Urgh... now that I think on it, the only H/Hr story without significant problems that I've read is Secondhand Lions by belleradh.

The Fifth Element is readable tripe, Backwards Compatible is severely dated, and canoncansodoff is a Harmonian with decent style but terrible pacing for non-parody writing.

I'm holding out hope for nos tres reges to make a comeback (all three of them - The General is good, but VINCET needs to continue) as well as hoping for Taure's muse to not leave, but yeah.

 

So long as Ashaya keeps bribing me for each complete chapter, we're good

Though - my story is H/Hr now?

OT: I like simple writing best. I actually think that JKR's writing style - especially in the later books - is very good.

 

@thisMortalCoil: Pullum's main criticism doesn't seem to be that Elements is too concise, it's that the advice is wrong and hurtful because the authors knew shit about grammar. I haven't read it, but the examples Pullum takes out of context seem pretty damning. The fact that they contradict their own apparently misguided rules just makes it worse.

I don't approve of purple prose, generally speaking. I'm not an author, but I suspect it can be pretty difficult for some to resist putting themselves forward in their writing ("having their prose come off as very impressive", as RustyRed puts it). A lot of DLP seems to enjoy it, maybe because we have a lot of authors, but imo fics like Wastelands try too hard.

 

Ah! That explains so much.

 

What! I don't even- Wastelands tries too hard? If anything it doesn't try hard enough!

I don't read fan fiction for:

I read it for this:

Now, is that an example of purple prose? Yes. But it makes me go :awesome. And that's why I read fan fiction, because purple prose is a convention of the genre- it's part of the fun.

 

...

That's more than purple prose. That's "I got a thesaurus for my birthday and I'm using random words" prose. "Salacious spine"? Really?

Both of your examples are hyperbolic. Your post is quite ridiculous.

 

I love how it ends, though. All that build-up and then "They had epic, mind-blowing sex."

 

Wow. Its been said that its difficult to read WoT again, because of how ridiculous it is. I haven't reread it because I want to preserve my good memories of it, but every time someone quotes it I practically gag at the level of melodrama and pointless rhetoric that seems to be in every sentence.

The prose is so purple, it reminds me of Vernon's face in every shitty fic you've ever read.

 

Yeah, Joe said somewhere that if he had a chance to rewrite it he'd probably cut 90k words - a good third of the story.

It was one of the first fics I ever read and I guess it's decent, but frankly I'd rather have him work on Of Harry and Harry (his HP/DF crossover) or even his old next-gen fic than Heartlands.

 

Yeah, I've always tended to find Elements of Style hopelessly trite and irrelevant, but just to clarify something:

Uh, no. No, I don't like H/Hr. You want to know my opinion on that ship, you can see this, or this, or this, or this.

So yeah, while I'm not as militantly anti-Hermione as some are on this site (like Sesc and Nukular Winter), I am most certainly NOT a Harry/Hermione shipper.

 

Well... I saw you recommend The Fifth Element several times and drew my conclusions from that; apologies. I took the time to read it, and while it's not a bad story by any stretch of the imagination, neither Harry nor Hermione are characterized properly. Their characterizations are acceptable but not canon, as there's very little noticeable progression from the divergence point. Also... her pacing is shit, frankly.

 

@The Berkeley Hunt: I'm not sure if your part about "every time someone quotes it" was referencing the thing posted by Toothpicks a few posts up, but you know that what they wrote was clearly not from Wastelands, right?

@TMC: My dislike of Elements, generally, coincides with Sesc's. I quoted the article to avoid actually having to elaborate on how shitty I find it. The advice ranges from bad to tautological.

 

You sure like to rant. Still, I LOL'ed when I saw you put forward as an example of an H/Hr shipper.

Myself, I happen to like the pairing, and have recced quite a few stories with that pairing. That said, most of those were ones I read when my standards were far lower than they are now, and a great many of those same stories would not pass muster for me anymore.

Y'know what I'd really like to see? A post-Hogwarts story where Harry and Hermione get together or at least move in that direction without the "I've always fancied you but [insert stupid reason here] kept me from telling you" premise that is in almost every HHr fic I've ever seen. *That* would be refreshing.

/derail

 

*cough* The Golden Age *cough*

Yeah, not really. That was such a bizarre story. I wouldn't recc it to anybody even though I gave it a 5/5.

 

Yes, that would be refreshing.

And if we could skip the 'Ron is cheating on me' and 'Ginny just murdered our children' angles, that would be nice as well.

 

There's an actual 'Ginny just murdered our children'-angle?

That's hilarious.

 

It slightly less common than the "Ginny just cheated on Harry with everything that walks, has bloated up to over 9000, is bow-legged, and is pregnant with a demonbaby" angle, but it exists.

@ Taure: Would you call it...

Ultraviolet Prose?

 

And here's my point about Fifth Element - I love the atmosphere and huge worldbuilding of that fic. I like most of the characterizations, particularly of the side characters. I find the interweaving plots and twisted narrative a joy to read.

If anything, my biggest problems with the story stem from how awkwardly the H/Hr relationship was crowbarred into the story. It's sloppy, overloaded, and silly. If anything, I will always highlight Harry/Eliza relationship in that story simply because the two had great chemistry and the pacing of the relationship was superb. And while I will admit some of the Hermione-centric chapters midway through the fic are actually pretty damned good, they were the last big high point of that story for me.

To put it simply, I don't read Bexis' work because of the romance. I read it because the man has a great imagination and can build fantastic suspense. It's Partially Kissed Hero done... well, better.

Hey, I get bored.

 

I agree that it had good worldbuilding - it reminded me of Barb's trilogy (in a good way) and of Years of Rebellion (once Harry stopped being a punching bag).

Anyways... on the subject of prose, I've randomly noticed that the Alexandra Quick series seems to be imitating Rowlings earlier work, both in style and in story structure (the way the yearly mystery gets laid down, discovered, unraveled, solved).

Also, I randomly got bored halfway through the second book and can't convince myself to continue reading. Worth it Y/N?