#like that is what my retrospection of harry potter is

[nyxshadowhawk]

A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

[shepherds-of-haven]

Happy New Year, everyone! I thought it would be fun to do a little retrospective on the game's progress over the last year... Shepherds of Haven has grown so much from the little demo I posted in January 2018, and it continues to steadily build and flourish in so many different and exciting ways! Here's a look at just some of the things we accomplished in 2023!

I added 143,151 words to the game (2.5 main chapters, 8 new character interludes) in 2023: the equivalent of writing the longest Lord of the Rings book in one year! We also broke our huge 1 million word milestone—without including code—meaning Shepherds of Haven is now officially twice as long as War and Peace, and almost as long as the entire 7-book Harry Potter series... and all in a single game!

A lot goes into game creation behind the scenes, including the coordination and creation of visual assets for the game—like character cards, codex entries, maps, portraits, and backgrounds—fun stuff for the fans (like the MC info template we created), and songs for the official soundtrack. As the game creeps slowly and determinedly towards its initial completion, that also means learning new things as a solo developer to prepare for the future, like learning to build an official website, researching business and tax practices, and beginning to think about how to conduct testing, publishing, and marketing down the road. Much of what I enumerate here hasn't been made public yet and will continue to cook in the background for a while, but I'm very proud of the work I've gotten done this year and will be excited to unveil more in the future!

And of course, for even more Shepherds of Haven content, I've added and completed even more stories for our little library on Patreon (which also has sizable word count at this point): The Bridge of Bones (a Trouble and Riel murder mystery), O Happy Dagger (a dark adventure featuring Briony, Chase, and Red), and The Hunt (a wild tale involving Tallys, Halek, Shery, and new kinds of spirits, fey magic, and Elves) were all serial stories completed in 2023, while Some Kind of Virus is a cyberpunk zombie apocalypse AU that will continue to be updated with new chapters monthly.

A full list of the Shepherd short stories and serial novellas (with links) can be viewed here!

I hope you enjoyed this session of Shepherds of Haven Wrapped! Honestly, this doesn't actually cover everything I've been working on, but some things can't be packaged and listed out neatly, or otherwise won't seem very interesting to anyone else but me! 😂 As we inch through Chapter 9 and get more interludes done (only a few more main chapters to go), I'm hopeful that I'll also be able to find time to work on my next novel, but we'll see if the Shepherds schedule ends up ramping up or settling down as we work steadily towards finishing the main story!

One important thing before wrapping up is to acknowledge your guys' role in this wonderful, wild journey. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you for your invaluable contributions to the development of Shepherds of Haven. Whether you took the time to share links to the game, supported its growth on Discord or Patreon, left encouraging messages or asked interesting questions, reported bugs, or showcased your remarkable works of fanfiction or fanart, I am sincerely thankful for the unwavering support from this amazing community! Your collective efforts have played a pivotal role in shaping the world of the game into what it is today. Words cannot adequately convey my gratitude for your support, and I am truly blessed to have such a passionate community surrounding this project.

As we step into 2024, I am filled with anticipation for the developments awaiting Shepherds of Haven. Big things are on the horizon, and I am so excited to share these experiences with you! Thank you for being an integral part of this journey, and here's to the continued growth of our shared little world. Cheers to 2024—may it be a year filled with creativity, adventure, and joy! 🎊

[thefloatingstone]

Not to be like "haha I'm better than you guys!!!" or elitist or anything because that very sincerely is NOT the point of this post.... but I never really understood people extremely love for Harry Potter.

I read them as they were coming out. Most of the time they came out soon enough that I was the same age as Harry. I liked them. They were cool. Goblet of Fire was my favourite and I was always happy to see what story the next book would bring but that's all it was. Interest to see the next story whenever it came out. Like a sitcom you enjoy but you didn't set your tv to record for you in case you missed it.

And then the word "Chosen one" was uttered and, just like that, I fucking lost all interest. Honestly there was "Chosen one" talk in the 4th book and already I was like

Honestly I think I liked Goblet of Fire the most because there was no friggen Quidditch. And there was less focus on the SCHOOL part of Harry Potter and more this weird Video game Quest setup which just appealed to me more.

In retrospect, I think that might be a big part of why I enjoyed it but never LOVED it like other people.

Like

"Oh boy my absolute biggest most favourite fantasy! THE BRITISH EDUCATION SYSTEM!!!!"

The fact that the books take place in a school seemed like a default to me because, well, most teenage focused cartoons and shows I watched had the main characters at school. Because they're teenagers. But the school wasn't why I enjoyed the books. The school was just a location. No I didn't want to go to Hogwarts. No I didn't want to get attached to a specific school house (although I feel it worth mentioning that when I was 13 I did the online house quiz thing on the official site and it said I was Hufflepuff so make of that what you will).

I really disliked whatever the one was that came after Goblet of Fire. So much so that it completely killed any and all enjoyment I had in the series. Which, considering I was only mildly entertained by them wasn't a massive loss or anything.

I know I read whichever book it was where Dumbledore died but I very genuinely cannot remember one single thing that happens in that book whatsoever. I read half of the Deathly Hallows after coming back from College and gave up because I wasn't enjoying any of it and I never picked the book up again.

I saw the first movie in theaters when I was 13 and I did not like it. It was visually very very dark and gloomy and just... extremely uninteresting to me. Idk how to explain it. The first book just felt so much more vibrant than what I was watching on screen.

I know I saw the 2nd movie although I have no memory of where or why. And I... THINK I saw the third one??? I think??? I'm actually not sure. But that's about where I just stopped and completely lost interest.

Because it wasn't very good.

They just weren't very good books.

They weren't TERRIBLE or anything like that but they were just so.... blah. The earlier ones 13 year old me enjoyed the one time I read each of them but I don't think 13 year old me had the best taste considering I also disliked the Princess Bride at this age.

But I was reading other books because I was a kid with ADHD in high school who desperately needed something stimulating to stop myself from going insane. And frankly, there were just far better books out there. Books I actually re-read. Books I borrowed from friends which ere just... so much better and more interesting.

So I just don't understand this insane appeal so many people have for it, even if they have severed that connection due to Jowling Kowling Rowling's bufoonery and showing herself to be a withered old crone with a shrivled heart and mind every time she opens her mouth.

I grew up with these books the same way as a lot of people. I was the exact age to go through the series' highest popularity and I just did not click with them despite reading them.

So seeing so many people my age or a little younger try and do their best to re-analyse and de-tangle what the books actually are and that... maybe.... just maybe.... they might not have been very good?? Maybe?? is very weird to me because I'm just like.

"Yeah they're overrated as hell and not that interesting."

It's a very weird thing to live through because it's like looking into a bizarro version of the world you remember living through... but not like THAT. I remember the Pokemon craze and yes, it was like that. I remember when anime started to become big and yes, it was like that. I remember DBZ airing and yes, it was like that.

But this insanity around Harry Potter while it was releasing?

Yeah I don't remember it being like that at all.

They were just mediocre books I read because I needed something to occupy my attention and eventually they got worse and worse and I just stopped reading them. That's all.

