Fan Phenomena: Harry Potter

Description

Nineteen years later . . .



Even as a new generation embraces the Harry Potter novels for the first time,  J.K. Rowling’s world is expanding with Fantastic Beasts, Cursed Child and Pottermore. There are new mobile games, new toys and, of course, the theme parks. Meanwhile, Quidditch and the Harry Potter Alliance stretch from college to college, inspiring each generation. Fans have adapted the series into roleplaying games, parodies, musicals, films, dances, art and published fiction like Tommy Taylor or Carry On. They are also scrambling Potter with new franchises: Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, Hamilton. What else is this new generation discovering about loving Potter? Which are the best conventions, the best fanfiction and wizard rock? And, how has Potter aged and what does it still have to teach us? Fan Phenomena: Harry Potter offers Potter fans a taste of the best the fandom has to offer.

Introduction

Valerie Estelle Frankel

Part 1: Real World

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Bringing the Books to Life

Erin Pyne

Surveying Fanworks: Art, Dance, Fic, Music and Community

Madeline Wilson

Fan Appreciation: A.J. Holmes (composer, Team StarKid)

Aya Esther Hayashi

Part 2: Virtual World

Polyjuice and Potterheads: The Changing Face of Fandom from LiveJournal to Tumblr

Emily E. Roach

The Magic of Video Game Adaptation: The Admirer Becomes the Caster in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone/Sorcerer’s Stone

Fan Appreciation: Justin Zagri (Severus Snape and the Marauders)

Lisa Gomez

The Wizarding World of D&D: The Art of Roleplaying in the Potterverse

Evan Kreider

Part 3: Critical World

Tommy Taylor Reveals Harry’s True Power: Stories and Fans Can Reshape Our World

Joel Hawkes

Fan Appreciation: Matt Maggiacomo (executive director, HP Alliance)

Valerie Estelle Frankel

Buffy, Hamilton and Jon Snow Go to Hogwarts: Literary Affordance and the Hogwarts Houses as Interpretative Framework and Rhetorical Tool

Jessica Hautsch

Harry’s Magical Move to Broadway

Valerie Guempel

Part 4: Fictional World

Fan Appreciation: Ariel Birdoff (author, wrocker, librarian and fan)

