Harry Potter and the Case of Fannish Overinvestment

[extemporally]

Alllllll I have been doing lately (besides, obviously, eating food and seeing people and trying - but failing - to revise) is reading ALL THE HARRY POTTER FIC IN THE WORLD. Man, you guys, it's so true, you never get over your first fandom! I started lurking hardcore on LJ in 2005 when a bunch of my favourite fanfic authors moved over from FictionAlley, and now I'm rereading all my old favourites (nearly everything a_t_rain writes is gold -- she doesn't use many tags, but her stuff can be found here! and also, om nom nom nom Tonks meta) and thinking about how I was totally that weird kid who read all the gen in the world (here is where I do another subtle link-droppy thing; hello omniocular!) because a) I actually liked all the canon ships, and in fact identified hardcore with Ginny Weasley and b) I was so ridiculously fascinated with the universe, and also JKR has this way of writing characters where she positively delights in caricature without ever letting them just be that, and it's just, good! It's all about light touches, duders.

Really now that I look back on it that was the start of everything. Fandom, politics, feminism, and -- man! A couple of months ago I was thinking about how there might probably be nothing as huge (in fandom terms) as Harry Potter ever again and making myself all :( :( :( about it, because I like fandom! I like how creative it is and how egalitarian it is, in some ways I guess, and how it's been inspiring and fun-making and educational all at once. And from my admittedly biased point of view, it seems like everyone started out in Harry Potter fandom. WHAT IF WE NEVER HAVE ANYTHING LIKE THAT AGAIN :(

I loved HP 7 so much I watched it twice -- once in England with a whole bunch of people who all wore robes to the theatre, and once in Singapore with two friends I've known a long long time. I really liked it! I can't quite tell, of course, if that's because it's a genuinely good movie or because I just went in thinking, "Well, it'll be a fun ride" instead of "the actors don't look like my mental images of the Potter characters, everything is ruined forever" like the overinvested teenie I used to be. (I used to be capable of reciting whole passages from the books, hahaha oh man.) And, aw man! I can't believe the Potterdamerung ends forever this summer, at least until JKR releases a Harry Potter encyclopaedia or something of the sort. So much of my early adolescence was wrapped up in these books, I think, and that was a pretty happy period of my life. Ah, fandom nostalgia!

Tl;dr -- HEY YOU GUYS DID YOU READ HP FIC TOO WHAT WERE YOUR FAVOURITES

Comments

[ancabell.livejournal.com]

I had shoebox printed and bound and now its in my library in two volumes :)))
i loved HP7 so so much! :)

[extemporally.livejournal.com]

Hahaha yes it's a fandom classic! I actually read those pretty late in my fannish career, I think, but it was so so good.