Check out the AO3 Ship Stats Project! archiveofourow... Bibliography here: pastebin.com/H... This is my first video essay & I had a lot of fun with it!
Seriously!! Harry literally hated the Ministry of Magic. It would be so much more narratively satisfying too, with the whole "there's a new defense against the dark arts teacher every year because Voldemort cursed it". Also creating Dumbledores Army showed he was clearly passionate about it and would've been a great teacher too, sigh 😔.
This!!! It makes sense on every level. I just can’t see Harry working for the ministry. He always said Hogwarts is his home. Harry being the one to finally fill the DADA position would be the perfect narrative conclusion to how they were never able to find a permanent teacher. It fits perfectly into the parallels between Harry and Voldemort since it was the position that Tom Riddle always wanted. And there really is no one better to teach the subject than Harry. He even taught it to his friends for a whole year!! I can’t believe all that setup was there and then she decided to have him work for the government instead.
He litterally was the happiest in the books when he was teaching his fellow students he loves to lead and teach and he loves to learn about magic, my headcannon is that they offered him an auror position but her turned it down and asked to be a teacher at hogwarts and his opening is telling his students he went toe to toe with Voldemort even as a baby
I also think that contributing to the decline of Drarry fanfiction is the growth of the Maurauders fandom and therefore the growth of Jegulus (James Potter/Regulus Black), a ship that is paralleled in a way to Drarry.
The ethos of the Mauraders fandom in general seems to be in the “fuck it” category as seen in this video. As far as Jegulus goes, it’s also very popular to depict Regulus as a trans man as an extra screw you to Rowling.
the actual parallel would be james/snape tho? james and regulus never even interacted. meanwhile james and draco were pureblood bullies who looked down on snape and harry who came from muggle households Draco Malfoy in Philospher’s Stone: “Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” James Potter in Deathly Hallows: “Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” Both also start their bullying on their first trainride to Hogwarts. The text literally directly compares james to draco.
@@viking-astronaut yeah good point. Interestingly James/Regulus is a lot more popular than James/Snape (15k vrs 1.2k fics on Ao3 rn) idk why maybe some ppl just don't like Snape lol
I was actually thinking about this, especially because the marauders fandom inherently exists in a world which ignores canon. And it’s also very widely agreed that it’s queer, like it’s hard to find heterosexual marauders fanfic in my experience.
Good news from a stats teacher - constantly hedging your claims and pointing out they're uncertain is like, the main thing we want you to take away from that class.
My new favorite type of RUclips video is queer folks dissecting Harry Potter and the culture around it. For once the algorithm has brought me what I wanted!
@@cthulhutheendless1587 if you like in-depth analysis, I recommend Lily Simpson's "A Brief Look at Harry Potter" (alternate title: Harry Potter and the Intimidating Timestamp). Do heed her warning about not necessarily trying to watch the whole thing at once, use the chapters, etc., but if you like long-form content, you are in for an absolute feast! Hoots also has one, as does Shaun, though idk if he's queer or just a vocal ally.
Every year I have a little Drarry Summer where I go reread all my old favorite fics and dive into the tag for new ones. My favorite genre is post-series Harry and Draco meeting again as adults (after a lot of personal growth and reflection) to find that the other has a lot of hidden depths to them, sparking a slow-burn romance against a sprawling backdrop that really fleshes out the wizarding world.
I also do this! You might like “Parallax” by nevillenobottom on Ao3. It takes place after the war; Harry is an elementary school teacher and teaches Draco’s son. (It’s enemies to lovers.) I also like “We Can Be Pirates” by cowboilikeme (Ao3) and “My Safest Sound” by ElenandTara (Ao3), but these take place while they are still teenagers.
I do this as well! I'm not a huge fan of drarry fics set during the course of the books, but I LOVE post-series where both of them have been allowed to grow and mature and be able to see each other beyond school rivals/bully
Great essay, but arguably more impressive for a first video: great accessibility! I'm so used to having to rely on auto-generated captions for my auditory processing issues and you actually have a transcript and closed captioning. You have a dedicated fan now
Same! I wasn’t even able to admit in my own head that I was queer until I found slashfiction. I had buried it so deep that I needed those stories to help me shift all the dirt. I hadn’t realized that queer love could be so normal and beautiful and compelling and GOOD until I saw it written out. It had always been made to seem so alien and unnatural that I couldn’t find myself in the things I’d heard. But I could find myself in the stories that other people had lovingly crafted and that made all the difference.
One thing I particularly enjoy about the HP fandom is how the "fuck-its" created our own magical world with the Marauders as soon as she came out as a transphobe. Like fuck it. She's tainted her own work, but she hasn't tainted ours. And the Marauders and their queer magical universe are ours, now. That's why I think Drarry fandom is less popular nowadays. To keep your metaphor; we kept our sandbox, but put entirely new sand in it. I sincerely wonder how many Drarry authors are now Jegulus authors. It has the same enemies to lovers vibes, and the same hero-loved-by-everyone vs the-misunderstood-kid-from-a-bigoted-family characters. 🤔
I need some recs for “classic”, novel length Jegulus. My love of Drarry fic is rooted in the fact that it improves on an existing premise that could have been so reflective and interesting if the author was only, y’know, not terrible. Haha. I’ve dipped my toes into Marauders fic but I haven’t seen anything light a candle to fics like TURN or The Man Who Lived. I’m sure I’m just not entrenched enough though!
@@rikkirikki4892 I'm sincerely not the one who can suggest you any Jegulus fanfics. I'm more of a Wolfstar girlie lol. But the novel-length one I know people really really love is "Choices" by Messermoon on AO3 🤷🏻♀️
Honestly, I've never been able to get into Marauder's. It's not just the "vibes" I like; I really like the characters. There's something about Drarry that says "take Rowling's main character and have him deconstruct her entire mythos and conceptions and also fall in love with the guy she accidentally wrote as very gay" that really gets me lol
Honestly, reclaiming the characters for ourselves, disassociating JK from "her" characters and turning them into everything she hates, is the best revenge possible for how she has ruined so many people's childhoods.
Trust me, it isn't. For as long as you're still talking about harry potter and consuming the media, you're still supporting her. It doesn't matter if you don't see it that way, she does.
@@Kaminoboi No, please do not keep buying harry potter stuff. She has EXPLICITLY said that she sees people buying her stuff as an agreement with her views.
any time in my adult life someone mentions warrior cats my vision whites out and my ears ring and suddenly im squirrelhands or whatever and im running thru the forest chasing rabbits and stuff
I was expecting that sentence to end with something about, like, being on the playground... aka where *I* role played warrior cats in elementary school 😂
Right wing people tend to be like that. They think they are super good people because they are not openly racist or in her case, feminist, when theres a far larger list of people who are discriminated and under represented in media
Drarry fans are sooo detached from the epilogue that I remember reading Drarry EWE before finishing the last book (I was at my peak obsession with the ship). I still get amazed with the author (and lots of fans) defending Snape, a grown man abuser, as a hero (????), while Draco, a mean KID, clearly is forever doomed 😮
Yeah... No matter what you think of Draco, no one can deny Snape is far worst. Draco had a real moral dilemma. Snape switched side because of Lily, but nothing indicates that he thinks his past actions were wrong. And he abused kids for decades. Can you imagine how toxic you must be to be one of your student's boggart?
@@deadphoenixrising happy you figured yourself out young. My own ASD and Ace journey started much later. Honestly you shouldn’t have to be between 40-50 like me to have yourself figured out.
I feel that a large part of the HP fandom have basically said Fuck It - JKR taught all of us to stand against tyranny, bigotry, bullying etc. we learned to stand up for those weaker than ourselves, to be true to what is right even if it meant going against friends. Being accepting of those marginalised and penalised for things beyond their control. As such, we have taken HP and are guarding it, using what we were taught against the very person who taught us. We know better and are better! We do better! We are inclusive and supportive of all people regardless of gender identity, sexuality or race. I cannot and will not hate a work that teaches us these valuable things but I cannot and will not be supportive of the author who clearly failed to learn the lessons her work taught so many of us.
@@SiriuslyPotty 🤔🧐🤦🏻♂️. The person you're replying to said "a large part," not "the large part" They made no claim to majority or even plurality. They spoke of holding onto the value of the works & the community even in the face of the author's continuing venom. You whined about cancel culture... But *Rowling* is the one who got herself shunned by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and most of the cast of her own films. She's trumpeting fascists like Matt Walsh and Posey Parker. Maybe you're marching to their tune, in which case there's not much to say; the face eating leopards will eat your face too sooner or later. But maybe you're willing to check your assumptions, set aside your certainties. If so, there's plenty of videos that will connect the dots for you. And over time, JKR seems committed to being more & more direct about fearmongering & fantasies of power.
Some very valid points made, but as someone in the UK I would urge people to look into the campaigning and financial backing Rowling does for transphobic causes in the UK, often using the continued popularity of her work as political currency. How much fanfic contributes or is taken into account in her dealings is up for debate, but Rowling herself has made public claims that every fan of her work supports her beliefs, and that some are just quiet about their support because they fear the wrath of the trans mafia. Though it's not easy to have these discussions about someone expressing problematic and harmful views, I would say the issue is a whole lot more fraught when you realise she's not just expressing views, she's genuinely influencing UK politics towards transphobia. Only recently she was a massive part in efforts to oppose progressive reforms to Scottish law, and she's literally friends with a former UK Prime Minister. She's got genuine power and influence over here, often fuelled by her perceived cultural power.
@@tgiacin435 a bill designed to streamline the process for trans people to have their gender legally recognised. The bill originally passed in Scotland but was blocked by UK parliament in 2022. Scotland amended the bill a little and got it passed again recently, this time without UK parliament blocking it, but it was a very close thing, with J.K Rowling being a very visible, vocal and active part of campaigns calling on UK parliament to intercede again. And you have to remember she literally has personal relationships with UK politicians and throws a lot of money behind anti-trans campaigns and lobbyist groups, so her actions were a pretty significant part of the whole thing.
This is vital information to know. It’s something that any fanfic writers and enjoyers in HP related queer fanfiction stories such as myself have to take note of if Rowling has found a way to potentially weaponize the existence of those same queer fanfiction works that blatantly go against everything she believes in (politically) to give herself real political influence. As much as I enjoy reading the trans HP works created by trans and genderqueer authors and creatives, this concerns me greatly. I thought it was bad enough that she engaged in H--c-st revisionism just to push her transphobic agenda, but for some reason it never truly dawned on me that someone as terrible as her still has real power in the world of politics, where trans rights are still threatened by the hateful and bigoted.
If I’m going to be honest, the only reason why I started to doubt her as a real threat given everything else going on right now (🍉) is because when I heard about her family cutting ties with her, I thought that would’ve impacted her as a person and caused her to stop spewing transphobia. At least for a little while. In hindsight, this was incredibly dumb with me and I have to be more vigilant about the political activities of creators like her in the future.
Now i want you to touch on the marauders fandom because there is a lot. It really is amazing how a fandom could create so much on characters barely mentioned by Rowling.
I love the marauders fanon so much. I’m always amazed if I read two works by different authors with completely different focus and writing styles and suddenly there’s a casual name drop or mannerism or lore tidbit that both have in common. And then 5 fics later, it appears again. It’s incredible how many „facts“ about certain characters have spread over the years of content creation and now people just accept them as true and fitting.
