Platinum, baby.
I think most everyone has read themorningstarr's wonderful post on the fandom revival we're currently experiencing. I certainly read it.
I know that for some people, the ones who have been steadily active in the fandom since the dawn of time without a break, it might not seem like we're having such a revival - but it sure feels like one to me.
The Morning Starr's post - especially her reference to the Golden Age - made me feel a bittersweet pang. It'll never be the Three-Year-Summer again. There was a kind of anticipation prior to OotP that can't be repeated - at least, not for me - even if we have to wait ten years for book seven. Before OotP, fandom hit a fever pitch. Before OotP, only a little more than half of the story had been revealed, and the What-Ifs seemed to multiply every day. Before OotP, everything seemed new to me - every site, every person, every theory, every fic. Before OotP, I met zsenya and she said, "What if we made our own web site?" Before OotP, we had our first summits, our first in-person obsessathons, and we wrote our uberfics that turned out to be so wrong, and we could not imagine EVER burning out on Harry Potter. Ever. Because there was so much we didn't know, so much we burned to find out. And there were still three whole Harry Potter books left. Three giant books in this wonderful universe that we would get to read for the very first time.
Now there's just one.
I loved the Golden Age. A lot. But you know... I don't know if it's fair to say that this one is Silver. It'll never be like it was, but there are things that are even better about it. The shipping war is over, for one thing (and while it was fun, feelings were often hurt). But much more importantly, this time, the waiting itself is more valuable. The anticipation is incredibly precious. Because this is it, guys. This is it. We've got two years, maybe three tops, to not know how it turns out. To be wonderfully, maddeningly in the dark. To keep wondering and hoping and imagining what she might give us, to keep fearing Harry's death or else a Weasley's. To debate whether Draco will come to any good, to obsess over what it is about Snape - about Lily.
This time, I think the time is going to fly. It's going to seem like a month or two and then we'll all be lined up at midnight again, half insane to get our hands on the book, half hating it for being the last one. It'll only take a handful of hours to turn all those pages and get to the word "scar." And then Harry Potter will be a series on a shelf, all its secrets revealed, all its plot lines complete. Still wonderful. But finished. And though I don't think fandom will go anywhere, it sure won't be like this. We don't have much longer, for this. The intensity of this experience, at least for most of us die-hard fans, has always been due in huge part to the fact that we've been right there in it with Harry, agonizing in real time, desperate, like him, to find out how it all comes together, piecing the information together, like him, little by little, year after year.
You know, by the time book seven comes out, many of us will have been online like this, waiting like this, for over seven years. As long as it takes to finish Hogwarts.
One day, not long from now, these books will be classics. And because of their unprecedented popularity, even people who didn't read them in the first place will know what happened between Voldemort and Harry. The mysteries will be popular knowledge. But we'll remember not knowing. We'll remember what it was like when Harry Potter had the whole world on edge. And we've still got two years - maybe three - to feel like this.
This age is Platinum.
I know that for some people, the ones who have been steadily active in the fandom since the dawn of time without a break, it might not seem like we're having such a revival - but it sure feels like one to me.
The Morning Starr's post - especially her reference to the Golden Age - made me feel a bittersweet pang. It'll never be the Three-Year-Summer again. There was a kind of anticipation prior to OotP that can't be repeated - at least, not for me - even if we have to wait ten years for book seven. Before OotP, fandom hit a fever pitch. Before OotP, only a little more than half of the story had been revealed, and the What-Ifs seemed to multiply every day. Before OotP, everything seemed new to me - every site, every person, every theory, every fic. Before OotP, I met zsenya and she said, "What if we made our own web site?" Before OotP, we had our first summits, our first in-person obsessathons, and we wrote our uberfics that turned out to be so wrong, and we could not imagine EVER burning out on Harry Potter. Ever. Because there was so much we didn't know, so much we burned to find out. And there were still three whole Harry Potter books left. Three giant books in this wonderful universe that we would get to read for the very first time.
Now there's just one.
I loved the Golden Age. A lot. But you know... I don't know if it's fair to say that this one is Silver. It'll never be like it was, but there are things that are even better about it. The shipping war is over, for one thing (and while it was fun, feelings were often hurt). But much more importantly, this time, the waiting itself is more valuable. The anticipation is incredibly precious. Because this is it, guys. This is it. We've got two years, maybe three tops, to not know how it turns out. To be wonderfully, maddeningly in the dark. To keep wondering and hoping and imagining what she might give us, to keep fearing Harry's death or else a Weasley's. To debate whether Draco will come to any good, to obsess over what it is about Snape - about Lily.
This time, I think the time is going to fly. It's going to seem like a month or two and then we'll all be lined up at midnight again, half insane to get our hands on the book, half hating it for being the last one. It'll only take a handful of hours to turn all those pages and get to the word "scar." And then Harry Potter will be a series on a shelf, all its secrets revealed, all its plot lines complete. Still wonderful. But finished. And though I don't think fandom will go anywhere, it sure won't be like this. We don't have much longer, for this. The intensity of this experience, at least for most of us die-hard fans, has always been due in huge part to the fact that we've been right there in it with Harry, agonizing in real time, desperate, like him, to find out how it all comes together, piecing the information together, like him, little by little, year after year.
You know, by the time book seven comes out, many of us will have been online like this, waiting like this, for over seven years. As long as it takes to finish Hogwarts.
One day, not long from now, these books will be classics. And because of their unprecedented popularity, even people who didn't read them in the first place will know what happened between Voldemort and Harry. The mysteries will be popular knowledge. But we'll remember not knowing. We'll remember what it was like when Harry Potter had the whole world on edge. And we've still got two years - maybe three - to feel like this.
This age is Platinum.