Potter Slash Archive

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Archive
Name: Potter Slash Archive
Date(s): March 2001 - late 2015?
Archivist: June (teacup82)
Founder: Sarvihaara
Type: Harry-centric slash (previously Harry or James slash)
Fandom: Harry Potter
URL: http://scarhead.net/ (2010–2015)
http://glassesreflect.net (2003–2010)
http://www.psa.shadow-wrapped.net (2002–2003)
http://chibihanna.net/psa/ (2002)
Potter Slash Archive.png
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The Potter Slash Archive (PSA) is a Harry Potter archive for Harry-centric slash. It was originally an archive for both Harry and James slash, but it split into three separate archives: the PSA for Harry slash, Stag Night for James slash, and Immortal Beloved for Harry/James slash.

"Two generations of dark hair, glasses, scarlet quidditch robes, invisibility cloaks and an effortless affinity with rule-breaking and mischief. Welcome to The Potter Slash Archive, a site dedicated to Harry and James Potter and their adventurous exploits and beautiful endeavours in relationships."[1]

glassesreflect was the Yahoo! Group for the archive from November 2001 to early 2005. A second group, psa-updates, was started in February 2005, but was short-lived.[2]

The archive was a member of The Harry and Draco Ring, the Slash Fan Fiction Ring and The Harry Potter Slash Web Ring.[3]

History

Beginnings

The archive was created by Sarvihaara in March 2001.[4] Sarvihaara wrote c. 2002:

The PSA started as a James slash archive ('Forever Now') because after reading HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban I was intrigued by James and liked the thought of the whole new world that could be created in stories from his era. Plus, I pictured him to look a lot like Harry, who I loved. There were so few James slash stories around that I had to group them all together.

At this stage, fanfiction.net was the only big fanfiction source around, and didn't have character searches yet and had a tendency to crash every few weeks. So it was very hard (and on occasion impossible) to find what you wanted. Hogwart's Library: The Restricted Section was starting to create a section of links to slash stories on ff.net, but was useless if ff.net crashed. So I decided to make it a Harry archive too because he's my favourite character and I read all slash pairings with him, and I wanted to create a site where there was only slash, which was easy to use and find stories and was not dependent on any other archive.[5]

In 2002, the archive was hosted by Krissy Moser at chibihanna.net. In November 2002, it moved to shadow-wrapped.net, hosted by Drusilla.

Cease & Desist Notice

On January 22, 2003, the Potter Slash Archive (at psa.shadow-wrapped.net) received a cease and desist letter from J.K. Rowling's literary agent and Warner Bros., due to the site's "sexually explicit" Harry Potter content.

As a result of the notice, all NC-17 material was temporarily removed from the site. A password-protected folder was set up on the archive for the material, with the password available at the (18-and-over) glassesreflect mailing list.[6]

In July 2003, the archive moved to Sarvihaara's own site at glassesreflect.net. In 2004, fauxwen became a co-administrator of the site; Sarvihaara continued to run the James fanfiction section while fauxwen took over the Harry section.[7]

Text of the Cease and Desist Letter

Dear Sir:

Harry Potter adult fan fiction

We are a firm of solicitors (attorneys) in London. We have been consulted by our client Christopher Little Literary Agency, on behalf of Ms J. K. Rowling and by our client Warner Bros, in connection with the Harry Potter adult fan fiction and illustrations made available by you at URL http://www.psa.shadow-wrapped.net .

As you are aware, Ms Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter books. Ms. Rowling therefore owns the copyright in the Harry Potter books. The sexually explicit content of the fan fiction and illustrations available at www.psa.shadow-wrapped.net, which are plainly based on characters and other elements of the fictional world created by Ms. Rowling in the Harry Potter books, are a matter of serious concern to our client. In addition, our client Warner Bros, which owns the film and merchandising rights to the children's series of Harry Potter books, is concerned to protect the integrity of its Harry Potter properties. For the avoidance of doubt, our clients make no complaint about fan fiction written by genuine Harry Potter fans.

There is plainly a very real risk that impressionable children, who of course comprise the principal readership of the Harry Potter books, will be directed (e.g. by a search engine result) to your sexually explicit website, which you will appreciate most people would consider wholly inappropriate for minors. Plainly the warnings to the effect that children under 18 should not access your website do not in fact prevent minors from doing so. Indeed such warnings may well serve simply to entice teenagers to your site.

You have chosen to publish the material in question on the worldwide web where it may be seen by anyone with access to the internet. If you choose to publish to the world at large, then in our view you should conduct yourself accordingly. It is no answer to suggest that the fault lies with the children, or their parents, if they visit your website, whether they do so inadvertently or otherwise. We see no reason why online publishers should consider themselves relieved of the responsibilities and legal obligations accepted by publishers in every other medium, and the Courts of both England and Australia take the same view.

