I was just mulling over a fic idea on my drive home, as you do, when I stumbled upon a genre that I realized could only work in fanfiction: The Who-am-I.

Inspired by the classic Whodunnit, the Who-am-I challenges the reader to figure out the identity of a character in a story. However, where Whodunnits have plots that are about unraveling the mystery, this doesn't have to be the case for a Who-am-I at all.

Hell, one could say that the Who-am-I is more of a meta-genre.

We've all heard about Harry-in-name-only. We've all about SIs. Now what if we were to add an extra layer there!

We can have a Harry, who's actually character x magically put into Harry's 11 year old body just as Hagrid breaks down the door to the shack! Or if you really wanna go crazy you could have someone other than Harry be the vessel, but let's not go overboard here.

Obviously it doesn't actually have to be Harry at the shack, and whatever plot the fic has doesn't really matter for the concept of the Who-am-I at all.

The point of the Who-am-I, is that the character currently inhabiting your mc's body is not mentioned by name. It would kind of defeat the purpose to not mention some kind of event/merging/weird memory stuff in the fic at all, but after that the game is on.

Maybe Harry gets cranky sometimes. Maybe those times often coincide with a full moon.

Maybe Harry's suddenly gained the ability to understand a bit of French.

Maybe this Harry is a bit of a know-it-all.

Your Harry could know who his past self was and you as a writer could just be playing your audience, or your Harry could not know and figure it out as a plot point. Or maybe he doesn't even know something beyond a weird dream happened and never finds out there was more to it, but your readers know and care?

Whether you definitively answer the Who-am-I question or not, no matter how long you keep mystery going, you're writing a Who-am-I!

The form that the Who-am-I most often takes is probably mysterious prologues where the identity of the pov character is hidden for a dramatic reveal. Do you know of larger form examples of it? Do you enjoy a bit of meta-mystery in your fanfiction? Do you reckon the extra level to your fanfic could spark some more engagement in your audience (maybe if you were to run your fic as a quest or something)? Is none of this new to you at all and I'm just super late to the party?

Discuss!

 

So it's a reincarnation crossover, where the audience isn't told what one of the series involved is? There's definitely good stories to be had with examining how a particular character would handle the challenges of a different story, but I don't think there's much mileage to be got out of the mystery of who the body snatcher is, for anything longer than a one-shot.

If the reader isn't familiar with the mystery half of the crossover, then the story just won't work. The reveal won't have any impact. The author also needs to get the right balance of dropping clues to make an actual mystery, which honestly I think is beyond most fanfic authors. It will also require fairly deep understanding of characters to make a proper mystery out of it, whereas I think most authors would just stick on a few surface level character traits or quote the crossover character occasionally.

I also think it would be a difficult story to advertise. "Harry Potter has been replaced by another fictional character, try and figure out who." Doesn't strike me as something that would hook a lot of readers.

 

Yea I would say a prologue/first chapter or two would be, realistically, about as long as you could keep the mystery up. It would be a fine line to give hints that readers could pick up on without outright giving everything away, and I think even if that's skillfully handled there's a natural limit on how long it can last. More of a neat hook, than a story premise in and of itself.

Absolutely could not tell you the name of it off the top of my head, but I'm reasonably sure that I read a time travel fic that did this, leaving the travelers unnamed for the first stretch. It was neat, I liked it, but it also didn't have much bearing on the greater story being told.

If you did want a story where the reveal came at the climax, you'd probably be looking at a short story or one-shot at that point. Maybe a longer one, if the clues about prior identity were kept to an absolute minimum? But then it would just feel like a cannon rehash with a personality-switched lead, and that seems like it would get real boring real fast.