Why I Write Fanfiction

    What if Hermione Granger was actually a Death Eater?

     What if Hannibal and Will survive the Fall?

    What if the Peverells were necromancers?

    

    What if Hannibal and Will became Murder Husbands and then a Murder Family with their adopted daughter, Abigail Hobbs?

    These are all wonderful questions. They can all be answered by the creative minds of dedicated fans. In fact, I’ve written fanfiction about all of these topics, and while only two are published on fanfiction sites, the other two (the ones about Hannibal and Will) are still being written and lay close to my heart.

    There is something so satisfying about taking a world you already love, albeit not created by you, and making your favourite characters be who you think they could have been, or write about what could have happened or some other crazy, wacky idea that is enjoyable. I have spoken of two Harry Potter fanfictions and reviewed them on this blog already. I have spoken about Harry Potter ships in the fandom (Bellamione and Tomarry, my personal favourite). I have not written to you all about my desire and love of writing fanfictions. Now, why write fanfiction when I could write my own book?

    I don’t really know. I know that all of my ideas are far too similar to Harry Potter, Hannibal or the Vampire Chronicles, and I know that while my characters are interesting to me, they are underdeveloped, but far more developed than any conceivable plot I have thought about. There are so many documents that have begun great and have declined into ramblings of a mad man (myself). I simply cannot think of a story idea that is as good or better than the already created works. Perhaps I am not a true writer, perhaps I lack the gift of writing, perhaps I am lacking altogether, but that’s alright, because I don’t care. I enjoy writing fanfiction, and if tomorrow J. K. Rowling asks for all the fanfictions of Harry Potter to be taken down and for nobody to write fanfiction about her characters anymore (Please, never do that, I beg of you JK) then I would, because not only do I love her characters, but I respect her rights and her works as a writer. I admire her, and by writing stories of her characters, I feel the satisfaction of writing a story without having to actually write a story. All the hard-to-find ideas and concepts are already prepared. I’m not a lazy person (when it comes to my creative skills anyway) but I don’t have time anymore to write fanfiction often, even less time to write an original story. Plus, is there anything that’s truly original anymore? Everything has already been done hasn’t it? I don’t want to beat vampires like a dead horse… or however that saying goes.

     I enjoy writing fanfiction because I get to explore the worlds already created, and I can entertain people who love the original story as much as I do. I consider the Hannibal TV show to be fanfiction-on-screen-and-making-money because I read The Red Dragon and it was nothing like the show. Most of the show’s events never happened in the book, therefore it was a prequel, therefore it was fanfiction. Even professional writers, like Brian Fuller (the writer of Hannibal the TV show), enjoy writing fanfiction from time to time. I like to think of it as an escape, just like when I read fanfiction that other people have written.     

 

    Now, I’m going to have a lot of pictures in the rest of this post because I somehow just lost thirty minutes of my day looking at the image results to my google search of ‘fanfiction.’ That is essentially how I spend my time when I should be writing. Whether it an essay, a fanfiction, a original story or a shopping list (well technically I write them for my grandma because she always manages to either break the lead in the pencil or can’t find a ‘sharp one’... or my aunt is being lazy and I hog all the sticky notes so nobody can find them) I always procrastinate and put it off. Just recently I started reading a new fanfiction, and it’s very, very long.

    Honestly, I really wish I could write a story with my own characters, with my own plot, with my own ideas… but that sounds like I am simply asking for too much. I have three notebooks full of characters that I’ve created, two moleskine and one spiral, (yes, I’ve dedicated my only two moleskine notebooks of my entire life to character planning) and I haven’t found or come up with one decent plot. I’ve been creating, tweaking and editing those same seventeen characters for four years (or something like that) and I have yet to write a full story with them in it. I can’t even come up with a short story for them to shine in. Sometimes I’m more disappointed that the world won’t be able to get to know my characters than I am for myself because my characters are really their own people. They’re so interesting! I feel like they’re my little children and I have to do something for them, dedicate my life to their story, but I don’t… I can’t, and it’s sad to think about, so I usually don’t think about it.  What I wish I could do? I wish I could be a writer. I wish I could be a successful writer, but I can hardly use commas properly.

