In a Wonderland they lie, dreaming as the days go by...

I would like to thank with sincere gratitude the ‘Harry Potter’ fandom for all of the emails, PMs, and notes I’ve received in regards to the recent site-purge of some of my stories from Fanfiction.net. I was able to recover every lost story thanks to kind fans that had downloaded them prior to their deletion. 

This incident has made it clear to me, as I’ve posted before, that Fanfiction.net is an inferior site for housing fanfiction, and their administrators are random and prejudicial in enforcing their guidelines. It’s time to leave them behind and move on to bigger and better sites that support fandom, not hinder it.

As such, over the remainder of this year (2021), I will be removing all of my fanfiction from Fanfiction.net and porting those stories over to AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/users/RZZMG) to permanently and exclusively house them. Please update any links you may have. 

Thank you again, beloved friends in fandom, for all your support and kindness during this turbulent time!!! I am hoping each of you safety, health, and peace.

XOXO,

I have been working on “Eros & Psyche”, wanting to finish the entire story before I post any more chapters, so I can put up 1 chapter a week until finished. It’s been 10 years of work on that story, and I’d like to finish it in one sweep of the broom, as they say. Right now, I have about 8 more chapters to write. I will not abandon this story, however. It’s my gem.

Yesterday (24 June, 2021), Fanfiction.net (run by FreePress) decided to delete several of my fanfictions without any arbitration or opportunity to retrieve the stories for downloading. Some of their removals were legitimate, I will admit, but some have left me with the negative impression that some Fanfiction.net Standards administrators are prejudiced (homophobic and transphobic) and that is something I will not abide. I have come to this conclusion after they removed three of my fanfics that specifically dealt with the issue of Transgender and Homosexual characters and their journeys of self-discovery:

1. “Hogwarts 365: The Golden Snitch” - A drabble featuring Trans!Draco coming out to his partner, Harry, with Hermione’s encouragement (she is his counselor). The drabble contained no nudity, no sexual interplay, and no profanity. It did not break any of Fanfiction.net’s rules, and yet they decided to delete it with a note stating it contained ‘explicit content’. 

2.  “Broken” - A WIP on hiatus that features Harry finding Draco years after the war working as a sex slave in a brothel in Rome. Draco is a crossdresser and bisexual. There was absolutely no nudity or sexual content in this fanfic aside from the implication of Draco’s prostitute status, and the profanity was extremely light. It was predominantly about surviving abuse as a sex trafficked slave. There was nothing in this fanfic that broke Fanfiction.net’s Terms of Service or Ratings Guide, certainly, yet it was deleted as containing ‘explicit content’. 

3. “Make Me Whole” - A story featuring Metamorph!Theo and his years’ long quest to accept his magical abilities to change his shape at will and his romantic and sexual feelings for his best friend, Draco. In the story, Theo pines for Draco all through their youth, and after the war, disappears and takes on a new name and life as a Transwoman. Her relationship with Draco evolves from friendship into sex, but ends sadly when Draco’s family insists he marry Astoria, per the arranged marriage they’d established already in contract for him. Many years later, Theo returns to England after a whirlwind tour around the world, exhausted and just wanting his best friend back in any form he can have him. Divorced!Draco finally accepts him and it’s an HEA. The sex in this story was “R” rated, not explicit NC-17 material, certainly well within the parameters of Fanfiction.net’s requirements and no more controversial than any mass paperback romance novel on today’s shelves, yet the administrators deleted it for ‘explicit content’.

Additionally, “Iron Closets” (a story about Dhampir!Draco struggling with a mating imperative for his best friend, Theo, who is dating Hermione), “Habit” (a story about Theo/Hermione/Draco in a convoluted triad filled with misunderstandings and recreational marijuana use), and “When Love and Hate Collide” (a story featuring 6th year head canon relationship between Hermione and Draco, featuring a prophecy) were also deleted by Fanfiction.net yesterday. These three tales, however, I will agree contained explicit sexual content and so their deletion is not in debate.

To say I am deeply disappointed in Fanfiction.net/FictionPress is an understatement. Their administration of the site has always been lazy and arbitrary, and the design and function of the site has always puttered around the minimum standards. In short, it’s an ugly site with a lack of functionality compared to its competitors on the market. The only thing that makes it attractive is the number of readers who regularly patron it (ironically, those numbers have been dropping as fans jump to other, better sites for their fanfiction fix). As a corporation that makes money from generating site clicks, one would think Fanfiction.net/FictionPress would want to put in some effort to maintain a ‘hip’ presence on the internet and that they’d keep open, positive dialogue with their base customers (the authors), and that their Standards group would not allow personal political agendas to dictate revenue streams for them. Alas, none of that seems to be the case. Fanfiction.net is happy to retain their title as a junk site, and now I believe we can add the term ‘conservative cancel culture’ to their list of deeply-rooted faults as well.

Needless to say, I have been dual-publishing my stories on Archive Of Our Own (AO3) for years, slowly moving all of my fanfiction over there, as time permits. I have found it to be a much more comprehensive platform, with abilities that outpace any of its competition on the internet. It allows for videos, pictures, and text formatting functionality that Fanfiction.net’s programmers probably dreamed about adding someday to their site, but were too busy picking their noses to accomplish. Furthermore, AO3 does not childishly hide behind puritanical prudishness and they are an inclusive site that encourages diversity and the freedom of expression. I’ll be pleased to continue supporting them as a by fans-for fans network for fandom. Over the next month, I will be porting my works over there where they will find a new, more accepting home.