@excessivelyfangirlingbookw3339 Definitely! A lot of facts have been commonly used now in fanon, which is almost like an author's base for fanfiction (sometimes) and it's really nice to see a common ground in fanon because of how much the little things have spread throughout the fandom. This fandom is truly a remarkable one and one of the most complex ones I've experienced, speaking that most of the things the fandom believes in is a majority of collectively agreed stuff rather than canon.
For me I don’t like the OG series. Loved it as a child (especially the movies) but reread them a little later in life (before JK came out as a terf) and absolutely hated them. Despite this I have always viewed the series as having a lot of potential, especially after the canon timeline. The canon has frustrated me for years but I didn’t get into fanficton in general until last year and drarry fics earlier this year. I haven’t viewed myself as a Potter fan for like 10 years but I am now a HP fic fan, for me these are very different. Personally I don’t see an issue with liking the material so long as I don’t financially support JK in any way, which I don’t. All the best parts of canon is either strolled right past or bad in the OG series. Love fics, love drarry, love wolfstar, hate Harry Potter.
I really agree with this, as I am the same way - an HP fic/fandom fan, not an HP fan. There was so much that Rowling either did poorly or didn’t do at all with the book series that fanfic writers have done super well since (or maybe they’ve just explored a really interesting idea for how the story could be different). There are also a ton of ways to show appreciation for the characters and world without directly supporting J.K., which is what I do (I cosplay, but never use official merch for example).
Something similar happened to me a few years ago - I don’t even remember how I discovered fanfiction, but I’m stuck since. I have read the books exactly once and have watched the movies only a couple times. But I have spent hours upon hours reading fanfic and that’s what made me be interested in HP again. I absolutely call myself an HP fan, but I lost contact to most of the original source material.
opened your channel to watch your other video essays because this one was so fire only to see that there are no others yet. hope youre working on solving this issue
Brilliant first essay! I was never into Drarry but was deep in the Wolfstar trenches as a teen back in the noughties, and although my connection to the HP franchise is pretty much severed now (I guess I'd be one of the 'burners') it's very good to see younger generations of the fandom in the 'fuck it' camp critically engaging and taking what value they can from the work while dissecting or abandoning the bad bits. Feels like an evolution of of Wolfstar fandom's reaction to a lot of the 'no homo' text JK shoved into books 6 and 7. Great job :)
It's still hard for me to make sense of the fact that the person who wrote the "from which witch or wizard did you steal this wand?"/"the wand chose me, I am a witch!" turned out... well, as she turned out. Yeah, there's also plenty of red flags... but it sure does seem that one of the main themes of the books is that one is *not* defined by the circumstances of one's birth. I suppose there's no law that says an author has to understand their own books. 🤷 First video essay, huh? Well, you have another subscriber. Good work.
Awesome video. I think a lot of the rhetoric surrounding how to deal with Harry Potter (and works made by problematic creators in general) has become a bit reductive. As a trans person myself, I find it more valuable and compassionate to actually investigate why and how people still engage with these works. You did an incredibly thoughtful job of that here, and acknowledge all of the nuance that exists for people still creating within the fandom. There is no one right answer here, and I think that's an important thing to bring into consideration.
This video has helped me to finally conclude that, no, I WON'T be guilted into leaving my home-fandom behind! You would think that as someone under the trans umbrella myself that I would understand right away that me still being part of the fandom doesn't mean I support Rowling's transphobia, but after being bombarded with "you're a bad person then/read another book" on Tumblr, I just felt so burnt out about it. I was just going to finish the last active HP fic I have and then just move over to MXTX's danmei full-time, but I'm SO raring to embrace 'Fuck it'! If the Cthulhu Mythos and the works of Charles Dickens can still be acceptable to enjoy to this day despite Lovecraft and Dickens being notoriously aggressive racists, I will not be shamed away from the fandom that taught me it was okay to be queer in the first place.
Definitely! You can still treasure the world and what the stories taught you about yourself, your interaction with others and your view of the world. I understand that many people decided that completely boycotting any related work is the way to go, but HP has had such a huge impact on me that I can’t leave it behind. I believe there’s a tangible difference between buying merch/ supporting her directly and staying at home in my Hogwarts sweater and reading comfort fanfics.
Tbh I think it's a kind of surprising take to claim Lovecraft isn't controversial in a similar way or doesn't receive a very, very high level of disparagement or "read another book" attitudes; I think that is extremely common in discussion of Lovecraft to the point of fleshed out viewpoints on cosmic horror as a genre being fundamentally bent towards upholding white supremacy. I also see strong pushback against using "Lovecraftian" as an adjective; many conversations about reclaiming cosmic horror very specifically focus on cutting Lovecraft himself out. Not interested in weighing in on that movement but like it very very much exists, especially with younger folks and especially online. It is a perennial discourse about Lovecraft and the refusal of some horror fans to engage critically with the source of the work they consume.
I am one of those who spent maybe two years after Rowling outed herself as a transphobe gradually shifting from "Give her the benefit of the doubt, she's just ignorant but may come around" to "She's a transphobe for sure, but death of the author, I just won't buy official stuff" to "Everything HP makes me uncomfortable now". I thankfully found The Worst Witch and have redesignated a lot of my HP-related stuff into Worst Witch stuff. It's not near as popular or well-known, but it predates HP and has so many similarities (witches and wizards [in their own schools], castle school with [unnamed] houses, flying broomsticks, stern and unforgiving potions teacher, female Draco Malfoy, weird and dangerous magic, invisibility cloak mention, a [tv series-only] founder named "Hermoine", etc. etc.). I feel better about holding on to important keepsakes now.
I really respect what you decided and were able to do by converting your HP content into Worst Witch content. For me, I made a lot of student and and adult characters in the Harry Potter setting of ranging ethnic backgrounds and queer identities, but as much as I stay away from consuming official HP content in preference of fan creations, the immutable fact that it’s original creator turned out to be a horrible, bigoted and h--c-st revisionist bigot will always irk me, so I decided to explore creating my own world based after the magic system and fantasy elements of Harry Potter to create my own hybrid setting and universe where I can repurpose these original characters and use them outside of Harry Potter along with the overarching stories and arcs I’ve written for them in the Hogwarts and Wizarding World setting. This way, at least, I can still privately enjoy creating and experiencing stories of magical children and teenagers investigating fantastical and supernatural mysteries using their abilities, creativity, and approaches based after their values and skill sets to solve situations and defeat big evils without having to host those stories in the Harry Potter universe.
@@j_fenrir Cassandra Claire's Draco trilogy was a huge huge fanfiction in the early fandom days. "leather pants Draco" became synonymous with they way he was portrayed in that fic, and it because a popular way to characterize him for a long time. think cliche bad but sad boy who needs love.
I'm an asexual/demisexual lesbian in the "eff it" camp. I'm a multishipper and I greatly appreciate seeing various queer interpretations of all the characters. I can't leave the fandom, but I refuse spend money on any Harry Potter products or JKR books. I will not support her. She has no power over us in fandom. She can't stop us from creating trans Harry or trans Draco or trans any other character. She can't stop us from changing the sexuality of characters. She can't stop us from saving bad characters from their evil ways. She can't stop us from keeping our favorite characters alive. She can't stop us from pairing anyone and everyone together. She can't stop us from writing Drarry, Snarry, Tomarry, Harrymort, Ronarry, Wolfstar, Jegulus, Sirius/Severus, James/Severus or stop the Marauder niche as a whole. JKR will die forgotten in her bigotry, but our words and stories will live on to touch the hearts of young queers for decades, perhaps centuries after our deaths.
Thus why I found a PDF version of the complete series, and turned it into a word document. I have so many fandoms, that while I may have headcanons for them, I also like the canon story just fine; eg. Fairy Tail, Naruto, Percy Jackson. But I also have others that I just can't stand the canon anymore as I've gotten older, but still love the idea of it and the fics and other fandom shit.
this is on my recommended home page! surprised it's only your first video. i starting reading on ao3 a decade ago now and loved the scholomance series - i did not know naomi novik was one of the creators!! omg
Amazing vid :) As a trans teen who grew up on Harry Potter I too find myself struggling to enjoy it the same way. But I will continue consuming fan creations and not give Joanne a dime
Lord of the Rings has always been that place of imagination for me, but it wasn't until I was deep in that lull waiting between HP books 3 and 4 that I discovered fandom for the first time. The LOTR fandom is a lot more diverse nowadays, but 20+ years ago it was definitely dominated by men a lot older than me. Not only did Harry Potter introduce me to a life long love of fandom, but a community full of people of all ages, gender, sexual orientation, and cultures. I honestly thank fandom for making me who I am, because I know my conservative family never would have. It broke my heart when JK Rowling went on her rant, but I stand by the fact that the HP fandom are some of the most wonderful people I know. I definitely say fuck it! I won't let her take away our community.
Fanfic has always been the Fuck-its, typically the older ones, the ones who like to use fanfic as a means of deconstruction. This is the camp I often find myself in, and often exploring what is wrong with the world has been a pivotal trend. For example, Harry’s abusive upbringing being tolerated by the people in charge. For me, what I’ve always wanted to dissect, were the issues with how female characters are portrayed in slash fanfiction. I’ve noticed it a lot in hp fanfiction recently, maybe because I’ve been reading a lot of them over the past two years. Still fantastic video essay! It’s interesting to discuss it, but I also feel like there could have been more, by reaching out to authors who were willing to discuss the topic with you. Still, regardless, great job!
this video was so good, especially for a first video essay. I am a trans man who was madly obsessed with harry potter as a kid. I wrote many fanfics and most of my creative writing for a long time was inspired by JKR's work. I have many tshirts I struggle to wear because they are harry potter related and don't want to be assumed to support jkr but also don't want to chuck out because that's wasteful. I haven't read the books in a few years now because it's just not something I can bring myself to do right now. and it sucks because for a long time Hogwarts was like a nice escape I could go to during hard times in my real life, but it's kinda hard to escape into a book written by someone who would prefer you stayed hidden in a cupboard under the stairs.
I have the same problem with a sweater of mine; it was a treasured birthday gift, still fits me quite well and is incredibly comfy, but I can’t wear it outside the house anymore…
This is a great first video essay and an interesting academic perspective to take. In the case of problematic artists, I wonder if those most affected by the artist's harm should reclaim and reappropriate the creation from the creator rather than being made to sever all ties to the work. That way, the work can culturally retain it's positive position while sanitizing it of the, in this case, fascistic, bigoted and uninquisitive undertones. Those whom it touched and equally tried to harm can reclaim and voice themselves through culturally canonizing their framing. Sorry if that was nonsense, but great work.
Went through this with joss whedon. Only recently was able to enjoy Buffy and angel again. Took nearly ten years to emotionally separate him from his art b/c of how intertwined my love for the characters and for him as the creator had become over time. I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. I really thought he was someone to look up to as a kid and it was heartbreaking to learn I was so wrong about him
Yesss love this! Im a fuck it fan and i still unashamedly read and write drarry fan fic. Fuck JK and all she stands for, draco and harry are mine now xx
I was talking to a friend about this recently, who was more of the 'burner' persuasion. I made the argument that I completely understood trans folks who wanted to find some catharsis in reclaiming HP, but that I felt that I, as a cis person, should be held to a stricter standard - which is why I have stopped engaging with Potter-related material at all. Since I'm not the one who is most affected by her bigotry, I don't feel it should be up to me to decide that my engagement with the fandom is harmless. I don't personally think my views (or indeed my nostalgia) should matter here.
