HP ranting
So fannish5 asked:
Five reasons you loved or hated (or were indifferent to) Harry Potter fandom.
Eh hem [/Umbridge]
That’s a pretty loaded question right there. I basically talked about why I never felt comfortable getting too much in to it. And yeah, there's a fair amount of shipping talk.
Ship wars
Yes I shipped Harry/Hermione like burning and think the eventual canon ships are awful horrible choices that will never make the characters happy but it always seemed that people in this fandom really quickly went from talking about the ships to talking about the shippers. And I most definitely mean that about both (main) sides. However...
Post HBP trolling
Look R/Hr shippers, you were winning (and went on to win, such as it was), but when it’s message boards on a H/Hr site maybe you could not be so rude about it? I wasn’t on lj back then of on general boards, just Portkey, but even that wasn’t a safe place to rage against what was happening in the series. It really kept me from ever participating in the discussion, because if I had been looking for a wide swath of people to talk to about it I would have taken it to a more general site, but I wasn’t, I wanted to have a safe place to be mad.
Yes, I’m certain it happened the other way around and almost certainly would have if things had gone the way I wanted. Further proof of why it was a fandom I only flirted with but never really got in to. By the way...
Canon ships
I hate them. Well, among the main characters; Remus/Tonks and Bill/Fleur and the like sure. But Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione I just can’t, I never could. I honestly don’t see the appeal, by which I mostly mean to JKR as a writer. Her ideas on love are just odd. Because she gets it right sometimes, mostly with older characters, but oh so wrong with her main characters. I honestly don’t see how H/G or R/Hr will ever work out, and JKR never gave me any idea that they could.
Non-canon ships that aren’t my own canon ship
To be fair this is something I run in to in most fandoms I’m in. But basically I’m a OTP type. And because of that, while sometimes I’ll read other ships it tends to have to be under specific conditions. And ones that involve persons in my OTP outside of that even less. And with my OTP being two of the most major characters in the series a lot of fic is off the table for me, so (back when I read HP) I tended to stick to small zones of it.
Old school
The more into fandom I got (and I was never very deep in) the less I cared about the Marauders era. I cared about how learning about it affected Harry and maybe his relationships with the remaining ones but as themselves I didn’t care. Particularly James/Lily (to bring it back to shipping talk), after we got flashbacks of them as a should not be couple I expected we would also get something on why they did eventually work but we didn’t. Much like how I don’t get how the main timeline ships work I don’t get how J/L make sense.
But mainly, it seems a lot of fandom likes to discuss/write Marauders things but it doesn’t interest me all that much. Even within the main timeline they’re just not that interesting to me on their own. I wish they were, I really do.
Five reasons you loved or hated (or were indifferent to) Harry Potter fandom.
Eh hem [/Umbridge]
That’s a pretty loaded question right there. I basically talked about why I never felt comfortable getting too much in to it. And yeah, there's a fair amount of shipping talk.
Ship wars
Yes I shipped Harry/Hermione like burning and think the eventual canon ships are awful horrible choices that will never make the characters happy but it always seemed that people in this fandom really quickly went from talking about the ships to talking about the shippers. And I most definitely mean that about both (main) sides. However...
Post HBP trolling
Look R/Hr shippers, you were winning (and went on to win, such as it was), but when it’s message boards on a H/Hr site maybe you could not be so rude about it? I wasn’t on lj back then of on general boards, just Portkey, but even that wasn’t a safe place to rage against what was happening in the series. It really kept me from ever participating in the discussion, because if I had been looking for a wide swath of people to talk to about it I would have taken it to a more general site, but I wasn’t, I wanted to have a safe place to be mad.
Yes, I’m certain it happened the other way around and almost certainly would have if things had gone the way I wanted. Further proof of why it was a fandom I only flirted with but never really got in to. By the way...
Canon ships
I hate them. Well, among the main characters; Remus/Tonks and Bill/Fleur and the like sure. But Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione I just can’t, I never could. I honestly don’t see the appeal, by which I mostly mean to JKR as a writer. Her ideas on love are just odd. Because she gets it right sometimes, mostly with older characters, but oh so wrong with her main characters. I honestly don’t see how H/G or R/Hr will ever work out, and JKR never gave me any idea that they could.
Non-canon ships that aren’t my own canon ship
To be fair this is something I run in to in most fandoms I’m in. But basically I’m a OTP type. And because of that, while sometimes I’ll read other ships it tends to have to be under specific conditions. And ones that involve persons in my OTP outside of that even less. And with my OTP being two of the most major characters in the series a lot of fic is off the table for me, so (back when I read HP) I tended to stick to small zones of it.
Old school
The more into fandom I got (and I was never very deep in) the less I cared about the Marauders era. I cared about how learning about it affected Harry and maybe his relationships with the remaining ones but as themselves I didn’t care. Particularly James/Lily (to bring it back to shipping talk), after we got flashbacks of them as a should not be couple I expected we would also get something on why they did eventually work but we didn’t. Much like how I don’t get how the main timeline ships work I don’t get how J/L make sense.
But mainly, it seems a lot of fandom likes to discuss/write Marauders things but it doesn’t interest me all that much. Even within the main timeline they’re just not that interesting to me on their own. I wish they were, I really do.