Cite as: Cuntz-Leng, Vera: All Was Well? A Comparison of Harry Potter Slash Fan Fiction Activity Online in the Years 2013 and 2024. In: Fandom | Cultures | Research 1 (1), 2024, pp.39–62. AUTHOR Vera Cuntz-Leng studied film and theatre studies in Mainz, Marburg, and Vienna. She holds a PhD in media studies from Eberhard Karls-Universität Tübingen and currently works at the department of media studies of Philipps-Uni- versität Marburg. Her main research interests include fan culture and fiction, serial narratives, and the fantastic. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3889-937X KEYWORDS AO3, digital archives, data sustainability and longevity, fan communities, fan fiction, fanfiction, Harry Potter, slash ABSTRACT Harry Potter fan fiction accompanied and dominated the establishing of fan fiction as cultural practice in the digital realm that appealed to a wider mainstream audience. It is undeniably still a large community with an immense creative output, whereas slash fan fiction (homoerotic and/or queer rewritings of the original material) make up for more than half of all the Harry Potter fan texts. However, platforms and certain trends (e.g., popular pairings) have evolved and changed over time. Therefore, the approach of this paper is two-fold: Comparing data gathered in 2013 on Harry Potter slash fan fiction on the four platforms Archive of Our Own, FictionAlley, Ink-Stained Fingers, and Restricted Section with recent data of Archive of Our Own enables us to show a) changes in the quantity and availability of fan fiction as well as migration movements and b) changes in the popularity of certain character constellations (pairings/ships) used in Harry Potter slash. It will become visible that the Harry Potter slash fandom is still very much alive but—or possibly because—it is not a static phenomenon but very sensitive towards external and internal influences. Long-term monitoring of online fan activities may help us to better understand why and how fandoms evolve and persist over time. Vera Cuntz-Leng All Was Well? A Comparison of Harry Potter Slash Fan Fiction Activity Online in the Years 2013 and 2024 https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3889-937X All Was Well? | 39 Introduction When thinking about a fandom with enormous fan-cultural activity, Harry Potter (HP in the following) is one of the first franchises that comes to mind. The HP fan community has grown and evolved parallel to the publication of official content—since the Pottermania craze starting around the turn of the century until today—and also changed its forms of expression and modes of communication and interaction with the constantly evolving possibilities and transformations of the media landscape. From its early days on, slash (fannish works ranging in content from light homoerotic undertones to gay pornography) played a major role in the HP fandom. In my PhD project (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015), I documented the then-current state of HP slash fan fiction back in 2013. This had been a time when fandoms had already moved online, and the multi-fandom platform Archive of Our Own (AO3 in the following) started to grow. But the HP canon seemed to be officially closed with the release of the last movie in 2011. However, this did not have the diminishing impact on the fan community that I would have predicted back then. The stage production Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) and the spin-off movie series Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (re- leased in 2016, 2018, and 2022, respectively) brought new official content to an already rich fantastic universe and its flourishing fandom. In addition, the controversies around HP author Joanne K. Rowling and transphobia did not stop the ongoing expansion of HP fan fiction as well as the constant embrace of queer readings of the HP text. Nevertheless, the HP slash fandom had not been blind towards these developments and various other factors, some of them rooted inside the community itself, as I intend to show in this paper. Digital platforms for publishing fan fiction changed over time and it is also possible to detect certain trends in the HP slash fan fiction community (e.g., the rise and fall in the popularity of certain pairings/ships). Therefore, the approach of this paper is two-fold: By comparing data gathered in 2013 on HP slash fan fiction on AO3 and three other fan fiction platforms that were dedicated solely to HP, namely Fiction Alley, Ink-Stained Fingers, and Restricted Section, with recent data of HP slash on AO3 (2024), it will be possible to show a) changes in the quantity and availability of fan fiction as well as migration movements online and b) changes in the popularity of certain character constellations used in HP slash during the last deca- de. Today, the fan base of HP slash is still very much alive despite numerous turbulences, probably precise- ly because it is not a static phenomenon, but very sensitive to external and internal influences. Long-term monitoring of online fan activities may help us to better understand why and how fandoms evolve and persist over time. Fan cultures can thus be described as permeable systems with permutable boundaries whose longe vity lies in their ability to constantly adapt and stay open towards new members and influences. All Was Well? A Comparison of Harry Potter Slash Fan Fiction Activity Online in the Years 2013 and 2024 Vera Cuntz-Leng 40 | Vera Cuntz-Leng Methodology and corpus In 2013, during my PhD project (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015), I was able to manually collect data on the amount of HP slash fan fiction on four fan fiction platforms: AO3, FictionAlley, Ink-Stained Fingers, and Restric- ted Section. They all share a non-commercial approach to fandom as well as a non-restrictive policy regarding content and ratings. Back then, the focus of my research had been on HP slash and femslash pairings: non-canonical male-male or female-female character configurations that have been romantici- zed and/or eroticized through fan texts. I was able to show that the three most popular HP slash pairings satisfy different needs as well as enable different narratives because three major tropes of slash were used: enemies become lovers (enemyslash) in Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, friends fall for each other in Remus Lupin/Sirius Black (buddyslash), and characters with differing levels of personal, social, or cultural agency become lovers (powerslash) as in Harry Potter/Severus Snape (cf. Tosenberger 2008, pp.192ff.; Cuntz-Leng 2015, p.85 and p.102). More than ten years have passed. It has been a busy time for Harry. The contradictions and conflicts taking place between Rowling and the HP fan community back then (e.g., due to cease-and-desist-orders by Warner Bros. known as the Potter Wars [cf. Jenkins 2006, pp.169ff.] or the attempts to control the fan responses to HP through Pottermore [cf. Cuntz-Leng 2013; Cuntz-Leng 2014]) have only increased further. The aim of this paper is the analysis of developments both in platforms and in the changing inter- ests of fans in specific character configurations within the past decade. Following a brief introduction into the HP phenomenon in regards of its connection to the fan fiction community, I will compare data regarding a) the sustainability of texts and platform migration and b) regarding developments in ships. By the comparison of data from 2013 and 2024, it will become possi ble to show and explain the decline of fandom-specific fan fiction platforms as well as the increasing impact of AO3 and the growth in HP fan fiction. Moreover, continuous changes and developments can be detected by looking at the data on the percentual growth of fan fiction in certain pairings on AO3 during this period of time (elevated by relationship tags). This analysis will be supported by data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futu- rephotons.io/shipwatch/), which cover the timespan 2004-2021. Unfortunately, the Ship/Watch data is only available up to December 2021 and the authors could neither be identified nor contacted, but the correctness of the data could be validated by random sampling. In addition, my PhD thesis was based on a corpus of 114 HP slash fan fictions, written by 104 diffe- rent authors (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, pp.459-473), which I had used to show how the ‘queer potential’ of the HP source material is intertwined with the ‘queer readings’ by slash fans. In this paper, I will return to these 114 fan texts and check their online availability to exemplarily show the longevity of fan fiction availability online and their sites of migration. This sample addresses exemplary both the assumed mo- nopolistic position of AO3 as fandom’s central gathering point today as well as the problem of (the lack of) sustainability and the possible short lifespan of fan texts as research objects. From then to now In 2011, when the eighth movie in the HP franchise had its theatrical release, it seemed that the HP canon was officially closed. However, in the years that followed, new releases added to the fictional uni- verse: the social media platform Pottermore/The Wizarding World, the play and stage production of https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch/ https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch/ All Was Well? | 41 Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the movie spin-off series Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and a broad variety of video games, among others. Recently, a TV series reboot had been announced by Warner Bros., expected to air in 2025/26. At the same time, the fandom surrounding the ‘boy who lived’ remained fertile regarding its fan fiction production. For example, the amount of HP fan fiction posted annually on AO3 increased significantly over the past five years. The total number of newly uploaded HP texts was 36,334 in 2019, 65,243 in 2020, 71,796 in 2021, 69,803 in 2022, and 83,087 in 2023, resulting in a total amount of 529,347 HP fan fictions hosted on AO3 in September 2024. Fan fiction writing as a cultural practice still attracts numerous new contributors, trend still rising. They can be described as a community with various forms of expression. Although many new fandoms emerged since the first HP fan fiction, no other fandom, aside from Marvel, has been able to outperform HP in terms of its productivity and longevity yet. Neither the supposed closing of the canon nor the con- troversies surrounding Joanne K. Rowling and transphobia allegations in June 2020, which were met with an enormous uproar in online fandom, prevented the HP fan fiction community from growth and expansion (Fig.1). The same applies to the financial failure of the Fantastic Beasts spin-off series and its premature cancellation in the aftermath of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trials in 2022 (cf. Ravell 2023, pp.265f.). As indicated by the red line in Fig.1, the total amount of HP fan fictions hosted on AO3 grew constantly and significantly, from just over 40,000 texts in 2012 to more than 320,000 in 2021 (and about 200,000 more during the past three years). However, after years of a constant increase in both the growth as well as in the pace of the fandom’s expansion, we can see that a peak was reached in 2020, followed by a sudden decline of HP fan fiction productivity (see Fig.1) that fits the timing with the controversies surrounding Rowling’s views on trans- women and the trending of the hashtag #RIPJKRowling on Twitter in September 2020 (cf. Ravell 2023). This drop in fan fiction activity mirrors the immediacy of fan fiction writers’ reactions to significant in- terruptions in a fandom (e.g., new installment of a series published; cf. De Kosnik et al. 2015, pp.152ff.). Fig.1: HP fan fiction activity on AO3 monthly (blue), general growth in HP fan fiction on AO3 over time (red), 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch 42 | Vera Cuntz-Leng Since then, not only have many fans ‘cancelled’ Rowling as an author persona and claimed HP as “theirs” (Duggan 2022, p.163), some fans have also publicly left the fandom and deleted their fan fictions.1 HP scholarship was affected as well (e.g., HP scholar and trans-activist Tolonda Henderson refuses to use the author’s name in a book chapter, referring to Rowling in analogy to Voldemort as “She-Who- Must-Not-Be-Named” [Henderson 2022, p.165]). Fan organizations like the Harry Potter Alliance dis- tanced themselves from Rowling by changing their name to Fandom Forward (cf. Ravell 2023, p.243). And the two biggest HP fan websites Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet withdrew from providing any infor- mation on the author’s achievements in the future. However, slash (and femslash)—meaning fannish works ranging in content from light homoerotic undertones to explicit gay pornography—is written by a variety of authors and accounts for a large part of texts in the HP fandom. HP “fans’ queer reading practices were further encouraged by the long-lived dedication of media fans to homoerotic fan fiction […] As experienced media fans migrated to the Harry Potter fandom, they brought with them the queer traditions established elsewhere” (Duggan 2022, p.155). The interrelatedness of HP, queerness, and the (slash) fan community and fan fiction has been a staple of extensive research, accompanying Harry’s journey from page to screen to the digital realm (e.g., Willis 2006; Tosenberger 2008; Ehnenn 2011; Balay 2012; Cuntz-Leng 2015; Duggan 2022). In the early days of fan studies, it had often been assumed that writers of slash predominantly iden- tified as straight cis women (cf. Russ 1985; Bacon-Smith 1991) but queer writers have in fact “always participated alongside straight women in slash fandom and people of all sexual orientations have found slash a place for exploring their differences and commonalities” (Green/Jenkins/Jenkins 1998, p.11); this claim is heavily supported by recent data (cf. Rouse/Stanfill 2023; for HP fandom in particular see Duggan 2020; Duggan 2022, p.157). In consequence, HP fandom has become for the most part a queer- friendly environment with a queer sensibility increasing over the years, which makes the renunciation of significant parts of the HP fan community all the more plausible. Tracing fan fiction migration through time and platforms In this section, I will explore the developments in the usage of platforms and the sustainability of fan fiction online. Many of the HP slash fan fictions that are popular in fandom today were not written and published by the time of my dissertation. Further, my research did not focus on the most popular slash fan works by that time—without the sophisticated search engine of AO3, it had been nearly impossible by then to tell how much readership a specific work gained. I had to rely on recommendation lists by fans; and some fan fictions were included in the corpus solely because of their very specific fit to particular research questions of my qualitative approach (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, p.104). The fan fiction corpus of my thesis consisted of a total of 114 works by 104 different authors. The majority of these texts were written in English, 14 were in German. Only one of the fictions in the sample was archived on AO3 in 2013. The titles and authors of the fan fictions, their current status of availability, and links to the sources are provided in the appendix (color codes in the appendix are similar to Fig.2). 1 This process is not yet completed as HP fan fiction writers still abandon the fandom and delete their accounts and fic- tions. As the number of newly published texts exceeds the number of deleted fan fictions, this does not have the effect of slowly reducing the total number of HP texts. All Was Well? | 43 By following these 114 fictions through the WWW, I will show that HP fandom did not only grow in quantity, it has to be taken into account that it also lost some of its contents. Regarding the development of my sample, I was interested in the following questions: How many fan fictions are still available un- der their original address? How many have actually moved to AO3 (or elsewhere)? And how many have vanished from the web for good? The three fan fiction platforms dedicated to HP alone that I frequented during my research over a decade ago—FictionAlley, Ink-Stained Fingers, and Restricted Section—have been abandoned in the meantime, and it is to be assumed that their content had been transferred to AO3 by the Open Doors project. Open Doors is an initiative by the Organization for Transformative Works and Cultures (OTW) to secure content sustainably (opendoors.transformativeworks.org; cf. Cuntz-Leng 2023). According to Open Doors, the contents of 13 different abandoned HP fan fiction archives has been imported to AO3 so far. Other fan fictions in my sample originated from private websites and blogs. Many of the fan fictions of the sample that are still available (and have sometimes been copied to AO3 in the meantime) originate from blogs and communities like MySpace, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal in particular that used to be very popular with online fandoms in the early 2000s (cf. Coppa 2006, p.57; Bury 2017) because its design “enable[s] community formation” (Bury 2017, p.628). However, the users’ trust in LiveJournal decreased rather quickly, and fans started to withdraw from the social networking site (e.g., after Strikethrough and Boldthrough in 2007, cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, pp.99f.; Bury 2017). With AO3 still somewhat in the making in 2013 (open beta was launched in November 2009)—conceptua- lized as a multifandom-archive without commercial and corporeal interests that was desired and em- braced by online fandom with high hopes (cf. Price 2019)—fans began to recognize a diminishing of fan activity on LiveJournal. In the 2010s, also tumblr became a social networking site strongly associated with fandom. And after the LiveJournal servers had been moved to Russia in 2016 and the terms of ser- vice regarding queer-friendly content had been updated, especially slash fans forsake LiveJournal for good. I assumed that most of the fan fiction sources of 2013 would be gone due to these circumstances. Interestingly, the majority of the content is still there, lurking in abandoned places on the WWW. Fig.2: Developments in the HP fan fiction sample, May 2024 http://opendoors.transformativeworks.org 44 | Vera Cuntz-Leng As Fig.2 shows, a total number of 18 fan fictions of the sample became unavailable since 2013 (15.8% [red]). Although this is less than I expected, the proportion of lost texts is still significant because our perception of how HP fan fiction used to look like is altered. For example: Of the two fan fictions men- tioned by Tosenberger (2008, cf. p.192) as key works in the early HP fandom, Love Under Will by ‘big name fan’ (BNF) and blogger Aja (Romano) is not archived on AO3 or anywhere else online (Rhysenn’s Irresistible Poison is still available on fanfiction.net but was not republished to AO3). The significance of the loss of certain key texts in the HP fandom is also true for works that were of special significance for my own research, e.g., the works by Snegurochka and Diana Williams’ 31 Flavours. As shown by Fig.2, the original link of 58 fictions is still intact (50.9% [blue, green, azure, grey]). 