That pesky epilogue, revisited, plus some other stuff

[geoviki]

It's been a month now (...hasn't it? My calculation could be imprecise.)

After we all read that *^%/(*^ epilogue, we joked about writing lots of EWE (Epilogue, What Epilogue?). But now we've had time to let it all digest, will we? Can we? I've never jettisoned a chunk of canon before, and I'm finding that even thinking of disregarding it, for me, is hard going.

As a writer of Harry/Draco, I am not quite sure how to handle the business of 'Harry/Ginny at the end of the battle followed by Harry/Ginny 19 years later.' I can't imagine what you Snarry writers are trying to cope with. Someone earlier pointed out that it took a bit of time to accomodate the 'Snape is not Teh Evil' from the last book, but after about 6 months there was fannish shorthand for it, so that writers could just refer to it briefly and didn't have to elaborate upon it in each and every fic, OMG!

But.

Is it a convergence of malevolent planets, is it the LJ/6A Perfect(ly Awful) Storm, is it canon fatigue? Or is everyone on vacation/holiday? I don't even see much fic coming out at all. Nor meta. metafandom is barren of discussion on What It All Means. Are you happily writing on journals I don't visit? Is my 4-years-of-fannishness cohort just plain burned out? What the hell happened while I wasn't looking?

Comments

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I thought I would dismiss it very easily, but I find somehow that maybe readers will think that's 'cheating' so my imagination is stymied there.

[cordelia_v]

Well, it's certainly not that people are writing on journals that you're not seeing. Forget that.

I and several others on my flist have noticed that people seem to be posting and commenting a lot less, lately. Emma Grant had a post on that recently, and I can attest that my posts are drawing fewer comments. I doubt it's that I've become suddenly less interesting, either.

Part of it, as I observed to Emma, is that setting up our personal journals and moving our comms to other sites has been a giant time sink. There's no doubt.

But another part of it is . . . something I can't explain. I get the sense that people are spending less time on their flists. Or are spooked and put off by all that's going on, with LJ. And part of it has to be the fragmentation that has followed the dispersal of HP fandom. You lack that critical mass of comments that create threads.

And Pirate has posted, eloquently, about how JKR wrote DH in such a way that no new avenues of speculation/exploration were opened. And it seemed like she was trying to nail down every pairing. Yes, it's hard to be a Snarry person, now. Unless you disregard the epilogue, which many people can't do.

And yet, there is hope. A really impressive number of people claimed prompts over at snape_after_dh, so I have hopes for a good crop there, that will help to create that "shorthand" you were talking about, which becomes a springboard for more fics. And there was so much excitement about Smutmas. Perhaps those two will be big successes, and restart our discussions and creative production.

Because right now? Yes, things are pretty quiet. DH (which I still haven't gotten over, how she killed Snape) plus the LJ debacle . . . well, it's really put a damper on things, hasn't it?

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Everything fandom seemed to happen all at once: movie, book, two cons, LJ implosion I and II. Are we overwhelmed? I know I am. And I haven't even done much with other journal sites beyond creating one on IJ just to cyberprotect my name. I think I started adding a few friends, but that week was so full of my flist weighing on on where they were going ('everywhere') and then rethinking and revoking that I just about gave up with trying to follow anyone. I figured I'd catch up down the pike.

And sadly, I think Pirate might be hitting it more closely - too many doors are closed and no windows opened (or Windows either).

[meri-oddities.livejournal.com]

You can do 19 years later and 1 day. Harry and Ginny are divorced and Draco and his wife have an open marriage. He gets involved with Harry. Eventually Draco leaves his wife, too. Use your imagination if you can't jettison the epilogue.

I've got about 15,000 words on a Harry/Draco story that's canon compliment. But I had to stop writing to work on Smutmas.

And for Snarry (of which I now have 3 WIPs), I'm not 100% convinced he was dead, so I can fix that pretty easily. (anti-venom potion, blood replenisher, Phoenix tears, etc)

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I'm so thrilled that you've found your Muse! I can't wait to see what you're coming up with.

