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

[teawithvoldy.livejournal.com]

Before HBP I was rolling. I created fanart like a machine on crack, I was threorising til I brain farted myself, I wrote fics, commented, volunteered... I was addicted.

And then I read HBP and something just died in me, like I had suddenly got fandom bipolar from reading the book. I think part of it stems from the fact HBP was much more different to the other books, and partly because HBP is the second last book, and lastly I had exhausted myself in fandom.

Now for nearly a year, my involement in fandom has slowed down drastically, my creative flare is hidding, my muse, escaped with it. So I'm only creating art a max couple of times a month.

However my interest in fandom has only started to bubble again in the last week, so it's good news.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering... is it odd we feel obligated to continue our online obsessions? Why is that?

Icarus

[teawithvoldy.livejournal.com]

obligated? If you feel obligated to continue without any enjoyment, then that is very odd, and you'll just make yourself sick. I enjoy hanging around people who are fantatics in the same sort of things I like.

I think also there's that sense of "I want to make something of myself, and if I can't do that in RL, I might as make it here online." So for some people they want to strive further, and better themselves in a virtual community.

I know, that I've certainly inproved in my writing and in my Art skills much more, because I've pushed myself to create a higher standard seeing all the fab work around me.