A reaction to the reactions to the reactions

[jlh]

Later I may have more to say about the book, mostly about characters and relationships--not plot because I think I'll need a complete reread to really understand that. But in the meantime I just wanted to address something that I always find troubling and that I wish we could avoid, and which I'm actually doing in making this post, but whatever, I know I'm a hypocrite.

I'm not sure why there is a need to comment on the way others are reacting to the books, as though there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way to react. It seems to me, after the five and a half years I've spent in this fandom, that this attitude underlies so much wank, so much infighting within fandom: that there should be no true disagreement about the books, that being dissatisfied with an event in the books is somehow wrong or disrespectful to JKR or the act of a "bad fan"--often, a fan whose emotional investment in the story is either "too great" or has been put in the "wrong place." I am not sure that scolding others for having that "wrong" reaction is really all that useful.

We've all had the experience of coming to the end of a book only to throw it across the room in disgust (my personal favorite: Time and Again). We all have different things we want to take away from the books, some of which JKR will give us and some of which she won't. And that's really fine. Some of that is what fanfic is for, after all. And some like fanfic that is as close as humanly possible to canon, and some like fanfic that is off in some great AU, and that's also okay! In fact, I dearly hope that the closing of canon will allow for more AU's; the other fandoms I've wandered through have been infinitely more accepting of them than HP fen who seem to want a fic that JKR might have written. (I personally have never understood that; canon is right there to be reread.)

This is why I find essays like angua9's Sojourns with Savages so baffling. Never mind that I continue to fly the flag of, "I can write and ship Harry/Hermione and still recognize and even enjoy that canon is Ron/Hermione, and not have that be a sign of disrespect to JKR." What I don't understand is why Angua, or anyone else, cares about how I think about Harry Potter or anything else that I follow and love.

Do you feel I have missed the point of American Idol if, while I do find the contest to be interesting and exciting, what brings me back year after year is the ongoing whateverthehell between Simon and Ryan? Do you feel I am a bad fan of Ferris Bueller's Day Off if my favorite character is Cameron--or that in general I am a bad reader/viewer if my favorite characters are often the minor ones? Do you feel I am a bad fan of Six Feet Under if my favorite storyline was David and Keith's relationship when "clearly" the show was "about" Nate?

Because even if you feel that I am giving the wrong reading to work, why do you care? What affect does it have on you, unless you allow it to irritate you? When I see folks saying, I feel so disappointed that this/that/the other didn't happen, I just feel badly for them, particularly if I saw that event coming. But I don't feel affronted that they feel the way they do. I hope that when I make my post later, and squee about Seamus and Dean, I don't engender a pile of locked posts from my friendslist saying, "I'm very annoyed at all these people who care about the survival of main characters just so they could ship them!" I know that I shouldn't care what you think of what I think, but that I've already on day what, three? seen so much complaining and sarcasm about other people's reactions does, I admit, make me more reluctant to post my own.

Because I'm telling you right now, if I do make that post? There will be squeeing about Seamus and Dean.

Comments

[moony]

Amen.

The only time I'm really bothered (bovvered) is when people say things like "the epilogue isn't canon," because that, to me, is a little bit overboard. It is canon. You just don't agree with it. That doesn't negate the existence of that canon, that you disagree with or dislike it. It means you need to work around it. But that's not enough for some people, so that gets me a little irked.

Well, also, I got annoyed when someone said they were planning to boycott the book based on a rumoured and ultimately untrue spoiler that Draco had died. I mean, what's that about?

There is no right or wrong way to react to the book, you're right. But there are some seriously bizarre responses out there.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I think saying something "isn't canon" is just an expression. I also think it's okay to write fic that blatantly says that it's from something other than full book canon, an idea that seems anathema to so many HP fen. I mean, I feel even more strongly now that I want to continue my stories, and they're all post-GoF canon. Before, I felt sort of discouraged about it because HP fen are so strident about being 100% canon compliant all the time, but now, with canon closed, I'm kind of over it.

There are bizarre responses, and I'm sure that there are people who might think that the response I actually have, which I haven't spoken of, is bizarre, and will attribute my disagreement with them, disparagingly, to either my shipping preferences or my overlove of certain characters, or that I have "read the books wrong" and it makes me sad to think that as soon as I post how I feel, which is some positive and some negative, that half my flist will be making with the pointing and the sarcasm behind a locked post. It also makes me sad that I hesitate to post how I really feel because of the entries that I've read, and that nearly all my H/Hr friends are posting their reactions—which, by the way, are far from anger about R/Hr and are more along the lines of, "weren't those H/Hr moments great?"—well behind very tight H/Hr-only filters lest they be swept up and ridiculed along with the Harmonians that F_W likes to make such sport of. I mean, if I like the interaction of two characters, I should be able to be happy about that on my LJ without that sort of whispering, and looking at my flist this week it is pretty apparent that I'm not.