[cloudmancy]

I saw your latest rat grinders piece (love it love it so much and you are right that song matches so well) and it got me thinking about calroy in comparison to the rat grinders and specifically kipperlily in reference to how the d20 fandom sees them. Obviously there is a retrospective and nostalgic lense to calroy that isn't afforded to kipperlily as of yet, however, I'm trying to understand why it seems that the fandom has this attitude towards them: calroy- evil but liked and kipperlily- evil (read as heavily manipulated teen girl with anger issues exasperated by a literal god of rage) who is disliked. Do you think it has to do with this 4 years ago vs present timing- are people too hot with emotions to think critically? Does it have to do with the setting- acoc is candy land game of thrones obviously there is going to be betrayal and ambitious power hungry characters who can only be found in fiction and well politics vs fantasy high where the audience LOVES the bad kids have seen everything they have been through, have sided with them, 'would like to sit at their fantasy john hughes movie lunch table' and hate kipperlily because she hates the bad kids so she does what she does like an "ambitious mean girl"? I hate to reference harry potter- it's giving "who do you hate more voldemort or umbridge? umbridge right? everyone has had an umbridge in their life" I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have any

okay I talked with my friends about it and I feel like it's:

the way kipperlilly was set up and introduced vs calroy - she was presented as an annoyance and an antagonistic character to the bad kids from the beginning, while calroy was a loveable close friend and advisor to the king who turned traitor. that also makes him a more likeable character especially since people started being fans of him specifically AFTER the betrayal too

people did hate calroy! it's just been so long since acoc aired that the people who hated him stopped talking about him and the people who like him still make content of him. I imagine after fhsy ends the majority of people who talk about kipperlilly will be fans of her OR people watching for the first time

and the last part, you're right. there's definitely some projection to it. lot of people on here going 'she's just like ex-gifted kids/this type of mean girl I had bad interactions with when I was younger' and put themselves in the role of the bad kids. there's also the seeing yourself in her type of hate where it's like 'EYE had rage issues as a kid and I'D never do what SHE'S doing. I'm better than her' okay but you're an adult now. let's give some empathy to her and your own past self please <3

[oldinterneticons]

Do you care about trans people? The amount of HP stuff you've posted just this year has started to make me think otherwise so I'd like to ask if you're simply unaware or if you don't agree with the many people who want it to fade out of culture

Hmm I wondered if this would come up eventually.

No, I don't endorse or agree with JK Rowling's stance on trans people and I support the LGBTQ+ community. I'm aware of the controversy but I don't keep up with the latest details of it.

My goal with this blog is just to present these graphics like a time capsule of the era in which they were made. Like I said about Pirates of the Caribbean when people were upset about seeing Johnny Depp here last year, it’s hard to grasp how massive and much a part of internet culture Harry Potter was if you weren’t there to see it first-hand when the books and movies were coming out. I can tell you that especially in fandom spaces, there was a hell of a lot more Harry Potter than I ever post.

Lots of these icons include questionable people and media. That’s what the 2000s were like - someone said previously in a comment, it was a lot less sanitized than the aesthetic Invader Zim glitter graphics nostalgic version. That's how any era will look in retrospect. I don't do much censorship of topics here other than things that go against Tumblr rules. If I did, you wouldn't see all the punk pop bands whose members have later been exposed for unsavoury acts here.

As far as Harry Potter goes, I have a LOT of HP icons collected because, as I said, that's how it was and I just save whatever I find or get linked to. My method for running this blog is randomizing the file names of the images in my icons folder as a string of numbers and letters and loading the queue in whatever order they come up, and honestly, I often weed out some of the Harry Potter (and Twilight, and Naruto, and My Chemical Romance, and other super popular topics of the era) themed ones that come up in the folder just because there are so many of them. So believe it or not, I have way more of that theme of icon than I ever post. I do purposely steer clear of ones focusing on JK Rowling alone rather than the franchise (though haven't found too many of those).

I would be curious to hear what others think, though.

[ruinofchimera]

People forget or are too young to remember that when Order of the Phoenix first came out, everyone thought Lily was exceptional because she was coming to the defence of some random slimy unpopular kid she didn’t know just because it was the right thing to do. Nobody theorized for a second back in 2003 that they were friends, let alone best friends, because they DIDN’T ACT LIKE IT. She pays no attention to him in that scene because she’s so dialled in to James even at his worst. People theorized that Snape had a distant crush. Obviously JKR wrote it that way in Book 5 to conceal the Snily connection because it needed to be a big mystery reveal in book 7, but that means she needed to make Lily’s behavior - the flicker of amusement and the bantering with James while her friend is assaulted - in the Book 5 scene work retrospectively from a characterization standpoint in The Prince’s Tale. And she makes it work by painting a picture of a shaky friendship that had turned toxic long before the Mudblood incident, and not just because of his Slytherin associations and the threat of the war. He doesn’t understand why she cares about her sister, she puts all the blame on him for them stealing Petunia’s letter. He minimizes the harm Mulciber does, she tells him that he’s supposed to show gratitude to his abuser for drawing the line at murder. We’re not meant to read it as this loving, warm, equal relationship that Snape fucked up in this one moment.

I won’t even bother to hide that your writing hooked me right away. I fervently crave insights from the time when the books were just coming out and people didn’t yet see the whole picture. I find red herring to be a rather delicious literary device, so it’s a pity that I can only imagine how the final twists of the series blew the minds of the audience. Unfortunately, I was still a child at the time, so my brain cells could not yet process the subtleties of the material. Therefore, my judgments were formed after multiple re-readings in adulthood, and by that time, I had been shamelessly robbed of the intrigue.

Many fanon trends take on deeper meaning after you lift the veil of how the material was initially perceived (being misled by the narrator until the very end and all). Taking this into account, it becomes clear where the claims of Lily’s heroism may have come from. Someone in a reblog of my previous post mentioned that even Harry, who held a grudge against Snape, didn’t find the display amusing in the slightest. On the contrary, he was terrified. So even if there was no evidence of Lily and Severus’s friendship to speak of at that time, Lily’s glorification is still dubious to me. But for some people that might be enough to plant the roots of her chivalrous nature.

I see it now. You explained incredibly well why people might have overlooked the red flags in Lily as a friend, given that they didn’t perceive her as more than a mere bystander during the incident. Unfortunately, though, I have very little faith that people still base their opinions on what they read many years ago. I mean, I reread the series just last winter, and I had already forgotten a lot of important details (for example, Lily trying to make Severus feel grateful that James had saved him). And some folk intervene in discussions about Harry Potter when the last time they touched the original material was more than a decade ago? Well, if they seriously rely on their—dare I say—ancient reading, it would be so absurd it would almost be funny. Why am I even surprised? Maybe I’m just jealous of their superior memory.

Whatever. Once again, your meta is a revelation to be reckoned with. I hadn't considered it from this angle before, my critical thinking is almost purring with an enjoyment.

[alexlwrites]

𝑱𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒌𝒐𝒐𝒌'𝒔 𝑱𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒂𝒍

✿𝑷𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈: Jungkook x Reader

✿ 𝑺𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚:  The one where Jungkook, a second year student in the Auror Academy, keeps a journal to vent about his unsuccessful attempts at wooing you.

✿ 𝑻𝒂𝒈𝒔: crack, humor, romance, Harry Potter Au

𝑨/𝑵: This is a Harry Potter AU but you don’t have to read Harry Potter to understand it. If you have any questions just let me know!

