Well, there is no other news. Not really.

But I've been contemplating my surprising (to me) return to reading fanfiction again.

I've just finished the available chapters of a story called The Mirror of Maybe (by Midnight Blue) and I can't wait for new installments to show up.

The author has grafted some new magical constructs into the Harry Potter universe and it's almost seamless -- several of her inventions seem so logical that I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up in a future Rowlings book. (Assuming J.K. really is still writing and not, as I suspect, freaked out by her unexpected success and hopelessly blocked.)

The characters aren't all quite the ones we find in the book, but they wouldn't be since they're older. The ones who aren't substantially older are close enough to the original to be quite recognizable.

The slash pairing is Harry/Snape, but the author's in no hurry. Eleven chapters and 250 pages into the story and they haven't even smooched yet. But it's worth the wait and you'll enjoy the ride. So far this story contains no incest, no sex between adults and underage boys or really any sex with underage characters, and every character in the Potter universe has not conveniently turned out to be gay. All of that is very refreshing even aside from the interesting story line and the good writing. Try it.

This makes two or three Works In Progress (WIP) that I'm reading in the Potter universe. I usually avoid a WIP until, and if, the author actually finishes it. Fandom is littered with the messy remnants of stories that authors got tired of and abandoned and normally I refuse to get sucked into an epic that might never end. On the other hand, the Potter universe is another of those fandoms that spawns 500 truly horrible stories for every readable one, so I'm taking what I can get.

Of course, I do have FictionAlley.org bookmarked and as soon as I have time, I fully intend to search the archive and see what gems might be lurking there.

I understand there's a lot of HP on Fanfiction.net but I'm afraid of that place. It has a reputation for housing an amazing quantity of incoherently awful fiction.

What the big archives really need is a ratings system for stories like TVGuide uses for movies. From 0 - 4 stars. Then you'd know what you were getting into when you went looking for something new to read.

I don't suppose an idea like that would ever get off the ground in the oh-so-democratic world of fandom though.

It's a pity. Bad writers are going to stay bad if there's no incentive for them to improve. Marginal writers who just need to put a little more work into their stories aren't going to bother unless they can see a payoff.

And the poor mistreated readers are going to keep having to slog through a hundred pieces of crap to find that one story that's worth reading.

I get tired of people saying, "it's just a hobby" to excuse their sloppy, badly crafted stories. All over the world, million upon millions of people work at their hobbies every week or whenever they have time.

Amateur musicians want to improve. Sunday painters take classes and study the masters. Singers join groups and take voice lessons. People who embroider learn new stitches, people who work on cars buy new tools, and cooks try new recipes. Scrabble players study to learn new words.

Why is it that writing alone out of all these hobbies is considered too unimportant to work at?

I don't care if people, "just want to have fun." Improvement is fun. Excellence is even more fun. Being good at your hobby makes your hobby more fun.

If fanfiction doesn't get any respect (and anyone watching the mainstream press has certainly seen it made fun of over the years), it's because so many of the people writing it treat it disrespectfully.

I swear, I didn't start out with the intention of ranting on this fine, Sunday morning. It just makes me crazy. Of course, a lot of things make me crazy in fandom.

Anyhow, FictionAlley.org does have a sort of ratings system in place, which is pretty interesting. It's reader-based, so the rating a story gets is based on what the readers who cared enough about it to post an opinion thought, which isn't the best way to rate a story in fandom. I mean, as we all know, the odds of most people being willing to post a negative criticism publicly are slim to none, but it's a start, right?

Anyhow, it's a comments forum and while I might wish they'd add a "rate this story" polling system, I'm also aware that friends and family of everyone writing would jump in and give every effort an A+, so I'm willing to accept that the sheer volume of people who want to comment on some story or other might be a better indicator of quality than anything else available to fandom right now.

Switching topics to the site itself, I do have to say that the site can be hard to figure out. I mean, it's mostly excellent, but when clicking on a link to a story category leads you to a "reviews" page instead of to actual stories, it's a bit of a shock.

The first time I visited the site, it took me twenty minutes to figure out how to find an actual story. For instance, I did a Google search on the site for the story title and pulled up a page that contained no actual links to the story itself. Finally I figured out that if you can find a page that contains the "fanfics by author" category in the menu at the top, you can click on that to get to pages with links to actual stories. Making finding the reviews easy is cool, but making finding an actual story almost impossible is aggravating. (Unfortunately, I can't provide you with a link directly to the story I was talking about earlier because the site doesn't allow that. But if you go to Schnoogle, you'll get the page you need that has the links to "fanfics by author.")

On the other hand, if I wind up with a few hours to spare today, I might just enjoy searching through the entire FictionAlley.org archive and seeing if the quality of the fiction is as good as the overall quality of the site. I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far.

On a last note, I should point out that FictionAlley.org doesn't accept NC-17 fiction, so those of you who like your stories shippy or slashy and down-and-dirty might not care for the site.