okay, most of what i do re: harry potter is criticism, and hp is flawed in such a number of ways, but sometimes i just sit here and
i mean, you all have a comprehension of just how drastically harry potter changed literature, yeah? like. it revitalized it. it blew the literary scene apart. the new york times had to create a separate bestseller’s list for children’s lit just because harry potter existed. harry potter changed reading.
so many people on tumblr were born in the ‘90s. when the first book came out, most of us couldn’t read. but we grew up in a world where everyone, everyone, everyone was reading harry potter, no matter how old they were; we grew up in a world where the most popular story in the entire world was a fantasy children’s book.
it’s sort of difficult to grasp, sometimes, the extent to which harry potter is not just a book. the extent to which what is basically a series of fun, interesting, and fairly good novels is such an enormous, enormous part of our lives, a cultural touchstone, a truly universal reference point, something so many people have shaped their lives around, a foundation for all of the stories we would read and watch for the rest of our lives– for so many of us, the first books we ever loved
the extent to which so many of us can’t call ourselves “fans” of harry potter, because it would like being a “fan” of, like, having lungs.
it’s not even about liking it or disliking it. it’s just a part of us.
the older i get the more i realize what it meant for lily and james potter to die at 21. when you’re 11 and you’re reading the books, watching the films, 21 feels ancient. it did to me. even the actors they picked looked like they were in their thirties, because actual 21 year olds standing next to harry in the mirror would have been an excruciating sight i think. actual 21 year olds lined up in the photo sirius shows harry would have been horrible to see. they weren’t adults. i look at 21 year olds now and most of them are still teenagers. and i’m so sad because you know harry turns 21 and then 22 and then 28 and 29 and realizes how terribly young his parents were, how brave they were, how exceptional they were, GOD I’M SAD IM GETTING A BEER
It just occurred to me, as I’m going through the Harry Potter books again, that whenever Harry has visions through Voldemorts eyes that he always, every single time, distinguishes between himself and Voldemort with the mention of “a white hand held a wand which was not his own”, or something to the effect of describing Voldemorts whiteness. While I’ve always taken this as a comment on how Voldemort is inhumanly, disgustingly pale, It occurred to me that a dark-skinned Harry Potter WOULD notice the stark, shocking difference in hands every single time without fail.
Fucking here for it
I’m just imagining someone asking Harry about his dreams and being like “are you sure it just wasn’t a dream and it was you?” And Harry’s like “Yeah I’m pretty fuckin sure, I’m not white”
Headcanon completely and utterly accepted. A++ OP.
What ethnicity would he be then? Like, I’m onboard with POC Harry Potter, it would make lots of sense, but isn’t his ancestry very English? I dunno enough about the British Isles to wrap my head around the genetics of it.
I’ve always thought Indian because they are the largest minority in the UK
same, my headcanon was always either Indian or Latino, on James’ side (additionally i hc race not being a big thing in the wizarding world compared to blood purity, so ppl wouldn’t care much about Potters being PoC)
Can we have a Harry Potter AU where Regulus Black is the Death Eater spy turned potions master instead of Snape?
I can’t believe I only JUST realized all the comedy potential that is Sirius showing up to kill Peter 3rd year and finding his supposedly evil brother working at Hogwarts and having civil conversations with Remus about Harry’s grades
Please let this be after a full year of awkwardness of Regulus working with his evil brother’s ex
Sirius and Regulus are both convinced they’re the good brother
if Rey and Kylo were both women or both men, the Force bond wouldn’t be considered sexual.
like, Harry and Voldemort also had an involuntary, unwanted psychic bond, but nobody sexualized it.
take off your hetero goggles.
“Nobody sexualized it”
Buddy have you MET the Harry Potter fandom
They successfully sexualized the World’s Greasiest Child Abuser and the campus squid
Like I’m sympathetic to your cause and all but please think before you post
i’m sitting here wheezing with laughter bc i’m pretty sure that there’s at least one M rated fanfiction with every single character from HP. like, i am willing to bet some dollars that fuckin goyle and buckbeak and some minor character only mentioned in passing all have at least a drabble that’s dedicated to them fucking. buddy, this is the fandom that sexualised the house elf, even the goddamn sorting hat. nothing is sacred, everything is permitted.
starry-eyed 