The wonderful world of fanfiction

I’ve found this excellent piece about the obsession some people have with a certain Harry Potter character. It’s very recognizable for me (and a lot of other people) and hopefully it will explain to non-HP fans what it is that makes the character of Severus Snape so loved by many female HP-fans. Read it here!

The topic was already mentioned in the article above: Fanfiction (also “Fanfic”, “Fic”, “FF”). [=It’s the name given to stories peopled with characters, places, and situations of a show/movie/book/comic written by a fan of the show/movie/book/comic for no monetary gain. While it technically violates copyright laws, fans keep doing it, and copyright owners tend to ignore it as long as no money is being exchanged.] I read fanfics and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Fanfiction.net is my main source because it has fanfics about an incredible amount of books, movies, comics, tv-shows, etc. From time to time I read some LotR, CSI and Star Trek fics, but I mostly read HP-fics, for the very simple reason there’s just the most of that category. Some 134033 HP-fics are available at the moment, for comparison, LotR has ‘only’ 32146 fics available. Most of the fanfics are written very poorly and are unoriginal (I absolutely hate Mary Sue’s), but once in a while you stumble upon a fanfic that is actually well-written, with characters that stay in character, ships that interest me and a story I could imagine could actually happen.

Ships are always a major point of discussion in the world of fanfiction. If you don’t like the ship you won’t like the fanfic, even if it’s well-written. There even are different shippers. [=“Shipper” is derived from the word “relationshipper”, which is someone who is interested in and focuses on a coupling of two specific characters. The word “relationshipper” was condensed to “shipper”]. I’m more of a friendshipper and romantic shipper myself. I you “ship” two characters, that means you want them to be romantically involved. Everyone has their own preferences about ships, so now I’m going to bore you with mine. CSI: Grissom/Sara, anyone who can’t see those two belong together should get their eyes checked. LotR: I totally stick with the relationships Tolkien created. Star Trek: Kira/Damar, T’Pol/Tucker. HP: I do not want to read any Hermoine/Ron or Hermoine/Harry fanfics. That’s just wrong. They are best friends and she is way too smart for them. I don’t want to read any Lupin Slash either. In my mind Lupin is heterosexual; he was just a good friend of Sirius and nothing more. I do like to see some kind of friendship evolving between him and Snape, especially now that we’re finally rid of Sirius. Furthermore (for the insiders): HP/GW, DM/GW, GW/NL, DM/HG, HP/DM, HG/SS, it’s all good.

By spending some time at fanfiction.net I’ve learned to keep away from most R-rated stories, because most of those contain scenes you would rather not think about. And I totally avoid smut [= fanfic that usually has no storyline, other then whatever is necessary to get the characters into bed]. There are some very sick people writing fanfics….
I’ve also noticed there’s a lot of Slash [= fanfiction that focuses on the romantic and sexual pairing between two characters of the same sex] published. By the amount of slash you would almost think over half the population is gay and homosexual relationships were entirely accepted throughout society and the world… But last time I checked the situation in the real world was a bit different. Nothing wrong with a well-written slash story though.

Lately I find it more and more difficult to find well-written fics, so if you have any please let me know!