Fic Stats, and a Shameful Shipping Confession

[kennahijja]

These are the stats for my hpde_smutathon piece which I'm dead determined to drop on the betas by the end of April, as promised! Wish me luck ;).

Typed Out :

4,220 / 11,000 (38.4%)

Handwritten:

9,000 / 11,000 (81.8%)

I've also just realised that I'm quite fond of Harry/Hermione as a pairing. Not in the rabid-shipper! mode, of course, but if it's handled well (i.e. not based on sudden great passions or physical attraction), it has a nice dynamic. They balance each other out and neither over-shadows the other. Both have their issues they feel passionately about, they're well-matched power-wise (Hermione's brains, and Harry's power/instinct), they genuinely like and trust each other and work well together. For a post-war, long-term relationship, I can see H/Hr working a lot better than R/Hr (who're dead cute as squabbling teenagers in love and - unless H/Hr - have chemistry, but I can't see them living comfortably together).

Of course my ideal trio-solution would be H/R and Hr/V (or, in my own little fanon paradise, a Lucius/trio foursome), but as far as het ships go, Harry/Hermione is pretty decent. I don't feel any signs of paranoia yet that JKR is personally out to ruin my life by not including it in HBP, but from time to time it's fun to write/hint at it.

Comments

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

Dude, those are exactly my thoughts on H/Hr and I am currently writing a fic that incorporates that thinking to a huge degree. It was a bit of a shock to refresh my flist and see this entry after just looking away from a scene where the brains/power thing is illuminated. The fic's not H/Hr itself, but it's been making me have thoughts of H/Hr. :D

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

*grin*
Weird minds think alike ;).
I don't think I've properly thought about it before writing (and losing) an essay on Hermione in HBP, because the Harmonian nuts are making such spectacles out of themselves that the mere mentioning of the pairing made me jerk in fear for a while... But as you say, it's not that I feel like writing H/Hr proper, but it keeps sneaking into my postwar fics and just feels comfortable there as an option - half because I think the two mesh really well, and half because I love Ron dearly, and desperately want to see him with someone who encourages his own considerable talents in a more... gentle? appreciative? way than Hermione is prone to be? But it's more a sense of being able to imagine it than actually having encountered more than one or two fics that managed to sell me the pairing so far... Then again, I've no gone on a proper reading spree yet.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

That's actually how I've always felt about H/Hr, combined with the feeling I have that Harry and romance don't work well until after he's overcome some of the aftermaths of his childhood and saviourhood.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

That's my problem too - Harry isn't a romantic soul, and neither is Hermione, so that excludes a lot of possible, 'standard' romance scenarios; well, and of course I react to romance as such pretty much like a squirrel to the sight of its tail on fire...

But that was one of the things I could not quite buy into in the 'teenage romance' bits of HBP - he's just got too much on his plate, and I'd have preferred it if he had realised that before starting with Ginny and breaking up for noble heroic causes immediately after...

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

Personally, I didn't mind him being Ruled by Hormones, because it's very Teenager for them to do silly things based on lust, and because while *we* know his Quest has one more year, he doesn't know this, so I was fine with the hook up/break up thing, except for its almost word-for-word parallel to Spiderman, and that, I think, was just lack-of-knowledge-or-of-editing on her part. But plot-wise, it made sense to me.

What doesn't make sense to me is that Ginny is lauded and Romilda slammed (even before the love potion oops) for doing the same thing - developing a crush on a celebrity. Because that's all Ginny did in the first book - and the second. And this is somehow "meeting cute"? WTF?

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

What doesn't make sense to me is that Ginny is lauded and Romilda slammed (even before the love potion oops) for doing the same thing - developing a crush on a celebrity.

On the other hand, Romilda makes her entrance slamming Luna and Neville while Ginny never quite resorted to putting others down to make herself shine. Ginny's was more a very shy crush, while Romilda came across agressive from the start...

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

I'm so jealous of your HPDES progress. I'm in so far over my head I'm getting a nosebleed, and it's only half as long. And it's coming out not smutty! It's hopeless. I'll be lucky to break PG-13

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

And here I thought you were done already ;). I saw your beta request and grumbled enviously (and in any other situation I'd have offered happily, but things are mad, both ficwise and RL-wise right now.

But I also have tons more plot/useless waffling than sex at the moment (combined with the lousy habit of writing around the smut and putting it in last of all...)

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you put the plot down first and saved the smut for last - the moral of my story is no plot + no sex = incoherent mess. I've gotten some good concrit from loupnoir and hoping some harsh suggestions are coming to get me on the right track before the end of April - I'm very far from done.

[djin7.livejournal.com]

I've always liked Harry/Hermione, as well. Prob. has a lot to do with Lori Summers' Paradigm of Uncertainty and the Draco Trilogy by Cassie.
*shrugs*

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

*grin*
I'm hysterically selective about my H/Hr - I liked both fics, but *that* aspect did not quite convince me ;).

[annephoenix.livejournal.com]

I like all combinations of trio pairings, but I consider anything non-non-con to be "genfic", so it needs a bucketload of plot to support itself.

But OMG you're doing well on the fic! I haven't even started. At least I've got some advance on the post-HBP thing. This is like a full-time job, dude!

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

It's still bloody *unexciting*, that fic ;(. You, on the other hand, can write fic in one night and turn out something bloody hot :).
*envies*

[annephoenix.livejournal.com]

I "finished" my hpde_smutathon last night. You say I can write fic in a night and I can, but those fics are crap. Your fics always have length and plot and I'm very jealous of how you can give your characters a tangible presence that makes me actually *care* what will happen to them by the end. I'm still trying to reach that ability. Only, of course, so that I kill Harry in the last moment , and make people *cry*. But I don't think I'm capable :(.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Those fics aren't crap, *thwaps*. That Harry/polyjuice!Arthur in particular was wonderful. As for length... it can be *horrid* if they just go on and on, and then you're over the limit for p_p for which you set out to write, and... yeah. Wish I could do short smut!

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to your take on adult Harry/Hermione. I hesitate to offer to beta, all things considered. You'd probably run away screaming. Luckily, it sounds as if you have that all sewn up already.

My own ideal pr0nfic would be Lucius/Harry + Draco/Hermione getting all mixed up into a foursome. All adult. One day I'll do more than make notes on it, if I can, er, refrain from running off somewhere private at intervals. In fact, that's only one of my ideal pairings/whatever, but I seem to be able to write the others with appropriate plot, not just lashings of smut.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

I'm only mentally playing with the idea of H/Hr, no project planned. But *if* I did, who better to ask for beta? I'm only dragging on the fic-in-question at the moment because RL sucks away my time like a bloody black hole....

That's an amazing foursome, by the way - I think I can bear Hr/D in that combination ;). And smut... what's wrong with smut? ;)

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

I misunderstood the intent of the post, then: two topics, rather than a continuous one. Good luck with the DE fic.

If you're game, I am!

Nothing wrong with smut, but I like it to have a backbone of plot, and I've never come up with one for that story, beyond Lucius walking out the door on business, saying, "Play nicely, children." The summary is in the form of an equation: L/H, D/Hm > D/Hm/H + L ! > L/H, L/Hm, L/D [repeat ad libitum with variations] > L/H, D/Hm ...