#well whatever. whenever someone IRL brings it up I switch topics. my life is short I’m not gonna spend it talking about the bad wizard book

[tisorridalamor]

I 100% agree with the prev OP but unfortunately I think they’re missing why HP is still popular in 2025. I think it has less to do with an inherent interest in wizard school (or a desire to “fix” the stories) and more that it’s a MASSIVE prebuilt fandom that has persisted since the early days of the internet that is easy to exist in. Endless fan content and an endless audience to consume any content you put out there.

Divorcing yourself from that means those people still involved in the fandom (IN 2025!!!!) means having to start from scratch and I don’t think they’re willing to do that. It means having to find a new interest that you click with (which won’t have a FRACTION the amount of fanworks or community HP still has) or having to try and build a completely new audience from nothing. I think we all know how impossible it can be for any type of artist doing original content to find interest when it’s not attached to a fandom.

Idk I have no solution but I have a morbid curiosity in the HP fandom phenomenon as someone who read the books as a kid but was never in the fan culture the way most of my IRL queer friends were (every day I’m thankful I was obsessed with JRPGs and click with those fan communities way more than I do with book based communities). I have trans friends and their partners who, while they don’t consume any of the new stuff / play the games / give any money to it anymore, still bring it up from time to time and I’m always like WHY… why does it have this hold over you after all this time. I genuinely don’t understand it but I believe it’s less the stories themselves and more the queer community the old fandom had and people grew up in.

Some of these folks unable to leave are likely a lost cause but all we can do is commit ourselves to seeking out independent art, supporting those who create original things divorced from any fandom context, indulging in a wide array of interests, and creating thriving communities even if they’re smaller in scale. It’s harder but you have to do the work. Trapping yourself in a single fandom or online community like I believe a lot of these people have means loosing everything when it comes time to leave it. I find it sad that there are still folks who can’t escape.