by Bee Brenton

Created on: April 01, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Harry Potter, by far is the most popular of all the fandoms and one of the major things (besides Anime) which has driven fan fiction to the popularity it is at today.

Fan fiction is of course, the borrowing of way cool characters that a person does not own (nor would probably ever afford to own) and using them for your own plots and devices.

This can be lots of fun with classic characters if you're good at or want practice with plotting. Fan fiction sites are also a good place to get ideas for original or other fan fiction stories as well.

Good ol' Harry though, shares a lot of fan fiction attention - even in the "adult" fan fiction domain (in which kids that read the books would possibly be horrified to see someone writing such a story, with such content, with Harry and the gang).
Pokemon, Avatar, Bleach and other popular animes also share quite a following, with everything and anything written of it.

As far as the regular concept of fan fiction - the borrowing of characters. Some fan fiction does not borrow a character at all, but rather the universe.
I.e. someone could create a villan and write about him in Jump City, the Teen Titans city, but have no mention of Robin and the rest of the Titans at all.
This is still fan fiction because the places mentioned and familiar concepts are still copyright of this fandom.

Another type of fan fiction is the "au" fan fiction. That is "alternate universe" - that's where you take the characters and put them in a wild west theme or the like. Modern day and "high school" concepts are very popular in this type of fandom.
I.e. Take Harry and his gang and write about them, not at Hogwarts but at a regular school in America. Same characters, different "universe" or place.

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