Yet another request for ideas

[petronia]

If you had a friend who:

• is male
• is straight
• is unfazed by teh ghei (totally non-homophobic; has many gay friends; TB/X-1999 fan)
• has never read any fanfiction
• but is online/fandom-literate enough to know, for instance, what a "ship" is
• just finished Deathly Hallows
• would like some HP fanfic recs, with no caveats except quality of writing

...What would you recommend? ^^;

Links to quality single- or multi-author archives as welcome as (or even preferable to) links to specific stories. Was baffled as not only do I not read HP fic anymore other than what occasionally crops up on my flist, I've been out of the fandom for so long that if you asked me to point out an archive of decent, fairly-current HP fic of any denomination/pairing, I wouldn't know where to look.

My guess is that dude would prefer the long, plot-filled type of fic rather than - say - Malfoycest bondage PWPs, but he's not easily fazed. XD; Maybe a kind of fandom-wide survey, with a couple of representative/seminal works from each pairing/era/movement. Eg. some post-book-5 war epic, some Marauders-era S/R, some Pumpkin Pie, some Fanon Draco's Leather Pants: A History, some Percy/Oliver intellislash, and so on. Although this might be over-ambitious (albeit commendable) as a project, so really, recs pls. XD

Comments

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

Oh, girl. (http://ladysisyphus.livejournal.com/476908.html)

i pimp my girlfriend because she is good

[drmoonpants.livejournal.com]

NO! NOT CORRECT. MY GIRLFRIEND FAILS THIS TEST.

I really only know about the S/R end of things, so I second the Shoebox, and uhhh apparently Stealing Harry (http://www.schnoogle.com/authorLinks/Samvimes/Stealing_Harry/) and the other thing the guy wrote where he's like rewriting canon into his AU (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sam_storyteller/2005/07/07/) are pretty seminal or something?

(um, well, and to tell the truth apparently Being An Historical Record and to a lesser degree I See A Darkness are also moderately well-known in the genre as well, but honestly that thought makes me want to vomit, so let's just avoid the whole subject)

[motorbike.livejournal.com]

Er, there's always Shoebox if he digs the S/R.

[cerisier.livejournal.com]

I feel like a tool saying this but I really enjoyed mistful's If You've a Ready Mind (http://elsie.livejournal.com/72090.html), aka the Draco-is-a-Ravenclaw fic. And this is spoken as someone who in general thinks Draco is a prat and is not a huge H/D fan. ^^; The gay doesn't really come into play for a few chapters, anyway... Drop Dead Gorgeous (http://mistful.livejournal.com/93520.html) was pretty amusing as well but uhhhh that's more straight ship fic (although if you want a fandom cross-section I would take that over Underwater Light any day. Any. Day.)

...it's been so long since I've read HP fic with any regularity. o_o (I remember the first HP fic in the Pit of Voles...) The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is Julad's Nightblooming Heartsease (http://yearningvoid.net/stories/julad/000080.html), which again is slash. Ah well.

Wait, that's a lie - in general copperbadge's fics don't do too much for me (very much aware I'm in the minority here), but I did love Registration (http://copperbadge.livejournal.com/523595.html), which can be read as gen or very faint S/R of the Marauders post-Hogwarts variety.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Yeah, um, if you'd asked for 5-year-old outmoded S/R recs.... orz There are still quite a lot of HP fans on my flist, though--I mean, historically speaking they were the core of it, ahaha, oh those days of yore--so I could put out a call? Or something.

[qem_chibati]

Hmmm.

Post deathly hollows stuff:
http://community.livejournal.com/quillofferings/97004.html
Neville centric, behind the scenes at hogwarts.

http://trickofthedark.livejournal.com/148325.html
Platform 9.999999999
Albus-centric.
This one is really intriguing as a concept the way it was written.

http://penknife.livejournal.com/281132.html
Summer holidays - Hermione centric, gen, het.



Older things:


http://www.ssf-moonshadow.com/archive/archive/5/howseverus.html
How Severus Snape (Didn't) Kill Nymphadora Tonks

AHAHHAHA. Well you did say he'd be okay with teh slash. ^_^;;

It's amusing!

I'm pretty sure it's post book 6.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2856616/1/
Post half-blood prince, Harry adopts Tom, I remember liking the dialogue.

http://pogrebin.livejournal.com/39591.html
Post OoTP I think. Creepy look at fear and policies and yea.