Wow. I can’t believe that the very first Drarry fic was posted exactly one year before I was born. I suddenly feel a crushing expectation to live my life differently
Was Alexander Avila cosplay intentional? /Pos The video's awesome i love essays on fandom/queer culture, i love statistics and i love internet drama, this video combined all of that lol
it was not! i was actually wearing a graduation robe covered with trans pride pins on top of this getup until like two minutes before filming (to sort of give a “wizard robes” vibe) but i got too hot and last minute decided to take it off… and then totally ended up in alexander avila cosplay. didn’t realize until folks pointed it out in the comments but very flattered by the comparison, his channel rules
Irs not even that she is a problematic or terrible person, but she lambasts it to the worls and becae figurehead of a hatemovement, willingly. Ther are shocking many authors and artists whi are not good people, yet can keep that private. While i dont take shippingtoo serious, drarry actually would explore a lot and have conflict with ron, hermine and harry more showing his darker side too, and draco of course actually get a real good character arc to , yeah. Also garry is already so obsessed with draco and and woulld be a way to face his bias. And harrrys most developed relationship argumently that isnt familial that close, is with draco. Also in the cursed child harry and draco would up as health friend with draco being the reasonable person in the room. She made that canon. Yeah Draco and harry being very close friends at least, Yes he was that. Also draco was practically written to be a zuko.
THIS WAS YOUR FIRST VIDEO ESSAY??? I could NOT tell, this is incredible! very in-depth analysis and the topic is so so interesting as well (the effect on specific communities not just the fandom as a whole), and done so well. Thank you!
Honestly super surprised to see this was your first video essay! It was a really well-written and insightful video, and I enjoyed your sense of humour greatly. I'm excited to see where you take this channel if you choose to do more!
thank you so much for this!! i’m in the same boat as you regarding childhood obsession, down to thinking harry should have ended up as a teacher!! i was completely heartbroken in 2016 when trans people i followed on tumblr pointed out JKR liking terf tweets. i have often wished that i didn’t find out till later, because i was still definitely a kid when i found out, and i had just realised i was queer. your video is brilliant
YES 9:55 before I came out as bi and suffered from internalized homo/biphobia as a cis woman I felt comfortable writing mlm instead. It felt safer in my brain. Now I’m a proud certified girl-liker 💖💜💙 I heavily used mlm growing up as an outlet to explore my own sexuality and queerness
This is really good for your first video essay, keep up the good work. As a trans woman I do find your analysis of Harry Potter fanfic very interesting, though I can't say I've ever been especially involved in male slash fics. From my general fanfic reading though, I would suggest part of the waning of drarry is growing popularity of other ships, I feel like I see more Snarry than Drarry nowdays.
First of all, awesome video! Great delivery, and I loved the topic. I would say I fall in the camp of a "fuck-it" but, I'm not very bold about it. When the dam broke in 2020, I spent a long time trying to see if I could be a burner. I wasn't as active in the fandom as I used to be, but I still held the world very close to my heart. I realized after a while that not only could I not do it, but I felt that hp at that point, had grown much bigger than her anyway.
Absolutely agree. The world has long transcended the author and people have added so much fanon lore to both characters and world that I sometimes forget what is official canon and what has been accepted as such for years.
@@excessivelyfangirlingbookw3339 So true! The fandom is it's own organism, and it developed it's own existence outside of the source material a long time ago.
I think another thing to consider for fic decline is that a lot of Burners took to harassing those in the fandom to the point many quit. There was and still are a lot of people who think if you don’t view HP with the same level of disgust and vitriol they do that you are horrible person yourself no matter how you personally feel. I find it such an interesting albeit frustrating phenomenon as someone who does not agree with the author yet does enjoy the franchise, fandom, and acknowledges studies that show the books have made people more receptive to social equality and democratic viewpoints. I’m thankful for how much good the fandom has done, how many people it has allowed to express themselves, and I hope that continues.
just messaged my gf with a link to your video (she'd already seen it, and subscribed.) So much of what you say here rings so true and correct to me. I was in the trenches of hp fandom for a long time, but absolutely dropped off engaging after 2020 happened and the *really* bad stuff came out. It honestly just hurt too much. I have a sort of micro tumblr/discord community, called sortinghatchats, where we get a little more nuanced and interesting with the hogwarts houses, and I changed up all my terminology to distance it from HP and signal my disapproval with JKR's comments. But when I finally felt okay enough to dive into writing "fuck-it" fic - boy did it feel good, and cathartic, and healing, and necessary. Please do continue creating content. This is good stuff, and I'll be here watching.
I was really surprised to see this on my homepage but I'm glad I clicked and I'm astounded this is your first video. The quality, both content and prodction, is very impressive. Definitely subscribing to see what's next!
One of my favourite types of fic to read is the ones where Hogwarts, magical school of magic, OBVIOUSLY offers trans-affirming healthcare to the kids that need it! Makes me smile every time :)
When you said "Harry Potter is the main character of the Harry Potter series" and a Harry popped up on the screen that didn't at ALL look like most of the fanart I see, I had to remember that fandom has completely recreated these people and that they did, in fact, exist as something else at some point. So I guess that serves as a commentary on a lot of this lol.
Screaming at the In Other Lands By Sarah Rees Brennan mention! It's also one of my favorite books, and I never hear other people bring it up. That screaming aside, excellent video! Can’t wait to see your future projects!
I love this video essay so much. I can tell it comes from a place of respect and love for fandom. So many videos dissecting HP fandom come from people who were never in it and could never understand what a welcoming, diverse place it was and is when it’s at its best. Pointing out its problems and struggles is always worthwhile but so is celebrating when we can come together to make things that transcend the original works, not just in storyline, but in diverse storytelling and representation. Fanfiction has helped me come to terms with my own identity and made me so much more empathetic to struggles I don’t personally experience. It has even been a jumping off point for political development. All this to say, thank you for the effort that went into this essay, and I hope to see more from you. Best!
You should probably include the induction of the Inkstained Fingers archive in this data. Import began in 2015 and the original archive closed in 2018. That also covers your little uptick spike in 2015-2016 in the gradual decline of interest in Drarry.
I'm so glad I found this video. I haven't been into Drarry in decades. It's great to learn more about the Drarry fandom and that some of it is still going. I like seeing fans reclaiming HP in spite of the Terf who must not be named lol I can't wait to see what else you'll make
The way you pronounce words and speak is LOVELY you speak in such a satisfying way. I think it's the "k" sounds that you pronounce in a "round" and hollow way? I could listen to your yapping forever
honestly, i think i would be very forgiving of dumbledor not having a noteworthy husband and or boyfriend at least in contextual clues later on in the series or even never, if harry himself was aromantic. sure not all aros are unlikely to notice or pick up on people being in love, some if not many are absolutely tickled by the idea of shipping people and people falling in love, but some are especially as kids some think it's an exaggeration or an inside joke or obligation. that said i don't know if it would fit harrys character, i could never get through the books no matter how hard i tried or wanted to due to adhd and preferring xenofiction. that said, i remember thinking mcgonagall and the future telling teacher had some SERIOUS bitter ex energy.
As a queer kid i feel very thankful i didnt care that much about harry potter and was instead extremely invested in percy jackson. Its not perfect and neither is the author but at least i dont have to see my childhood be destroyed by someone who openly detests my existence extremely loudly
I feel like there's a middle ground between saying that it was and has always contained bad ideology, and f it. Maybe we shouldn't be buying new content first hand and talking about the bad things! But also like do what you want with fanworks. as long as you dont send her money i dont care
Definitely in the eff it category, I read the series 12 times as a kid, knocking out the first book in one sitting a couple times. I could escape into a world where I had power and opportunity, where a group of different people “weirdos” could all accept each other. I was an undiagnosed queer adhd-having chaos gremlin with a genius level iq at 9. I literally had one friend in elementary school and we became friends because she was the new kid from Arizona and the school bully was scared of her and I was nice (and desperate) and she was nice.
27:28 Fun fact, there is a crack fic series on AO3 that kinda follows a similar premise? Umbridge finds the series in the Room of Requirement one day and tries to use them to get Harry and his contingent expelled/out of her way - hilarity ensues. It’s called Dramatic Reading and was started by White_Squirrel (no pairings btw).
This video is so well done!! It has left a bad taste in my mouth to engage with Harry Potter related media over the last few years because of JKR's transphobia. I don't like or participate in online discourse but was definitely passively in the "burner" camp for a while, despite the fact that I loved the books into my adulthood - or maybe because of that? I felt so hurt by her transphobia that it was in some ways easier to just abandon HP as a whole vs trying to Death of the Author it or have nuance with the issue - that felt too complicated for me for a while. I still don't really engage with Harry Potter stuff these days, but I like the idea that fans can reclaim the characters/world. Good work on this video!!!
Loved this, I am honestly tired of "burner" videos, they simply refuse to acknowledge the importance of Harry Potter in the identity formation of a large chunk of two generations of queer people.
i was an adult when i read Harry Potter, but i thought believed hoped that the story would continue to address the issues of inequality broached, but then they put out a game where you quash a goblin rebellion?? 😦😡
Im definitely un the f it category as a nonbinary lesbian. I refuse to support jkr, but the fandom generally is lovely and i will gladly engage in it. Its really sad to see drarry fic being written less, but i think maurauders has been picked up by the fandom in its place. Jkr has written a lot less on the maurauders and i think that makes it much more comfortable for queer people to engage in (they can also be more creative with it!), which i completely understand. This was a super great video, i adore seeing queer people making retrospectives on hp because theres a lot of things to talk about. It is a deeply flawed series, but was also such a safe space for a lot of kids. Its worth discussing what makes it have that magic despite the flaws.
For me, on an emotional level, interacting with the fandom/fanfiction feels identically frustrating to interacting with some sects of Christianity. This has kept me from becoming a "practicing fan" even while the books were still being written (far before jk had her public downfall). Like people attribute anything they think is good (community, self discovery, moral development etc.) to the book and cut out, ignore or straight up change anything they disagree with so they feel justified in still doing the thing (fandom or that specific sect of religion). Like how many passages of "women should not be allowed to speak in church" and "Campaigning against s l a v e ry is bad actually" do we have to excise out before we admit that the good stuff was in you all along and the book just isn't that good? How rotten does a foundation have to be before we decide not to build a house on it? How much active, tangible harm does a leader have to cause before we say "oops, maybe I won't support that anymore :-/"
while i agree with you i find this is not the side of fanfiction that is being talked about in the video. Most of us on the queer side already knew she was dodgy before the big blow up because while subtle, she had done and said shit way before that. we'd already been rewriting her work to challenge the weird shit like the werewolves and then 2020 was like the gasoline on the flames. like it was said in the video it was very much fuck it theyre all trans/queer now, and i think its become a really good space for that community to explore who they are but also the world at large and what change really is
Just got to the bit where you discuss not being able to know the fandom’s sentiments in 2020, but only now, about 4 years later. I am someone who read Drarry extremely often (like hundred of thousands of words a week, lol) from ~2016 through ~2022. I do still go back and read more occasionally, but I prefer long fics, and I’ve read most of the good ones on AO3 by now. So I do have some knowledge about what happened at the time, but I can only give my own experience. This would be a lot more difficult to search for and find statistical significance in, but I mostly saw the TERF rhetoric and Rowling in general discussed in author’s notes on AO3 at the time. There seemed to be a couple different general approaches on the AO3 authors’ parts - there were a number of authors that orphaned their Drarry works, some that deleted them all together, some that finished any WIPs but stopped after that, and quite a few that put a disclaimer in their author’s notes saying that either they disavowed Rowling’s words/beliefs but were separating the art from the artist and continuing on (the author contingent of the “fuck-its” as mentioned in the video) or that they could no longer stomach being involved in anything HP and would no longer be writing any new fics in the fandom or even finishing current WIPs. There were extremely few authors that did not address the issues at all.
yeah, considering that particular fandom was queer it couldn't really go unaddressed because the people who wrote and consumed this content believed in equality, i do wonder whether the same effect was reflected on heterosexual spaces like dramione
I read a drarry fic once were they talk alot about classism and how the pure blood elitist live/d and it went more into the house elves as a race. Like im sorry i thought i was reading a drarry fic not a book that would it have been written in the 19th century be now a classic. I sadly forgot the name but it was so amazingly written and jusg because the author has limited braincells we as a fandom should'nt be stopped from writing these. Got recently really into dc (well more batman tbh) and what the fanfic authors do there a lot is write in the tags that they cherry picked canon, because of its inconsitencies and at times weird stories... love that.