°•. ✿ .•°

(<<< part one)

November 5th, 10am

There are a few things I have previously done in my life that I believe could’ve added to the cosmic debt I am now paying, such as:

-Telling Jimin that “top me” is a muggle slang for “be my friend” and watching as he asked people to top him.

-Stealing leaves from Professor Sprout’s garden to figure out which ones were smokable and therefore profitable (up until I ended up with a third nipple from some hacky hocus-pocus weed).

-Jinxing Namjoon. Twice. But I stand by that. 10/10 would do it again.

All of the above and many countless other things are finally catching up to me. Maybe I should get my shit together, do charity work or something. Maybe if I had actually helped Taehyung with his Divination homework like I said I would instead of just making up all the shitty ways to die written in the stars, karma wouldn’t manifest itself in the shape of first years kicking my fucking ass in hand to hand combat without being allowed to fight back.

“Lovely demonstration on the effects of a throat punch, Jungkook” Coach Jin said, clapping his hands.

“I think the name is self-explanatory enough” I replied, voice cracking from the aforementioned punched throat.

“You never know”.

Coach Jin hates me. I am 100% sure of that. The reasoning is unclear and I’m honestly afraid to find out.

In the interest of maintaining myself less punched, I should invest some amount of energy to get him to like me.

November 5th, 11am

No energy was required to find out why that motherfucker didn’t like me. Now his dislike is fully reciprocated. I hope he chokes on his own pretty, juicy lips.

See, what happened was that one of the first years had gotten pretty carried away by the prospect of punching my pretty face and knocked me straight out, sending my karma-striken ass to the Infirmary, ears ringing and nose bleeding.

Now, I repeat that I am not the most romantic dude on earth (but I’m trying, okay? I even started reading Twilight to pick up some Hot Tips) but when all the signs are pointing towards that one person, who are we to go against fate? How can we spit on the forces of the universe like that? On Trelawney’s weed-filled legacy?

How can I not interpret Y/N doing an internship at the Academy Infirmary as the highest, clearest sign that we are meant to be? I am a student at the academy prone to causing and suffering accidents and she is a healer! The only way this could be more perfect was if she was a 100 years old vampire and I were a very pale high school student.

But alas, every great love story has its Jacob.

November 5th, 12pm

In retrospect, I do realize that my metaphor was flawed, cause if Jin was Jacob, he would’ve been into me, Bella - also why did I put myself as Bella and not Edward? - and if Jin was indeed into me he sure had a very weird way of showing it, completely ignoring me bleeding to probable death to flirt with the nurse, who I had claimed as my wife through the very legal power of “dibs”.

“Hi, Y/N” he said, leaning on my bed, hand resting on my bruised leg, making me whimper in pain embarrassingly, but also in a very manly way.

“Hello, Professor Kim” she said, professionally, not even bothering to look at him while tittering with her supplies.

“You can just call me Jin, you know. I’m only a couple years older than you.”

“That would hardly be appropriate” she answered, swatting his arm away from my bed. I think she said something else, but I honestly couldn’t hear shit when she cradled my face between her soft (so soft!) hands and for a split, dream-like second I thought she was going to kiss me.

“You shouldn’t let your students get so carried away.” she ended up saying “Poor Mr. Jeon. Look at him!”

Damn. 

I guess I did look kind of pitiful, all sweaty, bloody and bruised. 

Probably looked like I’ve been french kissed by a bludger. 

Coach Jin shrugged “He doesn’t look any worse than usual to me.”

The disrespect?

Before I had the chance to tell him very maturely to bugger the fuck off, Y/N stepped in “Then maybe you should be my next patient so I could get your eyes checked” she snapped and maybe those punches hit me harder than I initially assumed or maybe there was just something fundamentally wrong with me (place your bets!) but I thought that was very hot of her. Specially when she then proceeded to completely ignore Coach Jin’s presence and turn to me “How are you feeling, Mr. Jeon?”

“You can call me Jungkook, you know.” I mumbled. At least there was no stutter this time, so I would count it as a successful interaction had she not proceeded to ignore what I said too. 

“I’m going to give you an ointment for that bruise and it should disappear in a couple hours. Luckily nothing seems to be broken, but I would avoid any sort of exercises or tiring activities for the day.” she said as she ushered me out of the room with a funky looking jar thrusted into my hands “And hey” she called as I was about to leave the room with a very sour looking Coach Jin “take care of yourself, Jungkook.”

WELL.

WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT.

Before I could fully express my happiness, Y/N closed the door to my face, but not even the hardwood hitting my bloody nose could wipe away my smile as I turned to my sullen coach. 

“Whatever” he grumbled “Don’t think you’re off the hook. You’re still with me tomorrow, Jeon.”

Bugger. 

I guess if worse comes to worst, at least Y/N can still look after me.

Actually, that’s not a bad idea at all…

°•. ✿ .•°

Jungkook's Journal taglist is open <3

 [Permanent taglist: @imknewattis ; @dreamamubarak ; @onlythebest-106 ; @betysotelo18 ; @havetaeminforbreakfast ; @uno7 ; @chimchimmarie ; @anaya123world ; @namjooningelsewhere ]

[librarylexicon]

20 Questions for Writers

EDIT: Now with question 17!

Tagged by @cuephrase (ty bb!!)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

32 (that are attached to my account).

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

283,405. I very nearly posted 100,000 of them last year, and only noticed when I looked at my stats in January. If I'd known, I would have posted something else to get it over that line!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Right now, just Batman, but in the past I've written for Harry Potter, Anne of Green Gables, Little Men, Tintin and a handful of other fandoms. I have a Road to Avonlea fic tentatively in the works, and might return to any of these fandoms if inspiration strikes.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

All the Corners That Are Left is an outlier in my stats because it has more than three times as many kudos as the runner-up. It's an exchange fic that was my first foray into posting Batfam fics, and I liked writing it so much that it actually sparked a loose series of Post-Crisis oneshots, currently called Corners.

Family Crisis is my beloved canon divergence AU of War Games. It's the first fic I started writing for Batman, and I'm so happy that people are reading it. It's very comics-oriented, but still easy to follow without having touched a comic (imo).

Harry Potter and the Time-Turner is the first multichapter fic I ever wrote and completed, back when I was in my early teens. I won't reread it, lest I die of cringe, but I'm bemusedly grateful that it still gets hits and kudos.

Home Assignment is a Dick whump fic I drafted quite a while ago, and finally had an opportunity to finish and publish when I signed up for a Dick Grayson event. I had fun playing around with unreliable narration in this one!

In Retrospect is a HP fic that was written for a challenge where I was given five prompts and a week to produce five one-shots. I chose to make mine interconnected missing scenes set during and after Deathly Hallows, and particularly like how Painfully Abnormal turned out.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! It's a habit that's carried over from my fanfiction.net days, and I receive a manageable amount of comments, so I try to respond to every one. (The only reason I might not is when someone leaves a string of comments that are all very brief. In that instance, I tend to reply to the final comment only.) I adore reading and replying to comments! 🫶

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I've always been an angst lover. The Last Enemy, one of my oldest fics, ends with (canonical) apparent character death, and For the Sake of Our Son ends with both main characters (canonically) dying. How fun!

