Well, Forum Registration has been closed and a few of us are steering clear of the internet for awhile (in hopes of not being spoiled) but some of us are still around.

So let's discuss some HP.

Previous Discussion Points
Discussion Point I -- Harry's Legacy

Second Question: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is rumored to include an epilogue of sorts that wraps up the lives of the Harry Potter characters. What will an epilogue do to fanfiction?

Basically, if the scans of the table of contents are true and what's been said from Rowling herself - that there is a wrap-up of all the loose ends - is truthful and that there is in fact an epilogue... what will fanfiction be like?

If Harry's marriage to Ginny is made evident, children are mentioned and even perhaps a job included, do you think it's the end for fanfiction?

Maybe we can bypass that as authors by going through divorces, killing off the characters, etc, etc but that's us, the crazy sect of the Harry Potter Fandom.

Will it work for the more moderate channels that provide most of the fics that we in fact read?

Most know how hard it is to write a post-HBP fiction. I mean - what the fuck is a horcrux really? It's such an intangible concept that was thrust upon us with little warning and we really couldn't recover.

Furthermore, what if the Epilogue is set in the far distant future - 10, 15, 20 years from the end of Book 7 and it goes into extensive detail and eradicates those 20 years.

We could be dealing with a Harry who's 40 years old. Where's the appeal? What can we look forward to? Can anyone give a shit?

Then there's the biggest issue.

The fact that it's Post-Hogwarts!

People lament Hogwarts and the 1-2-3 step and all the rigmarole that comes with writing a going-to-school wizard but the reality is, 99% of the stories we read have a Hogwarts-bound Harry or a Harry that attends Hogwarts.

That's an amazing change to the atmosphere of a story.

Will we see Harry involved with politics? Will we see Harry involved in the Unspeakable department? There's only so much of the world we know and I don't think anyone wants to read about IceCreamMan!Harry who busts his ass 9 to 5 at Florean Fortescue's 5 days a week for 20 galleons.

Then the real kicker.

Voldemort could be dead.

If Voldemort is not dead but defeated, there's hope. But if Voldemort is in fact dead, you've just lost the antagonist to almost every fanfiction story written since 1998. Step back for a second and think about that.

If Voldemort isn't alive come July 22nd, 2007, we will have to see different characters made to fulfill the role of one of the easiest villains to write. I mean, there's absolutely no thought put into Voldemort. Kill shit, be mean to followers, generally have a plot that fails every year.

If Death Eaters are disbanded and most of them are killed, it becomes even worse.

Thus, an Epilogue that prolongs Harry getting involved with anything we're accustomed to makes HP Fanfiction that much more difficult.

Personally, I think we'll see a lot more fics starting with Book 5 if Book 7 is a letdown and if the Epilogue is disastrous to fanfction in general. We'll see a lot more time-turner fics. We'll see a lot more works that are unoriginal.

It kind of hurts to not see people trying Year 7 fics because of how bad HBP is. It's going to be even worse if there's absolutely no attempt to work off what Rowling has left us recently.

We'd be stuck in 2003 latching onto the open-ending awesomeness that was Order of the Phoenix.

And frankly, that can only lead to a severe decline. The Golden Age of HP Fanfiction has passed. Will it be a collapse like the Roman Empire, however?

Your thoughts?

 

I don't think that an Epilogue will make a bit of difference in the end. AU's, time-travel, etc. all make it easy for one to get past any bad ending that Rowling is likely to create(though they are, sadly, unoriginal). If Harry marries Ginny, the fan girls will give them forty children and have the children's years at Hogwarts while anyone else will slaughter her and have Harry go on a killing rampage.

On the point of a twenty year gap, why not just write about what happens in that time? His job, rounding up stray dark wizards, maybe even a couple of random adventures.

If the seventh book sucks, we are going to see a lot more memories of Cedric Diggory's death. People are going to be running back to the best book of the series to change the steady decline that came with OotP and the crash that came with HBP.

On the Death Eater note, Voldemort sprung up in twenty to thirty years after Grindlewald. Who's to say we can't make a story about Harry's fight, death, and then his children's fight against some new Dark Lord?

