The Myth of the Dying Fandom

[icarus]

The Myth of a Dying Fandom

There've been quite a few posts in the Harry Potter fandom lately about how it's dying, or declarations isn't dying, or that it needs to be revitalized, etc., etc. I think a lot of people have set the dying fandom myth to rest, but to add my two cents...

I receive several reviews a week on Harry Potter stories I wrote upwards of three years ago. Beg Me For It is being translated into Russian for Fanrus, a site that features Huge numbers of Harry Potter Russian translations. I was recently sent several gorgeous pieces of fanart. Given the last full-length HP fic I wrote was The Metronome in January, and I haven't been stirring the cauldron posting stories everywhere, that sounds like a pretty lively fandom to me.

When a group of authors discussed fanfiction on Making Light, most of the fanfiction writers who turned up wrote Harry Potter.

Now I have noticed that the HP authors I've followed for years haven't been posting a lot of fic. There seems to be a multi-fandom fad going around. I'm no different. Right now I don't have any HP stories burbling on the stove. I did burn out after 130 HP stories, and I was counting on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to restart my engines.

Instead, I find I'm holding my breath.

The book was a cliffhanger and I'm not one of those people who like to fill in what I think the ending's going to be. I don't shake my Christmas presents either. I like to be surprised. I've always been canon-centric in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (we'll not mention what I do to canon in Stargate Atlantis). So instead of filling in the ready-made holes of canon, I find myself faced with a story that's... incomplete. I don't want to tie up the loose ends or finish anything off for JKR. I want to see what she does.

This is not a dying fandom. This is a fandom on the edge of a cliff, silently breathless, waiting for the fireworks to begin.

I predict an explosion of fanfiction after JKR's final book.

Comments

Personally, I think the "fandom is dying" is a bit over the top

[lillian78.livejournal.com]

People naturally move on when their inclinations change or they're feeling they've done everything they think they can possibly accomplish in the fandom or just plain burnout. I've left the HP fandom. Why? Dunno. Problably burnout combined with my new love of the SGA fandom. Crack!fic, fabulous writers, canon still evolving on the show what's not to love? I don't *hate* the HP fandom. I didn't leave it because I was in a snit but because, for me, it was time. I still read the occasionally highly rec'd story but it no longer occupies the majority of my fandom time. Before HP I was in the Smallville fandom (my first) but left that when the writing/relationship of my beloved Clark/Lex went south. I think it's a natural progression. Some folks can keep involved in multiple fandoms and active but that's just not me.