Where have all the muses gone?

[author_by_night]

Am I the only one really craving post TDH fics?

August, I could understand there being so few post TDH fics.  WIPs that had been started before needed to be posted. September, again,  I could understand.

But half a year later... I don't understand that.

There's so much backstory and a nineteen year gap to work with. So why not write about that? That's what I think a lot of us are more interested in.

I mean, I don't mind it if people don't want to stick to pre-TDH universes, I just don't know why more people don't want to work with the new canon.

Comments

[petitecrivan.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just me, but I've fallen out of the fandom a bit. The story is complete, and I enjoyed the ride. It makes me sad to type this, but I think I've moved on. I still love Harry Potter, but I don't know if I consider myself a part of the fandom anymore, outside of livejournal and the occasional Leaky or F_W check.

I had so many fanfic ideas post-DH, and I wrote a bunch of them this summer. I may write some more - I may not. I'm at a really peaceful place right now with the HP world, and I really am enjoying not being The Harry Potter Nerd. Which is odd, because I'm in England...

[haro.livejournal.com]

Interestingly I didn't really get into the fandom until AFTER DH. I've been reading the books for eight years but full on fandom obsession didn't kick in until after I read DH. I'm so in the minority. *lol*

DH came out at the best fandom time possible for me. I was becoming so disheartened by my other main fandom and it really helped ease the fall.

And every single one of the fic ideas I've had (outside the one I wrote for a secret santa- the prompt was pre DH) has been post DH. Although, there is a strong lack of post DH fic regarding a lot of subjects I'd like to see...

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

I've seen a lot of post-DH fic, personally. Maybe it's just about looking in the right places?

[miss-celestine.livejournal.com]

Well speaking only for myself, DH fueled the fires of fanfic for me again - all the stuff I've written is post-DH, from my WiP to my one-shots, even the smutty ones. I'm surprised other people aren't feeling as inspired, but the fics on GTR keep me going ;)

[katieay.livejournal.com]

I've written plenty, and have three WiPs. I love them, too!

[j-a-lie.livejournal.com]

As you may have known, I actually entered the fandom because of DH. So after everything is said and done then I entered. Bwaha. There are plot bunnies here and there but so far they all either have been explored by other people or never got the time to be fleshed out.

The problem is that the way DH closes, even pre-Epilogue, there's so much things that is set in stone -- H/G and R/Hr (I'm using shippings because that's what usually fuel fanfics) are established and there's difficulty in getting around them. And then if you want to go beyond shipping, there's jobs and whatnot to work with, but there's going to be a lot of postulating and inventing of concepts never seen in the books (something as simple as how does the government exactly work). It's a lot of possibilities, and that's probably why people want to just do the pre-DH canon.

That, or pre-DH there's still Voldemort and Slytherins running around on the high ground.

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

TBH, I think a lot of the fandom's fic output came from people who are now antifen. So they don't want to write fic, generally, because they're too busy writing outraged meta about how they were cheated.

The people who still like the books are hampered by the fact that those 19 years were peaceful, and while the epilogue wrapped things up nicely, it didn't really cause a lot of plotbunnies. Unless you really like second-gen fic. At least, that's my impression and personal feeling.

As for backstory ... I think the people who prefer writing about backstory are fairly specific about what they want to write about, and that means there's a good chance they were Jossed, and probably don't want to write anymore.

And we're all tired. Maybe in a few years we'll have a fandom renaissance.

[niphredil-04.livejournal.com]

For me, I've sort of left the HP fandom a long time ago, and went to work on my own projects. These projects are all grounded in HP background, but they deal more with the present-day. I'm doing a lot of world-building, merging the two communities in nations other than the UK, and it's very fun to take canon and reality and try to mush it together without setting things on fire. Much. Unfortunately now, I'm a bit of a rudderless boat because canon and I went our seperate ways around OotP....

That 19 year gap is rather daunting because, I think, we don't know where the characters go afterwards. The glimpse in the epilogue is just a glimpse, whereas before TDH, people knew that eventually Ron/Hermione are going to get together, so it's easier to write something about that process of building a relationship; you know what the end result is.

Also, it's been roughly 17 years since the series started, I believe? The people who started reading the books from the very beginning are college/graduate students now or are branching out into the workforce. We still love our Harry Potter series, but we just don't have that much time to commit anymore to writing and fandom in general. It's something I've noticed that's been happening to a whole host of fandoms recently.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

I really wish I felt more like writing post-DH fic, but I feel like a lot of the fun has gone out of it. Partly, that's because so many of my favorite characters died, and partly because writing fic was always a predictive game for me, and now there's nothing left to predict.

[victorialupin.livejournal.com]

I'm craving post-DH fic as well, but when I say that I mean fic that takes place right after DH. Or, at least, sometime before the epilogue. There doesn't seem to be a lack of new fic about the past and there are plenty of stories about the next generation of children, but nobody seems to want to write about the trio in those years. :|

[purple-ladybug1.livejournal.com]

I feel as though I've read a fair amount of stuff, but then again, it's possible some of the fics I'm reading were all written between Sept and Dec, when I was too busy sojourning through France to enjoy HP fanfic. So I might have a higher concentration of "new" post-DH stuff to read.

That said, check out the comm thegoldenseeker. I'm a reccer for it. Although a lot of the recs are older or non-DH compliant, usually at least one per newsletter is post-DH.