38 texts were moved to another website (33% [apricot, yellow, orange])—the majority (30 entries) to AO3 (78.9% [apricot]). Almost half of the sample—56 texts—are now available on AO3 (49.1% [apricot, azure, grey, orange]). Although the community aspects that are at heart of fan cultures are very limited on AO3, these numbers underline the exceptional status AO3 has gained as a reliable and sustainable ar- chive that accumulates fan fiction content from both present and past. However, more interactive facets of fan fiction culture are taking place on complementary platforms like tumblr, TikTok, and Goodreads. Commercial multi-fandom archives like fanfiction.net and Wattpad are still important players—especi- ally with new fans. AO3’s approach on core elements of fan culture’s moral codices nevertheless attracts writers who remain in their fan communities on the long term. This is supported by the observation that a lot of the content now available on AO3 was not migrated by Open Doors but subsequently uploaded by the authors themselves, sometimes many years after the initial publication. The following example serves as an illustration for this course of action and also underlines the aspect of internationalization aided by AO3 in order to become a platform for a world-wide communi- ty that features lots of non-English content: The two fan fiction authors Hui-Buh and LoreleiLee both hosted their German-language HP slash fan fiction on the German multi-fandom archive fanfiktion.de in 2013. Although fanfiktion.de is still active, the authors decided to upload some of their fan fictions— interestingly not all of them—to AO3 in the meantime. The authors’ commentary in the notes suggests a long-term commitment to HP and online fan culture. Drei Freunde sollt ihr sein (Three friends you should be) by LoreleiLee was deleted on fanfiktion.de and uploaded to AO3 in 2017 with the author’s note saying: “Alte Fanfic. Ursprünglich 2004 auf ff.de gepostet” (“Old fan fic. Originally posted on ff.de in 2004”); Halb Trost, halb Entschuldigung (Part solace, part apology) by Hui-Buh is still available on fanfiktion.de but was also uploaded to AO3 in 2023 with the author’s note: “Story ursprünglich ver- öffentlicht auf fanfiktion.de im Juni 2006, hier überarbeitete Version Juni 2023” (“Story originally pub- lished on fanfiktion.de in June 2006, here revised version June 2023”). Interestingly, the re-posting of old content was used here as an opportunity to revise the fan text. To sum it up, reasons for the long-term-commitment of a fan writer to their fan object, the communi- ty, and their decision to move their stories to AO3, as well as a glimpse of AO3’s status in the community, are quite nicely put in the author’s notes to florahart’s But I Have a Penis: Please to note: I am posting this to AO3 in May 2019, but wrote it ~twelve and a half years ago, a con- cept I find as alarming as Harry finds being knocked up. What the hell, passage of time, what are you even doing. Ahem. […] (Posting here now because I’ve recently gotten comments on the original and so I wanted to put it somewhere better, but if you think you’ve read it before, well, maybe you have.) All Was Well? | 45 Various factors influencing the decision to newly upload an old fan text to AO3 are addressed here: Florahart assumes that AO3 has become a “better” host for their work, underlining the impact AO3 has on shaping today’s fan fiction practices and the decline of the blogosphere. However, florahart still re- ceived comments on the work originally posted on LiveJournal more than twelve years prior. In terms of time and longevity, this suggests a simultaneity of long-term commitment and newcomers in fandom that florahart is well aware of. Developments in HP slash pairings Being able to detect developments in the usage of platforms and the availability of HP slash fan fiction a decade after my PhD project gave me the idea to additionally use my data of 2013 to explore the popula- rity of HP slash pairings over time. HP slash fan fiction may not feature an exclusive “one true pairing” (cf. Tosenberger 2008, p.191) but in 2013, the fandom was dominated by one major pairing nonetheless: the protagonist and his antagonist Draco Malfoy (Drarry). Remus Lupin/Sirius Black (Puppylove) and Harry Potter/Severus Snape (Snarry) can be described as follow-up major pairings (Fig.3). But added together, Snarry and Puppylove fan fictions only produce about as many entries on AO3 as the Drarry fictions alone. It may be telling with regards to the immense success of HP as well as the longevity of its fan culture that these three pairings all serve and satisfy different purposes and needs. This highlights the great openness, multi-addressability (cf. Karg/Mende 2010), and polysemy of the HP text, which allows various (even con- flicting) points of entry and connection, readings, and interpretations (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, p.391). Puppylove falls in the category of buddyslash that is highly popular in several other fandoms—from Kirk/Spock of Star Trek to Aziraphale/Crowley of Good Omens, from Luke/Han of Star Wars to the recent Dead Boy Detective’s Charles/Edwin—dealing with the trope of friends becoming lovers. Snarry can be categorized as powerslash, focusing on two characters that have to deal with (or overcome) an imba- lance in their hierarchy, attributed by differences in social roles, age, class, etc.