Something I will say is while I find a lot of this silly. It is incredibly powerful to take the work of someone so hateful and to reappropriate it for the people who need it. After Daniel Radcliffe’s interview we can also keep in mind that despite JK herself being so mean spirited there are far more people attached to these projects that wish to see the LGBT+ community succeed and find happiness. JK may have the “rights” to Harry Potter but that doesn’t mean she has the right way for Harry Potter. That’s just me though.
No, no. We definitely know canon Draco is not an angel. He deserved more than Snape, and I'm not changing my mind on this one, cause JK talks about us “romanticizing” Draco, but she romanticized an adult who bullied his students, literal children, to the point one of them had him as his biggest fear. 😍 But WE are the delulu ones. Yeah. Sarcasm and irony aside, the reason I decided to stay in the fandom, is because I think about all the young people who get their hands in the books and then look for a safe space where they can feel comfortable and can explore themselves as people; I don't want them to feel alone, I want them to be safe, and if I have to throw hands to defend them, I'll do it. (Also, HP is a huge part of what kept me alive back in HS, but I'm not trauma dumping in here LMAO).
I think a lot these days about how, even if JKR didn't originally come up with the concept of a Horcrux, the way that many fanfic authors have treated it as semi-metaphorical for "cutting off" a part of oneself that has the capacity to feel compassion and other human qualities deemed "weak", it can certainly carry itself over into real life given how ghoulishly right-wing reactionaries abjectify the most marginalized people in our societies, JKR included
I do think you’ve also got to be careful with this kind of statistical comparison, because it could also just be that there’s more variety in other fandoms, or new fandoms on AO3 that are now competing with HP, rather than a simple decline in HP itself. Also while it is an unusually enduring fandom, many people will move on to other interests/fandoms eventually, even if they come back to this from time to time
Commenting to boost the algorithm because a quality first video essay with a proper transcript and bibliography by a queer creator must be seen! Also I shared this on my Tumblr so just to check I'm referring to you in my post correctly, your pronouns are he/him right? Subbed and looking forward to more!
The situation with the Harry Potter fandom to me reminds me of death of the author. JK Rowling can try and ruin her own creation postmortem, but it's already too late. Readers have already gone out and interpreted the story in their own way that is special to them. They saw good in it. Her intention is not the true meaning of the story, it's what the readers interpreted from it that counts. And if the readers refuse to accept the epilogue and instead search for readings beyond that, perhaps the story has grown so big that it's now beyond her control entirely. Whether you're a denialist or a fuck-it regardless. And taking that power away from her is satisfying because we know that no matter how much she tries to change stuff after, she's not that important anymore and it's no longer within her control to change. She's getting zero monetary support from people reading fan fiction on A03, so boycotting her and reading Drarry aren't mutually exclusive, which is amazing in itself.
Dude the decline of new Drarry fanfics on ao3 and the steady climb of Dramione is killing me 😭 I don’t want us to be overtaken by them. We deserve that first place. (Sure I haven’t written any of the fanfics but that’s irrelevant)
Does anyone remember when JK tried to convince everyone that Draco and Harry are siblings and now it’s said you can’t ship them because it’s incest? Am I tripping or was that a real thing that happened?
This was a really fun and interesting video. I’ve been thinking recently about how I just straight up forget that Drarry and wolf star fandom is technically Harry Potter fandom because it feels so disconnected, so this was so interesting
You could be a statistician! Really great work :] some of the people I know who left the fandom are just tired and wanted to bow out with no fuss. Tired of JKR's constant attacks, and tired of the burn it all down crew too. So they just... left.
A way to think of it is that reading fanfiction does not support jk in any way other than word of mouth. It gives her no money, no recognition of skill or work, and most importantly, no validation as most fanfiction in OUR fandom goes against all she has said and believes. It is OUR fandom, no matter what u write or read about and we cant let JK stop us from enjoying it. Just remember not to buy anything from official sites or to follow any official posts as this boosts her image and income. She has already earned millions from this half assed series she wrote decades ago. Let's not give her any cent more, yeah?
I sort of agree but as council of geeks said, word of mouth is the most powerful way to make sure more people end up buying the products. I'm too old to have any sort of emotional attachment to HP universe, I found myself in late 90s as a very young kid, but I recognize HP for what it is.
@twistedelegance_ I suppose so, but if that was the case, surely it can work the other way, yes? Word of mouth to not buy official stuff should work just as well if repeated the same or even more times. 😊
As I’ve been slowly joining a larger Harry Potter fanfic project, I’ve had a weird tension with the text. The people involved have taken many steps all over to reclaim the work (even reformatting the understanding of magic in the world as to overwrite some of JK’s weird decisions with her ramblings on the noneuropean schools), and they even ended up with multiple queer relationships and casual crossdressing before the story reached year four, and yet from my own experience there’s this reluctance to even considering a trans character let alone narrative. I understand it may not be malicious and more just wanting to avoid drama and conflict given the multi-writer production, but at the same time this silence is because of an endorsement. It might be that as I do more for the work and become more trustworthy the idea of even a character I write being trans wont be so ‘controversial’, but it sucks
I was never into Harry Potter (read the first two books when I was a preteen, decided they weren't my thing) and I've been uncomfortable with how prominent the fandom is even after JKR went mask off with her bigotry. I try not to judge, so I'll keep my mind open for this video as well
It REALLY doesn't make sense for Harry to become an Auror. That's his childhood pick because McGonagall made him pick his future career on the spot as a literal child and he blanked on doing anything else. But after beating Voldy, Harry would likely want a quiet life. Not to mention, if one dark wizard gets one lucky shot on Harry, even one that incapacitates him, *boom*. Evil wizard is now master of the Elder Wand. I personally would have liked to see Harry and Ginny switch careers. Ginny would make a great Auror, it makes incredible sense for Harry to play professional Quidditch, and then maybe in his 30s or 40s he could teach at Hogwarts.
My lukewarm defence here, with Harry becoming a cop is that this is a gripe that only Americans seem to have. Harry Potter is an English creation and the relationship we have with police just simply isn’t the same. There are of course problems, but American fans seem to get particularly angry with this point because they don’t differentiate between different cultures. Nobody in the uk has to fear being pulled over by a cop Good video regardless, I subscribed
I wouldn't say nobody has to fear mistreatment from the police here. (The murder of Sarah Everard was only 3 years ago and theres been evidence of racism in police searches for years) I agree that the relationship most people have with the police is very different from America though, especially when the books were written. Personally I think him becoming a teacher would have been a better end to his arc, him teaching dumledores army seemed to be hunting at that, but him being a cop definitely doesn't carry as much stigma here as it does in America.
I got a transphobic ad (for "what is a woman?,"" that stupid so called "Investigative documentary") on this video. I swear those guys target queer content because holy shit have I seen ads for that dumpster fire of a movie on A LOT of videos concerning the queer community. IDK why RUclips even allows them to be an advertiser on their site tbh
Ugh, that’s so annoying. I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t even get the money for this video-it got demonized because of the music. I’ll poke around in my adsense settings and see if I can stop that from happening again. Thanks for giving me a head’s up!
I think the series should have ended with Harry as a defense against the dark arts teacher, it just makes so much more sense for his character
Pretty sure the epilogue doesn’t even say who it is however many years later 😂 The copaganda is crazy
JK legit seems like the type to go, "But since Voldemort was defeated, there were no more dark arts to defend against!"
Seriously!! Harry literally hated the Ministry of Magic. It would be so much more narratively satisfying too, with the whole "there's a new defense against the dark arts teacher every year because Voldemort cursed it". Also creating Dumbledores Army showed he was clearly passionate about it and would've been a great teacher too, sigh 😔.
This!!! It makes sense on every level. I just can’t see Harry working for the ministry. He always said Hogwarts is his home. Harry being the one to finally fill the DADA position would be the perfect narrative conclusion to how they were never able to find a permanent teacher. It fits perfectly into the parallels between Harry and Voldemort since it was the position that Tom Riddle always wanted. And there really is no one better to teach the subject than Harry. He even taught it to his friends for a whole year!! I can’t believe all that setup was there and then she decided to have him work for the government instead.
He litterally was the happiest in the books when he was teaching his fellow students he loves to lead and teach and he loves to learn about magic, my headcannon is that they offered him an auror position but her turned it down and asked to be a teacher at hogwarts and his opening is telling his students he went toe to toe with Voldemort even as a baby
I also think that contributing to the decline of Drarry fanfiction is the growth of the Maurauders fandom and therefore the growth of Jegulus (James Potter/Regulus Black), a ship that is paralleled in a way to Drarry.
The ethos of the Mauraders fandom in general seems to be in the “fuck it” category as seen in this video. As far as Jegulus goes, it’s also very popular to depict Regulus as a trans man as an extra screw you to Rowling.
@@arcticg7644 i love that honestly
the actual parallel would be james/snape tho? james and regulus never even interacted. meanwhile james and draco were pureblood bullies who looked down on snape and harry who came from muggle households
Draco Malfoy in Philospher’s Stone: “Imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”
James Potter in Deathly Hallows: “Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”
Both also start their bullying on their first trainride to Hogwarts. The text literally directly compares james to draco.
@@viking-astronaut yeah good point. Interestingly James/Regulus is a lot more popular than James/Snape (15k vrs 1.2k fics on Ao3 rn) idk why maybe some ppl just don't like Snape lol
I was actually thinking about this, especially because the marauders fandom inherently exists in a world which ignores canon.
And it’s also very widely agreed that it’s queer, like it’s hard to find heterosexual marauders fanfic in my experience.
Good news from a stats teacher - constantly hedging your claims and pointing out they're uncertain is like, the main thing we want you to take away from that class.
My new favorite type of RUclips video is queer folks dissecting Harry Potter and the culture around it. For once the algorithm has brought me what I wanted!
Same. Its such an oddly specific type of video i enjoy now
Have any more recommendations of similar vids?
SAME.
Omg Julian!