     I wish I could write the next Harry Potter or the next Vampire Chronicles, Lord of the Rings, or even Twilight. I’m that desperate! (Although I would like to be known for the good things about my writing, not the bad.) I have been writing stories with mature themes (not just sexual/explicit content but with legitemate mature themes like abuse and the other not-so-nice-to-talk-about things) since I was in the fifth grade. I have been trying since the kindergarten to write a romance novel. (When I look back to my one page document, size 14, Comic Sans font in an alternating black and crimson colour pattern, I am rather impressed at my 5-6 year old self. I was still obsessed with vampires even back then -- I could tell from the title of the Word document since it was called ‘Vampyres Rock!’) I have been writing with British Spellings since the third grade and was commonly marked incorrect for my spellings (even though the British came first therefore their English is more, I don’t know, proper I would say) despite the extra ‘u’, ‘ae’, and ‘s’ instead of the ‘z’ make the words look so much nicer to me.

    In five years I would like to see myself a writer, but I would also like to see myself as a Forensic Pathologist, but I’m not sure if I want to be an M.E because of the desire to help people, like I think sometimes, or because they make good money and I want to be able to support a family in a way that my family has struggled to do with me. I want my family, in the future, to live a nicer, wealthier, overall better life than I did when I was growing up (still am growing up too, actually).

    I can sit at my computer for hours and not type a single word, or I can be sleeping, wake up and type two thousand. It’s not fair how difficult or easy they come to me. Why can’t I be like Stephen King? I have never read his book entirely since we’re banned from our library for stealing a book (because someone -- not pointing my finger in my grandmother’s direction -- forgot to return the book and when I asked where it was, that someone told me they had turned it back in… three weeks later, we find it in a pile of magazines) and since we don’t have enough money for books to read for pleasure (really we’re on a budget and can hardly afford school for me and I feel terrible because I don’t qualify for FAFSA yet because I’m still in high school) I haven’t gotten around to reading his tips for writers, but I have read excerpts of it and he has said things along the lines of ‘write three months, if you don’t finish your manuscript in three months, then the book wasn’t really to be,’ and everytime I think about writing a novel, I think about my one fanfiction which is far longer than any normally accepted novel (in fact it’s over 160k words while a typical first novel is about 80k)  but that’s a fanfiction and I can’t get famous nor can I make money for writing fanfiction.

    Sometimes I honestly feel so useless around my house. I’m a depressed, anxiety-ridden, stressed-out teenager and the best I have to offer in life is my somewhat average intelligence and a fast typing speed. I can also play guitar but I’m not Keith Richards good, so that’s pretty pointless to try and pursue. Maybe I’m just being a pessimist about all of this. I mean, I’ve gotten this far, and I never thought I’d live past sixteen.

    You know, I’m wondering if my English Professor will actually read all these posts. It would be brilliant if she did, but I don’t see her reading so many posts from her students. She has a large class and I’m sure she has multiple classes. She would be swamped with blogs to read. I was worried for a second. No need, no professor of mine will see my ramblings and insecurities. Maybe I’ve gotten too off-track, maybe I’ve derailed slightly from the point. This was supposed to be about fanfiction, not my avoidant personality disorder and mood disorders. No. Although I do find it typical that writers suffer from mental disorders, in fact most successful people do suffer from a mental illness of some sort or form. I don’t have any facts to back that up, so technically it isn’t ‘in fact’ but I have heard it often enough to believe it. I’m not going to look it up because I want to continue thinking that it’s true even if it isn’t because it makes me feel better.

    Back to writing Original and Fan fiction. So, I found this picture of Tony Stark, and at one point in my life I was obsessed with the witty, snarky Tony Stark from the Avengers, and it sums up my researching habits and then my over-eagerness to learn about the things and then my confidence in being correct about those things -- and let’s face it, when you learn something overnight, you usually aren’t going to be as correct as a genius with an eidetic memory -- and know everything in which you probably just reviewed during the night or during the previous day.

    I wish I researched as much as I did for my novels for my school work. Maybe I would be passing all of them with flying colours. I kid, I wouldn’t be able to pass my classes if an A-grade bit me on the behind.