Friday 5 December 2014

Harry Potter Short Stories

They're coming this month, not just from fans, but from J.K. Rowling herself!
Starting on December 12, JKR will be posting one story a day on Pottermore - and at least one story will be focused on Draco. No word yet on who - or what - the other eleven stories are about but at least one FictionAlley staffer is hoping for Regulus Black.
What characters would you like to see in JKR's "ficlets"?

Friday 3 October 2014

Crossposted from tumblr

We saw a question on tumblr this week:
Where is the good Harry Potter fanfiction hiding? The amazing, well written, fluffy stuff with great characters and moments? I know it must be out there somewhere on ao3 but whenever I try to venture in I can only find... weird, weird stuff. Any help would be greatly appreciated :) 

Kellifer_K started the discussion off by asking for recs, and there were some great suggestions (including that people search FA); Heidi wanted to share here what she said over there.

I know that all fandoms have their own natural lifespan but as someone who has spent years involved in Harry Potter fanfiction - and wrote about it for annejamison's FIC book, the fact that people are having a hard time finding Harry Potter fanfic makes my stomach twist. 
AO3 went live six years ago (October 3, 2008) today in a very limited beta - but that was already well over a year after the last Harry Potter book had come out. Harry Potter fanfic was very book-centric, even once the films started coming out, and a large proportion of magical HP fanfic was probably posted between the release of Goblet of Fire in 2000 and Order of the Phoenix in the summer of 2003 - it was called The Three Year Summer (although great stories were definitely written well after that, too!)
Because of this, most Harry Potter fanfic isn’t on AO3. People did go back and upload older fics - but out of the 64000 fics with Harry Potter in them on AO3, perhaps 2500 of them are things people uploaded from their archives after 2008. A lot of people had written wonderful fics but left fandom by then, which is why you won’t find A Certain Point of View or Draco Malfoy, The Amazing Bouncing… Rat?  on AO3. The Shoebox Project is a must-read (fluffy, angsty and perfect) but it’s only on LiveJournal. And I’m not sure the NC17 version of Boys’ Own Camping Adventure exists anywhere anymore because it disappeared when FFN took down all the NC17 fics ten-plus years ago, but the R rated version is still on FictionAlley. Most of the original Alternity fics are gone - flourish and I have looked - and Nocturne Alley’s been closed for over ten years, but they’re still interesting reads.  
Rec lists that were on Geocities are all gone - and most of the links would be broken by now, because people who used to have sites on Angelfire or EZBoard - or who paid for their own domains - have abandoned them by now, but it’s  possible to go to Archive.org (no relation to AO3 except both are awesome) if you have a dead link and want to see if the archive of that page is still available somehow. But the rec listd above are terrific resources but everyone will have their own favorites - I was looking for a rec list on Sugarquill but couldn’t find one. FictionAlley’s user recs are all over the Park, and there’s a curated set here
What should we do to be a better, more user-friendly resource for people to find fics? FA's content management system needs to be updated (but for that we need either volunteer coders willing to spend a few dozen hours, or funding/donations - let us know if you can help either way via those links)) but what can we do with what we have? 

Friday 20 June 2014

A View to the Wizarding World

SPOILERS!
After three days of tweeting from around Hogsmeade, Muggle London and Diagon Alley, this morning included a surprising and spontaneous chance to visit  “both sides of the Wizarding World" without venturing into the Muggle world in between.

The day started with Butterbeer (for breakfast) and a visit with the Sorting Hat. Then I heard - but did not see! - a Thestral at a carriage by Hogsmeade Station, rode the Hogwarts Express to King’s Cross and spotted the Knight Bus - and some Sherlock Holmes books - by The Leaky Cauldron (their sign on the Wizarding side leaks).
I can’t wait to come back for the experience of walking into Diagon Alley with witches and wizards. I still haven’t ridden through Gringotts or seen the Beedle tales performance, nor tried Butterbeer soft-serve ice cream in a cone, and even today there were details I saw that I’d missed before - not just on the Hogwarts Express but, believe it or not, on Forbidden Journey!
So many kudos to Universal for this immersive experience. I can’t wait to show some pics & talk about it at the Harry Potter fan panel at Comic Con, and come back for LeakyCon next month, and again and again with family and friends. This place is perfect. It feels magical and detailed and correct and will inspire fans to think about and talk of and even create, and will inspire those who still haven’t read the books - or are just getting to the age where they want to - to love the Wizarding World.
Next stop, Fantastic Beasts, Jo?
We’re ready.