@@cthulhutheendless1587 if you like in-depth analysis, I recommend Lily Simpson's "A Brief Look at Harry Potter" (alternate title: Harry Potter and the Intimidating Timestamp). Do heed her warning about not necessarily trying to watch the whole thing at once, use the chapters, etc., but if you like long-form content, you are in for an absolute feast!
Hoots also has one, as does Shaun, though idk if he's queer or just a vocal ally.
Every year I have a little Drarry Summer where I go reread all my old favorite fics and dive into the tag for new ones. My favorite genre is post-series Harry and Draco meeting again as adults (after a lot of personal growth and reflection) to find that the other has a lot of hidden depths to them, sparking a slow-burn romance against a sprawling backdrop that really fleshes out the wizarding world.
I also do this! You might like “Parallax” by nevillenobottom on Ao3. It takes place after the war; Harry is an elementary school teacher and teaches Draco’s son. (It’s enemies to lovers.) I also like “We Can Be Pirates” by cowboilikeme (Ao3) and “My Safest Sound” by ElenandTara (Ao3), but these take place while they are still teenagers.
@@shoe3251 im reading my safest sound right now!! its rly interesting with how it writes harrys emotional turmoil in 5th yr
Turn by saras girl 😔
@@cal6137 OH MY GOD DONT REMIND ME THE FEELINGS THAT FIC INSITES IN ME I WANT THE WHOLE BOOK TATTOOED ON MY CHEST I LOVE IT LOVE ITTT I SAY
I do this as well! I'm not a huge fan of drarry fics set during the course of the books, but I LOVE post-series where both of them have been allowed to grow and mature and be able to see each other beyond school rivals/bully
Great essay, but arguably more impressive for a first video: great accessibility! I'm so used to having to rely on auto-generated captions for my auditory processing issues and you actually have a transcript and closed captioning. You have a dedicated fan now
I use captions on every video I watch, so they are super important to me!
Wth this is your first video??? That realisation gave me whiplash rofl
You did amazing. Your voice is rly nice to listen to as well!
Gay fanfiction was so important to me a closeted lil kid in the 2000s. I learned so much. Lmao.
Drarry was my intro, I loved them so dearly, but now I’m all about Remus/Sirius.
Same! I wasn’t even able to admit in my own head that I was queer until I found slashfiction. I had buried it so deep that I needed those stories to help me shift all the dirt. I hadn’t realized that queer love could be so normal and beautiful and compelling and GOOD until I saw it written out. It had always been made to seem so alien and unnatural that I couldn’t find myself in the things I’d heard. But I could find myself in the stories that other people had lovingly crafted and that made all the difference.
@@GentlethemJoey oh my god, I knew I wasn't the only one :O
Same lol
Absolutely devastated to click on your page to see this is your only video. Hope to see more from you!!
Same here
same !! i subscribed 👀
Same here, essay so good I forgot I was watching a small channel AHHA
I had the exact same experience
One thing I particularly enjoy about the HP fandom is how the "fuck-its" created our own magical world with the Marauders as soon as she came out as a transphobe. Like fuck it. She's tainted her own work, but she hasn't tainted ours. And the Marauders and their queer magical universe are ours, now.
That's why I think Drarry fandom is less popular nowadays. To keep your metaphor; we kept our sandbox, but put entirely new sand in it.
I sincerely wonder how many Drarry authors are now Jegulus authors. It has the same enemies to lovers vibes, and the same hero-loved-by-everyone vs the-misunderstood-kid-from-a-bigoted-family characters. 🤔
I need some recs for “classic”, novel length Jegulus. My love of Drarry fic is rooted in the fact that it improves on an existing premise that could have been so reflective and interesting if the author was only, y’know, not terrible. Haha. I’ve dipped my toes into Marauders fic but I haven’t seen anything light a candle to fics like TURN or The Man Who Lived. I’m sure I’m just not entrenched enough though!
@@rikkirikki4892 I'm sincerely not the one who can suggest you any Jegulus fanfics. I'm more of a Wolfstar girlie lol. But the novel-length one I know people really really love is "Choices" by Messermoon on AO3 🤷🏻♀️
I'm still with the Drarry side of things, but honestly at this point these two might as well be my OCs
Honestly, I've never been able to get into Marauder's. It's not just the "vibes" I like; I really like the characters. There's something about Drarry that says "take Rowling's main character and have him deconstruct her entire mythos and conceptions and also fall in love with the guy she accidentally wrote as very gay" that really gets me lol
@@jokerdanny9255 Okay. Have a good day
Honestly, reclaiming the characters for ourselves, disassociating JK from "her" characters and turning them into everything she hates, is the best revenge possible for how she has ruined so many people's childhoods.
Oh yeah, you’re totally sticking it to her. Not like gender bending characters wasn’t already a thing.
Trust me, it isn't. For as long as you're still talking about harry potter and consuming the media, you're still supporting her. It doesn't matter if you don't see it that way, she does.
Nah she’s already rich you can keep buying the stuff just make trans Harry Potter ocs
@@Kaminoboi No, please do not keep buying harry potter stuff. She has EXPLICITLY said that she sees people buying her stuff as an agreement with her views.
@@amazingspiderlad Doesn't she also donate some of her money to transphobic organizations?
The role playing warrior cats online was such a severe callout help 😭😭😭😭
any time in my adult life someone mentions warrior cats my vision whites out and my ears ring and suddenly im squirrelhands or whatever and im running thru the forest chasing rabbits and stuff
I was expecting that sentence to end with something about, like, being on the playground... aka where *I* role played warrior cats in elementary school 😂
It’s a better fandom than Harry Potter
@@vlad5042lmfaoooo, yeah, this
i felt called out because i still rp warrior cats. i'm in my mid 20s btw
I still find it hilarious that JKR is legitimately ignoring the moral messages of her own work that teaches children to not be a bigot.
Right wing people tend to be like that. They think they are super good people because they are not openly racist or in her case, feminist, when theres a far larger list of people who are discriminated and under represented in media
It doesn’t, it’s peak neoliberal lol
Drarry fans are sooo detached from the epilogue that I remember reading Drarry EWE before finishing the last book (I was at my peak obsession with the ship). I still get amazed with the author (and lots of fans) defending Snape, a grown man abuser, as a hero (????), while Draco, a mean KID, clearly is forever doomed 😮
literally wild that snape gets a redemption but not a literal child forced into a death cult (willing or not) after his dad goes to prison lmao
SO TRUE
Yeah... No matter what you think of Draco, no one can deny Snape is far worst. Draco had a real moral dilemma. Snape switched side because of Lily, but nothing indicates that he thinks his past actions were wrong. And he abused kids for decades. Can you imagine how toxic you must be to be one of your student's boggart?
I read the title as Drake vs JK Rowling and didn't even question it
I can totally see Luna as being Ace.
I always write her as autistic and ace because she was my comfort space as a kid who was slowly realising I was autistic and ace.
@@deadphoenixrising happy you figured yourself out young. My own ASD and Ace journey started much later. Honestly you shouldn’t have to be between 40-50 like me to have yourself figured out.
I love ace Luna, but I love her even more as poly. I would love to see an ace but polyromantic Luna fic, but I haven't found one so far
harry growing up to be a cop is CRAZY
like aint you tired?
I love that Fangirl is just sitting in the background of a video on Drarry.
*Snowbaz enters the chat*
This is a fantastic little video from a criminally small channel, subbed for the algorithm EDIT: THIS IS YOUR FIRST ESSAY???? DUDE
I feel that a large part of the HP fandom have basically said Fuck It - JKR taught all of us to stand against tyranny, bigotry, bullying etc. we learned to stand up for those weaker than ourselves, to be true to what is right even if it meant going against friends. Being accepting of those marginalised and penalised for things beyond their control. As such, we have taken HP and are guarding it, using what we were taught against the very person who taught us. We know better and are better! We do better! We are inclusive and supportive of all people regardless of gender identity, sexuality or race.
I cannot and will not hate a work that teaches us these valuable things but I cannot and will not be supportive of the author who clearly failed to learn the lessons her work taught so many of us.
@@SiriuslyPotty not reading all that, sorry you have transphobic brainrot
@@SiriuslyPottythe whole thing is a bit silly to me. People act like they’re getting this one up, but it’s pretty much lateral moves.
@@SiriuslyPotty 🤔🧐🤦🏻♂️.
The person you're replying to said "a large part," not "the large part"
They made no claim to majority or even plurality.
They spoke of holding onto the value of the works & the community even in the face of the author's continuing venom.
You whined about cancel culture...
But *Rowling* is the one who got herself shunned by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and most of the cast of her own films.
She's trumpeting fascists like Matt Walsh and Posey Parker. Maybe you're marching to their tune, in which case there's not much to say; the face eating leopards will eat your face too sooner or later.
But maybe you're willing to check your assumptions, set aside your certainties. If so, there's plenty of videos that will connect the dots for you. And over time, JKR seems committed to being more & more direct about fearmongering & fantasies of power.
This comment made me tear up. Kudos. She did teach us the best fucking principles, even if she doesn’t live by them herself.
Literally crying tho
@@wasserperson 💕💕💕💕 thank you
Some very valid points made, but as someone in the UK I would urge people to look into the campaigning and financial backing Rowling does for transphobic causes in the UK, often using the continued popularity of her work as political currency.
How much fanfic contributes or is taken into account in her dealings is up for debate, but Rowling herself has made public claims that every fan of her work supports her beliefs, and that some are just quiet about their support because they fear the wrath of the trans mafia.
Though it's not easy to have these discussions about someone expressing problematic and harmful views, I would say the issue is a whole lot more fraught when you realise she's not just expressing views, she's genuinely influencing UK politics towards transphobia. Only recently she was a massive part in efforts to oppose progressive reforms to Scottish law, and she's literally friends with a former UK Prime Minister. She's got genuine power and influence over here, often fuelled by her perceived cultural power.
What progressive reforms to Scottish law?
@@tgiacin435 a bill designed to streamline the process for trans people to have their gender legally recognised. The bill originally passed in Scotland but was blocked by UK parliament in 2022. Scotland amended the bill a little and got it passed again recently, this time without UK parliament blocking it, but it was a very close thing, with J.K Rowling being a very visible, vocal and active part of campaigns calling on UK parliament to intercede again.
And you have to remember she literally has personal relationships with UK politicians and throws a lot of money behind anti-trans campaigns and lobbyist groups, so her actions were a pretty significant part of the whole thing.
@@katharineeavan9705 and how do you streamline the process?
This is vital information to know. It’s something that any fanfic writers and enjoyers in HP related queer fanfiction stories such as myself have to take note of if Rowling has found a way to potentially weaponize the existence of those same queer fanfiction works that blatantly go against everything she believes in (politically) to give herself real political influence.
As much as I enjoy reading the trans HP works created by trans and genderqueer authors and creatives, this concerns me greatly. I thought it was bad enough that she engaged in H--c-st revisionism just to push her transphobic agenda, but for some reason it never truly dawned on me that someone as terrible as her still has real power in the world of politics, where trans rights are still threatened by the hateful and bigoted.
If I’m going to be honest, the only reason why I started to doubt her as a real threat given everything else going on right now (🍉) is because when I heard about her family cutting ties with her, I thought that would’ve impacted her as a person and caused her to stop spewing transphobia. At least for a little while. In hindsight, this was incredibly dumb with me and I have to be more vigilant about the political activities of creators like her in the future.
