So you sailed away into a grey sky morning, now I'm here to stay, love can be so boring
I have an issue.
I'm a fanfic author and a fanfic reader. That's not really the issue, exactly. I have absolutely no problem with either of those things, in fact, I think they are a very valid pasttime. That's not the point.
Let me take a bit to get to the point.
I've been writing fanfiction since I was nine (for those who are curious, that was 1993). My first fanfiction was a series of five novel length stories. Star Wars fan novels. Seriously. The main character was a young, female, former apprentice of Darth Vader who, when the Emperor found out about her and was understandingly pissed that Vader was betraying him by having an apprentice, ordered her killed. Vader was reluctant to do so because she was his oldest child (Shut up, this was before Episodes 1-3, we had no idea back then that there was no chance that Vader and Amidala hadn't had other children before the twins) so instead he exiled her to a crappy little planet that had a population of something around fifty. Liana (I was trying to stick with the theme of "L" children and also the fact that both of the parents had "A" names) was understandably pissed, so she joined the Rebellion. There was also a subplot with a female aquatic-based Jedi and her young quasi-idiotic Padawan.
Dorky?
Fuck yes.
Did I have fun writing it?
Oh hells yes.
And was Darth Liana a Mary Sue? Probably, but she was a fully developed character with (I thought) a fairly believable story premise.
Regardless, that was my first fanfiction. I've written a lot since - I have a habit of writing epic length fanfictions, too - Star Wars is not the only fandom I've written novels for. I wrote three for Star Trek, seven for X-Men (all written in the first three months after the first movie came out), four for Harry Potter, two for Batman Beyond, one for Naruto, and a current one in the works for Supernatural. How many of these have ever been posted online? One, for Harry Potter. (Hogwart's Express) And novellas? Well... there's a lot, let's put it that way.
I love fanfiction, clearly.
But I don't just love to write it, I love to read it!
Which brings me, finally, to the actual point.
Harry Potter fanfiction, and the problem I have with it
I haven't read a lot of fanfiction in the last two years (Actually, I managed to go an entire 13 months without reading a single fanfiction, even ones that my friends had written.) but lately, because I'm getting very bored, I've been reading again.
I enjoy a lot of different things, but the one thing I really like is Harry and Draco together because I love the massive hate/love thing that's possible in this pairing, and because I don't read fanfiction for the fluff factor, I read it for the angst and the hate and the clever characterization and plot work that can result in it working out. Or not working out, honestly, unhappy endings are also very interesting, because honestly, life doesn't always work out, either.
So I like this pairing, fine, there are about 87 bazillion gajillion million fics with this pairing.
So let's break it down a little more. Amongst this huge variety of fic, I really like "Creature" fic, which are stories that have either Harry or Draco being not quite human. Yeah, this is about the weirdest and most cliche varieties of Harry Potter fics that exist, and I know this. I'm really not sure why I enjoy this kind of fic, but I do, and I don't see the point in being ashamed of it. And of all the fandoms ever, it's one of the few that really lends itself to creature fic.
But here's the problem. Let's say there are 100 000 of this kind of fic out there. Just as a guess. Sounds great, right?
No.
Because of these 100 000, about 50 000 are written by twelve year olds who have no idea how to actually write, and their grammar alone makes my eyes bleed. So I won't read anything that's shit because the author, frankly, can't write their way out of a paper bag.
That leaves 50 000, which is still a lot.
But of that 50 000, about 10 000 have OCs. I used to read OC fics all the time, and I even used to write them. I still do, but I preface each one with "these have OCs", and that's fine. But if the author doesn't warn, and I get three chapters in only to discover that "oh, Harry has two Elven lords to guide him!" I close the window.
That leaves 40 000.
