Some fandoms focus on the intensity of the canon relationships (think Lord of the Rings).
Some are centered on the range of imaginative possibilities that come out of things like alternate universes (Quantum Leap, Dr. Who/Torchwood).
And some—the ones I’m talking about here—make it big because they let fly with the taboos.
We all like taboos. Fandom is about fantasy, and fantasy is a space where pretty much anything goes. It’s where things like breathplay or sounding that might not be a fan’s cup of tea in real life get to be explored in the non-threatening context of a story or piece of artwork. Whether or not a fan likes watersports for hirself, writing or reading a story about it is a way to appreciate the sexy little thrill of something that “shouldn’t” be done.
And boy, do fen like those “shouldn’t”s.
Space-set canons (Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate) open the door for all kinds of potential dubious consent scenarios like sex pollen and aliens made us do it and soul bonding.
Horror based canons like Buffy the Vampire Slayer open up kink possibilities like woah (bloodplay, D/s, bondage).
The whole genre of RPF comes with the inherent taboos of making stuff up about real people, without even getting into the times where those people are related to each other (Jonas Brothers fandom, I’m looking at you).
And then there are individual cases that hit multiple taboo buttons. Supernatural is a show with room for all those horror canon kinks, plus it’s based on the intense, co-dependent partnership between two brothers. They deal with demons and angels and blood and violence and… well… the supernatural. Horror taboos + incest = fandom gold.
The mother of all taboo-inclusive fandoms, though, has got to be Harry Potter. Harry Potter, where you’ve got a whole cast full of characters with magical powers that, in the hands of creative fen, can make pretty much anything happen. HP fandom can and does easily provide you with your underage, your dub/non-con, your bestiality, your incest, your kink, your powerplay, and pretty much any other taboo you can think of.
HP is the perfect place for fen to invent that key ‘lubricatio’ spell or pair teachers illicitly with their students or hook characters up while they looking like someone (in the case of Polyjuice Potion) or something (animagi, anyone?) else. If you can imagine it, it’s probably out there somewhere in the vast realms of Harry Potter fandom.
It’s no coincidence, given all that, that HP is not only the top book fandom (in terms of number of works created) at the AO3, but the top fandom there, period. It took the fannish world by storm and gave us all the room we could possibly want to run as far as we could manage with our taboo fantasies.
I’d like to see something else come along and sweep fandom off its feet so completely and utterly and all-encompassingly the way Harry Potter did. It was a perfect storm of fantasy-building. So wizard hats off to JK Rowling (though she might not appreciate it in this particular context) for creating a canon that so tickled fandom’s fancy, and to all the fen who took that canon to places all over the taboo map.
