TikTok is renowned for being unpredictable. You don’t know whether you’ll get a slew of Killing Eve thirst traps or back-to-back videos of well-dressed teens lip-syncing to Billie Eilish. It’s a chaotic digital lottery that’ll always keep you guessing. So, when my haven of “do you listen to Girl In Red” memes was switched for a round of queer Harry Potter videos, you could imagine my surprise.
From cosplayers, house sortings, and Hogwarts-inspired outfit trends, the allure of Hogwarts was inescapable. Packed with reimagined romance scenes and digs about a lack of diversity, LGBTQ+ fans were creatively making an online space for themselves. As the Harry Potter hype continues, we asked some TikTok creators to tells us why everyone is suddenly obsessed with witches and wizards again.
Trae Wier, 23, is no stranger to TikTok. They downloaded the app during quarantine and it wasn’t long until the creator stumbled across Harry Potter content. “At first, in the US, it was cosplayers dressing up as specific characters. Then I got a lot of queer creators making fun of the author and trying to reclaim content that they enjoyed growing up,” they tell me over Zoom.
Before Trae got involved in making their own videos, they were intrigued at how different users were choosing to take control of a fictitious universe but wanted to do things differently. “I saw content creators dismantling the author’s perception of the Harry Potter world,” the recall, “But mine are more out of reclamation, so I was in my sorted house dressed in cosplay. It was to say I am here, I’m a queer person, and I’m being represented in this world.”
After thinking over the resurgence of the literary franchise, Trae considers the popularity of Harry Potter as something bigger than a fleeting trend. “I think there’s been a lot of people who related to Harry Potter and fantasy, which is to say there’s a part of myself that I can’t show to other people, or that feels different from other people, especially marginalised groups,” they explain.