What? No it's not. :| That's like comparing ... Your six year old brother's scribbles to Tolkien. It was readable, to be sure, and I'm sure he did a decent job managing plots...

Outstanding fic that went to completion? Kateydidnt's Betrayed does characterization a dozen times better, and its not the best piece in the fandom. Ditto for Ogenblik and Silens' Silence Game. Gentlemen Usher should be added, simply for the fact that its an all around more interesting story.

If I were to step outside of Potter, I'd say The Darkness Within (Tenchi Muyo) is superior as well.


Also; despite the fact that its not finished, Only Enemies was worlds better until the fucking Bones/Lich shit. :|

 

Look at it this way: I'm holding The Lie I've Lived up on a pedestal because it was one of the first 10 HP stories I'd ever read (so it left quite an impression) and because I haven't so much as looked at it since its completion for fear of ruining this image I have of the story.

If I went back and read it after some of the newer stuff I've found, I'd probably find fault after fault after fault.

And yeah, Only Enemies is cake on cake awesome...even if the Voldemort resurrection was a bit fruity.

 

Wasteland's of Time. That story seems to be held up by the hype of it's own foreshadowing.

 

This. I would prefer an update to All My Love to Long Ago than Wasteland's of Time.

 

It's the nature of the beast that any given fanfiction story or series will be overrated right from the word go. Anything that's better than headbutting at the keyboard for a few minutes will get at least one OMG RITE MOAR from the FFN kids, and anything that rises above the murky depths of mediocrity gets praised to high heaven out of sheer scarcity.

The only way for a given story to not be overrated is if it's shit and presented only to a small, choosy crowd - posting a crap story in WbA here, for example.

 

Everything I've read by Carrotglace (He's changed his pen name to Contrabardus, the pretentious prick). This is what I think of every time I read one of his fics.

 

Have to disagree with you here, Tehan, in all due honesty. Maybe it's because I tend to browse fandoms that are slightly outside of the practiced norm (and lurk numerous other boards other than DLP), but there are indeed fics that should have a hell of a lot more praise than they do, or fics that have earned some of the praise they get. Some fics, like JBern's and Joe's and Shezza's and nonjon's and Jeconais' get hype and universal recommendations bloody anywhere you might go, regardless of the forum or website. Others tend to fall by the wayside, and are never fucking seen, sometimes due to abandonment or infrequent updates, or other times because the writer doesn't have the same 'fan-following' that comes from some works.

Let me toss out a few examples of some underappreciated gems, or at least ones that I've spotted:

-The Song of the Trees by Tinn Tam. Damn shame this fic's never going to be updated in the near-future, because it had solid characterization, a well-defined plot, and near-flawless grammar. This fic doesn't have the mass 'overrated' factor simply because the updates are so fucking rare (yes, Tinn, that message WAS intentional).

-Equal and Opposite by Amerision. Yeah, it's a bit of a squick for some people with the Harry/Fem!Harry, and I think that scares some people off. Still doesn't mean that it's not hugely underappreciated across every section of the fandom. Amer puts a ton of effort into characterization and atmosphere, and his care with the scenes really shows. This is not slapdash writing, and that's something I can really appreciate.

-The Wrath of the Half-Blood Prince by Matt Quinn. I've recced this fic before and I'll do it again, because it has some of the best action in fanfic. Coupled with being the best paced fic I've read in a very long time with a sensibly well-written plotline, this is easily an underappreciated gem. Shame that the pairing (Lily/Snape) will disqualify it automatically from the majority of the HP fandom.

-Gentleman Usher of the Scarlet Rod by Heather Sinclair. I'm seconding Vash on this, because this fic is fucking awesome. Dialogue is witty and realistic, atmosphere is very solid, and it features (in my opinion) one of the greatest characterizations for Indy!Harry. And to top it off, it's the closest thing we're ever going to get to a good HP/Cthulhu crossover. Yeah.

Other fics I've found lived up to their hype, like Thanfiction's Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness (graphic as fuck and still probably the best non-Harry-centric fic that I've ever read) and nonjon's A Black Comedy. Both, in my opinion, deserve a lot of the hype they get, if not all the superfluous reverence.