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Other than a shipfic that's now anonymous, I don't know! I tend to go for uplifting or satisfying endings without necessarily aiming for happy ones (although I rarely have unhappy endings). Maybe You Know I Love You? I do also have a handful of Batman ficlets that I recently wrote for a zine, and there's definitely fluff among them.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I think I got some on fanfiction.net back in the day, but the most hate I've received that I can remember is people being salty about a couple of fics I began when I was a teenager and never finished. I'm sorry, but it's been almost a decade! Yes, you can and should resist the urge to tell me that you don't respect authors who abandon fics!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope!

10. Do you write crossovers?

While I've toyed with quite a few crossover ideas over the years, I've only published one, which is a Rise of the Guardians and Peter Pan one-shot called Lost Boy.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I can't recall any specific instances, but many of my fics have been on the internet for a long time, so they've definitely been scraped for knockoff sites, if nothing else.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, three times! Harry Potter and the Time-Turner has been translated into French, Shirley Not has been translated into German and At Home, They Call Me Tintin has been translated into Chinese. (Links to these translations are in my fanfic masterlist on Dreamwidth.)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, but I'm open to the idea! I'd have to really know the other author and get over my control freak tendencies, though...

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I don't ship much (to the point where I have plenty of NOTPs), but I do love TimSteph, and I have soft spots for DickBabs and BatCat (Bruce/Selina) as well. All-time favourite, though? That would have to be Anne and Gilbert from the Anne of Green Gables series.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

Before the War(drobe). Narnia fandom, I really want to return to you someday, but I have a couple things to do first!

16. What are your writing strengths?

My most positive comments almost always mention characterisation. I also think I write dialogue pretty well. In my mind, well-written dialogue is essential to good characterisation.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Even though I write about characters who are superheroes, I rarely write about them BEING superheroes, because I struggle with action scenes. Also description, but I like to think I've grown better at it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't like to use non-Latin characters in my fics for readability reasons, and I don't like to include dialogue in another language if I don't know the language. So, when my characters speak a language other than English, I either just use an English translation with a dialogue attribution (e.g. She said in Spanish) or just use the attribution without the dialogue, depending on whether or not the POV character understands the language.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter! I wrote for it before I knew what fanfic was. I also joined the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum on fanfiction.net back in the day, which led to my most prolific ficwriting period.

20. Favourite fic you've written?

My favourite fics tend to be my most recent ones, because they're the ones I've spent the most time on and am most proud of. I can never pick one of anything (as you've probably noticed), so my current favourites are:

Family Crisis – longtime labour of love and Bruce character study

All the Corners That Are Left – Dick character study feat. Jason

Flight Mode – Tim character study feat. Bruce

Phew, that was a lot of questions! I think a lot of people have already been tagged 😅

Scrolling through my mutuals and no-pressure tagging @silverwhittlingknife @geevesthevieve @batrachised @freyafrida and @silent-silver-slip and any other fic writers who see this! 🫶

[drainslo]

Chishiya x Reader AU -- player x citizen angst (One-Shot)

In which things aren’t as they seem.

In retrospect, getting involved with a player when I was a citizen wasn’t a great idea. Let’s be honest, it was one of the worst things I could’ve done. 

I had infiltrated the Beach together with Mira and Kuzuryu, and we posed as executives. Obviously I was given a speciality of diamonds.

When they found out what I did. Mira was simply fascinated by the monster I was, and Kuzuryu treated me coldly. 

Don’t you think you’re going too far, have you no heart? Kuzuryu had jeered, infuriated by my selfishness. What was worse instead was how delighted Mira was.

But I couldn’t help it, my feelings. There was no rationality or logic behind it. I felt like a goody clubs player giving in to the power of friendship and love.  Or even worse, I irrationally felt like a manipulative hearts player that forced him into loving me even when it was reciprocated. I had to swallow the feeling of nausea that arose from my deception when I was around him.

Ironically, I didn’t know he felt the same. My player had thrown another under the bus to steal the cards from the Beach and he desperately hid it from me for some reason. I guess he understandably didn’t want me to see the monster that he thought he was.

It was funny how similar we were. Player and citizen: two sides of the same twisted coin.

I spotted him running towards my room when the 10 of hearts was announced. I didn’t have time to say goodbye to him properly since I had to prepare my venue for the next round of games. I couldn’t even leave a note, because of the possibility that counted to admitting being a citizen. 

My player was clever, though. I think he at least suspected something was off with me. He once lazily commented that Kuzuryu gave off a kingly aura. He wickedly stared at me when he said so, and I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me.

“I suppose,” I had responded carefully, and that was enough for Chishiya.

And now Kuzuryu, Mira, and I had disappeared after the 10 of hearts. Mira happily volunteered to be the next one to announce the games. So with all his intelligence, Chishiya definitely knew that I was a citizen. He probably even knew I was the Queen of Diamonds.

There were days of maintenance between the first and second wave of games and I begged the other citizens to let me go to him. They all refused, saying that I would get lasered and there was currently nobody else to run a diamonds game in my place.

So I waited in my venue for him to come. There was no way he wouldn’t; I knew of his fascination with diamonds games. I focused on beating players in my game, a human version of chess that was inspired from one of the Harry Potter books. 

I played the queen, and could direct other pieces around the board. If I was captured, or was checkmated it was my game over. Players each had to become a piece, and had to direct each other or the remaining pieces in an attempt to win. I could kill players throughout the game by capturing them, or more quickly, everyone would lose if I checkmated the king.

I ran one game a day, and usually they lasted around 30 minutes at most. My chess hobby and love of Harry Potter growing up finally proved useful, despite how morbid they now were.

Throughout the week, I checked the blimps every night. Kyuma, the King of Clubs, had fallen on the first night of the games, and the Jack fell on the fourth night. I didn’t know who was running the Jack game, but Kyuma’s death was devastating to see. He was so lively and vivacious despite being a game-master. He made me feel less guilty about my relationship with Chishiya unlike the other King.

“You only live once! So why not live freely? If your love is genuine, then that’s all that should matter” Kyuma had told me. It made me feel marginally better, even though this came from a guy who flocked around naked.

Enji, Jack of Hearts, had fallen by day 6. Unlike Kyuma, his death was in no way a tragedy. His creepy hypnosis had always made me feel uncomfortable, and I secretly hoped all along that players would kill him in this stage. 

Strangely enough, only the Queen of Spades had fallen the seventh night. I was surprised to see the lack of diamonds games that fell. Knowing Chishiya, I assumed he would immediately set out to clear them first.

Unless something stopped him from doing so, likely the King of Spades. Isao was too good at being a roamer, and he often drove players into game venues they never would’ve stepped foot into otherwise.

The eighth night, the Jack of Diamonds toppled. I heard the blimp fall in the middle of my game and I rushed outside to confirm once I killed all the players. Where Amon’s Jack once proudly flew, there was now only the clear blue sky.

Chishiya’s coming.

My heart fluttered at the thought of seeing my Chishiya again, but I knew what the cost of it would be. I wasn’t sure if I was willing to give up my life for his as a citizen, but I was less sure that I could live with myself if he died because of me.

On the ninth night, I opened my venue for the daily challenge. Unsurprisingly, An, one of the former Beach executives with a diamonds speciality, was waiting outside with a group of her allies behind her. There were 7 of them in total, but no Chishiya.

