My adventure into the world of fandom began my sophomore year of high school. Mono hit me hard and I spent a week and a half planted on the couch with very little to do. To pass the time, my mom put the first four Harry Potter books on the couch next to me. Up until this point, I refused to read them. I refused to conform to the mindless media masses that valued fast-paced action over good writing. I was going to be an intellectual, I had decided at age 15, and intellectuals didn’t read Harry Potter.
After an hour of flipping through, the face of Harry Potter stared up to me from the cover of the first book. He looked nicer than Jerry Springer, more understanding than Montel, and with more drama than Days of Our Lives. Begrudgingly, I picked up the first book and started reading. Within ten pages, I couldn’t put it down, even when my brother got home and started watching cartoons.
I’d finished the small mountain left by my mother in two days and had moved on to Internet gossip. After hopping around the “official” sites to the “unauthorized” sites, I learned absolutely nothing worth writing about. But it wasn’t long until I ended up on FanFiction.net, reading the stories fans had written to pass the time until the next book came out.
In an hour, I was writing my own story. My first attempts were clumsy, half-romances featuring schizophrenic characters that had to contend with a spunky American girl sent to protect Harry Potter, i.e., a thinly veiled, highly romanticized version of me. Here’s a quick exert of my first story, “If Looks Could Kill, They Probably Will” (I had a thing for Peter Gabriel):
“Don’t know what?” he turns around. I turn the recorder off; they don’t need to hear this.
I start slowly, “I’m here to make sure you don’t get hurt. I’m a highly trained FBI agent from the American Government. I need to protect my people in anyway possible and if it means I have to be in every aspect of your business, so be it. Now,” I turn the recorder back on, “why did you spend the night with Ms. Granger?”
“You’re really here to protect me?” he asks. God, is he stupid? Typical, I always get the stupid ones.
“Yeah, now answer the question.”
He crinkles up his eyebrows in confusion. “Wouldn’t that be easier if you were my friend?”
Eventually, as both my writing and I matured, I began to probe the inner workings of characters mentioned once or twice. By the time I got to my senior year, I’d published several stories at FanFiction.net under the pen name KaterPotater (yes, they are still up there, the good and the bad, go have your fun) and I had even gathers together a small fan base of my own, one of the benefits of working with minor characters. Granted, this fan base is about four people under the age of 18, but how many high school seniors can say they have four people that will devotedly read everything they write?
Fan fiction is born when a creator expands on the universe and characters of another author. Though the writing of this genre has grown exponentially in the last decade, the concept is anything but new. Arguably, fan fiction (or some variation there of) creates the bulk of the literary cannon. Works like James Joyce’s Ulysses and many of Shakespeare’s plays were based on previously published material. Even with all this backing, fan fiction “remains the b*****d child in the literary family,” according to Cathy Young, a columnist for The Boston Globe.
Though many wrote fan fiction for private usage since the beginning of mass distributed literature, fiction written by amateurs (creators that make no profit off of their work) and distributed to other fans didn’t become popular until the 1970s. Since then, the fanzines spread throughout small, niche communities that consumed the stories with the fervor of rabbits in heat. Focusing on the science fiction and fantasy sector of mass media, not everyone was instantly taken in to this “new” idea. But these pioneers of amateur writing did one good thing for the community at large. They set the model for organizing fan conventions, events that still flourish in the fandoms of today. The first book on fandom culture was written in 1992 by Henry Jenkins, a professor of Media Studies at MIT.
At about the same time that Jenkins was writing his book, the Internet was starting to become an every day essential in people’s lives. Fandom communities grew once again. Now, fans could access fan fiction at any time of the day. No more waiting until the next magazine came to your door! Though this new technology greatly increased the availability of fan fiction, it was still a cult phenomenon.
But the true extent of the Internet’s influence on the world of fan fiction was yet to be seen. In 1997, J.K. Rowling published the first in a seven novel series focusing on the adventures of a young boy who finds out he is at the center of an evil plot in a previously unknown world. Something about this boy, this series, made the world of fan fiction come into the mainstream.
So, what was it about this Harry Potter? What about him made this series the catalyst to introducing a whole new generation to fan fiction?
After the fourth book—Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—in 2000, Rowling took three years to write the fifth installment. What were fans, which previously aged at the same rate of their hero, supposed to do in this desert? They made their own fifth book. Some did it because they couldn’t live without something new to read. Some did it because they were dissatisfied with what Rowling had written.
No matter if they did it out of desperation or disgust, the world Rowling created for Harry was so rich, it provided plenty of opportunities for the story to be changed. “All fan fiction is all about exploring areas left unexamined in the original work,” says Rebekah Denn, a writer for the Seattle Post. Rowling obviously worked hard on her world but there are many spaces that have been weighed and found wanting.
Basically, all fan work deals with the “what if” factor. Of course, some of these what ifs aren’t exactly professional. Like, what if Hermione was Harry’s cousin, or, what if Harry had an American sister? Or, my personal favorite, what if James, Peter, Sirius, and Remus were forced to play the Oregon Trail computer game with Snape (enter “Marauders & Snape vs. Oregon” by Deirdre of the Sorrows found on FanFiction.net)? But some of the what ifs deal with real issues of teen life, including relationships with peers and authority figures and struggling with sexual orientation.
In an emotionally charged book like Harry Potter (Imagine: you’re a prepubescent and, on top of that, the most evil person in the world since Hitler is out to kill specifically you. P.S., which he can do by muttering two words.), fans are bound to be caught up in lives of these characters. As University of Sydney professor Angela Thomas says, “Fan fiction for these young people is a way of responding to the texts they love.” For many pre-teen children, the characters in this book provided a parallel to their own lives. You know, without the magic part.
