Site Needed for Humorous Fic

[heiditandy]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, udder_pen_dragon 
<udderpd at y...> wrote:
> Hi Caius
> I can fully understand her not wanting to use Fiction Alley they 
seem to have no regard for JKR's wishes and are filling their site 
with slash and student teacher pairings.

How do *you* know what JKR's wishes are in terms of fanfic? 

Do you really think that someone who praised Lolita, as a novel and 
a work of art, actually believes that discussion of 
intergenerational interpersonal relationships, or even "romance", 
believes that we are going against her wishes for allowing 
discussion of such things in narrative and "essay"/post form? 

In case you didn't know, the full quote re Lolita is "There are two 
books whose final lines make me cry without fail, irrespective of 
how many times I read them, and one is Lolita. There is so much I 
could say about this book. There just isn't enough time to discuss 
how a plot that could have been the most worthless pornography 
becomes, in Nabakov's hands, a great and tragic love story, and I 
could exhaust my reservoir of superlatives trying to describe the 
quality of the writing." 

Look - she described it as a "love story" - now tell me where and 
how and why you can presume a 100% slam by her on intergenerational 
relationships.

Now, in terms of slash fics, do you *really* think that someone 
whose stories explore themes of tolerance and understanding in such 
depth and with such cleverness is homophobic? Do you really believe 
that nobody is gay in the wizarding world? How could such a thing be 
possible, when around 10% of all human beings are gay? 

Apart from that, FictionAlley has a wonderful relationship with 
Warner Bros. They've sent us hundreds of dollars in merchandise to 
use in a contest that we just wrapped up, and yes, they and JKR's 
people are familiar with the types of fics we host on FA. I have, in 
fact, spoken with people on JKR's team about the fics we host, and 
they have *never* asked us to remove a fic. Never, in the three 
years that we've been online. Never in the two-plus years that we've 
worked with them. 

And given that the first contact we had with WB was after the New 
York Times ran a front page article which highlighted, a story that 
we host on FA where "Harry Potter and his schoolboy nemesis, Draco 
Malfoy, grow up to be gangsters and gay lovers in London." 

Yes, because of that article in the Times, WB contacted FA, and 
asked us to be an associate of their online store. We respect WB; we 
respect JKR's people - and I like to think they respect us enough to 
tell us if they have a problem with anything we have on the site. 
And don't forget - FA is a discussion site, as well as a fanfic 
site - that means that, like HpfGU, we allow discussion of all sorts 
of topics (although we do allow movie and book discussions to 
overlap, if the context is appropriate) - should HPfGU also bar 
certain topics because a random person or two thinks that they are 
against JKR's wishes, without any reason to actually think that?  

HPfGU allows discussion of same-gender relationships, and, for that 
matter, intergenerational relationships. Do you really find 
McGonnagal/Snape so horrifying? What about Arabella Figg/Remus 
Lupin? Those are intergenerational ships - and McGonnagal even 
*taught* Snape. And you really think those things are horrible? Why? 
And do you also tar HpfGU with the broad brush of "defying JKR's 
wishes" that you paint FA with? 

Finally, I want to note that at FictionAlley, we follow the precepts 
of the American Library Association, an entity that is partially 
supported, financially, by Scholastic Books - among those precepts 
are the following: 

<<Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek 
and receive information from all points of view without restriction. 
It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through 
which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be 
explored.>>

<<In expressing their opinions and concerns, would-be censors are 
exercising the same rights librarians seek to protect when they 
confront censorship. In making their criticisms known, people who 
object to certain ideas are exercising the same rights as those who 
created and disseminated the material to which they object. Their 
rights to voice opinions and try to persuade others to adopt those 
opinions is protected only if the rights of persons to express ideas 
they despise are also protected. The rights of both sides must be 
protected, or neither will survive.>>

<<Censors might sincerely believe that certain materials are so 
offensive, or present ideas that are so hateful and destructive to 
society, that they simply must not see the light of day. Others are 
worried that younger or weaker people will be badly influenced by 
bad ideas, and will do bad things as a result. Still others believe 
that there is a very clear distinction between ideas that are right 
and morally uplifting, and ideas that are wrong and morally 
corrupting, and wish to ensure that society has the benefit of their 
perception. They believe that certain individuals, certain 
institutions, even society itself, will be endangered if particular 
ideas are disseminated without restriction. What censors often don't 
consider is that, if they succeed in suppressing the ideas they 
don't like today, others may use that precedent to suppress the 
ideas they do like tomorrow.>>

<<The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is 
continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in 
various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access 
to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to 
label "controversial" views, to distribute lists of "objectionable" 
books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently 
rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is 
no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid 
the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. >>


Heidi for FictionAlley