Hola, HP fen!

[icarus]

Hola, HP fen!

One of my coworkers is an HP writer. Harry/Draco. Just starting out in fandom having only been exposed to ff.net so far.

We (anime fanfic author extraordinaire, katmaxwell, and myself) are hooking her up with an LJ, although I understand many HP people have fled to InsaneJournal. I'll point her towards Fiction Alley of course, heidi8, but I'm far out of the loop in Harry/Draco-land these days -- if I ever was in the loop.

Some questions for you all:

- Where's the HP porn these days?
- Where do you post your Harry/Draco fic?
- Where are the comms?
- Where's the porn?
- Who are the latest and greatest Harry/Draco authors nowadays?
- Who's writing the fine Harry/Draco and HP meta nowadays? (Yes, regan_v's great for meta, but she hates Draco.)
- Where are the beta readers because, no, although she's a writing tutor, she'd not heard there are beta readers out there.
- What classic Harry/Draco fics would you send her to?
Yes, yes, I know I should know, but I figure you know better since I was more into Snape. And Harry/Ron. And Ron/Draco. And Percy.
- Where's the porn?

Annnd... any advice for a new HP writer?

*Icarus rolls out the red carpet for all and sundry*

*crickets chirp*

No takers on the red carpet?

Comments

[jackie-brown.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who only came to the HP fandom and also Harry/Draco just a little while ago, my favourite so far is mistful's story Drop dead Gorgeous, available on her LJ.

I also loved:
- Duinn Fionn http://archive.skyehawke.com/authors.php?no=157
- http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/gatewaygirl/SAL.html
- Invisible to see - rebeccalizard - Draco escapes using 7-league boots - http://www.rebeccalizard.net/nlts/stories/invisibletosee.html
- Tissue of Silver, by fearlessdiva http://www.silververse.net/hp/tissue.htm

Something impossible - cassieclaire
A thousand Beautiful Things - Geoviki

I also joined the comm hd_prophet who do a regular fic round-up. Hope some of this is new to your friend, but I'd be happy to exchange Harry/Draco info if you want to pass on my details :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Where are people posting PG-13 Harry/Draco fic these days, other than their ljs (ijs?) and Fiction Alley?

Icarus

[jackie-brown.livejournal.com]

http://archive.skyehawke.com is huge - they have a 'most popular' filter that has turned up some gems - but some awful stuff as well :) I suppose each to her own....

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

A lot of people abandoned Skyehawke because of a wank over removing underaged fic, so I don't know if it has the traffic she's looking for to post her own stories.

[jackie-brown.livejournal.com]

Huh - I didn't know that - shows what a newbie I am to the fandom :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

All of it will be new to her. She's very knew to the HP fandom, and unless it's posted on ff.net, and recently, she's not come across it.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

All of it will be new to her. She didn't know beta readers existed, she's that new. Unless it's posted on ff.net, and recently, she's not come across it.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the multi-post. Whoops.

[djin7.livejournal.com]

I was just going to suggest the HD Prophet as a great source. Stories, art, meta, vids, rec lists, icons, and the have an "Old Fic of the Day" which points to the more classic stuff.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Her first two priorities are beta readers and where to post her own fic, though I'd like to give her the grand tour. HD Prophet fits the bill for the latter nicely.

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

I like both idontgiveafaux and jennavere who write fanon!harry/draco, jennavere more so.

Resonant's Transfigurations (”http://trickster.org/res/transfig.html”) is my favorite H/D fic. I would consider it classic.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, Transfigurations. Thank you, I'd forgotten.

[incidental-fire.livejournal.com]

Hm...I'm not really in HP much anymore either, nor was I ever a huge H/D fan, but I came up with a few things that might/might not be useful.

First, yes, most of the HP fandom (*particularly* fic posting) has pretty much completely gone to IJ. As far as I can tell, some people are still at LJ for the personal connection, but generally still post at IJ. I have no idea where people post their H/D fic on a general basis, so looking at the IJ profiles of some of the authors is probably the best bet.