And then you get some fics, like Wastelands of Time, Dagger & Rose and Ambient that it's really fucking impossible to tell whether or not it's underrated or overrated. Partially because the fics both came after the main 'Golden Age of HP Fanfic' (which, if TVTropes is to be believed, was between 2004-2008 ), and partially because of other issues, such as not appealing to a wider audience or having scenes that prove controversial (see Dagger & Rose - if you've read it, you know the scene I'm talking about).

Hell, people have told me Renegade Cause is massively underrated - which, and this might come as a surprise to some, I don't buy at all, because it appeals to a different audience. It gets as many reviews as I expect, and not many more.

Also, to add to the list of overrated novel-length fanfic, I'm throwing on Harry Potter and the Fifth Element. It's a fucking behemoth over a million words, and the only H/Hr fic I can read, and I'd still recommend it, but on some forums that fic is practically held in reverence (partially because it's incredibly immersive and sucks you in like a million dollar whore, but still), when in reality it could have been pruned back considerably.

Also on this list, Dethryl's work. Admittedly, he's good, but his fandom (and most of fictionalley) treats him like a fucking king. In reality, he paints every Slytherin with the saint brush and has a real problem with realistic dialogue (particularly in his newer stuff). This is like Shezza's stuff - it's really good, but nowhere near the heights it's held to.

 

Each of the stories on that list received close to their due. It's not like Dagger and Rose slipped completely under the radar, and it had already amassed a large readership before the rape scene.

Wastelands of Time, if anything, doesn't get enough hype. What you said could apply to the Hero Trilogy, but not wastelands. A smart writer can literally imitate the mechanics of any other writer in the entire fandom, but not Joe in wastelands. No exaggeration.

Swimdraconian's Circular Reasoning is another.

 

I disagree. Joe's Wastelands is lifted up by its own verbose expectations. The almost faux use of grandiose description, the unnecessary quotes and quote-esqe moments, and the use of archetypal grand scenery all contribute to a story that feels falsely grand, overinflated by its authors manner of writing.

The story certainly seems grand, but this is only skin-deep (and almost forcefully so).

The most underated story is RustyRed's Ectomancer, whis is one of few stories that manages to match its style of writing with its content. RustyRed wrote a warm, human story that doesn't bash its sense of adventure into the reader's face with 'monsters locked deep in underground chambers beneath Rome', or 'Gods of Time that made a deal with a mortal', or 'Fleur and Tonks, who smell like fruits'.

 

Out of interest, what change could be made, do you think, to make it more genuinely grand? It seems to me that its scale extends beyond the prose. Old gods, the stakes of the battle (the survival of the world, possibly the universe), the power of the magic, the locations... it seems to be that the content is grand as well as the style.

Personally, I think Wastelands and Denarian series are hyped just about as much as they deserve.

 

I'd propose that Dagger and Rose is overrated on DLP (though arguably not "extremely" so, as suggested by the thread title) and underrated most everywhere else. I published it over the course of a month, which left a small cross section for readers to run across it and little time to build up the kind of buzz that leads to overratedness. Comparatively few outside of DLP have read it and it's taken years to squeak over 1k reviews on ff.net. Compare that with PerfectLionheart's 10k reviews for PKH and it's no contest.

Some on here enjoyed it, though it had no shortage of detractors from the beginning. Shezza, for example, read part of one chapter and declared the story so badly written as to be unreadable; Vash had similar things to say. Nonjon's review was blunt and pulled no punches, declaring it a technically sound, though thoroughly unlikable story.

They say you write a million words of crap before you get any good at the craft. Dagger and Rose is part of my big ol' pile of suck.

 

That's just it - he's forcing the grandness by using all these elements. It's so self-propped up on these elements that it gets annoying.

It's more than that though. So much of the writing is unnecessarily grandiose and quote-like. There's at least a dozen scenes that remind me of TV shows right before they go to commercials - a big overblown meaningful line that's supposed to make us go "OH WOW THIS STORY IS EPIC".

