Interactive Harry Potter Porn Fanfic

Oh my stars and garters, yes, you read that title correctly. In this post, I’m going to talk a bit about a confluence of stuff most people have never thought about seriously, or at least openly — Pornographic fan fiction implemented in text-based interactive fiction. I’m not interested in the former (porn or slash fanfic seems really “last century” and I really have to resist the urge to think of this as very pathetic), but I am a huge fan of the latter (which, arguably, is just as “last century” and I, for whatever reasons, have no problem with). As I become more and more interested in studying fan communities, I’m finding that I have to figure out how best to wrestle with the sexualizing of stuff that I don’t really think needs sexualizing, and looking for the interesting embedded content in the most marginal of marginal media.

Before I rant, however, I’ll step back for a second and describe a little of what I’m talking about. In the past week, I noticed my Internet pal William Wend had posted about Emily Short’s review of an interactive fiction called “Ron Weasley and the Quest for Hermione.” It is, essentially, a work of porn fan fiction using Harry Potter characters (set when Ron and Hermione are adults). Short linked to her review of the game in her own weblog post, and here’s the IF Wiki page for the game. Though the topic of the game may be very unappealing, it looks to be interesting in the same way that some have found the Super Columbine Massacre RPG to be interesting — what purposes does the game serve for its creator and its players, and what does this tell us about the boundaries between art, interactivity, and fandom?

It’s well-known that many popular fan fictions have had a sexualized component to them — from Kirk/Spock slash fiction through all the possible permutations over various media and various stories. The existence of Ron/Hermione porn fanfic is nothing new and, to me, not terribly interesting. But what is interesting is the choice to put this kind of fan exploration of the characters into interactive form. What’s to be gained from making a game of Ron and Hermy’s sexual escapades that can’t be done in static text? In the game, the player is Ron who has to overcome obstacles and solve puzzles in order to “get” Hermione. Is the titillation factor higher if one is pretending to solve puzzles? Is there something about embodying the character that is appealing? I don’t know, as this kind of fanfic is ludicrous to me personally, but I’m curious to find out what motivates the creation of a work like this.

Short talks about her interest in interaction fiction adaptations, and I’m finding that interesting as well — a colleague and I are thinking of writing a paper on a similar topic this summer. However, it’s more than just adapation going on here — there’s the appropriation of well-known characters from an existing story for new (and transgressive) purposes. This game exists at the intersection of embodiment (a player actually pretending to be Ron Weasley), and the kind of “textual poaching” that Henry Jenkins has written about extensively. That is, there’s more than just a fanfic author “poaching” the text of the Harry Potter novels here, he or she is creating a world for others to inhabit and play within. There’s something appealing about that to me (regardless of the porn) — sharing a creative fan work is no longer only about producing an artifact to be consumed (whether fan story, art, video, etc.), but the tools exist to create fan works that other fans can then inhabit.

I’m sure this has gone on in LARPs and tabletop RPGs (and, actually, some online text-based communities — PernMUSH immediately comes to mind). I bet there are learning and literacy implications here, but I’m not sure what they are just yet — at the very least, though, as we start to see fan producers creating more and more elaborate implementations of interactive fan fiction, perhaps we’ll have to start thinking more seriously about what this might tell us about the embedded practices which support the creation of these works.