For fic recs, I'd suggest looking around at painless-j's (http://painless-j.net/) lists, as she has probably the best set of thematic lists (separated by theme, pairing, kink, etc.) I've ever seen.

For Harry/Draco fic in general, there's a few fests that might be worth looking around. hd_holidays is one of the still-at-LJ exceptions, and they had a *huge* turnout for the fest that was around the winter holidays. The Harry/Draco World Cup (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/hd_worldcup/) is currently going on, with posting in a month or so, I think (similar set-up to the McShep games).

A few fics that I've liked: (browsing through the few HP bookmarks I still have)
Kiss A Boy In London Town (And Other Intimate Misadventures of A Society Whore) (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/merry_smutmas/15327.html), by femmequixotic, from this year's Merry Smutmas (which has other H/D as well). Very well done.
One Night at the Ministry (http://www.etc.slashcity.net/maeglin/viewstory.php?sid=147), by Maeglin Yedi. From early 2006, and *hysterically* funny. Even now going back and reading it makes me laugh so hard my sides hurt.

To find porn specifically, there's always The Restricted Section (http://www.restrictedsection.org). You have to register for a username/password (not difficult, IIRC), but all they have are NC-17 fics of all shapes and sizes (or, you know, all kinds of pairings). They don't screen for how good the story is, but they do reject on basic spelling/grammar issues.

Hope this helps a bit!

[incidental-fire.livejournal.com]

Eeenteresting. After looking at the hd_prophet, it looks like the H/D portion of fandom may not have left LJ as en masse as other portions. So that part of my earlier comment may be null and void (or, at least, not quite as valid).

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Either that, or the Harry/Draco is just as massive as it's always been, and splitting the group didn't reduce it by any measureable amount. *g*

[incidental-fire.livejournal.com]

Heh, there is that possibility as well. :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That banner for the HP Prophet... uh.... I wouldn't want to have it open while at the school library. That's all I'm saying.

[incidental-fire.livejournal.com]

::spits Diet Coke onto monitor::

Um, when I looked at the comm earlier, the header didn't load for whatever reason. But, uh, yes, I would say that opening that at school would not be...preferable.

[winterthunder.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I can mostly second what everyone else has said (mistful, femmequixotic, hd_worldcup). Dungeons (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/hp_dungeons/) currently has a Harry/Draco/Snape threesome, if that's her thing. And if she's not scared off by mpreg. :P

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

She loathes Snape, or rather, shudders at the idea of Snape in any sexual context. The main reason I'm at sea.

[winterthunder.livejournal.com]

Really? Hmm. Well, I suppose none of us can exactly call the others on anything since we all play in a rather gray area. I'll flip through some of the stuff I've saved to rec and see if I can come up with anything else. It'll be a good excuse to clean out that folder and actually rec the stories that have been sitting in there since god knows when.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Okay, cool, I'll pass stories along. I think she's looking first and foremost for betas and for places to post her own H/D WiP. And, you know, finding fandom.

:D

[novembersnow.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, the H/D corner of fandom (or at least the piece of it that I hang out in) is still mostly alive and well on LJ.

To echo what a few people have said already, the recent hd_holidays fest might not be a bad place to look for newer fics; there were at least a handful of fics posted there that I really liked.

In addition to the hd_prophet, another place to look might be the serpentinelion comm--it's a closed community (and not as active as it used to be, but it might be worth glancing through the archives), but the stuff that's posted there (both fic and art) tends to be pretty good quality.

Some of my favorite H/D writers who are still producing fic to a greater or lesser degree include mistful, femmequixotic, furiosity, pir8fancier, geoviki, and pushdragon.

Some of my favorite H/D writers who are, for the most part, no longer writing in the fandom include ivyblossom, fearlessdiva, marksykins, and zionsstarfish.

I posted a recs list of (mostly) H/D "comfort fics" recently here (http://novembersnow.livejournal.com/353128.html#cutid1), and I'd recommend pretty much any of them to an H/D newbie without reservation. (It's a mix of older and newer fics--only a couple incorporate book 7 canon.) There also are a lot of recs in the comments on that post, many of them H/D as well. :)

Hope this helps!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It helps very much, thank you.

