'The Fault in Our Stars' Fans Write a Future for Hazel and Augustus
Fan fiction — in which aficionados of a particular movie or book write their own new adventures for the main characters — is most often associated with sci-fi and fantasy. On websites like FanFiction.net and Wattpad, hundreds of writers speculate on the adventures of a post-Lord of the Rings Legolas or what might have happened if Twilight’s Bella chose the werewolf over the vampire. However, an indisputably real-world novel has also become surprisingly popular fanfic fodder: The Fault in Our Stars. (Spoilers follow for those who haven’t yet read the book.) On the surface it’s an odd choice since, unlike Star Trek or The Avengers, John Green’s teary novel has a definitive conclusion that does not leave the door open to further adventures of the central couple. However, that’s part of the allure for these fanfic scribes: They want to give it a happy ending.
The Fault in Our Stars tells the story of two teenagers with cancer, the very ill Hazel and the in-remission Augustus, who spark a romance that inevitably ends in tragedy. “After reading such a great book, I just couldn’t accept that it was all over,” says 16-year-old Alyssa, a fanfic writer from Connecticut, via email. “As someone who gets super-attached to the books that I read, I found that fan fiction is a perfect outlet. I can read about Hazel and Gus until I go blind. I can write about them in a million different ways.” Her story, "Reunite", published on FanFiction.net along with hundreds of other TFIOS-inspired tales, envisions Hazel and Augustus resuming their romance in the afterlife. It’s a common theme in TFIOS fanfic, much of which seeks to rework the novel’s ending into a more upbeat one. In some of the stories, both characters live to see their wedding day; in others, their love lives on through the birth of a baby.
These stories, largely written by teenagers, may appear at first to miss the point. Isn’t the story supposed to be sad? Yet in some ways, Green’s novel is itself a love letter to fan fiction. Hazel’s favorite novel, a fictional book called An Imperial Affliction, ends midsentence, and she speculates obsessively about the fate of its characters. As a gesture of love, Gus even offers to write Hazel a new ending, the very definition of fanfic. In the end, Hazel realizes that both her personal love story and An Imperial Affliction contain infinite possibilities, even if the end comes too soon.
If fan fiction is about anything, it’s about infinite possibilities. There is, for example, a thriving sub-genre of The Fault in Our Stars fan fiction that involves the members of One Direction. FanFiction.net has six stories, all by different authors, in which Hazel meets Doctor Who. Some fans have even attempted to turn An Imperial Affliction into an actual novel.
In contrast, the big-screen version of The Fault in Our Stars, which comes out this Friday, June 6, is a one-shot deal. There will be no sequel, and Harry Styles is unlikely to star in an alternate version opposite Niall Horan. But for fan fiction writers, the film will only deepen the canon. When TFIOS star Shailene Woodley appeared in Divergent, she inspired a flurry of fanfic envisioning a romance with co-star Theo James. If fans fall for Woodley’s TFIOS co-star Ansel Elgort, it could inspire a whole new subgenre of Shailene-Ansel fiction. As Hazel says in the book, “Some infinities are bigger than others.” Or in the words of Alyssa, who dreams of being a writer like Green: “Because of fan fiction, the stories never have to end.”
Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox
