To the ends of their universe (and beyond)

Elizabeth Wolf
Jul 27, 2017 · 6 min read

At almost twelve years old, I finished the Harry Potter series. While at first a joyful sensation washed over me as I read that final sentence, “All was well.”, but I soon found myself craving the characters I had spent so long with; I wanted to see more of that wonderful wizarding world Rowling had created.

Through a mere chance of fate, while looking up different things about the series online, I found a link that made me curious: Fanfiction.net. Confused but intrigued, I clicked the link and found myself on a simplistic white website with thousands of stories. As I looked further, I saw all of them on that list were about Harry Potter, all written by fans like me who wished to see more of these beloved characters.

The sheer amounts of writings on fanfiction.com can overwhelm the young fan.

The fanfiction community are amateur writers and readers who make and consume stories based off their favorite books, television shows, or most other media platforms with a decent-sized fanbase. These fandoms can range to amazingly large, almost having subcultures within itself, or small, tight-knit communities devoted to each and every story produced. Some can be quite accepting of all types of ideas regarding the source material, while others can be more rigid on how they think the canon should be handled. This wide variety of groups within the subculture can lead to many different “dialects” when referring to fan language.

For the newer members of a fandom, finding the type of material they want to read can be difficult; however, the websites most commonly used to read and write fanfiction (fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org) are extremely user friendly and have filtration devices to help narrow the choices. For example, if you are trying to find a story including a specific relationship, you could enter that into the system. Ships featured within the shows (ex. Lizzy Bennet x Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice) are usually much easier to find fanfictions of than those that are fanon, or those simply imagined by the fans (ex. Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger from Harry Potter). On top of that filter, you can also filter what genre you’d like the story to be. If you want a sweet, romantic story, you would look for fluff, but if you were searching for a more tragic story to read, you would look for angst. Further still, after an unsatisfactory ending of a television show, you can search for canon complaint or AU (alternate universe) stories and pretend it never happened in the first place.

Here is an example of even more (yet more general) filters on fanfiction.net

Like any skill, writing fanfiction takes practice. The more you write, and the more peer review you get, the better your writing can become. Nonetheless, even with sufficient constructive criticism, what any writer truly needs to grow in their writings is to be able to take this criticism. Many young writers in the community do not understand that most (yet not all) comments criticizing are meant to help them improve and will resent anything less than approval.

The HP fanfic “My Immortal” lives in infamy for the behavior of its author and the OOC (out of character) moments. (MATURE CONTENT WARNING)

I am ashamed to admit that I may have been one of those young authors a few years back. While I would willingly display my old writing in this circumstance to show my growth, I unfortunately deleted all of those subpar stories off a fanfiction account connected to a now-dead email. Now lost of this opportunity, I can only show the present.

I have mostly converted to writing on tumblr.com as of late. This website and others like it allow for writing practice to those such as myself, who hope to do more “serious” writing some time in the future. Just this past May, I received second place in the Renaissance Theater’s Mindsprouts contest for an original play of my creation; I feel that my regular writing of fanfiction to contribute to that.

Below I have included a expert from a W.I.P. fanfiction of my own, based off the show American Horror Story.

While Tate would certainly resent the thought, he was a man of his time. Perhaps his small high school and sheltered life had blinded him to this fact, but most anyone outside of that community could tell he was a typical “grunge” teenager. That much was clear to Evelyn.

What wasn’t clear to her was his strange mood changes. That boy could go from shy and sweet to angry and violent at the drop of a hat, and it seemed to scare everyone around him. But not Evelyn; no, she had experienced much worse to be frightened by a punk-wannabe with mood swings. If anything, she was intrigued by him.

She tried to turn back to the book in her hands, but her mind wandered away from the spells once more. Sighing, she flopped back onto her bed, cursing under her breath. Why did she keep thinking about him? She was a witch of Salem, so much stronger than any of the people in this insignificant town (besides her mother, since no witch was stronger than the Supreme, even a dethroned one). Tate was just another normal kid with no real special qualities, despite how big and bad he thought he was. She could crush him like a bug and there would be little anyone could do to stop her. But killing him didn't appeal to her. Really, the thought of anyone causing him harm made her physically sick.

Did… Did she have a crush?

“God no! Why would I ever-? As if I’d have such bad taste!” Evelyn answered herself aloud, scoffing though she could feel her cheek warm with a blush.

Sometimes dislike of the direction of an otherwise great story can produce the best fanfiction

It may be something to note that the character who I am writing in the perspective of (Evelyn Bishop) is my OC, or original character. I added her, and other OCs, into the story for this to not only be an AU for Murder House, but a Canon complaint over Coven. As a history buff, especially considering the Salem Witch Trials, I found it curious that the Supreme of the “Salem Witches” was not descended from any of the witches on trial. I give my own explanation for this in my fanfic, showing my OC Evelyn as a direct descendant of Bridget Bishop.

In the fanfiction community, the concept of original characters in fanfics is a debatable one; some people believe that most of these characters are self-inserts or Mary Sues.

A Mary Sue is a trope of an original character (usually female), which is described as being over-powered, bland, and only possessing good traits. To call a thought-out OC a Mary Sue is usually hurtful towards the creator of the character, but the term seems to be dying out in the fanfiction community. However, the term is unfortuneatly becoming more used when looking at original works. For example, when Star Wars: The Force Awakens first came out, many peopled referred to Rey as a Mary Sue for her ability to fly the Millennium Falcon and use the Force.

How could Rey know how to wield a lightsaber? It’s not like she even used a similar weapon, like a quarterstaff.

Many people not within the subculture do not like what they believe the fanfiction writing community is. They believe that these people have no real ideas and are simply capitalizing on the success of an existing work. In some cases this may be true, but the majority of the time, the authors of fanfictions are not expecting anything in return for their writing, but are very creative and passionate about these stories that have usually touched them emotionally.

And in my mind, this is what fanfiction is about; in its essence, it is always meant to be a homage to the work it was based off of. Even if there are certain things we may tweak or change, we love the media we based these stories off of. All we want to do is share an extension of these beloved fictional universes.

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