Blame It On The Dimples

Filmmaker. Tea. Books. Writing. Tattoos. Pretty pictures. Chill with me for a while.

[duskydestra]

Happy birthday to AO3 🎂🎉

[thesoftboiledegg]

What makes JKR's shitshow even harder to process is that she didn't just ruin a book series. Harry Potter was an entire subculture. Like Star Wars and Star Trek fans, Harry Potter fans dedicated their lives and careers to the series. I don't know if I'd call it "underground," but liking Harry Potter got you beaten up when I was in school, so it was more of a dedicated indie culture than a mass-appeal fanbase.

Harry Potter was so huge that fan works developed their own followings. Potter Puppet Pals racked up hundreds of thousands of followers and was nearly as relevant as the series itself. For fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality got so big that it has a Wikipedia page. The band Harry and the Potters spawned the wizard rock music genre. A Very Potter Musical developed a fanbase and launched Darren Criss's career.

Harry Potter also has extensive ties to fandom history. Everyone in my generation (millennials) remembers coming home from school to read Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Today, most people just post their stories on Wattpad or Archive of Our Own. But at the time, the fanbase was splintered between fanfiction.net and dozens of individual websites and forums, some made for specific ships. Since they all had individual hosts, a lot of those sites have been lost to time.

And there's the infamous My Immortal fanfiction, which is an Internet legend with people still searching for the author. Everybody read that one (and laughed at it) in middle school.

Pre-social media, fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet had massive followings because they were one of few sources for news, theories, essays and fan content. Some of these sites still exist after being around for over a decade and building their own legacy.

Before Deathly Hallows came out, fans were so desperate to know what happened that Mugglenet published a book called What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End? Yep...Harry Potter was so big that people wrote separate books about what would happen in an upcoming book.

And that's not mentioning all the book release parties, Harry Potter-themed events, monuments, fan films, restaurants and even a theme park. A lot of fandoms have those, but Harry Potter infiltrated every aspect of popular culture.

Today, there's a thriving culture of "Harry Potter adults" with themed weddings, baby showers and Etsy stores. Putting your Hogwarts house in your Instagram bio is pretty much a prerequisite for joining the "bookish" community. Warner still produces new content, like the Fantastic Beasts series, although we've all seen what a disaster that's been.

Everyone has at least a few memories associated with Harry Potter even if it's just watching the movies. I had great memories associated with Harry Potter. But looking back at the subculture, history and thousands of fan works, it doesn't seem fun anymore. Studying the fandom or being part of it comes with an awkward tension because you don't want to seem like you're condoning JKR's bigotry but can't divorce her from the series. This subculture was spawned by a woman who turned her legacy of magic and wonder into one of abuse and hatred.

I don't expect people to write paragraphs about how much they hate JKR every time they post about Harry Potter, but it's still uncomfortable to see people make new content or wear their Harry Potter Etsy tote bags like nothing happened. Even if they clarify that they don't support her, it's just a weird, tense situation for everybody.

People dedicated years of their lives to running Harry Potter fan sites, writing fanfiction, cosplaying characters and making fan movies. If I were in that situation, I'd have a mild identity crisis. I'd ask myself "Did I waste all those years? Should I delete my content? Where do I go from here?"

So ultimately, JKR didn't ruin "just" a book series or even "just" a fandom. She tanked an entire culture, which inspired people to look at Harry Potter more critically. The issues that people brought to the light tainted the series's legacy even without JKR's personal issues.

Once, Harry Potter was a series for generations. Now, former fans hope that the series fades into irrelevancy. Unfortunately, JKR didn't just tarnish her legacy--she took decades of history, millions of fans and a worldwide subculture along with her.

[peerieweirdo]

it’s crazy having been super-involved in the HP fandom for more than a decade and watching the fallout from this

quidditch (the real sport) has changed its name to quadball

the harry potter alliance (a nonprofit) has rebranded to fandom forward

the sub-subcultures that sprung up within the HP fandom have now distanced themselves from the main fandom and have become independent groups in their own right

HP was so integral to the development of early online fandom (as OP’s mentioned) that now there’s sort of just a weird... hole in the internet

for many HP fans, it took up a lot of their life. three conventions a year, wizard rock shows, HPA fundraising, granger leadership academy, nightly fanfic, podcasts, quidditch games.

when fans (rightfully) shunned JKR and began to leave the fandom, a lot of them (myself included) were left rudderless. how do you reconcile the fact that most of your friends, hobbies, sometimes even jobs, were due to the work of such a hateful person? as OP said, did i waste my life?

i’m obviously not saying that this is the worst part about JKR’s bigotry (the worst part is, of course, the bigotry) or that HP fans are the worst-done-by victims (who are of course trans people)

but it is WILD to see such a juggernaut of internet fandom be virtually scrubbed away

[superdaisypowerhour]

There are two schools of thought on the locked tomb series; there are the people who took tazmuir at her word when she said gideon had a longsword and drew it as such; then there are the people who know what a longsword is and know that the thing gideon swings is at the bare minimum a fucking claymore.

