Snowflake Challenge 3, Part 2

[author_by_night]

This is a reflection of my last post. I realized after making it that my fandom experience is different from a lot of people's, and I think that counts as a changed perspective, if not opinions. 

First, this does mention the Harry Potter fandom. I am not talking about it to condone JK Rowling's views, I'm talking about why I think my perception of fandom is a little skewed in relation to other people's. If you do not want to read about a JK Rowling property, I completely understand.

I'm going to be very transparent: My first fandom, Harry Potter, was a lot stricter than most fandoms, and sometimes that strictness led to flat-out snobbery. People judged what you wrote, what you shipped, whether or not your OCs were Mary Sues (the Scarlet Letter of fandom)...

Of course, not everyone with certain interests was judgmental about it. I have to point that out. Plenty of fans knew they had specific interests and were cool about it.
 
Canon shipping was also very much a thing, although I think it had a slightly different meaning than it does now. People would often ship because they wanted them to be canon, not just to have fun. Which isn't to say deliberately not canon pairings didn't exist - Harry/Draco was a MAJOR one. It's just that a lot of fans did seem to think the point of shipping was for the ships to be canon, or at least close to canon. My guess, in retrospect, is that a lot of canon shippers were new to fandom, fell in love with the canon discourse, and became canon shippers from there without realizing that ships were more often than not, not canon. I say that having been such a person. 

Purity culture tended to come in the form of fandom conservatives. It was less "shipping this is more moral than shipping that" and more fandom evangelicals. Which sadly, there were more of than you'd realize.

Since then, I haven't really been in many major fandoms, or if I have, it's been more on reading reviews and reactions being heavily involved in the fic side of the things. So that probably also skews my perspective a little.

To date, my most active fandom skews older. Which isn't to say I haven't seen drama, but not to the levels I see described. I was very recently trying to get into a fandom that had of anti and canon shipper nonsense, so I backpedaled hard.

Just interesting to see how everyone's perspectives can be so different. 
 

Comments

[lunabee34]

I didn't get into HP until it was a very mature fandom so I missed a lot of the excitement.

[elizalavelle]

I wonder if purity culture didn't appear more in the Harry Potter fandom because the books were so forbidden for a lot of very religious folks. Reading them was a form of rebellion but they did come to the fandom with a lot of other hang ups about relationships and sex and one small act of rebellion doesn't undo a lifetime of that kind of indoctrination.

I find as I get older I have far less time for fandom drama so if I see a lot of infighting in a fandom space I just don't want to be there.

[delphi]

Picking up that previous thread about HP being so big that it was actually a lot of separate fandoms, this was really interesting to read! I fell early on into what was predominantly an older side of fandom, focused on Hogwarts staff m/m and f/f, with significant overlap with Snarry circles and general "here for the porn" circles. Every once in a while I'd stumble into another comm that had more concern about canon shipping or about the books as literature/representation/moral instructors of children and realized that I'd wandered too far from home.

It was embarrassingly late into my time in HP fandom (like...fifteen years?) that I even realized that Harry/Draco was a big pairing. I'd just blithely assumed that Snarry must be the slash juggernaut.

[sabethea]

I mean, it does depend on the part of the fandom you got involved in. I fell into HP fandom early, but on the pornier side, and the predominantly LGBT porn side, too. So one of the early LJ forums was pornish-pixies; and I was invited to join daily-deviant about four years later when it started in 2005 or so. Purity culture it was *not* and there is still a tumblr post complaining about a fic I wrote which started with Ron marrying Kreacher…

Anyway, this was before JKR was obviously terrible as a person, and I still miss the characters, albeit not the books so much. I liked the school story element, which got left behind as the series progressed. I definitely don’t regret my time in the fandom, though, I met people I’m still good friends with now.

[tjs_whatnot]

It always surprises me, the many ways HP fandom was different for everyone. ❤️