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==Events==
==Events==
Like other fan communities, the Harry Potter fandom has had a number of conventions. These include Accio 2005, Nimbus 2003, Magic for Muggles: A Harry Potter Experience, Convention Alley, and, most recently, The Witching Hour in Salem, Massachusetts. Lumos is scheduled to take place in Las Vegas in July, 2006, and has been sold out since February, 2006. Patronus 2006 is to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark July 2006. Phoenix Rising will be held in New Orleans in May 2007 and feature Quidditch and a masquerade ball as well as more traditional academic programming. Unlike other fan communities, most Harry Potter conventions have an academic emphasis as well as traditional fan activities.
Like other fan communities, the Harry Potter fandom has had a number of conventions. These include Accio 2005, Nimbus 2003, Magic for Muggles: A Harry Potter Experience, Convention Alley, and, most recently, The Witching Hour in Salem, Massachusetts. Lumos is scheduled to take place in Las Vegas in July, 2006, and has been sold out since February, 2006. Patronus 2006 is to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark July 2006. [http://www.thephoenixrises.org Phoenix Rising] will be held in New Orleans in May 2007 and feature Quidditch and a masquerade ball as well as more traditional academic programming. Unlike other fan communities, most Harry Potter conventions have an academic emphasis as well as traditional fan activities.


Additionally, a number of large websites and mailing lists have had regular meetings for users or had those users plan special events timed to coincide with the release of books or movies. Among the groups who have done this are Harry Potter for Grown Ups, [[FictionAlley.org]] and the Sugar Quill.
Additionally, a number of large websites and mailing lists have had regular meetings for users or had those users plan special events timed to coincide with the release of books or movies. Among the groups who have done this are Harry Potter for Grown Ups, [[FictionAlley.org]] and the Sugar Quill.

Revision as of 16:32, 25 May 2006

It has been suggested that [[::Harry Potter podcast|Harry Potter podcast]] be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

You must add a |reason= parameter to this Cleanup template – replace it with {{Cleanup|October 2005|reason=<Fill reason here>}}, or remove the Cleanup template.

The Harry Potter fandom is an international, informal community drawn together by the Harry Potter series. The fandom community consists of a wide variety of things, including web sites and fan fiction.

File:Kings Cross Platform Nine And Three Quarters.jpg
Platform 9 3/4

Online encyclopedias

Many online encyclopedias contain large quantities of Harry Potter information and speculation. The administrators of these web sites work, sometimes with the assistance of thousands of fans around the world, to build interconnected databases of information about the Harry Potter movies and books. Some sites tend to stick very close to the canon, while others encourage speculation and debate about what is to come in future books and movies.

Examples of these websites include the Harry Potter Lexicon which Rowling has admitted to using to refresh her memory of past events in the books.

Fan fiction

There are many fan fiction stories on the Internet that involve Harry Potter or other characters in the books. Some fans will use canon established in the Harry Potter books to write stories of past and future events in the Harry Potter world. Others write stories that have little relation to the books other than the characters' names and the settings the fan fiction takes place in.

Rowling pays some attention to fan fiction. When asked about it, Rowling said "I've read some of it. I find it very flattering that people love the characters that much." She generally supports fan fiction, although she has asked that sites that contain fanfic with adult content password-protect the stories so children under 18 cannot access it.

Amidst all the fan fiction in various internet communities, "negative" fan fiction has appeared. These fan fiction sites portray Harry Potter in a typically negative manner. Some are modeled after the parody of Barry Trotter.

Roleplaying games

Roleplaying has been a central feature of the Harry Potter fandom, owing mainly to the fantasy aspect of the books. There are two primary forms: internet-based roleplay and in person roleplay.

