I too early learned that fandom didn't always play nice. Still these days I can't being saddened that fandom, a place where I can escape the troubles of rl, seems to have become just as troublesome and complicated. When people say stuff like, 'If I met SVA I'd give him a good slap' or 'If he killed himself I'd be happy' I wonder what the hell I'm doing in fandom. I feel like I have to convince myself every that fandom can be fun and rewarding, the question is how long can I keep doing that. My fandom activities have been waning lately, this lawsuit, or rather the fandom response to it, have been draining my interests in participating. I can't remember when I last felt compelled to draw fan art. I have many fond memories from fandom. Many friends I wouldn't know to this day, if it wasn't for fandom, and for that I hang on, but for how long? I don't want to leave, but fandom is a scary place these days.

"You just have to stay calm and not let the Death Eaters scare you.." - Unless they happen to come from Spinner's End & one hasn't been paying attention, of course ;)

I always thought that the Marauders=cool and Snape=jerk mindset was only for fanfickers. And as far as I can remember there has always been a loyal fanbase for both groups. Personally, I think they were all bullies in some form or another.
Moooving on, fandom is, as any other product of social interactions, complex. To say it is a friendly place it would be a lie, to say it is only filled with wolves who "eat their own" would be a huge mistake. I have made great friends in this fandom, people who I wouldn't have met otherwise. And I have also seen some disgusting things (ie: mature fan fiction??? WT*?!).
All in all, I think that it is us (Harry Potter fans, from both sides of this argument)who have to keep it alive and stop getting into arguments for the sake of picking a side.

My apologies to those who are into mature fanfics, but that's me being honest.

I was struck by this paragraph from Madam Pince Potter's blog:

[i]What does it say about people that a community centered upon books that celebrate tolerance, integrity and individual responsibility can turn into angry factions bent on wounding and punishing each other? [/i]

In my mind, the series does not at all celebrate tolerance, integrity and personal responsibility. Oh I thought it did, at one time. But after Deathly Hallows, it became clear that the HP world in Rowling's mind is a dark and hateful place, where prejudice is perfectly acceptable, so long as it's against the right people (Slytherin). Integrity? That's the exclusive purview of Gryffindors and assorted other Good Guys. Arthur Weasley can accept a bribe of tickets to the World Cup, but he's a good guy, so that's no reflection on his character. Harry can cast Crucio, but he was under duress and he's not perfect so there's no point fussing about that. As for personal responsibility, the entire plot of Deathly Hallows centered around Harry's willingness to sit on his arse in a tent until miracles fell into his lap one after the other. He defeats Voldemort not through any effort of his own, but via ancient magic he knew nothing about and only accidentally invoked. As for all those other defenders of Hogwarts who actually put forth a little effort into fighting the Bad Guys, they are not protected by their own willingness to sacrifice - no it's Harry the Patron Saint of Passivity, whose sacrifice protects them all.

As for "angry factions bent on wounding and punishing each other" if that doesn't describe the Marauders and Snape to a tee, nothing does.

So it seems to me that fandom has not so much perverted the message of the books as brought them to life.

There is a Good side and a Bad side, and once you've made your choice in the matter, that's it, you're stuck. The Good side can behave however it chooses, whereas the Bad side's every action is considered a personally motivated vicious blow. The twins can nearly kill Montague and that's a hoot, but when Draco gives Harry a broken nose it's just another reason to hate him. Melissa can plant an outright lie in the forums about Wu's relationship with SVA and when she is called on it, just shrug it off as unimportant. But if Wu misattributes one line in a rambling podcast, it's evidence of his clear and deliberate bias.

And we see that just as in the series, integrity belongs only to the Good side. The Bad side is motivated by jealousy and spite.

And personal responsibility? Well, sitting around on his hiney, staying faithful to Dumbledore and waiting for divine intervention worked just fine for Harry, so it should work just fine for us. Hold tight, continue to believe in Rowling no matter what you hear to the contrary, and everything will be just fine.