They walked onto the life-sized chessboard where I was standing, waiting expectedly for me to begin the game.

It was both a blessing and a curse that Chishiya wasn’t there.

“So, is that everyone? Are we ready to start?” I asked, prepared to close the venue.

Then the entrance opened, and I breathlessly watched Chishiya walk in. He stepped onto the board besides An, unsurprised when he saw me.

Now it’s everyone.

I gazed at him, trying to read what was going through his mind. He quirked his lip into a vague smile but didn’t say anything. I wanted to tell him everything, but my duties as a citizen had to come first.

“I’m going to start the game.” I flicked my hand towards the giant projection screen I had placed in my venue and an automated voice read familiar rules.

[GAME]

‘CHESS’

TIME LIMIT: NONE

WEAPONS NOT ALLOWED

RULES:

THE GAME IS CHESS. IF ONE SIDE VIOLATES THE STANDARD CHESS RULES,  IT IS GAME OVER.

PLAYERS ARE PLAYING BLACK, AND THE QUEEN IS  PLAYING WHITE.

 PLAYERS MUST PICK A PIECE ON THE BLACK SIDE TO TAKE THE ROLE OF. THE QUEEN WILL PLAY THE QUEEN ON THE WHITE SIDE.

THERE WILL BE 90 SECONDS FOR EACH SIDE TO MAKE A MOVE.

TO MAKE A MOVE, ONE PLAYER HAS TO DICTATE WHICH PIECE IS MOVING AND WHERE ALOUD. IF THE PIECE THAT IS MOVING IS A PLAYER, THEY CAN WALK TO THAT PLACE. IF IT IS NOT A PLAYER, THE HOLOGRAPH WILL SIMULATE THE PIECES MOVING.

PLAYERS WILL ACHIEVE GAME CLEAR IF THEY CAPTURE THE QUEEN, OR CHECKMATE HER SIDE.

PLAYERS WILL INDIVIDUALLY RECEIVE A GAME OVER IF THE QUEEN’S SIDE CAPTURES THE PIECE THEY TAKE THE ROLE OF. ALL PLAYERS WILL RECEIVE A GAME OVER IF THEIR SIDE IS CHECKMATED.

PLAYERS MAY NOT LEAVE THEIR CHESS POSITION IF IT’S NOT THEIR TURN. IF THEY STEP OFF IT’S GAME OVER.

THIS SCREEN WILL SHOW THE TIMER FOR EACH SIDE TO MAKE A MOVE. THE GAME ITSELF CAN GO ON AS LONG AS NECESSARY.

“So you’re running wizard’s chess.” Chishiya commented faintly amused, clearly remembering when I shared my Harry Potter filled childhood with him.

“Unfortunately, I am,” I replied.

An positioned herself as the queen, instructing other players to take the roles of the back row chess pieces. Chishiya volunteered himself as the knight, and the game began.

An was primarily leading the charge against me, and she occasionally conferred with Chishiya throughout the game. By mid-game, I was 2 pieces up and in a strong winning position, having taken several pawns and killed one of white’s rooks..

When the rook player died, An exasperatedly turned to Chishiya next to her and venomously uttered, “I wasn’t expecting your girlfriend to turn out to be a sadistic citizen.”

It was the most emotion I’d seen from An. I hesitantly glanced over at Chishiya, who didn’t  verbally affirm An, but he didn’t defend me either. I didn’t expect his silence to hurt more than if he said anything. Logically I should’ve been happy that he didn’t agree with her, but I wanted to hear him say something, anything about my being a citizen. 

Chishiya instead leaned in towards An and whispered something into her ear that I couldn’t hear. She looked over at me, then back at Chishiya and nodded.

Chishiya walked over to the square in front of me, following an L-shaped pattern as a knight. 

My knight, except without the shining armor. 

“What are you doing? Do you have a death wish?” I hissed at him.

“You can’t step forward,” Chishiya calmly said, and gestured to the player-bishop behind him. As I drew my gaze to the bishop, I realized he was right. If I stepped forward, it would put my king into checkmate.

I quickly surveyed the next move I could make. I decided on pushing a pawn forward to threaten the bishop.

“You have,” I glanced at the clock. “60 seconds before I make my move.”

“I think you have much more to say than I do~” Chishiya’s voice had a melodic tone.

The clock read 45 seconds. That wasn’t nearly enough time to profess how I felt for him. To me, he was my everything. And my legs almost shook as we were now directly face-to-face, and it hit me that I wasn’t going to be the one walking out of here alive.

“Where do I begin?” I laughed. “I’m sorry for not telling you that I was someone who ran the games that were trying to kill you. I’m sorry, for our relationship, I wasn’t planning on it. I wanted to set the record straight that I never deceived you along the way. Everything between us was true.”

“I wasn’t going to accuse you of deceiving me,” Chishiya said slowly. 30 seconds “I have a lot of respect for you and Kuzuryu. Your games were interesting. Did you design the 6 of diamonds?”

I nodded. “I saw that was your first game. I was watching, and I was impressed that you made it out without knowing the rules.”

“What did you feel when you first saw me?” Chishiya’s voice had its unmistakable lilt when changing the topic abruptly. “Did you see me as a player, or a person?” 15 seconds.

“I saw you as a player. But then you became someone who was important to me, and no matter how much I tried to rationalize it, there was only one explanation for how I felt. I love you.” It was the first time I had mentioned the word “love,” to Chishiya. Throughout our relationship, it had always gone unsaid.

I sent the pawn one step forward as the timer hit 5 seconds.

An was silent, and the timer reset to 90 seconds for the player team.

“When I met you, I felt something was off,” Chishiya admitted. “But you were interesting, so I wanted to observe you closer. I had a certain respect for your intellect, see. Yet as we spent more time together I realized what I was missing.”

We were eternities apart, only separated by one square, but we were so close. He leaned in towards me and touched his forehead to mine.

“Years and years of emptiness. Somehow, you looked through the empty shell I was and saw me when I couldn’t even find myself” Chishiya whispered softly.

I placed my hands on the side of his face gently caressing him. He was so familiar. I felt my heart ache since I hadn’t seen him for over a week.

Neither of us acknowledged the quiet tears that slipped out of our eyes.

“You’ll clear the rest of the games. This batch of players is strong. Kuzuryu might be challenging for you. He’s extremely intelligent, but I don’t doubt you. ” I said softly so nobody else heard my voice breaking.

15 seconds.

“(Reader), what happens when we clear the games?” Chishiya tentatively asked.

“You’ll have a choice to make. Don’t make the one I did. I made it for the wrong reasons, and I’ve regretted it every day.” I was begging him not to choose to be a citizen like I did three cycles ago. I thought that being a citizen would grant me a sort of immortality. The opportunity to remain alive as long as I killed players in my games.

With Chishiya, I realized how fruitless this all had been. I wasn’t really living at all.

5 seconds. An still hadn’t said anything, and it was still the player’s turn.

I took a deep breath, my decision made long before I consciously registered it, and stepped off my square. I hugged Chishiya tightly and felt his heart pounding. He was so alive.

He stroked my hair and murmured, “You did the best you could (reader), I love you too. Now rest.” Chishiya then pulled away from my hug and kissed me softly. It was the second to last thing I felt.

The last thing was the brief pierce of a laser through my skull, then all was numb.

