Desiderius Price

Trouble with Harry pursuing Hermione (or Ron) is that it’d diminish the odd one out. Prior to HBP, there was Ginny infatuated with Harry, but mostly “Ron’s sister” back to her. Early in HBP, Ginny gave Harry cookies made “just for him”… rest of the book had poisonings due to bad batches of love potions to others, so yeah, IMO, Ginny drugged Harry up, and I’m guessing with Molly Weasley’s help. I even poke fun at Ginny’s infatuation in the explicit version of my fanfic Speculating where the author will take the narrative in the next book is fun. When I was working on my fifth year story, JKR was dropping hints to book five, and yeah, I made a guess, and TBH, I think mine’s better in some ways, more impactful.

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And some fanfiction can be better written than canon. Prior to HBP, the worst of the Harry/Ginny hookups read way, way, better than the “sudden urge” of the books… unless you think she used a love potion on Harry. Also, prior to book 5, there was a lot of speculative/predictive fanfics that were taking a guess to where canon was headed, many got abandoned when they became “AU” with the book’s release. (Ditto for books 6, likely 7 too)

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That these types of questions can be asked and answered in serious fashion makes AFF forums a good place

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Originals are challenging, because you’ve got to create the world, you’ve got to introduce characters. And in order to do that, you need to create them yourself – and once created, to simply scrap and move onto another project is...well, off putting. Writing up oneshots in the same world help with development, backstory. This is all stuff fanfiction doesn’t necessarily need. However, having delved into originals, when I came back to my fanfiction, I’ve been able to drum up some interesting new characters. For my current potter fanfic, it’s uses GoF as canon (because this story predates the release of OotP), but it covers Harry’s years six & seven. Having original experience on this rewrite, I wanted a foil for Harry helping Oliver Wood with flying lessons for first years. So, I created this boy with issues, introverted, shy, and smart, but doesn’t really know his own father (solicitor trying to get out of his moral obligations), so that Harry spends the entire lesson helping this one boy rather than helping Oliver with any of the other students. Ash, the boy, kept poking his head back into the story, and has become an invaluable insight with a better Hogwarts perspective than I could in the previous iterations of the story, as Harry’s progressively more and more isolated from both Hogwarts and the wizarding world. Overall, Ash was a “happy little accident” that’s made the story better.

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If we wade into originals… mine started off as a oneshot, meant as a pwp, way later than posted stories… and then my mind rebelled, where the creation of the particular society became way more interesting, so now I’ve got a suite of stories, some complete, some works in progress, others light skeletons.

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I’d upvote that comment if I could. No, don’t give up.

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My potter fanfic makes Harry’s time in canon… a cakewalk. I do stray a bit OOC because I do have the death eaters effective in their designs and plans. I also let myself get bogged down in the details, but that captures the grind that Harry would experience in this, as he steadily becomes persona-non-grata throughout the wizarding world, unable to stop the slog of negative press slandering him. It’s enjoyable to keep writing here, because the narrative is so addictive for what comes next; even on the rewrite, despite knowing, it’s still enjoyable. For other fandoms, I occasionally do get thoughts, mostly of the mary/gary sue variety, nothing worth writing about TBH, because original works is where the rest of my fun writing is at.

“Money attracts lawyers” is a useful adage. So even if a person finds a magical trick to legally make money out of fanfiction, its unlikely to break even with all the legal fees as they get sued by those corporate lawyers. And there’s always the risk that court cases might generally outlaw fanfiction too (unless the original author explicitly gives permission). Because fanfiction is in that gray zone, it’s better for EVERYBODY to charge nothing, and keep it free – don’t be the jerk that ruins it for all. However, it’s worse with plush books, as it appears they’re STEALING the stories too, simple theft, and rebranding it as their own. Though I wonder if we should all respond by making sure that every fanfic out there is at least 5 million words...kill ‘em with printing fees.

My favorite retort… that it’s so corrosive that it’ll eat through granite (given enough time). It’s also found in the blood of autistics and serial killers.

One trick I do is to take a snippet of my stories, run them through google (with “” around it), see what comes up in the search results..