Much like hating people but loving gatherings (isn’t it ironic?), I get a kick out of Harry Potter fandom. Not the books mind you, as I tried to read the first one and it just wasn’t my bag, but the people who are rabid for the world of wizards and muggles. Without more than my few chapters’ worth of work, I know more about the franchise than honestly I should because of the loyal, creative and sometimes cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs fans. People who’ve invested time and lightened kids’ imaginations by staging wizarding events and who encourage fandom in their kids by knitting them scarves and making their own wands and whatnot is hands down awesome; as a die-hard Trekkie since I was wee, the time my parents spent shuffling me to a convention or helping my sew my first classic Romulan uniform are special and certainly encouraged me to be the person I am today.
But then… there are the other fans.
The best spot to watch people dig their own graves is Fandom Wank, a community of people dedicated to watching people take their hobbies far too seriously and, sad and true, Harry Potter is a common topic. With the last book released this year, the Fandom Wank folks declared the coming of the ‘Potterdämmerung‘, the fan uprising of all fan uprisings and only recently has this really bloomed.
The reason why I share it here with you kindly people is that apparently, there’s this guy in charge of annotated resource for the books called ‘The Leaky Cauldron‘. A fairly popular resource and reorganization of the information in the books, the webauthor decided to publish his site as a book; the problem with this is that JK Rowling had already announced that she was going to do an encyclopedia of sorts (the kind of book the Leaky Cauldron was going to do) and that a lot of the info on the site is taken directly from the books and would be a sort of plagiarism.
Now, when asked by JK Rowling and the WB (since they own the rights to movie stills and/or specific content) not to publish this book or at least show them that the Leaky Cauldron’s work wouldn’t be direct lifting, you’d think that the author would back down, show that he was doing original content and give the people who got him into this business, so to speak, their due. Not so! This whole mess is actually going to court and is packed to the brim with angry fans who think that JK ROWLING has completely lost it by telling the Leaky Cauldron guy he shouldn’t publish her work reorganized in alphabetical order.
More theories have come to light with fairly damning evidence that the Leaky Cauldron guy had plans that he would help Rowling with publishing her encyclopedia when the series was over and did seem to be in good favor with the multi-million dollar author, but Rowling didn’t take up his offer, he decided (and spoke loudly at a con) that the fans were taking over.
So remember, folks: fan entitlement is everywhere. And sometimes, it can get really nasty.