[sulky-rhino.livejournal.com]

I understand why people prefer to write EWE. If you don't ignore the Epilogue, and you still want to write H/D, for example, you'll basically have to write infidelity fic. You'll also have to deal with how this affects children. And I think that a lof ot people don't really want to write that. It's kind of depressing (at least to me). :/

I know some people have said that they're planning to get their post-Epilogue plot bunnies out first, and that then they'll write EWE. :) I hope they'll do that soon. :P

And you don't really have to ignore all of the canon in the Epilogue. Just the Harry/Ginny and Draco/nameless wife part of it. You can still give Draco a receding hairline if you want. :P

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

You can still give Draco a receding hairline if you want

But that's the first thing I'm jettisoning!! My Draco has and shall always have a bounteous head of flowing silvery tresses. :-)

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, it's NOT Harry and Ginny sewed up in a nice little package that has me somewhat stymied, it's the lack of character development for the major characters. I'd pretty much mined everything I could out of the characterization I'd been given up to book six, and now, with the complete abdication of character arcs as a whole, I have no new material to jettison off of. The pitfalls of a very agressive plot at the expense of character arcs. I can easily get around the whole business of marriage. I've always thought that Harry desperately needed children (see Lush Life). It's not that issue that has me stewing. It's because there are NO (or very few) issues left to explore. We don't even know if he's marked! Draco's wife doesn't even have a name! Fortunately, I wrote my major Snarry before book 7 was completed. I have one more story about Snarry to tell and that's it. I'd moaned eight months ago that I didn't think I could say anything new about them (and then I become infuriated by the hate meme thing and wrote Bite Me), but really. I'm in the same position now as I was eight months ago. Having written my "wad" so to speak and not given anything else to work with.

[jinxgirl71.livejournal.com]

it's the lack of character development for the major characters.
I agree.

[fiona-fawkes.livejournal.com]

I like the challenge of coming up with plausible plot lines that still technicall fit in with all of canon. But while it's tons of fun to figure out post-DH Snarry that's canon-compliant and fantasize about all those juicy years right after the war where Harry was fucking Draco on the side until he felt guilty and married Ginny, I just have no motivation to sit and write any of it.

However. When I'm ignoring LJ's asshatery, I'm quite enjoying just playing in fandom.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I'll never forgive LJ for choosing this particular month to harsh our squee. It sent some of us away for good, while others (like me) sit in bewildered confusion.

[oulangi.livejournal.com]

I think the reason discussions aren't landing on metafandom is two-fold. There's a general chilling of fannish discussion on LJ (and something we're just not addressing - if we plan on tracking discussions on the other sites we need more people to actually help *find* those discussions) AND when people do make meta posts they are increasingly flocked or comment disabled.

It's incredibly frustrating to be honest.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I can see how it would be hard to track where everyone's gone as a comm organizer like those who post for the newsletters. Lord knows I haven't been able to - I think when the dust settles, I'll post to re-locate all those on my flist who are really off LJ, but for 2 weeks there were way too many of even those posts; everyone had the same idea. It was like a giant game of fandom Marco Polo.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Did you see my recent attempt at epilogue subversion? ;-)

I am currently working on two H/D fics. One is set right after DH and doesn't really take the epilogue into consideration, though I suppose someone could read it and imagine the epilogue could still happen. The other one ignores the epilogue entirely.

I don't have an issue with that, myself. I don't feel compelled to use that information, and I guess I also don't see it as a "big chunk" of canon. IIRC it's not even 10 pages out of a 750-ish page book. But I don't doubt that there will be people who would read the first fic I describe above but not the second, simply because they consider the epilogue canon.

It's been really quiet around here lately, yes. School's about to start here and I've been really busy with that, but I don't know how much the back-to-school rush affects everyone else.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I love that "article"! What a scoop.

I think in my mind, that 'big chunk' is 19 years of unwritten history that has an end point that's hard to get to in a lot of my story scenarios.

I need to get over my fear of trashing the epilogue, I think. Hopefully in a couple of months, EWE fics will be the norm. It's hard to be on the forefront for that. I don't know why I care - I even love AU and...what's the other flavor? AR?

[jinxgirl71.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of it might be that so many people got IJs and GJs and such. Though some are posting on all, there are those that have just picked one site. I get comments from people only on certain sites. So maybe they are staying...or have left. I don't know, but I have noticed it as well.

But then again school has started and people have gotten new jobs, maybe it's just the slow season.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Partially it's the slow season, but we really should have a lot to talk about right now, between the movie, the book, and a bunch of cons this summer. Yet we're all so quiet. It's like a scene in a scary movie, just before something leaps up and tries to rip your lungs out.

[thrihyrne.livejournal.com]

I was really put out of joint in ways I didn't expect after finishing DH, and felt all kinds of emotions I didn't expect, which then were exacerbated by the LJ explosion/debacle/negativity which really threw me even further. It's taken me until pretty recently to feel that I've actually begun to internalize the book with the epilogue, though I ignore it for the most part. I wrote an alterna-epilogue for a Ron/Harry challenge, and now I'm writing what's going to be yet another long and meaty Ron/Draco fic, ignoring the epilogue, but my first consciously post-DH canon compliant story.