—examples from other fandoms with these dynamics include Spider-Man and Iron Man from Marvel or Frodo/Aragorn of Lord of the Rings. Finally, similar to other enemyslash pairings—from Doctor/Master in Doctor Who to Clark Kent/Lex Luthor in Smallville—Drarry fan fictions base on the enmity between two characters, the ten- sions between them gradually moving from hate towards desire and love. The data collected in 2013 relate to the relationship tags that the users assign to their work. In the case of AO3, these tags are also validated by tag wranglers (cf. Price 2019; Cuntz-Leng 2023). All other HP slash pairings were significantly less popular than Drarry, Puppylove, and Snarry (Fig.3) but due to the large size of the HP cast with more than 700 individual characters and the possibility to include other fandoms (crossover) or insert new characters (OC) into the storyworld, the number of possible ships is endless. The 2013 data of all four platforms on HP slash pairings shows that the values of the three most po- pular pairings are relatively congruent in relation to each other on all four platforms. The only exception is Snarry on Ink-Stained Fingers, which corresponds with the platform’s origin from the Snapeslash mailing list in 2001.2 In 2013, AO3 hosted a total of 46,450 HP fan fictions, about 58% (26,850) of them slash (cf. Cuntz- Leng 2015, p.102). As of today, the platform has grown constantly and significantly. More than 13 million 2 In the early 2000s, distinct but small character- or pairing-centric websites hosting fan fiction were common and popu- lar in the HP online fandom but these are mostly defunct by now, e.g., the Drarry archive The Silver Snitch (2004-2011) and the Remus/Sirius archive Mischief Managed (2003-2006). 46 | Vera Cuntz-Leng Fig.3 Cuntz-Leng 2015, p.103 (AO3 data collected on Oct. 21, 2013; the data of the other three platforms is even older since these platforms were not updated for quite a while prior to October 2013) All Was Well? | 47 Fig.4: Developments in HP slash fan fiction on AO3 (growth rate and total numbers, 2013 & 2024) The values I have collected may differ from the results of Ship/Watch under certain circumstances, as new backdated texts have been added or texts have been removed from the archive between 2013 (the time of my collection) and 2021 (the time of Ship/Watch’s collection). 48 | Vera Cuntz-Leng works have been archived so far—491,963 (data collected on Mar. 7, 2024) in the HP fandom alone, about 53.5% of them slash and femslash. The number of texts increased almost tenfold (Fig.4-6); this equates to a growth rate of 984%. However, the proportion of slash in the overall body of HP texts de- creased measurably. All three platforms solely dedicated to HP—FictionAlley, Ink-Stained Fingers, and Restricted Section— are offline by now and do not host fan fiction anymore. As mentioned above, their content has been moved to AO3 in the Open Doors Project to secure content sustainably (opendoors.transformativeworks.org; cf. Cuntz-Leng 2023). The content hosted on Ink-Stained Fingers was moved to AO3 in December 2016, so was Restricted Section sometime in 2016, but the website was still available until April 2018; as of today, Fiction Alley’s content moved to AO3 in 2018, but the site still features a weblog on HP fandom but no fan fic- tion anymore. The last update dates back to July 2020, discussing the possible consequences of the Rowling controversy on fan culture and the commitment of FictionAlley to the queer community. Further updates on the issue were promised but never redeemed, all hyperlinks on the website are dead. This also supports the assumption that AO3 has become the major venue for HP fan fiction in the past ten years, with single- fandom platforms declining. Since problems on various occasions occurred in the past regarding questions of censorship, child protection, and copyright infringements, corporate platforms like fanfiction.net have mostly lost their appeal to slash fans and may not be regarded as an alternative publication site to AO3. This is especially true since FictionAlley and its adult-only content ‘sistersite’ Restricted Section were only establis- hed in response to both fanfiction.net’s rigid policies and the ban of BNF Cassandra Claire due to plagiarism allegations, as it had been stated on the website when founded in 2001: “All of the founding mods desired a community in which no person would be unreasonably censored or senselessly banned—a place where peo- ple could state their ideas and engage in spirited and thought-provoking debates, discussions, and analysis” ( https://fanlore.org/wiki/FictionAlley). Since the content of all three HP archives was moved, a compari- son of the data collected in 2013 with 2024 regarding shifts in the popularity of pairings is consequently only possible for AO3 (Fig.4-6). Fig.5: Comparison of the amount of HP slash fan fiction on AO3 in 2013 and 2024 by pairings All Was Well? | 49 Drarry When comparing the percentual growth of the individual pairings with the general growth of HP fan fic- tion on AO3 (+984%), the character configurations can be divided into winners and losers: those ships that grew faster than the fandom and those that grew slower. Interestingly, the growth in Drarry fan fictions (+963%) was the most consistent in the fandom by far. The recurring larger spikes in the graph (Fig.7) are always in December, which leads to the conclusion Fig.6: HP slash on AO3 by pairing in 2013 (blue) and 2024 (red), growth of the respective pairing (yellow) Fig.7: Development of the popularity of Drarry on AO3 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch 50 | Vera Cuntz-Leng that there is more time for writing during the Christmas break/over the holidays. Similar ‘Christmas peaks’ have been measured in other fandoms (cf. De Kosnik et al. 2015, pp.152ff.). The consistency of Drarry indicates that the ship is unaltered by external events and has a strong and loyal fan following (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, pp.203ff.). In this sense, Tosenberger’s analysis of 2008 is still (all the more) true for Drarry sixteen years later. Tosenberger concludes in her essay “Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts” that the release of the fourth HP novel had been accompanied by an enormous expansion of the HP fan community, mirrored by the growth of Drarry fan fictions. According to Tosenberger, this resulted in older fans’ exploration of the erotic potential and queer possibilities of other pairings who felt that everything had been said about Drarry, whereas the sheer amount of Drarry stories available online made it likely for new fans to initially encounter the slash phenomenon through this pairing and take it as a starting point to become slash writers themselves (cf. Tosenberger 2008, p.192). However, the data suggest that this introduction to HP slash fan fiction via Drarry is a consistently ongoing, constant, and lasting process that cannot be isolated to a singular event at a certain moment in time. The attraction of new members to the HP slash community is far from completed and Drarry still seems to offer