Ashley Reese

Grumpy Sunshine, kind of like, think of it almost like an opposites attract kind of thing, where it's one person a little more sardonic about the world, and the other person's like a little bit of just chipper, more optimistic.

Tropes have kind of become the junk food in the book space, and like, we're just giving people what they want.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is honestly a huge part of fanfiction in general.

You know, I've dabbled in other fandoms to some extent.

When it came to fan fiction and like real fandom chatter.

It's been Harry Potter since day one.

I'm not even going to lie.

Which, obviously, now is a little bit more loaded because of J.K.

Rowling's politics on trans rights.

Which, funnily enough, pretty much everyone in the fandom, in the spaces I'm in, despise J.K.

Rowling for her views.

And even in disclaimers for fan fictions, they will write, I do not support J.K.

Rowling's views.

I just like playing around with these characters.

Author is not important to me.

Like...

So it's really interesting to see that evolve over the last 20 years.

But the politics that she has developed or, you know, has really tried to emphasize in the last few years feels like a betrayal to a lot of people who were into that fandom because a lot of people who got into the series did see this as a story about...

fighting fascism, talking about racism, even if the parallels maybe aren't perfect.