As for regular posting, I'm notorious for posting in chunks and then not for several days, and that hasn't changed too much. I was quite struck for a while that people seemed to be absent, or lurking, but some of that was fandom and some holidays/work/other stuff. I'm here for the duration, though, unless something awful happens.

I haven't even wanted to write meta on DH because I'm frustrated with the writing itself and other people have already written up more eloquent explanations that illustrated how I felt. Really, it's prompted me to write original fic, except, I've already slid back now that I'm enjoying this new R/D so much. If only the fanfic worlds didn't come so easily... blast it. :P

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I know I wasn't writing much fic at all lately, so I'm not surprised I'm not doing it now, either. But the rest of you were carrying the load, and that's definitely slowed down.

I'm looking forward to your R/D, though. Go, you!

[luci0logy.livejournal.com]

In my little corner of fandom I have several fics to do that are HBP compliant, but not totally DH, so I shall chug along with those. School starts next week and I've got a big change in my teaching schedule which needs some thinking about and planning for. I've also jointly set up a comm with dragon_charmer and have just sent out assigments for our first 'offbeat genre' fic exchange. Talk about learning curve.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I was squeeing over here to see you become more and more active in fandom - you're such a cheerleader and an encourager (is that a word? it is now!), at least where I'm standing.

Maybe as autumn progressses, we'll get over our collective shock.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

I think it's a combination of all those factors, plus a little "OMG it's really over" setting in. I hope it doesn't last too long, though. Need pr0n, you know?

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I'm finding that I've already forgotten swaths of DH, probably because I read it (like most of us did) in one day. I have big plans to start from Book 1 and read the whole thing once more. I know I'll be surprised at how much I missed the first go.

Andyou, you busy thing! Big congrats to you for your new role. I'd be all snooty and put the mark over the 'o' in 'role' there, but I don't know how.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I haven't written much in the past two years. I think I could see my way to writing epilogue-generation fic, because there are so many potentially hot boys new characters.

[kupukello.livejournal.com]

Ah, PLEASE get over the epilogue angst, will you? The few H/D fics I've seen that take the epilogue into account have all been basically the same depressing cheat/divorce fic, so the only way I can see keeping an interest in this fandom is that writers start to write EWE and AU stories. Or, if AS/S gets more popular, that too might keep me interested.

The way I see it, JKR did her damnest to keep the fanfic writers at bay. She claimed this generation of people hers, and wrote the epilogue so that there's basically no wiggle room. Then she was kind enough to create a bunch of children for fanfic writers, but she didn't quite realise that you need more than just names and ages to make a character (for us to play with).

What she didn't tell in the epilogue itself were professions, and I can't remember if she said Harry and Ginny are actually married. We COULD assume that Ginny and Draco's nameless wife are just the mothers of their children, but NOT their spouses. We could also pretend that Harry didn't become an Auror, but something more interesting (at least JKR hasn't said anything about Draco's career or the years between the end of the war and now!)

I've started spamming my journal shamelessly just because my f-page is so quiet. It's a bit embarrassing, but if I too stop shouting in the empty air, that's one more quiet journal then.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I hope I do get my writing mojo back. I was having trouble before this anyway. I guess I thought new canon would fire me up, and instead it's left me wondering where to go. I kind of wish JKR would shut up about what careers and all her characters end up with. Even though it's not book canon, it's still hard to disregard her.

What is going to happen now, though, is that we all shall be writing our holiday stories, but they won't be posted until December. Last year, there was a big lull in posted fic in October and November. Noticeable, maybe because there were so many fests.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I think several things.

First, a lot of HP stories have already been written. Fanfic predicted a good deal of what's coming out, HP7 tied up lots of loose ends, and HP& didn't develop the characters of some slashcentric characters, like Draco and Snape.

Second, there's a big adjustment to people's conception of the whole story: in particular, the unfolding canon does squeeze certain interpretations of characters and pairings. It does not give a hell of a lot of room for H/D, for example, in the way that HBP did.

Personally, I think the amount of space left for fanfic in HP7 is massive, in the same way that OotP spawned huge amounts of fic: big story, bit rambling, some people not satisfied. BUT a lot of that will be gen, quite honestly. Harry/Ginny. Draco/Goyle.

I'm not enjoying the HP discussion on LJ - actually, in part I'm not even seeing it. I want to talk about what happened, not what people wanted to happen, because I liked the story a great deal. I don't see people responding to the story much, except through very fanfic-narrowed glasses.