Coming over the weekend, our gallery of photos of detailed elements of the Wizarding World that fill Diagon Alley, Nocturne Alley and Horizontal Alley - we're sure FictionAlley is also around there somewhere with innumerable book shops and art galleries, but we didn't spot an entrance this time.  If you can't wait, check us out on Twitter for brief glimpses of the magic.

Note: Some meal and hotel expenses, as well as park admission, were provided by Universal, although all opinions are our own.

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Diagon Alley Opens....

The Today Show announced that Diagon Alley will open on July 8.

Monday 16 June 2014

#Potterwatch #DiagonAlley


Follow @FictionAlley for live reports from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley, starting on Tuesday, June 17!

Friday 6 June 2014

Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts - and soon, into Diagon Alley too!


A view of Hogsmeade Station from inside the WWoHPLast weekend, FictionAlley's Heidi went "back to Hogwarts" (to quote the StarKid song) to revisit Hogsmeade, have some #Butterbeerforbreakfast and see what could be seen of the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley at Universal Orlando.

It was magical! While we're still a few weeks from the Grand Opening of the Diagon Alley area - Hypable reports that June 20 looks to be a likely Opening Day - we got the new double-park shopping bag with our purchases and caught glimpses of Hogsmeade Station and the top of the Knight Bus.

We also visited the revamped Honeydukes - now bereft of the joke products that will be available soon, alongside more japes and tricks, at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes in Diagon Alley - and checked out new products including mens' swimming trunks and an interactive Marauders' Map that lets you track Harry, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore and Snape around Hogwarts.

WWoHP Diagon Alley Knight BusWe're not the only ones who went to the WWoHP this week - Oliver and James Phelps joined Bonnie Wright for a peek into the shops and experiences along Diagon Alley and Muggle "London" - but be warned! There are spoilers for the park in that video! They also tried some of the new food options that visitors will get to enjoy at The Leaky Cauldron before long.

We'll see you there when the construction walls come down!

New WWoHP Diagon Alley shopping bag
Here's the latest from Universal: 
Opening this summer, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley will bring even more of Harry Potter’s adventures to life. Inside the land, guests will enjoy themed shops, dining experiences and the groundbreaking thrill ride – Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts. The new area will double the size of the sweeping land already found at Universal Orlando, expanding the spectacularly themed environment across both Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.

Wednesday 4 June 2014

We're Heading Back to Comic Con!

The Harry Potter Fandom Panel is coming back to San Diego Comic Con! If you already have your Comic Con registration (it sold out months ago) we'll be back in our Great Hall - that's room 6DE - on Sunday, July 27 with Fantastic Fans & Where to Find Them.

The Harry Potter fandom is back! And so are J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World stories, with three new movies and a brand new theme park - which will all inspire hundreds of thousands of Wrock songs, fancons, fanart, cosplay, fan-films and vids, charitable and social justice projects, and so much more. This year will mark our seventh Comic Con celebration of all things Harry Potter, and we're hoping to look back at creativity from the fandom, ship debates, Pottermore and Quidditch - as well as what's new from Universal Studios, WB and J.K. Rowling. Last year, about 800 Harry Potter fans capped off their Comic Con weekend at our panel discussion, and we'd love to do the same this year.

