Merging Heaven's post with Nappa's, as the former was buried in the Announcement forum's back pages.

RELATED: FAQs about Portkey's Fanfic Side

~gal-texter 2Jun2004



Lately I have found several stories that break the ships we have stated in this site.

Our rule for fanfiction is thus:

Ships contained in the Fanfiction:
The submitted Fanfiction must fall into one of four categories:
A. Harry/Hermione ( * )
B. Lily/James ( * )
C. Draco/Ginny
D. Ron/Luna
( * ) The star next to a ship indicates a ship that may not be broken in any stories. This means that this ship cannot be broken, even if the story isn't classified in that ship. So in Draco/Ginny fanfictions a romantic pairing between Ron/Hermione may not occur. Ships marked with a star will not be contradicted in any stories, and graphical scenes between characters that contradict a ship listed above are not accepted. This means that graphical scenes between Ron/Hermione may not occur as it contradicts Harry/Hermione. Graphical scenes between characters that do not contradict a ship with a star next to it are acceptable.

Now that is taken straight from the Terms of Service that all authors agreed to when signing up to post their fanfictions on this website.

This basically means that any graphic scenes between characters others than the ones with stars next to their names are not acceptable. That means in a fanfiction, Harry and Ginny cannot have a graphic kissing or sex scene. This means Ron and Hermione cannot have a graphic kissing or sex scene. It is perfectly fine to allude to something happening between those couples, but it cannot be written out in the story, at least not on this website.

This rule also means that in any story, H/Hr and J/L couples cannot be broken. That goes for whether or not one of the characters is alive. If Harry is/was married to Ginny/Lavender/Parvati/Luna... this means the H/Hr ship has been broken and is not allowed.

Any author can START a story with R/Hr or H/G or whatever couple, as long as any story with Harry and Hermione ENDS H/Hr. You are free to not mention them as well, if you prefer other ships.


More discussion here.
-gal-texter Jul 2008

Portkey.org Fanfic Hosting Policy

All fanfictions that you submit to PORTKEY.ORG's fanfic archive must comply with all of the following rules. Failure to comply with all rules will result in the immediate removal without warning of all fanfictions found to be in breach of these terms. We reserve the right to remove an author's account if we believe that the infringement was deliberate, or that the user was aware of the rules but proceeded regardless. When submitting an author's application we will review the fanfiction that you link to in your application, and at least one of those fanfiction's must comply with all of our rules. When we grant you access to PORTKEY.ORG, it is to post only the fanfictions which comply with these rules.

1. Spelling and Grammar:
The fanfiction you publish on PORTKEY.ORG must be to a reasonable standard of spelling and grammar. We acknowledge that mistakes are easily made, but hope that at the very least, authors read over their own work and attempt to remove the more obvious mistakes. We recommend that authors get their work beta-read before submitting it to PORTKEY.ORG, but we understand that this often isn't possible. Misspelling of key characters and places should be avoided at all costs.

Grammar must be of a reasonable and understandable quality. Obvious mistakes in grammar which re-occur continuously will be pointed out to you by an admin when he or she accepts your application. We ask that you please repair such mistakes before submitting your work to PORTKEY.ORG. During the time that you are an author on PORTKEY.ORG you may receive a warning for content, spelling or grammar. Failure to comply with this warning may result in the suspension or removal of your account from PORTKEY.ORG.

2. Ships contained in the Fanfiction:
The submitted Fanfiction must fall into one of four categories:
A. Harry/Hermione ( * )
B. Lily/James ( * )
C. Draco/Ginny
D. Ron/Luna
( * ) The star next to a ship indicates a ship that may not be broken in any stories. This means that this ship cannot be broken, even if the story isn't classified in that ship. So in Draco/Ginny fanfictions a romantic pairing between Ron/Hermione may not occur. Ships marked with a star will not be contradicted in any stories, and graphical scenes between characters that contradict a ship listed above are not accepted. This means that graphical scenes between Ron/Hermione may not occur as it contradicts Harry/Hermione. Graphical scenes between characters that do not contradict a ship with a star next to it are acceptable.

The fanfiction must end with the category it has been entered into romantically involved together. Our moderators will not approve your application and will delete any fanfiction uploaded if the portion of it completed so far does not suggest one of these pairings will end up together. All pairings (excluding pairings that we forbid - see below) are welcome in your fanfiction, but the fanfiction must contain a reasonable portion of the category you involved in within the ship. Should one of the characters or both of the characters be killed off during or at the end of the fanfiction, we can accept that. It makes good angst. However, the story cannot focus around the theme of one or the other moving on.

3. The Fanfiction cannot under any circumstances contain any of the following:

A. Student/Teacher Relationships
We do no accept fanfictions which contain a relationship between a student and a teacher. Crushes, or stories where feelings that are one-sided are acceptable, but any fanfictions where a relationship begins between a student and a teacher not acceptable.

B. No Explicit scenes between characters that do not fall into our four categories
Fanfictions submitted can not contain explicit scenes between characters we do not support. However, you can imply that an explicit scene took place provided it is not shown to the reader in the story.

The exception to this is if the explicit scene is between two characters that do not contradict any of the ships listed in point 2.