People on LJ now are old hands: the other thing I think is that the activity and the new writing is elsewhere. I see a lot of good HP writers on LJ who are probably a bit burned out on HP, fanficly speaking.

On the perfect LJ storm: I think people have totally shot themselves in the foot. I can understand the anxiety in part, which will affect some folk much much more than others, but I think a lot of the response is incredibly self-defeating.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Also, the epilogue? It's her story, in all its glorious heteronormativity.

[fourth_rose]

It seemed to me that in the beginning, many H/D writers set out to prove that epilogue-compliant H/D is entirely possible. I've read a couple of one-shots (and written one) that did just that. I still think EWE is going to be prevalent in the long run - personally, I refuse to let my creativity be limited by JKR's visions for her characters' future and intend to come up with my own instead.

I'm working on a WIP right now that's set right after the events in DH (the actual story, not the epilogue) and goes into a different direction than the one JKR obviously intended. It's not quite EWE because the events in the epilogue make an appearance in a different form, but they're certainly not going to happen in my fic's future (which will be H/D, but I guess that goes without saying ;)

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I should break my "I don't read WIPs" rule for yours, I see. I read one epilogue fic that was very good, (mistful's), but she said a lot of things I meant to say, so I've stepped back a bit until I let the details of her story fade.

[spark-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

I see there people here think there's a bout of infidelity!H/D fics, but WHERE ARE THEY??? My flist is bare in ways that scare me - I go to bed when US-ers basically go to work, then wake up, check flist and see scanty half a dozen posts have appeared overnight. :cries: Right now I can accept and tell myself that school beginning+LJ drama+last holidays taking place+flurry of Dec fests with distributed requests=unusual slowness. Aug/Sept have been always a little slower, but they are practically dead now, and I need the reassurance of some internal reasoning.

Speaking for myself, I am not like omg-abandoning-ship,-JKR/LJ-killed-the-beauty-of-it. Maybe because I write so slow, and I have a bunch of fics that started canon and in the middle of the writing process a new book AU-ed them. So I'm sort of used to not being a canon-marshal.Not that I won't read ep-compliant stuff if it's good, but EWE cheer won't put me off at all. I do H/D mostly, and write meagre amounts of Snarry even though I read both in equal measures, but my Snarry muse right now is quite in a coma.

Frankly, I think there isn't much meta to be done. What can you discuss with the non-existent or truly mind-boggling character arcs and with the plot that comes apart at the seams more often that not? If a ficcer did that Dean-coincidence in a fic, 90% of comments will be along the lines of oh, please. Harry is dumb as a rock in one chapter and makes brilliant connections in the other, Hermione is oh so very smart but acts like an idiot in the range of three paragraphs, and I am like, Dear God, woman, have you heard of consistency? No? An editor then?

In means of adding layers and details to a universe, the book does great; lore and tradition and history if you want. When it comes to writing quality, though, things are far from mass acclaim.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't see a lot of fic coming out. There was a rush that first week - very short stories, almost written from the subconscious - but since then, my flist is all about LJ-6A and RL.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. I thought I noticed a slowdown during 2007, after Merry_Smutmas. There were lots of H/D for the hd_holidays, many of them really good, too. In fact, I never finished reading them all. There! I have something I could be doing instead of whining. ;-)

[gilded-kage.livejournal.com]

I've been reading less and less fanfic, so I am doing ok with the fic silence. I am, however, not ok with the LJ silence, but I'm trying to deal by working on poetry collections to put on lulu.com.

My suggestions for your fic:

Write in other fandoms.

Write AU. I mean, Harry/Draco has been getting more and more AU as the books went on.

Write original fic. You are such a good writer, viki. You can do it. And we'll read it, because it's by you.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I am kind of dinking around in other fandoms, but I always pick ones no-one's heard of. I seem to be strictly a print-fandom kind of gal, while everyone else is all about TV fandoms.

Awww. I appreciate your confidence in me. :-)

[mad-martha.livejournal.com]

I think it's a combination of all the things you've mentioned, but I do think there was a definite edge of "sewing everything up" in the way JKR finished DH. If I was only a canon-compliant sort of writer, the epilogue alone would have finished me off (it finished me off in other ways as it is!)

As a happy AU writer canon is less of an issue for me, although it's never a non-issue I must admit. I have a couple of things that have been on the boil since well before the book came out and I'm forging ahead with those, although admittedly I've found fandom reactions to DH and the LJ fiasco rather demotivating.

Actually, it's good to hear someone life yourself commenting on the sudden fandom slowdown - I was starting to wonder if it was my imagination or just that everyone had actually upped sticks and moved to IJ ;-)

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I'm always so impressed by your persistence! You were the second fanfic author I ever read (and I still have to say that The Lodger is one of my favorites even now), so your longevity and consistency is a tribute to fandom.

