This post is an edited version of one originally posted in March 2024, which I decided to republish after reading an article in the New York Times about how “Dramione” — Harry Potter fan-fiction in which Draco and Hermione get together — is breaking through into mainstream publishing. (Of course the authors interviewed performatively denounce J.K. Rowling, and one is even non-binary…)
Around the same time as my original article was published, I discussed some of these ideas with Louise Perry on her podcast “Maiden, Mother, Matriarch”.
I have been fascinated by fanfic since first writing about slash fiction – fan fiction about romantic and/or sexual relationships between two men, both heterosexual in the source material – in 2016. I had never even heard of fanfic, let alone slash, until earlier that year, when I was drafted in by The Economist’s editor to write a companion piece and an editorial about the impact of porn on young people’s ideas about sex, to go along with a piece two business journos had already written about the business model of “free to view” porn. In the course of researching that I stumbled across the concept of slash and thought it was the maddest thing I had ever heard – my jaw literally dropped.
