Snape, slash, sex, nostalgia ...

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Valy wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/26476 :

<< Snape is born in mid-winter and is a capricorn, which the leading
planet is Saturn. He does have dark hair, a mean stature, and MAY have
lost people at a young age.  >>

Nitpick: Snape is not 'of mean stature'. 'Mean stature' means short
and scrawny, which was true of Harry in the first four books but not
in five, which began by mentioning that he had had his growth spurt
and was now as tall as James. Snape in my mind is average to short
height and mesomorphic build, but CANON repeatedly calls him tall and
thin, a tall, thin wizard -- ectomorphic build. 

I wonder if the Potterverse has some rule connecting tall height,
ectomorphic body type and hair being red or black (rather than brown
or blond) to having more magic power... I recall indications that
Sirius is a tall mesomorph and that Molly, Charlie, Fred, George, and
Ginny are short mesomorphs, and Hermione has brown hair...

Did anyone used to read the Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley
back in the 1970s and 1980s? In those days, they were sword & sorcery
fantasies passing as Science Fiction by calling the magic 'psi' and
'telepathy' and saying it all happens in the far future on another
planet colonized by humans from Earth. Anyway, in that series it is 
an axiom that only redheads have 'psi', the redder the hair the more
powerful the 'psi', and the best 'telepaths' are 'tall and thin or
small and thin"= ectomorphic. A pseudo-scientific reason was given,
that redheads and thin people have more active adrenal glands. 

Dumbledad wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/26480 :

<< Slash fiction is called slash fiction because of the oblique 
stroke written between the character's names, e.g. Sirius/James.
Wouldn't it have been better if the various communities involved had
picked up the English name for '/' rather than the American? Somehow
if it was called "oblique stroke fiction" it would conjure up far 
more sympathetic connotations than "slash fiction", which sounds like
something from a horror movie. >>

Except in USAn, 'stroke fiction' means pornography (fiction to
masturbate with). Other names for that punctuation mark include
solidus and virgule. Solidus was also the name of a Roman coin and
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=virgule says: <<thin sloping
line, used as a comma in medieval MSS, 1837, from Fr. virgule, from L.
virgula "punctuation mark," lit. "little twig," dim. of virga "shoot,
rod, stick." The word had been borrowed in its L. form in 1728.>>

I really ought to think of something clever to say about 'shoot, rod,
stick fiction'. 'Stick rod, shoot' is more chronological?
  
Steve bboyminn wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/26488 :

<< Another way of referring to Slash is 'Lemon' or 'Lemony'. >>

I thought "lemon" referred to explicit sex scenes. Apparently the
origin of the term is from two ancient (IIRC 1970s) anime series named
"Lemon People" and "Lemon Cream". 

In the late 1970s or early 1980s, Fred Patten and Mark Merlino founded
the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (C/FO) in Los Angeles for fans of
anime, which at the time they called 'Japanimation' because very few
Americans had ever heard of anime. IIRC Merlino had learned about it
while serving in US Military in Japan. The purpose of meetings was to
show a wide range of anime and let all the members copy each other's
videotapes, because there was no commercial sale of anime videotapes
in USA. They either bought home-made copies wrapped in tinfoil from
gift shops and food shops in Little Tokyo or Sawtelle District or had
friends in Japan mail them, and a problem with the latter was some
difference between Japanese and American VCRs.

I was in APA-L, a weekly printed version of a Y!group (in those days,
UUCP usenet groups were very small and rare, and the only other
on-line group conversations were Bulletin Boards that were not
connected to a network), and so was Fred, and he wrote about the C/FO
meetings and what tapes had been played, and one was an episode of
"Peppermint Cream" which IIRC he said was an example of US/Japan
cultural differences because in Japan it had been IIRC broadcast on TV
and in USA it woold be considered Child Pornography.

So I asked What does Peppermint have to do with Pornography, unless
it's some Food Fetish, and Fred explained that Peppermint Cream was a
rip-off of Lemon Cream and Lemon People, so I asked what does Lemon
have to do with Pornography, so Fred said the guy just liked lemons so
he used it as a name.

Dina wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/26493 :

<< Gah, do you remember back in the early 1990s when the 28.8 modem
was the typical *speed* of home internet? >> 

I remember when 28.8K was a Big Improvement on 14.4K ... I remember
being awed at 14.4K because my previous job had involved a 9600 baud
modem. Every evening, after a making a back-up tape, I had to modem
the back-up tape (data) to an off-site archive. I remember how very
much earlier I got home once we upgraded to 9600 baud from 3000-odd.
There was no home Internet in those days, only some of my genius
friends got on ARPAnet... One of them wrote up an @!rgy, an orgy only
for people with @ or ! in their addresses....