Now, of these 40 000, about 30 000 feature the now very trite plot of "magically, on my 17th birthday, I grew seven inches taller and my hair grew two feet and suddenly I went from a normal guy to a mindblowingly beautiful woman with a penis!" Excuse me while I gag. That's ridiculous! Sure, I like creature fics, I love creature fics, but I don't want something that's this ridiculous! Why not a gradual change, if the creature thing is going to change their appearance, over the months leading up? Or a spell that does it, even? Maybe the change comes after? It's the ridiculous "moment of pain at midnight, now look at how different I am" that pisses me off.
So that leaves us with 10 000.
Which again, would still be totally great. Except that this last 10 000 falls into three categories:
1. Emo!Harry, or his lesser known associate, Emo!Draco. Okay, don't get me wrong, both of them were emo idiots in the books. I read the same series you did. But emo in terms of "oh, I hate my life wah wah wah" like they did in the books is very different from the bizarre versions created by some authors where they look like they stepped out of a Hot Topic catalogue, and for inexplicable reasons, slice themselves up with knives.
Okay, as someone with problems around some of these issues, I get really offended by this kind of fic. What is the desire to see characters slash themselves up? Especially since these authors clearly have no idea what they're talking about, and only seem to write about Self Injury because they have some twisted idea that it's "cool". It's not fucking cool. It's Self Abuse, and it is absolutely stupid. Believe me, it's not cool, and even if it fucking was, these authors do not write it properly.
So these suck, and take away about 2000 of the remaining 10 000, leaving us with 8000.
2. Harry strangely decides that he hates all of his friends, and his friends hate him, just because he's a) no longer 100% human, or b) because he likes Draco now for whatever reason. Dude, the guys stuck with him through Voldemort and near death. Yes, Harry and Ron fight all the fucking time, and yes, there's a very good chance that they'd temporarily fight hard enough to not be best friends, but they always come back together in the end.
And the weird 1% that feature uber!religious Hermione that hates homosexuality? What the frig? Who thought that was a good idea?
So take away another 6000, and there we go.
3. We are now left with the remaining 2000 that are actually good.
Huh.
Well, 2000 isn't bad, but... still.
Why aren't there good fics out there?
*sighs*
I am such a dork.
I'm a fanfic author and a fanfic reader. That's not really the issue, exactly. I have absolutely no problem with either of those things, in fact, I think they are a very valid pasttime. That's not the point.
Let me take a bit to get to the point.
I've been writing fanfiction since I was nine (for those who are curious, that was 1993). My first fanfiction was a series of five novel length stories. Star Wars fan novels. Seriously. The main character was a young, female, former apprentice of Darth Vader who, when the Emperor found out about her and was understandingly pissed that Vader was betraying him by having an apprentice, ordered her killed. Vader was reluctant to do so because she was his oldest child (Shut up, this was before Episodes 1-3, we had no idea back then that there was no chance that Vader and Amidala hadn't had other children before the twins) so instead he exiled her to a crappy little planet that had a population of something around fifty. Liana (I was trying to stick with the theme of "L" children and also the fact that both of the parents had "A" names) was understandably pissed, so she joined the Rebellion. There was also a subplot with a female aquatic-based Jedi and her young quasi-idiotic Padawan.
Dorky?
Fuck yes.
Did I have fun writing it?
Oh hells yes.
And was Darth Liana a Mary Sue? Probably, but she was a fully developed character with (I thought) a fairly believable story premise.
Regardless, that was my first fanfiction. I've written a lot since - I have a habit of writing epic length fanfictions, too - Star Wars is not the only fandom I've written novels for. I wrote three for Star Trek, seven for X-Men (all written in the first three months after the first movie came out), four for Harry Potter, two for Batman Beyond, one for Naruto, and a current one in the works for Supernatural. How many of these have ever been posted online? One, for Harry Potter. (Hogwart's Express) And novellas? Well... there's a lot, let's put it that way.
I love fanfiction, clearly.
But I don't just love to write it, I love to read it!
Which brings me, finally, to the actual point.