Valerie Estelle Frankel 

Tuesdays with Malfoy: The Pain of Sharing Fandoms

Katryn Alessandri

Recharming the Fans? The Expanded Works and Why They Don’t Hold Up

Valerie Estelle Frankel

Contributor Details

Image Credits

Sujets

• Digital Media
• Role Playing
• Activities
• Wizards
• Popular Culture
• Gaming
• Fan labor
• Harry Potter universe
• Games
• Anthropology
• Les Sorciers de la guerre
• Cultural Studies
• Internet
• ART
• Fandom
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9781789380712
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Credits
First published in the UK in 2019 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2019 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2019 Intellect Ltd
Editor: Valerie Estelle Frankel
Production Editor: Naomi Curston
Copy Editor: Emma Rhys
Typesetting and Cover Design: Aleksandra Szumlas
Inside front cover image: Shana Mosella, Anime Los Angeles .
Ontario, CA, 2017. Photo by Michael Benedict.
Inside back cover image: Ray Bender aka Aunt Tessy Cosplay plays Boggart-Snape at Comic-Con . San Diego, CA, 2018.
Photo by Valerie Estelle Frankel.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written consent.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Fan Phenomena Series
ISSN: 2051-4468
eISSN: 2051-4476
Fan Phenomena: Harry Potter
ISBN: 978-1-78938-070-5
ePDF: 978-1-78938-072-9
ePUB: 978-1-78938-071-2
Printed and bound by
Hobbs, UK.
Contents
Introduction
VALERIE ESTELLE FRANKEL
PART 1: REAL WORLD
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Bringing the Books to Life
ERIN PYNE
Surveying Fanworks: Art, Dance, Fic, Music and Community
MADELINE WILSON
FAN APPRECIATION
Aya Esther Hayashi A. J. Holmes (composer, Team StarKid)
Lisa Gomez Justin Zagri ( Severus Snape and the Marauders )
Valerie Estelle Frankel Matt Maggiacomo (executive director, HP Alliance)
Valerie Estelle Frankel Ariel Birdoff (author, wrocker, librarian and fan)
PART 2 : VIRTUAL WORLD
Polyjuice and Potterheads: The Changing Face of Fandom from LiveJournal to Tumblr
EMILY E. ROACH
The Magic of Video Game Adaptation: The Admirer Becomes the Caster in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone/Sorcerer’s Stone
CÉSAR ALFONSO MARINO
The Wizarding World of D&D : The Art of Roleplaying in the Potterverse
S. EVAN KREIDER
PART 3: CRITICAL WORLD
Tommy Taylor Reveals Harry’s True Power: Stories and Fans Can Reshape Our World
JOEL HAWKES
Buffy, Hamilton and Jon Snow Go to Hogwarts: Literary Affordance and the Hogwarts Houses as Interpretative Framework and Rhetorical Tool
JESSICA HAUTSCH
Harry’s Magical Move to Broadway
VALERIE GUEMPEL
PART 4: FICTIONAL WORLD
Tuesdays with Malfoy: The Pain of Sharing Fandoms
KATRYN ALESSANDRI
Recharming the Fans? The Expanded Works and Why They Don’t Hold Up
VALERIE ESTELLE FRANKEL
Contributor Details
Image Credits
Introduction
The State of Potter Today
Harry Potter , as well as being the bestselling children’s book series (Rowling, 1997–2007) of all time, has defined the meaning of fandom. As it debuted around the same time as the Internet came to popularity, fanfiction, fanart and fanvids showed what this new tool could offer. Wizard rock crowded Myspace and Bandcamp, even as YouTube, DeviantArt and FanFiction.net welcomed all comers with their creativity.
In the midst of all this, the massive, celebrated fansites like The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet were the place to be. In fact, in a gesture of basically unprecedented support for her fan community, J. K. Rowling invited the webmasters of these two sites, Emerson Spartz of MuggleNet and Melissa Anelli of The Leaky Cauldron, to Scotland to read book six and interview her. Rowling also showed support for these and other websites with the J. K. Rowling Fan Site Awards, saluting the fans who put so much effort into celebrating her works.
Of course, in person fans could really strut their stuff. Aside from general fantasy conventions, from Comic-Con to Worldcon , several tracks of specifically Potter conferences suddenly materialized. These, sponsored by HP Education Fanon, Inc. ( Nimbus 2003 , The Witching Hour , Lumos , Prophecy 2007 , Portus , Azkatraz , Infinitus and Ascendio 2012 ) and by the educational group Narrate Conferences ( Phoenix Rising 2007 and Terminus 2008 ), focused heavily on academic papers and speculation on how the series would end. This was the height of Potterdom, with Rowling’s clues and twist endings providing endless fuel for speculation. Enterprising fans mapped out Hogwarts or described Ginny’s mythic roots in everything from King Arthur to Red Riding Hood. Held only weeks after book seven was published, Prophecy 2007 saluted the perished characters with shrines, where fans could leave spontaneous gifts of socks for Dobby and hotel bottles of shampoo for Professor Snape. While some actors attended these conferences, the real stars were Potter and fan culture professors like John Granger and Henry Jenkins. They taught actual Potter classes back at their universities too, leading to a new level not just of scholarship but also of academic respect for the Potterheads. Books like Hog’s Head Conversations (Prinzi, 2009) and Teaching with Harry Potter (Frankel, 2013) emphasized new avenues for fandom as popular culture gained a new respect in academics.
