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.
Harry Potter bookended my childhood, and I mean that literally. The first book was the first Big Book I ever read when I was seven-years-old. My parents promised me a new bike if I read it all the way through, which I think was just a way to not have to buy me a new bike, but the joke was on them, I read it in a day and discovered an Obsession with getting more books. Woulda been cheaper to just get me the bike.
And then the last movie came out the summer before my senior year of High School. I still remember that movie premier. I went to the all afternoon/evening marathon of the previous three movies before the last one. But it wasn't a normal marathon. They only dimmed the lights, and they kept the volume a little lower than normal, and we all just hung out. People were in costume. People had blankets and pillows. One girl brought in a huge BAG of Harry Potter uno cards and at one point half the theater was playing. We all swapped seats and walked around and made friends. Fuck it was fun.
And when the movie ended, and everyone left, I discovered that literally half my high school and been there for at least the last movie (because every screen in the theater was showing it). People who generally didn't give two shits about Harry Potter came, and after the movie ended we all stood around outside and just hung out and talked for ages. This was pre Aurora so it was actually a midnight premiere, and I don't think we left until dawn.
And now that's all tainted.
People ask me what the first book I ever remember reading was, and I don't want to say. But I don't have anything else TO say because ADHD has stolen away most solid memories of my childhood. Movies don't even do midnights anymore, at least here in Colorado. I think that may have actually been the last real midnight I ever did, because Aurora was almost exactly a year later.
Just. Bah.
Fucking her.
all of this. I used to be the kid in my friend group where someone would say a book and a page number, and I could tell them all the relevant info on that page. Over 7 books. Every single page. It was a fun pre-teen/teenage party trick I had. I was The Walking Harry Potter Encyclopedia.
I have had a few other book series that I have read all the way through, but none of which I had devoured quite like I did with Harry Potter. My mom had to beg me to read the first book, and I fell in love with the series.
Only when I got older did I start to piece together exactly how problematic the content was, what the context was, and just how much of a shitty person the author was.
As weird as it is to say that my identity was tied to a specific book series and culture, it's even weirder now to know that the experience itself has both become nostalgic and tainted. While I enjoy other fandoms and series, I have not been able to really thoroughly enjoy them like I used to with Harry Potter. Because I don't want to lose it all again.
I remember being so excited that I could introduce my son to Harry Potter. And now I don't even want to let him experience it.












