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Revitalizing a meme
Back in April of 2002, I posted my first "things I love about the fandom" post, and it became a bit of a meme back then, but that was a long, long time ago, and most of you weren't around then, so I'm, er, posting it again, updated where necessary. Feel free to gack and memeize?
I've been reminded that the 4 year anniversary of FictionAlley was last month, and the fifth anniversary of my posting my first fanfic, which is now totally and utterly lost in the mists of time yay was this last week, so I've thought that this is the right moment to do My Own Personal Survey Of The Fandom Thingy, which isn't in total traditional survey form, but will do for now. Take it yourself. Put it on your LJ. Let me, for once, start a trend.
When did you join the HP fandom? June, 2000, right before GoF came out, but I already had posters from the book releases and a cardboard standup of HP & The Doomspell Tournament thanks to a nice person at Barnes & Noble. The Doomspell standee was purchased by somone at Nimbus for $200, which was donated to HPEF.
Where did you join the fandom? I read an article in the Washington Post about Harry Potter for Grownups, a Yahoo Club, and it took about 2-3 hours of searching before I found it. Then I did, and I posted some inane thing about how I found the list and how long I'd been reading the books, and it just went on from there.
So when did you read the books? I read PS in November, 1998 - the same week I got pregnant (later named Harrison, after the books, sorta). I read CoS immediately after and had to wait for PoA to come out. I orderd it from the UK, and was so happy that it arrived before I went into labor (turned out to be about 3 weeks before, but, still...) so I'd get to finish it before the baby came. GoF and OotP were purchased at midnight parties and finished within 12 hours of their release in the US, but I couldn't get HBP until 7am California time; I finished it within 14 hours of getting my hands on it, and that was around spending the day with my in-laws.
What do you think of the fandom, at this moment in time? It's huge. It encompasses every age group, probably every country, every background and every mindset. There are tonnes of wonderful people - it's like a large sized city both in its size and its diversity - so people have to be careful with their personal information, but people also have wonderful opportunities to learn and do and try and experience new things. I love the way we have, as a general and amorphous thing, moved beyond mailing lists onto blogs, sites, wikis, comments-zones, and especially real life events, from large and mid-sized cons to 15000 person fests for book releases, and ideally, a gargantuan and worldwide GoF thing on November 19 (stay tuned for more!)
If you could ask JKR one question, what would it be? Last time, it was "Does Draco have *any* of Fitzwilliam Darcy's characteristics at all?" and I think she's answered that quite nicely :) Now, it would be "Do you have, or have you had, any songs that you listen to while you're writing specific bits of the HP books?
And what do you fear your follow up question would be? In other words, is Girlfriend in a Coma the theme song from Chamber of Secrets?"
What is your top ten list of fandom things? (I'm leaving the original 2002 stuff here as is, and anything new I add below will be italicized)
1. Beta reading. I've become a better editor and a better writer because of the stuff I've done in plotting, throwing plot bunnies into the world, and especially editing other writers' fics. It's a treat to see something come along well - and an even better treat to try and guess possible reactions to a chapter or character - and then see what happens when it hits the "airwaves".
2. Keeping up to date on the news. When I joined the fandom, back in June, 2000 (during the runup to GoF) I joined because I wanted to know what others were thinking about what would be in the book. I had heard barely any rumors or guesses, and it was like being in a world of speculation. And all of it creative and erudite and lucid and lovely. Especially about the wand order thing. Which I did notice the first time I read the book. And yes, I think the way it was explained/changed was utterly ludicrous. (Wow, look at me. In 2002, I dared to criticize the magnificent JKR for having an error in her book! Of course, it *was* an error, so I think the comments that we *noticed* the error were spot on, but my gosh, wouldn't F_W have gone to town on the HPfGU list that July and in November of 2000 when the error was "corrected"? I still think the writing was sub-par, btw, but I understand they may've been limited in terms of space for making the correction.)
3. The way people can change their minds. I've looked back over some of my early posts and giggled and goggled at my take on Draco back when I first read GoF. Evil? Him? Yeah, I sure thought so. Silly me, maybe. And I read something in an old H/G thread on FA today (permission requested, I swear) -
Isn't it cool?
4. The shared sense of expectation about Book5Seven. The way that everyone, no matter what their SHIP or their take on any of the characters, is equally desperate for new canon even though it's only been a month or so since we got what is now *old* canon. Gee, we're so needy! It's lovely. Even another schoolbook, I think, at this point, would relax our brains for a few minutes.
5. Livejournals. One mass off topic chatter thingy - with pictures! I also love chat, at least when the trolls have been cast out of the dungeon.
