So, *basically* this is kind of a reply to Amber's post in reply to idreamofdraco's post on the FIA facebook page. (so go and read it first.) The thread is here. It started as a LONG reply, and at some point, I realized that it really needed to be the next chapter of this essay. After this, we'll go back to the chronological story of how I got involved in the fandom in the first place. :)
Amber wondered if we're in an inevitable decline as a fandom, and I'm not going to repeat her exact reasons in my own words, because she put it so well. I've thought about that too. For example, I wasn't sure what to expect from the 2016 ffn exchange fics this time around... I was a little gloomy over the fact that there were only 6 fics too... but when I read them, I was REALLY impressed by the quality. I really hope that everyone seeks these fics out and reads them, because I was a little dubious about the chances of getting such a great batch. We have to keep this fandom alive, if for no other reason. We have to be able to continue to read fics like this! ;)
So could this happen? If so, how and why? Has anyone else done it? That’s what really got me thinking.
Yes, HP canon has been 'closed" since 2007. But what does that actually mean in terms of the fandom? The thing is that there a lot of other examples-- a LOT-- of fandoms that continue long, long after the original canon was closed. Arthur Conan Doyle published the last Sherlock Holmes fic so long ago that not only is IT out of copyright, but the first SH fanfics are, too. But there are still thriving communities of fans writing and reading old school SH fanfics. When I visited my sister in San Rafael last week, she'd just had surgery and we had to spend a lot of time in the hotel room... so we watched the first two seasons of the original Star Trek on Netflix. There were exactly three seasons of that show, it ended in 1969, and people are STILL writing new fanfic about it. (Several new profic are published every year, too.) And William Shatner carved an entire career out of it and now does commercials for Priceline. O.o. And I can never get over the size and strength of the Jane Austin fandom… I have to admit, I’m a much bigger fan of the Brontes, but there it is.
The ultimate example, in a way, is Star Wars—the Ep VII Force Awakens reboot is all about the fan love, which I think is WHY it works. The fact that it reminds us of the original isn’t a negative (IMHO, of course! ;) It’s the natural result of the fact that the original Star Wars was an indelible cultural phenomenon. The way to continue this isn’t to attempt some kind of improved versions of the dreaded prequels of doom (Jar Jar was ‘original’, spending hours on trade negotiations and taxation issues was original, but if anything ever proved that what is original is not always what is good, those examples did.) It’s to return to the roots of what made the first Star Wars great, which were precisely the aspects that were NOT ‘original” (the hero’s journey has been a storytelling trope since Uga the Tribe Shaman told that story around a campfire about 100,000 years ago. Ugh the Caveman probably raised his hand and said, "Uga told story last week." ;) ) George Lucas didn't even seem to know how to imitate his old work; the prequels would probably have been better if he'd at least tried to do that. But JJ Abrams didn't imitate the source material-- he loved it deeply, and EP VII was fanfic in the best possible sense of that word, the product of that love.
Yes, there’s been new “canon’ for all these three fandoms, from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to BBCSherlock to TNG/DS9/Enterprise/the JJ Abrams reboot to… um… the other JJ Abrams reboot. ;) But you could say that the same thing is true of HP—Fantastic Beasts being a good example. And it’s not as if pairings that weren’t canon before suddenly become canon in the new iterations. Star Trek: Into Darkness didn’t contain Kirk/Spock; BBC!Sherlock flirts with the Sherlock/John relationship just as much as all the other canon but doesn’t go any further. The pairings in these fandoms survive because of something essential and intrinsic in each of them. And the same, I think, has to be true of D/G.
And that’s why we need to have more non-traditional D/G, which I think is what really is happening. It’s not that the old tropes and fics based on them aren’t good, but we do need to move beyond them, too. IN some ways, I think, that also means going back to basics. The reason why I was so attracted to D/G in the first place isn’t really about the “romance” as such, but rather that these two characters share things that no others do in HP (especially not Harry and Ginny.) Both Draco and Ginny have hidden darkness, a history of trauma, of being misunderstood by the world they live in, and of needing to make it on their own without the kind of help that Harry constantly had in every book. They’re both survivors.
I didn’t really write D/G for quite a while, and I do know now why that was: I wasn’t facing up to the reasons why the character of Ginny pulled me so much in the first place, and it really affected my other writing, too. Ginny was the first example I have ever seen of her particular type of character in fiction—I’ve NEVER seen another one—and I’ve gone back and forth with understanding this and not really wanting to deal with it.
Well, I’m going back to it now in my nonfiction memoir writing, and the more I do of it, the more I realize that I also have to keep writing about Draco and Ginny. They’re all facets of the same type of writing. If you’re a D/G author, you may or may not write for the same types of reasons I do (actually, for your sake, I hope not)… and you may not read for the same reasons. But there is something about the D/G pairing, about these characters separately, about the way that they’re more than the sum of their parts when they’re together, which means that it has the potential to go on for a very long time. The SH fandom has been a thing since 1887… so WE have a lot more life left in D/G! ;)
Exactly how, though? Which fics might fit this description? How do they work? Well, that’s for future chapters… ;)
ETA: March 2017: More coming soon!
