orgectoplasm! :: fandom lifespan
Dec. 6th, 2003 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bkI read a great fic this week, "Come To Know Yourself" by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tekalynn. It's charming and engagingly characterized, and has one of the most oddly beautiful sex scenes I've read. It's also ghostslash -- Professor Binns/Bloody Baron. There ought to be a ghostfic archive for this fandom. I know I'd visit.
*
I've been thinking lately about fandom lifespan -- that is, how long an active fandom can sustain itself before it goes into a population decline. There's really no such thing as a dead fandom, not in the age of reruns and VCRs -- people are still discovering ST:TOS and being inspired to write Kirk/Spock, and people are still reading their work -- but there's definitely a division between fandoms that are on the upswing and those that aren't. In TV fandoms, lifespan may be partially determined by the duration of the series -- once there's no new canon, population growth is bound to level off and eventually decline. (There's also the fact that most series reach a certain point where there's no *good* new canon.)
I'm wondering how this applies to HP, which is likely to enjoy a very long period of new canon, but has it released in huge chunks after lengthy dry-spells. HP population growth has been on a steep incline for several years, and I think can safely be said to be the biggest fic-writing fandom around. That kind of growth seems unlikely to continue through the duration of the series -- I'm thinking four or five more years.
Does fandom have an upper limit, a carrying capacity? HP is already a sprawling fandom, split into many different coexisting areas with limited mutual interaction. Asshadowluck once pointed out, if one area of fandom culture splits off enough that what they're doing isn't recognizable to people in a different area (perhaps Draco characterization could be an example?), it isn't really one integrated fandom anymore, but several. People often speak of themselves about being in "Snape fandom" or "H/D fandom". Perhaps we're leaving off thinking of ourselves as Romans, and starting to think of ourselves as Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, etc.
All right, now I'm starting to want to talk about thinking of myself as a Californian but not an American, so I'm just going to stop here and leave it for another time. Suffice it to say that HP fandom is very different from other fandoms in many ways, and it'll be interesting to see what happens as it gets older.
tekalynn. It's charming and engagingly characterized, and has one of the most oddly beautiful sex scenes I've read. It's also ghostslash -- Professor Binns/Bloody Baron. There ought to be a ghostfic archive for this fandom. I know I'd visit.*
I've been thinking lately about fandom lifespan -- that is, how long an active fandom can sustain itself before it goes into a population decline. There's really no such thing as a dead fandom, not in the age of reruns and VCRs -- people are still discovering ST:TOS and being inspired to write Kirk/Spock, and people are still reading their work -- but there's definitely a division between fandoms that are on the upswing and those that aren't. In TV fandoms, lifespan may be partially determined by the duration of the series -- once there's no new canon, population growth is bound to level off and eventually decline. (There's also the fact that most series reach a certain point where there's no *good* new canon.)
I'm wondering how this applies to HP, which is likely to enjoy a very long period of new canon, but has it released in huge chunks after lengthy dry-spells. HP population growth has been on a steep incline for several years, and I think can safely be said to be the biggest fic-writing fandom around. That kind of growth seems unlikely to continue through the duration of the series -- I'm thinking four or five more years.
Does fandom have an upper limit, a carrying capacity? HP is already a sprawling fandom, split into many different coexisting areas with limited mutual interaction. As
shadowluck once pointed out, if one area of fandom culture splits off enough that what they're doing isn't recognizable to people in a different area (perhaps Draco characterization could be an example?), it isn't really one integrated fandom anymore, but several. People often speak of themselves about being in "Snape fandom" or "H/D fandom". Perhaps we're leaving off thinking of ourselves as Romans, and starting to think of ourselves as Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, etc.All right, now I'm starting to want to talk about thinking of myself as a Californian but not an American, so I'm just going to stop here and leave it for another time. Suffice it to say that HP fandom is very different from other fandoms in many ways, and it'll be interesting to see what happens as it gets older.
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-06 01:36 pm (UTC)Oh and look out for a peter-fic I'm about to post. Not so much a fic as an exercise... Just thought I'd try my hand at his POV. It's very... rough.
Babbling
Date: 2003-12-06 03:39 pm (UTC)Interesting thoughts about fandom. I've never yet been in on the beginning of a fandom -- so far I've either gotten in once things were well underway, or after it was all over and things had started cooling down. The few times I was there for the beginning (TPM and Smallville), I didn't really get drawn in.