[moony]

Also, OMG Seamus and Dean!!! Dean was all over the place! Whee!

[darth-kittius.livejournal.com]

Word.

Just like in life, there is not a correct or incorrect way to interpret the book. Everything has a piece of your own experience, hopes, wishes and cares. And that makes your own interpretation right for you.

Why can't people understand that already?

Although, I suppose if they understood that, then it wouldn't be much of a leap to get people to understand the same thing about politics. Which would just be a downright miracle.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing is, politics is so different. If you feel differently than I do about some political issue, that can easily affect my life. If you feel differently about some HP thing than I do, all that means is you probably won't be reading or writing the fic I want to read or write. I can't think of any other way that actually affects me. That's why it's so weird that other people care. Like, I get the sort of "that's an odd way to think about it" or the "I totally disagree" or even "you're wrong about that" but I don't get the "how dare you think that" or "how can you feel that way and be a fan" or "if you feel that way what are you doing here?" It's that reaction to reactions that I don't understand.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

::sigh:: People are already complaining about other peoples' reactions?

These are the times I wish I wasn't actually in fandom, because things that a person not in fandom can say quite easily is somehow wrong for people in fandom to say. Which is really strange when you think about it. Well, what isn't strange about being annoyed by other peoples' reactions, especially if they weren't competing with you to begin with.

And btw, David/Keith rules.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Of course now that I read this I saw a post "defending" the book. This isn't a comment on the post since I haven't read it yet, just saw the title, but it just made me sigh that it has to be put that way, as if the book must be defended, because this presumably means

a)explaining why you should have liked things that if you were going to like them you would have liked them when you read them. Hearing it told to you again by somebody telling you how they liked it probably won't change the fact.

b) explaining about how you were reading wrong, or had too many expectations, or the wrong ones, or any at all--which again, how is that helpful? Everybody has expectations when we read, and part of being disappointed in a book means they weren't met. If you're disappointed you are probably already keenly *aware* of expectations you had that weren't met, that you would have been better off not having. There's no need for someone else to explain that to you.

c) explaining how you were focused on the things that didn't matter instead of the things that did which, again, was probably made more clear from the book than it could be in a post talking about the book.

What am I going to do with any of this advice? Vow in the future to only care about things and have expectations I know in advance are going to be met before I've gotten to the end?

I mean, the people who didn't like the book are just as capable of doing posts of how everyone else is wrong and should hate the book--they just also have the threat of wank on their side if they do that. Personally, I'm just leaving alone posts that I completely disagree with as much as I can. I almost didn't post at all, not wanting to harsh anybody's buzz, but I really enjoyed talking to people who felt the way I did in a space where we're all just agreeing with each other.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

What I realized after reading all the great discussion that happened in your post was how much I had radically downsized my expectations, even hopes, for the rest of the series after book 5. I don't think that my higher expectations are why I was so unhappy with book 5, as there were separate reasons for that, but I did realize after that book that she probably wasn't going to "go there" or if she was, she didn't have a lot of time. After book 6, which I thought was fun and somewhat ridiculous I realized that there was no way in hell she was going to "go there" and I really didn't expect much out of book 7 except that it would be a mostly fun ride, there would be a puzzle in the horcruxes (and I love puzzles) and that Harry would live. I got that, so I wasn't disappointed, but that's because I already had been disappointed.

I love your three points here and feel they should be in a post of their own. And then: Vow in the future to only care about things and have expectations I know in advance are going to be met before I've gotten to the end? Or at the very least, have the same priorities as the creators/producers/writers. I think that's where we get disappointed; canons set up all sorts of expectations, some on purpose, some not, some that they intend to follow through on, some that they intent to leave vague, some that they will just leave us hanging on. Where I get worried, and I can see you having the same reaction, is when the readers/viewers who had the same expectations and priorities that the creators did attributing this to good sense, or good reading/viewing, rather than just good luck to not fall for the minor character that would never be important, or the storyline that would never be followed through on. The little bells and whistles around the main throughline of a canon are, after all, what makes a good story into a beloved story, and liking the "wrong" minor points, or liking them more than the major story, isn't the fault of the reader/viewer, and I find it sad that fellow fen want to point fingers in that manner. I suppose they do it to make themselves feel superior?