The conferences also offered a place to celebrate the lighter side of Potter – fanfiction and art, cosplay and wizard rock concerts far into the night. Some conferences pushed this to the logical conclusion and structured the conference like a school, with crafting class, dance class, History of Magic, mythology, writing and anything else that fit the bill. Balls, fashion shows and unusual experiments like Water Quidditch and parody plays gave the fans delightful places to show off. MISTI-Con (2013–ongoing) a deliberately small New England gathering, kicked off a steady intimate get-together, while a few cities and universities began annual Potter fairs. Adding the theme parks, computer games, films and Pottermore itself, the official world was expanding into… well, an entire world indeed. The unofficial events expanded alongside it.
Figure 1: Yuki the Destroyer, Online Comic and @HagridCosplay at Comic-Con 2018.
Still, some parts of the Potterverse ran their course and began to fade. The yearly music festival ‘Wrockstock’ stretched from 2007 to 2013, but some of the wrockers began retiring. Meanwhile, the conferences faded into the less academic LeakyCon s (begun in 2009 by The Leaky Cauldron and still ongoing in 2018), which invited young adult authors to help celebrate an expanding world beyond the Potterverse. LeakyCon began to fill with crossover fans sporting mockingjay pins and Camp Half-Blood T-shirts as teen dystopia and Percy Jackson novels succeeded Harry’s legacy.
Fan groups in major cities persevered, with the staff changing but the trivia nights, gaming afternoons and cosplay adventures stretching for decades. Even as the New York wizards skated in costume at the Rockefeller Center and the Los Angeles branch headed off to the beach to visit Shell Cottage – or the theme park after it opened – the fandom was going strong. The Harry Potter Alliance (HP Alliance), a social action group founded by Andrew Slack in 2005, continued to engage millions of fans with over a hundred international chapters. Quidditch, founded at colleges across the world, lasted as a sport, with an annual Quidditch Cup. Themed camps for younger kids across the US – heavy in crafts and Quidditch – helped them share in the love of Potter . Libraries hosted parties and events, especially to coincide with Harry’s birthday or the release of new material in 2016.
Figure 2: Ray Bender aka Aunt Tessy Cosplay plays Boggart-Snape at Comic-Con 2018.
This included the London and Broadway play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Rowling, Thorne and Tiffany, 2016) and the new film franchise Fantastic Beasts , along with the new backstory of Ilvermorny, the American school of magic, presented on Pottermore (admittedly amid some controversy about cultural appropriation). After the drought since 2007, fans finally had new stories. These too produced special celebrations at the conventions as the attendees at LeakyCon 2016 dressed in 1920s fashion and read the best Cursed Child scenes onstage. Once more, art, fanvids, fanfiction, music and so on had expanded to welcome new series.
This book celebrates it all – the costumers, writers, artists and wrockers. More, it delves into the stories behind the fans’ most marvellous creations. Theme park design writer Erin Pyne carries readers inside the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, explaining the storyline and plan behind it. Matt Maggiacomo, executive director of the HP Alliance, details how Potter fans across the world are fighting for social justice in Harry’s name. There are also interviews with creators of the fan films The Greater Good (Zagri, 2013) and Snape and the Marauders (Zagri, 2016), as well as Team StarKid, who wrote the beloved A Very Potter Musical (Lang, Lang and Holden/Team StarKid, 2009) and its sequels – parodies performed at LeakyCon s to the delight of thousands of fans.
César Alfonso Marino considers the licensed computer games, finishing with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s 2018 Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery app and the evolution of the gaming platforms. Paralleling this, S. Even Kreider lays out fans’ efforts to adapt the series for roleplaying games (RPGs) and explains the benefits and pitfalls of each system. Gazing over the early history, Emily E. Roach describes the journey of the fans from LiveJournal to Tumblr, seeking better mediums for communication.
Moving on to new material, my own chapter examines Rowling’s post -Deathly Hallows (2007) works, from Casual Vacancy (2012) to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), and considers why these aren’t striking the fans as publishers and producers had hoped. For something unique, Valerie Guempel invites readers to follow her to the 2018 Cursed Child Broadway premiere as she reveals through intimate details why the play must be watched, not just read. Katryn Alessandri considers the play from another angle,