I hadn't really thought about it before, but I wonder if that's a 'thing' for me -- that a fandom has to be well underway before I can fall hard for it. I know that in the case of the fandoms I have fallen hard for, it was the fic that drew me in, and there was already a whole lot of it just waiting for me to read.
It will be interesting to see how things play out with HP. I think you're right about the splits. I entered HP through the Snape slash part of things, and when I started reading Harry/Draco it was really like entering a different fandom -- different people, different perspectives, a whole different flavor to the fic. (And I was sometimes amused by H/D fans who made statements that clearly indicated they believed H/D *was* HP fandom.) Although I'm not at this point really interested in what goes on in them, I'm peripherally aware that there's the Sirius/Remus section, and the Harry/Ginny, Hermione/Ron section, and the (newish since OotP) Remus/Tonks *shudder* and Kingsley/?? sections, and so on and so on and so on (just like that old shampoo commercial!).
I also think you're right that HP is in many ways unique. It has the canon, and a sort of time-lagged quasi-canon in the form of the companion movies, and we *know* (unlike most other book or movie based fandoms) that there's more of both books and movies to come. I think it could conceivably continue to grow until the last movie has been thoroughly processed.
Gosh, I'm babbling a lot today. When's the next chat??
Re: Babbling
Date: 2003-12-07 04:03 pm (UTC)I entered HP through the Snape slash part of things, and when I started reading Harry/Draco it was really like entering a different fandom -- different people, different perspectives, a whole different flavor to the fic. (And I was sometimes amused by H/D fans who made statements that clearly indicated they believed H/D *was* HP fandom.)
That's definitely been my experience.
Gosh, I'm babbling a lot today. When's the next chat??
I wanted to have one this month, but yesterday I had to work late, and this Saturday is the company Christmas party. Maybe we could do one on a Friday instead, though some people wouldn't be able to come. Well, I'll do a post about it later.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-06 04:14 pm (UTC)Please tell me I didn't inadverantly add that to your vocabulary. Please tell me you and you alone are responsible for that word.
And as for the HP fandom being an incredibly divided space... that sounds true and reasonable. And your Rome & its properties metaphor works incredibly well. They are seperate places in many ways, and have a seperate culture and customs. But in the end, all those municipals were affiliated with Rome. All the fandom traces back to J. K. Rowling's pen.
And not to mention, to someone on the "street," we're all the same anyway. A Harry Potter nerd is a Harry Potter nerd is a Harry Potter nerd. That's important to note too. Only we can tell each other apart. To all others, we're a more or less unified culture.
And also... check out this (in)famous place. It brings the funny to the many miniature split cultures and warring Big Name Fans that populate the Harry Potter fandom.
Fandom Wank Harry Potter Section:
http://www.journalfen.net/tools/memories.bml?user=fandom_wank&keyword=Harry+Potter&filter=all
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 10:43 am (UTC)I will never tell anyone of the role you, er, didn't play in its genesis.
And not to mention, to someone on the "street," we're all the same anyway.
That's true, but to a lot of people overseas, all Americans are the same as well.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-06 07:16 pm (UTC)I think this happens in any popular fandom. X-files certainly went through this, as did Buffy. You got Mulder-fans, Scully-fans, and Krycheck, Buffy-fans, Willow-fans, Giles-fans. Anything that encompasses several thousand people is going to factionalize, especially in fandom, which is quite famous for all sorts of Big End-Little End divisiveness.
The only thing about lit-fandom opposed to media-fandom is that it can be much more persistant, because books don't go out of circulation as fast as tv shows do.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 10:47 am (UTC)Notice that XF fandom has a unified yearly awards system, the Spookys, which persists even to this day (the voting is going on now). The same people vote on MSR, Krycek slash, LGM, and the rest. HP has nothing like that, and it's hard to imagine it ever happening.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 02:32 pm (UTC)Reminds me of a line from Garret Mattingly's Renaisance Diplomacy, regarding oh, about 11C Europeans, still thinking of themselves as part of the Roman Commonwealth:
"Nobody had come to tell them that Empire had been given over to the Goths. Or that they were the Goths it had been given over to."
(Or something close, I seem to have lent out my copy.)