badstar | (no subject)

http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/harry-potter-and-the-chamber-of-zealots/2006/08/18/1155408026089.html

The article is about Lumos, the Harry Potter convention.

This part really gets me:

In reference to writing Harry Potter gay slash fiction...

"It's empowering. We are reversing the gender roles. We are saying we like porn: deal with it," Rachael says.

So...what you're saying is that to take a fictional character that you didn't make up- an adolescent character at that- and write stories about said character in pornographic scenes with another character that you didn't make up...is...empowering?

Please. The stupid, it hurts.

If you like porn so much and want to write about it...oh, I dunno...call me crazy, but why on earth not make up your own characters- preferably adult ones- and write stories about them?
(Yes, yes I know, there are adult characters in the Harry Potter book, whatever. I never really understood people's desperate wanting to write fanfiction anyway...and some of the writers that I've seen are so unbelievably talented, why not write their own original stuff? Just. Don't. Get. It.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

they're called fangirls...the love to make those characters they love...love the cock. It's not new. Fuck it's older than me or you! I have friends who write video game characters gay. Buffy chraracters, Angel...I've seen brothers from a tv show going on it. X-men...no one is immune. It's always going to happen. People who want to see what they want will write it and then publish it because they thing others are going to want to see snape take harry's wand.

You are the minority in this renee. It will never make sense because some people can't write the history...they stink at back story, but give them a background and history and they will write for their life. It's the way things are. And if people don't like it? Well then close the webpage and go somewhere else.

because fanfiction is writing boot camp. i say people shouldn't have to write 'real stuff' until they get characterization and plot down. it's really amazing practice, and i didn't start making up my own characters until v. recently, and i've been reading and writing fanfiction of several sorts since i was in highschool.

not all fanfiction out there is the most savory of natures, but there is quite a lot of REALLY good things, and most of it isn't sex. slash is a subgenre.

I think I read/heard/learned from somewhere that a very high percentage of child molesters get started with "kiddy-porn-by-proxy", ie stuff you're talking about here.

That concerns me far more than artistic/originality aspect of it. =\

As another person alluded to here, it's so you can write without worrying about all that pesky back story bother.

"Bugger the details! Let's make Harry Potter a raging poofter!" etc., etc.

I'm personally squicked by the tendency toward underage slash, but apparently a lot of people don't see a problem with it. It's even better when the aforementioned squickage involves plot that would only interest members of NAMBLA.

I'll agree with Renee here. I can't get behind gay or lesbian HP porn - written or otherwise.

First of all, nofate301, I think you're in the minority. Fanfic porn, gay or otherwise, may be older than the hills, but the crowd endorsing and reading said is probably very small, especially in the HP world. This is because it's largely challenging reading for children, who are not generally exposed to porn from the HP reading early ages of say 9-12. [I saw my first piece of porno at 13, so I'm going to go with that]

Most adult HP fans are not fanFic readers. It's a subset of a fan culture, and while it's proliferated on the net, most fanfic involves extended adventures and other such. While there may be no statistics on said, I'd be highly suspicious of any claim pronographic fiction based on HP constitutes for any sort of majority - either in general fandom, or in fanfic writings.

Now that said, I'm not saying such writings should be banned or discouraged. It's a free country, write what you will. But understand that criticism of Renee's is not only valid, it's probably the general feeling of many people. Porn isn't empowering, it's about sex. Which is fine - I've seen porn, read pornographic stories, etc. I do not have any current sbscriptions to pronographic services. [General Disclaimer] And assigning pornographic literary license, gay or straight, to beloved juveile reading books will draw criticism. And I'm not even talking wacky religious right criticism, but mainstream literary criticism and fellow fan criticism.

Let's not call porn anything other than what it is - a fantasy to, by and large, self-induce pleasure (physical or otherwise). if we start assigning higher moral authority or "empowerment" (overused phrase) to things like porn - instead of simply letting it be what it is, a pleasurable experience, then we degrade our morality by valuing one item falsely, and assigning morality to that which has no intrinsic moral value.

You asked "why not make up your own characters?" I think that the fic-writer's use of an existing character is akin to my embroidering a dress for a renaissance festival. I scrolled around on the web until I found a motif I liked, and then adjusted it and tweaked it and played with it until I had a design I liked. I'm nowhere near good enough an artist to have a design spring fully formed from my own mind...but I'm good enough to create original work from an existing frame. Same thing holds for a fic-writer. They are not a good enough author to create a whole, multidimensional character like Harry or Snape or even Petunia Dursley. They ARE good enough to take an existing character with interesting hobbies and flaws and turn them into an original piece of work.

I used to write fanfic. It helped me to get out of a writing block that dried up my fiction-writing for about five years, after having written stories since I was a kid. Yes, I wrote slash, and yes, I felt empowered, mainly just by having the courage to write erotic stuff. After writing in a number of different fandoms, including Harry Potter, I moved on to writing original fiction again, with a clearer idea of what I wanted to do as a writer and how to do it. It's not so much the *writing* that's insane, at times, as the obsession with the books or tv show, with the actors, with what the author does or doesn't do that the reader wants her to do, with the subtext and the hidden meanings, and finally, with the fandom itself, with who knows whom, who talks to whom, who rooms together at conventions, and who's a BNF (Big Name Fan) and who's a lowly nobody.

That said, while I'm grateful for what I learned from writing fanfic, Harry Potter fans are batshit insane. Don't let this (very biased) article trouble you.

Harry Potter fans are batshit insane.

Fuckin' A.