ample opportunity for queer romance and fantasy. Bellatrix Lestrange/Hermione Granger Fig.8: Development of the popularity of Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Lestrange on AO3 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) The accelerated growth of the femslash pairing Bellatrix Lestrange/Hermione Granger (+6,109%) is unprecedented (cf. enormous peak in Fig.6). Bellatrix/Hermione started off as a minor pairing alt- hough the HP text offers some queer points of entry that may invite a fan analysis of the relationship3 by drawing parallels between Hermione and Bellatrix with Harry and Voldemort (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, pp.217f.), which also received exceptionally more approval over time (+1,851%). Although the data do not support a general increase of femslash fictions (there is a notable boost of Ginny/Luna fictions since 3 Both the torture sequence of Hermione and the physical transformation of Hermione into Bellatrix in the seventh instalment of the series can be accounted for a stronger interest of fans in this pairing. https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch All Was Well? | 51 2013), Hermione’s character constantly gained popularity in fandom, mainly in het fictions with Draco Malfoy (Dramione). The success of the very dark, post-apocalyptic Dramione story Manacled by senlinyu (https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454174/chapters/33390198) may be the reason why fans were inspired to explore the darker aspects of Hermione with other characters as well. Manacled bor- rows heavily from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985); the story is set in an alternate uni- verse in which Voldemort won the war and Harry died; it contains many depictions of torture, rape, trauma, and murder. Manacled was originally posted in 2018/19 on AO3 and went viral on TikTok on several occasions since 2020 (cf. Minkel 2024). The increase in Bellatrix/Hermione femslash fits in well with the release and success of Manacled (Fig.8). Moreover, the canonical material offers the ideal bree- ding ground for fictions about prejudice, power, violence, and abuse, too. Marauder’s era With a rate of more than 2,500%, the pairing James Potter/Severus Snape did very well in terms of growth. This corresponds with other fan fictions set during the time when Harry’s parents were stu- dents at Hogwarts (Marauder’s era) that all grew above average: foremost Puppylove (+1,336%) and James/Sirius (+1,382%), possibly Voldemort/Severus (+1,493%). Nevertheless, the interest of fans in some of the other pairings from the Marauder’s era dropped: most visibly Remus/Severus (+300%), also Sirius/Severus (+793%), and possibly Lucius/Severus (+508%). Overall, a general decline in Severus Snape as the main character and possibly love interest is supported by the data because the growth rate of many fan fictions featuring Snape grew below average. Snape was killed off in the seventh installment of the series but no general connection between the death of a character in canon and the decline of the community’s interest in the same character can be detected. This observation suggests a lack of interest in canonicity and fidelity to the original work by the fan writers, and it must be assumed that many fan fictions are set in a so-called ‘alternate universe’ (AU). AU fan fictions may ignore various crucial ele- ments of the original plot (e.g., death of characters, existence of magic). Fig.9: Development of the popularity of James Potter/Regulus Black on AO3 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454174/chapters/33390198 https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch 52 | Vera Cuntz-Leng The claim of growing enthusiasm for exploring the Marauder’s era is supported by another pairing that had not been in the spotlight ten years ago at all and was therefore not part of the 2013 survey: James Potter/Regulus Black. With 13,507 fan fictions tagged as Regulus/James, it has become the fourth most popular pairing in the HP slash fandom on AO3. The pairing was able to be established in the fan community regardless of the canonical insignificance of the characters and the lack of cano- nical evidence that the characters had any relationship whatsoever. There had been a total amount of only 13 Regulus/James texts on AO3 back in 2013; the significant increase happened around February 2021 with more than 50 new texts published monthly (Fig.9). This results in a staggering 10,380% growth rate. In addition, other pairings with Regulus as a love interest also started to produce more results, e.g., Regulus/Sirius (733 entries), Regulus/Severus (669 entries), and Regulus/Remus (662 entries). Fig.10: Development of the popularity of Puppylove on AO3 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) The growing popularity of fan texts situated in the Marauder’s era could signify a decline of transcul- tural differences that had been visible earlier when Marauder’s era ships had been much more popular in Japan than in the US or Europe (cf. Noppe 2010; Chin/Hitchcock Morimoto 2013). This may result from the international alignment of AO3; many uploads are in a language other than English. More likely, however, the exceptional growth in popularity of James/Regulus is linked to the increasing interest in Puppylove, which can be attributed to the astonishing success of All the Young Dudes by MsKingBean89 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057010/chapters/22409387). Originally posted in 2018, All the Young Dudes went viral on TikTok in November 2020 (cf. Heise 2022, p.6). The sudden leap in pro- ductivity correlates with this in timing (Fig.10), the rise in James/Regulus followed by a slight time lag (Fig.9). The spike of Puppylove in 2004 can be attributed to the back-dating of migrated stories from other archives. All the Young Dudes is an influential text that aligns in content and tone more with queer activism than with the HP slash of the earlier years or the suggestive queerness and homoeroticism of Rowling’s work (cf. Hampton 2021; Heise 2022; Marsden 2022). In retelling all seven 1970s Hogwarts school years of https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057010/chapters/22409387 All Was Well? | 53 the Marauders from Remus Lupin’s perspective, All the Young Dudes manages to make strong statements on coming of age, domestic violence, class prejudices (“We’re British. It’s always about class.”), gay cul- ture and activism, homophobia, AIDS, and popular culture. The success of All the Young Dudes and other Marauder’s era works in its wake may not directly be related to Rowling’s queerphobia allegations—but the queer sensitivity (Harriet Marsden [2022] called it ‘wokeness’) of All the Young Dudes resembles a strong counterpole to HP and Rowling’s public author persona. New readers of HP fan fiction who were looking for explorations of non-heteronormative relationships during the time when Rowling’s views on gender became known would be quite easily directed to All the Young Dudes. Snarry The growth rate of Snarry fan fictions had been much slower than for the other major slash pairings as seen by the flatter red curve (Fig.11). Nonetheless, Snarry is still in third place among the most popular HP slash pairings. However, a relatively slower growth rate for powerslash configurations can be found in general, e.g., Draco/Snape, which goes hand in hand with a decreasing interest in the Hogwarts teaching staff by fan authors. The increase in popularity of the powerslash pairing Harry/ Dumbledore may count as an exception here, but stories romantically involving these two characters are still extremely rare (total of 254 entries, less than 0.1% of all HP slash uploaded to AO3) that this spike could be ignored. Since the majority of powerslash in the HP fandom is concerned with teacher-student relationships, this may be attributed to either the stronger focus on the Marauder’s era since the success of All the Young Dudes or to the augmentation of AU stories—the more time passes since the closing of the HP canon. Have all stories taking place during Harry’s seven years at Hogwarts been told by now? In both Marauder era stories and in AU fictions, the original HP school-year setting is not typically used as an environment of exploration. Fig.11: Development of the popularity of Snarry on AO3 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch 54 | Vera Cuntz-Leng Grindeldore Another big winner of this decade in terms of its growth in slash fan fiction productivity is Grindeldore (+2,561%): fan fiction that pairs Harry’s late headmaster and mentor Dumbledore with the friend of his youth and later nemesis Gellert Grindelwald. This pairing can easily be used to tell both buddy- and ene- myslash stories—sometimes both genres blend into each other. The immense increase of Grindeldore since 2013 is an interesting result because the release of the seventh book in 2007, which is laden with strong homoerotic (but destructive) subtext supporting this pairing (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, pp.309-322), and the ‘outing’ of Dumbledore as gay by Rowling a few months later, did not induce a boom of Grindel- dore fan fiction. Rebecca Stephens described this as a “nonreaction” (Stephens 2009, p.21) of the fan- dom; among others, Lauren M. Capaccio criticized the extratextual outing of Dumbledore as “profoundly homophobic” (Capaccio 2011, p.3)—and obviously it came with a bad aftertaste that did not sit very well with the HP slash fan fiction writers in the years between 2007 and 2013. In many ways, Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore was perceived by the community as another attempt of the author to take control over the interpretation by their fans. Grindeldore may have become canonical, but as the data of 2013 suggest, there was no strong immediate response and fans refused to explore the pairing on a grand scale (cf. Cuntz-Leng 2015, p.320). However, the boost of Grindeldore after 2013 is not a gradually increasing phenomenon but an im- mediate response to the release of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them spin-off, the second ins- talment Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in particular, which was released in November 2018 (Fig.12). As the chart shows, the popularity of Grindeldore quickly waned again. Further, no other pai- ring that bridges HP and Fantastic Beasts gained any significant response: for example, Albus Dumble- dore/Newt Scamander (198 entries), Newt Scamander/Gellert Grindelwald (324 entries), Harry Potter/ Newt Scamander (34 entries), and Harry Potter/Gellert Grindelwald (62 entries). Fig.12: Development of the popularity of Grindeldore on AO3 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch All Was Well? | 55 Albus Severus Potter/Scorpius Malfoy With about 500 fan fictions posted to AO3 by 2013, the enormous increase in popularity of the next-ge- neration pairing Albus Severus Potter/Scorpius Malfoy had not been foreseeable in 2013. Both charac- ters had only been briefly mentioned in the epilogue of the seventh book, which was widely dismissed by slash fans. Because of the epilogue’s heteronormative outcome and its rather clichéd mawkishness, many fan fiction writers started to tag their works ‘EWE’ (‘Epilogue? What epilogue?’) in reference to the popular abbreviation ‘PWP’ (‘porn without plot’, or ‘Plot? What plot?’), indicating that they will ig- nore the last pages of the final novel in their own work. Stephens states that in the epilogue, Harry and his friends “have grown up to be paragons of the nuclear family values so dear to conservative hearts” (Stephens 2009, p.22). Therefore, it was only much later that the fans gained a stronger interest in the pairing Albus Severus/Scorpius. By 2024, love stories about Harry’s and Draco’s sons ranked among the top-10 HP slash pairings with a total number of 4,771 fictions. After an initial peak that can be attributed to the premiere of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre in London, in which young Albus and Scorpius are the main protagonists, the fan fiction output leveled off at 35-50 new stories per month (Fig.13). The widely discussed and recognized queerbaiting controversy of Cursed Child (cf. Masad 2016; Ro- mano 2016; Hecke 2017; Roach 2018; Brummitt/Sellars 2019; Duggan 2019) predated the major trans- phobia outrage on Rowling. Queerbaiting has been critizised by fans as a marketing technique used by producers in the entertainment industry where creators hint at, but ultimately do not depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ representation with the goal to attract a queer or straight ally audience by suggesting of queer content, while avoiding alienating more conservative audiences by actually por- traying it. All the