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*.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

He didn’t know what he was going to- but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.

There's nothing quite like rereading old favorites.

Finished rereading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone today. Still a great book that makes me smile. In particular, I loved reading through those character defining moments...Hermione's now infamous (roughly paraphrasing) "We could die or worse get expelled" line, Harry's humbleness and desire just to be normal, Ron's loyalty (of course all three of them were going to find the Philosopher's Stone together), Dumbledore's brilliance and quirkiness (wool socks in the mirror of erised), Neville's awkwardness and clumsiness- of course we all know people like Neville who are kind but awkward and you want to be their friend but just can't quite do so, so you hope that he'll make other friends.

One of my favorite moments from the book has to be Neville finding out that he has magical powers- of course he tells it and it doesn't seem like a big deal (understated) but it *is*. Also loved all the really lovely lonely descriptions of Harry before he finds out that there are people out there who actually do care about him. And at the end of the day, it's not really about the magic but about the friendships. Another particular favorite moment towards the end of book 1. <3>

It seemed to be a handsome, leather-covered book. Harry opened it curiously. It was full of wizard photographs. Smiling and waving at him from every page were his mother and father.

“Sent owls off ter all yer parets’ old school friends, askin’ fer photos…knew yeh didn’t have any…d’yeh like it?”

Harry couldn’t speak, but Hagrid understood.