(no subject)

[a_t_rain]

You know what I've decided is the problem with the Internet in general, and Livejournal in particular? It makes it way too easy for people with bizarre opinions to flock together and reinforce each other's bizarreness, and since nobody calls them on it, they don't realize they're being bizarre. For the benefit of the general public, I have drawn up a helpful guide.

Common Signs that Your Opinions About Harry Potter Might Be Bizarre

1) You believe JKR has insulted not only you, but your entire generation, by failing to include your pet ship or plot element.

2) You are utterly horrified at the values she is teaching the next generation, and believe she is going out of her way to warp the minds of the millions of impressionable young children reading the books.

3) You believe that JKR WAS writing your pet ship or plot element throughout the first five books, even though nobody else could see it, but has decided, for mysterious reasons of her own, to undo everything she's written and contradict the message of the first five books by failing to include this element in the sixth.

4) You have threatened to deface, destroy, or throw up on Book Six if it includes or fails to include a particular element.

5) You have actually carried out this threat.

6) You have ever wished harm on little Mackenzie, for any reason whatsoever.

7) You have written up a long rant about your least favorite character, explaining in exhaustive detail why she is inconsiderate, annoying, mean, self-centered, fangirlish, and generally unpleasant -- and concluded it with "... and also she has no flaws."

8) You are in the habit of ranting in capital letters about the RUDENESS of people who have the temerity to express opinions that are different from yours -- while at the same time flinging personal insults and sending nasty PMs to these people.

9) You complain because the new book "is just like fanfic" -- and in the same breath, argue that fanfic is much much better.

More coming, as I stumble across new examples...

Comments

[maple-clef.livejournal.com]

Ohyes. But - number 6: that's happened? I'm sort of lost for words...

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Well, I haven't actually seen the original comment in question, so I'm hoping it was fabricated or at least embellished ... but yes, if the rumors are correct, it has.

[tunxeh.livejournal.com]

Word. I'm getting especially annoyed at #7 lately but if I'd seen any of #6 it would have gotten me a lot more upset a lot quicker.

[hannahmarder.livejournal.com]

You have ever wished harm on little Mackenzie, for any reason whatsoever.
Oh dear Lord, please tell me that people haven't said that. That is absolutely sick. The sad thing is, I can believe it. It's frightening.

You have written up a long rant about your least favorite character, explaining in exhaustive detail why she is inconsiderate, annoying, mean, self-centered, fangirlish, and generally unpleasant -- and concluded it with "... and also she has no flaws."
Oh yes, I'm so fed up of posting in threads to try and explain that saying Ginny/Tonks/Fleur/Hermione/Luna is perfect but at the same time has no good qualities, and is in fact a Mary Sue (because there's no worse insult than that...) is something of a contradiction. Usually you get a reply saying that the problem is that, although the character is blatantly 'more evil than Bellatrix' (actual description of Ginny from an FAP post), no other character can see it. No. That goes for a lot of readers too...

Anyway, good rant, and it's worrying how many fans it could apply to.

[lazy-neutrino.livejournal.com]

Right, that's it. You have offended my entire generation.

Number 6. What?

Number 7. Ginny, I take it?

A sign that you may be about to be bizarre (at least by the standards of normal people):

You use your Harry Potter books as sources and have more than once wondered if they should be on the 'reference' shelf with the dictionary and the book of quotations, rather than on the 'privileged fiction' shelf.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Number 7. Ginny, I take it?

And just about every other female character in the books, with the possible exceptions of Minerva McGonagall and Merope Gaunt.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

I knew I friended you for a reason. Ah, #3. At least MOST Wolfstar shippers aren't QUITE that bad....

[mafdet.livejournal.com]

A Letter To My Fandom:

I am ashamed of you right now. Kthxdie.

No love,

Me.

PS. There's a special burning seat in hell for anyone who has done #6.

[winding_path]

OK, I will confess to having said that Ms. Rowling needed to stop having children (and anything else that smacks of a real life) until the books were done, but I was kidding, and as far as wishing harm on one of them . . . yikes. People need to chill.

[bradamant.livejournal.com]

I've made fun of her name--because the characters' names are so nice, and then she names her own kid something boring and trendy like Mackenzie--but I'm sure the actual child is lovely.

If I were JKR, I'd probably threaten to stop writing until people stop being so stupid.

[lunar-wolf.livejournal.com]

It makes it way too easy for people with bizarre opinions to flock together and reinforce each other's bizarreness, and since nobody calls them on it, they don't realize they're being bizarre.

Here here!

The internet has spawned the belief of The Otherkin (http://www.otherkin.com/), mostly teenagers and insecure adults who desperately need to believe they're special.

So they convince each other and reassure each other that yes, "You sound like a reincarnated angel to me! Maybe we were both warriors of Lucifer against God!" or that "I feel rage and powerful, I'm a dragon!" and even that "I'm genetically half-elf, half human!"

