A Change of Pace: On Fan Fiction

Fan Fiction and Harry Potter

An article from Time about fan fiction and Harry Potter.  How very appropriate because Harry Potter has one of the largest, if not the largest, fan base that I have seen online.  I used to be involved in the fan fiction world myself, mostly as a reader, and I still peak back at it sometimes.

I think the article does a good job with giving a good overview of the fan fiction world, but I wanted to add a few things:
-One very positive thing about fan fiction is that it helps a lot of people write.  A lot of times, it's about the community of writers and readers that you encounter.  You have these characters that everyone knows and so you already have an audience (encouragement for writing and good for feedback) and also, characters you can flesh out and explore.  Writing about characters that exist is much less daunting than characters you create on your own.
-What about the fictional books that are based on famous novels?  E.g. I have seen quite a few books out there that do an alternative take on Jane Eyre and lots of sequels to Pride and Prejudice.

In honor of the last Harry Potter movie coming out (sniffle sniffle), I wanted to share a link to one of my favorite Harry Potter fanfics out there: Summer Holidays by Penknife.  A lot of people, myself included, were really frustrated with the epilogue in the last Harry Potter book after a decent ending in the last chapter.  While it was nice to see Harry happily settled down, their children have ridiculous names and the epilogue, as a whole, just seemed tacked on and *too happy*.