Confirmed panelists include FictionAlley writer and award-winning playwright Madhuri Shekar, MarkDoesStuff's Mark Oshiro, the HP Alliance's Lauren Bird, Team StarKid's Dylan Saunders, the 15th Anniversary Harry Potter book cover illustrator Kazu Kibuishi and wrocker/actress Sunny Williams. FictionAlley's Heidi will be moderating - and we'll have some giveaways and surprises, too!

While SDCC sold out months ago, we're hoping to have a brief afterparty for HP fandomers who aren't able to make it to the panel. More info on that TBA.

Hope to see you in San Diego next month!

Tuesday 20 May 2014

A Shipping Ship, Shipping Shipping Ships

SHIP: Used as a Verb on FictionAlley Since June of 2001





Not only did the Oxford English Dictionary add the verb “ship” in its quarterly update, their definition is spot-on; that's exactly how we've been using it since June of 2001. For some reason, though, we didn't include it in our 2002 glossary - possibly because we had already posted the definition in a pinned post in SCUSA.

Shipping is a general term for emotional and/or intellectual involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction. Shipping can involve virtually any kind of relationship from the well-known and established, through the ambiguous or those undergoing development, and even all the way to the highly improbable and the blatantly impossible. People involved in shipping (aka shippers) assert that the relationship does exist, will exist, or simply that they would like it to exist.
We also note their use of lines from Dido's White Flag in their headline; at least three fics on FA use those lyrics:



It's interesting that the OED blog chose to illustrate it with Sherlock/Molly, which implies to us that whoever wrote that page is versed in the ways of fandom. It's inherently meta, as an example, because many view the BBC Sherlock as fanfic (or a fanfilm) of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, which means that Sherlock/Molly is in and of itself a fan-created ship that is canon in one version of Sherlock fanworks, and is both an on-screen romance in The Empty Hearse but also not an on-screen romance in said episode as it’s only visually included in a story being told by a character.

In other words, kudos to you, OED, for including a fannish term, giving the fannish etymology, and wrapping the whole thing up in a perfect storm of English-story-centric meta.

How would you have defined it?

Thursday 15 May 2014

JKR is Drabbling!

Technically, they're longer than drabbles, but this Spring, J.K. Rowling herself is writing Quidditch World Cup reports. They're not in the third person, as the HP novels themselves are.

No, JKR is writing as Ginny Weasley Potter, and you can catch her updates and news reports from the Quidditch World Cup every day this week on Pottermore

You can also follow the progYou can also follow the progress of your favourite team with Pottermore’s ‘Route to the Final’, which can be found on the Pottermore Insider blog. JKR's new stories are sure to provide plot and art bunnies and creative inspiration to ficcers and fanartists alike! Let us know how they're inspiring your creativity.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Fantastic Beasts and WHEN to Find Them: November 18, 2016

Warner Bros. has announced that the first Fantastic Beasts film penned by J.K. Rowling will be released in theaters on November 18, 2016.

That'll be over fifteen years since the paperback Schoolbook was first released, in support of the UK's Comic Relief charity. With the movie release about 30 months away, we still don't know who'll star as Newt Scamander, or whether the cast will include Young Dumbledore, Potter, Weasley, Lovegood, Malfoy or Black ancestors, or... much of anything else - though we do know the film will be set in the wizarding world of New York City.

Are you getting in line for a good seat yet?

Spoilers! A Sneak Preview of "Escape From Gringotts" at the WWoHP: Diagon Alley

Universal released a sneak peek - SPOILERS! - into Harry Potter & the Escape from Gringotts, the newest ride at Universal Studios Orlando, located in the soon-to-open Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Diagon Alley.

Universal promised Grand Opening information soon - but we still don't know exactly when the dragon will start breathing fire and new flavours of Florean Fortescue's ice cream will start being served.

It will be sometime this summer, though - will you be heading to Orlando to join thousands of fans in the Wizarding World?



