Within social media like Tumblr, TikTok, Reddit and X, people participate in fandoms. These are spaces where fans interact with their ideas – by discussing fanart that others have drawn, writing fanfiction, discussing fanfiction, talking about head canons, drawing their own fanart, and in many other ways. And while things can get quite heated in the larger fandoms, arguments are a gentler and more short-lived in the smaller fandoms, making them easier to interact with overall.
What defines a fandom?
A fandom usually consists of people who enjoy the ‘canonical material’ of a text but wish to expand on it with their own interpretations of the story and characters. Canon refers to the original story as written by the author. In fandoms, participants will create fanfictions, head canons, original characters, alternate universes, and similar additions or changes to canon (the original story).
This could be something like writing a fanfic where a character, who is technically canonically straight and cis, as a gay trans person instead. This could be because the person relates to the character’s experiences, it could be because they believe the character’s story makes sense to have these characteristics added, it could be because they don’t like how the canon story ends, or it could be for many other reasons.
Head canons are small things that do not add or deplete a character’s story but are fun extra details that people think make sense for a character. For example, like James Potter liking Spiderman and Draco Malfoy’s favourite snack being Turkish delight. These additional traits can make the characters feel more realistic to audiences, or more relatable.
The marauders fandom
Marauders is part of the Harry Potter universe – an offshoot of the Harry Potter fandom – which is a prequel story about the marauders: Harry’s father James and his friends Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin. In the early years, it was solely based around these characters and occasionally Lily Evans and Severus Snape. Nowadays, it’s been expanded to include minor characters who are only mentioned by name in the canonical texts, with no real personality. Characters like Mary Macdonald, Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas Meadowes.
It even includes superficial characters who are technically on the side of the enemy, like Regulus Black (“my poor baby”), Evan Rosier, and Barty Crouch Junior. In expanding on them, many fans have made these canonically bad characters sympathetic, and given them happy endings that were simply not possible in canon because they died. I’ve included Regulus Black in this list, but will point out that even in canon, he’s not evil. At a minimum he’s morally grey because he turns his back on Voldemort and dies trying to destroy one of the horcruxes. He is not even an adult when he dies, so can he truly be at fault for his actions at all? But I digress …
In large fandoms like marauders, there are arguments every other week and they can get a little repetitive at times. Arguments like Severus Snape being a ‘good guy’ pop up constantly (personally, I don’t consider his character a ‘good person’, but that’s not the point).
Other regular arguments take place over ‘ships’ (character relationships or romantic pairings, and the support of them) and which ones are the best. This is known as ‘shipping’. Popular ships include ‘Wolfstar’ (Remus Lupin and Sirius Black) and Jily (James Potter and Lily Evans). But many within the fandom create an atmosphere where it feels like you have to pick a ‘side’ and only support one ‘ship’ per character. For example, they would take great exception to supporting ‘Wolfstar’ as well as ‘Remadora’ (Remus Lipin and Nymphadora Tonks), even if you like the idea of both ships.
The culture of fandoms
In the larger fandoms, expressing opinions can be difficult because of the quantity of people involved. As with many other spaces on social media, it can feel quite toxic at times – with instant repercussions for making just one wrong move. For this reason, I’m not an active participant in the marauders fandom, I don’t read the popular marauders fanfiction that everyone recommends, and I don’t discuss the fandom with anyone other than my best friend.
Arguments do not happen nearly as often in small fandoms like the All for The Game fandom, which only has a few thousand fans. This fandom is based on the book series by Nora Sakavic. There are still arguments, but they’re smaller and they don’t last as long. Within the All for The Game fandom, arguments are usually contained to one or two people and they never really last long, as they’re usually about something small and can be easily resolved or ignored.
Closeknit community: All for The Game fandom
The All for The Game fandom is also a more closeknit community. When I first joined the fandom, I began talking to one of the prominent fanfiction authors there. She sent me a massive document containing all the extra content that the author, Sakavic, hadn’t included within the books, but has since discussed on Tumblr and Twitter. Without her help, I may never have seen this precious document, which is filled with a ton of information. And I probably would have spent months being extremely confused about the mentions of certain characters and events that just don’t occur within the books but are still established canon.
Everyone within this fandom appears to be friends. People still have their favourite ‘ships’ but they’re always welcome to create new ships involving whichever characters they like. In fact, it’s quite popular to ship one character with nearly every other character, and everyone just happily accepts that. I’ve seen some ships in the fandom that I know you could never get away with in a place like the marauders fandom, but everyone’s fine with them.
For example, I once read a great fanfic where the creator shipped the characters Jean Moreau and Seth Gordon. Technically, you can’t ship those two characters together, because Seth dies at the end of book one. But it worked really well, and while it’s not something I’d have looked for specifically, it was really well-written and that’s all that matters in this fandom.
Everyone in the All for The Game fandom is free to experiment with whatever ships, head canons and alternate universes they like, and I think that’s really great. This general acceptance creates a positive atmosphere of mutual respect, where participants feel safe to express opinions and enjoy the space.
Author-fan engagement in the fandom
Even Sakavic occasionally engages in fandom discourse and sometimes the fans have been able to change her mind on certain things. For example, she had originally envisioned one character’s hair as being brown, but after seeing so much fanart of Jeremy Knox having blond hair, she decided to add a scene into the latest book where he dyes his hair blond for his final year at university. That made the fans very happy!
This positive relationship with the author makes the All for The Game fandom work particularly well. Sakavic has even stated that people should be free to disregard her opinions about the characters, different canon and story – which is something I find humorous, as the characters, canon and story are her creation!
Smaller fandoms feel safer
Both the Marauders and All for the Game fandoms hold a special place in my heart. But it’s far easier and safer to interact with the latter, because it’s such a small fandom with far fewer arguments. I adore many other fandoms too, but in my opinion, smaller fandoms are easier to engage with and less prone to nonsensical and time-consuming arguments.
