Ravenclaw House

My journal is about the issues revolving around the ideas of “enemyslash” and “powerslash” in fanfiction, and why it is perhaps for the best that the old trend was to write around “buddyslash” particularly in a fan culture such as Harry Potter, which inevitably attracts children to its audience, and therefore needs to set a safe example for queer youth.

Although the representation of same-sex (or “slash”) relationships in fanfiction is important in terms of creating an open and accepting environment for fans who may not be represented in the source material, it seems to often come at the cost of valuing certain types of relationships over others. According to Catherine Tosenberger, for instance, the three most popular pairings in the Harry Potter fandom are Harry/Draco, Sirius/Remus, and Snape/Harry (192). While Sirius/Remus is of the “buddyslash” category, Harry/Draco and Snape/Harry are of a the “enemyslash” and “powerslash” subecategories. Tosenberger expresses her own opinion as she states, “Happily, this is changing” in regard to the past assumption that slash and buddyslash were one and the same (192) but I would argue that enemyslash and powerslash come at a cost that devalues the safety of queer fanfiction for folks who are actually queer.

Although Tosenberger states that the Harry Potter fandom provides the opportunity for young people to engage with queer-positive texts (190), I would counter-argue that it is not the relationships themselves that many authors are interested in, but more so in the tropes that can be filled by certain characters. What I mean by this is that, generally, fanfiction based on same sex relationships enjoy fics that have characters that fit in with dominant and submissive roles, but often result in pairings that are not a glowing example of a healthy relationship, which are fully represented in enemyslash and powerslash.

For instance, based on the fanfiction uploaded to Archive of Our Own, Draco and Harry have over 22,000 works whereas Ron and Harry have just a little over 1,500 fics. The source material offers seven books of friendship between Ron and Harry, so it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to expand upon the relationship that was shown and create a slash fic with two characters who canonically have mutual respect for one another, as opposed to Draco and Harry, which is a relationship shown to canonically be a rivalry at best, and pure hatred at its worst. Tosenberger sums this up nicely when she says, “The joy of an enemyslash pairing is in watching antagonists overcome their differences, at least long enough to have sex” (193). Particularly because of the necessity to link it to sex in Tosenberger’s descriptions, it makes it difficult to see the validity in fics that aren’t centered around sex for Draco/Harry.

It’s possible to argue that if the relationship itself isn’t canon, what’s written in the original material doesn’t need to matter at all for fanfiction, and there is also the idea of alternate universes and changing the characters’ personalities that happens often in fanon. What is most significant, however, is that should someone new to the fanfiction community look up fics for the first time, they would be going in with the knowledge only of in-canon characterizations, and thus a Draco/Harry relationship would be based in a problematic space, and Harry/Ron would offer a much healthier base for a queer relationship. Especially considering the younger fanbase that the Harry Potter books can draw in, it is a responsibility of fans who are writing fics to provide material that depicts healthy relationships for any queer or questioning youths, which enemyslash and powerslash simply don’t provide.

The Snape/Harry dynamic in fanfiction is the most troubling because in the reading it is defined as, “slash between characters who have differing levels of personal, social, or cultural agency” (191). The main differing agency between Snape and Harry is age, and it’s not just a few years give or take; Harry is eleven at his youngest, and seventeen at his oldest in the books (excluding the epilogue), whereas Snape is an adult throughout the entire series. Even fics that try to give the characters different ages (which still does not cover all of the Snape/Harry fanfiction) have to respect that in canon, one of the characters is underage, and this type of fanfiction establishes a power dynamic that can be dangerous and damaging for any individual to fall into, but definitely poses a real threat to queer youth.

Overall, although I believe that fanfiction can work as a safe space for queer individuals, even with authors who are not necessarily queer themselves. However, there is a level of responsibility that comes with crafting relationships, and canon has to be considered in terms of age and relationship dynamics to prevent setting a problematic example, particularly in fandoms with a younger audience.