December Daily: Looking back on Harry Potter

[resonant]

cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"

Well, you're not wrong ... but "fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination" is just another way of saying "Fanbait."

I mean, Shatner-era Star Trek -- the classic fandom inspiration -- would you say it could live up to the collective imagination? Would you be eager to watch it today if the Trek universe in your mind didn't include the fanworks as well as the canon?

Maybe you'd have a lot of writers and directors saying, "I remembered it fondly from childhood, and then I went back and watched it again ... and it inspired me to create things that were actually as good as what I remembered."

So. Harry Potter. If I re-read Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban, I expect that it would be a genuine pleasure. Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix would be a mixed pleasure. I barely got through Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows the first time.

On the other hand, the universe shows some cracks where the ethics weren't fully thought through, but every page is jam-packed with invention. The characters were sometimes shoehorned into going ways that they didn't want to go, but there are so many of them, and they're still alive.

I could open any book to a random page and start reading, and I'll bet I'd have a story idea within three pages. I might describe it as "here's something else JKR screwed up," but it would be a story idea!


schneefink, I moved your question earlier to make room for ride_4ever's birthday.



1 -- goss, "VENOM! Why do you think it's been such an instant hit with Fandom, and what are some of your favourite fanworks so far?" and nestra, "Any Venom recs?"
2 -- anitac588, "How do you relate to different fandoms? Do you revisit them? Sometimes I find it difficult to go back to reading stories in 'old' fandoms after discovering new OTP."
3 -- marginaliana, "what is your favorite physical non-living thing? Not a person or a pet, but it could be something you own or a piece of art, etc."
4 -- cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"
5 -- teigh_corvus, "Your thoughts on James Joyce and Ulysses."
6 -- kass, "If the you of 10 years ago could see you now, what would surprise her most?"
7 -- jjhunter, "What do you carry with you?"
8 -- mific, "Sounds like you commute to and fro still. How do you pass the time traveling? Music? Audiobooks? Something else? Any reccs? :)"
9 -- torch, "favorite advent songs!"
10 -- princessofgeeks, "How did you go about changing fandoms? Was it, historically, something you did or something that just happened? Did friends lure you? Did you find new shows to watch?"
11 -- reginagiraffe, "(It's MrGiraffe's birthday so...) Have you ever written a birthday themed story? If not, what couple would have the best/funnest/easiest birthday story to write and why?"
12 -- laurenthemself, "What are your thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok? I know ya boy Steve wasn't in it but did you have any shippy feelings?"
13 -- allheadybooks, "13. What's your least favorite thing about splitting your time between two houses? (My wife and I are also in a commuter marriage at the moment, and I get so frustrated every weekend when I have to go grocery shopping AGAIN because I thought I had eggs but that was at the other apartment!"
14 -- schneefink, "how about your field of study/work/specialization/hobby and how a book/movie/series/canon got it terribly/hilariously wrong?"
15 -- china_shop, "What hooks you into a fanfic? Is it banter, characterisation, tropes, or...? Is it different from what hooks you into original fic?"
16 -- muccamukk, "Describe a long fic you always wanted to write, but never have and likely never will."
17 -- ride_4ever, "rec two due South fanworks: a favorite that you created and a favorite that someone else created. (Anything! Triggers and squicks not a concern for me.)"
18 -- kass, "What have you read recently that you've enjoyed?
19 -- jjhunter, "What are five words you like or find especially meaningful + 1 word you despise? Why?"
20 --
21 --
22 -- mekare, What would Ben Fraser do in 2018?
23 -- marina, "What was the last book you read that wasn't fanfic and that you intensely loved, and why."
24 -- wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."
25 --
26 --
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 --
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[resonant]

A lot of fans are convinced that the books are All That, but mostly I think those are people who either are too young to have read very much or are just the kind of people who don't read very much. And, in fairness, I was in my thirties when the books came out -- if I'd been twelve, I might be viewing them as completely magic to this day.

(When I was actually twelve, I read Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha over and over and over and over. I haven't dared to look at it as an adult, but it's fair to assume that it's not the world of beauty and wonder that I thought it was when I was a kid.)

[cesperanza]

I get the genius of the worldbuilding - but that was SGA too, a magical sentient city that the writer had NO IDEA what to do with. The world of HP is amazing, the execution is--IDK, wildly sloppy but I'm someone who wants every gun fired and every t crossed!

[resonant]

But imagine if you were contractually obligated to take the very first fiction you ever wrote and make a seven-book series out of it!

A co-worker of mine recently shared some of her fanfiction with me. It's het, SGA crossed over with a series I've never watched, very much Not My Kind Of Thing, but the thing that really struck me was that her fantasy John Sheppard is a very confident dommy straight guy, while the fantasy Sheppard in my neck of fandom was the Tragedy Of The Closet.