Flourish

Fan
Name:	Flourish Klink
Alias(es):	Flourish, chaoticflourish, msbunburyist, cennorethsdaughter, mahtala, nyx
Type:	fan writer, aca-fan
Fandoms:	Harry Potter, Vorkosigan
Communities:
Other:	http://flourishklink.com Alohomora.com, Zosteria.net, Blotts.org
URL:	at Archive of Our Own at FanFiction.Net at Dreamwidth at LiveJournal at Instagram at Pinboard at Tumblr at Twitter at Wattpad
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Flourish is a fanfic writer, conference organizer, archive administrator, most notably in the Harry Potter fandom (having written stories for that fandom prior to the establishment of its Fanfiction.net section), and co-host of the podcast Fansplaining.

Their pronouns are they/them. Flourish is also an aca-fan who has frequently worked with Henry Jenkins.

One notable contribution to fandom includes co-founding FictionAlley, being on staff at FanFiction.Net at the age of 12 or 13.

• playing in the RPGs Nocturne Alley and That Was Then/This Is Now
• secretary of the board of HP Education Fanon, Inc. in 2009

Flourish also co-authored the classic Harry Potter fanfic "Alternity." Though the story has since disappeared from the internet, they resurrected it as an RPG in 2008. The RPG is also entitled Alternity.

List of Primary Fandoms

• 1997-1998: X-files
• 1998–present: Harry Potter
• 2007–present: Vorkosigan
• 2010s–?: One Direction

Online Presence

A member of the internet and fannish since 1998, Flourish has numerous online accounts, some where they maintain great activity while others have no apparent updates.

Many of their first fannish activities are no longer available due to the crash of various fan community sites, or because the activies were deleted by Flourish themself.

Flourish has been on LiveJournal since 2001, and created an account on Dreamwidth in mid-2009. According to their Tumblr they migrated to the platform as many previously did after the LJ turmoil.

Their DW account has been closed exclusively to friends since 2016, and their LJ has no updates since 2014, but Flourish has been active on Tumblr as of July 2021.

Bio

Flourish Klink (Chief Research Officer, Partner) masterminds all of Chaotic Good's key social media and fan strategy initiatives across all platforms for studios, networks, game developers and brands.

Flourish's interest in fandom started early: at thirteen, they co-founded FictionAlley, which became the largest _Harry Potter fanfiction community online. They also helped organize Harry Potter fan conferences over the course of ten years. They then continued their interest in participatory culture at MIT and for their graduate degree carried out a groundbreaking and in-depth study of _Twilight_ fans (and their counterparts, Twilight haters).

Before joining Chaotic Good, Flourish was the Chief Participation Officer at The Alchemists where they oversaw transmedia and social media strategy for Hulu's TV series _East Los High_ and was the lead producer and co-writer on the _Transcendence: Origins_ mobile game for Warner Brothers and Alcon Entertainment.

Flourish is a prolific writer and transmedia storyteller. They are the founder and co-author of _Alternity_, a collaborative transformative work of fiction based on JK Rowling's _Harry Potter_ alternate universe which ran for seven years. Their fanfiction work also includes _The Hellhound of the Rockefellers_ (_Sleepy Hollow_ & _Elementary_ crossover) and _Just For The Cameras_ (One Direction).

In 2012 Flourish designed, wrote and programmed _Muggle Studies_, a text adventure that critiques the morality of the _Harry Potter_ universe. It won a prestigious XYZZY award (the Academy Awards of interactive fiction). Also in the interactive novel/narrative game space Flourish wrote _Out of the Night_ and _Red Room_, both taking place in the _Twin Peaks_ universe.

In 2015 they launched a podcast about fandom, _Fansplaining_, with Elizabeth Minkel. They are also a board member of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, which seeks to preserve and support the creation of all forms of interactive storytelling.

Flourish graduated from Reed College in 2008 with a B.A. in Religion and also holds an S.M. from MIT in Comparative Media Studies. In their copious free time, Flourish often lectures at MIT in the US and has also lectured in Brazil, Norway and Columbia.

Autobio

2002

I don't know months on all this without looking, so I'm just going to group it into Random Time Periods. This all begins around November 1999, kay? Yeah.

1. Am at grandmother's house. Read "Sorcerer's Stone," which she had bought for my younger cousin. Reread. Buy rest of books in short order.

2. Find HarryPotterRealm.com. Meet Katie Bell, Gypsy, and Elizabeth Notrab. This is good. We move over to fanfiction.net and go on happily posting. The first fic I spent time on was "Shades of Grey," but I wrote a choose-your-own-ending fic called "Partings" before that.

3. People begin complaining about the fandom going down the drain because of influx of new people due to Newsweek article on Harry Potter. Yes, this has been going on this long. I meet Tinderblast for the first time (though she was supposedly lurking before that... I'm not sure if I believe her. *pokes Tinderblast* can I believe you?

