The CharlotteLennox Saga

If anyone ever needed proof that HP fandom is the hands-down, bug-fuck craziest fandom ever to tap into a baud rate, then all one need do is visit charlottelennox for a study in abject, collective insanity. Reading through that, I boggle that I survived as long as I did in that fandom. Compared to GTers and sapphsmum, however, I was pristine. In fact, my only contribution to the affair was being the OP of Charitygate, and had I had an inkling of what was to come, I never would have done so. That post exposed the nastiest, most craven aspect of the human animal-its wanton cruelty and cavalier disregard for human suffering-and I wish no one had ever had to see it.

HP fandom was and is a great place, and I met most of my flisters through my participation in, and contributions to, it. I don't regret my time there, and I am not yet ready to divest myself of it fully. However, after exploring other fandoms, I can safely say that HP is one of the most exclusionary and hierarchical on the 'Net, second only to the LOTR fen, who will happily bludgeon you to death with copies of The Lord of the Rings for not knowing the names of Sam Gamgee's twelve children in order of chronology and foot size. I spent three and a half years as a contributor to the fandom, and I was one of the lucky ones. I was never a BNF, but a few of my pieces got recced on a regular basis, and no one publicly derided me as a loser because I wasn't writing the right pairing.

My CSI:NY experience has been worlds different. There is no line of demarcation between BNFs and regular fen, no ivory tower to scale before you're granted an audience. If I want to talk to stellaluna_, all I've got to do is fire off an email or a comment. She and twincy and scarletts_awry are out there, leaving feedback and encouraging others to write and sign up for challenges and just to have some fucking fun in the sandbox. There are no canon police breathing down your neck, and flamewars are rare and usually deal with Lindsay Monroe. There is no minimum coolness requirement for entry, and I love that. I hope it stays that way.

Maybe the collapse of the BNF system is what the HP fandom needs. If there are no BNFs, self-appointed or otherwise, then no one will obsess about sitting at the cool kids' table, and Potterdom will be fun again.


In other news, my lyric_ficathon fic stands at 6,531 words. Danny is about to make a leap to a catastrophically wrong conclusion and land painfully.