swatkat

Every now and then, posts discussing 'Why doesn't het work for you?' pop up on LJ. There is discussion. And invariably, there are commenters stating that they prefer slash because 'slash (boyslash) is generally better written than het'. And that? Makes my blood boil. I speak, admittedly, from my limited experience, which does not consist of any of the legendary boyslash fandoms (say, due South)*. But I've hung around in fandoms that have a large amount of both boyslash and het, and I read all kinds of fic, so when someone claims that of all the het ships in, say, the HP fandom, of all the giant freaking archives and all the fic being written, the boyslash is 'generally' better-written (what does 'generally' even mean? are there statistics?) than the het, I have to ask: seriously? See, when I first found the House fandom, it was a relatively new fandom, still growing, still small, and the main ship was (is) House/Wilson. All the rec sites contained House/Wilson. And I love House/Wilson, but what I really wanted was to read fic about Cuddy. I went around asking for recs, and I'd be pointed to the same three stories - which were very good, but I wanted more. So I started looking. Digging through archives and ff.net and recs sites. And you know what? I *found* fic. So when someone says that they can't find the good het, I'm tempted to think that maybe they didn't *look* properly. And you know, it's okay, not to look. If your priority is boyslash, and you can't be arsed to trawl through crap in ff.net in order to find that one good het fic, don't. No one's asking you to. But please, please don't say that you don't read het because it's 'generally' badly-written - say you don't read it because it doesn't work for you, because you like slash more, because you don't want to. Het fen aren't Fandom Police. They aren't going to make you sit and force you to read their fic if you say that it's not your thing.

Of course, because I'm crabby today, I have a complaint against het fen as well - *why* are they so poorly organised? Look at the boyslashers. Look how organised they are, how they come up with good, navigable sites and rec lists (please spare me the 'recs are elitist' stuff) every time they move into a new fandom. *That* is why all I found only House/Wilson when I started looking for Housefic. The girlslashers got together and founded femslash_today. Het fen on the other hand post in the obscure corners of ff.net and their own badly designed websites, with light font on dark or, god forbid, light font on light**. And then they wonder why some people say there is no good het fic out there. Newsflash: they probably weren't looking very hard, but you didn't make the effort to be found, and the ones who did find you probably ran away with tears streaming down their face.

Sigh. I think I've been reading too many of those OTW is stupid and evil posts.

* What is it like in these fandoms? Enlighten me, O flist. Am I being too harsh?
** This is largely hyperbole. Some of it *is* true, though.

ETA: OMG people mina_de_malfois is back! OMG *dies* (there might be SPOILERS in comments, so beware)

Less than a week left for HP 7. I'm excited. I don't have words to express how excited I am. How nervous. There's this feeling of dread, butterflies in my stomach every time I think about what will happen. Because nothing will be the same after this.

I had no intention of reading Harry Potter the first time I heard about it. A book about witches and wizards? Silly. For children. That's what I thought.

Then I picked it up out of curiosity, a few years later, in a tiny bookstore in a train station. I picked it up and I read the first chapter of the very first book, 'The Boy Who Lived.' And nothing has been the same ever since.

JKR has written about this chapter afterwards. Says some of the writing makes her cringe, and I don't know, maybe it should. But to me – it's perfect as it is, one of the most magical things I've ever read. The cat reading the map and Professor Dumbledore with his half-moon glasses. Hagrid in a motorbike and wizards celebrating everywhere. Petunia Dursley waking up one fine morning to find the Boy Who Lived at her doorstep. It's perfect. It's magical. There is no other word for it. I read it and my world changed.

I picked up the next book, and the snake whispering at the background, "Rip! Tear! Kill!" made me shiver. Azkaban left me breathless and overwhelmed and in love with everyone and everything about this 'verse. I read GoF, and Cedric died, and I knew I had to read more. I had to read something, anything.

So I came online and googled Harry Potter fansites. And then I discovered ff.net. I discovered fandom, and nothing was the same after that.

Harry Potter gave me fandom. You know what that means, right? Harry Potter gave me *fandom*. I'm here with you and I'm talking to you because I picked up Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone that day in the train station.

And now here we are, waiting with bated breath for what happens next, what happens in the *end*.

Fandom will be different after this. Canon will be closed. Our endless fascination with the 'war' scenario will have to be dealt with in a different way, now that JKR will give us her version of the war. Things will change and fandom will change and I don't want them to change. Except that I do.

Does that even make sense?

I don't care if JKR, in someone else's opinion, is a hack who can't string two sentences together. She wrote Harry Potter. And no matter how much the hype is, no matter how much money mediahouses spend on this, it takes a little more than a hack to have the so many people in love with her world and her characters. I hope, someday, I can write as badly as she does.

And maybe some day, years later, our grandchildren will discover the Potter books in our bookshelves, as I discovered The Fellowship of the Ring in my grandfather's bookshelf. And we will tell them, 'We were there when it happened. We were a part of the story.'

To Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. *raises glass*