So about fanfiction development...

[W_L]

After writing The Boy Behind the Lens and trying for a few weeks to come up with a good story that allows Colin Creevey, an adorkable third-tier character with a love of taking Harry's photos in the novels and who unfortunately died tragically in canon, to have a happily ever after with the protagonist, I'll just say it's incredibly hard, 

Despite 18+ years having elapsed since the first book introduction and a plethora of fanfiction out there, there's very few legitimate attempts to do what I am doing. AO3 has the Colin/Harry relationship in some stories, which are essentially Nifty erotic stories, but no real romance or grounded plots. I looked over at Pottermore as well without any real success.

What I thought at first glance to be an easy love story between an enthusiastic and adoring Kohai (Younger trainee in this context) and Sempai (Older trainee), has morphed into this melancholic unrequited romance that I'm trying to find a decent breakthrough, making things that could develop later work. 

I know a lot of M/M slash fiction writers don't care about character feelings, development, or integrity with world setting, since many are just fun what if stories for personal enjoyment. Maybe it's a little weird for me as a writer to say, but I feel like I owe Colin a fully realized story as a queer kid who devoted everything including his own life to someone who never gave that affection back at least in my reading of the subtext. It's not Harry's fault either.

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For authors of fanfiction, do you ever feel like you owe your creations something like the way I feel I owe Colin? Maybe for tragic characters like him specifically?

[Myr]

I've not seen much of Collin as character in all the fanfic's I've read.

If he's there at all, it's as a nuisance.  Though, he clearly has a hero worship and would probably make a good partner if he himself saw Harry instead of the legend.

[W_L]

27 minutes ago, Myr said:

I've not seen much of Collin as character in all the fanfic's I've read.

If he's there at all, it's as a nuisance.  Though, he clearly has a hero worship and would probably make a good partner if he himself saw Harry instead of the legend.

 Thanks @Myr,  I've read your old HP fanfics, years ago. Those were fun.  

It's hard to find any fanfics with him, despite him being more serious later on, his first impression as the annoying fanboy clouds everything.  

I liked the idea that he used the camera to hide his burgeoning attraction to Harry, because I remember reading some real-world gay photographers using their camera similarly during their early years. It makes him outwardly annoying as a coping mechanism.

One thing I'm trying to avoid is modernizing characters, i.e. Star Trek Discovery has been panned for their writing character with too many 21st-century neologism, basically ruining their premise as a TOS prequel just as an example. If Colin met Harry in 2020, I'd write him to go for it and develop him to be less neurotic, but it was 1992 and there's some stuff I've got to be realistic about. He's also muggle-born and lived in the regular world in rural UK (his dad's a milkman), same-sex attraction isn't openly discussed nor positively approached back then.

Edited October 26, 2025 by W_L