The dialogue is so laden with 'cool' and 'quotable' that it almost comes out of a play. Every line doesn't have to be some clever 'dohohoh' moment.

Don't even get me started on the little vignettes between scenes sometimes.

Joe can write, no doubt, but I can't read his stuff simply because Wastelands seems like a script written for a movie comprised entirely of scenes destined for a trailer - eyepopping, 'awesome' moments and lines that just get tiring after awhile.

It's all sparkle.

 

Sadly, this was the thing that Amer summed up in a few words that I've been struggling to write in my planned review of the newest chapter of Wastelands of Time over the past few weeks.

I mean, I still really like the story, but I'm feeling that Wastelands is falling into the same damn trap the Hero Trilogy fell into. It's holding itself together with fantastically epic rhetoric - but that's all it's shown to be. Rhetoric. The epicness is superseding the plot, and that's bad news.

I'm not going to lie, the best scene in that story thus far, to me, was the

Spoiler

scene where Harry just said 'Fuck it' and went to live with Tessa.

This scene didn't have a scrap of epic imagery or flowery language - it was plain, incredibly well-written prose that did more for Harry's character and the story as a whole than the previous five chapters. More importantly, by pushing down the epic language and letting us, the readers, connect with Harry, it made that moment epic in the real sense.

In my opinion, if Joe continues to write scenes like that, he could avoid the Hero's Trilogy trap. If he doesn't... I honestly don't know.

 

Possibly...but if so it's the right kind of 'suck', IMO. Dagger and Rose is one of the stories I've enjoyed - it had a nice collection of ideas, and a reasonably good plot progression. If there was a flaw, it was that the writing seemed a bit, uh, chintzy at times. I think you're capable of overcoming those flaws, rather than letting them become entrenched, and that is a good thing. So go write D&R2. :awesome

By the way, did you see the one recent D&R review from anon reviewer "your ok"? I'm not sure if it's a joke/troll or legit, but either way it's friggin' epic.

 

Lulz were had. For those who don't feel like looking it up:

And that, friends, is why you don't turn off anonymous reviewing.

 

Eh. The man problem I had with it was that you had Harry meet Fleur and five minutes later going "herpderp My uncle abuses me. Herp. Derpderp."

... Paraphrasing, mind. >_>

Other than that, it had potential last time I read it.

 

That got excised fast thanks to the whole DLP WBA/reader feedback thing. Fleur getting dateraped by her fiancé is the majorly shitty thing remaining in the story. Skip that bit (it's telegraphed fairly well) and you're good.

 

Heh, Amer has the words I don't for why I can never get into Joe's work. Fantastic ideas but unfortunately fantastic verbosity ad nauseum. I was a fan of Heros until Harry got some connection to big 'G' God, and had to drop it.

Anyway, this probably makes me sound like a right hypocrite since melodrama and kaleidoscopic plot complexity is what my writing is characterized by as well. Though, perhaps, my semi-reluctant/semi-accidental fanservicing counter balances that.

Dagger and Rose is not overrated, I feel. It had a lot of new ideas or old ideas done better and it was a pleasure to read. And yes, 'the scene' jarred me as well, but Pers and I talked about it in PMs, so no need to hijack this thread with it.

Any Lily/Snape story should remain underrated. Though given it's own fanbase I doubt that it's true that it's underrated. I just don't think a character whose first thought was to the save the object of his love but forget the ones she loved: Harry and James, is beyond redemption. Love is obsessive and selfish, I suppose. But that premise just requires too much suspension of sense.

I think any story where you can't see Harry as a character you can understand/ connect to at some level threatens to reach the 'overrated' mark. DLP is chock full of those.

Addendum: Any story where you can't see Harry as Harry anymore (*cough* Rakesh *cough*) also threatens to reach the 'overrated' mark.

 

...you owe me a contact lens; reading that "review" you posted caused me to facepalm too hard, and I can't find one of'em now...

So does your turning 'Catharsis' Harry into a Green Latern/Care bear hybrid count ?

(Yeah I went there. Fa'shigga dow.)​

 

It's golden not a rainbow, and it's more like the penance stare.

tbh, I was thinking of DFMP Harry.