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So, hello! It sure has been a while! I've been meaning to try to start posting again for a while, but as always, when there's been a big gap it's hard to start again. But I've been doing some writing lately for the first time in a while, and just did a WIP Wednesday post, and that's broken the ice enough that here I am.
The thing I guess I really wanted to talk about first is that I've disengaged entirely with HP fandom at this point. I still have a lot of complicated feelings about it, so hoping that dumping it all out here will help me continue to process.
So as I guess we all know by this point, JKR has fallen down the terf rabbithole. For a while it felt like enough to make sure I didn't do anything that would add to her wealth. I didn't buy anything or engage with any new media. I've been in fandom since the old Anne Rice days of cease and desist letters, so to me fandom has always felt like something separate, so for a while that was still all right. And then JKR not only continued to be awful, but she became more and more vocal about it, and at some point even reading and writing HP fic started to feel like too much.
And at that point, I just felt stuck. I really didn't want to leave HP fandom. I still loved the world and the characters and the whole community of people around me who loved those things too. I have about half a million words of partially-written fic that I really do want to finish and share, including a novel-length thing I'm 110k into and is honestly some of the most awesome writing I've ever done, and another fic I'm only about 20k into and is what I think is the best fic idea I've ever come up with, and have been saving until I felt I had the time and space and energy to do it properly.
It sucks to let go of all of that. Maybe it's silly and selfish, especially in the face of how much real-world harm she's doing to real people out there, but I've actually been grieving. I know that this is the right choice for me, but cutting something I love so much out of my life, something that's brought me such joy, through which I've made such wonderful friendships with so many fantastic people, something that became such a lifeline through the darkest part of my life, has been miserable, and difficult, and painful. But it also feels necessary, so here we are.
It was easier than I'd thought to get rid of all the HP stuff I owned (aside from the books, which I have packed away). But what to do with my fics was a really tough decision, since I do believe in the archive part of AO3, so I didn't feel great about deleting everything. I hated the loss of control that would come with orphaning them. But I also needed to do something that would draw a line under that part of my fanom-life, something that would give me enough separation from it that would allow me to fully move on. So I've ended up creating a new AO3 account (firethesound_HP_archive) and transferring everything over to that one. And I think I feel good about this compromise. I have the separation I want, but it's still preserved, and still available for anyone to whom it's meant something and wants to revisit.
And in the meantime, I'm still working my way through the stages of grief. I've already done denial (surely she doesn't actually mean that!?) to anger (fuck her!) to bargaining (well maybe I'll just finish writing the things I started before she revealed herself as a terf?) and am now pretty firmly in the depression stage about it. Here's hoping acceptance isn't too far away.
The thing I guess I really wanted to talk about first is that I've disengaged entirely with HP fandom at this point. I still have a lot of complicated feelings about it, so hoping that dumping it all out here will help me continue to process.
So as I guess we all know by this point, JKR has fallen down the terf rabbithole. For a while it felt like enough to make sure I didn't do anything that would add to her wealth. I didn't buy anything or engage with any new media. I've been in fandom since the old Anne Rice days of cease and desist letters, so to me fandom has always felt like something separate, so for a while that was still all right. And then JKR not only continued to be awful, but she became more and more vocal about it, and at some point even reading and writing HP fic started to feel like too much.
And at that point, I just felt stuck. I really didn't want to leave HP fandom. I still loved the world and the characters and the whole community of people around me who loved those things too. I have about half a million words of partially-written fic that I really do want to finish and share, including a novel-length thing I'm 110k into and is honestly some of the most awesome writing I've ever done, and another fic I'm only about 20k into and is what I think is the best fic idea I've ever come up with, and have been saving until I felt I had the time and space and energy to do it properly.
It sucks to let go of all of that. Maybe it's silly and selfish, especially in the face of how much real-world harm she's doing to real people out there, but I've actually been grieving. I know that this is the right choice for me, but cutting something I love so much out of my life, something that's brought me such joy, through which I've made such wonderful friendships with so many fantastic people, something that became such a lifeline through the darkest part of my life, has been miserable, and difficult, and painful. But it also feels necessary, so here we are.
It was easier than I'd thought to get rid of all the HP stuff I owned (aside from the books, which I have packed away). But what to do with my fics was a really tough decision, since I do believe in the archive part of AO3, so I didn't feel great about deleting everything. I hated the loss of control that would come with orphaning them. But I also needed to do something that would draw a line under that part of my fanom-life, something that would give me enough separation from it that would allow me to fully move on. So I've ended up creating a new AO3 account (firethesound_HP_archive) and transferring everything over to that one. And I think I feel good about this compromise. I have the separation I want, but it's still preserved, and still available for anyone to whom it's meant something and wants to revisit.
And in the meantime, I'm still working my way through the stages of grief. I've already done denial (surely she doesn't actually mean that!?) to anger (fuck her!) to bargaining (well maybe I'll just finish writing the things I started before she revealed herself as a terf?) and am now pretty firmly in the depression stage about it. Here's hoping acceptance isn't too far away.
