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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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