(contemplating) The Problem with Purity by Silver Birch

[autumnmist]

Link to The Problem with PurityFirst, I want to celebrate the ending of the saga of fixing-autumnmist's-internet-connection... It only took, uh 8 days for me to regain functional and reliable internet service from AT&T. (Whyyyyy can't FiOS be sold here

Comments

[shiv5468]

I'm enjoying ti but I'm still abit put off about purity / virignity being the specialness thing again.

[autumnmist]

Haha, but that's the entire premise of the story. :)

Maybe magic is like The Force (in Star Wars)... there's something special about the young ones.

[shiv5468]

Indeed. But you can ignore it for the most part as just yet another reason for the characters to interact but now I'm getting increasingly irritated by Snape being an arse and Hermione being wooby in love.

Kick his arse, find Lucius, set up a commune

[autumnmist]

It's amazing how Hermione can be so perceptive when it comes down to dealing with Pansy/Ron/Harry/Draco and a completely mess when it's Snape and Viktor.

On the other hand, isn't that real life? It's harder to deal with romantic vs. platonic relationships.

I don't know that the unicorns will like Lucius, even if he does have a silver flowing mane. :)

[manic1066]

I don't know, I found the writing to be uninspired and quite boring. I HATE the awesome, mind-reading, Fawlkes-whisperer Hermione that solves everything.

[autumnmist]

I don't think the writing is exciting, but in the regularly-updated-novel-length fic area, there's not much competition. It's, I guess interesting enough.

At the moment, I'm feeling charitable towards the awesome Hermione (I think I could do without the mind-reading part actually -- that's the main aspect of her Mary Sueness that gets to me).

[harmony_bites]

Huh. That's high praise indeed comparing it to Anna. Maybe I'll give it another chance. This year's longfic (above 65K) have otherwise been underwhelming me. I don't remember exactly why/which part I let go on--but it was fairly early. As with Shiv, the basic premise put me off, especially since I feared it might go off in a MLC-like direction--also not a fan of MarySue!Hermione, especially paired off with a Clueless!Arse!Snape.

But see above on missing a good ongoing read in the ship. I could use one...

[autumnmist]

Well, I guess I don't know that it's as good as Anna's writing (especially given the major Mary Sue problem), but Anna's Hermione is also kind of all-powerful/awesome.

I wouldn't say I *love* it, but there are so few regularly-updated longfics right now...

[autumnmist]

It's not MLC-like at least thus far.

And I figure, if you're going to have Mary Sue Hermione, you might as well have her kick ass instead of be a simpering idiot (like so many other stories out there).

[harmony_bites]

Anna's Hermione was awesome. So was Hayseed's in "Ordinary People" -- but they had flaws, they felt real. And hey, often JKR's Hermione was pretty awesome--its part of why I love her.

Particularly because of the Exchange I think there's a lot of strong short novels, novellas and shorts posted this year, it's just in the really longfic I think we're coming, well, short. Generally, I don't try WIPs until they hit 40k, cuz if they do I feel there's a good chance of it having developed enough to judge, and even to finish.

Right now, if we were having the sshg_awards there'd be no complete epic I'd nominate, and among WIPs I've only so far this year found 3 worth following. NorthAngel27's Solace (which I do have issues with and is on hiatus), rhianonofthemoon's Becoming Silhouettes (which hasn't updated in a couple of months) and ChristineX's "Half Magic" which looks to have only one chapter left to go. That's pretty much it.

There are a few others out there given what I see on my f-list that are popular--ApollinaV's, The Gilded Cage,

[zhenggy]

can't say i read fanfic anymore (or was ever into herm/snape) but i totally agree with you on the its/it's thing!

[benevolntgoddes]

I LOVE that you're doing an in-depth review! Now i want to go read this.