Is he an FMA fan?
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2929916/1/
Invert is pretty fun and interesting to read. WIP. Post HBP

The author also did a really interesting stargate crossover as well.

Actuallly I think I'd try pointing out super!Harry stories, since their usually full of action and fun, and tend to go down well with a male audience.... But! Most of the super!Harry stories I know get sucky towards their end, devolve wildly from the canon and or are old so I have trouble just remembering the plot details let alone title an author. So it's hard for me to rec them at this point in time. D:

There's also this part of me that tends to think that they date a lot faster than some of the more oneshotty type things.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1795399/1/
Resonance is one of the few ones I remember fondly though. It continues with a sequel and is wip with the sequel to the sequel... So very very long and plotty (though sometimes a bit random)

This is definitely before HBP, may even have been started before OoTP but as the story goes on the author tries to incorporate new canon. Hence the sometimes a bit random!

---

Really if you want recommendations for a bunch of different pairings, crack_broom is the place to go, though it's very much orientated towards the slash. (They do, do het pairings, and have a gen tag, and a femmeslash one too).

It's also very pairing centric, so not much luck in finding the long plotty detailed things (they are there but they are outnumbered because the concept of this con favours the oneshot pairing centric things and most of the active members are slashers. ^_^;;)

[qem_chibati]

...Do you know if there are any characters he particular likes?

[akatonbo.livejournal.com]

My HP reading is so random and not-part-of-fandom. ^^;;

http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/ivy_blossom/TTAH01a.html
Short, mess-with-your-head gen, written pre-OotP. My only actual REC, on the grounds that it belongs in a survey of the fandom.

Actually, I guess Ivy Blossom was a H/D BNF or something back in the day (I mean, I mostly read her for the H/D, but I have no idea who was a BNF), so taking the filename off that URL will yield some older H/D. Also, for that matter, I liked bookshop's 'Commencement' well enough to save it to my hard drive, but heaven only knows where it is on the net. Also, it was mostly porn.

...I know you already know about astolat because you're the one who informed me she'd posted more Scholomance stuff.

I never actually read much of Hal's HP stuff because my barely-into-HP-fandom days were circa book 4 and she was later, but if your friend might be amused by often-humorous British boarding school jock pr0n, then direct him to www.prillalar.com posthaste to read about Quidditch boys.

I read trickofthedark for the Escaflowne fic, not the Harry Potter, but her HP stuff is entertaining and has the charming plus of being frequently illustrated.

...I don't think I'll go looking for Snape/Hermione recs, because I don't even read those as fanfiction (I read them as romance novels) and it's been long enough since I read anything that I'd just end up losing a week to reading about Tall, Dark, and Sarcastic.

[bell]

When I want HP, I read user's recs. She's mostly a Remus/Lupin fan, but she dabbles often in other ships & gen.

[marej.livejournal.com]

Wax's Thing * 7,000.

[evilsimon.livejournal.com]

If he likes silliness, a very silly story starring Harry Potter, Gryffindor Sex God (http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/allegra/ABAO00a.html) (which is nowhere near as porny as it sounds). Hooray for alliteration?

[niche.livejournal.com]

the one guy i know like that really likes writing with great stylistic flair, like the clamp-equivalent of writing. :| so.

Every You & Every Me (http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=2663&chapter=1&font=&size=) by Kay Taylor. my favourite story ever, bill/charlie, but that's only because being a single kid, the idea of incest doesn't squick me in horror at all. some of the turns of phrase are a little cliche or make me "..." but overall, A++. i think i love it so much because it's the best story for my otp, okay. represent!

sadly this was the only fic i read insanely. i mean i read others, but they didn't appeal to me that much. i know i read a lot of snape/lupin, lupin/sirius, marauder orgies on restricted section (http://restrictedsection.org/) when i was fourteen, but that was eons ago and i don't know what the quality there is like now.

[gisho.livejournal.com]

http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/susan_hall/TBOS01a.html

"The Boys of Summer". The single best HP fic I have ever read. Summary: "1981. Bill Weasley has dragged his father to Headingley to watch the baffling Muggle sport of Quikket. The odds on England beating Australia are 500-1 against. But Voldemort is at the height of his powers, and just as the England captain thinks his problems couldn't possibly get any worse the Dark Mark appears over the Kirkstall Lane End."

