Life After Canon: Dramione Fanfiction’s Literary Reconstruction in Harry Potter Fandom
Date
2024
Authors
Linsley, Maya Wei Yan
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Publisher
University of Victoria
Abstract
Drawing on fan studies and Harry Potter studies, I investigate how selected works of transformative fiction (“fanfiction”) reconstruct J.K. Rowling’s fictional Harry Potter characters, specifically through the romantic pairing of Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger (“Dramione”). I build on existing semi-autoethnographical fan scholarship to ask and answer questions about how Harry Potter fans mobilize fanwork as a way of engaging with the source text critically. My analysis centres on three fanfictions, all pseudonymously authored and hosted on the Archive of Our Own (AO3): isthisselfcare’s Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love (2021–22), AccioMjolnir’s Until the Ink Runs Dry (2021), and senlinyu’s Manacled (2018–19). As doorways into a digitally powerful interpretive community, the selected works illuminate a cultural sphere wherein fanworks take social and affective precedence over commercial works. These fan writers take the relationship among source material, readership, and transformative creation very seriously. In doing the same, I demonstrate how fanfiction writers engage in a form of literary interpretation and analysis that transcends the source’s existing conventions, effectively replacing “canon” with “fanon” in the cultural imagination to which they contribute.
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Keywords
fanfiction, fan studies, fandom, Harry Potter studies, transformative work, transformative cultures