Awesome post Va32h. I am hoping she decides to revise DH at some point. It could have been so much better than it was. Maybe she will leave the pontificating out of a revised version. :-)
Ah the shipping wars. I stayed off that thread. I seriously did not believe it was going to be so simple as Snape loved Lily. LOL I am okay with that. Can you imagine how the death scene is going to look? Alan Rickman staggering around with a snake bubble stuck to his head, screaming. I wonder if they will change that for the movie. Got to hope.
Some people always did take the books too seriously though. It is hardly Dickens. What did she change? What impact will Harry Potter have on the world besides creating an industry for merchants to sell more crap that nobody needs?

No fandom plays nice 100% of the time. You can't expect them to.

I think fandom is inevitably a reflection of RL communities with the usual tendencies to group together, lash out, and exclude, but there are also a lot of qualities to fandom (and RL). I could be missing something here, but I don't see fandom as going wrong - not before this lawsuit and not now. I think the majority of fandom isn't even paying attention to the case, lol.

I find it interesting that you've experienced some nastiness for being a Snape fan (not that the thought doesn't horrify me!). I think you've mentioned this elsewhere, and I wanted to comment on it then but had to hurry off to something else. I admit I've never been very deeply involved in fandom outside of occasional fanfiction, but I've always thought there was a decent portion of the fandom who were nutty about/interested in Snape. Nearly half, I once exaggerated to a friend because that was really my impression. (Also, I do think Snape fans give as good as they get, like the Potions Master himself. ;))

I guess what I found most disturbing in the books was you had the Sorting Hat singing about how all the houses needed to stand united, and in the end, there's not only a serious split among the houses, but two decades later, that sort of willful prejudice continues. I thought before DH that JKR was going to come up with something that would unite the houses, and instead, you have students turning against students, and later parents perpetuating that sort of prejudice. I realize that some of the other themes--such as slavery or how we treat those with disabilities--most likely didn't have "happy endings" so to speak because of the length constraints of the book. I would've been just as happy in a post-DH interview if JKR had said "Well, there was legislation to free the house-elves" or "Ten years down the road, they made it illegal to discriminate against werewolves." I realize that in RL, changing of social attitudes takes time, and no doubt that is true in the fictional HP universe. I just suppose I would've like to have seen some inkling, some glimmer that some positive social change was taking place, and that maybe more positive change would take place in the real world. (Hey, if Harry and Draco could find a way to get along, then maybe the US and Iran could follow suit.) I dunno--maybe I'm too Pollyann-ish and should realize that the silver-lining of every cloud is a lightning bolt.

"Dumbledore should turn over in his grave".

But why, Rattlesnakeroot? Dumbledore, after all, was himself extremely biased against Slytherins, treated Severus like dirt, set up his murder, and never disciplined Harry or any other Gryffindor that we saw. What makes you think he ever wanted to do the least thing against these divisions? I think he'd be just fine with things as they are, especially since his darling Harry survived. Have you read The Bitter Word over on insanejournal on Dumbledore? If not, I recommend her essay highly, and can provide the link.

See, this is what I miss in fandom. Debate over the books. Debate over the topics and issues and themes. Kamion, I had to laugh when you said JKR needed fanfic to fill the pot holes (plot holes?). I understand that there were seven books written over a span of seventeen years. But, as a fan, I would've gladly waited longer for books that more effectively dealt with the issues of wizarding prejudice, slavery, etc., not to mention less Flints/inconsistencies. I think it reached the point where the fans were clamoring for the next HP *now*, and she obliged. However, I think her work suffered as a result. IMO, I was satisfied with the overall plot of the series, but felt the last three books could've definitely used some tightening--they just didn't seem to be as coherent or as consistently well written as the first four.

For sanity's sake, I haven't been following the trial (just in case you've been wondering whether I'm alive or not, LOL) but I read the blog entry.

I agree with those who say that fandom was never really nice.
But I think that now that the last book is out, and all of our precious theories and favorite characters are dead, our emotions are that much more powerful. A huge part of our lives is over and done with, and I think it's hard dealing with all that. Many people are much more likely to lash out under strain.

And on top of all that, there's the trial. No matter what party you support, this whole thing still shows us that our authoress is a real flesh-and-blood human being, involved in and subject to all the annoying legal and monetary matters of the ordinary world. It's hard to take, since it distances her from the fantasy world she has written and we have immersed ourselves in.