Tuesday 6 May 2014

Found Items from Fandom History

Did you sign the posterboard?
We were going through our FA Draft Posts folder and realised that we'd never posted this gem from fandom history.
At Nimbus - 2003, most of the attendees signed a piece of foam-core board that one of the attendees had brought - and instead of signing our real names, or fandom names, most everyone signed with their LiveJournal usernames! That was the year that so much of fandom migrated onto LJ, if they hadn't already; Facebook didn't exist yet, nor did YouTube or Twitter - although MySpace did!
How many names can you find and recognize? Did you read their fics or posts on LJ or here on FictionAlley?
Heidi currently has this poster at her office, and may raffle it off some day, or keep it forever as a fantastic, self-contained archive of information and content.

Tuesday 8 April 2014

FIC on Wattpad

Heidi's chapter on the Harry Potter fandom and fanfiction - which includes a long discussion of the history of FictionAlley - is now up at Wattpad. Flash back to the days of 2000 and 2001, when fanfiction was misunderstood and thought by many to be legally suspect, and we were having extensive discussions as to whether Voldemort, as a trademark, could be tarnished. You can get a copy of Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World here on Amazon to download to your Kindle, or purchase the old-fashioned printed copy, and a portion of your purchase will go to support FictionAlley's hosting fees.

Wednesday 19 February 2014

FA's Heidi at SXSW

FictionAlley founder Heidi will be reading from FIC: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World at South By Southwest in Austin in March!


Speak_IA

Heidi's presentation date/time info was announced as part of the SXSW schedule last week - it'll be Tuesday, March 11 at 10 AM at the Convention Center; click here for more information. 

Sunday 2 February 2014

JKR Talks to Emma Watson About Romance Endgames

How's that for a non-inflamatory headline? 
You may have seen the piece in Hypable about today's Sunday Times headline that “JK admits Hermione should have wed Harry.” The article goes on to say: 
“I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment,” she says. “That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she continued, “I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.”
We hope not, too.

FictionAlley has long been a site that hosts fics of all shapes, sizes and ships. It's what we were founded to do way back 2001, and we have never refused to post a fic because of the characters or ships included in the story.

We've also hosted ship squee threads and ship debate threads in FictionAlley Park's SCUSA and VENOM forums; if you're H/Hr and want to talk about the news, you can join the thread here, and if you prefer R/Hr, you can re-start that thread by posting here.
Innumerable other ships, from Ron/Harry, Harry/Ron/Hermione and so many more can be found in SCUSA.  Ship debates don't go in those threads; visit  V.E.N.O.M. for "Vehement, Exuberant & Neverending Opinions, Monographed". 
There've been a lot of reactions from all corners of the fandom - and among people who are Harry Potter fans but didn't participate in the fandom in the past. Some of those reactions draw on hurt feelings and stigmas from seven, ten, thirteen years ago, and some of those hurt feelings were caused by posts made on this site. In retrospect, some of us may look back on things we said with regret, with vindication, with insight from what we've learned and experienced since.

Back in 2003, right before OotP came out, Heidi wrote this:
We're all about to jump into this brand new era, pretty much in tandem with each other. And no matter what our shipping preferences are, who our favorite - and least favorite - characters may be ...
It's going to be exciting, isn't it?

Fandom is forever; people who hadn't thought about Harry Potter specifics in years were on FB and tumblr and Twitter and FA and MN and TLC last night to talk about it, to revisit fics they loved, and some people are considering writing fics they didn't finish, or only thought about, after HBP or DH, but chose not to continue with because of shipping or character issues. If that's what comes out of these comments by JKR and Emma Watson - more stories, more art, more discussion, more fandom - then we will all be able to enjoy even more magic, for years to come.

FictionAlley will always be here, wherever the fandom is, to host your stories, discussions, thoughts, art, squee and flail. Share your thoughts, share your stories, and let's all enjoy how Creativity Is Magic!


Friday 24 January 2014

An HP Celebration at Universal Orlando

Who's at the #HPCelebration at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando this weekend? Heidi will be covering all the events for FictionAlley and AdventuresByDad, so follow along for chats with the cast, a Wand Dueling lesson, a moment with new US book cover artist Kazu Kibuishi and so much more! ETA: