Elizabeth ColtonFollow

Date Collected

Winter 12-2-2018

Place item was collected

Online

Informant

Rebecca Whelan

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Rebecca Whelan (Bex) is a young adult from England. She joined the fanfiction community in 2013 and has taken part in multiple Harry Potter related fanfiction competitions, including the Hogwarts School Fanfiction Competition, since 2014. She is considered one of the most knowledgeable of the forums since she has stayed with them for a significant amount of time. She spends most of her time reading, writing, drawing, and finding new zoos.

Context

The Hogwarts School Fanfiction Competition (HSFC) is a year-round competition that connects a bunch of different Harry Potter fans/fanfiction writers. Like Hogwarts in the original Harry Potter canon, there are four houses in HSFC: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. I am a Slytherin. The main goal is to earn points for your house, by writing fics using certain prompts/following certain guidelines, so that by the end of the year, your house has the most points. Every month, HSFC puts on specialized events that give the students (aka, the competitors) more chances to win points for their houses, and sometimes these events are reoccurring. One of these events that reoccurs is the Slash Months. There are two slash months, Femslash February and Slash September (Slash September came first). The goal for Slash September is to complete twenty-five fics that feature Slash pairings (male x male) as the main relationship of the fic. The fic can be any rating, and the only restrictions are that you can’t use the same character in more than two of the two of the twenty-five fics and that the fic must be over 300 words long. Femslash February is the exact same, except instead of a male x male relationship, a female x female pairing is required. I participated in the last Slash September, but I only managed to write seven fics for it. When the events are mentioned, they are almost always mentioned together; it’s as if one cannot exist without the other. I asked my competition house (Slytherin), in our group chat, about the events, and I received a response from Bex, who has been a part of HSFC for roughly four years. She is one of the most knowledgeable on HSFC as a whole as she has been a part of it for so long and is friends with the moderators of the competition. I wasn’t surprised that she was the one that answered me.

Text

Me: Question. How long has Hogwarts been doing slash September/femslash February?

Bex: I think maybe a year and a half?

Bex: It’s a relatively new thing I think

Me: Aaand this is gonna sound dumb, cause I know what it is.. but what is it?

Bex: So, slash September focuses on slash pairings and femslash Feb on femslash pairings

Me: I feel like there might be some sarcasm there XD

Bex: Me? Neverrrr

Bex: 🤣

Me: God I love you

Texture

As always, Bex was hilarious with her explanation, and she managed to encompass the entirety of the events in just a single, sarcastic sentence. She tends to answer my questions in this dry manner, but she also always makes sure to answer my questions and is only dry with the people she is comfortable with.

Course

Folklore 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2018

Theme

G9: E-mail, including instant messaging

EAD Number

7.1.1

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