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Train-wrecks you can't resist
Posted on: Mon, 09/22/2008 - 17:05
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Train-wrecks you can't resist
You know the kind of thing I mean. It's littered with SPaG errors, the tense shifts more than a jelly in an earthquake, the layout gives you a migraine just looking at it ... and yet you carry on reading it regardless. Sometimes this might be because it's a really intriguing concept which would be great done properly, sometimes it's just the usual human fascination with a disaster in progress.
Right now, this slot is filled for me by two stories on SIYE which follow on, one from the other:
- "the Ambush Harry Conspiracy" (sic) http://www.siye.co.uk/siye/viewstory.php?sid=5406
- "Marriage and Inheritance" http://www.siye.co.uk/siye/viewstory.php?sid=2299
Both are by one "billybob" who demonstrates the happy exuberance of a lovable mutt who just can't help getting muck all over your carpet, and you love him because he's just so bouncy.
The stories are based on a standard premise: Harry is near-suicidal after the MoM incident, and the only person who can pull him back from the brink is Ginny. The writing is trite, the grammar is appalling, the spelling is about what I expect from my daughter (who has a Language Disorder on the strength of which she attends a Special School). In short, the writing itself sucks boulders through nanotubes.
And yet ...
I read it because it makes me laugh, and cheer when the good guys score a point against the bad guys. It's like fast food: you don't eat it because it's good for you, or because it's made from prime ingredients, you eat it because for some indefinable reason it makes you feel good.
I know it's awful, but I still read it. Does anybody else have an example which can match mine?
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No! I find it strangely hard to get involved with fics like that. They make me cringe so bad. And when I once tried to suggest that someone get someone to look over their story they were less than polite!
I'll have to check out those stories and see how long I can last *grins*
"You know the kind of thing I mean. It's littered with SPaG errors, the tense shifts more than a jelly in an earthquake, the layout gives you a migraine just looking at it ... and yet you carry on reading it regardless. Sometimes this might be because it's a really intriguing concept which would be great done properly, sometimes it's just the usual human fascination with a disaster in progress."
I know what you mean. I would post a link to one such story I'm fallowing but the author can't take constructive criticism without going ballistic. Its the story I mentioned in one of my posts here and I will not post a link to the story to protect the guilty.
A fish without a bicycle cannot contemplate his navel.
"That’s right Albus I forgot, please forgive me." Mr. Quartermain said before bowing respectfully toward Ginny. "As you are now the Dowry-bride of Lord Harry James Potter the twenty-third Earl of Nor-Wall. That instantly makes you officially and more importantly legally, Dame Ginevra Molly Weasley-Potter, the mother of his heirs, Mistress of his household, and the keeper of his treasury. What that means young lady is as of this moment you have the same access rights to your husband’s vault as he does himself."
So many mistakes .... not least because the double barrelled name denotes the existence of a by-blow in the family tree. Also He is a Lord but she is only a Dame?
So many mistakes .... not least because the double barrelled name denotes the existence of a by-blow in the family tree. Also He is a Lord but she is only a Dame?
As i was once told, the wife of a lord is a lordess ;)
I once tried to read "Ambush Harry". I really did. In general, I like take-charge-Ginny stories. But I just couldn't find any quality in it. The plot premise was preposterous, the characterization was unrecognisable, and the writing (as noted) was awful. Whatever it is that makes you watch a train wreck, I couldn't even find that much to interest me in the story.
I feel like there have been train-wreck stories that I've read for that reason, but I can't think of any at the moment.