Now i want you to touch on the marauders fandom because there is a lot. It really is amazing how a fandom could create so much on characters barely mentioned by Rowling.
I love the marauders fanon so much. I’m always amazed if I read two works by different authors with completely different focus and writing styles and suddenly there’s a casual name drop or mannerism or lore tidbit that both have in common. And then 5 fics later, it appears again.
It’s incredible how many „facts“ about certain characters have spread over the years of content creation and now people just accept them as true and fitting.
@excessivelyfangirlingbookw3339 Definitely! A lot of facts have been commonly used now in fanon, which is almost like an author's base for fanfiction (sometimes) and it's really nice to see a common ground in fanon because of how much the little things have spread throughout the fandom. This fandom is truly a remarkable one and one of the most complex ones I've experienced, speaking that most of the things the fandom believes in is a majority of collectively agreed stuff rather than canon.
For me I don’t like the OG series. Loved it as a child (especially the movies) but reread them a little later in life (before JK came out as a terf) and absolutely hated them. Despite this I have always viewed the series as having a lot of potential, especially after the canon timeline. The canon has frustrated me for years but I didn’t get into fanficton in general until last year and drarry fics earlier this year. I haven’t viewed myself as a Potter fan for like 10 years but I am now a HP fic fan, for me these are very different. Personally I don’t see an issue with liking the material so long as I don’t financially support JK in any way, which I don’t. All the best parts of canon is either strolled right past or bad in the OG series. Love fics, love drarry, love wolfstar, hate Harry Potter.
I really agree with this, as I am the same way - an HP fic/fandom fan, not an HP fan. There was so much that Rowling either did poorly or didn’t do at all with the book series that fanfic writers have done super well since (or maybe they’ve just explored a really interesting idea for how the story could be different). There are also a ton of ways to show appreciation for the characters and world without directly supporting J.K., which is what I do (I cosplay, but never use official merch for example).
Something similar happened to me a few years ago - I don’t even remember how I discovered fanfiction, but I’m stuck since. I have read the books exactly once and have watched the movies only a couple times. But I have spent hours upon hours reading fanfic and that’s what made me be interested in HP again.
I absolutely call myself an HP fan, but I lost contact to most of the original source material.
opened your channel to watch your other video essays because this one was so fire only to see that there are no others yet. hope youre working on solving this issue
I sure am!
@@elievileye good im waiting with my popcorn and critical thinking hat on
Brilliant first essay! I was never into Drarry but was deep in the Wolfstar trenches as a teen back in the noughties, and although my connection to the HP franchise is pretty much severed now (I guess I'd be one of the 'burners') it's very good to see younger generations of the fandom in the 'fuck it' camp critically engaging and taking what value they can from the work while dissecting or abandoning the bad bits. Feels like an evolution of of Wolfstar fandom's reaction to a lot of the 'no homo' text JK shoved into books 6 and 7. Great job :)
It's still hard for me to make sense of the fact that the person who wrote the "from which witch or wizard did you steal this wand?"/"the wand chose me, I am a witch!" turned out... well, as she turned out. Yeah, there's also plenty of red flags... but it sure does seem that one of the main themes of the books is that one is *not* defined by the circumstances of one's birth.
I suppose there's no law that says an author has to understand their own books. 🤷
First video essay, huh? Well, you have another subscriber. Good work.
Awesome video. I think a lot of the rhetoric surrounding how to deal with Harry Potter (and works made by problematic creators in general) has become a bit reductive. As a trans person myself, I find it more valuable and compassionate to actually investigate why and how people still engage with these works. You did an incredibly thoughtful job of that here, and acknowledge all of the nuance that exists for people still creating within the fandom. There is no one right answer here, and I think that's an important thing to bring into consideration.
This video has helped me to finally conclude that, no, I WON'T be guilted into leaving my home-fandom behind! You would think that as someone under the trans umbrella myself that I would understand right away that me still being part of the fandom doesn't mean I support Rowling's transphobia, but after being bombarded with "you're a bad person then/read another book" on Tumblr, I just felt so burnt out about it. I was just going to finish the last active HP fic I have and then just move over to MXTX's danmei full-time, but I'm SO raring to embrace 'Fuck it'! If the Cthulhu Mythos and the works of Charles Dickens can still be acceptable to enjoy to this day despite Lovecraft and Dickens being notoriously aggressive racists, I will not be shamed away from the fandom that taught me it was okay to be queer in the first place.
hell yeah!!!!!!
Lovecraft and Dickens are dead. They can’t use profits from people enjoying their work to fund hate groups like JKR does.
Definitely! You can still treasure the world and what the stories taught you about yourself, your interaction with others and your view of the world. I understand that many people decided that completely boycotting any related work is the way to go, but HP has had such a huge impact on me that I can’t leave it behind. I believe there’s a tangible difference between buying merch/ supporting her directly and staying at home in my Hogwarts sweater and reading comfort fanfics.
Tbh I think it's a kind of surprising take to claim Lovecraft isn't controversial in a similar way or doesn't receive a very, very high level of disparagement or "read another book" attitudes; I think that is extremely common in discussion of Lovecraft to the point of fleshed out viewpoints on cosmic horror as a genre being fundamentally bent towards upholding white supremacy. I also see strong pushback against using "Lovecraftian" as an adjective; many conversations about reclaiming cosmic horror very specifically focus on cutting Lovecraft himself out. Not interested in weighing in on that movement but like it very very much exists, especially with younger folks and especially online. It is a perennial discourse about Lovecraft and the refusal of some horror fans to engage critically with the source of the work they consume.
I am one of those who spent maybe two years after Rowling outed herself as a transphobe gradually shifting from "Give her the benefit of the doubt, she's just ignorant but may come around" to "She's a transphobe for sure, but death of the author, I just won't buy official stuff" to "Everything HP makes me uncomfortable now". I thankfully found The Worst Witch and have redesignated a lot of my HP-related stuff into Worst Witch stuff. It's not near as popular or well-known, but it predates HP and has so many similarities (witches and wizards [in their own schools], castle school with [unnamed] houses, flying broomsticks, stern and unforgiving potions teacher, female Draco Malfoy, weird and dangerous magic, invisibility cloak mention, a [tv series-only] founder named "Hermoine", etc. etc.). I feel better about holding on to important keepsakes now.
I really respect what you decided and were able to do by converting your HP content into Worst Witch content. For me, I made a lot of student and and adult characters in the Harry Potter setting of ranging ethnic backgrounds and queer identities, but as much as I stay away from consuming official HP content in preference of fan creations, the immutable fact that it’s original creator turned out to be a horrible, bigoted and h--c-st revisionist bigot will always irk me, so I decided to explore creating my own world based after the magic system and fantasy elements of Harry Potter to create my own hybrid setting and universe where I can repurpose these original characters and use them outside of Harry Potter along with the overarching stories and arcs I’ve written for them in the Hogwarts and Wizarding World setting.
This way, at least, I can still privately enjoy creating and experiencing stories of magical children and teenagers investigating fantastical and supernatural mysteries using their abilities, creativity, and approaches based after their values and skill sets to solve situations and defeat big evils without having to host those stories in the Harry Potter universe.
this is INSANE for a new account, i love your style of delivery. can’t wait for more when you’re ready :))
Oh man. You said 'Guns n handcuffs' and I was instantly falcon punched back into 2007
Same lol, although the teen in the back of my mind muttered “*The S.S.* Guns n Handcuffs”
So much wincing nostalgia through this one lol
i was waiting for a leatherpants draco reference
@siyrean please tell me what this means im so curious
@@j_fenrir Cassandra Claire's Draco trilogy was a huge huge fanfiction in the early fandom days. "leather pants Draco" became synonymous with they way he was portrayed in that fic, and it because a popular way to characterize him for a long time. think cliche bad but sad boy who needs love.
@siyrean of course cassandra claire would birth "leatherpants draco" god just imagine him squeaking all around hogwarts
I'm an asexual/demisexual lesbian in the "eff it" camp. I'm a multishipper and I greatly appreciate seeing various queer interpretations of all the characters. I can't leave the fandom, but I refuse spend money on any Harry Potter products or JKR books. I will not support her. She has no power over us in fandom.
She can't stop us from creating trans Harry or trans Draco or trans any other character. She can't stop us from changing the sexuality of characters. She can't stop us from saving bad characters from their evil ways. She can't stop us from keeping our favorite characters alive. She can't stop us from pairing anyone and everyone together. She can't stop us from writing Drarry, Snarry, Tomarry, Harrymort, Ronarry, Wolfstar, Jegulus, Sirius/Severus, James/Severus or stop the Marauder niche as a whole.
JKR will die forgotten in her bigotry, but our words and stories will live on to touch the hearts of young queers for decades, perhaps centuries after our deaths.
Thus why I found a PDF version of the complete series, and turned it into a word document.
I have so many fandoms, that while I may have headcanons for them, I also like the canon story just fine; eg. Fairy Tail, Naruto, Percy Jackson. But I also have others that I just can't stand the canon anymore as I've gotten older, but still love the idea of it and the fics and other fandom shit.
this is on my recommended home page! surprised it's only your first video. i starting reading on ao3 a decade ago now and loved the scholomance series - i did not know naomi novik was one of the creators!! omg
"otherwise good and normal year 2020" destroyed me 😂
Amazing vid :)
As a trans teen who grew up on Harry Potter I too find myself struggling to enjoy it the same way.
But I will continue consuming fan creations and not give Joanne a dime
Lord of the Rings has always been that place of imagination for me, but it wasn't until I was deep in that lull waiting between HP books 3 and 4 that I discovered fandom for the first time. The LOTR fandom is a lot more diverse nowadays, but 20+ years ago it was definitely dominated by men a lot older than me. Not only did Harry Potter introduce me to a life long love of fandom, but a community full of people of all ages, gender, sexual orientation, and cultures. I honestly thank fandom for making me who I am, because I know my conservative family never would have. It broke my heart when JK Rowling went on her rant, but I stand by the fact that the HP fandom are some of the most wonderful people I know. I definitely say fuck it! I won't let her take away our community.
It’s like that with the narnia and lovecraft fandoms now unfortunately
The only thing I liked from The Cursed Child is Draco being an exceptionally good dad!! He was the best parent out of the bunch imo
Dude your voice is so smooth. I would listen to an audiobook voiced by you.
Fanfic has always been the Fuck-its, typically the older ones, the ones who like to use fanfic as a means of deconstruction. This is the camp I often find myself in, and often exploring what is wrong with the world has been a pivotal trend. For example, Harry’s abusive upbringing being tolerated by the people in charge.