I wonder if many authors have as hard a time letting go of their work as it seems JKR is having.

Once a book is published, readers interpret it. The futlilty of an author telling readers what it all REALLY means, has become painfully obvious to me. My challenge then, is to ignore JKR's odd post-DH comments and get back to what I really do admire, and that is the books. Since I've read somewhere that JKR has not read her earlier books once they were published, I see a possible disconnect between what she thinks she wrote, and what she actually wrote.

SIP, hi there! Haven't seen you lately so I decided to come over to your house. Anyway, it's too bad that you were ridiculed in the "earlier days" (I didn't find the fandom until even later, 2006ish) about Snape. Shouldn't all those clueless morons who thought badly of Snape be kicking themselves now? They were proved wrong, right? Snape is THE hero.

This will say "anonymous, but I am linden swallow.

Hi - a bit late to this thread perhaps - and I haven't posted on this blog before, so hi to everyone, if you are still reading this... :)

(and by the way, my livejournal is practically dead, this: http://www.torill-underthemagnoliatree.blogspot.com/ is the blog I am using nowadays..)

I feel very bad for Lisa and the rest of the Lexicon staff that have found themselves at the receiving end of so much hate. It is easy to overlook that this does not really involve every HP fan, perhaps not even the majority..

That said, I want to comment a little about the connection between the message of the books and the war in the fandom. I don't really believe there is any such connection. Yes, the books have some very questionable parts - the slavery question, the House issue etc. But I have ceased to see the books as a series describing the battle between Good and Evil, I see it a lot more as a story investigating Power in all its facets and all its seduciveness. Read that way, it is not so disturbing or surprising that all the main characters are deeply flawed and do some very questionable things at times - and that social reform is not prominent or slave liberation is still far away by the end of the series.

I don't believe any of this is prompting anyone in the fandom to behave in any particular way, though. It is sad to watch what some people feel entitled to do and say these days - but I don't believe for one second they would have been any nicer had the books ended with full House unity and all the Elves freed. I'm afraid what we see is human nature, plus perhaps some structural/organisational features of the fandom that were here long before book seven was out.

And we have had wars before, certainly. I was a LL moderator for about a year when the Lounge opened, and had my share of trying to curb the shipping wars for instance - and no, that was not just the Harmonians being nasty, the R/Hr or H/G shippers were just as bad. Some of the "Kill Cuarón Squads" were no fun either, and I came across more than one Snape fan who ridiculed or psychoanalyzed to death those disliking Snape - and vice versa. Intolerance and "Ad Hominem" attacks have never been limited to one particular camp in the fandom, and I suppose it won't be that in the future either. Whether we play it nice or not is more about our personal standards or codes of ethics than it is about our HP preferences or interpretations of the books!

Another thing. I may be too sensitive, but I feel a little uncomfortable when the House sorting of the books is projected onto the fandom, and fans are described as Gryffindors and Slytherins as well - with what feels like a prejudiced set of opinions linked to each group - as in saying people who are against Steve are more likely to be "Gryffindor types" who gang up against the underdogs in general, jump on bandwagons and detests Snape, the chief underdog in the series...

I resent this a bit, I must say, and hope it is not meant to be taken too seriously - because I for one support Steve and loath any "jump the bandwagon" or bullying tendencies no matter where they show up - but I also pretty much despise Snape as a character who I do not read as either a hero or an underdog and poor victim of cruel bullies. And I love Sirius - whom I do not see as flawless in any shape or form (and I wish I could crawl inside the book pages to slap him upside the face in the Snape's worst memory scene - him and James both) - as well as have serious issues with the manipulative puppetmaster Dumbledore. Everyone ended up being very ill served by trusting Dumbledore too much...

So - what I am trying to get across - just as I may get annoyed by a certain stereotyping in the books regarding House personalites etc., I also get annoyed by fan sterotyping - especially, of course, when I feel subjected to it myself. Not that I admire it when it hits others either...

It all comes down to what several of you have pointed out: a willingness to accept differences - different readings of the books, different takes on and favorites among the characters, different understandings of copyright law...