Yeah, I'm a Harmonian (In the broadest sense possible, mind you), but nowadays I look for good-written fics, irrespective of the pairing. H/G being the exception, of course.

That'd be me as well- a Harry/Hermione shipper from the beginning, with a few months of insanity in early 2002. Now, I could care less what the pairing is (except for a select few- HG and RHr being the main ones I refuse to touch), as long as the fic is decent.

The reason I don't like Harry/Ginny is because it was so sudden. Ginny was largely an undeveloped character who hero-worshiped Harry, until BAM, he finally notices her and starts dating her. And, you know, I could live with that, especially the way they broke up at the end of HBP. Typical school aged romance, really. But then he pretty much stalks her through the Marauder's Map, and falls into her arms at the end of DH and in the Epilogue everything is completely rosy and perfect- and we saw absolutely no basis for that in DH.

I really think JKR should have scrapped the epilogue. It served no purpose, instead making the ending overly fluffy. Of course, just because it's canon that Harry and Ginny are married doesn't mean it has to be a good marriage...or that it has to last any longer.

Anyways, I don't have anything against most of the Weasleys, but Ron comes off as immature and really a poor version of Draco, and Ginny...doesn't really have a character at all. Heck, I think Luna nearly has more of a character in the books than Ginny does. She's at least different and has a personality. Ginny is either hiding and shy, barely mentioned or a Mary Sue. Even COS, where Ginny was integral to the plot, she barely spoke in the book. OOTP I found her tolerable, with Mary Sue leanings, and then in HBP she was Harry's True Love and they were unfairly ripped apart by the forces of Darkness, to return to each other after Harry defeated Voldemort. Hell, instead of killing Fred, JKR really should have killed off Ginny. Harry would have been even more pissed off, Molly would have reacted the same, the Weasleys would still have lost a family member and there would be no more Harry/Ginny to worry about.

Though having her killed in COS does have its merits. Or hey-what about having her end up getting sent through the Veil instead of Sirius? I don't believe that's ever been done before...

 

Get over here and write it up.:mrgreen:

 

Not sure if it'd be graphic enough for the challenge, but I definitely will have to play with that idea. The Department of Mysteries is full of mysterious things after all and if Ginny just so happened to be knocked into a pen of rabid, cursed Puffleskins before tripping and falling into the veil- who am I to complain about the fact she was already dead before going through the veil?

Another death scenario- instead of setting the Cornish Pixies loose in Harry's DADA class, Lockheart lets them loose in Ginny's. Instead of them lifting Neville onto the chandelier, they drop Ginny out of the window.

I shall have to think these ideas over. I never realized thinking up ways to kill Ginny could be so much fun.

 

When she falls through the veil you could describe what happens. Instead of it being a nice peaceful death she could have demon pixies rip her apart every day for eternity, you know like that prometheus guy with the birds and the guts.

 

And you know that her tedious whines would the loudest of the voices emanating from the beyond.

 

Well I'd like to chime in here also. I write Harry and Hermione as my primary ship, but even I can look back at my early stuff and cringe at how saccharine it is. My shipping days have passed, and now I just look for the rare piece of fanfiction that lacks gaping plot holes and inconsistent characters. In terms of mainstream authors I am a big Jbern fan...and he avoids the common ship cliches like the plague.

Ginny Weasley and the either hate or love relationship all fans have with her, is due to one person alone, JKR.

I certainly didn't mind Ginny until the last two books, and then it was sort of like someone shoving a huge sugar covered turd down my literary throat....not pleasant. But hey, how many people have two large paperwights that cost them $40...oh that's right millions of people do.

While we are on fandom cliches....how about Draco Malfoy being some super cool stud that every single female (and male *vomit*) need to get them some Malfoy loving....or Severus Snape's relative likelihood of getting laid by any female weighing in at under 300 lbs? Yes that's right women love yellow teethed greasy haired bastards....I'm sure you'll find that one in the next 'cosmo' or some other b.s. woman's magazine.

~Matt

 

Mathias, you are the author of the Open Your Eyes fics right?

I'm all for Harry being more observant and more intelligent (which is leaps and bounds better than Super!HighPower!Harry), but I just couldn't get past the 5th or 6th chapters of Open your Eyes GoF.

The thing that ruined it for me was the blatant and badly done Harry/Hermione ship. Out of nowhere Hermione starts having feelings for Harry, plots to get him, invites him over her house during the summer, etc. It seemed just too OOC for me.

Your writing style isn't bad, and the plot of the OYE fics are good (with Harry being more observant/intelligent), but I just couldn't get past the hp/hg aspect of it. It left a sour taste in my mouth.

 

Fair enough, but if you read past that you'll see that the romance is hardly mentioned past them being brought together. I show their partnership in working together as a team, and for the most part the story is becoming more of an ensemble type story than solely Harry's story.

But yes, the beginning of the series is a bit more lighthearted than many on this site would prefer...

I'm more interested in the plot at this point of the series, but I'll leave it to you to decide to read it. I make an assumption about Hermione's romantic feelings at the beginning of the story, accept it or not. I tend to think I don't beat anyone's head over it, and it isn't excessively cheesy.

But, I know how difficult it is to get past preconceptions when reading fics, I've stopped read many for lesser reasons than you stated.

I think those preconceptions are why we have threads like this one existing.