[GAME CLEAR]

PLAYER SIDE WINS

[terastalungrad]

Wanted to buy some keyrings for the spare house keys. Where do you get keyrings, eh?

Timpsons keyrings were rubbish. Tried Forbidden Planet - nothing inspiring there either. Ended up getting Lego keyrings.

"We've got these new Star Wars ones," said a man I hadn't asked for help. "And if you give me a minute, we've got a load of new Dumbledores and Hermiones from Harry Potter! ... if you're interested in that."

"I'm not interested in Harry Potter," I said.

So I looked at what remained. Just Star Wars and Marvel. And not a rich range of either.

I picked a Darth Vader and a Wanda Maximoff. They'll do.

"Who'd win in a fight between these two?" asked the man behind the counter.

I can't tell you why I loved this man so much, when I'd been so irked by the other guy. But I DID love him, and I really wanted to answer his question in a fun way.

"... I mean, it'd be the Scarlet Witch, wouldn't it," I said. Because it would be. I'm not that interested in "who would win in a fight?" questions with anyone other than my wife. Nobody else's opinion in this matter interests me. But ... Scarlet Witch can rewrite the whole world. Darth Vader can, at best, strangle you without needing to get up.

"Yeah," said the man. "I love Darth. But Wanda's broken."

Broken! lol. I like the idea of analysing characters based on how well-balanced they'd be in a video game. Tell you who's REALLY broken - God. I just think he's a bit OP.

In retrospect, I wish I had bought a Hermione Granger alongside my Wanda and Anakin. A transphobe's idea of an activist against two characters known for killing children. No contest.

[paragonrobits]

not to blog about harry potter in the year 2023 but it illustrates a central point that I've had in mind for years whenever the subject of its pop culture impact came up; I always thought that it was the book series that actually got me into fiction in general, as until I read that series as a sort of my first urban fantasy without realizing it, I wasn't that interested in fiction in general, though that isn't specifically true and its a little surprising to realize why

so to illustrate my first point; for most of my life I've been an extremely heavy reader. As a kid I always loved reading more than anything else, and often I found myself doing so well in classes that I would just wind up ignoring everything going on to read, which I was usually allowed to do. For years, I would bring a book or two with me to school so i would have something to read in case my text books weren't interesting enough

the key point is that though I was a really intense reader, there were VERY few fiction stories that got my attention. Mostly, they were just... boring. I think on reflection that most of the books available at the time in the school libraries I frequented were kids adventure stories (the Hardy Boys and the like), things like Goosebumps and books series like the Babysitter's Club; in general i might consider the first and third categories predecessors to the Coffee Shop AU for a kid growing up in the 90s; relatively low in impact, strictly mundane and firmly set in the real world. At best I found them boring and not of interest to me, though I liked a lot of the goosebump books, which might have been foreshadowing.

So the Potter books were something unanticipated for me and really got me into reading fiction in a big way; I remember feeling that the time that it was something radically new for me, big on-going books with a lot of character stuff going on, meshing of the real world and the fantastical, and more; now I think its all VERY bare bones and there's perhaps something to the idea that even though the worldbuilding is pretty mild at best and it LOOKS like an interesting setting more than the actual details hold up, it was still pretty innovative for someone at the time.

But you know what book series I WAS already into, in a huge and monumental way at the time? A book series predating the Potter books, that have aged significantly better (and aren't written by the Arch-TERF)? That focused on science fiction, aliens as people in their own right, with really intense stakes, horror and gruesomeness all meshed into goofy 90s 'commit to the bit' feelings, complex characterization and a whole lot of fucked up goodness?

Well, hypothetical reader, let me tell you that the Potter books were NOT really my intro to fiction. To my collective knowledge, I was reading comic books long before then (though not cohesively or in any kind of order, which is probably why they don't stick out as much to me), enough to be massively into the Hulk cartoon series at the time, but when it comes to published books that I regularly bought or begged my parents to get for me whenever they were out, there was ONE series. One series that impacted me in a massive way, that were always the pride of my book collections.

That's right, and if you know something about the era you might already know what I'm going to say; i was an ANIMORPHS kid.

I think the reason the Potter books FEEL like they have more personal impact for me is a fairly ironic one, since I was reading animorphs for quite a while before the Potter books were ever published, at least by a couple years or so, is that they were large novels by the standards of the books I saw as a kid; I think that was probably unprecedented for me. Animorphs was released in monthly, episodic novels rotating character perspectives by month and they were relatively short books; collectively they got WAY more going on, but the individual Potter novels felt quite different.

In retrospect, I think Animorphs had way more of an influence on my mind and eventual writing attitude; I definitely remember being ENTRANCED by how the alien characters had genuinely alien designs, that Ax and Tobias were my favorite viewpoint characters, and the increase of ambiguous morality and the tragedy of the Hork-Bajir (especially them being outwardly ferocious looking but fundamentally peaceful beings) hit me like a firetruck at an age when I rarely read fiction at all and most of the other stuff I DID read felt rather bland by comparison.

In short, if Animorphs had been released as larger collections, I would have gone berserk for it more than I already did, and in a truly better world, Animorphs would be THE most famous book series from the 90s that ignited interest in reading genre fiction for children of the era.

[majorbaby]

very very long rant

when i first left tumblr after the porn ban, the sjw stuff was starting to plateau, but you still had big bloggers ironically calling themselves misandrists in bio. I say ironically because unlike an open misogynist, an open misandrist cannot amass vast structural power, they instead will remain on the fringes of society. before they can even be shunned in the mainstream or the elite, they're being shunned by their own peers.

at that time, there was a lot of popular blogs run by (sometimes allegedly) racialized people or "poc-run spaces" like thisisnot[country] and blogs specifically dedicated to pointing out cultural appropriation. i personally contributed to the reclaimthebindi which in retrospect seemed inspired by blackout selfie day (not to be confused with thr subsequent 'blackout' posts associated with BLM - that was later), altho idk to what extent the south asian diasporic community (of which i am a part of) actually paid homage to the black blogger/s responsible for blackout day.

now many of those blogs are defunct or have been scrubbed from level-one searches of tumblr, and their history has not been well documented. it's hard to understand what the climate was unless you were there because not many secondary sources, like the one you're reading right now i suppose, exist. or they weren't well-circulated. this one won't be, i'm turning off reblogs i think.

this is, in my opinion, in contrast to other major trends in internet culture that inform offline social justice movements. that's your gxmxrgxte (so well-ingrained in my memory that it still upsets me enough to censor today), metoo and the annual around ao3's right to host any and all content with very limited few exceptions.

reclaimthebindi is still up, so are a few of the thisisnot blogs, but you can't really tell that they were all interconnected, a part of the same zeitgeist. i have a few theories as to why, and which one you pick depends on how generous you are when imagining the people who ran these blogs. some of them for sure were run by bored college students seeking an outlet. some of them were denied recognition by their offline peers because of racism, so it felt good to find a space where they could actually amass social capital on the basis of the very thing that disadvantaged them in every other space. some were concerned with punitive justice, others with restorative justice. some just posted black and brown bodies so that those images would exist on the internet somewhere. some were run by racefacing white people who also felt like outcasts offline, and saw a quick and easy way to be embraced elsewhere. it's possible that some people did it for a combination of these reasons.

