Harry Potter fandom... lit, media or its own wierd breed?

kaiz started an interesting post over here on reading and writing in the various incarnations of canon, be they dead, zombie or live. Go have a look at the post and ensuing discussion and you will she what she, and we the responders, mean by these terms.

But a couple of the comments got me thinking. The comment was made a number of times on how HP fandom works differently to, for example Stargate Atlantis, or even a dead canon like The Sentinel.

And it suddenly occurred to me that HP fandom is a very strange beastie, in that it is predominately a lit fandom in that its canon is governed largely by the books, but its fans behave like media fans. Truly a strange beast.

To explain myself, is there anyone here who has been to a Worldcon, a Natcon in their home country, fantasy-con etc? Most who have will have noticed a huge difference in the behaviour of lit fans to media fans. Lit fans have a much greater proportion of male participants (excepting Dr Who), their literary participation leans much more toward APAs (newletters), and it is a running joke that a lit fan never must never actually be caught in public discussing the subject of their current fannish interest, whether that be the lack of female representation in LOTR, to whether cyberpunk is really dead, to just how there has never been an acceptable transition from book to screen of the genre greats.

Does any of this sound like HP fans? Nope.

And that is the dichotomy. Is it that media fans have simply found a new source of material, have devoured its canon and launched themselves into fanfic productivity as they usually do, completely ignoring, in this case, that their source is not entirely audo-visual?

Or do HP fans find the movies, go back to the books for the wealth of canon to base their launch upon, and rocket themselves off into cyberspace from there - media fans behaving as media fans, but referencing the books for canon?

I have to ask the question, because, folks, this is not normal lit fan behaviour. It is media fan behaviour, post-internet age media fan behaviour. And it is an anomoly.