...And they really take pride in this.

I have no problems with the general theory of Otherkin --if we can have gender identity, why not species identity? *shrugs* I'm equal opportunity. And since I believe in reincarnation, anyone could have an animal soul.

But elves and unicorns and dragons....And they're ALL dragons and elves and other 'special' creatures.

What, being a badger-soul not good enough for you? It was for scores of Native Americans!
[/hijack]

Sorry. But you said it and it made my head go kaplooey.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

:: blinks :: Wow, I'd never come across that particular brand of craziness before. Good to know it's not all fandom-related.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

#6 is just *awful*! Please tell me that hasn't actually happened!

I can only imagine people are throwing #7 at Ginny yet again. Le sigh.

I will admit there were a few segments of Book Six that made me think 'Wow, that's just like so-and-so's fic. How very surreal', but that was about it.

[rhi-silverflame.livejournal.com]

There is just not enough "You, out of my fandom" in the universe to apply to people who fit in the above categories -- especially #6, which is just appalling and reprehensible beyond words.

[dharmavati.livejournal.com]

9) You complain because the new book "is just like fanfic" -- and in the same breath, argue that fanfic is much much better.

This is a stupid argument. If there are a good amount of fics that took place during Harry's sixth year (Draco Dormiens comes to mind) and some authors seemed to have similar events with HBP, how does that make HBP lesser than these fics. JKR is still God of Potterverse canon and, while some may prefer elements of sixth year!fanfiction over the real thing, JKR's version is... well, the real thing. Deal with it.

And about #6, extremely sad and disturbing, but I can imagine it to be true. There are some wacko fans out there.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

When I read the first lines of this entry I held my breath, fully expecting to be proven very, very bizarre; but as usual (I should know by now), I turn out to be very mundane. In view of point 6, especially, that seems a very good thing indeed. The only element I am guilty of is number 9, a little. For fear of being accused of sliminess I shall not elaborate ;-). *cough*RL/NT*cough*

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Ah, what the hey, let's talk RL/NT, shall we? It's the closest thing I have to an OTP, and I'm thrilled beyond words that we got a page of text and a bit of handholding, but at the same time I accept that they're minor adult characters. They're about as relevant to Harry's story as Hagrid and Olympe, or Percy and Penelope, and I'm not expecting JKR to give us any more on-screen romance than she did with those other couples. The only difference is that a certain subset of fans had already taken to this couple and claimed them as our own, and since we have the luxury of actually writing stories that focus on these characters and explore their relationship in depth, anything JKR does is going to suffer by comparison.

If I'm looking for a detailed, subtly characterized romance, I'll go read fernwithy's stuff. That's the perfect example of what fanfic is for.

[crazysexy-cool.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. I need to post this above my desk.

[jesspallas.livejournal.com]

*reads over the two familiar references* Oh dear, oh dear...

1) Some people take shipping - and certain ships in particular - far too seriously, to the point of scaring me profoundly. And, in what I suspect will be the message of most of this reply - it's when all is said and done, it's just books. They're good books, set in a wonderful world that I enjoy, but I'd never say it would be the end of my world and an insult to all who read them if things didn't go the way I'd like them. Except if she killed Lupin, obviously...(joke!);)

2)Oh, for goodness sake. I say again - just books!

3)Ah, denial. I have seen much near violent denial across the net recently. Again with the scary...

4 & 5)Fine, let them. It's their money that's already in JKR's bank account...;)

6) Words cannot describe how sick this is. Any person who says this needs more than telling off, they need mental help...:/

7) *sigh* On goes the broken record. Just books, just books, just books....

8)Ah, glorious hypocrisy, the weapon of the ridiculous...;)

9) Ah, circular logic. The argument that HBP is fanfic is the one I find most bizarre. It can't be fanfic because it's canon. It's written by JKR and this is her world - she can decide what she likes. I will admit, there are fanfics that I like better than HBP, sad as that sounds. Not that I don't like HBP, but it's not my favourite book in the series and there are very good fics out there. But I like them as fanfic, not as canon, and fics that good are very rare beside the sheer volume of illerate pap that they share the internet with.

*shakes head* Forgive me if I sound curmugeonly, but I'm not very well and a bit grumpy. But when all is said and done - they are just books, intended for fun and entertainment, not for life consuming obsession. And anyone who doesn't get that probably needs to be taken aside and quietly spoken to. ;)

[jesspallas.livejournal.com]

That "two" should say "too". You can tell I'm not on form...;)

[sprite6.livejournal.com]

I've seen #8 a lot on LJ, on all sorts of subjects besides HP. Since people can ban anyone they don't like from commenting in their journals, it's easy for them to live in an echo chamber. And honestly, even "normal" fen can forget how bizarre fandom seems to outsiders, as a non-fandom friend reminded me just this morning. :).