 

Depends on why various readers and writers are into Harry Potter fanfic. To use myself as an example, in the past I've read Ranma fanfiction because there's no closure, Buffy fanfiction because it gets too emo for me around season 6, and Harry Potter fanfiction because there's a lot of untapped potential in the books - Rowling built a whole world and then proceeded to just tool around in one corner of it.

The closure people would leave the scene, the newest-iteration-sucks people could go either way, those that want to see the same characters in different situations will stick around.

 

But is anything that's not Harry-centric appealing? Won't most be turned off?

The reason we love Harry so much is because he's transitioning like a lot of us and we can easily put ourselves in his shoes. Frankly, I don't want to be married to Ginny or have 30 children. It's hard enough getting a muse going with the cluster-fuck that is Half-Blood Prince.

How much harder will it be?

And as I said, if all we have to look forward to is rehashing Book 4 and Book 5 and continuing what we've done there, are we going to see the Downfall of HPFF?

I mean, Lord of the Rings is a great example. How solid of an ending can you have? I mean, Tolkien fucking nailed that thing shut tighter than a nun's cunt would be on a cold day in Massachusetts. Everything has to happen either during the Lord of the Rings (see the 5,000 Boromir shall live fics) or before it (see the 5,000 Elrond doing shit in the Second age fics).

It's part desirability to read, write and do what we did in 2003, 2004 and 2005. Let's face it. Those were golden years. Everything was fresh, everything was enjoyable and our standards for fanfiction were really broad.

Go into the library and find some of the stories there. If half of them were recc'd today they'd be absolutely ripped. Standards have improved, that's the natural cycle of fanfiction as every idea is plotted.

But it becomes even worse when we have no new source material we're willing to work with. If fanfiction authors deny DH's ending like they denied HBP's ending, then we'll have very little to work with that we don't find cliche.

I like the idea of Post-Hogwarts but then we're asking for talent. We've relied heavily on the world around us and not having to create so many new things. Some authors are capable of it - I can think of quite a few - but that's being able to have something to read when you're on and not when a handful of authors update sporadically.

 

Who gives a shit about his kids? This would be alright if Harry were the one fighting or becoming the new Dark Lord.

I think post-DH fics are going to suck balls. They could be alright if people start tweaking events: "What if..."

 

But even if DH is utter shite, we've already suffered through that with HBP. Pretending that canon ended with book five won't be all that much harder with a seven on the end.

Also, there's always the option of taking the plot points from DH and leaving the crap. Look at how many stories completely ignore HBP but have horcruxes.

 

Fanfiction doesn't die.

That's all there is to it.

Even if there's a good closing that totally ends all options for "canon" fics, it doesn't really matter.

As long as someone out there wants to read about Harry Potter, someone will be writing about it, in whatever crazed and deranged way they want to.

All it really means is that the writers will need to adapt to different confines, or just need to take them where they want to go. It's fandom, and anything can happen.

Harry dies? No problem, he is resurrected, or perhaps we do some timetravel.

Ginny/Harry lurve 4eva!? No problem, either she dies, they run with that, or divorce, etc.

Voldie dies? No problem, he can be resurrected somehow, perhaps. But who needs the same ol' dark lord when another is just waiting to pop up?

You can see what I'm getting at, here. No matter what happens, writers will twist the story as they see fit. They do it all the time now, so it doesn't really matter.

I can imagine, though, that we will see a significant increase in the number of crappy time-travel fics, and politicky fics.

And, of course, there's the pretending it never happened. Not that hard, considering what happened with HPB. Even if they do just continue on from DH, who's to say that it will have all the exact details? The author can do whatever the hell they want.

IMO, I'd say that by now the fandom has spiraled away from canon. It doesn't really matter any more, regardless of the ending.

Still, I'd also imagine that we'll see a whole slew of new authors popping up trying to recreate the end scenes from DH in "A new and creative manner!!11!!!". Or even, create an AU that involves the major plot points but takes out whatever isn't liked. It's happened before, it is guaranteed to happen again.

