred Burkle, and much of (not ALL, but still) Illyria's scorn for her "friends" and the world they live in can be interpreted as a defensive reaction to hide her fears about the changes in the world and even herself.

From what I can tell regarding the Buffy Cosmology, the time of the Old Ones was a dangerous, scary place to be sure, but not a place that featured a lot of change. To go from the top of a very well established pyramid to an uncertain role in a rapidly changing and unfamiliar time could be quite traumatic.

 

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. That was the longest shit I've ever seen. You could have rewritten the story for all that work.

 

Lots of douche-baggery can be explained away or justified, it still doesn't make watching it any less annoying.

As for JoeHundredaire (who I'm not quite certain isn't a radical lesbian feminist pretending to be a man) I love how he finds Shezza's stories misogynistic when his own are pretty much "men are shit, anything with a pussy rules" except ironically, his BtVS/BSG crossover.

 

I just happened to run across this last night:

A HP/Temeraire crossover was not something I'd seen before so I thought I'd read it.

It's not too bad, though it's not great either and the story really hasn't taken off just yet.

I usually don't pay too much attention to who the author of a story is so it wasn't until I'd already read most of it that I bothered to look up and see who the author was. I was sad to see that it was esama, who seems to come up with many ideas for interesting new stories that he usually abandons sometime after 50k words, often right as things start to get interesting. It's very frustrating.

 

Is it bad that I really want to read that? Or rather, I would like to read a Harry/fem!Malfoy pairing. Is that even an option? I've never seen one.

 

That one doesn't actually qualify as fem!Draco, AFAIC. She's more like "What would have happened if Narcissa had a daughter instead of Draco." than "What would have happened if Draco were a girl."

There are a few Harry/fem!Malfoy fics out there. Good luck not stabbing your eyes out part way through. Last time I checked, pretty much all of them stunk.

Heh, well, I'm not really trying to lay the smack down on anyone. Just voicing some thoughts and venting a few frustrations, while adding the requisite amounts of hyperbole and snark.

As to the writing part...

Probably the right idea.

I write a ton of my own stuff... whether it's fit for human consumption or not is another question.

I've often lamented my inability to write a story from beginning to end. Instead I just create a text file and add scenes to it whenever an idea comes to me. It could take place at the beginning of the story, somewhere near three quarters of the way through...

I'd never be able to post something as I write it, I'd have to write it in its entirety, then post it.

Still, I have my meandering, half-assed writings to thank for my DLP #13 rank in whatpulse.

62,000 words of HP/NGE, anyone?

 

Me! Me! PM now!