#**hp

Your rival is me...I won't give up so easily

I can definitely understand that, and I’ve wrestled with it wrt Harry/Louis, too -- and with Harry Potter, because that was such an enormous, formative part of my life, and JKR has turned out to be such a vile piece of shit that it’s impossible to go back to the source material without feeling slimy.

But I think in both cases, I agree with what Heidi said in her episode of IMYOLJ about trying to reconcile loving Harry Potter fandom with hating JK Rowling and what she imbued canon with in terms of like, overt-veiled bigotry... what I loved, and love, most about Harry/Louis was never really Harry and Louis and One Direction, it was the fandom around them and the friends that I made and the creativity they inspired and the joy that kind of fannish excitement gave me. And I don’t feel gross about that, and I don’t regret that.

Same with Harry Potter; what I love, really, is how much my young self loved and learned and was inspired by Harry Potter, not the actual text of the books themselves. What’s mattered is the way that Harry Potter changed the MG/YA world and the world of fandom, and those have nothing to do, really, with JKR or her actual works. They’re about other people, whom I don’t feel gross about.

Harry/Louis was so much fun for me not because of anything that Harry or Louis or 1D did, but because of the days that @witchietozier and I stayed up all night writing fake versions of them, or the explosion of excited, joyful posts on my dash the morning that LWWY leaked early, or how igrab flew halfway across the country to spend the night at my apartment so we could see 1D’s first-ever US tour and then dipped out to get burgers before the actual headline act hit the stage because 1D were just the opener (lol), or @kingsoftheimpossible‘s Weird Cat Louis, or getting to meet Catie and Emma and @nichestars and so many other people in person and have coffee or whatever and talk about fanfiction in real life for once.

I loved Harry/Louis so much because sure, those pictures of them meeting Baby Lux for the first time may have been what inspired MYEYNL, but Millie was an OC that I spent a year writing and creating and actually finished a massive-length fic about, and I am always going to be proud of the massive-length stuff that I actually finish instead of getting in my head too much and forcing myself to just abandon. I love Millie. I love the fake versions of Harry and Louis that I created in MYEYNL, and I love the fake Harry and Louis that Lucy and I created in Sheylinson, and I love the fake versions of Harry and Louis that Lucy and I created in Landslide, and I love the fake versions of Harry and Louis that Hannah and I (but mostly Hannah) created in Anyplace Anyhow Anytime. I have always loved the fake versions of them that I was creating, by myself or with friends, infinitely more than the real versions.

That’s what fandom IS, to me. You see a thing and you love it, sure, but you love your own version of it infinitely more. And that’s worth trying to keep in a fond place in your heart, for me. And it’s something that I feel like, for me, is worth fighting against shitty people so that they can still exist, and hold back the tide against what the shitty people have created taking over entirely.

Harry Potter Fandom is the breakwall that stops JKR in her tracks because the versions of Harry and Ginny and Hermione and Ron and the Marauders, all of whom would fucking embrace trans people and mostly fucking ARE people of color, have a bigger and stronger and more meaningful place in the world to more people, at this point, than JKR’s dinky versions.

The Harry and Louis that starred in the fics that I loved -- and there was SO MUCH GOOD H/L FIC back in the day, holy shit -- are NOT the Harry and Louis that Larries believe in, and they’re also not the real Harry and Louis, who are just, like, dudes in their twenties who are whatever. And the more versions of Harry and Louis there are in this world that AREN’T the Larries’ version, the less ground the Larries’ versions can claim for their own.

anakin becomes vader because he’s just so fucking hufflepuff that he can’t see past his loyalty (to his friendpatine palpatine, to padme and keeping her alive, to love for his mother)