6. Watching the movie with friends - with a theater full of HP4GU and FA people. Talk about sharing the love - and the hate. Nobody looked at me askance when I yelled, "Plastic? His sandwich is wrapped in plastic?"I just had to add from my 2005 perspective, OMGYES. Movies surrounded by fellow fans are amazing, even in a half-full theater two days after HBP came out, especially because watching PoA, with Snape over Dumbledore's shoulder all the time is just damned creepy. Hey, look, I'm still cut-tagging my spoilers. But for length, not spoileratude at this point.
7. The way it's brought me friends from around the world - I had friends in the UK, NZ and Australia before, from my stint (still ongoing) in the Crowded House fandom, but now, I have friends in Argentina, India, the Philippines, Israel, Russia, Hawaii, Japan, Scandinavia, Mexico and for some strange reason, Canada as well. : hugs all the Canadians and everyone else, too.
8. The fact that we also love Lord of The Rings and Star Wars, sometimes, and Neil Gaiman Batman Begins and Lost and all sorts of other things - just look at Miliways. While HP was a gateway fandom for a lot of us, many people have ventured forth, and I think LJ has been a motivating force in that. Look at me - last month was the first time I started regularly reading a non-HP fanfic community. It took a while, but I'm branching around, too. And I followed Lost this season through all of you.
9. The way nobody minds if it takes 7 months for you to do the final chapter of your fic. Okay, they mind, and they ask and they worry. But they *will* get it. Soon. I hope. Or not. Gah, I suck. I need a month off to write. Gratis.
10. An all new vocabulary. Schnoogle. Meep. Glomp. Meeble. Snark. SCUSA. SHIP. And in everyday live, when not talking about relationships in canon or fanon, I've replaced the word "slash" with "dash", so I don't start giggling or having my mind wander.
11. Things to read on myPalm PilotSidekick. When Harry was about 15 months old, and the worst falling-asleep-baby one could find, I kept sane by loading fanfics onto my palm pilot and reading them by backlight. Only in the past 3 months has he gotten better at falling asleep, and this is the first week he's fallen asleep on his own, so I've still got a rotating set of about 30 fics which I read in elevators, while sitting outside his room listening to him talk to his animals, while on airplanes, etc. And it's all good. And it's even easier to keep my sidekick up to date than it ever was on the Palm. Whee for mobile communications.
12.It's all about the me. Ok, it's not. But it could be. See, I've got this One Ring... okay, I don't. But I could!The way, weirdly enough, the fandom, overall, seems to either adhere to a permutation of actual motto from Monsters, Inc. We Scare Because We Care - most of us say, We Share Because We Care. I love finding shared love for books, especially childhood favorites, as well as movies, music, art, tv, PINK, gizmos, events, beliefs and all sorts of other things from the posts by those on my flist. It's like the Tanita Tikarim song goes - "Tell me if you want to see the world outside your window." Maybe in 1987 said world wasn't free, but in 2005, it's damned easily accessable. Without all of you, would I know about IHarthDarth? Or LUSH? Or iPods? Or Stealing Harry? Would I have edited a book (the Nimbus compendium) which I'm going to plug to all of you as soon as Lumos has an Amazon Associates account? Would I have seen Jim Dale or be planning on going to Salem in a few weeks? Not likely. So forgive me, but I much prefer the pinksparkly world of fandom. Even if not everyone loves pink.
I've been reminded that the 4 year anniversary of FictionAlley was last month, and the fifth anniversary of my posting my first fanfic, which is now totally and utterly lost in the mists of time yay was this last week, so I've thought that this is the right moment to do My Own Personal Survey Of The Fandom Thingy, which isn't in total traditional survey form, but will do for now. Take it yourself. Put it on your LJ. Let me, for once, start a trend.
When did you join the HP fandom? June, 2000, right before GoF came out, but I already had posters from the book releases and a cardboard standup of HP & The Doomspell Tournament thanks to a nice person at Barnes & Noble. The Doomspell standee was purchased by somone at Nimbus for $200, which was donated to HPEF.
Where did you join the fandom? I read an article in the Washington Post about Harry Potter for Grownups, a Yahoo Club, and it took about 2-3 hours of searching before I found it. Then I did, and I posted some inane thing about how I found the list and how long I'd been reading the books, and it just went on from there.
So when did you read the books? I read PS in November, 1998 - the same week I got pregnant (later named Harrison, after the books, sorta). I read CoS immediately after and had to wait for PoA to come out. I orderd it from the UK, and was so happy that it arrived before I went into labor (turned out to be about 3 weeks before, but, still...) so I'd get to finish it before the baby came. GoF and OotP were purchased at midnight parties and finished within 12 hours of their release in the US, but I couldn't get HBP until 7am California time; I finished it within 14 hours of getting my hands on it, and that was around spending the day with my in-laws.