more, the canonicity of Cursed Child had been a subject of debate among fans since the play’s introduction of time travel and alternate realities contradicts some of the fundamental rules of the wizarding world established in the original series. But the debate got more heated regarding the love/friendship story of the main characters Albus Severus and Scorpius that (once again) did not—de- spite the strong homoerotic undertones—culminate into a queer-romantic resolution. Fans had hoped Fig.13: Development of the popularity of Albus Severus Potter/Scorpius Malfoy on AO3 01/2004-12/2021, data provided by Ship/Watch (https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch) https://www.futurephotons.io/shipwatch 56 | Vera Cuntz-Leng that the author—knowingly aware of the strong fan following by members of the LGBQIA* community as well as the slash fandom—would manage to turn the “gay subtext to text” (Romano 2016) after the botched outing of Dumbledore in 2007. Duggan (2019) emphasizes that since Rowling’s extra-textual outing of Dumbledore as gay, Rowling’s habit of providing her own interpretations of the HP series whi- le also claiming to leave it open to her readers’ own interpretations had become obvious. According to Duggan, these contradictions led to frustration among fans, who feel that Rowling is controlling their reading experience and that she tries to “appease fans who want queer representation while continu- ing to write texts that lack representation—or, worse, emphasize negative stereotypes” (Duggan 2019, p.100). The growing interest of fans in the Albus Severus/Scorpius pairing may be the result of their confusion and their disappointment in Rowling, consequently returning to the established practice of ‘filling in the gaps’ left by the text. Perspectives on the future of HP fan fiction Slash fan fiction communities are no static systems. Neither are the platforms hosting the content. Why people are attracted to a fandom at a certain moment in time and which pairing they will be shipping is, to some degree, predictable (e.g., a spin-off will fuel productivity in a fandom in general) and motiva- ted by the original material (e.g., homoerotic undertones in the relationship between Remus Lupin and Sirius Black), but it is still in flux and influenced by factors inside and outside of the source material and the fan community. The effect that external factors like the transphobia controversy did, in fact, have on the output by fans was measurable, whereas the extratextual outing of Dumbledore did not immediately fuel slash fan fiction production as one may have assumed. Internal factors of the fan community, like the immense popularity of individual fan texts among HP fans (e.g., Manacled, All the Young Dudes), had an even greater impact on the rise in popularity of certain character configurations. It may be interesting to explore how these widely read and discussed stories also affected the popularity of certain genres (e.g., dark romance, coming of age). As supported by the data on HP, consistency in the appeal of ‘one true pairing’ like Drarry is rarely the case. New developments inside and outside of canon and fanon alike have not only consequences for the production of new fan fiction content and the rise and fall of charac- ter configurations, they also influence the availability of content—seen in this light, the controversies surrounding Rowling may well leave their mark on the community on the long run. It would be fruitful to explore how the trends in character configurations manifest further in certain tropes established in a specific fan fiction community—has the HP slash fandom become more queer-sensitive?—, e.g., by using a computer-linguistic approach. To document and analyze fan fiction more thoroughly with quantitative approaches, it would be ne- cessary to make the data more accessible and to further develop tools to scrape data. The Organization for Transformative Works and Cultures (OTW) could provide an appropriate port for this purpose, ma- king it easier to scientifically monitor the database, which can be assumed to be the organization’s own desirable goal due to the academic and non-profit origin of AO3. The authors of Ship/Watch could not be identified or reached, but to see an update of the graphs covering the past three years would be in- triguing. HP stands out for the diverse offerings that the text presents to its fans, which is still reflected in the wide spectrum of simultaneous enemyslash, buddyslash, and powerslash. As a fan object, HP offers more connections and entry points than other slash fandoms, which—like Good Omens or Sherlock— All Was Well? | 57 practically only have one pairing, which is varied over and over again. HP’s variety of possible ships will be a warrantor for its longevity and persistence. The polysemic richness of HP is a more important factor than short-lived trends induced by official new releases like sequels and spin-offs, which is supported by the rather short-lived phenomena of Grindeldore and Albus Severus/Scorpius. HP fandom appears to be more resilient towards external influences, whereas the trends initiated by the community itself remain more stable. To many fan writers in 2013 online fan fiction felt like a mine field with authors’ fearing cease-and- desist letters for copyright infringement or legal actions against them because of the content of their fic- tional works (depictions of explicit sex, dubious consent, underage relationships, depictions of violence, profanity, etc.). A decade later, fan fiction benefited from the Open Source and Open Access movements as well as from its mainstreaming. Authors, showrunners, and production companies are much more aware now of their audiences’ wishes and beliefs—with the downside of more subtle attempts to take control over it, monetarizing fan fiction, queerbaiting, and voicing frustration about ‘fan service’. In the end, not all was well in HP fandom in the past decade, but it is still there (not because of but despite of Rowling) and it will probably outlive its author). 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APPENDIX https://www.vox.com/2016/9/4/12534818/harry-potter-cursed-child-rowling-queerbaiting https://www.vox.com/2016/9/4/12534818/harry-potter-cursed-child-rowling-queerbaiting https://www.flowjournal.org/2023/02/fan-demographics-on-ao3/ 60 | Vera Cuntz-Leng All Was Well? | 61 62 | Vera Cuntz-Leng