The Not So Dark Side of Harry Potter Fanfiction

The start of my obsession 

I have been a Harry Potter fan for a long time. I watched the first movie when I was six on my uncle’s computer as he had downloaded it and that is when I fell in love. In 2011, Jk Rowling created Pottermore as a way for Harry Potter fans to figure out which house they belonged to, what type of wand did they have, and what their Patronus is.  The website recently got its name switched from Pottermore to Wizarding World.  Wizarding World now includes an online Fandom where all the fans can come together and share their thoughts on Harry Potter. For example, fans can ask about fanfiction recommendations. Harry Potter fans have been writing fanfiction since 2005. However, I have been reading Harry Potter Fanfiction since August 2015. Harry Potter Fanfictions are a way to keep the books alive, but in some cases, some fanfictions are inappropriate.  

 Pornographic Fanfictions  

  

   I have accounts on the websites Fanfiction.net and Archive of our own, Wattpad, and Quotev. However, the most popular are Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own when it comes to reading Harry Potter Fanfiction. Archive of Our Own is where you can find the fanfictions that resemble porn. In the Article The New Pornography: The Rise of Fanfic, Kelly Caputo states, ” So much porn, actually, that every time it seemed like there was nothing new to write about, I found more character pairings, more new positions, and more exotic locations.”(Caputo, 2016, pg.5) Caputo wrote a research paper about the world of fanfiction and decided to focus on the Harry Potter fandom. Caputo decided to write fanfiction to help her with her research and went onto the website Archive of our own to get inspiration on how to write a pornographic fanfiction. Archive of Our Own uses tags to help the readers to find what kind of story they are looking for, for example, threesomes or foursomes, BDSM, and Incest. Unlike Fanfiction.net, on Archive of Our Own, you can go into detail about what the characters are doing during sex. I have seen stories where Harry Potter is having sex with different women and girls at Hogwarts. I do not mind pornographic fanfictions at all. Pornographic fanfictions are a way for adults to express their crushes on the Harry Potter Characters. I think people should be more open-minded when it comes to pornographic fanfictions and not judge the people who read them.  

      

Female Harry Vs Male Harry  

 

Harry Potter fanfiction writers give the characters subcategories to help the characters come to life. Hill and Pecoskie (2017) found that fanfiction writers create subcategories for the characters that include jobs, sexualities, and genres. The genres include time-travel, disabilities, abductions, and relationships. Fanfiction.net has communities created with different types of subcategories for Harry Potter. On Fanfiction.net, you will find FemHarry, Dark Harry, Alternative Universes, and The Next Generation stories. Seales (2015) stated 12 ways the books would have been different if Harry had been a girl. I have seen some of the ways she mentioned in FemHarry stories. For example, Severus Snape would not hate a female Harry, and female Harry would have a crush on Fred Weasley.  In the books, Snape hated Harry because he looked like his father, James Potter, who used to bully Snape. However, in the female Harry fanfictions, Snape likes Harry as a daughter because she reminds him of her mother Lily, who he loved all his life. In those types of fanfictions, Fred Weasley ends up liking female Harry and bothers her just like her father with her mother until they ended up together. Unlike male Harry, who broke up with Ginny Weasley for her safety, female Harry would not leave Fred because she knows he can take care of himself. I prefer female Harry to male Harry because female Harry inspires me to be a strong independent woman who stands up to evil. Female Harry would have inspired so many young girls had it been a real book.  

 It is ShowTime       

 

        In twenty fifteen, I had decided that I wanted to write a two-part fanfiction on Luna Lovegood. Luna Lovegood is one of Harry Potter’s friends. Others see Luna as crazy because she believes in non-existent creatures. My fanfiction was called showtime, I wrote it, on Wattpad. In my fanfiction, I had a modern-day Hogwarts. In the story, Hogwarts was having a talent show, where students can display their talents, whether it was singing, dancing, or even playing an instrument. Luna sang and danced to the song Like a Virgin by Madonna. Luna’s performance was seductive, which caused the boys to take notice and want to be with her. My fanfiction did not resemble porn due to being written on Wattpad and I being fifteen. However, if I were to have to write a fanfiction that had to have sex scenes, I could by using the fanfictions on Archive of Our Own. I have been recently thinking about rewriting that two-part story and making it into a chapter book. I was thinking of Luna using a fake name to sign up for the talent show, and she would practice in secret until Blaise Zabini would discover her in the abandoned classroom. I was going to have Blaise then help Luna, and they would have ended up falling in love. I am hoping to start the new edits of the story after this semester ends.  

The Final Words  

While there are Harry Potter fanfictions that are appropriate for younger audiences, there are also fanfictions that resemble porn. Those types of fanfictions make parents mad when they find their kids’ reading them. However, it is not the writer’s responsibility to make sure no kids are reading mature content. Parents should be the ones monitoring what their kids are viewing. Pornographic fanfictions are for people eighteen years and older, Archive of Our Own always warns their readers if the story they are about to read is for mature audiences. Parents should not be annoyed at the website or the writers but should check in with their kids who are ignoring the restrictions for these stories and still reading them.  Parents should not be judging people who write pornographic fanfictions just because they do not like that idea of porn and books coming together. 

 

 

 

 

                                     Reference Page

 

Caputo, Kelly. (2016). The New Pornography: The Rise of Fanfic, The Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY, Capstones.

Hill, H., & Pecoskie, J. (2017). Information activities as serious leisure within the fanfiction community. Journal of Documentation, 73(5), 843-857.

Seales, J. (2015, June 19). What If Harry Potter Had Been A Girl? Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/articles/90942-12-ways-the-harry-potter-books-would-be-different-if-harry-potter-were-a-girl