The Future of the Fandom

The most popular fandoms around if you tend to peek at the amount of stories on fanfiction.net tend to be things that are currently hugely popular.  Twilight.  Harry Potter.  Even Pirates of the Caribbean.  These are all things that you could have gone to see in the theater over the past year. 

Star Wars has been around for thirty-five years.  That is a long time.  And amazingly, I don't think its popularity has waned all that much.  I bet there are a lot more Star Wars fans than will openly admit it.  Of course this theory still does not allow me to bring myself to wear my Star Wars t-shirts in public, but anyway...

After this much time, it is hard to imagine it not continuing to stand the test of time.  Will others fare similarly?  It's hard for me to believe that in twenty years people will still care that much about Twilight or PotC.  Harry Potter has a pretty strong chance in my opinion. 

That's not really the point of this post, though.  Where do you think we go from here as a fandom?  Do you think there is ever a saturation point where we will run out of things to say about Han and Leia?  Run out of stories to tell?  You run into a lot of stories out there that are quite similar, or at least cover similar time periods.  How many times can the same story be written?  Will there even still be fans around to read them?

I've been involved in reading Han and Leia fanfic for over ten years now.  When I discovered fanfic in the first place, of course.  I read the books before I knew fanfic existed and from the time the first movie came out there were fanzines and stories.  How people found out about these fanzines back then I have no idea!  There have always been little ebbs and flows.  Sometimes lots of people are talking, and sometimes they aren't.  My personal belief is that this isn't so much people not being interested, it's the vocal ones not being vocal, so nobody else says anything, they just lurk and wait for other people to do the talking so they have something to read or maybe something to chime in on.  I think the interest is always there even if there isn't always new stuff to read about.

A big part of why we started this blog was so that we could keep the fandom alive and have a place for people to come.  The blog posts would ensure that at least someone was talking, and the comments for a long time were pretty slow, but people were obviously reading.  I think it's just nice to know that there are others like you out there.  And I wish we still had the results to the age poll because the great news is that the fans range from under 13 well beyond middle age.  We've even got at least one mother/daughter pair who pop in!  That's pretty cool.  So the good news is that there are apparently always going to be new fans to go along with me or even those of you who were old enough to have seen the movies in the theater. 

But fans or not, there are still hundreds if not thousands of Han and Leia stories that have been written out there.  Is it possible to run out?  My personal opinion is no.  If only because there are currently over 500,000 Harry Potter stories on ff.net and only 28,000 or so for Star Wars.  That's without breaking them down to specific couples, but if there are that many stories and lots of people to read them, there must be more to say, right?

And I've said it before but I do think that you can take any situation and write your own personal take on it.  You do really have to have something unique to say, but if you think you do, then go for it.  I don't think we should be deterred by the number of stories out there.  There's always room for more.  You know, as long as you spell check and stuff ;)

Happy Birthday, Harrison!

Aw, look at the cute little baby picture.  Yes, folks, today is Harrison Ford's birthday.  For those of you who don't know, he is now, dare I say it, 70 years old.  Yikes.  And in spite of that number and the fact that it means he remains more than twice as old as I am, I still love him. 

Go ahead and use that one to help you imagine what his kids with Leia might look like.  I'll admit I don't really love it when I am reminded of how old he's gotten.  But then again, since we've never met, I can just go ahead and pretend in my mind tha the always looks like this:

It is kind of incredible to think of all of the things he's done, but at the same time, it is also incredible to think that his life as a "real" actor didn't begin until he was close to his mid 30s when he got the role of Han Solo.  To be honest, that makes me feel better because it means I still have time to make something of my life ;)  Sure he was in some movies before that, but nobody had a clue who he was.  I think I even read once that he went to see Star Wars in the theater and wasn't recognized.  Yeah, that wouldn't happen now. 

What would we all do if he wasn't Han Solo?  I actually wonder about this sometimes.  I sincerely doubt that I'd be obsessed with this stuff if he wasn't in that role.  He made it so much more than it could've been and of course we've all talked about the chemistry.  Although maybe if Christopher Walken had gotten the role I'd have more of a social life ;)

Wow, no wonder I've had a crush on him for as long as I've had crushes on people even though he's older than my parents.  If anyone is interested, he's actually been quite busy lately.  He's got three movies in the works right now, like in the filming stages so something we'll actually eventually see, and that doesn't include another Indiana Jones movie, which they still seem to be dangling in front of us.  Obviously the last one was not my favorite, but I'll admit I enjoyed it.  Yes, I have low standards.  But don't you want to see him as Indy again?

Ok, he won't look exactly like that, but still.  I was personally far less upset about the alien thing than I was about the long-lost son thing.  I don't really get why people can accept an artifact that spontaneously melts people's faces if they look at it, a guy who can rip people's hearts out but they live long enough to be burned alive, or a cup that gives you everlasting life but they get really bent out of shape over "interdimensional beings."  I'll say the same thing about the fridge thing.  Indy did some crazy stuff in those other movies.  You know he did. 

Here's another picture of Han, even though we know he will never play him again.  I know a lot of people are very cynical and angry with him for some choices he's made or whatever.  But honestly, the man doesn't have to work again, ever.  He could just hang out at home with his way-younger wife and fly his planes and hang out and drink coffee.  We should be glad he wants to work at all! 

He's still doing pretty well, right?  I don't know a lot of people who are 70, but I bet most of them don't look like that.  So good for him.  Let's hope he continues to age well and at least occasionally do a cool movie and we can be glad that he's still way younger than Clint Eastwood.

Oh, and go ahead and use this as fodder to write a story about Han's birthday if you want.  Happy birthday, Harrison!  Both of his parents lived well into their 90s so we should still get him to hang around for a while. 

Sorry, but....

All right, I know, things have gotten painfully slow around here.  Nothing bad has happened, I assure you.  It's just not in the forefront of my mind and, well, it's summer.  I'm still like a little kid in summer.  But to make up for it I'd like to share this with you.  This is not my work as I could never have the patience for such things even if I do greatly appreciate that others do.  You owe all of your thanks to Amara Z on this one.  It is amazing what you can do with a little photoshop.  I hope this makes up for the extreme lack of updates at least a little.  Feel free to use it as inspiration for a story or to start up some conversation.  Enjoy!