The release of the final Harry Potter film got me thinking about endings and how we deal with them. Endings are sad and most of the time we wish things could keep on going, but everything has to stop sometime.
I loved the Harry Potter books but I’d be worried if JK announced she really was going to write more. I could maybe get on board with a prequel but no sequels. I still haven’t gotten over the childhood disappointment of how The Animals of Farthing Wood books turned out. It’s hard to keep investing time and love into the less-interesting and less-original offspring of original characters.
I think with fiction, you have to go out on a high. No dragging it out, going over old plots lines, losing energy and heart until finally it fizzles to a halt. It’s great when something is popular and people like it, but that’s not a reason to keep re-hashing the same old rubbish. We need to be creative and come up with new ideas and projects. We need to use our imagination, not let ourselves become lazy. Down with the Hollywood remakes, with the pointless sequels (I say pointless here as not all sequels are bad).
All this got me thinking about fan fiction, which I’ve never really understood. I get that you can love a fictional world and the characters that inhabit it, but I don’t then get how you make the jump to fan fiction. To me it seems wrong, sacrilegious even. I remember in primary school my friend and I declaring we were going to be writers when we grew up. My friend then shocked me by announcing she was going to continue the What Katy Did series. Even then, something about this felt wrong. A simple google search however reveals that someone has written fan fiction about What Katy Did – maybe my friend fulfilled her childhood ambition after all?
As a kid, I was hoodwinked into buying a Famous Five book that hadn’t been written by Enid Blyton. The cover was particularly devious, as it had Enid Blyton’s famous signature on it but above it in tiny writing was the phrase ‘based on the original idea by.’ I realised when I started reading it that something wasn’t quite right. You can take someone else’s creation but capturing the original tone and voice is something much harder. In the end you’re left with only a shadow of what came before.
I never realised until I searched online just what a huge phenomenon fan fiction is. There’s the obvious ones - Harry Potter, Dr Who, Twilight, but there are also some really odd choices – Black Books, South Pacific, Sesame Street. Even real life people have it written about them – musicians, actors, politicians. Am I wrong in thinking that’s just a bit weird?
I understand when you’re growing up that writing teenage fantasies in your diary or in letters to your friends is a normal, healthy thing to do. But to me fan fiction goes beyond that. It feels wrong to read it, like you’re reading someone’s most personal and private confessions.
Maybe I’m being too critical, I certainly don’t want to diss anyone who takes part in fan fiction. I just don’t understand it. Is it a bit of fun? A form of writing which doesn’t hurt anyone. Is it gratification? The writer isn’t happy with the way things turned out in a fictional world so invents their own version.
Or is it something more sinister? A writer who can’t deal with the fact that the series has ended. An unhealthy obsession with a celebrity. A writer living out their own life through a fictional character?
If you love a book, just turn to the front and start again. Buy the film on DVD, put the album on repeat. It’s better to leave people wanting more, isn’t it?
