I Feel Like The Biggest Differences W/Gen Z In Comparison To Some Of The Older Generations' Works Are

I feel like the biggest differences w/Gen Z in comparison to some of the older Generations' works are that they're willing to take the Marauders into different universes as children and write about them in a more contemporary style.

Young/new adult (17-28) and older readers were first introduced to Sirius and Remus as 33-year-old individuals, so it was easier for those readers to write S & R as adults attempting to grapple with their background and trauma and grief than it was to reach back and try to make their Hogwarts years more accessible. I think Gen Z writers are coming in and reclaiming their life experiences as young people growing up with technology and texting and the realities of being Online All the Time in a way that older authors weren't doing at the time. I assume part of that comes back to the development of technology and the schisms that exist between gen x/millennial/gen z readers on that front, but I also think older writers may have been less aware of some of JKR's bullshit, which made it less uncomfortable to stick to canon environments and scenarios.

Barring 'All the Young Dudes', many of the currently popular wolfstar stories take place in non-magical settings (college AUs, sports AUs, etc), and while those aren't exclusively written by the youths™, I think their prolificness has likely been influenced by JKR's shitty behavior; it's a lot easier to divorce those characters from their author's terrible views when you remove them from the world she created. That also plays into how large of a factor the characters' queerness plays in the narratives being planned—and as you mentioned, the influx in fics that feature trans, NB, or genderfluid characters is a great side effect of these shifts.

Also, having spent a fair amount of time reading fics in the fandom, I think there was a bit of a high bar to clear in terms of writing quality early on. There are always posts going around that recommend more "literary" wolfstar pieces, and a fair amount of them tend to skew older (specifically: before 2010). By and large, online communities seem to have embraced the "everyone has to start somewhere" mentality a bit more in recent years than they had then, but I distinctly remember getting comments when I was writing in the 2000s where people would drop in to tell me I had utterly mischaracterized someone or that my grammar was bad. All for constructive criticism, but I do have to wonder if the "flame" reviews forced people to either conform to what people were looking for (literary, stylistic writing), switch to another platform (LJ to ff, or ff to Wattpad, etc), or stop writing altogether.

Nowadays, I think our younger authors have an idea for a fic and just...go for it. They don't always have beta readers (which aren't inherently necessary, but can definitely impact style, structure, and word choice) so they'll post things as they come to them, they've got fan-pages on instagram and tiktok and tumblr where they make textposts about characters using modern slang that get hundred of likes/reblogs—they've found a formula that works for them, and they aren't inclined to change it (see: how many texting fics exist). Beyond that, relying on conversational and colloquial writing means they can process their emotions in real time while writing, in a way that we as older writers definitely could have, but didn't usually. When I was reading fics then, and even rereading some of those fics now, it always seemed as if fics danced around trauma a bit more delicately than some of the popular fics do now.

That's not meant as a slam to younger writers, but I do think young people on the internet these days are FAR more willing to share about their personal trauma(s) online, and when they write their fics, sometimes that's obvious. Older authors do/did it too, but I think it's usually a bit more strategically veiled than younger authors are now. It was a poetic thing, and arguably, not always a good one, considering the way mental illness/saviour complexes could often be romanticized. Young authors now fall into the same patterns, which again, aren't great, but I also think that they're the first to acknowledge their own mental health crises and say it hasn't been a great experience—even in a joking manner.

I could go on about this for DAYS but I've already written you an essay, so I'll leave it there hahahah

Thank you for the essay!!!! I love all of these points. Yes, I have also noticed that the big fics in this corner of the fandom tend to be the non-magical AU ones--fics that essentially follow the plot structure of contemporary romance novels, but just so happen to have characters named Sirius and Remus in them. I mean, any one of those fics could have the serial numbers filed off and be published as an original romance book, you know? Up until now, I was just chalking that up to the popularity of romance novels--I figured that the writers were just replicating the structure of the books like they like to read, but in fanfic form. But you bring an excellent point--it might be more that they're trying to divorce the characters from the world JKR created.

This is fascinating. I'm loving all the meta that's ended up in my inbox today.