[Fandom] Now I need to go re-read canon...

[jennaria]

...because I'm fairly sure that Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince is not actually about Harry's sexual awakening, featuring Draco, the aforementioned Half-Blood Prince, and possibly Ginny Weasley. (I told Wife this. She made the most interesting faces in response.)

In any case. I have now looked through ~500 pages of Harry Potter fanfic on AO3, and come to the following additional conclusions:

- Top AU: rewriting all of canon from the ground up, usually but not invariably sorting Harry into Slytherin. Also tends to peter out somewhere around the Triwizard Tournament. Second Most Common AU: Everything Changes After The Fire Nation Attacks Sirius Dies.

- It's fascinating to follow certain tags down a rabbit hole. 19 pages of 'Pureblood Culture' (but only 6 pages of 'Wizarding Traditions')! (And two and a half of those 19 pages are from one particular author who specializes in the kind of romance where it's super-shocking to brush your hair in front of someone who isn't your family or your fiance, and kissing someone, well. Abstinence porn in the finest Victorian tradition.) 9 pages of 'Wrong Boy-Who-Lived' (which usually involve Harry being a twin, and you can figure it out from there)! And 11 pages of 'Creature Inheritance,' wherein it turns out Draco is a Veela, Harry is a Dragon, and Snape really is a vampire after all. (I kid. Sorta. Not as much as I might be.)

- Also, wow, canon is over here and fanon is over there and I see those of y'all who are trying to bridge the gap, y'all are doing God's work, but it's a really big gap.

- Finally, you know that thing where you're reading a lovely rich WIP, and you get to the end and want more? And go check the Last Updated stamp and it's all 'ha ha this was uploaded from a defunct archive and hasn't been updated in over a decade'? Yeah. :hollow laughter:

Comments

[dine]

I've been reading a LOT of HP fic lately, and your findings sure do mirror some of the stuff I've noticed. it's fascinating (and kinda amazing) just where people go with this fandom

[misbegotten]

Loved your analysis of HP fandom. ♥

[hitokage]

is it bad that I think the Fire Nation attacking the fandom would be a good thing? *puts self in corner*


but it is reassuring to see I'm not alone in thinking wow fanon has wandered into the tall weeds in places.... and not in the good way.

[swingandswirl]

Oh gods, you are a braver soul than I am, wandering into the hellfire cesspit that is HP fic. I have transported myself to AU land and am Not Venturing Out. /nods firmly/ That said, would you like recs? I have some excellent ones, most of which are complete.

TBH, your version of HBP sounds more interesting than what happened in canon. For my own sanity HP is, and always will be, an unfinished four-book series to me, because when JKR tries to write books that aren't Dahl-esque school stories with magic pastede on yey the series just breaks in unfun ways, at least for me.

[merit]

There's a lot of really, really good HP fic but it can be a mission to find it! I remember when marriage law fics were all the rage, Neville/Draco is actually the Chosen One, all the flashbacks to the 70s, Harry travels back in time to X period...

From memory, there was a big shift when GoF came out (since there was such a large gap between it and OotP that there was a massive surge of fics) and then OotP ruined a lot of fanon.

[jenett]

I find the responses to the GoF gap so fascinating. (also, I am firmly in Camp "The Deathly Hallows subplot makes no sense.")

I worked out a lot of my issues with the canon via Alternity (which, y'know, if you want to be busy reading for a good while, there's a lot of stuff there. We got a lot better around Y2, and really hit our stride in Y4. Y1 was the shortest year in word and post count by far, so it goes fast.) Readable via journal entries, but probably easier by PDF - website over here has context, and PDFs for download and other links, and I am here for questions if people have them.)

More to the point, we had a lot of conversations in the process about what parts of canon we thought made absolutely no sense, which we liked, but needed modification, and which we wanted to run hard with. (We were universally on "The Deathly Hallows are a silly plot" and ignoring it, for the record. Complete with Monty Python noises in my head.)

On other recs: Lust Over Pendle and the sequels remain about an annual reread for me because I am apparently right here for manners novels with shennanigans and completely ridiculous magical theory.