 

I think that we're forgetting that the books don't exist to create fanfiction; furthermore, as there's absolutely no profit to be gained from fanfiction, then there's really no motivation for JKR to create a story that allows it to thrive--especially considering how much of it is smutty and slashy, which JKR apparently isn't a big fan of.

Personally, I think that a more in depth description of Horcruxes is in store (didnt the table of contents say as much?). What I'm truly dreading, as I'm sure most people here are, is the final battle, in which a 17 year old wizard, not even having finished school, with a few select friends of the same age, manage to take down a veritable army of evil (adult) wizards and dark creatures, en route to the utter destruction of the most powerful dark wizard in some time--who has roughly 50 years of experience and a deadly arsenal of weapons, strategy and experience that can't be hoped to be overcome by the power of LOVE.

 

I think it will continue. If he has Kids people will write about them. Kill the slut wife and have Harry mope about for a few days and decide to move on. Go back to the founders and write a fic, write a fic about James and Lily. More Tom Riddle fics might show up.

JKR encourages fanfiction just not slash and smut.

 

I thought so too after HBP, which gave as a good amount of information about Tom, but is there a good recent fic about Tom Riddle? No, I don't think so.

Authors like to write about abused-manipulated-hated Riddle who later then turns to Dark Arts to take revenge on manipulative!Dumbledore, but they in general have weak stomaches to write about REAL Tom Riddle. Same is with a true Dark!Harry. Pity.

 

Its so sad. We need some more truely screwed up mentally Tom and Harry fics I could get the truely screwed up mentally but I aint a writer.

 

After HBP, pretty much all new fanfic is either AU or post-OotP anyway. So I doubt DH and the epilogue will change the fanfic world that much: if it's bad for fanfiction, we'll just ignore it like we did HBP, and if it's good, then it's all the better for us: more material to work with.

It's almost certain that DH will lead to an increase in fanfic as people who have now finished the HP saga turn to fanfiction to satisfy their obsession for all things Potter.

Also, if you think about it, there is only one thing that all Harry Potter fanfiction possesses; one thing that makes it all Harry Potter. Not the characters (they've been messed around so much that most of us have no clear definitions of the characters anymore), not the writing style (we all write differently), not the dialogue (we write that differently too) or the descriptions, but the basic world. And DH cannot help but add to and increase that world. More for us to play with.

 

The epilogue will include the h/g marriage and undoubtedly the kids who will most likely be named: James, Lily, Sirius, Remus, Albus, and Ron.

Fanfiction will take a hit b/c authors will more than likely have to be creative and write more AU's.

 

A comprehensive epilogue would absolutely slaughter canon-continuation fanfiction. The only way to write FF then would be to cut in somewhere along the canon line and make it an AU.

I can see ways that a short epilogue might ever spur FF writers (the story ends with Harry entering the auror academy, for example), but in most cases I'd say an epilogue is a bad thing.

 

It's not as if an epilogue will actually stop anything. People don't avoid AU; if DH's epilogue rounds out everything nicely, then there will simply be more 'what if' fics. Though, I hope that they're better than the, 'what if Harry was raised by Dumbledore' tripe.

 

I disagree, it may be bad for FF but it gives us closure in the series, i mean, i've been reading these books since fifth grade, i've grown up with them, if there isn't some sort of epilogue i would be really dissappointed.

 

Something similar as to what HBP did to fanfiction, make everyone ignore it except to a few details that they like...or feel required to use. (horcruxes)

 

Some of my favorite things in fandom have been out there AU and crossovers and other shit like that. The way I see it this will just kill off a lot of the weak shitty canon fics that I don't much care for anyway.

 

I don't think that we can assume anything until we read it. If it's a good ending, then it'll encourage good fanfiction. If it's a bad ending, that can be good as well- it'll discourge the crap OMG H/G 4EVA authors from writing and make the division between the god-awful flufflets and the good fics that ignore canon after OotP more apparent. That way it'll be easier to avoid the crappers.