Harry Potter Poll

[shadowkat]

Anyone who reads my journal or is on my flist, please answer. For a lark and out of curiousity - I wanted to see how many people on my lj are actually into Harry Potter. This came out of a little discussion with my pal CW last night. Who I had persuaded to read Harry a long time ago, she was one of the people who veered away from it because a) kid books and b) hype. Then she picked up one and changed her mind. Last night she told me how cool it was on Sat to see such a huge cross section of people reading it in Central Park - from old men to little children. All races, sexs, and ages. Anywho...curious to see how many do so on my lj. So if you have a moment. Please answer. I'm also doing the poll.

PS: I haven't read the finale book yet and am still unspoiled, a miracle, I know, but I have a cool flist who cut tags on stuff like that. So no spoilers in comments. Thank you!

[Updated: for the purposes of this poll - "Persuaded" is the same as "Recommended" and "if you only read one book but none of the others" - pick did not read. It's not exact, but once again I forgot to put those options. ]

[Poll #1027147]

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Not sure why some people love it and others don't. I think it probably goes back to that post I did a while ago on kinks and buttons.

One of my co-workers can't stand the title character in the films, much less the books. While my former boss adored the books and rarely reads fantasy. Neither my brother nor sisinlaw will touch them - too heavily marketed and they avoid bringing anything in their house that has been over-branded, marketed or hyped. (They are both in the field of marketing and a tad snobbish about it. They have a hatred of anything made by Disney for example.) So I may not be *allowed* to share them with my niece when she grows older.

And...I wouldn't describe myself as fannish about them. I've really only been *fannish* about one thing in my entire life - Buffy. While I've had celebrity/character crushes before - Davey Jones with the Monkees being the first, and Richard Hatch's Apollo on the original BSG when I was nine or ten, being another one. That was mostly kept to myself. Same with my love of X-Men comics, or a specific *cough*soapopera*cough*. Buffy is the only series I ever came close to joining a *fandom* with and the only one I interacted with other *fans* about.

I don't feel that way about Harry. Nor do I see myself joining another fandom or getting that way about another thing. I got *fannish* about Buffy due to a specific set of circumstances - that I honestly pray never happen again. It became a coping mechanism - which may or may not be different than other people's reasons for joining fandoms. I did it to cope with combination of situations that overwhelmed me. What I've been struggling with is letting go of that coping mechanism. Because while it worked for that situation - it cannot be applied to the new ones.

Part of me would love to replace Buffy with Harry, but don't see that happening. HP - I see as my happy books, or light fun books. Books that take me out of myself for a bit. Stress free. I don't remember them that well. Don't feel the need to re-read them. And don't really obsess over them. I actually prefer the Dresden Files to the Potter Books, and find myself more attached to those characters - maybe because they are more adult? Or it is easier for me to relate to a 30-40 something male lead than a 15-18 something one? Don't know.

At any rate...I hear you on the fan bit. I love the books but *fannish*?
Nah.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

ITA about wishing I could add HP to my roster of fandoms, but it just ain't gonna happen! Funny thing about kinks and buttons is that they're not always foolproof. I mean, Harry Potter has all the elements of a series I could be totally fannish about. Teenagers with magical powers? An epic struggle of good versus evil? Heroic battles? A fleshed out universe? And on the fandom side of things, so much fanfic that I would never run out of stuff to read!

I guess sometimes we can't predict what will and will not ping us?

But I get what you mean about being fannish about Buffy due to circumstances. If I hadn't been in university at the time, I wouldn't have found online fandom. My whole experience would've been quite different, I think.

Not sure I can relate to you on being only fannish about Buffy, though. Even before I got online, I was totally fannish about Gargoyles, Sailor Moon, other cartoon movies/shows. I wrote fanfic!

Interesting what you say about relating more to adult characters than to younger ones. I think that's beginning to be true for me too, though it's not that I "identify" with older characters more -- I just don't have patience for characters making the same mistakes. I need my teenagers to grow the heck up already. I need people to act like professionals. Yes, I'm turning into an old curmudgeon ;)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The whole fannish thing is well hard to define or understand.
People do it about different things and in different ways.

I never knew fanfic existed until 2001 - after the episode Smashed on BTVS, when I wandered about online hunting for information - mostly spoilers, the wait between Wrecked and the next episode was too long.
And found them. Coming from an Intellectual Property background, my first reaction to fanfic was - WTF? And OMG, I should so not be reading this.
It really was a guilty pleasure - particularly since my job entailed acquiring rights to textual and media properties for an internet database and I was on two copyright forums at the time - both incredibly worried about the effect of the net on intellectual property law. So fanfic went against everything I'd been taught. LOL! I also did not know people discussed the shows in depth or wrote essays on it.

My experience with fandom prior to 2001 - was a bunch of giggling girls meeting in a dorm room to send out fan letters to their favorite movie star - like in the play Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Or the conventions that Trekkies went to - which were made fun of on Saturday Night Live. So, I came into the whole concept - with very critical preconceptions. And I admit I've seen some nutty behavior on and offline in the BTVS fandom, particularly amongst *cough*shippers*cough*.
But largely it wasn't what I thought it was.

There are I've discovered more than one type of fan. Those who stick with just one fandom the whole time and never leave it - Trekkies, BTVSers, Spikites (I made the last two up for want of a better term). Then there are those who are serial fans - they jump from one to the next. And finally the dilettants - who flirt with it - stick with it a while, might write one or two fanfics, lots of essays, then move away from the whole thing and don't get obsessed with another one.

I'm the dilettant type, I think. Slowly moving away from my BTVS/Spike obsession. Which has only lasted as long as it has due to my interaction with other online.

Agree on Potter - I do love the books, more than you do, but
if you were to ask me who my favorite characters were and who I was most intrigued by? I'd have to say Snape and Luna Lovegood. Odd, I know.
Hee.