I’ve always been a voracious reader. I read every single night, within reason. I take a book to work with me for when I get the train there and back and to occupy myself during my lunch hour. I find nothing more than relaxing after that day at work to unwind in the evening with a book. I try to dedicate a full day every week to just read straight through from page one to the end. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, of course, with variations on time and setting and situation, but when I was in my mid-teens, my reading changed a little.
I would continue to read novels
at bedtime and during the weekends, but afternoons and evenings were dedicated
to something else: fan fiction. There are very strong opinions towards fan
fiction, both writing it and reading it, but it kept me going. Around the time I
began delving into the beguiling world of Harry Potter fan fiction (Dramione
all the way in case you were wondering) my mum started to get sick for the
first time. That’s a difficult thing to deal with at fourteen while simultaneously
trying to start your GCSEs. Sp I buried myself in the Harry potter world while I
waited for the Half-Blood Prince and
then the Deathly Hallows to be
released. It was a real high of production at that time – no one knew what was
going to happen.
I found some trash. There were
so many stories were the authors used text speak or no punctuation or they were
just really terrible. But there were some seriously good ones. Stories of
fifty+ chapters, each about 3000/4000 words which were uploaded every week and
were brilliantly written and absorbing. I particularly liked AU (Anothing
Universe), non-cannon and set after the Deathly
Hallows (which hadn’t been released yet so people were free to speculate on
the outcome) where Voldie had won and Draco and Hermione were pushed together
in increasingly awkward and dramatic situations. Admittedly, looking back, Draco’s
character was never really Rowling’s Draco, but Hermione was always believable
and I really liked that ship so I went with it! There were some stories I would
check every single day waiting for an upload. And even now there are some I still
remember fondly, particularly one that was never finished where Hermione just disappeared
one day, leaving behind Draco and her little girl. I was hooked.
Then the final books came out
and the fuss started to fizzle out a little in the world of Harry potter fan
fiction, though it is still being written now which is brilliant, and I started
to bury myself in novels again. Then I moved onto college and A-levels and my
reading changed with the introduction of big, heavy texts that I had to read
multiple times and I eventually forgot about fan fiction.
It wasn’t until my final year
at university when my Tumblr usage and love of the Vampire Diaries was at its height where I heard about a fandom
favourite Delena fan fiction, Bourbon in
Your Eyes. I couldn’t imagine going back to fan fiction for anything
other than my beloved Dramione, but the fandom would NOT stop talking about it.
So one night, when I couldn’t sleep, I thought I’d just read one chapter and
see what it was like. Heh. I read about 35 out of the 50 chapters. It was
brilliant and I was hooked. Once again, AU and past the timeline of the series
(I only read up to book four as I thought they were crap so I can’t comment on
how it fits the timeline of the books) and at the time, a non-canon pairing.
I was reminded just how good
these stories could be. How they encapsulated everything you love about an
existing world, relationships and characters and make it their own. And really
just how good some of the writing was. Then a few ago my sister became obsessed
with TVD after seeing me fall apart due to the ending of season five and I recommended
her read it too. She devoured in it one night.
Amy is also a regular reader of
fan fiction. In fact, she reads it more often that regular fiction, though she
tends to read fics based around Supernatural: often Baby Winchesters (this was
totally unexpected), injured Sam, Destiel and Sam and Lucifer. She’ll read it
on her iPod for hours. For her it satisfies the craving to read without
investing in something super long and in her own words “means I don’t stay up
all night reading”. But there are many mixed opinions on fan fiction:
Neil
Gaiman has a lot
of things to say about it.
Author
of the Song of Ice and Fire series, George
RR Martin, in a post
about the legal side of it: “My
characters are my children … I don’t want people making off with them, thank
you. Even people who say they love my children. I’m sure that’s true, I don’t
doubt the sincerity of the affection, but still… No one gets to abuse the people of Westeros but me.”
Interview with a Vampire author Anne Rice errs on the legal side,
and very severe, too: “I do not allow
fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even
think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your
own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that
you respect my wishes.”
And
there’s a great post on Oh No They Didn’t!
quoting lots of famous authors who feel strongly about it, and I think I actually
agree with Stephenie Meyer the most...
Now I
am not an author and I have never published anything that would warrant fan
fiction, but I see it as an honour to that author, those characters and their
world that fans feel so strongly about it that they need more of it. Obviously,
that’s taking advantage of the fact that no one abuses that privilege and makes
money from it or commercialises it in any way. What do you think?
Do you
think it’s a compliment, or a crime? Have you read any fan fiction? Have you
written any fan fiction? Trash or treasure?
Sophie