~Matt

 

I'll go back and give it another shot. I'll try to get further this time around. The thing is, I'm not a fan of Harry/Hermione fics. It has to be done very well for me to enjoy it, but sadly, most aren't. I've only come across one or two H/HR fics that I really liked. It's just too easy for the author to include cliches and recycled plots that others have done before. Well, that would hold true for most HP fanfics and not just H/HR because there are hundreds of thousands of HP fics on the internet.

I guess one of the biggest problems is that I like my Harry independent and self sufficient. A great deal of the H/HR fics have Harry relying on Hermione for everything, with her doing all the work and bossing Harry around and telling him what to do. Basically in most of these fics Hermione wears the pants and makes Harry her bitch. When Harry can't do anything without Hermione's approval and advice/instruction it becomes pretty much the opposite of what my ideal Harry is like, so I usually end up clicking out of the fic within the first 5 chapters or when it becomes unbearable.

 

Well I can say with all honesty that Hermione isn't wearing the pants, and that Harry isn't a domineering man. No power struggles in the relationship here, they simply enjoy each other's companionship in my fic. Trying to avoid all cliches in writing a story is nigh impossible unless you want to reinvent the wheel.

Often times creative decisions like that can lose an author readers, but you can't please every one...and waste time trying to do so.

~Matt

As far as Ginny goes, she does seem to have a rather rapid ascent to Quidditch stardom, doesn't she? It would be like a high school basketball player becoming a star in the NBA right off the bat....it happens once every fifty years or so...with Lebron James...so yes Rowling's knowledge about sporting skill aptitude leaves something to be desired also....

As a seeker Harry has to beat one other person...chaser is a much more complicated position by all accounts...

Ginny as a whole rather seemed like narrative laziness than anything else to me.

 

The main issue I have with Ginny is that, aside from her being a tremendous Mary Sue, is that the whole her/Harry thing popped the fuck out of nowhere.

Everything was okay up to book five, then suddenly in book six, Harry has this 'Scaly monster that wants to kill things' whenever he thinks about stuff in relation to her, and it just seemed rather contrived.

Of course, when I read HBP, I thought JKR was actually going something with these sudden feelings, like maybe Voldemort was influencing Harry or something... and she never did, and it was never explained.

As for their hapily ever after.... bleh.

I think the main issue is that JKR basically picked out the characters at the VERY begining and said "Harry's going to get Ginny, Ron's going to get Hermione, so on and so forth" and then spent the next seven books on and off trying to make it happen, but sort of forgot about her goals for the first five, then decided to make up for the lack of quality with all the quantity in book six.

The one major issue is that Harry never meanders. Short of his awkward date with Cho, he /never/ looks at another girl AT ALL. EVER. He doesn't think about ANY of the other girls. It's just "ooh, bad experience with Cho, JUMP ON THE GIN GIN BANDWAGON!"

 

Harry/Hermione seems to me like the most fickle pairing. There was a great Harry/Multi (not harem) fic going until suddenly all the dialogue turns into "You're being a bad boyfriend to Hermione", and Harry's inner monologue consists of "I'm not worthy of her! Woe is me."

At least with Harry/Ginny, you know you'll be disappointed. With Harry/Hermione, there's the puny, off chance you might miss something like Backwards Compatible.

Marginalization is one of the more efficient ways to deal with characters you dislike. I'm planning to have Ginny die an offscreen death in Assassin's Creed. Her death will be mentioned only in passing, and Harry goes on completely unaffected.

Also, the Harry-gets-mauled-by-Hedwig thing was amusing for the first occurence.

I guess I'll just get the owl eaten up by Harry's new Animagus or something. Kimodo dragons are much cooler anyway.

Edit: On Jbern, my favorite Harry/Hermione story is Jbern's Turn Me Loose, if you know what I mean...

 

Hmm, yes the 'pity screw' from TML is one of the more amusing takes on H/Hr I've read.

Backwards compatible was an enjoyable read, until it went on hiatus/abandonment for a very long time.

Harry as a whiny angsty wimp certainly isn't much fun to read either.

While we are at it, Rowling did the literary equivalent of dry hump the Weasley family for seven books, so it didn't come as a surprise when all of her main characters...became official Weasleys.

~Matt

 

JKR was quite poor before she wrote Harry Potter, so I think Clan Weasley was an extrapolation of the Ginny-Sue and SI!DeusExMachina!Hermione and a way to bring them into the same fold.

 

I'm a firm believer that canon Ginny fed Harry armortentia.

This is so true. JKR is a female so she would never understand it, and the little kids and parents would freak out, but most guys from age 12 and onwards size up every attractive girl they see. It's like Harry was gay until 4th year when he suddenly got a boner over Cho. I find it hard to believe that Harry never noticed or fantasized about any chicks before Cho.

 

I find it even harder to believe that Harry never once had a roll in the hay with Hermione during the atrociously dull tent scenes in DH. But, apparently, Sexual Tension (TM) only exists between Ron and Hermione. That's why she tries to kill him when he comes back. It's Twu Wuv, I say!

Nowadays I don't care about pairings much, as long as Ginny and Ron end up with no one but each other. Then fuck each other and give birth to more inbred deformed Pureblood gingers.

 

...why on God's green earth would you wish for MORE Weasleys? Unacceptable Doc, unacceptable.

 

Come on, three-eyed Weasleys are awesome....oh the stories those garden gnomes can tell.....

~Matt

 

Target practice.

 

That is easily one of the best answers I have ever heard.

What kind of target practice, though? As entertaining as it may be, there's not much point in allowing several more inbred morons to exist even for a handful of years, just to toss a few Killing Curses.

Narion