I don't think he is. The only thing I know is that he reads this thread here whenever he's afraid that his head is getting too big (his own words, not mine)
I haven't specifically invited him over, either.

 

I could not get into this fic, and I tried so goddamn hard. Please tell me if I quit too early, since this fic apparently takes a long while to get good, but I just could not read past the first 30 chapters.

All my problems in it basically can be summed up in the scene of the first potions class. In this scene, Jim Potter (horrible name) butts heads with Snape in an implausibly perfect recreation of the infamous pop quiz scene. In order of appearance, the following problems appear:

1: Characters are not rendered faithfully. In this case, Hermione: as seen with how much Ron's post-Charms comment hurt her in the first book, it's evident that she was at first somewhat insecure about fitting in and probably lacked many friends. This, combined with her initial respect for authority and desire to follow the rules, makes it highly unlikely that she would ever get out of her seat before the entire class to yell at a wizarding hero she's only known with for a few days - especially when that hero wasn't even being all that bad. I mean, sure, he was kind of a dick, but so was Snape, and in canon Hermione and the rest of Gryffindor recognized how unfair he was. Why didn't they here? Well...

2: Despite the disclaimer, bashing is still rampant. The reason Hermione is okay to scream at Jim, and that virtually everybody but Ron hates his guts, is because the author doesn't understand what it means to bash a character. Yes, Jim still gets treated with fairness at times (the mirror scene comes to mind), but most of the time it seems that the circumstances of the universe are conspiring to make him seem as shitty a person as possible. Even when he's kind of right, he's not allowed to be right: virtually everybody condemns his actions, when the twins have done far more disrespectful stuff to teachers, and then the author introduces some bullshit about required reading that definitely wasn't in canon so that Jim is also breaking the rules. Then, Snape acts out of character himself and awards points to Hermione, when he never would've done so in canon, just to emphasize how much of a little shit Jim is, as if we didn't already get it. The author takes way too much pleasure in pointing how awful the character he created is. However, all this is only symptomatic of the final and largest problem with the story:

3: Canon is dead, long live the cliche. I came into this story expecting a rejection of all the cliches of WBWLs, especially all the made-up setting elements that were played out before Harry Potter was written, but instead I see everything from non-canon politics to non-canon secret chambers running around. And it never fucking stops! I don't care if you change the setting some, because that's what AU means, but in a story like this with a single point of divergence you should always work to minimize the changes you need to create a unique story. In other words, if you are to make a change to canon:
- Tell the audience beforehand about it, or at least warn them that changes will be made, so that they don't think you've made a mistake.
- Ensure that the change is absolutely necessary to your story. If you can develop your characters and plot about the same without altering the setting, then don't.
- Avoid retreading common ground here. If nothing else, at least realize that when a hundred other well-known stories have made the same change or set of changes, then your interpretation needs to be fresh to set itself apart.
This fic violates all three of those rules I just made up to show how bad it is. I don't get any warning before Harry lays on the bullshit about Jim not doing his "assigned reading", or all the characters simultaneously deciding to go OOC. Most of the changes are completely unnecessary, and only serve to reinforce tired facts established three chapters in (i.e. Jim and James are dicks, or Harry is smart). And even those changes which are necessary to the plot and characters only end up making them more cliched and boring. Bashing, super-secret founder's legacies, goblin blood tests, noble house politics, convenient obliviated backstories, dear god it's like I'm having flashbacks.

It frustrates me to no end, because I want to like this fic. It's long, the prose is generally unoffensive, people I respect seem to enjoy it, and so on. But I just can't, and I can't understand how other people can. It's a shitty fic, and it deserves a shitty rating: 2/5.

(...Heir presumptive. *gags*)

 

Which is one of the, if not the worst scene of the entire story, I agree. I can't do more than assure you it will get far better, but I'm aware that this fic does make a horrible first impression.

I personally think that Hermione was and is still the character with maybe the worst characterisation. She seems like canon Hermione being super intelligent and perceptive and with tremendous social skills and all that. Luckily, until now, she didn't show up as much as she did in the first year, which doesn't make that criticism less valid, but maybe less important. For year 2, she's more like a secondary character.