C. Fanfictions with rape themes will not be accepted
The fanfiction cannot, under any circumstances, contain rape scenes or implied rape scenes within it. Rape scenes, or references to a rape occurring in the story are against the rules of this site. Stories which make reference to a rape, but do not focus around that rape will be considered. Users wishing to submit fanfictions of this nature must inform a moderator. Adding the fanfiction will be subject to the moderator's decision on the rape mentioned in the story.

D. No Fanfictions that contradict Lily and James as Harry's parents
The fanfiction must stick religiously to the book series when it comes to who Harry's parents were. There are a number of ways you could go about this, but we just ask that this isn't contradicted. Creating a scenario where Harry is adopted or something along those lines does not contradict canon, and we can accept that.

E. No Cross-Generation stories
We don't accept stories where two people from different generations come together in the story. It is unacceptable by our site rules. Some people may write perfectly good stories that do this, but we don't want them on this site. Cross-Generation could be considered anything over approximately 3 or 4 years of age gap.

4. Moderation:
A moderator's decision is final. When submitting fanfiction, please make sure it complies with the rules. It is up to the user to contact the moderators should there be any rules that they do not understand, or if they are unsure if their fanfiction breaks any rules. Occasionally we will not pick up things that violate our rules when we read over your work before approving your application. Even if we approve your application, we reserve the right to remove stories that violate these rules. We do not want to force ourselves to moderate each story that is uploaded, and so we trust our users' judgment when uploading their stories on this site. Our decision will always be final.

5. Plagiarism:
Any work found to be plagiarized will be immediately deleted, and the author permanently banned from the website.

6. Posting Work:
Please don't post other people's work without consent. In order to verify that you have consent, the author of the story must get in touch with our fic mod team.

7. Other Languages:
Fanfiction posted on PORTKEY.ORG must be written in English.

Adding some clarifications that were brought up in a recent discussion by Fic Mods.
2 Aug 2004: Added more explanations re no anti-H/H or -L/J

No rape themes

--Portkey stories may not explicitly describe the act of rape itself.
--Our Admins have approved stories that deal with rape, but did not have graphic scenes of it. Here's an excellent example (and fic!).



No student-teacher nor cross-generation pairing

This ban particularly covers --but is not limited to-- romance or sex between a canon student and a canon teacher, or between a canon minor and a canon adult.

Definitions:

"canon student" - someone who appeared as a student in any of the 7 Potter books
"canon minor" - someone who appeared as a minor (under 18 years) in any of the 7 Potter books
"canon teacher" - someone who appeared as a teacher in any of the 7 Potter books
"canon adult" - someone who appeared as an adult in any of the 7 Potter books


The following ships are ACCEPTABLE under the the above definitions:

--Dumbledore/McGonagall, Remus/Tonks, similar ships

--Scenarios where the student and teacher involved are the characters in Portkey's ships themselves. Like Draco coming back to Hogwarts to teach on Ginny's 7th year.


We RULE OUT pairings like (but not limited to):

-- Snape/Hermione or Sirius/Hermione, even if the story is set in Hermione's adulthood.

-- Minor-adult relationships, be they original characters or not.
But Bill/Fleur would be acceptable, as it was made highly probable in the Potter books. Besides, it seems Fleur is already an adult in OOTP (I'm not sure at what age is one considered to be an adult in the UK / Europe).



Stories should not break Hermione/Harry (H/H) or Lily/James (L/J).
No explicit scenes between pairings that contradict PK ships.

Please refer to Heaven's post at the start of this thread. I hope the following explanations are useful.


The following paragraphs also apply to Lily/James. Simply subsitute H/H with L/J.

This means that any story that has an H/H romance --whether as the main or supporting characters -- should have this pairing intact by the end of the story.

Portkey stories may have some pairings contradicting H/H at some point, but such couples must:
-- not have any graphic or drawn-out kissing or sex scenes, AND
-- be given minimal exposure in the story; AND
-- break up by the story's end.

The present rules allow for an H/H-centered story to have side ships that contradict Draco/Ginny (D/G) or Ron/Luna (R/LL), even until the fic's conclusion. But do give advance notice to our D/G and R/LL fans who might read your fic! You are encouraged to put such anti-D/G or anti-R/LL ships in the story's "summary" field.

The following came up elsewhere in Portkey.

How can authors consult the Fic Mod team about iffy chapters?

Please read this.


What can readers do about archived stories breaking a Portkey rule (or rules?

Please use either of the two report this story to the admins links seen in every uploaded chapter. One's below the story title while the other's above the review box. This system's not perfect, so feel free to suggest how it can be improved. Fic mods will get in touch with the author about reports that the mods deem to be valid.


What can authors do when advised that their story or chapter breaks a Portkey rule or rules?

Authors can always choose to post a PK-compliant version. I've seen many authors voluntarily take that route here and in other sites, without waiting for a fic mod to ask them.

For example: the PK version has H/H scenes all the way, but the alternate version (posted outside PK) has Trio smut. They are free to tell their PK readers about that other version.

Another example: a story's R version is in Fiction Alley.org while the NC17 version is in restrictedsection.org or here in PK.

Some authors have opted to take down the entire story from PK. They're allowed and encouraged to leave a note to notify readers of alternate story URLs. See next item.


How can authors notify readers of stories taken off PK (by themselves or by fic mods)?
This also applies to PK-compliant stories taken offline by authors for various reasons.

Please read this thread. It's a must-read -- well, at least until the procedures in my Jan 21/22 2009 reply in there.

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