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I blame the constant mutual reinforcement of Livejournal for sending people into a spiral that carries them farther and farther from reality.

And honestly, even "normal" fen can forget how bizarre fandom seems to outsiders, as a non-fandom friend reminded me just this morning.

Indeed. And I think people also have a tendency to forget how few fans of the Harry Potter books are actually in fandom. Big big difference between those two things.

[snorkackcatcher]

Ah, fandom. Yes, I think I've seen a few of those, especially #7 and #9 ...

Clearly however, she has deliberately insulted her entire readership with HBP - after making it so plain in the first five books that Harry and Hermione belonged together, and so did Remus and Sirius, and then failing to follow through on it because her publishers threatened to refuse to print the book if she did.

[/joking]

[gunderpants.livejournal.com]

Wow. Your reason for avoiding fandom is the exact reason that I've thrown myself into FAP all the more lately. It's like Shitstirring Season, and I'm a natural born.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

It's not even FAP so much as various Livejournal posts. At FAP, outside of the artificial constraints of forums like VENOM, people will generally call you on it if you've said something particularly idiotic. At Livejournal, people tend to segregate themselves into tiny like-thinking communities, so the lunacy is like an endless loop that feeds off of itself.

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

Heh. Good and frightening points for many reasons. So here's my question.

I am sick of the fandom. Fed up. Whatever. And I can't seem to stop At least for more than a few days at a time. Then a little fix of total insanity. Then I go away again. Why the hell is *that*? How can you be fed up with people and their oppinions and their rants, while encouraging them all the while?

I think I'm distancing myself from it, I certainly have less interest in writing fanfic these days, but cold turkey isn't easy. The urge to argue and asert our oppinions is always there.

I think we care about these characters for some totally unknown reason -- perhaps because of real life lonliness, perhaps out of boredom, perhaps because it's more interactive than caring about characters on TV or the movie stars that play them -- too much. Oh well. I still do. Certainly not to the point of wishing harm on anyone else anywhere, but most definitely enough to engage in entertaining debate and wild speculation.

I guess it's all a matter of perpsective and understanding, neither of which is particularly easy to come by when we can't even read each others' faces or emotions except by font decorations. But such is the nature of the beast.

Not gonna lie, I've met several interesting and wonderful people in this fandom, and the furor(sp) around this book will die off eventually. So, despite the insanity, it's not an experience I would have traded in, I think.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Dunno why it's so hard to walk away. For me, it's even weirder, because it's like a bizarro-world version of my own particular corner of academia, only strangely it's ever so much more addictive. (You know the whole argument about whether Albus Dumbledore is an ideal man-of-the-people leader or a manipulative bastard? It's an exact mirror of the perennial debate about Henry V, and I think it's a contentious issue for many of the same reasons, both within and outside of the text. And, as a totally random side note, Prince Hal hung out at the Boar's Head, and Dumbledore's brother runs the Hog's Head. Weird.)

Um, yeah. Should probably walk away from the keyboard and go to bed.

[the-prof.livejournal.com]

It's a good list, puts into short, pointed order so many of the things that are so irritating about fandom. The thing that gets me most is that, all too often, it's not kids perpetuating this kind of thing. It's a fair bit easier to overlook a 13-yr-old having a screaming match over a ship than it is to overlook a 23-yr-old doing the same thing. I'm honestly not sure that we all remember the same first five books. Bizarre is a very good word for it. But it does seem to have spread through an awful lot of fandom, doesn't it? I almost worry that if JKR moves any deeper into fandom, she'll be scared away, and yet it seems she's missing most of the really good stuff, too. Alas.

*waves*

[threeoranges.livejournal.com]

Hi, a passing dissenter here... I actually agree with #2.

2) You are utterly horrified at the values she is teaching the next generation, and believe she is going out of her way to warp the minds of the millions of impressionable young children reading the books.

Admittedly I don't believe she is deliberately warping kids' minds... Just that the way her teenagers behave under the influence of hormones doesn't provide a particularly nice role model for kids. Ranted about it here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/threeoranges/141526.html), in fact.

You may say "it's just a book", but it is a book which virtually every little kid in Great Britain has read. This means it's a marker on the road to maturity, much as Judy Blume's books were when I was a teenager. The Harry Potter books are more influential even than Blume. When applications to British BOARDING SCHOOLS (those pits of hellish peer-torture) are up because of Harry Potter, you know those books are influential :-) Rowling may have intended to write a portrait of how messed-up, insecure and emotional kids are at age 15/16, but what she actually wrote was the prescriptive lesson that you need "experience" in order to be mature.

