On the End of Canon: What keeps a fandom alive?

[icarus]

A question came up on my f-list about the end of canon in Stargate Atlantis.

I'm not sure whether the imminent end of the series has any significant effect on readership

In the Harry Potter fandom it certainly didn't. I can't imagine the end of the series would have a significant impact right away. Quite the opposite. There's a spike in interest as people mourn, fret over what's not neatly tied up, are annoyed at the author's/PTB's ships, or just miss it and want more, darn it. In time I think it will taper off as people find other active canons and drift to new fandoms, but no boom is going to be lowered late December, no, not at all.

How active the fandom remains depends on the fandom:

- Do the main archives, challenges, communities, still have people to run them? (Most Important Factor.)
- Is the fandom old enough to have a solid body of work, and fandom tropes, to sustain it?
- Are there lots of Swiss cheese-like holes remaining to play in?
- How dependent on canon is the fandom (are the majority of fics episode tags, or have the fic writers embraced AUs and crossovers)?
- How committed are the fans to keeping their fandom alive? Have fans declared that nothing will stop their ship? Or have they been ho-hum about the end of their series?
- Are there other factors to keep the fandom alive? Spin-offs, movies, conventions.

Comments

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

I think HP fandom's main problem was the epilogue, and how it, for lack of a better term, fucked most everyone over. I know it put me out, that and the deaths :/ And there's something about EWE fic that's just a little hard to believe.

Considering your questions, I think SG will be just fine :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

EWE fic? What are those?

[likethemodel.livejournal.com]

Epilogue? What Epilogue?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I learned an important lesson from her epilogue: never, even if you've written your ending in advance, just leave an older piece of writing in place. She'd grown as a writer so much in the interim. Never mind the ships.

The epilogue was trite, wooden, lacking in context and vivid description. I hit the end of it and wished that I'd skipped it.

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

I wish she would have thrown out her outline all together. How often do you write something and have it finish in the same way you expected it would since the beginning? I know I never do.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

If she had thrown out her outline, I doubt she would have ever finished.

Plus, once a story gets that big, it's not like a short story. You can't keep the whole thing in your head.

200 pages and half a dozen characters is doable.

Once you have an entire school, several families, and two generations, plus the Muggle and Wizarding world--? No way she could throw away the outline. Never in a million years. She'd never keep it straight.

I just always thought it odd that she threw away the Hogwarts school year structure for the final book. It was very disorienting.

[mad_maudlin]

Plus, I kind of suspect that Ron was drunk in it.