Individual Work
Fred & George

Fred & George (2012) is a remixed iteration of Nick Montfort’s generative poem, Taroko Gorge (2009) by Flourish Klink, a transmedia producer, fanfiction writer, and scholar. Named after J.K. Rowling’s beloved Weasley twins from the Harry Potter series, this poem is a creative interpretation on fanfiction and fandom, posing Fred and George as lovers in, as Klink describes it, a “twincest.” The poem begins with line after line appearing against a bright orange background--an unsubtle visual allusion to the Weasleys infamous read hair--until it fills the page and begins scrolling, a seemingly endless stream of wizard-themed erotica that humorously combines euphemism and bodies in random variations.

Like the original poem, each line of Fred & George randomly pulls from a small set of vocabulary to form text in a set poetic form. While Klink largely maintains the original poem’s structure and code, they replaced Montfort’s descriptive vocabulary of geographical markers and landscapes with a variety of body parts, sensual verbs, and subject identity. Unlike other remixes, Klink’s dataset is one of the smallest ranging from only six to ten words. The effect is striking; visually, Klink’s poem is short and simple yet no less complex. As combinations of body parts and actions scroll up the page--repetitions of hands, fingers, and lips--this poem almost reads like a dreams where the boundaries between bodies, identities, and experiences are blurred, furthered by the inconsistencies of the randomly-generated lines.

Klink further captures and satirizes the nature of Harry Potter fanfiction and fan culture by borrowing key terms from Rowling’s worlds. By including both “wand” and “wizard” in this poem, Klink creates erotic euphemism and humor while highlighting the “endless kinky desires” of online fan culture. In reading the poem, it is easy to ask: whose dream is this? The characters of Fred and George or that of the fans? In this poem Klink demonstrates the role of authorship and creativity in fandom, illuminating the ways in which fanfiction is act of interpretation, imagination, and remediation, all while engaging with humor, taboo topics, and creative programming.

Screenshots: 
Author statement: 
<em>Fred and George</em> is a crossover between Nick Montfort's Taroko Gorge and Harry Potter fanfiction. It is an illustration of the internet's endless and endlessly kinky desires. It is also an act of trolling.

Discussion

Say more about the variables and how they have changed from Montfort. Where does Klink get the lexicon specifically?

Say more about the visual appearance.

Add literary qualities, procedural modalities, and so on.