Again, try to imagine that you're not a mature adult but a young boy as you read Ginny's attack on her brother, how he launches himself onto Lavender, extricates himself from her after a few embarrassing "Won-Won"s, and how he ends up happily with Hermione. Are you going to think "What a jerk Ron is! Didn't he consider how Lavender might feel?" or are you going to carry away the lesson that you have to play the field before you get together with the girl you actually want?

If so, is this the right sort of lesson for young boys to be learning? If they are going to learn that, I'd like them to be getting that lesson together with a lecture about birth control and the avoidance of STDs. Really. Because books aren't "just books", they impart moral messages like anything else, and kids do absorb those messages.

Sorry to ramble; just thought I would explain the reasons for my stance. Those who replied agreeing with me are not "bizarre", just possessed of an ability to remember how tough it was at school ;)

Re: *waves*

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Hmm, thanks for providing some interesting food for thought, but I'm afraid I've got to disagree. Frankly, I doubt that any kid is going to absorb his set of values and rules for living from a book, no matter how popular that book may be (unless it's the holy book of a major religion and it's been presented to him as a guide for living by people he respects and cares for). We get our core values from the people in our lives, not from literature -- and I say this as somebody who has a great deal of respect for literature and its power.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_vocalion_/]

Very funny take on the fandom and its reaction to HBP. I followed your link from Sigune's LJ. Sigune has recommended your work to me, but FA is so vast and the print is much too small. Why not post at Sycophant Hex so I can enlarge the print and read your stories? :-)

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

Heart.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

I just thought I'd share this comic: http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp07252005.shtml

The sad thing is, the girl's rant is a more mature and less vulgar parody version of an actual person's rant on LJ 0.o

Talk about nuts *sigh*

I soemtime think people forget how to jsut enjoy things. Even when I'm hating Dumbledore's guts, I love him as a character.

And I've happily set up "anti_JKR interview" space around my head. I'm glad I was in an "The Author is dead" english class somtimes ^^

[snorkackcatcher]

Sorry if I'm flogging a dead horse here, but this comment arrived in my inbox today (from a Yahoo story group with lots of keen H/Hr shippers):

The character developement was unforeseen but not up to JKs usual
standard (like her excellent plot points in PoA and GoF).
If she wants us to belive in the "power of love" why doesn't she show
Harry being with Ginny more. We don't really know how he feels about
her, do we? I even knew more about Cho.
And I don't care about interviews with JKR because I belive in the
reader (I'm studying literature and really like Michel Foucault's
theories).
The text is always smarter than the author (Kafka, Freud etc.) - and
therefore, and because I read all books carefully, I know that there
is evidence for both ships in the text.
If JK likes it or not.

(Truncated slightly, but I tried to not do so unfairly.) Not really my field, I suppose, so what's the opinion of a literature geek on this sort of thing then? :)

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

On the specific issue raised: I think this person is confusing love-in-general with romantic love. The former is a vitally important theme of the series as a whole; the latter is something JKR uses for light relief (though I have to admit I'm coming to consider romance a bit more central to Harry's journey than I would have thought prior to HBP). There is plenty of textual evidence that Harry and Hermione love each other, so I can see where the H/Hr shippers are coming from -- but not that they love each other that way.

On the "death of the author": This is one of those theories that works best when the author is literally dead. When she's still alive and giving interviews, and the readers are debating what's actually going to happen in the next book rather than how to interpret it on a thematic level, they'd do well to listen up :)

That said, does reader response occasionally trump authorial intention? Sure. If the reader were saying "I found Harry's relationship with Ginny to be one of the weaker parts of the book because of X, Y, and Z," and left it at that, she'd have a valid point -- JKR was going for a particular effect, but at least in one reader's mind, she didn't pull it off. You can also make a legitimate argument that even though JKR says the main theme of the story is the power of love, other themes overshadow this one in the text itself and some elements seem to contradict the author's statements. But arguing that Harry / Hermione could still happen, and / or it could already be happening "between the lines" even though the author says otherwise? That's a plot point, not an interpretative one, and questions about plot have definite right and wrong answers. And, in general, it's a good idea to listen to She Who Knows The Story Best to find out what those answers are.

This list is BRILLIANT!

[chesnutella.livejournal.com]

Hi there a_t_rain! Sorry for randomly dropping in on your LJ! I just got an email that told me I've been assigned to do you something for the R/T ficathon.
Anyway, I enetered mystelf as an artist ... but I could try my hand at a fic if you prefer that, so wanted to check if you had a preference either way...?

Re: This list is BRILLIANT!

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Do whatever you're comfortable with, although I'd better warn you that my art-reviewing skills are none of the best, and I can seldom come up with anything more profound to say than "Oh, pretty." Doesn't mean I won't appreciate it, though.

However, I've just received an assignment for said ficathon that I am never, in a million years, going to be capable of writing, so I may be withdrawing anyway. Will get back to you if I do.