I think this is a good fic in part because it's the sort of thing a thoughtful fanwriter would like, not necessasrily just a fan, but it's also magnificent on its own merits. It reads like Rowling suddenly asked Douglas Adams to do a side-story for her.

(And I second the recs for sam_storyteller's works; Stealing Harry and Laocoon's Children are, imo, far better than the original books, and I dearly wish they were publishable just so's I could donate them to every library in range and tell little kids, "This is what GOOD writing looks like." Er, apart from the lemony bits, that is. There are occasional mentions of a kidsafe version, but not minding lemony bits personally I've never asked for it, and apparently you do have to ask and Sam will email it.)

[astrael-nyx.livejournal.com]

resonant8's Transfigurations (http://trickster.org/res/transfig.html) (HP/DM, NC-17, post-war, but not post-DH, since it was finished in 2003) Slashy, explicit in bits and parts, not PWP. A more than decent example of what can be done with post-war and slash.

jay tryfanstone's Consanguinity arc (http://tryfanstone.co.uk/warning.htm) (linked to warning page per author's request) is less plot-filled, but gripping and written in a more original fashion. First two fics of the trilogy are short, it's the last, Consanguinity, that's the kicker. It is HP/SS slash with a teensy bit of R-rated stuff. Post-HP6.

Should I even mention this? I'm not going to comment on the convoluted and complicated past, present, and quality of this fic, but in a survey of fandom, I feel it should be mentioned though I do so with more than a little trepidation. Cassandra Claire's Draco Trilogy. CC had most HTML versions taken down, but they can be found in PDF format here (http://www.fur-haven.com/draco.html).

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I have no idea about the quality but oh my god (http://painless-j.livejournal.com/61855.html) that's a long rec list. (painless_j's recs.)

Authors who have written a lot:
mistful
mirabellafic
scoradh
aspenlight
sam_storyteller
Jobey in Error (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/938605/Jobey_in_Error)
Elizabeth Culmer (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/461224/Elizabeth_Culmer)
Mousapelli (http://www.theratbox.com/potter.html)
and nopejr (http://nopespace.com/allfics.htm) for, like, a million drabbles.

[cis.livejournal.com]

for your fandom-wide survey, that 2002 vintage in brief (i've left out the ever-popular percy/ginny chan side of things, along with the rest of the incessant weasleycest, which i feel sure no-one but a fangirl would love (which is why it's great) (obv)):
- rhod and marvolo present: nazi!riddle! (http://rhoddlet.livejournal.com/61192.html) (the original and still the best)
- silviakundera's girl!harry (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1241778/1/) (i will never understand why genderswitch didn't take off outside popslash) (consider this the representative for 'all those popslash people who broke into hp with their drabbles and their rare pairings and their fancy ideas and limited third person')
- sad homoerotic jock stories! i can't remember which were the good ones beyond V's true but not nice (http://v.twinners.org/hp/true.html).
- also misery-of-war stories, usually with tragic het and gratituous character death and everyone about twenty-one and loads of millicent bulstrode (and imperius, best beloved rpg of my heart). but i have lost all my links for these. :(((

(haha i just remembered haeddu (http://amatia.acherontia.org/h_potter/haeddu/index.html), the fic that launched a thousand quite similar fics, including some ones that came before it. dude, 2002 was such a glory year!)

[cis.livejournal.com]

In fact -- i'm almost tempted to rec everything Silvia wrote, even though it's so flat against the 'he would prob prefer long plotty gen' guideline, because she's such a great demonstration of the things one can do with fic, that odd barthelmist short-form that grows out of it. Something like Welcome (http://silviakundera.livejournal.com/520660.html), which is just so lovely but perhaps only works because it's an unconventional approach, though it's sort of her style, too, excuse me but (http://silviakundera.livejournal.com/534428.html) and sixteen in bulgaria (http://silviakundera.livejournal.com/565613.html) do that same plunging straight into atmosphere because context and base characterisation don't need to be provided, nor even does plot particularly if you're doing it right. Also let us not forget butter and pigtails (http://silviakundera.livejournal.com/493846.html) and how it is great. (though sadly reading her again is making me realise how badly i was biting her style back then)

(i might have to read haeddu again now. it's been so long!)