Amber wondered if we're in an inevitable decline as a fandom, and I'm not going to repeat her exact reasons in my own words, because she put it so well. I've thought about that too. For example, I wasn't sure what to expect from the 2016 ffn exchange fics this time around... I was a little gloomy over the fact that there were only 6 fics too... but when I read them, I was REALLY impressed by the quality. I really hope that everyone seeks these fics out and reads them, because I was a little dubious about the chances of getting such a great batch. We have to keep this fandom alive, if for no other reason. We have to be able to continue to read fics like this! ;)
So could this happen? If so, how and why? Has anyone else done it? That’s what really got me thinking.
Yes, HP canon has been 'closed" since 2007. But what does that actually mean in terms of the fandom? The thing is that there a lot of other examples-- a LOT-- of fandoms that continue long, long after the original canon was closed. Arthur Conan Doyle published the last Sherlock Holmes fic so long ago that not only is IT out of copyright, but the first SH fanfics are, too. But there are still thriving communities of fans writing and reading old school SH fanfics. When I visited my sister in San Rafael last week, she'd just had surgery and we had to spend a lot of time in the hotel room... so we watched the first two seasons of the original Star Trek on Netflix. There were exactly three seasons of that show, it ended in 1969, and people are STILL writing new fanfic about it. (Several new profic are published every year, too.) And William Shatner carved an entire career out of it and now does commercials for Priceline. O.o. And I can never get over the size and strength of the Jane Austin fandom… I have to admit, I’m a much bigger fan of the Brontes, but there it is.
The ultimate example, in a way, is Star Wars—the Ep VII Force Awakens reboot is all about the fan love, which I think is WHY it works. The fact that it reminds us of the original isn’t a negative (IMHO, of course! ;) It’s the natural result of the fact that the original Star Wars was an indelible cultural phenomenon. The way to continue this isn’t to attempt some kind of improved versions of the dreaded prequels of doom (Jar Jar was ‘original’, spending hours on trade negotiations and taxation issues was original, but if anything ever proved that what is original is not always what is good, those examples did.) It’s to return to the roots of what made the first Star Wars great, which were precisely the aspects that were NOT ‘original” (the hero’s journey has been a storytelling trope since Uga the Tribe Shaman told that story around a campfire about 100,000 years ago. Ugh the Caveman probably raised his hand and said, "Uga told story last week." ;) ) George Lucas didn't even seem to know how to imitate his old work; the prequels would probably have been better if he'd at least tried to do that. But JJ Abrams didn't imitate the source material-- he loved it deeply, and EP VII was fanfic in the best possible sense of that word, the product of that love.
Yes, there’s been new “canon’ for all these three fandoms, from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to BBCSherlock to TNG/DS9/Enterprise/the JJ Abrams reboot to… um… the other JJ Abrams reboot. ;) But you could say that the same thing is true of HP—Fantastic Beasts being a good example. And it’s not as if pairings that weren’t canon before suddenly become canon in the new iterations. Star Trek: Into Darkness didn’t contain Kirk/Spock; BBC!Sherlock flirts with the Sherlock/John relationship just as much as all the other canon but doesn’t go any further. The pairings in these fandoms survive because of something essential and intrinsic in each of them. And the same, I think, has to be true of D/G.
And that’s why we need to have more non-traditional D/G, which I think is what really is happening. It’s not that the old tropes and fics based on them aren’t good, but we do need to move beyond them, too. IN some ways, I think, that also means going back to basics. The reason why I was so attracted to D/G in the first place isn’t really about the “romance” as such, but rather that these two characters share things that no others do in HP (especially not Harry and Ginny.) Both Draco and Ginny have hidden darkness, a history of trauma, of being misunderstood by the world they live in, and of needing to make it on their own without the kind of help that Harry constantly had in every book. They’re both survivors.
I didn’t really write D/G for quite a while, and I do know now why that was: I wasn’t facing up to the reasons why the character of Ginny pulled me so much in the first place, and it really affected my other writing, too. Ginny was the first example I have ever seen of her particular type of character in fiction—I’ve NEVER seen another one—and I’ve gone back and forth with understanding this and not really wanting to deal with it.
Well, I’m going back to it now in my nonfiction memoir writing, and the more I do of it, the more I realize that I also have to keep writing about Draco and Ginny. They’re all facets of the same type of writing. If you’re a D/G author, you may or may not write for the same types of reasons I do (actually, for your sake, I hope not)… and you may not read for the same reasons. But there is something about the D/G pairing, about these characters separately, about the way that they’re more than the sum of their parts when they’re together, which means that it has the potential to go on for a very long time. The SH fandom has been a thing since 1887… so WE have a lot more life left in D/G! ;)
Exactly how, though? Which fics might fit this description? How do they work? Well, that’s for future chapters… ;)
ETA: March 2017: More coming soon!
To Be Continued.
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