In person roleplaying often involves re-enacting or creating an original Quidditch team. There are a number of sites online that give directions on how to do this. Internet-based roleplay consists of many types of sites, which normally try to simulate the Hogwarts experience. Most sites are forum-based, which usually emphasize taking classes taught by staff members in order for the players to earn points for their respective houses. Other sites such as Xauror use modified versions of phpBB that allow for a certain level of interactive roleplaying and are what is commonly referred to as "forum-based roleplaying". Interactive gaming can include player versus player features, some form of currency for making purchases in stores, and non-player characters such as monsters that must be fought to gain levels and experience points. However, these features are more prevalent in games that are not forum-based, such as the Hogwarts Live RPG. Advancement in such games is usually dependent on live chat, multiplayer cooperation, and fighting as opposed to taking classes or simply posting to earn points for the House cup.

Events

Like other fan communities, the Harry Potter fandom has had a number of conventions. These include Accio 2005, Nimbus 2003, Magic for Muggles: A Harry Potter Experience, Convention Alley, and, most recently, The Witching Hour in Salem, Massachusetts. Lumos is scheduled to take place in Las Vegas in July, 2006, and has been sold out since February, 2006. Patronus 2006 is to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark July 2006. Phoenix Rising will be held in New Orleans in May 2007 and feature Quidditch and a masquerade ball as well as more traditional academic programming. Unlike other fan communities, most Harry Potter conventions have an academic emphasis as well as traditional fan activities.

Additionally, a number of large websites and mailing lists have had regular meetings for users or had those users plan special events timed to coincide with the release of books or movies. Among the groups who have done this are Harry Potter for Grown Ups, FictionAlley.org and the Sugar Quill.

To capitalize on the fan base, many bookshops and libraries have created their own events to attract fans. These events tend to focus on selling books rather than studying them. The fan base attending these commercial events tends to be different from the attendees of the conventions, members of the web sites, and recipients of Harry Potter mailing lists. Many of these fans are considered the fringes of the fandom, since they are not involved in a large part of the community's events.

The "ship debates"

At one point, the Harry Potter fandom was infamous for its ferocious "ship debates," controversies that related to the characters' love interests ("shipping" being a general term for championing a romantic relationship between fictional characters). The fandom had long been divided into different camps, each advocating one romantic pairing over another, in a rivalry that often transcended the web sites and forums the debates were being carried out on. The main ship debates centered on whether Hermione would be romantically involved with Harry or Ron, and on Harry's future romantic involvement in general.

The separate pairings that did not contradict one another sometimes melded into unified theories: Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione, expanded to include Bill/Fleur, became known as the One Big Happy Weasley Family (OBHWF) theory, while Harry/Hermione often expanded to accommodate Ron/Luna and either Draco/Ginny or Neville/Ginny. One of the most popular ships in Harry Potter fandom is Draco/Hermione. Other well-known ships included Harry/Luna, Harry/Draco, Harry/Snape, and Sirius/Remus. (See: Slash fiction.)

Template:Spoilers

When Harry's love interest turned out to be Ginny[HP6] the debates were largely stripped of the ambiguity fueling them, and while some personal vendettas, factionalism and controversies over how Rowling handled Harry and Ginny's relationship remain, the core issues of the ship debate seem to have finally been laid to rest. Comments from J.K. Rowling following publication confirmed that Hermione has romantic feelings for Ron, not Harry, and with that resolution it could be said that the ship debates have been concluded for all practical purposes.

Prior to the release of Half-Blood Prince, Rowling surprised the fandom by displaying intimate knowledge of shipping culture, and admitting that she was taken aback when she first discovered shippers online. She also said she was surprised that people had dedicated themselves so passionately to relationships that she knew were not going to be part of the series. Curiously enough, Rowling seems to have parodied shipping in her books, as in Half-Blood Prince, in which Harry and Hermione are seen (jokingly) discussing the basic equivalent of a Filch/Pince pairing. Rowling has always treated the subject humorously, at one point making a tongue-in-cheek reference to the severity of the shipper conflicts when describing how she contacted Emerson Spartz, founder of MuggleNet, to invite him for an interview:

