Gacked from Kokopoko
Jan. 3rd, 2004 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heidiA true BNF of Harry Potter
It got me thinking, at around two o'clock in the morning... the real BNFs of Harry Potter are people like Stephen King, Rosie O'Donnell, Diane Duane, Laura Bush, and now, Simon leBon. Not any of us (unless any of you are, secretly, Stephen King, Rosie O'Donnell, Laura Bush or Simon leBon, which one of you may very well be).
As many of you know, I don't like the term much anyway, in part because there are so many different areas of this fandom, and someone who's a well known BNF in one section, like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arabel1a, is not well known at all among the people who are, say, regular readers of marvolo's work (back when she wrote HP, that is).
But all of us know Stephen King, or Simon leBon, even if not all of us know Diane Duane. They're the big names. They're the fans. Would it be worth suggesting we reclaim the term BNF from fandom-participants and give it to the truly famous fans, the ones you'd recognize when you're walking down the street?
ETA: I think my problem with BNFness, conceptually, is that, as a few people have said over the past few days, the fandom belongs to everyone. Yes, some people (myself, admittedly, included) spend more time on fandomy things than others do, and some people who've tried to leave the fandom just have too strong a reputation for that to ever really happen. But it's clear to me, after having watched and participated in the HP fandom for about three and a half years now, that there is no bar to someone with talent at writing, reviewing, reccing, drawing, theorizing, organizing or helping from becoming just as involved as s/he wants to be. And to say that there are 100 people who "run" or "control" or "are involved with" everything denigrates everyone else, whose contributions and participations are really what make anything in and/or related to HP fun/interesting/enlivening/worth paying attention to.
It got me thinking, at around two o'clock in the morning... the real BNFs of Harry Potter are people like Stephen King, Rosie O'Donnell, Diane Duane, Laura Bush, and now, Simon leBon. Not any of us (unless any of you are, secretly, Stephen King, Rosie O'Donnell, Laura Bush or Simon leBon, which one of you may very well be).
As many of you know, I don't like the term much anyway, in part because there are so many different areas of this fandom, and someone who's a well known BNF in one section, like
arabel1a, is not well known at all among the people who are, say, regular readers of marvolo's work (back when she wrote HP, that is). But all of us know Stephen King, or Simon leBon, even if not all of us know Diane Duane. They're the big names. They're the fans. Would it be worth suggesting we reclaim the term BNF from fandom-participants and give it to the truly famous fans, the ones you'd recognize when you're walking down the street?
ETA: I think my problem with BNFness, conceptually, is that, as a few people have said over the past few days, the fandom belongs to everyone. Yes, some people (myself, admittedly, included) spend more time on fandomy things than others do, and some people who've tried to leave the fandom just have too strong a reputation for that to ever really happen. But it's clear to me, after having watched and participated in the HP fandom for about three and a half years now, that there is no bar to someone with talent at writing, reviewing, reccing, drawing, theorizing, organizing or helping from becoming just as involved as s/he wants to be. And to say that there are 100 people who "run" or "control" or "are involved with" everything denigrates everyone else, whose contributions and participations are really what make anything in and/or related to HP fun/interesting/enlivening/worth paying attention to.
