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Jul. 17th, 2005 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verbminxI initially wrote the following as an addendum to a comment I made on a friend's journal, but I decided to post it here instead, because I wasn't really talking about the friend in question (it was inspired by some stuff I've seen posted here and there by really intense Harry Potter fans, one or two of whom had posted replies to some of her comments). There are some spoilers, but not like my last post, which was full of them.
I think people are getting a little too personally upset about all this, tho.
I wish people would keep in perspective that these are fictional characters and the books are meant as entertainment, and LIGHT entertainment at that. Whether a character is evil or not, or who they're dating or marrying, is not really really worth getting extremely emotional about, only maybe a little emotional or mildly-to-moderately irritated; these are not people who actually exist and what they do or don't do doesn't really matter when it comes right down to it. Not only is it irrelevant to actual living, it's not something we can control.
Anyone who really hates something in the book so much that it's actively making them miserable should probably just go find fanfic to read that went the way they liked, or something, or take their copy of HBP back to the store ("I read a third of it and I JUST HATED IT"). But I think it would be great if people would take all this energy and devote it to something more productive... not just taking their toys and going to play in some other fandom, which is kind of masturbatory*. This could be devoting their former Harry Potter energies to ending poverty in Africa or could be something a lot more selfish like learning to paint or composing a piano concerto.
It's not that I don't care what happens too, it's that I think it's more reasonable to accept what an author writes and not get disproportionately emotional about anything in that vein that is contrary to my expectations or desires. I have definitely not always been this way, but X-Files really burned me out on intense fandom - along with a bunch of other people, I expect. I couldn't stand the nuttiness of some of the other fans, and the last few seasons felt like a big "fuck you" to its remaining devotees. IT DID NOT REPAY THE INVESTMENT ANYONE HAD PUT INTO IT, and it made me pretty much unable to get quite that fannish about anything else ever again, OCD or not.
Angel was kind of similar for people who had followed the show from the first three seasons of Buffy - the idea that Angel could fall in wuv with Cordelia was almost insulting, and required radical shifts in Cordelia's character over time. If she had been a new character when Angel started, it would have worked, but it's nearly impossible to reconcile Buffy-Cordy with Angel-Cordy. (Yet I've known more than one person who was an Angel/Cordy shipper, and you need not assume that I was an Angel/Buffy shipper either. I hated Angel - the character, not the show - pretty much period, and I didn't care who he fell for.) Nowadays I hang out on a Lost board once every week or so, and steadfastly refuse to hypothesize about what's going on, or create relationships where they don't exist, or. Occasionally I shoot down absurd theories, or support interesting ones, but I make a point of saying that I think theorizing is pointless, because TPTB are going to do what they have planned to do and that's that. I was only annoyed that they killed off Boone because I think Ian Somerhalder is hot.
(I am sure someone is going to come along and yell at me for all this, but all I can say is: come on, is [insert HP event that bugged you] really more important and upsetting than genocide in Darfur? Which is, by the way, a situation that might be improved if everyone were paying as much attention to it as to Harry Potter? Or is HP even as important or upsetting as, say, your dog being hit by a car? Of course not. So ppl might feel better if they were able to chill out and keep it all in perspective.)
And now I have just spent way too much time writing this.
* I have drastically conflicting feelings about fanfic and RPGs and so on. On one hand, they can be fun to read and participate in. On the other, they're kind of a waste of time, and as such, they can make it so that ALL of someone's leisure time is taken up by Being Fannish, leading to stuff like what I'm talking about here. People who suffer significantly, and unnecessarily, because Snape Is Evil or because Sirius Got Killed. However, it's not any more of a waste of time than watching TV or movies, or reading solely for entertainment (rather than to learn), except in that it encourages an emotional involvement with people who will never be remotely interested in you - that would be the characters - and that if you put energy into doing something creative, you can't actually do much with it due to copyright concerns. Fanfic and fan art can be good practice for eventually doing your own stuff, though, and some fan art is saleable. *shrug*
I think people are getting a little too personally upset about all this, tho.
I wish people would keep in perspective that these are fictional characters and the books are meant as entertainment, and LIGHT entertainment at that. Whether a character is evil or not, or who they're dating or marrying, is not really really worth getting extremely emotional about, only maybe a little emotional or mildly-to-moderately irritated; these are not people who actually exist and what they do or don't do doesn't really matter when it comes right down to it. Not only is it irrelevant to actual living, it's not something we can control.
Anyone who really hates something in the book so much that it's actively making them miserable should probably just go find fanfic to read that went the way they liked, or something, or take their copy of HBP back to the store ("I read a third of it and I JUST HATED IT"). But I think it would be great if people would take all this energy and devote it to something more productive... not just taking their toys and going to play in some other fandom, which is kind of masturbatory*. This could be devoting their former Harry Potter energies to ending poverty in Africa or could be something a lot more selfish like learning to paint or composing a piano concerto.
It's not that I don't care what happens too, it's that I think it's more reasonable to accept what an author writes and not get disproportionately emotional about anything in that vein that is contrary to my expectations or desires. I have definitely not always been this way, but X-Files really burned me out on intense fandom - along with a bunch of other people, I expect. I couldn't stand the nuttiness of some of the other fans, and the last few seasons felt like a big "fuck you" to its remaining devotees. IT DID NOT REPAY THE INVESTMENT ANYONE HAD PUT INTO IT, and it made me pretty much unable to get quite that fannish about anything else ever again, OCD or not.
Angel was kind of similar for people who had followed the show from the first three seasons of Buffy - the idea that Angel could fall in wuv with Cordelia was almost insulting, and required radical shifts in Cordelia's character over time. If she had been a new character when Angel started, it would have worked, but it's nearly impossible to reconcile Buffy-Cordy with Angel-Cordy. (Yet I've known more than one person who was an Angel/Cordy shipper, and you need not assume that I was an Angel/Buffy shipper either. I hated Angel - the character, not the show - pretty much period, and I didn't care who he fell for.) Nowadays I hang out on a Lost board once every week or so, and steadfastly refuse to hypothesize about what's going on, or create relationships where they don't exist, or. Occasionally I shoot down absurd theories, or support interesting ones, but I make a point of saying that I think theorizing is pointless, because TPTB are going to do what they have planned to do and that's that. I was only annoyed that they killed off Boone because I think Ian Somerhalder is hot.
(I am sure someone is going to come along and yell at me for all this, but all I can say is: come on, is [insert HP event that bugged you] really more important and upsetting than genocide in Darfur? Which is, by the way, a situation that might be improved if everyone were paying as much attention to it as to Harry Potter? Or is HP even as important or upsetting as, say, your dog being hit by a car? Of course not. So ppl might feel better if they were able to chill out and keep it all in perspective.)
And now I have just spent way too much time writing this.
* I have drastically conflicting feelings about fanfic and RPGs and so on. On one hand, they can be fun to read and participate in. On the other, they're kind of a waste of time, and as such, they can make it so that ALL of someone's leisure time is taken up by Being Fannish, leading to stuff like what I'm talking about here. People who suffer significantly, and unnecessarily, because Snape Is Evil or because Sirius Got Killed. However, it's not any more of a waste of time than watching TV or movies, or reading solely for entertainment (rather than to learn), except in that it encourages an emotional involvement with people who will never be remotely interested in you - that would be the characters - and that if you put energy into doing something creative, you can't actually do much with it due to copyright concerns. Fanfic and fan art can be good practice for eventually doing your own stuff, though, and some fan art is saleable. *shrug*
