Thursday, February 24, 2011

Fanfic Reviews: For the Potion Master's Amusement (Snape/Hermione, MA/NC-17, complete) by snape.submiss

So I wish that I could give this fic an adequate review, but the truth is that I quit reading seven chapters in, and it actually encompasses a whopping eighty-six chapters.
When I initially began reading this story I had no idea that it was a dom/sub fic, but even after learning that it was, despite it not being my thing, I decided to give it a go simply because it's so fabulously well-written.

Make no mistake: This story is quite well-written with very few, if any, technical errors, and the author thankfully knows how to punctuate quotations, a pet peeve of mine. However, I realized that I was no longer interested in continuing the fic when I completed the end of chapter seven & there was an a/n explaining that chapter eight had been removed from the site--and I realized I had no interest in finding out what was so "bad" in that chapter that the site administrators had deemed it worth removing while leaving up the other explicit chapters. After all, I cringed in the previous scenes where Hermione was spanked by Snape; I don't get off on reading/watching people being tortured/humiliated, so therefore I have no interest in reading anything that would be considered worse.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Beta Readers: The Little-Known Secret

I've recently discovered a profound secret concerning fanfic-writing that I feel compelled to share: Readers, for the most part, couldn't care less whether or not you use a beta, and, in fact, would prefer you offer speedy updates over flawless writing.
 

How did I come to this conclusion? Experience. During my time in the Twilight fandom I believed whole-heartedly in the do-not-post-until-this-has-been-beta'ed-and-pre-read mentality, believing that readers cared as much about quality and professional-looking writing as I do.

Book Reviews: Primal by Lora Leigh, Michelle Rowen, Jory Strong, and Ava Gray, Part 1: Review of "Bleeding Heart" by Michelle Rowen

An introduction before I get to my review: Since the above-mentioned book, a series of novellas titled Primal, is split into four different novellas I thought it would make more sense if I reviewed them individually as I was reading, thereby satisfying my inexplicable need to criticize the shit out of everything that I read.

First off, I picked this book at random off the shelf from Wal-Mart, craving something a little more professional than the array of Harry Potter fanfics I've been reading as of late, and I chose this particular one because it was one of Wal-Mart's few scant choices in the "paranormal romance" genre--my new thing--that wasn't categorized as "young adult." (If Stephenie Meyer taught me one thing, it was "Don't read teenage romance novels with an abundance of sexual tension unless all you want is to be teased through four novels.")

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Results of my Harry Potter fanfic rec challenge at FFn

Again, I wanted to thank everyone who submitted recs to my fanfic rec challenge (at Fanfiction.net)! All the recs submitted were of decent quality, and I found some very interesting reading material thanks to all of you. ;) I judged the recs you guys sent in based on several factors, including grammar, punctuation/spelling, overall readability, writing quality, characterizations, plot, and entertainment value, and I came up with some favorites.

So you understand my process a bit better: In the case of multichaptered fics, I read through the first chapter and scored them based on that very first chapter. If the fic interested me, I bookmarked it and went back to read on it some more, and I adjusted the score as necessary as I read further. If it didn’t catch me from the get-go, however, I left the score as-is based on that first chapter.

I’d intended to only post my top five, but there ended up being more because of ties and near-ties, which I then placed in order based on personal preference: