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“The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.” [1] Chances are, you remember quite well when and where you read this sentence for the first time. It might have marked the end of the Harry Potter-era, but started a seemingly endless supply of fix-it fic: fanfiction that addresses a – according to the author – unfathomable error in the original work and tries to set it straight. Especially the final Harry Potter book has lead to an innumerable amount of such works. Yet, Harry Potter is far from the only franchise inspiring fanfiction writers all over the world to fix their predecessor’s errors. How has this genre developed over the years?
Back in the days
The term ‘fanfiction’ first emerged in 1939, though it was then still used for amateur science fiction stories. It did not acquire its current meaning until the 1960s, when fan-written stories started appearing in so-called fanzines: magazines produced by fans of a certain franchise, notably Star Trek. Despite the fact that the term is relatively young, the concept of fanfiction is anything but. Coming up with new stories inhabited by characters and places from existing literary worlds is probably as old as the art of storytelling itself. Before the fan-age, these would simply be called ‘unofficial sequels’ or ‘pastiches’. Long before the internet or even fanzines would emerge, people wrote and read countless unauthorized stories set in the worlds of Sherlock Holmes or Jane Austen’s novels. But the oldest fanfictions we still know today are probably the Iliad and the Odyssey, as long as you believe in the theory that Homer wasn’t one guy, but instead a collective (in which case you might still debate the rather vague boundaries between using legends as source material and ‘actual’ fanfiction). And even then we’ve probably not reached the beginning: fanfiction most likely has its roots in the oral tradition. [2]
Whatever its exact history may be: an ages-old storytelling phenomenon suddenly got a name halfway through the last century. This had everything to do with the new-found concept of copyright. Now not only the works were appreciated as copyrighted material, but also their characters and the world in which the story takes place. Apparently this gave rise to a need to distinguish stories that make use of these pre-existing elements from stories that uses a more original setting. [2]
But did these early fanfictions also count as fix-it fic? In order to answer this question, we will need a solid definition first. Seeing as every fanfiction already changes something about the original work, fix-it fic must have some special quality to the change. I argue that this has everything to do with intent: someone writing fix-it fic will have one main goal, namely set straight something that they think is not right in the original work. That does not seem to be the case for the works in Spockanalia, generally considered to be the earliest source of written fanfiction. [3] The stories here are more like ‘unofficial sequels’ like those long before them: stories that add to the universe of the original work, without changing what happens in the canon[1] work itself.
Later the Star Trek-fandom would produce one of the fundamental parts of modern fix-it fic: slash fiction, which is fanfiction focusing on romantic and/or sexual relationships between characters of the same sex. This didn’t happen in Spockanalia (which is somewhat regrettable, given the title), but in 1974 in the fanzine Grupi. [3] Slash fiction would only be considered to be fix-it fic is the author of the fanfiction deems the choice not to bring these characters together in the original work to be a mistake. Although same-sex relationships have become increasingly more common in the different media types that usually inspire fanfiction writers, it took a long time to get there. Fanfiction has for a long time served as an important platform for both the telling and consummation of queer stories within our storytelling culture, especially when these places were scarce in the more mainstream original works. But not all slash fiction inherently belongs to this category: some has just been written because there is an audience for it, or simply because the author thought it would be interesting to write about an improbable couple.
Fanfiction in the internet age
Fanfiction might precede the internet, but it could not grow to the global phenomenon it is now without it. Where before fan stories could only be shared on a small scale, internet pages provide spaces where fans can share their enthusiasm and fantasies. Initially, the differences with the fanzines were only minor: fandoms[2] had their own websites and communities, allowing them to remain relatively small and close-knitted. However, this changed when the first collective websites emerged, importantly fanfiction.net. This would prove to be a quintessential change for fanfiction readers and writers alike: no longer the different fandoms lead a more or less isolated existence. Instead, a more or less overarching culture emerged, with unwritten rules, customs and trends.
These internet archives of fanfiction provide a wealth of information about the ways fans interact with the stories they consume. For example: how did fix-it fic change through the years? Perhaps Harry Potter can tell us a little more about that. With over 813,000 stories on fanfiction.net and over 222,000 on archiveofourown.org (which has gained much popularity over fanfiction.net in recent years), it is probably the biggest fandom in history. For comparison: the second biggest fandom on fanfiction.net is Naruto (~429,000 stories) and on archiveofourown.org Harry Potter only gets superseded by the Marvel universe (~399,000) stories, which actually consists of a wide array of movies, tv-shows, and comics about a large cast of superheroes and the even broader category of K-pop (~260,000 stories). Furthermore, the first Harry Potter fanfiction on fanfiction.net was published as early as 1999, which allows us to look back into twenty years of fanfiction history.
So get your time-turners ready for a little trip down the history of Harry Potter fanfiction. In part 2 of this blog, we will see how the genre of fix-it fic has developed within this world of witches and wizards.
Bibliography
Rowling, J.K. (2007). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. London: Bloomsbury.
Hellekson, K., & Busse, K. (Eds.). (2014). The fan fiction studies reader. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Spockanalia. Available on https://fanlore.org/wiki/Spockanalia
Grossman, Lev. (2011). “The Boy Who Lived Forever”. In Time.com. Available from http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2081784-2,00.html
Footnotes:
[1] Canon is everything that happens in the original work and is deemed by the (fan) community to be part of the fictional world.
[2] Fandom: the community of people who are fans of a certain franchise, work or artist.