What Is This Pornish Pixies of Which You Speak?

[icarus]

What Is This Pornish Pixies of Which You Speak?

We fanfiction writers and readers wish that people who stumble on this odd thing we call "fandom" would take their time to learn what it is. Look around. Read some of our better stories (instead of selecting something at random, and really, would that even work in a book store?). Get to know us before you pass random ill-informed judgments.

Now that pornish_pixies has come into the limelight because of Strikethrough 2007 to a variety of fandoms, I'm going to ask other non-Harry Potter fandoms to do the same. I'm seeing pornish_pixies used as an example of "fanfic I wish didn't exist" in some fandoms, and I find that distressing, given pornish_pixies's history in the Harry Potter fandom.

But you don't know that history yet, do you? Give me a moment of your time.

First, Harry Potter is a megolith of a fandom that has kept the hecklers at Fandom Wank entertained for half a decade. The political infighting (a.k.a. "wank") has been in proportion to the size and variety of the HP fandom: immense. It became a by-word. Whenever a new fandom had a lot of wank, the folks at F_W gloated, "This could be the next Harry Potter."

If you wish to understand the history of Harry Potter wank, this well-written editorial (set aside an afternoon), The MsScribe Story: An Unauthorized Fandom Biography, covers 2001-2006 and will give you a Ph.D. in that darkest aspect of Harry Potter fandom history.

But it doesn't seem to mention pornish_pixies. Well, what was fun for the hecklers wasn't much fun for the participants.

Enter switchknife and pornish_pixies.

After a series of inter-related wanks that embroiled many friends, the prolific slash writer switchknife, who maintained the popular Switchknife Recs website waved a flag (red? white? pink?), calling for a halt to all the battles. "This is supposed to be fun," switchknife insisted. "Let's get back to the porn -- the good kind of wank."

Switch created pornish_pixies, "The Community You Wank Off To," kicking it off with a series of "write your favorite kink" challenges. Switch's terms (made somewhat solemnly, with a wink):

- Respect other people's squicks. Since this is a pr0n community, there will be depictions of various kinds of sexual practices. Please state warnings clearly before the fic/poem, or place your story behind a cut-tag (as advised above), if you feel that some of your subject matter could seriously upset people. (Examples: chanslash, bloodplay, rape.)

- Respect other people's kinks. Do not tease and/or abuse someone for their particular proclivities, or what they choose to write in a fic. Everyone here reserves the right to perv unchallenged.

It was intended to be short fics only, lunch hour length, but that went by the wayside very early on.

Since that time, pornish_pixies has been a sort of Japanese bathhouse of R and NC-17 Harry Potter fic. HP fans take off their fandom affiliations and politics and leave them at the door. "Fluffy Harry/Ron Christmas morning romance" appears next to "Werewolf BDSM Non-con" without a qualm. Slash, (Other?), are all welcome, so long as it's sexually explicit and you leave each other be.

So to stand outside of pornish_pixies and use it as an example of "that" kind of fic that "I would never read," misses the point of the community entirely.

Comments

[starcrossedgirl.livejournal.com]

Pst - PP is actually slash and femmeslash only. Het fic is separate at EE!

Great summary otherwise, and I completely agree with your points. :D

[trobadora]

I'm seeing pornish_pixies used as an example of "fanfic I wish didn't exist" in my Stargate and Supernatural fandoms

WTF?! I'm glad I didn't see that.

Pornish is slash only, though (m/m and f/f).

[marksykins.livejournal.com]

Did Switch really start Pornish as a (fandom) wank response? I didn't start writing in HP until just about the very second the comm was created, so I didn't know/think it had that sort of related history. I always figured it was just a response to Switch wanting more porn. :D Which, of course, is not a bad thing.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!!

I have vague flashbacks to Arcana here. I dislike it when outsiders point and laugh/snicker/dismiss, but I really, really hate it when we ourselves do it.

It may not be my kind of thing, but I have the fucking context to get where it's coming from (even if I might not have the specific details...)

[perfica.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched p_p in a while but it's iconic in the HP fandom and I would hate to see it disappear. They were messing with our history, dammit.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

That just sent me back poking through Switchknife's journal. I used to have SUCH a crush, and would flirt in comments any chance I got.

*sigh* I miss Switch.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

This is a BEAUTIFUL post. Thank you. I love the Japanese bathhouse metaphor.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

OK, I'm confused as to why any fandom would think they have any moral high ground from which to be sneering or eyerolling at someone else's porn com. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there porn in every fandom's fic? And doesn't every fandom (or at least all the more mature, established fandoms [by which I mean fandoms which have existed for a while -- not meaning any judgements about the fandom itself or the age/maturity of its fans]) have some pretty serious kinkfic? OK, I started hanging out in Blood Ties and Dresden Files fandoms recently, when the TV shows started, and both seem to be pretty new and the stories pretty vanilla still. But every fandom I've poked my nose into that'd been around for a while has its share of kink and other off-the-beaten-path type stories. So what?

My own main fandom has "stuff I'd never read" and that's just because different people have different tastes. There are some characters I don't like, so I don't read them without an absolutely glowing rec. There are some kinks that don't do anything for me, so I don't read those stories or I might read for the plot and characters but skim over the not-my-kink part. There are story types I don't care for (songfics, most drabbles) so I just don't read them unless I trust the writer implicitly. But the idea of going to someone else's fandom to point and sneer at a particular kind of story is just boggling. :/

Angie

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

I've never really understood the horror over the "stuff I'd never read" mindset. Not because I'll read anything, but because if I hit a story that fits into the "stuff I'd never read" category, I JUST DON"T READ IT. It really is simple. My kinks are my kinks, and your kinks are yours and if we can both find stories that satisfy our kinks good for us. I have never stumbled into a community and had someone jump out of my computer, hold a gun on me and make me read a story I didn't want to. And if I've stumbled into a story that squicks me I just hit the back button.

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

I am so in love with your fannish information posts. First the FanLib summary and now this. Awesome!

[femmequixotic]

Thank you. :)

During all this kerfuffle, I went back and edited a post on my journal that was linked to all over the net to say that pornish wasn't an incestfic comm because I was starting to see people say that. It's an erotica community, a porn community. Chan and incest were a tiny fraction of what was posted there kinkwise. For the most part it was your standard NC-17 PWP fare. We've just always upheld a no-censorship clause. I'm hoping that we can continue that, but I'm waiting to hear what SA/LJ will tell me next week. *crosses fingers and toes*

It was intended to be short fics only, lunch hour length, but that went by the wayside very early on.

Actually, they've always been fairly short fics. Up until last month the posting limit was 5,000 words max. Now it's up to 10,000 words, but that still limits stories to one-LJ-post size. :)

[lttledvl.livejournal.com]

thanks for the history lesson!

[ix-tab.livejournal.com]

Heh. I would love it if any of my other fandoms had a communiy like pornish_pixies. The quality of the writing, the rare pairings, the kink, the lack of fanbratiess, and the all round general awesomeness...other fandoms should be so lucky.