But fan fiction brings up a whole mess of problems that were previously unprecedented. Because the fan fiction movement was mostly a small, marginalized community before Harry Potter, there was no real need to call the works into question. Published works of fan fiction were focused on books whose copyright had expired and no author was alive to context the publication. Just look at all the published sequels to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Stars and writers even enjoyed the involvement of the fans and showed up at their conventions with a jovial smile because such die-hard fans were few and far between, not to mention they were the major contributors to the star’s paychecks.
All this changed at the beginning of the Potter Wars, an issue so large and compelling, it warranted its own chapter in Henry Jenkins’ 2006 book, Convergence Culture. The term was coined to encompass two related but very distinct issues surrounding the series. Like all wars, there’s the story told to the public and the real story, hidden behind the media’s veil.
The highly publicized version was focused on conservative Christians’ claims that the series encourages witchcraft. This front of criticism is the easiest to combat. It is a clear case of censorship, pure and simple. Librarians, educators, and parents have banded together to fight off the threat to their children’s development. They’ve formed groups such as Muggles for Harry Potter, a group based in Michigan that successfully lobbied to have the series remain in school libraries across the state.
The secret, underground Potter War isn’t nearly as simple. Here, major corporations wish to maintain their rights over copyrighted material. But, as Jenkins points out, “industry groups have tended to address copyright issues primarily through a piracy model, focusing on the threat of file sharing, rather than dealing with the complexities of fan fiction.” Fan fiction is not about sharing books for free. In fact, many fans own multiple copies of the series. For example, I, who am by no means as obsessed as many other fans, own the series in both English and French. (What can I say? It’s easy to read and helped boost my French vocabulary.)
The issue is even further muddied when considering the differing policies taken by the creators of the Harry Potter series. In 2003, J.K. Rowling issued a statement affirming her policy of welcoming fan participation, as long as it wasn’t pornographic. Bur Warner Bros, the studio that bough the rights to turn the book into a movie, has gone around writing Cease and Desist letters to many members of the fan fiction community. Obviously, these mixed messages only confuse some writers. Most just pay attention to Rowling, who they see as the real owner of the series.
But even then, some ignore her plea to stay away from pornography. At websites like RestictedSection.org and AdultFanFiction.com, you can read about your favorite characters getting it on with just about everyone and everything. Want to see Neville have sex with the Giant Squid? Or maybe you want to see our favorite Trio have an awesome threesome? Anything, and everything, is possible in this very adult community. (Don’t believe me? Just Google “And Just Plain Wrong.” I just hope you have a strong stomach.)
Most of these pornographic stories are written by women in their 30s with children of their own. And who can blame them? Harry Potter is, after all, a series for children. If you’re a housewife stuck with your 4 year-old, surrounded by nothing but Harry Potter all day, wouldn’t you write a little revenge after your kid goes to bed? That is, if you aren’t so tired you fall asleep immediately.
The benefits of fan fiction are just now being explored. Steve Vosloo, a Communication and Analytical Skills Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, has conducted research into the area of fan fiction and how it can be used to help increase youth literacy. In a setting where children are reluctant to write a one-page essay for a teacher, they are voluntarily writing novel length pieces of fan fiction while simultaneously reading and reviewing other writers’ work. Writing fan fiction is like writing for a class, except no one is forcing you to do it.
“Many adults,” adds Jenkins, “worry that these kids are “copying” pre-existing media content rather than creating their own original works. Instead, one should think about their appropriations as a kind of apprenticeship.” Spending less time having to worry about making something new gives budding authors a chance to focus on their craft. The opportunities to create new and exciting worlds will indubitably come with world experience. But getting in the practice of writing with vivid imagery and delving into the minds of round, intriguing characters will only help later on.
A benefit of working on the craft of writing early is that craft can translate to any genre. Many big name fans have landed book deals because of their work in fan fiction. Popular author Meg Cabot, writer of The Princess Diaries started out as a simple fan.
Fan fiction also provides children with the tools they need to think critically about texts. Jenkins sums up the main point in his 1992 book Textual Poachers: “Organized fandom is, perhaps first and foremost, an institution of theory and criticism, a semi-structured space where competing interpretations and evaluations of common texts are proposed, debated, and negotiated.” The world of fandom gives children a taste of college academic life and prepares them for writing and engaging with texts.
Even a college student with dreams of being a professional writer continues to pour energy into fan fiction. (Hello, my name is AnnaKate, and I’m addicted to fan fiction.) The strenuous pace of a writing program, where on a weekly basis we’re asked to pour out new, creative works starring original characters demands complete focus by the student. Many times I think programs in writing are designed to suck the passion right out of your mouth and leave you dry and empty. Fan fiction, at least for one struggling artist, provides an atmosphere to regain that passion.
I use Rowling’s familiar characters and world to work through, and hopefully perfect, new techniques of writing I learned in class. The reviews given by my peers at FanFiction.net give me the kindling to help restart the fire of my passion. And I use my newfound passion to get through another week.
Although fan fiction is at best a controversial topic, there is very little chance of it going away anytime soon. Harry Potter is so engrained into our culture (who else is going to see the musical debut in London?) that, statistically speaking, people who aren’t fans are now outside the mainstream. The adventures of this little boy, for good or for bad, have become the modern day equivalent of King Arthur. Who knows? Perhaps in 50 years, students will be studying the epic poem Idylls of the Boy Who Lived.
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