Drarry, Snarry and Snape: The Queerest of the Queer - Heteronormativity and Queer Theory in Harry Potter Slash Fan Fiction

Academic Commentary
Title:	Drarry, Snarry and Snape: The Queerest of the Queer - Heteronormativity and Queer Theory in Harry Potter Slash Fan Fiction
Commentator:	Nina Kaipia
Date(s):	2011
Medium:	Masters Thesis
Fandom:	Harry Potter
External Links:	https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/225047/NinaKaipiaProGradu.pdf
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Drarry, Snarry and Snape: The Queerest of the Queer - Heteronormativity and Queer Theory in Harry Potter Slash Fan Fiction is Nina Kaipia's masters thesis.

Excerpts

In short, slash has developed from a relationship between best friends into covering all pairings available in the canon and extending from romance to any genre imaginable. However, there are conventions formed, such as pairings of buddy, enemy, and power slash that make it somewhat easier to categorize and examine slash. Still, the overlapping of the genres and tropes often makes it difficult to give any overall description of a typical slash fic, especially in Potter slash. It is not uncommon to have a Harry/Draco m-preg story that is also a horror story, or a fic including torture having a fluffy, romantic ending.

Overall, Potter slash can be seen as a literal way of recreating a text and finding new ways and more complex interpretations within the already existing text, using the above mentioned deconstruction as a basis. The Harry Potter canon provides an existing arrangement of us versus them: the wizards versus the muggles (non-magical people), an arrangement which could be read as queer. In this case, the whole concept of wizardry is read as a metaphor for homosexuality. However, this type of queer reading of Harry Potter as a whole differs slightly from what slash writers and readers seem to be doing. Many of them find it fascinating to explore the characters because they provide an array of possible queer readings on a more specific level. A slash writer, ventorous1, explained the interest with the Harry Potter canon as a source of slash:

Many characters are eccentric in ways that twist stereotypic [sic] gender roles. Harry seems oddly sexless in his interaction with Ginny; Snape is basically a stereotypical witch (ugly nose, long hair, cauldron, black dress) who happens to be male; male wizards dress in flamboyant clothing; Draco is pretty, Hermione is tough and independent.

In a way, slash writers search for clues around which they might construct their fic. There are several settings in slash in which Harry’s “oddly sexless interaction” with Ginny is explained by Harry’s homosexuality; similarly, Snape’s canon qualities are used to support his mysteriously hidden relationship with male character X. Slash fics make use of the way in which the canon characters are written in the original text (e.g. their relationships with other characters or the way they behave or dress); thus, this type of queer reading is derived from an already existing material.