I guess I was okay with it being just me who had slowed down, but when everyone else starts doing it, too, I get worried. Because I don't like change, especially when it's not for the better.

[lunanocturne.livejournal.com]

Hiya! Friended you a while ago after I'd read that lengthy post DH Draco post you made - just been lurking here until now. *waves*
I agree that a lot of places seem awfully quiet around here, and I'm still waiting for the post-DH fic avalanche I'd been expecting, but that will probably never come. Which, in my opinion, partly is because of the LJ/6A f***up. And the minimal amount of meta posting may also have to do with that - everyone's been running around like headless chicken, creating backup accounts and cross-friending and cross-posting all over the place. That stuff does take up quite a bit of time.

As for H/D and The Epiloge, however - I don't share the depression that seems to be going around. I'm not a fic writer - I only read - and as a reader, I personally do prefer canon-compliant fics. I'm okay with slight alterations, but it it's completely AU, I'm normally not interested.
But I don't really think The Epilogue ruined everything. It's 19 years later - that leaves plenty of room for H/D in between.
There could be so many H/D scenarios right after the battle, or a few years later, that are in no way contradicted by canon because there *is* no canon for that timespan.
Take all the Marauders era fic - there's so much of it even though we KNOW that James and Sirius and Remus will all die. That doesn't make stories about when they're 17 and in love any less enjoyable or any less canon-compliant, because it could actually have happened when they were 17. Even if we know James died when he was 21 - nothing tells us it wasn't like that when they were 17.

And even if you write something for "19 years later" - all the epiloge tells us is that both Harry and Draco will have wifes and kids - that doesn't necessarily mean they're OMGsomuchinLove. I think there's actually a few scenarious that would work WITHOUT ignoring the epilouge - you only have to read it right. ;-) Grasping at straws or wishful thinking? Maybe, but no more than we've had to do in previous books. So as far as I'm concerned, DH didn't really damage H/D any more than the other books have.

And if all of that doesn't work, there's still the option to just ignore the epilogue completely. Which, for me, wouldn't make a story completely AU. It's not like there's a whole complicated story arc happening in those last few pages, it's just a snapshot of a short moment in the future. Like a certain pirate would say - it's more like guidelines, not actual rules. ;-)

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

*waves back*

DAmn LJ anyway!! The timing of their current idiocy couldn't have been worse. You're right; the amount of time we all have spent running around trying to hide from Big Brother has crushed our creativity.

I know in my head that what you're saying about accommodation is right, but I'm not feeling it yet in my heart. Give it time, I think.

[silentauror.livejournal.com]

I think it's partly just that it's given us collective pause. I also think that we're overwhelmed, but you can't keep a good fic-writing community down, I say! After HPB came out, for me there was a slight sense of chill as I was forced to consider Draco as the incredibly two-dimensional character that JKR writes him as. And then imagination began to kick in and we all began writing like fiends again. I think that this is a larger hurdle to get past, but like you, I can't find it in myself to ignore the epilogue altogether. I know it's there, regardless. All I can do, strictly for myself, you understand, is to write fic that makes sense of it, makes it appear in new lights. I just wrote a longish thing for The Eros Affair, which sets things up so that the epilogue reads differently when it happens later (beyond the end of the story itself).

The parade has most definitely been rained on, and I think that the end-of-canon thing has set us back a little, too. On the other hand, I was afraid that people were going to just drift after DH came out, because it was the end of canon and that the end of fandom was surely just around the corner. However, I'm inclined to think that the LJ business has reminded us rather sharply of just how fond we are of this community and what we do here. I think the fic will come. We just need to be patient, and wait to see what our muses do with it all.

♥

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

God, I hope you're right. I mean, I think you are. I feel a little guilty because I'm part of the great slowdown, too, which is why I'm trying to do my bit for meta. I think I've posted more in the past two weeks than I have in months, and it's not all music posts this time, either!

[no-mad-skillz.livejournal.com]

I think (and forgive me if this has been discussed; I only scanned the comments) that in the past, when there was a big LJ blow-up, people stuck around for the dust to settle, because there was always more HP to come. This time, with the blow-up occurring right after The End of All Things, there's kind of a feeling of nothing to come back to. And the diaspora feels like the leave-taking of guests after a long, long party. "The chandelier's on the floor, the liquor's gone and the hosts are cranky, man. Time to go."

:(

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Sadly, as the month wears on, I think you might be right. :(