Tunbridge Wells calling

[woman_ironing]

Barack Obama has been elected, the Bank of England has reduced interest rates, Labour have won the Glenrothes by-election, but I’m going to have a moan about an obscure lj Harry Potter community, deathtocapslock.

Comments

[woman_ironing]

I’m not getting at you for plugging away at HP, I’m getting at you for not doing it more interestingly! Or maybe interestingly enough for me. Perhaps I just have a short attention span. You say “sometimes what sounds like bitterness and hatred actually isn't” and bookshop says that the members of death2 are all huge fans of the series. But slinkhard, horridporrid, static pixie and Anonymous Dan Hemmens (“I, and most of the other regular posters at DTCL have exactly the opinions about the series that you describe.”) don’t seem to be. I’d guess that’s why they like deathtocapslock.

You must be right that there are places for discussion on the web. I thought I’d found just such a place when I found lj. I suppose the fact is that that is no longer the case - if it ever was. As I put in my reply to slinkhard, death2 rankles so much because it epitomises the dominant attitude on lj. An example. Earlier this year someone posted in hp_essays on, ‘Alchemy - What Might Have Been’, concluded that “alchemy does not assist too much in our understanding of the Harry Potter series” and asked “Care to convince me otherwise?”. I tried, but the writer of the essay was not actually interested in being convinced or even in discussing the topic he himself had raised. So, there’s my tragic story!

I hadn’t come across mike_smith. He is rather funny. He oozes impatience rather than bitterness. The comments and his replies are the best - and the silver surfer interludes.

[horridporrid]

I’m not getting at you for plugging away at HP, I’m getting at you for not doing it more interestingly! Or maybe interestingly enough for me.

But that's the central issue, I think. One person's "interesting" is another person's "boring" (or repetitive or bitter or whathaveyou). I find alchemy theories regarding HP supremely boring, but that doesn't mean I think sites that discuss same should somehow shift their focus to accommodate me. Why should my disinterest dictate the discussion habits of those who share an interest?

I'll admit I have some bitterness about the HP series; I think it ended in a fantastic train-wreck. But... what's wrong with that? What's wrong with playing around in a comm where folks who do feel some bitterness can feel free to express that feeling, knowing they're not peeing in the general HP fan's pool?

You must be right that there are places for discussion on the web. I thought I’d found just such a place when I found lj. I suppose the fact is that that is no longer the case - if it ever was.

I think you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater there. LJ is... everything really. There are places that dedicate themselves to squee, places that dedicate themselves to harsh, and everything in between. Each lj user, the moderators of each lj comm, decides for themselves what they want their particular journal to be. (I ran across a Stargate:Atlantis discussion comm that put the actors off-limits, for example. So it was discussion up to a point, that point was made clear, and discussion existed happily within those parameters.)

DTCL fills a particular niche. I'm sure there's a comm out there that's filled with HP squee. It makes things a bit difficult, because you do have to look for the comm or lj that suits your needs, but I think that's the nature of the beast.