Two things to that: 1. I can assure you that the bashing of Jim Potter will cease to be, and he will be a very likeable character - at the moment, I'm not even sure if I like him more than Harry.
2. I had a conversation with the author about Jim's actions and the reactions to it at the beginning of first year, and he said that he wanted to show the BWL acting exactly like he did in most WBWL fics and, instead of being cheered for it, this blowing up in his face. Not exactly a valid reason for having bad characterisation at the start of a fic, but I can understand it somehow with the author's goal being to subvert the WBWL clichés.
I hope that I can at least assure you that Jim in year 2 will be one of the reasons to like the fic.

Well, the author tries to subvert the commonly known clichés and his way of doing that seems to be to first establish and later subvert them.
That's a reason for most of the changes, I think.
Apart from that, what can I say? All the things you mention are actually there, and still, I'd recommend you to read on, because:
-a very well thought-out plot with many interesting subplots
-Jim's character development
-the absolute brilliance that is Gilderoy Lockhart in this fic
-my personal new headcanon about what dark magic actually is
-nice humour
-etc etc etc

And in general, you've pulled through 20 chapters of unpleasant reading, and now the real meat awaits you. You won't want to miss that, will you?

Of course, I can't guarantee you'll like it. But I can guarantee it'll be far better in comparison to year 1.

 

Spoiler

It's rare but suicide on such young ages do happen and most people certainly do not get mind raped by Voldemort.

Ginny shrugging it off so easily on canon actually felt weird to be honest. I'd expect PTSD at the very least.

 

I think you're right in that, chapter 25-34 aren't that much worse than, say, 50-60.
But when you get that bad a first impression, that may influence your opinion; at least it did in my case. I mean, especially those first ten chapters are weaker when it comes to writing, but they also seem to throw every cliché you already know in your face, so it seems like a bog-standard WrongBWL story. The following ten chapters include Neville being abused, which is ok done, but not exactly a new concept. Additionally, the whole "Prince of Slytherin" business comes pretty much out of nowhere.
So, what we have is a pretty bad first impression that's followed by mediocre chapters. In my case, at least, I also let my opinion of the following chapters be influenced by those first chapters, so I only read this story as a "hey, that's so bad it's even kinda funny"-"guilty pleasure"-mixture thing at first.
And I think, something similar goes for him, because most of the things he mentions do happen between ch. 1 and ch. 10.
In your case, that bad first impression wasn't as bad, because you read ch. 50 first.

My main problem with Hermione in this story always was that the author tried to reason her character with supposed canon evidence. But just as I write this I get the idea that he only did do that with her intellect - which still is, imo, wrong, but not as bad.

OK, in that case I'd advise not reading on as well.

No, he didn't. In fact, in his "AN" in the very first chapter he said:
"AU with multiple departure points (though still hewing to basic HP canon, at least through Fourth Year)"

Yeah, just quoted because it was so right. I think we have similar things in "Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived".

I think, at least in second year, that the multiple interesting subplots are another factor that lift this story up to "more than another almost recommended" Slytherin!Harry story, because, without them, the additions would be nice but ultimately pointless.

EDIT: Just something OT I've been meaning to ask since forever: Why is the word "author" sometimes used with the pronoun "they"?

 

It's not even wrong anymore. It started as people trying to be gender-neutral because English doesn't have a genderless pronoun, but it's an official part of the language now (I believe the Oxford Dictionary includes a definition of "they" as a replacement to he/she).

 

It is still wrong.

Most publishing style guides still indicate to use singular pronouns and reformulate the sentence to avoid he/she or to just randomly choose one.

Its one of those things that gets me raging if I see it in newspaper.

 

I don't see this as a big problem in the wizarding world, where the house you're sorted in to as an eleven year old impacts on pretty much every relationship from that point on - it is shown affecting prospects for jobs, friends and partners, breaking family ties, etc. So just being a Slytherin is seen as important not just during school, but basically from that point on.

Viewed in this context, being the "Prince of Slytherin" is massive. The Prince is more than just a Class President, it is a title conferred by magical means only on those that are deemed "worthy". Chapter 27 of this fic says that Lucius was the second to last Prince, and we now know who the last was too. Harry hasn't actually been confirmed as a Prince yet. So there's only been two "Princes" in twenty years, and maybe another during the next six. Say there's 10-15 kids sorted into each house every year, that's 2 going on 3 Princes out of 250-300 Slytherins. Basically the people with this title, who don't actually broadcast the fact, are confirmed as having the character of some sort of ultra-Slytherin - the top 1%. It makes sense to me that this would be something that other Slytherins respect.

