Immeritus Interview with Venivincere

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Immeritus Interview with Venivincere
Interviewer:	Pen and Moon
Interviewee:	Venivincere
Date(s):	June 2006
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Harry Potter
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
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In 2006, Venivincere was interviewed for Immeritus by Pen and Moon.

Others in the Series

See Immeritus Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

I was bored at work one afternoon in 2002 so I hopped on the internet to find out when the CoS movie would be released in my area. I stumbled upon an article that talked about how some fans weren't waiting for the next book to come out, that they were writing their own Harry Potter stories. It gave a little history of fanfiction, talking about Star Trek, and then they mentioned 'slash' and Kirk/Spock and said the same thing was happening in HP. People were writing about Harry and Draco as a couple!!!OMG!!!!!! They gave a paragraph of text from someone's fic (It was from something forgettable on FFN), and it was a scene of Harry kissing Draco. I was electrified. I immediately Googled on the paragraph text and came up with a link to the story, and then I searched for "Harry/Draco" and found an NC-17 rated fic, and before I knew it was 5:30 PM and I was going to be late picking up my son from daycare. I spent the next several months sleep-deprived. I discovered The Leaky Cauldron for news, and joined a ton of Yahoo groups, then a couple months in, I read my first Snarry and I was lost all over again. I found Walking the Plank, and it was my Mecca for the next few weeks of my life. I read absolutely everything there from start to finish, then went back and read my favorites again. In Feb. 2003 I wrote my first fic, “The Proof in the Argument", and in June 2003, I got an LJ and migrated most of my fan activities there.

I don't believe in the censorship of ideas when it comes to adults. If a writer wants to address something within the context of the Harry Potter universe, then they should do so, as long as they make their best effort. I believe if you're going to tackle a subject that is difficult or foreign to you, you should do the research first. I made that mistake of incomplete research with "At The Unicorn Club". I felt bad enough about it that I ended up including a warning on the fic, and I think it's been effective -- it has nowhere near the readership of other fics I posted around the same time. I don't think there is much I wouldn't address in my work. There's not much I haven't addressed. I've written chan, non-con, explicit homosexual sex, SM... looking back, though, I don't think I've written a lot of violence with weapons (excepting, of course, a good paddling). Without being too explicit here, I would probably shy away from writing most horror!fic unless I had a bunny that just had to be written. But I can't imagine ever finding interest in a horror bunny.

I never really started out reading gen, het or femmeslash, just slash -- so I haven't seen much of a trend at all. For all of the rumors that fandom is dying out, however, there seems to be more and more new people participating every day. I can't say whether this is due to a dynamic shift in interest or the vacuum-like sucking in of new fans. In any event, bias toward male slash hasn't played any causal role in my abstinence from writing gen, het or femmeslash fics. I like writing male slash because I like the dynamic, and in the HP universe, the characters who interest me most are men. I suppose I would write gen if I had a compelling bunny, but I probably would stay away from writing het or femmeslash because I don't feel I have as good a grip as I would like on the female characters. I don't know why other women enjoy reading and writing about male/male relationships, but I like to do it because it's hot, it gives me a chance to explore relationships outside the normal assumptions, it's hot, I get to write and read about the most fascinating characters interacting in ways they don't in canon, and it's hot. Oh, and did I mention it's hot? *fans self*