Slash Fans Take Note

[Jennifer Piersol]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., rainy_lilac at y... wrote:
> 
> 
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/621503.asp?cp1=1


Oh, now this is interesting.

A couple of comments/questions:

First.  How in the hell did HP slash get so popular that it's making 
it into news articles?  I'd never heard of ANY kind of slash prior to 
2 years ago (when I started reading HP and joined HP4GU (on the 
yahoo clubs list)), so I'm curious as to what events transpired to 
make it become a topic of conversation at the news desks.  Was one of 
the researchers a fan, showed it to one of her colleagues, who didn't 
like it, and their ongoing arguments sparked an article?  

Second.  While I'm not a huge fan of slash, I fail to see the HUGE 
deal that WB seems to be making of it.  Pornography.  Pfft.  However, 
I can imagine that JKR could be bothered by it - not by the fact that 
there's (gasp!) homosexuality going on in it, but if they are HER 
characters, and SHE has determined their personalities/traits/sexual 
orientation, and she has NOT made these characters gay, she could 
conceivably be offended.  Of course, you could expand that argument 
(the "But my characters would never do that" argument) to include ALL 
fanfiction.

Third.  How is this going to affect the fanfiction world in general?  
Okay, I'm mainly concerned about the HP fanfiction world, but if WB 
decides to really nail it to HP slash writers everywhere, it's going 
to get to the point where someone's going to argue that ALL 
fanfiction is illegal, and that WB can't "discriminate" against ONE 
group of writers, simply because their illegal characters are gay.  
How un-pc is that, anyway? ;)

Jen (who is only reading 4 fics at the moment and honestly thinks 
they're the only things keeping her sane until the movie and book 5 
come out)