Twinship, incest, and twincest in the Harry Potter universe

• Main Author: Vera Cuntz-Leng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Organization for Transformative Works 2014-09-01
• Series: Transformative Works and Cultures
• Subjects: Fan community; Fan fiction; Slash
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0576

Among the large group of Harry Potter fans who write their own stories about the boy wizard, his friends, and his foes, and publish them on the Internet, some are interested in the exploration of the erotic and romantic bond between identical twins. Because the Harry Potter saga features two sets of identical twin pairs of different gender—the Weasley brothers and the Patil sisters—the series not only provides a unique playground for the recipients in terms of the possibilities for twincest stories; more importantly, it offers ample opportunity for researchers to examine how fans actually use such pairings. In this essay, the examination of twin relationships as portrayed within Rowling's works, the movies, and in twincest fan fiction are confronted with each other to outline how Rowling's different concepts of the sibling pairs and the author's general ongoing interest in doubling motifs is consistently expanded by fan fiction writers to discuss the complex relationship between source and fan text.