As always, SM, you help me to clarify my thoughts. I really hope that the end of canon does NOT mean the end of your musings on it as I know so many of us would miss them. Unfortunately all I can offer you in payback are amazing Cake reqs (http://jlh.livejournal.com/334841.html) but verily I say unto you that lillijulianne's stories will raise expectations that WILL be fulfilled. /pimping.

[meezergal.livejournal.com]

Yeah--why does it matter so much to people if I like a ship that's not canon? Let me go on my merry (delusional!) way, and you go your canon way! How the heck is that hurting anyone? In my head, Harry still loves Hermione, Ron ends up with Luna, Neville and Ginny rendezvous in the greenhouse, and everyone's happy at the end of the day. And I LOVE Seamus and Dean. They're so squeeable.

Man, in the X-Files-verse, I shipped Mulder and Scully as my primary ship, but also Mulder dabbled around with Krycek every now and then. I really, truly, felt that Krycek had UST with Mulder--and man, did alt.tv.x-files light up one time when I dared say that! A guy ripped me a new one, saying, and I quote: "You -----! A guy can't have sexual tension with another guy!" A bunch of other M/K slashers jumped to my defence immediately, thank Heaven. :) :)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

You know, I used to blame that whole "delusional" mess on Emerson, and I still do in a lot of ways, but the more I see what goes on the more I realize that JKR is actually a very controlling writer and like, whatever. She could have said, "Wow, I don't really understand that interpretation, because while Hermione is a very beloved and important friend of Harry's, she's not his type." And that would have been respectful of the shippers becasue I think seeing a ship where there is a deep friendship is not "delusional."

I'm really sad that discussions of H/Hr meta have had to go so far underground. You'd think Pumpkin Pie was the Communist Party of HP fandom the way people talk about it. Better to be the craziest chan slash SS have we met shipper than be a fan of H/Hr.

[anemonerose.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you. This "you're reading it wrong and I've done it right" attitude is amazingly popular in a fandom as vast as the Harry Potter fandom, considering how many characters/pairings/events/time periods we can write in. Just because someone likes something that another person hates doesn't make anyone more or less of a fan - it makes them unique and their own person. I think fandom needs a healthy dose of "to each their own" because it always seems that someone is taking offense at something someone else says or wrote.

I will also say that even I squeed over the Seamus/Dean in the book, but that was mostly because it reminded me of you. :))

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I just honestly don't get why it matters! I find Snarry to be completely baffling, and I don't care much for Snape, but the Snarry people love it so I say rock on! It isn't hard to be respectful of other people. I mean, really. They're just opiions and whatever happens to turn us on, in the end.

[kerosinkanister.livejournal.com]

I did get annoyed by the response from some people, though it's not from those who were just "so disappointed", and I did briefly discuss fandom at the end of my DH post. I'd been hearing about people hating the book and such and I went looking for those responses, perhaps a poor choice in hindsight; I wasn't really expecting how vicious some are being.

I waffled back and forth whether to comment here at all but thought, in the case that my post was a part of the attitude that spurred you to post, I should say something. In any event I am interested in your thoughts and squeeing about Seamus and Dean, should you decide to post.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Always a bad idea to look for what you don't want to see, because it's always out there.

For the POV of folks who are disappointed in the books for reasons other than a possible overinvestment in fanon ships, I'd suggest checking out the discussion in sistermagpie's recent entry. I guess my disappointment is the "if you don't like the book you've strayed too far from canon into fanon" argument was made post-OotP, and in this fandom, or at least, from people who make that argument, that's something like the worst thing you can say about a fan. To get too far into fanon from canon is the act of a bad fan.

But while the disappointed shippers might be the loudest and the most vicious, there are plenty of other people who were let down here and there. I mean, I have a lot of friends who write H/Hr, and who didn't really think it would happen in canon, and they have posted most of their reactions to the book--which are mainly, the R/Hr was cute, the H/G was oddly nonexistent, and there were tons of H/Hr friendship moments that reminded us why we're H/Hr shippers--in very tight lockdown, only to fellow H/Hr shippers, for fear of wank or criticism or just general dismissiveness. The things I'm disappointed in, with the book, have nothing to do with shipping, but I worry that since I have written non-canonical ships that any reaction I have will be reduced to that. "Oh, she's a H/Hr shipper and you know they hate the Weasleys." That sort of thing. It's really condescending.

