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06/08/2004: a HP fanfic question, well two actually
I'm still nearly devoid of any sort of motivation/drive to do anything (more so than usual, even), which in turn has led me to reading quite a bit of Harry Potter fanfic, because there are far more longer HP fics I haven't read than in DCU fandom, like, several magnitudes more. Some of which were rather scary and not in a good way (as I'm not only reading by rec, feeling sometimes adventurous and search on my own), but that's beside the point.
I've of course come across a fair number of WIPs, and I'm not bemoaning the fact that so many stories are WIPs (I don't mind), what I was surprised to find was, that several times now I started reading a WIP at schnoogle, and it had like twelve chapters, and was recently updated (as in the last couple of days), but following author links and such I find out the same story at ff.net is already in its 20th chapter or something, but not finished there, either. The chapters aren't different in length, nor seem to differ in revision status, though I didn't compare whether I find more typos.
And frankly this confuses me. I like the ff.net page formatting even less than the one at the fictionalley sections, so I'd prefer not to read there, but apparently I can't count on authors posting their story chapters at the same time at the different sites. Is that a common and accepted practice in HP? Personally I find it a bit annoying, because I have to do even more work to find all of a WIP, if I start reading at one archive and have to check others to make sure to catch all installments currently out there. At first I thought it was an isolated incident with just one story, but it isn't.
My second question is, are there any good "Harry was sorted into Slytherin." AUs? When I started looking for that kind of AU I had assumed it had to be one of the standard scenarios for AUs of the "what if?" variety, as fandoms with obvious watershed moments have, and that surely there must be some good among the lot, but I didn't have much luck. The stories I found where either utterly bizarre and deviating from canon in far more than just the sorting -- there seem to be whole strange and fearsome "turned-evil-by-orphanages" and "Snape-as-Harry's-father" (wtf?) subgenres in HP fanfic -- or the stories were a thinly disguised Ron-bashing fest (like this one). I mostly enjoyed Two Households, Both Alike In Dignity, by Mad Martha, even if at the beginning it's more like an exposition-like summary than a story, and it was interesting in that Harry doesn't like it in Slytherin, though personally I think even if he still had problems with Snape and Draco, he would like the qualities of his house a bit more after being sorted there. Slytherin Pride, by Rhysenn was an intriguing enough start, unfortunately it's only four chapters so far, and a note on the author's page indicates it's likely to stay unfinished. There can't just be one and a half okay stories along this AU premise, so which ones did I miss?
(And please, no scenarios with ludicrous orphanages turning Harry into Tom Riddle, and Snape as Harry's father scenarios only if the story makes some kind of sense and doesn't involve elves or mysterious mage councils -- sorry, I'm a bit traumatized still from spending a bit of time searching for such AUs on my own.)