Harry Potter fanfiction, and the problem I have with it
I haven't read a lot of fanfiction in the last two years (Actually, I managed to go an entire 13 months without reading a single fanfiction, even ones that my friends had written.) but lately, because I'm getting very bored, I've been reading again.
I enjoy a lot of different things, but the one thing I really like is Harry and Draco together because I love the massive hate/love thing that's possible in this pairing, and because I don't read fanfiction for the fluff factor, I read it for the angst and the hate and the clever characterization and plot work that can result in it working out. Or not working out, honestly, unhappy endings are also very interesting, because honestly, life doesn't always work out, either.
So I like this pairing, fine, there are about 87 bazillion gajillion million fics with this pairing.
So let's break it down a little more. Amongst this huge variety of fic, I really like "Creature" fic, which are stories that have either Harry or Draco being not quite human. Yeah, this is about the weirdest and most cliche varieties of Harry Potter fics that exist, and I know this. I'm really not sure why I enjoy this kind of fic, but I do, and I don't see the point in being ashamed of it. And of all the fandoms ever, it's one of the few that really lends itself to creature fic.
But here's the problem. Let's say there are 100 000 of this kind of fic out there. Just as a guess. Sounds great, right?
No.
Because of these 100 000, about 50 000 are written by twelve year olds who have no idea how to actually write, and their grammar alone makes my eyes bleed. So I won't read anything that's shit because the author, frankly, can't write their way out of a paper bag.
That leaves 50 000, which is still a lot.
But of that 50 000, about 10 000 have OCs. I used to read OC fics all the time, and I even used to write them. I still do, but I preface each one with "these have OCs", and that's fine. But if the author doesn't warn, and I get three chapters in only to discover that "oh, Harry has two Elven lords to guide him!" I close the window.
That leaves 40 000.
Now, of these 40 000, about 30 000 feature the now very trite plot of "magically, on my 17th birthday, I grew seven inches taller and my hair grew two feet and suddenly I went from a normal guy to a mindblowingly beautiful woman with a penis!" Excuse me while I gag. That's ridiculous! Sure, I like creature fics, I love creature fics, but I don't want something that's this ridiculous! Why not a gradual change, if the creature thing is going to change their appearance, over the months leading up? Or a spell that does it, even? Maybe the change comes after? It's the ridiculous "moment of pain at midnight, now look at how different I am" that pisses me off.
So that leaves us with 10 000.
Which again, would still be totally great. Except that this last 10 000 falls into three categories:
1. Emo!Harry, or his lesser known associate, Emo!Draco. Okay, don't get me wrong, both of them were emo idiots in the books. I read the same series you did. But emo in terms of "oh, I hate my life wah wah wah" like they did in the books is very different from the bizarre versions created by some authors where they look like they stepped out of a Hot Topic catalogue, and for inexplicable reasons, slice themselves up with knives.
Okay, as someone with problems around some of these issues, I get really offended by this kind of fic. What is the desire to see characters slash themselves up? Especially since these authors clearly have no idea what they're talking about, and only seem to write about Self Injury because they have some twisted idea that it's "cool". It's not fucking cool. It's Self Abuse, and it is absolutely stupid. Believe me, it's not cool, and even if it fucking was, these authors do not write it properly.
So these suck, and take away about 2000 of the remaining 10 000, leaving us with 8000.
2. Harry strangely decides that he hates all of his friends, and his friends hate him, just because he's a) no longer 100% human, or b) because he likes Draco now for whatever reason. Dude, the guys stuck with him through Voldemort and near death. Yes, Harry and Ron fight all the fucking time, and yes, there's a very good chance that they'd temporarily fight hard enough to not be best friends, but they always come back together in the end.
And the weird 1% that feature uber!religious Hermione that hates homosexuality? What the frig? Who thought that was a good idea?
So take away another 6000, and there we go.
3. We are now left with the remaining 2000 that are actually good.
Huh.
Well, 2000 isn't bad, but... still.
Why aren't there good fics out there?
*sighs*
I am such a dork.