No, no no! I'm not ready!

[emmagrant01]

Okay, The Title: I played the hangman game and literally stared at the screen with two letters left and thought, bzuh? Then got the title and still went bzuh? I'm not sure what I think. I wasn't too happy with HBP either, until I had finished the book and it made sense.

But mostly I'm thinking, noooooooo!!! I am SO not ready for book 7 to come out. The HP fandom has been a huge part of my life for the last three years, and I don't know what will happen after book 7 comes out. Fandoms fade when canon closes, and there's not much to be done about it. What if my favorite characters die? Will people stick around to read AUs? Will AUs finally be accepted by the mainstream of this fandom? Next year at this time, will we be anxiously reading holiday exchange fics, or will people be moaning about the death of the fandom? Will there still be meta? When the good-or-evil Snape dilemma is solved, will he remain an interesting character for people? What will we talk about at cons?

*wibbles*

I still have fics to write that are set after HBP, and I know I won't write them after the last book comes out. That will change everything. I doubt JKR is going to leave a lot of stuff unfinished for fanfic writers to tackle.

I'm not ready. I want another year.

Edit: Haha, CNN just got the title WRONG. :-P

Edit 2: My god, could Amazon's mock-up cover be any more ominous?? (Spoiler)

Comments

[loony-moony.livejournal.com]

What a weirdass title.

And anyway, she might have another baby. >:)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

But would she push to have the book done first? :-P

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

I'm ready. My biggest fear has been that either I or JKR will expire or lapse into a coma before the last book comes out.

I have the same fear about George R.R. Martin, actually.

[loony-moony.livejournal.com]

Not in past experiences. ;)

[clara-posts.livejournal.com]

Well, Q/O ran out of canon after one film and people still write and talk about that. It's never the same but, hey, it's more... exclusive ;oP

[scarah2.livejournal.com]

I WANT IT NOW

What about fics set in eras where the characters are still alive? My favorite character has always been dead.

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

I'm not ready to have it all come to an end this soon, either and I hope that if the book is released next year that it comes out at the very end of the year. (After the fests and cons and whatnot.) It's silly, but I worry that the energy of the HP conferences (particularly Prophecy and Sectus) will be lost if the final book is released before they take place.

And indeed, what will happen to all the good Snape speculation (among other things)?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I just hate things ending. I'm dreading getting to the "The End" of that book, oh man. :-P

[nekkidchick.livejournal.com]

I know, I can't stand it. I'm in total denial. *head in sand*

I mean... part of me is anxious to know what happens, but you know... after HBP, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid to read it. *hides* I'm SO AFRAID JKR is going to KILL HARRY... oh god. *wibbles*

And I will miss fandom SOOO much if/when it disappears... *cries*

[dartmouthtongue.livejournal.com]

Damn, do you think that could happen? I sure hope not. I mean, I'd think it would make you wanna write/read more fanfic, the fact that you'll never read more canon.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

True. And there's a small core of the Buffy fandom that's still going strong. Small being the appropriate word in both cases.

Do you think Q/O is different, though, since Q was dead before the fandom even started? There was a lot of past history of Q/O people could write, and while that's true for some of the popular HP pairings (like many of the Snape ones), it would be problematic for those of us who ship Harry/Draco.

And IME, the HP fandom has much less tolerance for AU than does the TPM fandom. :-P

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

I hear you. I was so traumatized when I got to the end of the LoTR trilogy, I couldn't read it again for another twenty years.

It's tough to say goodbye.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

If you're a Snape fan, you could keep writing for ears to fill in his backstory, absolutely. My biggest fear is that she's going to kill Draco, which would pretty much Joss most of my fic. :-P

[dartmouthtongue.livejournal.com]

Merope? I really like Merope.

[scarah2.livejournal.com]

I like Merope too, but I was talking about James Potter. Asshole-licious!

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I know. I asked Elanor what she would do if the book was released the weekend before Sectus, and she said she was actually most worried about it being released the weekend OF Sectus. But geez, can you imagine what would happen if a bunch of characters died and then there was a con a week later? :-P

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I'm terrified that either Harry or Draco will die in book 7. I think I could handle just about anyone else -- but not either of those two! If they're both alive at the end, I could keep writing fanfic for a while.

And I dread the fade of this fandom, I really do. :-(

[rolling-scone.livejournal.com]

I think that if fandom isn't happy about the ending there will be an upsurge of fics.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

Yes, we touched on this at Lumos: will HP fandom survive the last book? I share your wibbles.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

In other fandoms I've been involved in, that's what happened. They didn't die altogether, because the hard core fans stuck around and kept reading and writing. But a lot of people moved on to more active fandoms. A lot of the big HP questions will be answered in book 7, so for some people, the mystery and excitement will be gone.

Heh -- maybe just the really wanky ones will leave? ;-)

[clara-posts.livejournal.com]

Qui's dead??????

Sheesh....

::cough::

I dunno about other fandoms. I'm inexperienced in those kind of things. But I'm sure people won't go off your fics just because they don't fit with the last book.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Well, that was certainly what happened with Star Wars for The Phantom Menace. There probably would have been a Qui/Obi-centric fandom anyway, but when Qui died at the end, the first thing people did was start writing AUs. OTOH, those two had a canon history of spending 12 years together, so there was a lot of backstory one could think about.

And I've found the HP fandom far less tolerant of AU fic than SW was.

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

Is there a release date yet?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I just need to wibble about it some more. Time will tell, I suppose. :-P

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. People are guessing summer. *cries*