❄️ snowflake challenge day 2: a fanwork that changed my life ❄️

[necessarian]

this is a very open question (it didn't need to be a fanwork, but i went with that in the spirit of fannish positivity) and as such i am giving a particularly strange answer. as some of you might know, my forever fandom is the harry potter fandom. i was an awful, contrary little child and for a few years i refused to read harry potter because everyone liked it, therefore it was too mainstream for me. when i was 9, on a few-hours flight home with my parents, they bought me philosopher's stone to read. i had always been restless, but for that one flight i read non-stop and didn't look up once—and i haven't looked back since.

so, i started writing harry potter fanfic shortly after, of the very basic sort that children write, self-inserts and simple plots. i found online communities at 11, and published my first fic at 12. i very quickly discovered that i had a niche in the harry potter fandom: i was absolutely taken with the minor characters in harry's grade who never got much of the spotlight except in their roles in dumbledore's army. in particular, i was passionate about anthony goldstein, because as a young jew who was lacking representation and role models (outside of, like, rugrats,) the surname "goldstein" leapt off the page at me, and as they say, the rest is history. unfortunately for my budding obsession with anthony goldstein, michael corner, and terry boot (who were barely mentioned in the half-blood prince! i was scandalised!) there was always very little fan content. enter the hp lexicon.

in a world before wikia, the lexicon was there for those of us who were sticklers for canon and needed the detail in our fics to be absolutely perfect. i don't remember exactly how old i was when i stumbled upon it, but it very quickly became another obsession. apart from wiki-like cataloguing, the lexicon also has essays asking the big questions about the potterverse, deconstructing its minutiae with love, never pretension. this was pure, earnest attention to detail, and it was one of the best things i could've been exposed to as a kid. i read all the essays and absorbed their details into my version of canon, but there was one essay in particular that has stuck with me forever.

it's this: secrets of the classlist by diana summers. it's an in-depth demographic study of the known (and unknown) students in harry's grade, and it places them all over britain and gets into issues like class, religion, and ethnicity. some parts of the essay are a little reaching, such as the assumption that terry boot is from an evangelical family just because of the possible reference to jesse boot, or the idea that justin finch-fletchley will meet a violent death because finches are small and vulnerable and fletchley means "field of arrow heads." (and the customary blaise zabini speculation!) but that aside, i'm glad i read this when i was fresh and new to fandom, because it sets a bit of a standard for acknowledging diversity, something the hp books themselves don't do all that well. it's deeply researched and cleanly presented, and has continued to inform my headcanon over the years.

(also, in light of the wank that happened years later, it's worth noting that this essay acknowledged what we all knew: anthony goldstein is jewish!!!)

Comments

[nrgburst]

This is fascinating! Thank you for sharing! :D

[necessarian]

no worries, i'm glad you enjoyed it!

[sperrywink]

Oh, yes. I vaguely remember using the HP Lexicon for just those kind of canonical searches! I never wrote much in HP, but trying to get the details right, the Lexicon was so perfect.

[necessarian]

yeah, it's great! and it goes solely off the books, unlike the wiki, so i find it way more reliable.