For me, what I’ve always wanted to dissect, were the issues with how female characters are portrayed in slash fanfiction. I’ve noticed it a lot in hp fanfiction recently, maybe because I’ve been reading a lot of them over the past two years. Still fantastic video essay! It’s interesting to discuss it, but I also feel like there could have been more, by reaching out to authors who were willing to discuss the topic with you. Still, regardless, great job!
this video was so good, especially for a first video essay. I am a trans man who was madly obsessed with harry potter as a kid. I wrote many fanfics and most of my creative writing for a long time was inspired by JKR's work. I have many tshirts I struggle to wear because they are harry potter related and don't want to be assumed to support jkr but also don't want to chuck out because that's wasteful. I haven't read the books in a few years now because it's just not something I can bring myself to do right now. and it sucks because for a long time Hogwarts was like a nice escape I could go to during hard times in my real life, but it's kinda hard to escape into a book written by someone who would prefer you stayed hidden in a cupboard under the stairs.
my suggestion for all those shirts is wear them inside only or as pyjamas
@@ranchustars3050 that's actually a good idea
I have the same problem with a sweater of mine; it was a treasured birthday gift, still fits me quite well and is incredibly comfy, but I can’t wear it outside the house anymore…
This is a great first video essay and an interesting academic perspective to take. In the case of problematic artists, I wonder if those most affected by the artist's harm should reclaim and reappropriate the creation from the creator rather than being made to sever all ties to the work. That way, the work can culturally retain it's positive position while sanitizing it of the, in this case, fascistic, bigoted and uninquisitive undertones. Those whom it touched and equally tried to harm can reclaim and voice themselves through culturally canonizing their framing. Sorry if that was nonsense, but great work.
Went through this with joss whedon. Only recently was able to enjoy Buffy and angel again. Took nearly ten years to emotionally separate him from his art b/c of how intertwined my love for the characters and for him as the creator had become over time. I wasn’t sure it would ever happen. I really thought he was someone to look up to as a kid and it was heartbreaking to learn I was so wrong about him
My Immortal is the only fic I have read from the fandom. And lets be honest, there can't be anything better than that.
Yesss love this! Im a fuck it fan and i still unashamedly read and write drarry fan fic. Fuck JK and all she stands for, draco and harry are mine now xx
I was talking to a friend about this recently, who was more of the 'burner' persuasion. I made the argument that I completely understood trans folks who wanted to find some catharsis in reclaiming HP, but that I felt that I, as a cis person, should be held to a stricter standard - which is why I have stopped engaging with Potter-related material at all. Since I'm not the one who is most affected by her bigotry, I don't feel it should be up to me to decide that my engagement with the fandom is harmless. I don't personally think my views (or indeed my nostalgia) should matter here.
Wow. I can’t believe that the very first Drarry fic was posted exactly one year before I was born. I suddenly feel a crushing expectation to live my life differently
Was Alexander Avila cosplay intentional? /Pos
The video's awesome i love essays on fandom/queer culture, i love statistics and i love internet drama, this video combined all of that lol
it was not! i was actually wearing a graduation robe covered with trans pride pins on top of this getup until like two minutes before filming (to sort of give a “wizard robes” vibe) but i got too hot and last minute decided to take it off… and then totally ended up in alexander avila cosplay. didn’t realize until folks pointed it out in the comments but very flattered by the comparison, his channel rules
Irs not even that she is a problematic or terrible person, but she lambasts it to the worls and becae figurehead of a hatemovement, willingly.
Ther are shocking many authors and artists whi are not good people, yet can keep that private.
While i dont take shippingtoo serious, drarry actually would explore a lot and have conflict with ron, hermine and harry more showing his darker side too, and draco of course actually get a real good character arc to , yeah. Also garry is already so obsessed with draco and and woulld be a way to face his bias.
And harrrys most developed relationship argumently that isnt familial that close, is with draco.
Also in the cursed child harry and draco would up as health friend with draco being the reasonable person in the room. She made that canon. Yeah Draco and harry being very close friends at least, Yes he was that.
Also draco was practically written to be a zuko.
THIS WAS YOUR FIRST VIDEO ESSAY???
I could NOT tell, this is incredible! very in-depth analysis and the topic is so so interesting as well (the effect on specific communities not just the fandom as a whole), and done so well. Thank you!
Honestly super surprised to see this was your first video essay! It was a really well-written and insightful video, and I enjoyed your sense of humour greatly. I'm excited to see where you take this channel if you choose to do more!
thank you so much for this!! i’m in the same boat as you regarding childhood obsession, down to thinking harry should have ended up as a teacher!! i was completely heartbroken in 2016 when trans people i followed on tumblr pointed out JKR liking terf tweets. i have often wished that i didn’t find out till later, because i was still definitely a kid when i found out, and i had just realised i was queer. your video is brilliant
YES 9:55 before I came out as bi and suffered from internalized homo/biphobia as a cis woman I felt comfortable writing mlm instead. It felt safer in my brain. Now I’m a proud certified girl-liker 💖💜💙
I heavily used mlm growing up as an outlet to explore my own sexuality and queerness
This is really good for your first video essay, keep up the good work. As a trans woman I do find your analysis of Harry Potter fanfic very interesting, though I can't say I've ever been especially involved in male slash fics. From my general fanfic reading though, I would suggest part of the waning of drarry is growing popularity of other ships, I feel like I see more Snarry than Drarry nowdays.
First of all, awesome video! Great delivery, and I loved the topic. I would say I fall in the camp of a "fuck-it" but, I'm not very bold about it. When the dam broke in 2020, I spent a long time trying to see if I could be a burner. I wasn't as active in the fandom as I used to be, but I still held the world very close to my heart. I realized after a while that not only could I not do it, but I felt that hp at that point, had grown much bigger than her anyway.
Absolutely agree. The world has long transcended the author and people have added so much fanon lore to both characters and world that I sometimes forget what is official canon and what has been accepted as such for years.
@@excessivelyfangirlingbookw3339 So true! The fandom is it's own organism, and it developed it's own existence outside of the source material a long time ago.
8:09 stevonnie steven universe came to the real world to speak facts
fr
I think another thing to consider for fic decline is that a lot of Burners took to harassing those in the fandom to the point many quit. There was and still are a lot of people who think if you don’t view HP with the same level of disgust and vitriol they do that you are horrible person yourself no matter how you personally feel. I find it such an interesting albeit frustrating phenomenon as someone who does not agree with the author yet does enjoy the franchise, fandom, and acknowledges studies that show the books have made people more receptive to social equality and democratic viewpoints. I’m thankful for how much good the fandom has done, how many people it has allowed to express themselves, and I hope that continues.
just messaged my gf with a link to your video (she'd already seen it, and subscribed.) So much of what you say here rings so true and correct to me. I was in the trenches of hp fandom for a long time, but absolutely dropped off engaging after 2020 happened and the *really* bad stuff came out. It honestly just hurt too much. I have a sort of micro tumblr/discord community, called sortinghatchats, where we get a little more nuanced and interesting with the hogwarts houses, and I changed up all my terminology to distance it from HP and signal my disapproval with JKR's comments. But when I finally felt okay enough to dive into writing "fuck-it" fic - boy did it feel good, and cathartic, and healing, and necessary. Please do continue creating content. This is good stuff, and I'll be here watching.
I was really surprised to see this on my homepage but I'm glad I clicked and I'm astounded this is your first video. The quality, both content and prodction, is very impressive. Definitely subscribing to see what's next!
I left the HP fandom once JKR went full on terf. I can’t even enjoy fanfic because of her.
One of my favourite types of fic to read is the ones where Hogwarts, magical school of magic, OBVIOUSLY offers trans-affirming healthcare to the kids that need it! Makes me smile every time :)
When you said "Harry Potter is the main character of the Harry Potter series" and a Harry popped up on the screen that didn't at ALL look like most of the fanart I see, I had to remember that fandom has completely recreated these people and that they did, in fact, exist as something else at some point. So I guess that serves as a commentary on a lot of this lol.
Screaming at the In Other Lands By Sarah Rees Brennan mention! It's also one of my favorite books, and I never hear other people bring it up. That screaming aside, excellent video! Can’t wait to see your future projects!
I love this video essay so much. I can tell it comes from a place of respect and love for fandom. So many videos dissecting HP fandom come from people who were never in it and could never understand what a welcoming, diverse place it was and is when it’s at its best. Pointing out its problems and struggles is always worthwhile but so is celebrating when we can come together to make things that transcend the original works, not just in storyline, but in diverse storytelling and representation. Fanfiction has helped me come to terms with my own identity and made me so much more empathetic to struggles I don’t personally experience. It has even been a jumping off point for political development.
All this to say, thank you for the effort that went into this essay, and I hope to see more from you. Best!
You should probably include the induction of the Inkstained Fingers archive in this data. Import began in 2015 and the original archive closed in 2018. That also covers your little uptick spike in 2015-2016 in the gradual decline of interest in Drarry.
I'm so glad I found this video. I haven't been into Drarry in decades. It's great to learn more about the Drarry fandom and that some of it is still going. I like seeing fans reclaiming HP in spite of the Terf who must not be named lol
I can't wait to see what else you'll make
The way you pronounce words and speak is LOVELY you speak in such a satisfying way. I think it's the "k" sounds that you pronounce in a "round" and hollow way? I could listen to your yapping forever
This is very kind, thank you! Next video will be up next month and it’s on the longer side-probably about an hour.
honestly, i think i would be very forgiving of dumbledor not having a noteworthy husband and or boyfriend at least in contextual clues later on in the series or even never, if harry himself was aromantic. sure not all aros are unlikely to notice or pick up on people being in love, some if not many are absolutely tickled by the idea of shipping people and people falling in love, but some are especially as kids some think it's an exaggeration or an inside joke or obligation.
that said i don't know if it would fit harrys character, i could never get through the books no matter how hard i tried or wanted to due to adhd and preferring xenofiction.
that said, i remember thinking mcgonagall and the future telling teacher had some SERIOUS bitter ex energy.
As a queer kid i feel very thankful i didnt care that much about harry potter and was instead extremely invested in percy jackson. Its not perfect and neither is the author but at least i dont have to see my childhood be destroyed by someone who openly detests my existence extremely loudly
Percy jackson is boring pigs$hit
Why do you look exactly like Alexander Avila
mom: we have alexander avila at home
the alexander avila at home:
Thank fuck it's not just me 💀
I feel like there's a middle ground between saying that it was and has always contained bad ideology, and f it. Maybe we shouldn't be buying new content first hand and talking about the bad things! But also like do what you want with fanworks. as long as you dont send her money i dont care
Definitely in the eff it category, I read the series 12 times as a kid, knocking out the first book in one sitting a couple times. I could escape into a world where I had power and opportunity, where a group of different people “weirdos” could all accept each other. I was an undiagnosed queer adhd-having chaos gremlin with a genius level iq at 9. I literally had one friend in elementary school and we became friends because she was the new kid from Arizona and the school bully was scared of her and I was nice (and desperate) and she was nice.
27:28 Fun fact, there is a crack fic series on AO3 that kinda follows a similar premise? Umbridge finds the series in the Room of Requirement one day and tries to use them to get Harry and his contingent expelled/out of her way - hilarity ensues. It’s called Dramatic Reading and was started by White_Squirrel (no pairings btw).
This video is so well done!! It has left a bad taste in my mouth to engage with Harry Potter related media over the last few years because of JKR's transphobia. I don't like or participate in online discourse but was definitely passively in the "burner" camp for a while, despite the fact that I loved the books into my adulthood - or maybe because of that? I felt so hurt by her transphobia that it was in some ways easier to just abandon HP as a whole vs trying to Death of the Author it or have nuance with the issue - that felt too complicated for me for a while. I still don't really engage with Harry Potter stuff these days, but I like the idea that fans can reclaim the characters/world. Good work on this video!!!
