Not dead yet.
Being a fan is difficult.
I am serious, but I might be very alone in believing that. Being a fan is actually a total passive business. You can make it exhausting by producing fanwork of any kind and get involved in activities with other fans, but being a fan itself is no work at all. And yet, I totally hate it.
No, it's not that liking something lessen my hate for world or something - no, I hate it because I dread new installments. Of course, I could be fan of something or someone that has been dead and buried for a long time, but where is the fun in that one? No, I need the dread. But I don't like it. And, actually, I can rationally explain why.
You know Umberto Eco once distinguished between the intention of the author, the intention of the reader and the intention of the text. To illuminate what he meant he cited the example of a letter that mentioned a basket with figs and a reader who finds it centuries after it was written. The reader with his knowledge and experiences can interpret that letter as a secret code, as a naughty metaphor, as anything. What the reader shouldn't do is operate outside of reason and claim that the text itself is about Tesco bag with bananas, because that would be unreasonable.
Works in progress are special beasts, because while the author is dead between installments, he and his text is very much alive and actually still subject to change. Works in progress are special because they have retroactive continuity button.
I live in dread of the retroactive continuity. Imagine finding a copy of a book torn in half - and you read first half which is all about A, which you interpret as meaning C, and you adore it for meaning C. And then you read the second half, in which the author makes clear that A means B and that C (and your reason for liking it) never existed.
Now C sounds like it would major, would be expecting a happy ending from Romeo and Juliet, but it isn't. It's often minor details that become facts in the fans' minds - a backstory, a characterisation, a detail, an expectation.
I think the older I get, the less flexible and accepting I am of getting B instead of C. Or perhaps, HBP broke my "accept every kind of crap as long as it comes from the creator himself" button. That button that worked for seven seasons of Buffy, six Bjork albums, five installments of Harry Potter, four seasons of Angel (didn't watch the fifth), three seasons of Roswell (Where is my medal for that one?) two-and-a-half installments of His Dark Materials and one season of Veronica Mars.
Nah, I am unfair. I lost patience with Lost half way through its first season - which was prior to HBP's publishing date.
Well, to be honest this isn't really about HP, this is about Veronica Mars.
I am not a big fan of the season opener, which is firmly founded in the reason why I hate the A Trip to the Dentist' denouement. It always striked me as fundamentally wrong to end the rape investigation at Duncan's doorstep and leave with only his word that it was consensual. Even terrible rape investigations are not ending with simply taking the rapist's word that it wasn't rape. Rape convictions are hard to come by, getting rape prosecuted is difficult, we all know that, but still a suspect's word that he didn't do it, is nothing more but its face value - a denial of guilt. It's not evidence, it's not a reliable testimony.
Just on the basis Duncan is not a character I feel capable of liking, much less one I want to see in a romantic relationship with someone I do not feel completely unjustified labeling as his victim. That's just creepy.
There are other issues I have with the episode, but I am not throwing the towel yet. Which is more than I can say about Harry Potter.
That train... I guess it left the station long ago. I cannot even muster the energy to explain why it sucks.
Am I unreasonable? I mean re-reading this post it's clear that what I love most is my reader intention. I reject the author and love the text only to the extent in which it pleases my knowledge, my experience, my opinions, my world view, my morality, my ethics, my standards.
Perhaps it's not that being a fan is difficult, but rather that I am a difficult to please. And so I will continue to dread new installments. But should I just accept things I don't like, pretend to like them, make myself like them against my own judgement?
Why? For what purpose?
Being a fan a personal thing, and if my judgement tells me that there is nothing left to fangirl anymore... Maybe the truth is that it's not difficult to be a fan, but rather that it is difficult to stop being one.