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Daily reach of four popular Harry Potter fan fiction sites: Sugar Quill, Fiction Alley, Portkey, harryloveshermione.com and HarryPotterFanFiction.Com.

Word search featuring The Sugar Quill users

People and organizations threatened with legal action by Heidi8

Daily traffic of five popular Harry Potter fan fiction sites: Sugar Quill, Fiction Alley, Portkey, harryloveshermione.com and HarryPotterFanFiction.Com.

Survey of year of birth from three LiveJournal communities done in 2005: Fanthropology, The Sugar Quill and FanFicRants

The Sugar Quill is a Harry Potter fan web site whose original primary goal was to introduce people to creative writing through the use of Harry Potter fan fiction. The Sugar Quill consists of both a fan fiction archive and discussion forums. The site is known for being a selective fan fiction archive: authors are accepted only a few times per year, and most authors must submit every chapter of a story to official beta-readers for editing suggestions and proofreading. The Sugar Quill primarily supports fanfiction which includes or accepts the canonical pairings.

[edit] Mission Statement

The Sugar Quill was intended to be a place where like-minded people could examine and discuss the Harry Potter books. Besides discussion forums, the site is a place for imagination and creativity within the bounds of a rapidly developing canon. As the Canon of Harry Potter unfolds, the ship regulations of the site (mainly R/Hr and H/G) adjust to come into compliance with the new canon.

Supported Ships on the Sugar Quill include the following (Not an extensive list)

• Harry/Ginny
• Ron/Hermione
• Bill/Fleur
• Tonks/Remus (as of July 2005)

Remus/Sirius has also been an accepted ship, though it is not deemed canon.

The above characters may not end up with anyone else, although stories written prior to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince could have Harry dating Cho Chang and Ginny dating Dean Thomas, etc.

[edit] History

Zsenya and Arabella opened The Sugar Quill on January 5, 2001. For more detailed history links, please visit Sugar Quill's Purpose of Existence on the Web. Some events have been detailed in the timeline below.

[edit] Timeline

[edit] Coming Together: The Beginning

[edit] Summer 2000

• July 8 2000 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire published; Arabella and Zsenya meet at a small gathering of Jane Austen fans

[edit] Fall 2000

• September 2000 Second meeting between Arabella and Zsenya
• October 6 2000 Arabella-- not yet known by that name-- posts Chance Encounters on fanfiction.net, under the name "Meg Kelley" (much later, a post on The Sugar Quill warns her that someone named Meg Kelley has plagiarized one of her fics)
• November 8 2000 Zsenya posts on HPforGrownups asking why people seem to think Ron will turn evil, when he obviously won’t
• November 27 2000 Doctor Cornelius reviews Arabella's Sine Qua Non on fanfiction.net, saying, "Ranks along with Lessons for Life among my favorite hypothetical H/G futures"
• December 19 2000 Zsenya posts "In Defense of Ron" on the Veritaserum board (see quotes in "Random Notes")
• ’December 22 2000' Zsenya mentions The Sugar Quill on HPforGrownups and invites Elanor Gamgee to join
• December 23 2000 Hermione, Queen of Witches, Book One published; Zsenya later comments that "without HQoW there would be no Sugar Quill"

[edit] Winter 2001

• January 1 2001 Zsenya posts a R/H evidence "challenge" on Veritaserum
• January 3 2001 B Bennett publishes A Certain Point of View
• January 5 2001 The Sugar Quill officially opens. The original expectation of The Sugar Quill is to have five good stories and a message board.

[edit] The First Stories and Threads

[edit] Winter 2001

• January 9 2001 Moey posts The Yule Brawl
• January 11 2001 Doctor Cornelius joins The Sugar Quill.
• January 15 2001 Winky and Dobby create WAIL (The Weasley Adoration and Idolatry League)
• January 23 2001 Vapid writes Broken Bottles, Broken Hearts, best known for its introduction of Butterbeer Extra to the The Sugar Quill community
• February 24-25 2001 Second Sugar Quill Summit takes place

[edit] Spring 2001

• March 12 2001 Red Nose Day: in chats, JKR answers questions from Zsenya on R/H, from GinnyPotter on H/G, and from KarinaLupin on Ron's birthday
• March 30-April 1 2001 Third Sugar Quill Summit takes place
• April 1 2001 First April Fool's Day prank
• April 14 2001 The Sugar Quill Mach II goes into effect

[edit] The Sugar Quill Grows

[edit] Summer 2001

• May 11-13 2001 Fourth The Sugar Quill summit
• May 12 2001 Zsenya and Arabella publish the first chapter of After the End (AtE)

[edit] Fall 2001

• October 11 2001 The Sugar Quill Glossary posted
• October 17 2001 The Sugar Quill Literacy Project begins taking orders
• October 23 2001 The Sugar Quill puts COPPA into effect, and members must now be 13 or older and register for EZboard to post
• November 2001 (approx.) The Sugar Quill switches from .com to .net
• November 16-18 2001 SQUKNY. The ONE summit. For the first movie.
• December 6 2001 The First Annual Sugar Quill Fan Fiction Tournament announced

[edit] Winter 2002

• January 2 2002 NEWTs are created

[edit] Spring 2002

• March 29 2002 Instorn offers to help The Sugar Quill manage its fan fiction archive by designing a content management system for story uploads, and directs The Sugar Quill to a new server at PCHost4u
• April 1 2002 Second April Fool's Day Prank, with help from Prettyannamoon
• April 5-7 2002 SQOMP summit
• April 10 2002 The Sugar Quill leaves top HP fanfic sites, thread turns into 1st The Sugar Quill appreciation thread
• May 29 2002 The Sugar Quill Gringotts Vault opens

[edit] Summer 2002

• June 11 2002 The Sugar Quill reaches 2000 members
• July 27 2002 The Sugar Quill MACH III opens.

[edit] Fall 2002

• September 4 2002 The Great SQ Crash occurs.
• September 7 2002 The Letter is posted, bringing some very welcome new rules to The Sugar Quill ^{[citation needed]}
• September 9 2002 The Sugar Quill forums reopen after the Great Crash
• October 28 2002 The Sugar Quill begins the "Forum Ghost" system for moderators
• December 18 2002 Margot Adler interviews the Sugar Quill founders on NPR: Harry Potter Fan Fiction

• From 2002 to 2003, The Sugar Quill held a discussion regarding Mary Sue which started the trend of defining almost every original character in Harry Potter fan fiction as a Mary Sue. ^{[citation needed]}
• June 30, 2006, The Sugar Quill added Google Ads to the site. This was the first time the site had advertisements on it; these ads were needed as the site was costing $200 a month to run. [1]

[edit] Conflicts in the Harry Potter Fandom

This section equires more information

[edit] Parts of the Sugar Quill

[edit] The Fanfiction Archive

The Flourish and Blotts Fan Fiction Archive[2] is the main section of The Sugar Quill.

[edit] What the Sugar Quill Considers Canon

The Sugar Quill defines "canon" as:

• The Harry Potter Books
• Interviews giver by J.K. Rowling
• Wizard Cards approved by J.K.Rowling
• Information found at JKRowling.com

It should be noted that the site does not consider the movies produced by Warner Brothers to be canon.

[edit] The Story Submission Process

The story submission process at Sugar Quill has a number of steps or stages that make it a rather selective archive. First there are set submission days that are announced ahead of time and all new authors must submit a story during the time frame. Next a preliminary cut is made as the stories are sorted. If a story makes it past the first cut it goes on to the team of beta readers who choses to accept or decline it. An author then works with the assigned beta reader to polish the story and any subsequent ones written.

For more information please see the submission guide. [3]

[edit] The Forums

Currently, the Quill's forums are split into eight sub-forums; the first four (The Sugar Quill Community, Harry Potter, The Art of Writing, and Help) are active forums, while the remaining four are archives (read-only).

The Sugar Quill Community

• Wuzzgoinon? (formerly S'up Figgy, Parseltongue): A sub-forum where non-Harry Potter or non-writing related topics are discussed.

• Summits and Meetings: For discussion of summits and local pride. Also home to the Birthday Thread.

• The Sugar Quill's Enchanted Paintbrush: Where discussion of art and Harry Potter fanart are discussed. The Enchanted Paintbrush is still hosted on EZBoard.

• The Great Hall: A sub-forum created during the 2005 winter holidays, where Harry Potter characters (role-played anonymously by the admins and moderators of the Sugar Quill) could interact with regular members of the Quill. Currently most topics in this forum are locked, though they are sometimes reopened during major holidays.

Harry Potter

• The Lighting-Struck Tower (formerly Seen and Unforeseen, Veritaserum): For discussion of Harry Potter canon, both past and future.

The Art of Writing

• The Pensieve: For discussion of both original writing and Harry Potter related writing, as well as topics on fanfic in general.

• SQ Book Club: For discussion of non-Harry Potter books.

• 87 Rolls of Parchment: Harry Potter writing challenges.

Help

• Kreacher's Cupboard (formerly Erised): The Sugar Quill's Help Desk. For answering questions about forum errors, problems with the fanfiction submission process, and site history.

[edit] Uniqueness of the Sugar Quill

[edit] Words and Phrases coined by the Sugar Quill Community

On the Sugar Quill forums, a lively place of discussion, certain filters are in place. These filters are put to prevent Netspeak (or netSPEAX), or for pure amusement. For example,

• 'ppl' (an abbreviation for 'people' in Netspeak) is changed to Parts Per Liter.
• 'you all' is changed to 'y'all' (this has caused frustration for users who do not wish to give the impression that they are speaking a dialect of the American South.)
• 'rocks' is changed to 'ROX'.
• 'socks' is changed to 'SOX'.
• 'teh' is changed to 'the'
• 'Hermy,' a long-loathed nickname of 'Hermione,' is filled out to her full name.
• 'Tonks' is changed to 'Tonx.'
• 'Squee' is changed to '(word that Cap'n Kathy hates)'.
• If a user abuses the exclamation point (such as, '!!!!!') the second exclamation point will be replaced with 'We-get-the-point-already!'.

[edit] Titles

[edit] The Sq87

"87" has long been an injoke for the SQ. The "SQ87" are a group of Quillers- known as "Subbers"- who try to discover the meaning of the number 87. The meaning has never been officially revealed to the public, although a group of Quillers - known as "Masters" - have correctly found out what it means, and it has been occasionally leaked.

[edit] Founders

• Arabella
• Zsenya

[edit] Moderators

Below is a partial list of past and current The Sugar Quill moderators and site admins.

• B Bennett [4] (Admin)
• Moey
• Elanor Gamgee (Admin)
• Jedi Boadicea
• James (Admin)
• David (Admin)
• FernWithy[5]
• Michelle Ravel [6]

[edit] Members

Below is a partial list of past and current The Sugar Quill members.

• Firoza [7]
• Harriet Wimsey
• James Bow
• VaniityX

[edit] External Links

• Official The Sugar Quill site
• The Sugar Quill LiveJournal community