4. Alice Spinnet, Narri, etc. join fandom. Am slightly off-put. Start alohomora.com about this time and create my Nyx personae. Convince Tinderblast that Nyx isn't me, but my twin, for about a week. Eventually feel so bad about it I admit to being Nyx. The Harry Potter Fanfiction Writers' Association (HPFWA) is formed.

5. Golden Toad Awards begin. GoF comes out. About this time Cassie Claire & Lori join the fandom. Become virulently anti-new-people. Complete several fanfics such as "Project City" and "St. Olran's High School for Semi-Humans," both of which were good ideas but poorly pulled off. "5 Snitches" begins. I become friends with Arabella, pre-Sugarquill.

6. Slash enters! Woo hoo! I become femmeslasher. I become close to Viola, author of "Dreamwalk Blue," and begin "An Angel Comes to Babylon" which she BETAs.

7. I fall out with the management of FF.N. All of a sudden the people I "hated" became my friends. V. odd; I still don't quite understand how I managed it. FictionAlley formed. w00t. "An Angel Comes to Babylon" is put on the back burner in favor of "The Next Great Adventure," a rewrite of "Shades of Grey."

2018

I’ve been around fandom a long time, and in recent years I’ve become more or less a professional fan: I work in the entertainment industry, helping people understand fandom and create better experiences for their fans.

I poked around X-files fandom in the late 1990s, but my first real fandom was Harry Potter. I wrote a column for Fanfiction.net (called “Five Snitches”) for a little while in 2000, then in 2001 I helped found FictionAlley.org. In 2003, I was part of the organizing committee for Nimbus 2003, the first ever Harry Potter fan convention. I also was part of Nocturne Alley and That Was Then/This Is Now (two journal-style RPGs that probably nobody remembers anymore). One of my Harry Potter fan projects, Alternity, is (as far as we know) the longest-running journal-style RPG online.

After taking some time away from fandom in college, I studied under Henry Jenkins at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program. Then I joined The Alchemists, a transmedia storytelling company, as Chief Participation Officer. In that capacity, I worked with advertising agencies, international brands, TV networks, and movie studios. In addition to helping to demystify fandom, I produced transmedia experiences, including games, ARGs/AREs, and ancillary video content, plus I was a producer on East Los High, an English-language telenovela. I also produced and co-wrote a game, “Transcendence: Origins,” which is a prequel to the Johnny Depp movie Transcendence.

In 2012, I was the Minister of Magic for another Harry Potter fan convention, Ascendio. I also recently released a Harry Potter text adventure, “Muggle Studies.” And I’ve poked around various fandoms: Supernatural, Game of Thrones, The Vampire Diaries, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the Avengers, Star Trek, Star Wars, Elementary, Sleepy Hollow…

I recently helped start a company called Chaotic Good Studios. We’re pretty awesome. I can’t talk about most of our clients yet. Watch this space!

I’m a cohost of Fansplaining, “The Podcast By, For, & About Fandom,” with Elizabeth Minkel.

I keep a dream journal.

Interviews

• A Short History Of Me In Fandom, (not an interview but a short self-recap) (2002)
• Acafandom and Beyond: Week Three, Part One (Kristina Busse, Flourish Klink, and Nancy Baym), Acafandom and Beyond: Week Three, Part Two (Kristina Busse, Flourish Klink, and Nancy Baym) (2011)
• Fandoms, the Internet, and Harry Potter: An interview with Flourish Klink, co-founder of FictionAlley and CMS lecturer (2013)
• Mini Interviews: Wesley Chu and Flourish Klink (2015)
• Fandom is My Fandom, panel discussion with Flourish and others at ComicCon (2015)
• An Interview with Elizabeth Minkel and Flourish Klink from fansplaining with Angela Yuen at Margins (2016)
• The Multiplicity and Diversity of Fandom: An Interview with Fansplaining's Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel (2017)
• The Verge 2017 Interview with Flourish Klink (2017)

Essays

• How to Make a Good First Impression (2001)
• The Radical Idea that Children are People (June 10, 2009)
• OTW Guest Post: Flourish Klink (2014)
• To Ship or Not To Ship: An explainer about the terms “ship” and “slash” (2016)

List of Conferences & Conventions (Presenting or Organizing)

• 2003: Nimbus 2003, panelist for "Once Upon a Time-Turner: The History of Harry Potter Fandom." Moderated "Slytherins, Smoke and Shadows: The Secret Life of Severus Snape."
• 2009: Azkatraz 2009, co-chair of formal programming. Moderated "Ten Years On," a discussion of the history of Harry Potter fandom.
• 2010: The Digital Media and Learning Conference 2010: Diversifying Participation, co-presented "From Fan Activism to Political Activism: Participatory Democracy around Popular Media Affinity Groups."
• 2010: International Conference for the Fantastic in Arts 31: Race and the Fantastic, panelist for "Antifans: What Fans Love to Hate." Presented "Fans, Anti-Fans and Sparklepires: An Examination of Current Definitions of ‘Fan’ with Reference to Twilight."