It made me read and write more in my formative years. This is all.

 

It introduced me to the idea that you can suddenly become better than everyone you know at everything, in the course of a summer. I mean, this isn't true for the most part, but with enough Adderall, it really is.

 

Writing fanfiction has brought me enlightenment. I have discovered that I am God, and can bring about the creation of worlds through an act of sheer will.

 

Like many, fanfic has just helped my real life writing dramatically. My first serious attempts at writing were fanfiction, and now I get paid to write. So yeah, it's been a pretty huge boon to me (not that I'd tell anyone, still).

 

I wish this was true. I would rock up back to uni after the summer and just be a badass.

 

It's difficult to say who I would have been without fanfiction, as it has been a part of my everyday life since I was 12. I didn't think I ever actively set my accomplishments against Harry's like Taure did. Perhaps I would be far more systematic in my approach to every day life, if that was the case.

As an aside, I think you may be placing too much emphasis on Harry Potter and not enough on third factors in your formative years, Taure. I know it's on an anecdotal basis, but I have yet to hear of others taking the same approach as you. Perhaps you applied fanon Harry Potter to an approach you already were using?

Personally, I think my abilities with abstraction may be what I took from fanfiction. Taking a single moment in a boy's life (the summers before or after fifth year, anyone?) and transforming it with countless choices (or countless iterations of the same choice) that drastically alter the timeline affected me religiously, philosophically, and socially.

I began to think more about why I was doing something, whether it was my only option, and why everyone around me felt like they knew what was best. My mother told me last night that I wanted to be the pastor of a church when I was younger. While I definitely don't remember this, the concept of monotheism became anathema to me in my formative years. I think at least part of that can be attributed to fanfiction.

 

Reading fanfiction, particularly by gifted writers on this site has allowed me to realize that I should never have come close to passing my English exams in school. Nowadays, I'm leagues and leagues above what I was in school but still feel kinda retarded in comparison with alot of people on here.

I'm not sure if I'm just that bad or they're just that good. Probably a combination of both.