In the circumstances, our clients therefore request you to remove all such material and cease making it available lo the general public on the internet or by any other means. Would you please let us have your confirmation that you will do so by no later than 18:00 GMT on Wednesday, 29 January 2003. [8]

Fan Comments: The Cease and Desist Letter

[ jdsampson, speaking as a representative of FanLib ]:

And I love this line from a Harry Potter C&D; - their complaint is about sexually explicit art on the site and includes this line:

"For the avoidance of doubt, our clients make no complaint about fan fiction written by genuine Harry Potter fans."

So I guess if you can prove you're "genuine" you win!

[hotpoint]: Of course the "clients" get to determine the definition of "genuine". [9]

Revamp & Split

In May 2005, Sarvihaara temporarily closed the PSA to "sort out what to do about the new Australian censorship laws" and revamp the site.[10][11] The archive went back up in August, with chan (underage) content removed from the site.[12] The content was moved to a locked LiveJournal group, psa_dungeons.[13]

The revamped archive (reopened in August 2005) was closed to new submissions, with new authors added on an invite-only basis. Structural and design changes were made to the site were made through 2007, including preparations for a new database (developed by Silence, who joined the site as an administrator), but the revamped site may never have been completely finished.[14]

In November 2005, fauxwen stepped down as administrator of the Harry fanfiction section, and the site was split into two distinct archives: the PSA for Harry slash, and Stag Night for James slash.[15] The PSA was taken over by Silver and Harmony,[16] while Sarvihaara continued to run Stag Night, with help from Mosh. In 2006, the Harry/James subarchive, Immortal Beloved, was started.[17]

eFiction & scarhead.net

June took over the site around 2009.[18] In January 2010, the archive was converted to eFiction; previously, the archive was coded manually by a team of volunteers.[19]

In June 2010, the archive went briefly offline because June was unable to renew the domain name, which was registered in Sarvihaara's name.[20] The site reopened in July at scarhead.net, where it remained through 2014.

As of October 2016, the site is down; the last copy saved by the Wayback Machine was on 28 September 2015.

Screencaps

References

  1. ^ Potter Slash Archive, main page. (Accessed 28 January 2014.)
  2. ^ On 15 June 2006, Sarvihaara wrote that she could no longer access the psa-updates group because her Yahoo! account was deleted when Yahoo deleted glassesreflect; she encouraged people to join the new psa_dungeons LiveJournal community instead. (PSA - Updates, archived 12 January 2007.)
  3. ^ The Potter Slash Archive, via Wayback 2002. (Accessed 23 October 2021)
  4. ^ The PSA - Home at chibihanna.net. (Archived 13 October 2002 by the Wayback Machine.)
  5. ^ The PSA - About at psa.shadow-wrapped.net. (Archived 25 November 2002 by the Wayback Machine.)
  6. ^ The PSA - Home: "please take note!" (30 January 2003) and "New fics" (16 February 2003). (Archived 15 April 2003 by the Wayback Machine.)
  7. ^ PSA - Site Info at glassesreflect.net. (Archived 15 April 2004 by the Wayback Machine.)
  8. ^ from here
  9. ^ from FanLib Forum and FanLib Forum (May 16, 2007)
  10. ^ PSA Main Page at glassesreflect.net. (Archived 10 June 2005 by the Wayback Machine.)
  11. ^ PSA NEWS at Sarvihaara's LiveJournal. 17 May 2006. (Accessed 28 January 2014.)
  12. ^ PSA back up at Sarvihaara's LiveJournal. 09 August 2005. (Accessed 28 January 2014.)
  13. ^ HELP (02 August 2005) and James FQF and PSA update (17 September 2005) at Sarvihaara's LiveJournal. (Accessed 28 January 2014.)
  14. ^ The update page at glassesreflect.net shows an October 2007 announcement by Sarvihaara that she was "in the process of setting up a database for the site" and promised "some changes soon," but through January 2009, the only other update was a November 2007 announcement of new fanfiction.
  15. ^ PSA - Harry section up for grabs (06 November 2005) and Hello + Stagnight/PSA update (13 December 2005) at Sarvihaara's LiveJournal. (Accessed 28 January 2014.)
  16. ^ Two people, one LiveJournal account. See PSA - Site Team, archived 12 January 2007).
  17. ^ Immortal Beloved at glassesreflect.net. (Archived 10 January 2007 by the Wayback Machine.)
  18. ^ The glassesreflect.net was last archived in September 2009, at which time it was last updated on 06 November 2007 by Silver & Harmony. The eFiction-updated site shows an update on 08 January 2010 made by June, announcing the conversion to eFiction (archived 20 January 2010).
  19. ^ See the glassesreflect community on LiveJournal for coders and maintainers (founded 08 December 2003), and painless_j's call for volunteers, posted 17 August 2006. (Accessed 09 July 2014.)
  20. ^ June (teacup82) at the harrydraco community on LiveJournal. Potter Slash Archive (glassesreflect.net). 28 June 2010. (Accessed 28 January 2014.)
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