[ossifer-deactivated20250706]

gentle reminder for those that belong to the former school of thought

[scalierpepper]

It's standard practice on the Ninth for luggage trunks to be capable of fitting one adult skeleton

[villagesong-deactivated20250203]

the opening of gtn is so unserious in the sense that you could Never expect what it's leading up to. you get to know the protag who's basically being held captive by a gothic cult and you think Oh the plot's going to be about her trying to escape. Wrong. then you get to know that the leader of the gothic cult is quite literally puppeting her dead parents around to keep the cult intact. nope that's actually not very important to the plot either and doesn't really lead to any consequences as such. i love you tazmuir

[vampiremotif]

the locked tomb is high risk high reward investment. yes reading it you are potentially entering an unfinished 4 book series. yes the first book is not going to make much sense to you, pushing you to pick up the next one. which will make even less sense. it will not answer your questions and raise even more. but it also contains a level of storytelling and character development i’ve been yearning and searching for in every other media since. and lesbians

[babybabyevilgirl]

my body is a temple? wrong. mausoleum. *gives myself a lobotomy, preventing my dead girlfriend’s soul from being consumed by mine in a desperate attempt to save her. and takes her sunglasses and sword from her corpse, hoping to return them to her one day. bitch.*

[undressrehearsal]

i don't see anyone talking about the line in harrow the ninth when gideon says "I died knowing you'd hate me for dying; but Nonagesimus, you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. At least I'd had your full attention." and that's a fucking disservice

[vengeful-horde-of-angry-ghosts]

"You've made yourself her mausoleum," he says to the tomb keeper. Someone whose entire existence, whose only reason for being alive has been to care for a tomb and who defied god to open it and worship what was within. Of course this is her expression of love! Of course this is her fidelity! There was never any other choice.

[your-resident-fangirl]

the harrow/gideon/ianthe dynamic at the end of harrow the ninth is so funny to me. ianthe thinks shes in a live triangle with harrow and gideon only for gideon to show up and be like WRONG. your competing with ANOTHER dead bitch and we're BOTH losing get over it loser. meanwhile harrow thinks she has two dead wives and a work colleague (they are BARELY even platonic *scoff* <- harrow voice). truly unparalleled

[danggerine]

going insane thinking about the harrow and palamedes friendship. harrow, who has never met another necromancer her age forming a bizarro 3D chess rivalry while pal worries about her safety at every possible turn. harrow, who is up to her eyebrows in paranoia and secrecy, trusting the sixth house with gideon unconscious and hurt, letting them into the ninth house quarters unsupervised. if “i cannot conceive of a universe without you in it” is goth for i love you, “death first to vultures and scavengers” has got to be goth for i love you (platonic). pal’s first reaction when harrow comes into his bubble in the river is to scoop her up in a hug, and at this point she doesn’t remember anything about him because cutting out all her memories of gideon is impossible without cutting out memories of the sixth, but she still makes him a skelehand to inhabit anyway. when harrow’s memories are finally whole, she tells dulcinea she couldn’t face pal knowing that his pen pal girlfriend died on her account, but the next time she “faces” him, palamades’s soul is in someone else’s body and harrow’s body is full of nona’s soul. he spends six months protecting and caring for harrow’s body (and nona obv), believing in the possibility of bringing her back to it the same way cam believed in him. “god, do you know i miss harrow terribly.” and by the time harrow comes back to her body at the very end of ntn, pal is gone forever, fully pauled. the last time harrow and palamades see each other as their complete selves is in canaan house, alive and unlyctored. two of the smartest and loneliest people in the solar system meet each other in the worst of circumstances and spend the rest of the story dancing around each other as fragments of themselves, trying to care about each other in the interim but never fully meeting like they did the first time. a friendship made almost entirely of missing the other person. “do you know i miss harrow terribly.” god. i need to lie down

[longearedhare]

thinking abt the subtle yet overwhelming body horror and dysphoria present in Nona the Ninth. I’m not even talking about Ianthe piloting around Naberius’s corpse or Kiriona’s whole. thing.

it’s the subtler shit. imagine you’re Pyrrha. you’re lying awake in bed on a doomed wasteland of a planet and you’re in your dead best friend’s body. in the next room is a kid, and you have no idea who she actually is. she eats pencils and she’s physically weak but when she’s mad she will break her own bones over and over just to communicate her rage. you kind of have feelings for two people living in the same body, and that very situation is killing that very body. You shave your dead best friend’s face every day. You will never have your own body back.

[special-lucky-chosen-one]

think my favourite part of Harrow the Ninth is that there's a bit where she gets hit in the face so hard she loses a bunch of teeth, then uses the fragments of her own shattered teeth to explode a man's eyeballs - and it never gets mentioned by anyone discussing the book because in a few pages there's a soup scene that is Very Much Worse.

[miraonpluto]

harrow signing the order for gideons sword like yes our fights are gonna be so much more exciting now

[miraonpluto]

Guys

[dragonsspire]

Honestly their relationship makes so much sense if you remember that Harrow is playing 4D horny mind chess with herself all of the time. Her fights were certainly with Gideon but they were also homoerotic punishment fantasies where the only person left from her generation beat her bloody for her sins and Harrow sometimes came out on top triumphant a justified prize for such a dear cost, and other times lost but was never allowed the mercy of the absolution of cold steel death.

Honestly i think once she learns that Gideon is God's daughter who was conceived through unholy means she will only become more honry about it.

[ajipao]

Of course my first tlt fanart would be griddlehark

Harrow is skulless because I'm too tired to paint it. But also, look at her cute face

[blondie-drawings]

working on some silly tlt memes for my friend's bday and I liked how this one came out 🥲

[tatianakawkaw]

Happy Halloween!

Instagram: @tatianakawkaw

[aphrobites]

girls will see a chance to commit arson and be like “sorry, i have to take this”

[tofu-pofu]

girls will see a building that's not on fire and say "is anyone gonna burn that" and not wait for an answer