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

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hey, conventions kept Star Trek: TOS alive. I hadn't thought about the problems with the movies. But the Stargate SG-1 movies did give the SG-1 fandom a shot in the arm.