time is making fools of us again

I just can't split these two apart :). I have this headcanon that ron becomes crookshanks's best friend afterwards and hermione can't stop them at all. They're a very autumn couple.

Mothers (or nurturers), bitches, and jokes.

That’s it.

Petunia is a bitch until she admits to worry for Harry and Dudley.

Narcissa Malfoy is a bitch until she admits to worry for Draco.

Mrs. Black is a mother who refuses to nurture and is a bitch.

Fleur Delacourt is a bitch until she chooses to devote herself to nurturing Bill.

Rita Skeeter is a bitch.

Bellatrix Lestrange is a bitch.

Dolores Umbridge is a bitch.

Aunt Marge is a bitch.

Pansy Parkinson is a bitch.

Molly Weasley is a mother.

Lily Potter is a mother.

Mrs. Longbottom is a mother.

Tonks is a mother.

Ginny is a joke until she becomes Harry’s emotional support, and postcanon is a mother.

Hermione’s entire role is to support Harry and Ron and—yup—in the epilogue is a mother.

Narcissa is redeemed by being a mother.

Luna Lovegood is a mother and teacher.

Minerva McGonagall is a head of house—what we in the US call a housemother—and headmistress.

Professor Hooch is a teacher.

Professor Sprout is a teacher.

Merope Riddle is a mother and entirely devoted to a man.

Cho Chang’s entire character is “I’m devoted to a man.” She straddles the line between mother and joke.

Professor Trelawney? Joke.

Moaning Myrtle? Joke.

Also, note that when Rowling wants you to dislike a female character, she always goes straight for their looks. Narcissa always looks like she’s smelled something unpleasant. Umbridge looks like a toad. Rita Skeeter is “mannish.” Petunia is “scrawny” while Aunt Marge is described as fat in super-fatphobic ways and Umbridge is described as looking like a toad. When we first meet Hermione she’s described as “frizzy-haired and bucktoothed” and her teeth are magically fixed after she becomes a love interest. Cho’s friend, I forget her name because she literally only shows up once, turns in Dumbledore’s Army and her punishment—which is treated as a joke—is disfiguring acne and scarring across her face.

And let’s not forget the implication that Umbridge was raped, which is also treated as a joke!

As a kid, I'd never read anything like this. It was the most creative thing I'd ever seen.

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.

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)

#baby pics