Jan. 23rd, 2015

snowgall: (year's best)

What follows is a list of my picks for the best Drarry fanfiction of 2012
(23 fics, sorted by date published)

Updated February 10, 2016

Note: There are so many lists of favorite Harry/Draco fanfiction, but I wanted to do something a little different. Rather than create a list based on genre or length or era or whatever, I've decided to do a series of "best-of X year" lists. This means the year the work was published not the year I read it.

More lists:

2012 list )

General notes:

  • The "original post" column provides links to the first place I can find evidence of the work online. However, it can be really tough to determine when and where a work was first published (see my rant here: Dates Matter). So it could be that a fic was actually published earlier somewhere else and I didn't know it. Corrections are welcome.
  • I've read a lot of HD fiction, but I certainly haven't read it all, so if I've left off something you think I shouldn't have, I'm happy for you to let me know.
  • I may continue to add works to this list but I will try to keep the total number to 25 or less. (On the challenge of maintaining lists)
  • My goal is to add lists for other years as well, time permitting.

How my fic preferences will skew the lists:

  • I tend to like fics which contain explicit sex, so the list will probably skew that way. However, I prefer that there be an actual plot, not just sex, and I read PG rated fics too--just fewer of them.
  • I like almost all the standard tropes, but I don't usually go for non-magical AUs, unhappy endings, dark!fic, or threesomes
  • I don't give a toss who's on top or bottom, so you'll find both here.
  • I shy away from epic-length fanfiction unless I'm very confident in the author, so most of my recs will be less than 100,000 words.
snowgall: (close-up)

What's the deal with all these "year's best" lists I've been posting?


(see e.g. Best of 2012)

Note: a version of this essay has been uploaded to AO3: Dates Matter


Basically, it started with me being frustrated that I couldn't always tell when a work was first published (see long discussion of this problem under the cuts). Consequently, I began noting the original posting dates in the lists I kept of all the fics I'd read. As this sometimes involved a fair amount of sleuthing (see below), I thought it could be helpful to share this information publically. But the world really doesn't need a list of all the hundreds of fics I've read, some good, some not so good. And so instead I decided to create the series of "Best of Year X" lists I've been posting so far. It was really just a way for me to feel that this detective work I'd been doing had a point :)


So, why is it so difficult to determine when a fic was first published, and why should anyone care other than me? Well, I'm so glad you asked.


Why date fics: The Big Picture )
Why date fics: The Small Picture )
How hard is it to date a fic anyway? )
TL; DR

In sum, accurately dating fics is good practice, and is useful to both individual fans and the fandom as a whole. Yet finding accurate publication dates for many fics is nearly impossible: some fics don't have dates at all, some fics have hidden or lost dates, and others are incorrectly dated when they are re-posted to a new archive.


A plea to authors

Please, please, please make sure your fics can be dated. If possible, provide a link to the original posting in your masterlists. If the original work is no longer available, at least give a date. And if you add older works to AO3, please add an author's note explaining where and when the work was first published, and adjust the "published" field to show that date if you can.

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