Here’s a roundup of stories on fanworks created for new audiences that might be of interest to fans:
- The Hindu took a look at the revamping of classics through fannish remixes. “Most of us are familiar with ‘A truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’ famously written by Jane Austen in the classic Pride And Prejudice. However, it is also ‘a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains’ or that ‘a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a good romp and a good wife although not necessarily from the same person or from the opposite sex.’ Welcome to the world of adult fan fiction.”
- Writer Lev Grossman shared his fanfic devised for an audience of one, his daughter. “Lily asked me for something about Buckbeak. Buckbeak is a major figure in Lily’s imagination — I think in her mind he ranks somewhere around Ron and Hermione in terms of his importance as a character in the series…For reasons best left to psychoanalysis, I framed the story as what is known in the jargon as a hurt-comfort scenario, with Buckbeak being hurt, and my daughter — whom I recognize is not generally considered to be a ‘canonical’ Harry Potter character — doing the comforting. Probably there are massive canon-breaking errors in it too. I had to extrapolate a bit about what Buckbeak does in the off-season. What can I say: it’s fan fiction.”
- Crime story site Criminal Element held an interview with the creators of Auror’s Tale, a new Harry Potter fan film. Writer Cassandra Johnstone said, “A lot of my design for Auror’s Tale is inspired by the classic aesthetic of the 1920s to 1940s in America, so I began my research on gang violence by observing urban criminal activity during that era. That obviously led me to delving into information of the inter-workings of different factions of mafias. I also wanted to make this screenplay strikingly current, so I watched several documentaries on gang life and current gang politics in New York City and California. Hopefully, The Hellhounds, the wizarding street gang I have created, will play out as a marriage of more recent ideas and what one might consider more nostalgic ones.”
If you’re part of Harry Potter or Jane Austen fandom, or are also creating fanfiction or fan films, why not write about it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.
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