I'm sure there are people out there who are very upset that Snarry or H/Hr or whatever didn't happen, and I feel rather badly for them that they can't get their non-canon ship enjoyment just from fanon and hadn't given up on canon giving them anything but really fun moments to play with long ago. And maybe this goes back to an undercurrent that I've never seen in the other fandoms I've played in, where to like the books in the way that JKR wants us to is to be a good fan, and to be critical is to be a bad one; or where alternate universe is an abomination unto the lord; or where writing fic taking off from other moments in canon is considered "denial fic" and therefore bad. The way that people made fun of anyone who felt sad about Sirius's death in book 5, or even let down about how it was handled, really took my breath away, and I'm leery to post how I feel about Remus in book 7 for fear of the same thing.

I don't know, I guess I just didn't think that the Harry Potter books were a ten-year exam in reading comprehension with prizes given out to those who most accurately predicted the ending once book 7 came out, but it seems like there are so many who react to "gee, I was disappointed in some moments" with "what were you expecting, and how could you have expected that without completely misreading the books?" That attitude makes me sort of sad, and concerned about posting.

[kerosinkanister.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're saying. But, and coming from someone who came to the books quite late, my interpretation is that all this still comes out of shipping. Given how huge a deal shipping was (and is) and how contentious the debates got I think it directly lead to a situation where real critical analysis and discussion were in no way encouraged. So now we have a situation where someone says I didn't like X for these reasons and, as you note, the response is "You're obviously just disappointed because Y and Z didn't hook up. Can't you read?"

And it's all compounded because so many seem to judge anyone liking a ship with the absolute worst behavior of any of it's fans. I'm reminded of seeing frequent claims of "Ginny is a slut," repeated so often that the association becomes "Harry/Hermione shippers think Ginny is a slut" regardless of who or how many ever actually made that statement.

I do like critical analysis and good discussion but sometimes it's hard to even know where to find it. I almost always find sistermagpie's posts and the subsequent discussions interesting, even when I don't agree.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

It's like religion and politics. For some reason, people think that if you believe differently, that somehow throws their beliefs into question. I don't get it, never will, but fuck 'em.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

But with religion and politics I actually understand--religion, if you believe wrong, some people think that you may well go to hell and they would rather that you didn't go to hell. With politics, if you believe "wrong" you could gain power and outlaw something I think is right, like, I don't know, abortion or gay marriage or something. So I understand why people care about what others think in those two instances (though I only care about politics--I believe all paths lead to G-d). But opinions on a book? How is my loving the interactions of Harry and Hermione (or squeeing over Harry and Draco actually sharing a broom hurting your ability to adore the Ron/Hermione romance storyline?

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

needless to say, being that cake is my only fandom/ship i find this beyond fascinating. i don't have anything much to contribute, but i wanted you to know that :)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

You don't even want to know. Apparently now some are saying that since JKR has "told" us what the ships will be, that no one in fandom "should" write any fanfic other than that. Which, whatever; that sort of thing just baffles me.

[lessthangreat.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this.

It is my right as a loyal reader and fan of these books to be disappointed by certain things. Now, I'm not crazy, so I'm not about to go set myself on fire in front of Jo's house just because she killed my favorite character (also because, srsly, who didn't think Snape would die in this one?) or anything. But I am going to express disappointment and confusion over, say, her treatment of the whole of the Slytherin house, and the flippant, insulting (to us, as readers and fans of those characters) manner in which she merely discarded Remus and Tonks.

I see the wank, and I knew it would be there because this is the HP fandom of course, so I'm not shocked or whatever. I'm surprised at people's reactions to the reactions, honestly. Because it's about personal interpretation. I'm not about to cry about how she raped canon, because it's her canon and I recognize that above all else, but my interpretation of those two things I mentioned up there were "WTF?", and I think that's an appropriate reaction, given what we've been given in the other books.

Srsly. People's personal opinions aren't jumping out from the screen and strangling anyway. I don't see why there is wank over the wank. :-O

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Where did you get that awesome icon?

You know, I was so mad pre-release that all the buzz on metafandom was, "How big do you think the coming HP wank will get?" as though all HP is, is a series of wanks, which isn't true. It's just that when HP gets wanky everyone likes to watch, because everyone has an opinion about HP fandom.

(Like, recent events in Cake-ville? Never mind that everything was locked; if it even had made it to F_W do you think that many people would have cared?)

