Fanfic Gots Cooties!!!
Just mailed the paragraphs in italics below to the address given at the end of the article from The Guardian entitled Harry Potter and the mystery of an academic obsession in the hopes that it'll reach the author. Though I rather guess that first line is an underestimate. :)
Ahem...
"As I suspect about 6,000 people have already written to tell you, you've started a wave of amusement over the Internet suitable for surfing on. HP is rather more Star Trek for girls than you realize, because many Star Trek fen, probably most ST fanfiction writers, and certainly most slash ST fanfiction writers are, and always have been girls. The Save Star Trek fight that led to the third season was led by a woman named Bjo Trimble. One of the most notable things ABOUT Star Trek fandom from the start was the number of female fans it added to what had been the hitherto mostly male world of science fiction fans (who seem to have found it decidedly disconcerting but not displeasing once the shock wore off). In the mid 1960s. Certainly by the time I got involved in Star Trek fandom in the early '70s it was mostly us gurrrrls.
"As for fandom, it's hardly limited to ST and HP. Go thou and check out the website http://www.fanfiction.net and gaze in awe at the sheer number of different TV series, movies, books, short stories, games, and in some cases rock bands that have people writing fanfiction about them. You won't be able to tell what sex the authors are because most of 'em use on-line aliases, and no, it's not all slash by any means! But it's a good cross-section of what's out there. There are also sites devoted to slash of all of the above which can be found by judicious googling. Or goggling. :)"
Ahem...
"As I suspect about 6,000 people have already written to tell you, you've started a wave of amusement over the Internet suitable for surfing on. HP is rather more Star Trek for girls than you realize, because many Star Trek fen, probably most ST fanfiction writers, and certainly most slash ST fanfiction writers are, and always have been girls. The Save Star Trek fight that led to the third season was led by a woman named Bjo Trimble. One of the most notable things ABOUT Star Trek fandom from the start was the number of female fans it added to what had been the hitherto mostly male world of science fiction fans (who seem to have found it decidedly disconcerting but not displeasing once the shock wore off). In the mid 1960s. Certainly by the time I got involved in Star Trek fandom in the early '70s it was mostly us gurrrrls.
"As for fandom, it's hardly limited to ST and HP. Go thou and check out the website http://www.fanfiction.net and gaze in awe at the sheer number of different TV series, movies, books, short stories, games, and in some cases rock bands that have people writing fanfiction about them. You won't be able to tell what sex the authors are because most of 'em use on-line aliases, and no, it's not all slash by any means! But it's a good cross-section of what's out there. There are also sites devoted to slash of all of the above which can be found by judicious googling. Or goggling. :)"