Loved this, I am honestly tired of "burner" videos, they simply refuse to acknowledge the importance of Harry Potter in the identity formation of a large chunk of two generations of queer people.
i was an adult when i read Harry Potter, but i thought believed hoped that the story would continue to address the issues of inequality broached, but then they put out a game where you quash a goblin rebellion?? 😦😡
Im definitely un the f it category as a nonbinary lesbian. I refuse to support jkr, but the fandom generally is lovely and i will gladly engage in it. Its really sad to see drarry fic being written less, but i think maurauders has been picked up by the fandom in its place. Jkr has written a lot less on the maurauders and i think that makes it much more comfortable for queer people to engage in (they can also be more creative with it!), which i completely understand.
This was a super great video, i adore seeing queer people making retrospectives on hp because theres a lot of things to talk about. It is a deeply flawed series, but was also such a safe space for a lot of kids. Its worth discussing what makes it have that magic despite the flaws.
For me, on an emotional level, interacting with the fandom/fanfiction feels identically frustrating to interacting with some sects of Christianity. This has kept me from becoming a "practicing fan" even while the books were still being written (far before jk had her public downfall).
Like people attribute anything they think is good (community, self discovery, moral development etc.) to the book and cut out, ignore or straight up change anything they disagree with so they feel justified in still doing the thing (fandom or that specific sect of religion).
Like how many passages of "women should not be allowed to speak in church" and "Campaigning against s l a v e ry is bad actually" do we have to excise out before we admit that the good stuff was in you all along and the book just isn't that good? How rotten does a foundation have to be before we decide not to build a house on it? How much active, tangible harm does a leader have to cause before we say "oops, maybe I won't support that anymore :-/"
while i agree with you i find this is not the side of fanfiction that is being talked about in the video. Most of us on the queer side already knew she was dodgy before the big blow up because while subtle, she had done and said shit way before that. we'd already been rewriting her work to challenge the weird shit like the werewolves and then 2020 was like the gasoline on the flames. like it was said in the video it was very much fuck it theyre all trans/queer now, and i think its become a really good space for that community to explore who they are but also the world at large and what change really is
Just got to the bit where you discuss not being able to know the fandom’s sentiments in 2020, but only now, about 4 years later. I am someone who read Drarry extremely often (like hundred of thousands of words a week, lol) from ~2016 through ~2022. I do still go back and read more occasionally, but I prefer long fics, and I’ve read most of the good ones on AO3 by now. So I do have some knowledge about what happened at the time, but I can only give my own experience. This would be a lot more difficult to search for and find statistical significance in, but I mostly saw the TERF rhetoric and Rowling in general discussed in author’s notes on AO3 at the time. There seemed to be a couple different general approaches on the AO3 authors’ parts - there were a number of authors that orphaned their Drarry works, some that deleted them all together, some that finished any WIPs but stopped after that, and quite a few that put a disclaimer in their author’s notes saying that either they disavowed Rowling’s words/beliefs but were separating the art from the artist and continuing on (the author contingent of the “fuck-its” as mentioned in the video) or that they could no longer stomach being involved in anything HP and would no longer be writing any new fics in the fandom or even finishing current WIPs. There were extremely few authors that did not address the issues at all.
yeah, considering that particular fandom was queer it couldn't really go unaddressed because the people who wrote and consumed this content believed in equality, i do wonder whether the same effect was reflected on heterosexual spaces like dramione
I read a drarry fic once were they talk alot about classism and how the pure blood elitist live/d and it went more into the house elves as a race. Like im sorry i thought i was reading a drarry fic not a book that would it have been written in the 19th century be now a classic. I sadly forgot the name but it was so amazingly written and jusg because the author has limited braincells we as a fandom should'nt be stopped from writing these. Got recently really into dc (well more batman tbh) and what the fanfic authors do there a lot is write in the tags that they cherry picked canon, because of its inconsitencies and at times weird stories... love that.
Something I will say is while I find a lot of this silly. It is incredibly powerful to take the work of someone so hateful and to reappropriate it for the people who need it. After Daniel Radcliffe’s interview we can also keep in mind that despite JK herself being so mean spirited there are far more people attached to these projects that wish to see the LGBT+ community succeed and find happiness. JK may have the “rights” to Harry Potter but that doesn’t mean she has the right way for Harry Potter.
That’s just me though.
No, no. We definitely know canon Draco is not an angel.
He deserved more than Snape, and I'm not changing my mind on this one, cause JK talks about us “romanticizing” Draco, but she romanticized an adult who bullied his students, literal children, to the point one of them had him as his biggest fear. 😍
But WE are the delulu ones. Yeah.
Sarcasm and irony aside, the reason I decided to stay in the fandom, is because I think about all the young people who get their hands in the books and then look for a safe space where they can feel comfortable and can explore themselves as people; I don't want them to feel alone, I want them to be safe, and if I have to throw hands to defend them, I'll do it.
(Also, HP is a huge part of what kept me alive back in HS, but I'm not trauma dumping in here LMAO).
I didn't expect young Jon Oliver to give me a deep dive into the harry potter fandom but I'm glad I'm here
I think a lot these days about how, even if JKR didn't originally come up with the concept of a Horcrux, the way that many fanfic authors have treated it as semi-metaphorical for "cutting off" a part of oneself that has the capacity to feel compassion and other human qualities deemed "weak", it can certainly carry itself over into real life given how ghoulishly right-wing reactionaries abjectify the most marginalized people in our societies, JKR included
I do think you’ve also got to be careful with this kind of statistical comparison, because it could also just be that there’s more variety in other fandoms, or new fandoms on AO3 that are now competing with HP, rather than a simple decline in HP itself. Also while it is an unusually enduring fandom, many people will move on to other interests/fandoms eventually, even if they come back to this from time to time
Commenting to boost the algorithm because a quality first video essay with a proper transcript and bibliography by a queer creator must be seen!
Also I shared this on my Tumblr so just to check I'm referring to you in my post correctly, your pronouns are he/him right?
Subbed and looking forward to more!
This is so sweet-yes, he/him pronouns! Thank you so much.
Hoooow is this your first video?? This was so well-organized and entertaining, can't wait to see more :)
The situation with the Harry Potter fandom to me reminds me of death of the author. JK Rowling can try and ruin her own creation postmortem, but it's already too late. Readers have already gone out and interpreted the story in their own way that is special to them. They saw good in it. Her intention is not the true meaning of the story, it's what the readers interpreted from it that counts. And if the readers refuse to accept the epilogue and instead search for readings beyond that, perhaps the story has grown so big that it's now beyond her control entirely. Whether you're a denialist or a fuck-it regardless. And taking that power away from her is satisfying because we know that no matter how much she tries to change stuff after, she's not that important anymore and it's no longer within her control to change.
She's getting zero monetary support from people reading fan fiction on A03, so boycotting her and reading Drarry aren't mutually exclusive, which is amazing in itself.
Dude the decline of new Drarry fanfics on ao3 and the steady climb of Dramione is killing me 😭 I don’t want us to be overtaken by them. We deserve that first place. (Sure I haven’t written any of the fanfics but that’s irrelevant)
We have "The Owl House" at home
"The Owl House" is my "Witch Hat Atelier at home". =P
TOH is more explicitely queer, but I absolutely love both.
Does anyone remember when JK tried to convince everyone that Draco and Harry are siblings and now it’s said you can’t ship them because it’s incest? Am I tripping or was that a real thing that happened?
I can't remember this at all, but that's hilariously naive if she did, considering this is the fandom that brought us Fred/George Weasley fics.
3:41 you just described my childhood
This was a really fun and interesting video. I’ve been thinking recently about how I just straight up forget that Drarry and wolf star fandom is technically Harry Potter fandom because it feels so disconnected, so this was so interesting
You could be a statistician! Really great work :] some of the people I know who left the fandom are just tired and wanted to bow out with no fuss. Tired of JKR's constant attacks, and tired of the burn it all down crew too. So they just... left.
would expect nothing less than excellence from a former warrior cats roleplayer. fantastic video
A way to think of it is that reading fanfiction does not support jk in any way other than word of mouth. It gives her no money, no recognition of skill or work, and most importantly, no validation as most fanfiction in OUR fandom goes against all she has said and believes.
It is OUR fandom, no matter what u write or read about and we cant let JK stop us from enjoying it.
Just remember not to buy anything from official sites or to follow any official posts as this boosts her image and income. She has already earned millions from this half assed series she wrote decades ago. Let's not give her any cent more, yeah?
I sort of agree but as council of geeks said, word of mouth is the most powerful way to make sure more people end up buying the products. I'm too old to have any sort of emotional attachment to HP universe, I found myself in late 90s as a very young kid, but I recognize HP for what it is.
@twistedelegance_
I suppose so, but if that was the case, surely it can work the other way, yes?
Word of mouth to not buy official stuff should work just as well if repeated the same or even more times. 😊
@@S1rT1mmySh33p I mean yeah if the word is not to buy anything official / not pay for it I suppose that could work also
As I’ve been slowly joining a larger Harry Potter fanfic project, I’ve had a weird tension with the text. The people involved have taken many steps all over to reclaim the work (even reformatting the understanding of magic in the world as to overwrite some of JK’s weird decisions with her ramblings on the noneuropean schools), and they even ended up with multiple queer relationships and casual crossdressing before the story reached year four, and yet from my own experience there’s this reluctance to even considering a trans character let alone narrative. I understand it may not be malicious and more just wanting to avoid drama and conflict given the multi-writer production, but at the same time this silence is because of an endorsement. It might be that as I do more for the work and become more trustworthy the idea of even a character I write being trans wont be so ‘controversial’, but it sucks
I was never into Harry Potter (read the first two books when I was a preteen, decided they weren't my thing) and I've been uncomfortable with how prominent the fandom is even after JKR went mask off with her bigotry. I try not to judge, so I'll keep my mind open for this video as well
It REALLY doesn't make sense for Harry to become an Auror. That's his childhood pick because McGonagall made him pick his future career on the spot as a literal child and he blanked on doing anything else. But after beating Voldy, Harry would likely want a quiet life. Not to mention, if one dark wizard gets one lucky shot on Harry, even one that incapacitates him, *boom*. Evil wizard is now master of the Elder Wand.
I personally would have liked to see Harry and Ginny switch careers. Ginny would make a great Auror, it makes incredible sense for Harry to play professional Quidditch, and then maybe in his 30s or 40s he could teach at Hogwarts.
My lukewarm defence here, with Harry becoming a cop is that this is a gripe that only Americans seem to have. Harry Potter is an English creation and the relationship we have with police just simply isn’t the same. There are of course problems, but American fans seem to get particularly angry with this point because they don’t differentiate between different cultures. Nobody in the uk has to fear being pulled over by a cop
Good video regardless, I subscribed
I wouldn't say nobody has to fear mistreatment from the police here. (The murder of Sarah Everard was only 3 years ago and theres been evidence of racism in police searches for years) I agree that the relationship most people have with the police is very different from America though, especially when the books were written. Personally I think him becoming a teacher would have been a better end to his arc, him teaching dumledores army seemed to be hunting at that, but him being a cop definitely doesn't carry as much stigma here as it does in America.
I got a transphobic ad (for "what is a woman?,"" that stupid so called "Investigative documentary") on this video. I swear those guys target queer content because holy shit have I seen ads for that dumpster fire of a movie on A LOT of videos concerning the queer community. IDK why RUclips even allows them to be an advertiser on their site tbh
Ugh, that’s so annoying. I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t even get the money for this video-it got demonized because of the music. I’ll poke around in my adsense settings and see if I can stop that from happening again. Thanks for giving me a head’s up!
Great video, your voice is so soothing