Are there any flashfic H/D comms, or drabble comms? I get the impression she's looking to post and write and put her stories out there. She's so shiny and new, she didn't know that people volunteer to beta read.

[novembersnow.livejournal.com]

There's a fairly new community called hd_500 that might interest someone new to the ship--it has monthly challenges, and fics need to be a minimum of 500 words.

There's also an H/D-specific drabble community at hd100.

There seem to be about 100 different communities where people can post H/D fic, but to be honest I avoid most of them like the plague, so I wouldn't even know where to point you. The above two are run by people I know and trust, though, and they'd probably be good places for a newbie to explore writing fic among a community of writers with a range of experience.

[obfuscate3.livejournal.com]

- Where's the HP porn these days?

At pushdragon's journal (see "A Tale of Horns").

- Where do you post your Harry/Draco fic?

When I started out, I posted it on ff.net. Then I got bored with ff.net and moved to FictionAlley, and when they started sending my stories back blank, agreed to post fics on my journal as well as doing exchanges and posting a few specialized fics (like my Teddy/James "Mirrors") in communities specifically for that pairing.

- Where are the comms?

I don't stick to comms too much, so: not sure. I'd rather trawl through rec comms than anything else, so for that I'd say crack_broom is good, and though she's not a comm, painless_j.

- Where's the porn?

In the subtext.

- Who are the latest and greatest Harry/Draco authors nowadays?

Many of my favorites are authors who don't write much anymore, the biggest of which is Maya. I pretty much worship whatever she types, but all her fanfic is coming down in September, so everyone should rush out and save it to their computers before it's gone! Frayach is excellent. Pushdragon, again. Scoradh has written a few things I love. OH. I can't believe I forgot them! Blythely and circe_tigana are goddesses of HP fic. Blythely's Corridors of Power makes me wibble a bit (because I am a politics whore) and circe_tigana writes gorgeous Slytherins. They collaborated recently on Currency, which can be found at by_blythe comm.

- Who's writing the fine Harry/Draco and HP meta nowadays? (Yes, regan_v's great for meta, but she hates Draco.)

I don't read much meta, so I'm not sure.

- Where are the beta readers because, no, although she's a writing tutor, she'd not heard there are beta readers out there.

I'll beta pretty much anything. I love to edit, so it makes me happy to get a fic from one of my favorites early and be able to fix the tiny grammar errors that set my teeth on edge. (Also, it means I get to be the first to read the rough draft of some of the best fics out there, which is squee material.) I'm an utter grammar/spelling snob (and now that I've said that, I'm quite sure I'll make some hideous error in this post), so my edits are often half-copyediting and half-plot quibbles.

- What classic Harry/Draco fics would you send her to?
Yes, yes, I know I should know, but I figure you know better since I was more into Snape. And Harry/Ron. And Ron/Draco. And Percy.

Anything written by Maya, ever, but Underwater Light especially because that was the fic that made me fall in love with H/D. I have rather a lot of AUs on here: Corridors of Power, Left my Heart (by Emma Grant), A Thousand Beautiful Things (by geoviki). Alternate (by copperbadge, found at sam_storyteller).

And, okay, I know this is supposed to be H/D only. But there should never be a single person belonging to the HP fandom who has not read The Shoebox Project. I think it's treason. You could be beheaded.

- Where's the porn?

Wherever fandom is.

Annnd... any advice for a new HP writer?