"I was worried that Emerson, who was not expecting anything at all, might simply hang up on me; as I heard his Dad walking away from the telephone to fetch him I was trying to think of way to prove it was really me and not some angry Harry/Hermione shipper trying to lure him down a dark alleyway."[1]

The largest shipping-related controversy resulted from this same interview, conducted by Spartz and Melissa Anelli, editorial director of The Leaky Cauldron, in which Spartz referred to Harry/Hermione fans as "delusional." In a later posting on MuggleNet, Spartz explained,

"She couldn't have made it any clearer. My comments weren't directed at the shippers who acknowledged that Harry/Hermione was a long shot but loved the idea of them together. It was directed at the "militant" shippers who insisted that there was overwhelming canon proof and that everyone else was too blind to see it. You were delusional; you saw what you wanted to see and you have no one to blame for that but yourselves."

This incident resulted in an uproar among some Harry/Hermione shippers who announced that they would return their copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and boycott future Harry Potter books. They also levelled criticism at Spartz, Anelli, and even Rowling herself. The backlash following this interview was the peak of the prominence of shipping culture within the fandom, and probably of the shipping phenomenon as a whole, at one point even receiving coverage from the mainstream media.[2]

However, although the amount of debate on the subject of shipping has decreased, it is common for members of the Harry Potter fandom to identify themselves by which pairing(s) they ship. A fan's favourite couple is usually termed their OTP or One True Pairing. This can be (and frequently is) entirely unsupported by canon pairings, but represents the fan's own preference - it may be that they enjoy fan fiction devoted to that particular relationship.

The concept of shipping within the Harry Potter fandom is so well established that slang terms for the different pairings have developed which bear no relation to the original name/name convention. For example, the Harry/Draco pairing is frequently referred to as the H.M.S. Guns and Handcuffs (H.M.S. is a pun on ship; see Her Majesty's Ship). Other names for popular ships include Harry/Hermione (H.M.S. Harmony), Ron/Hermione (H.M.S. The Good Ship R/Hr), Harry/Ginny (H.M.S. Several Sunlit Days, H.M.S Emerald Flame), and Draco/Ginny (H.M.S. Fire & Ice).

Fan art

Some sites host thousands of pieces of fan art, created by a wide variety of artists of various backgrounds and skill levels. Fans have also created music videos relating to the Harry Potter books and the various characters within them.

Podcast

Main article: Harry Potter podcast

There are two prominent Harry Potter podcast that have been listed on iTunes and Podcast alley with consistently high ratings. Both are offshoots of the two major Harry Potter fan sites, Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron. A free subscription can be obtained through iTunes.

  • MuggleCast- Hosted by Andrew Sims, Micah Tannenbaum, Ben Schoen, Laura Thompson, and other rotating members of MuggleNet, usually Eric Scull and Jamie Lawrence.
  • PotterCast- A weekly podcast hosted by Melissa Anelli, John Noe, and Sue Upton of The Leaky Cauldron.
  • Leaky Mug- a joint podcast by PotterCast and MuggleCast.

A Live Leaky Mug Podcast occurred for the premiere of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in New York November 2005. The Next Live Podcast is scheduled for Lumos Symposium 2006 in Las Vegas, NV. Shortly after, The Leakymuggers will be in NYC to do another live Podcast after Jo Rowling does a charity book reading on August 2nd, 2006.

Music

Wizard rock is a musical movement dating from 2002 that consists of a number of bands formed by young musicians playing songs about J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter literary franchise. The lyrics are usually humorous and simple, and many bands write songs from the point of view of a particular character in the books, usually the character who features in the band's name.3 If they are performing live, they may also cosplay that character. Though most fans of the music are previous fans of Harry Potter, some bands have attracted listeners outside of the Harry Potter fanbase. Wizard rock has recently evolved to become deeper and more refined.

Harry and the Potters was the first wizard rock band but inspired other wizard rock bands.

Forbes magazine article on HP bands

See also

External links

[10]

References

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