whatever benefits there may have been, it wasn't enough to keep the momentum going. very few put out 'retirement' statements, most just stopped posting and were eventually purged. tbh, i see the draw in airing your grievances all in one place, but it's exhausting, and eventually your supporters grow tired of the negativity, and you grow tired of the negativity too. that's why i think it's usually better to stick to posting and sharing the stuff you love, not the stuff you hate, or at least, find a balance. though their presence is much, much smaller, creator networks for women, lgtbq, and racialized people have sprung up, and so have spaces where people post and repost art that engages with class, race, gender etc.

but it still feels like racialized people have a much quieter voice on tumblr. i have to rely on stumbling upon them naturally, which is next to impossible, especially if you're on tumblr for a small to medium sized fandom, which i think most fandoms are these days. your supermassive fandoms - doctor who, sherlock, kpop, harry potter, the mcu, also no longer dominate the site. i would still say tumblr is the big fandom site, but a lower user count means that the internet's fandom site is smaller than before.

so, less users in general, and any existing minority shrinks. and if we're talking racialized people who are lgtbq, that's an even smaller minority.

this in my opinion has contributed in a major way to the backlash against feminism, the idea that "terfs ruined feminism" with the subtle suggestion that feminism has perhaps failed, or was never really good to begin with, and a laser focus on terfs as the ones responsible as though the mainstream, patriarchal, cis-heteronormative bloc had absolutely nothing to do with it. or the ludicrous idea that terfs are the mainstream, patriarchal cis-heteronormative bloc. two things can be bad, that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

anyway! a big part of the original tumblr feminist movement was not just the "poc run blog" but in the "woc run blog". "poc" was absorbed into BIPOC, and "woc" is a legacy term. your woc were regularly venting about how being a woman of colour means choosing between your race and your gender, putting up with the misogyny of the racialized men in your life who you show up for constantly but who throw you under the bus when the white man asks them how high to jump. now there's white lgbtq bloggers all over the place asking whether you "include black and brown men when you said you say men are trash?" (yes, i absolutely am) and if you ask that question to a room full of white people, they're all going to keep their mouths shut because they don't want to appear racist.

well, white men do not have a monopoly on misogyny. misogyny levied at racialized women by racialized men is a huge intra-community barrier to trying to organize against racism and white supremacy. it is extremely upsetting to see white people suggest that racialized women, lgbtq people and children are not oppressed by the racialized men in their own communities. that we are not survivors of domestic abuse, sexual abuse or that we do not endure oppression under patriarchy in the home, workplace and in society inflicted upon us by our own kin, which compounds upon what we already absorb from white people.

and they can go on doing so on here because many racialized women have shut up and gone away. even running blogs aimed around celebrating themselves has become a service to white consumers that they've done thanklessly for years. just to hear that actually, they have no right to say "men are trash" because what if the brown man that abused them or their mom or their aunties overhears and gets his feelings hurt. didn't we discern the difference between hurt feelings and systemic oppression almost fifteen years ago on tumblr dot com?

like, sure, maybe we should adjust "women only spaces" to be "spaces for women and trans people" but we can do that and not pretend that we have absolutely no idea why women live in fear of men, or that a reasonable amount of fear is completely unwarranted.

man it is one thing to come back here to find all the, admittedly, sometimes kind of annoying sjw blogs around race gone, and another to see a resurgence of popular MRA talking points. but i see how that's happened. racialized women are done talking about this, and who can blame them. white women, and i wish i only meant cis women, get slapped with 'terf' the second they open their mouths, so they are also done talking about this.

if you managed to read all of this please be a little careful when reblogging posts that are critical of feminism. yes, there are a few bad-faith actors within feminism, but feminists in general are a minority group, even if it doesn't feel that way on tumblr. think about it, how long has it been since you saw someone with 'feminist' in bio? is it a good thing to keep facilitating this growing resentment against feminism? has feminism done nothing for us? should we toss it out with the bathwater?

[rose-icosahedron]

I miss Harry Potter.

Let me explain, since this sounds both weird and potentially like a red flag off the bat. But here we go.

We know now that JKR is a transphobe who uses the platform granted to her by the popularity of her book series to spread and justify her views. Talking positively these days is a dog-whistle for TERFs and Transphobia. And I know that retrospectively re-reading some of her works knowing her views it seems obvious in someways.

However, none of that mattered when I was a little kid who thought magic was cool and didn't have much media literacy. And tones of people who did liked the books too.

I have fond childhood memories of having the books read to me by my dad in the evening, and of going to the Harry Potter park(I think its in universal studios although I don't know) and absolutely loving the butterscotch slushie they had that they called butterbeer. I remember having incredibly detailed conversations with my family about the fact we were probably all Ravenclaws.

The first fanfic I ever read was "harry potter and the methods of rationality" a fic that was a complete re-write of the entire series that showed off various logical fallacies and addressed them, adding logic to the original series and being really the sort of thing my geeky family loved, which note, my dad read this fic to me when I was little, and it is honestly still one of my favorite fics of all time.

These were all good memories, and there was nothing wrong with them. My family enjoyed this series and the media around it and its fandom, tons of people did. We all did, honestly.

But now adays I don't think I could say all this without this context. Because of everything, it is almost impossible to say that you did enjoy this thing as a child and not call your younger self bad for that. For something that you could not have predicted or known about. And its sad, and I miss Harry Potter.

I'm not saying go and ignore what JKR is doing with her platform now and try and be giant Harry Potter fans all over the place, I'm just saying I'm sad. That that book series was, in many ways, good, or at least good enough to capture our imagination. People read and liked it for a reason and the joy many of us found in it was good, the work may not be but the memories were. I'm saying that those good memories weren't bad for happening, and that it sucks that it has all become what it as.

Don't feel bad for enjoying what you enjoyed.

You had fun as a kid, don't let an asshole take away the joy from those memories.

Or well, you don't have to. If you don't want to.

And I'm going to re-read the methods of rationality sometime because it was great and someone made an awesome audio book recording of it and I like the nostalgia that comes with it.

[batshieroglyphics]

Crossover Scene Breaks

Paid patreons got this almost a week ago, and it opened to everyone about four days ago. I meant to have it post here in tumblr at that time, but this week has been the absolute SHITTIEST, so that did not happen. Y'all are getting it now, instead. (The one following this, of HP scene breaks, will be queued and should post at the same time as the version on patreon goes public; paying patreons have access to it now.)

All of these are actually crossovers with Harry Potter, because I spent so long in that fandom.

As per previous scene break posts, these were created because I wanted fun scene breaks that were screen reader-friendly at AO3. The images on AO3 are smaller than the versions shared here—I like the larger versions that let you see a bit better the specifics that aren't always visible in the smaller versions—and due to the coding I use, they only exist when you have creator's style on, and cannot be viewed as an image.

Harry Potter/Doctor Who series got a silhouette of Hogwarts, outlined in purple, with a small TARDIS flying in front, and the text HP/DW in the HP font. The castle silhouette was actually pulled for Abandon/Reclaim, and then I just ended up using it for standard HP ship breaks, so you'll be seeing it a lot when the HP set drop.

HP/Torchwood, for my one fic in the Harry/Doctor series that more focussed on Harry being a member of Torchwood's team, which is basically the above break, but with a brighter outline on the castle silhouette (because I apparently changed it between versions; may or may not go in and match them up at some point) with the Torchwood T made up of hexagons at the bottom right.