Ask everyone you meet about cliches, and avoid them like the plague. Writers who come up with original takes on the same story are pretty much revered (see Maya, Blythely, etc). And follow the same rules of writing as you did before you entered fandom, i.e., just because you want Harry and Draco to get together already, you can't just skip to the climax and leave the rest of us with the wind knocked out of us. Find a way to make the in-between bits interesting, because that's what really makes a story. And enjoy your writing. That's what really got me into HP fandom: there's so much room to play here, and none of the writing is being judged or graded--it's for your own pleasure. I amused myself greatly making up stories about the portraits in the dungeons and so on. Fandom is for fun.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Cool, thank you. There was a "delay" but she's around now. *drumroll* Introducing... thelovesupreme. :)

[feanna.livejournal.com]

One of the few things HP that I'm still following today is Frances Potter. She has a livejounal as dragon_charmer (I don't know how to do the link thing).
The story I'm still following is here:
http://dragon-charmer.livejournal.com/242884.html
Current works that I'm not totally up to date on are on her lj and here:
http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/frances_potter/

[essie007.livejournal.com]

I see many have given advice before me, but I will say this. I was a newbie to H/D quite recently and my holy bible savior guide to hd fandom was (and still is) this:

http://gossymer.livejournal.com/20570.html

Seriously, it may as well be a road map.

[essie007.livejournal.com]

Also, she MUST read everything Maya's written.

http://meitachi.livejournal.com/112270.html

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

And soon, before Maya pulls it down.

Thank you, I didn't know about this link list.

[helkamaria.livejournal.com]

I have an up-to-date links list (which meitachi's isn't):

http://helkamaria.livejournal.com/38724.html?style=mine

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Cool, thank you!

[sesheta-66.livejournal.com]

I recently pimped out some comms I write to in this post (http://sesheta-66.livejournal.com/184568.html). It includes a little description of each of the comms. The rest of what I would suggest has already been mentioned, I believe. Hope that helps!

Oh, and I'll pimp out our shiny new comm (in case she's interested in art also), hd_fanart.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Ah, wonderful. Thank you!

[libitina]

via a friend of mine:

serpentinelion archives the best of the best h/d authors. You have to request to become a watcher.

For the best h/d smut, privetdrive. Amembership request is needed, but she responds quickly.

And of course i must pimp the comm I [empress_jae] co-mod calanthe_fanfic, which is owned by clanthe_fics. If she wants graphic, mind-numbing, well-written smut, calanthe_fics is her girl. We only check for age verifications, so just make sure her age is in her bio.

hd_prophet is the best daily source for harry/draco fics, art, and searches. the work of the writers i admire and follow are listed here. (even yours truly surprisingly gets mentioned here!)

Right now, I'd say the queen bee in fandom right now would be frayach, and this is a relatively new crown passed on to her. Good friend of mine, sweetest person around, and writes pure art. her fics are unreal. Her fic, The Price We Pay for Wings for hd_holidays basically brought the fandom to a standstill. People I didn't know were emailing and asking ME if she would friend them. It was crazy! But she's overly talented and not pretentious. very laid-back and in awe of her growing popularity.

Hope that helps!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*marks down a second vote for hd_prophet (and the many fics and comms). What did we do before Newsletters?

[caseylane.livejournal.com]

This is the story that dragged me yelling and screaming into the HP fandom. Although I'm more of a Snape/Lupin girl this is one of my absolute favorite stories. It's a bit dated, it's before we knew that Narcissa Malfoy was a nee/Black so you have to bend a bit. Still it's an amazingly good story.

Tissue of Silver by fearlessdiva

http://www.silververse.net//hp/hp.htm

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That one I'm long familiar with. Read it back in, hmm, 2005?

[wideopenstar.livejournal.com]

Random lurker sent here via . . . I don't recall. A couple of newer writers putting out some good stuff: blamebrampton and bryoneybrynn, both on LJ. And I second the frayach rec heavily. And jordangrant (on lj) is writing an interesting slave!fic WIP.

Classics: Mirabella's (mirabella on lj) stuff is some of the most amazing stuff ever written - Harry Potter and the Inconvenient Condition, which is supposed to be vamp!Harry crackfic but is marvelous, and A Consummation Devoutly to be Wished, which is supposed to be veela!Draco crackfic but is wonderful. And, she has an ongoing WIP, Shadow of His Wings, which I'd take over canon any day.

[antoninadobrova.livejournal.com]

жесть ;)