The Myth of the Dying Fandom
May. 3rd, 2006 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusThe 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-04 10:42 am (UTC)I don't think we're a dying fandom, but I think we've grown a lot of grudges, and there's competition. Harry/Draco shippers think only Harry/Snape fics get read, Harry/Snape shippers think only Harry/Draco fics get read, Harry/Hermione shippers think Ron/Hermione shippers are hotheads, Ron/Hermione shippers tihnk Harry/Hermione shippers don't really read the books... shall I go on?
The other problem is that HBP tied up so many loose ends already. Before OoTP, there was a LOT more to work with. After OoTP, less. But after HBP... heck, the book even changed the way I look at characters. It also, for me, ruined several plot ideas. I had a long withstanding DADA teacher for the Maraudera era, and Andromeda was the ultimate Heir of Grimmauld Place (I still think the "Sirius was the oldest son" makes no sense - he. was. dis. owned. But I'm sure I'm just missing something... maybe JKR'll explain someday).
The site has made stuff harder too. Anyone wanting to write a Sirius fic where he had a Significant Other can't. Anyone making Alice Longbottom Harry's Godmother can't. Fics with Neville/Luna and with the Prewett brothers were possibly destroyed.
So now we also have to consider this: more could be changed. It suddenly makes it harder to write.
After the seventh book... it could go two ways. There may be too many tied up things for there to be a good amount of fics. OR, there will be so many loose ends, like the end of GoF, that fic explodes.
Sorry if this was too long.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-04 08:04 pm (UTC)A couple questions: which site do you mean? The last pieces I wrote were Gen, so I haven't run afoul of any TOS changes anywhere.
This could be a result of my writing fanfic for a TV show, but doesn't canon joss storylines all the time? I mean, I would have to work really hard to write Snape Manor now. It's the trade-off between writing something where the canon is incomplete but the interest is high.
As for grudges, the great thing about being a huge fandom is that the institutional memory of grudges is lost like a penny in the ocean. For individuals it's a problem, but I don't think it's a problem for the fandom as a whole.
After the seventh book... it could go two ways. There may be too many tied up things for there to be a good amount of fics. OR, there will be so many loose ends, like the end of GoF, that fic explodes.
I agree, but don't forget the "rebellion" fics: if JKR kills Snape, he will live on relentlessly in fandom.
Icarus