For my HP/Radiata Stories fic, since it takes place entirely in the RS world, I went ahead and just used the break from the game's title logo, which is a dagger in the centre, pointing down, and a stylised line that looks a bit like a royal sceptre mirrored to either side. Recoloured gold with a purple outline. (I think there was also a non-crossover RS fic that I used this as a scene break for? But don't quote me on that.)

This is the break I decided to use for Fayth, which is HP/FF10, with Harry and some of his friends having become fayth and surviving to the Final Fantasy world/time. Background is that fayth are sealed into crystals, which break when the fayth is 'gone'. Harry has somehow been returned to the world as a living human, and his aeon was Phoenix, so I went with a cracked foreground with Phoenix in the background.

For my other HP/FF10 crossover, Twin Blades, I decided to recreate a scene from the opening AMV of the game, where you see Tidus' sword, Yuna's staff, and Wakka's ball all together on a hill while they rest at the entrance to Zanarkand. Except, I added Lulu's moogle plushie and then two katanas, as Harry's weapons. (Hence the title.) I did try a version with everyone's weapons, but it was...way too busy. So I cut back a bit, but kept Lulu because I adore her and, also, it's fucking adorable. And then, because I have no self-control, I made an alternate version, using their Celestial Weapons, and two alternate katanas for Harry. When I originally shared these on Patreon, I hadn't yet added the breaks to the fic, so I wasn't certain how well they'd work—I since have and ended up generally liking them, even on mobile—so I also made what I feel, in retrospect, was a kinda dumb go of two katanas pointed outward and vampire teeth in the centre, to use instead, as below:

I'm quite glad to say that one has been retired, unused, lol

[ecc-poetry]

"TERF Wars" notes and recs

Before you read the sestina, if you indeed do, I urge you to check out these creative efforts from fellow LGBTQ+ zillennials:

"I'm Done with JK Rowling" Jessie Gender (The biggest direct inspiration for this piece. It's 3.5 hours long, so if you love long Youtube videos like I do, you're welcome.)

Trans Witches Are Witches (Get this bundle of LGBTQ+ games, zines, music, and other creative goodies! It's 80% off until 02/24/23.)

"A Brief Look at Harry Potter" Lily Simpson (Yes, my favorite Harry Potter/JKR retrospectives from trans creators get even longer. This one is 10 hours, I've watched it twice, if you start now you can be done by the weekend.)

Harry Potter Rebind Laur Flom (Separating the art from the artist by rebinding the Harry Potter books without JKR.)

And then some navel-gazing from me under the cut.

As a member of the Harry Potter generation, I've been thinking about my relationship with JK Rowling and her work. I never actually finished the Harry Potter books, and while I remember participating in fannish activities (midnight screenings and book release parties, fanfic-reading and -writing, a letter to JK Rowling that I don't think I ever actually mailed), Harry Potter as a world never became one of the ones that really grabbed me and shaped me. In hindsight, I'm still not sure why. It didn't offer me what I think I wanted then, which was a deep understanding and empathy for my internal state.

Speaking of understanding and empathy.

Many trans creatives, from video essayists to writers to visual artists, have spoken movingly and with moral urgency about JKR's transphobia and the threat it poses. But they shouldn't have to do all the work. Transphobia is an attack on all women--and all people--because bigotry is intersectional. I wanted to write something that would come from my own experience as a queer cisgender woman and repudiate the idea that transphobic rhetoric serves me in any way. To whit: There is no conflict between the rights of women and the rights of trans people (they're overlapping categories). There is no trans debate--a human person, with dignity and feelings and inalienable rights, is not to be "debated."

I hope that this poem serves as one more pebble of resistance against the forces that seek to undermine our rights. Trans liberation now. <3

P.S. I owe big thanks to my bestie Anthea Carns, author of the musical "The Devil and Sarah Blackwater" as well as other stuff that is good! Without her this sestina would have been (even more) tortured and (even less) focused.

Also, a big thank-you to my family. We watched all 7 Harry Potter films over the winter holidays, and seeing my parents raise many of the critiques I've seen over the years, in real time, was fascinating. When Hedwig died, my mother turned to us and said, "This is cruel. You don't do that to children." And that really stuck with me.

[avelera]

One time my writing workshop that I recommend to everyone (they have online courses and a free podcast!) had sci-fi author David Brin as a guest lecturer and he gave some advice to new writers that has been living in my head rent-free ever since.

He said, first time writers should consider having their first novel be a murder mystery.

The reason being as follows:

Mysteries require a great deal of structure to work properly.

They also teach one a great deal about how to build a plot, especially around characters who want something (like: to solve the mystery or to not get caught)

How to have conflict and tension that grows out of each scene,

How we're introduced to characters, and finally,

How everything must build to a satisfying conclusion in which attentive readers are just a little bit ahead and casual readers discover the solution and see all the clues laid out in a satisfying manner in retrospect.

And it's a great genre for bringing in a friend to see whether or not you achieved the goal of laying out the clues properly, because it is in fact impossible to do on your own (this is true of most things in writing, but it's a bit more subtle when trying to tell if other stuff like romance has landed properly).

Putting a cut here to go over some popular examples and how writers can learn from them to improve their stories.

And the more I thought about this advice, the more I realized just how many of the most popular genre works of recent years had a mystery (whether or not it's a murder they're solving) as the way to drag the audience into the story, at least at the beginning, even if the plot then evolves into something else midway, because mystery is also an excellent way to dump exposition because it's all about finding out the truth.

The Winter Soldier film, in addition to being a Bourne-style action thriller set in the Marvel universe, has a strong plot through-line of "Who "killed" Nick Fury? Who is the Winter Soldier?" which gets us through a good chunk of the film that would otherwise be a slog of exposition and it works so well.

The first three Harry Potter books are actually very well structured mysteries. I've argued for ages that Book 4 onward is where Rowling lost the mystery plot structure to the series' detriment, the plots ballooned, and the whole thing got quite sloppy (this in addition to her reprehensible views, to be clear, I've been a critic of her structure in stories for quite some time short version: she's very bad at it when not grafting onto a school year).

The first Game of Thrones book and S1 revolved around Ned Stark as our primary protagonist seeking out the answer to the mystery of Who Killed The Hand of the King and Why - revealing the deeper mystery of Joffrey's lineage and setting up the events that eventually led to his execution. AND, by the way, that's PART of why Ned's execution was so shocking and effective: GRRM borrowed from the murder mystery genre to build a portion of his plot around, and then disrupted it by killing the investigator which as the POV character generally speaking very rarely happens in mysteries, which made it an even bigger and more effective shock for readers when Ned, who seemed to have plot armor on many levels, dies thus reinforcing the theme of "You win or you die" and the brutal chaos of the GoT world.

What I think makes all 3 of these very popular examples so effective is the blend of genre. Murder mysteries are tantalizing but they do sometimes fail to answer the "So what?" of one person dying in a small town. But combine the murder mystery structure, which demands so much of its writer and is so effective at dragging the reader along through the hardest part of introducing them to your world, with a genre that is better at answering the "So what?" like epic fantasy or action thriller, and now you've got a very effective combination for entertaining an audience.