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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Date: 2006-05-04 08:19 pm (UTC)but I've never heard why exactly everyone thinks the fandom is dying
My understanding is that there are three factors intersecting. People are noticing their f-lists are full of other fandoms when they friended people solely for HP. I've had a few 'huh-what?' moments myself.
Then, certain long-standing HP writers have wandered off/stopped writing HP/stopped writing fanfic. There was a poll, and the reasons varied. Some were writing original fic. Some were annoyed with the HP fandom. Some had personal situations that didn't allow the same amount of online time (children, jobs). Others just lost interest. There may be a natural limit to how long one can sustain an obsession and a lot of these people had been writing HP for over four years.
Then there was a rather vague assertion that there was less fic being produced or that it was of lower quality. That one I have trouble buying. I'm thinking that we just need to find the next generation of BNFs, that there may be a changing of the guard right now, but our friendings haven't kept up.
Icarus