People's personal opinions aren't jumping out from the screen and strangling anyone. Okay, I want that stitched on a pillow. Or, I need to figure out how to make awesome text icons.

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

...huh. Some people really have too much time on their hands, huh?

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Well, or too much need to be right, or too much need to control others. Take your pick.

You are totally not texting me too much, btw! I just cannot put how I feel about the book into a text quite yet. Or I would be texting you 25x too! ^_^

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

ROFL! OMG. Was it really 25x?

[zorb]

hermionemalfoy and I were discussing the weird thing HP fandom has against deviation from canon, just this evening. For a comparison, Stargate fandom certainly has its share of oh-so-familiar ship wank, but nobody really gives a hoot if your fic takes place post-[x episode], deviates from canon, and you don't label it AU. AU seems reserved for things like a butterfly flapping its wings and making the whole premise different to some degree.

My only working theory is that it's the difference between having a single creator and having a changing writing staff. The former becomes that much more sacrosanct with at least a portion of the fans; the latter get mud slung at them from all sides equally.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

That, plus books are so different. TV is an ever-changing canon, week to week, and even with the post-season longfics that are written, everyone knows that come fall, something else will be happening that you can't even predict. With the books we would have a huge pile of canon all at once and then take two years to process it, as if every TV show were shown in a marathon of the entire season in one weekend and then went dark for two years.

With HP there was such an emphasis early on for predicting all the events in canon--not just solving the mysteries, but working everything out to such an extent that I always felt like, if you predicted everything accurately would you get a new car? Be JKR's best friend? So once new canon came all fics were supposed to be post-that canon. But with canon closing I think that attitude will subside.

Not to mention that people who wanted to discuss canon but were not interested in fanfic were a much larger force in HP fandom I think than they are in TV fandoms, particularly on LJ, which probably comes from the GoF fandom growing out of HP4GU to such a large extent. The kind of people who don't like their canon messed with and are TV fans never leave the boards, it seems.

However, I'm really looking forward to revisiting my own personal post-GoF fic. It would have been sacrelige to say that before this book came out, but now? I kind of don't care.

Also? How sad is it that so much of the H/Hr meta is locked up deep underground? Are we the commie pinkos of the fandom now?

[zorb]

Of course, in some ways, the book format has been a real blessing for the fandom; with all that time on our hands between canon infusions, we got way more diverse in our shipping and theories than TV fandoms have a chance to get, and with canon open, there wasn't necessarily motivation strong enough to demand the AU label. Even though I'd been in the Trek fandom before coming to HP, I was still surprised upon returning to a TV fandom to find how limited it was in popular ships, and how small and restricted even the tamest alternate ships were. The fact that we have Character/Giant Squid at all would be horrifying to other fandoms, but we kind of take it in stride here.

I think the ongoing, serial model versus a canon with a pre-defined conclusion is important, too. With shipping, TV shows that want to go on and on for years try so hard never to bring their ships to fruition, or at least to keep them uncertain enough that there's easy opportunity for fandom to change them. Not true in all cases, of course, and certainly the other option isn't limited to books.

Anyway, yes, it's terribly sad that so many H/Hr people feel the need to lock away their ship for fear of wank. I really don't think they have anything to worry about unless they're asking for it in some way, and I'm quite tempted to make a post in support of continued H/Hr. My LJ never draws the wank, anyway. But that's not a promise.

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

While I was reading and unexpectedly hugely enjoying myself on Saturday, I felt the strongest urge to try to draw out coming back on LJ for precisely that reason, because I didn't want to go back to what seems like a gigantic amount of peer pressure when it comes to opinions of the book. I love LJ as a discussion forum on fanon, but for the last two books my enjoyment of the actual books was taken away from me because I started reading others' opinions & mockery first, before my own reactions had sunk in. Hence I've been very careful about reading the HP reaction posts this time around, and also didn't post as much as I wanted to - because it's my opinions, my interpretation of the very last canon we're going to get, and I don't want comments telling me how "wrong" I am.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

If someone posts something I don't agree with, I just don't comment, and even if I did, it wouldn't be to say that they were wrong, but to hopefully just provide a different perspective. But most likely, I wouldn't comment. I admit that when it comes to overall liking or not liking, I'm pleased when my friends like something I've recommended, or something I also like, etc, but they certainly don't have to like it in the same way or for the same reasons. And when it comes to non-friends, I'm not sure why I should care.