What do you think of the fandom, at this moment in time? It's huge. It encompasses every age group, probably every country, every background and every mindset. There are tonnes of wonderful people - it's like a large sized city both in its size and its diversity - so people have to be careful with their personal information, but people also have wonderful opportunities to learn and do and try and experience new things. I love the way we have, as a general and amorphous thing, moved beyond mailing lists onto blogs, sites, wikis, comments-zones, and especially real life events, from large and mid-sized cons to 15000 person fests for book releases, and ideally, a gargantuan and worldwide GoF thing on November 19 (stay tuned for more!)
If you could ask JKR one question, what would it be? Last time, it was "Does Draco have *any* of Fitzwilliam Darcy's characteristics at all?" and I think she's answered that quite nicely :) Now, it would be "Do you have, or have you had, any songs that you listen to while you're writing specific bits of the HP books?
And what do you fear your follow up question would be? In other words, is Girlfriend in a Coma the theme song from Chamber of Secrets?"
What is your top ten list of fandom things? (I'm leaving the original 2002 stuff here as is, and anything new I add below will be italicized)
1. Beta reading. I've become a better editor and a better writer because of the stuff I've done in plotting, throwing plot bunnies into the world, and especially editing other writers' fics. It's a treat to see something come along well - and an even better treat to try and guess possible reactions to a chapter or character - and then see what happens when it hits the "airwaves".
2. Keeping up to date on the news. When I joined the fandom, back in June, 2000 (during the runup to GoF) I joined because I wanted to know what others were thinking about what would be in the book. I had heard barely any rumors or guesses, and it was like being in a world of speculation. And all of it creative and erudite and lucid and lovely. Especially about the wand order thing. Which I did notice the first time I read the book. And yes, I think the way it was explained/changed was utterly ludicrous. (Wow, look at me. In 2002, I dared to criticize the magnificent JKR for having an error in her book! Of course, it *was* an error, so I think the comments that we *noticed* the error were spot on, but my gosh, wouldn't F_W have gone to town on the HPfGU list that July and in November of 2000 when the error was "corrected"? I still think the writing was sub-par, btw, but I understand they may've been limited in terms of space for making the correction.)
3. The way people can change their minds. I've looked back over some of my early posts and giggled and goggled at my take on Draco back when I first read GoF. Evil? Him? Yeah, I sure thought so. Silly me, maybe. And I read something in an old H/G thread on FA today (permission requested, I swear) -
A couple of posts back I said, rather firmly, that I had no fancy to join this ship. Or else I've no life and have enough time to think it over and change my mind. For some reason, I'm thinking it's the latter option.
Isn't it cool?
4. The shared sense of expectation about Book
5. Livejournals. One mass off topic chatter thingy - with pictures! I also love chat, at least when the trolls have been cast out of the dungeon.
6. Watching the movie with friends - with a theater full of HP4GU and FA people. Talk about sharing the love - and the hate. Nobody looked at me askance when I yelled, "Plastic? His sandwich is wrapped in plastic?"I just had to add from my 2005 perspective, OMGYES. Movies surrounded by fellow fans are amazing, even in a half-full theater two days after HBP came out, especially because watching PoA, with Snape over Dumbledore's shoulder all the time is just damned creepy. Hey, look, I'm still cut-tagging my spoilers. But for length, not spoileratude at this point.
7. The way it's brought me friends from around the world - I had friends in the UK, NZ and Australia before, from my stint (still ongoing) in the Crowded House fandom, but now, I have friends in Argentina, India, the Philippines, Israel, Russia, Hawaii, Japan, Scandinavia, Mexico and for some strange reason, Canada as well. : hugs all the Canadians and everyone else, too.
8. The fact that we also love Lord of The Rings and Star Wars, sometimes, and Neil Gaiman Batman Begins and Lost and all sorts of other things - just look at Miliways. While HP was a gateway fandom for a lot of us, many people have ventured forth, and I think LJ has been a motivating force in that. Look at me - last month was the first time I started regularly reading a non-HP fanfic community. It took a while, but I'm branching around, too. And I followed Lost this season through all of you.
9. The way nobody minds if it takes 7 months for you to do the final chapter of your fic. Okay, they mind, and they ask and they worry. But they *will* get it. Soon. I hope. Or not. Gah, I suck. I need a month off to write. Gratis.
10. An all new vocabulary. Schnoogle. Meep. Glomp. Meeble. Snark. SCUSA. SHIP. And in everyday live, when not talking about relationships in canon or fanon, I've replaced the word "slash" with "dash", so I don't start giggling or having my mind wander.
11. Things to read on my
12.
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Dude. Now that's a good question.
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~Slow Uptake Girl
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Wow. I remember being totally convinced that that was the title for Gof. I have been in the fandom for way too long...
Well, definitely a fun survey. I like the fact that your likes about the fandom haven't changed much. Nice to know we aren't bugging you off by now...
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That's what I was thinking. ^^