 

It kind of makes sense if you follow the prejudice that's held with each house and which job you're applying to.

Someone hiring for a position directly beneath him who might one day have the skills to replace him might not for example, look for a Slytherin. Because they know that a Slytherin would be more likely to be ambitious enough to figure out a way to replace them.

Someone might hire a Slytherin if they are looking for work being done off the books, discretion, and are required to think outside the box in solving problems.

Sure, you can work your way up into these positions as another house after a decade or so when people finally learn that you're more than the stereotype of whatever house your in, but you have to have the opportunities to get there first.

Most positions probably wouldn't matter one way or the other, but I can see how certain positions might have an employer looking one way rather than another when it comes to which house you were in.

 

The seemingly strange importance of the houses can imo be, as @Kai Shek implied, explained with the fact that the hat is basically a character judge. It's not only that you've been in a different house, no, your character has been examined (and examined quite well, at that) and you've been judged by your most defining (positive) traits - and I imagine that to be pretty interesting for every employer/man/whatever.

However, if this problem really irks you that much @CheddarTrek I'd suggest you write the author a PM and ask him about it. He normally responds.

 

I agree that wizards (and witches) seem to place a ridiculously high emphasis on house sorting. Even if the sorting hat was an infallible reliable judge of character, with only four different houses there's not a lot of distinction really, and discriminating for or against any one house affects 25% of the population. But the sorting hat is totally fallible. It seems to make mistakes, in canon there are plenty of people that display character traits from other houses much more strongly than their own. And you can negotiate your way into a house. That's not even going in to the craziness of judging an adult based on the character they had when they were 11. Both the sorting system and way it affects life into adulthood are pretty flawed.

However, the logic for the Prince being important makes a lot more sense. Again it's based on a magical selection, which could be flawed, but its a much higher bar than just "this ones a bit ambitious, better be Slytherin". Only a very select few people get chosen, perhaps only 1% of the Slytherins as I estimated above, which is maybe 1 out of every 400 people. You still get selected as Prince quite young - the periods noted in the book for previous Princes are for 2-3 years so in 5th or 6th year, say either 15 and 16 years old. But this is much later in development than age 11, so is a better indication of what you'll be like as an adult. The existence of the Prince seems to be a secret that only 7th year Slytherin Prefects know anything about (and the Princes, and I guess the people that the Prince tells). Draco doesn't know about his father being the Prince. So the club is pretty small and seems to be treated with great reverence by those in it.

Consider also that people selected as Prince have been approved by "all seven serpents" making the selection, each of which judges the Prince against a "different characteristic that the Founder considered important for his students" - vision, political acumen, intellect, cunning, charm / subtlety, ruthlessness, and respect for wizarding traditions. Makes sense to me that someone that has demonstrated that they have all these abilities would take the views of others like them quite seriously, even later in life.

 

Lots and lots of new loose ends opened up with this new chapter, one being done out of what previously was something that could be criticized (and now, of course, now longer can).
The chapter was like the previous one, nothing completely outstanding, but a truly enjoyable and engaging read and it contained some very interesting scenes.
Apart from that, Jim Potter is - at the moment at least - indeed the bigger man of the duo. In general that was one of my favourite scenes, despite (to be honest: BECAUSE) it being a little fluffy.

 

This latest chapter is so fucking out there. It's like a fever dream - 30 H's with plot. What in the actual fuck.

 

So I just read chapter 82...

Spoiler

Wtf did I just read? Malfoy is called "Drake" now, Filch used the word "reprobate", Harry is giving Ron motivational speeches, the dialogue jumped on the bus to wtf town, there was a confrontation between House Elves that left me unsure whether I was actually reading HP and the Prince of Slytherin or if I had ingested a large amount of bleach and was now experiencing a particularly odd fever dream, Peter Pettigew and Narcissa Black are apparently sleeping together, wtfwtfwtfwtfwtfwtfwtf

 

Finally having reached the conclusion to book two I have to say I've been seriously impressed with the improvements undertaken over the course of this book. That being said the whole, shall we say, 'house elf meta-battle?!' was a bit of a blow but considering how this story has handled previous issues it will be addressed competently later I'm hoping.
The end of the story really was the chapter previous with this merely setting up what I assume to be the salient conflict points for book 3; very excited to see how it plays out on September 1st. That being said hopefully something good comes of the short stories he talked about in the A/N.