When you have an established setting even most laypeople understand it stops being about the story or the media and starts being about using that as a template. Thats how a lot of sci fi franchises get big by simply expanding outwards with expanded universes.
JK Rowling being a transphobe aside she also struggled to do this. She doesn't really play super well with other creators and WB has also used bottom dollar dev teams to make new games. Jam City Games tried to make a cute slytherin girl for Hogwarts Mystery, for example, but that was stuck as a low budget clicker game with limited reach and the characters involved never really caught on.
Some people have gone so far as to say this trend is a psyop, but we already know the people involved are literally not capable of making something like this break out and become popular. It really does just seem to be an organic art trend from where I'm standing.
there is not stopping anyone to find other magic school media (I will always recommend The Owl House), and there is no reason just making something new yourself, without the problem of an incredibly dangerous terf being attached to it.
edit: Once I was exposed to more books and media around age 10, it became so very clear how bland HP really is, really play by the numbers, it's literally just a generic power fantasy at the end of the day, I would say making something more creative won't be so hard, marketing is the hardest part
I also recommend Mage the Ascension, not as much about magic school, but about magic and belief as a concept (and also being a very punk metaphor for politics and society as a whole). It's a ttrpg, like DnD, with the core concept being that what is and isn't reality is decided by the subconscious beliefs of the mass majority, with mages being those who have realised this and can now alter reality to their whims.
The big thing is that whilst stats decide what your character can vaguely do with magic, you decide your character's beliefs for how its done, making it more improvisational and you could have a classic wizard, a cyberpunk hacker, a druid, an ecstatic cultist, etc.
It even came out before JK released her books, as the first edition came out in 1993, and one of the in-lore groups came from a precursor game called Ars Magica in the late 80s
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u/NockerJoe 12h ago
When you have an established setting even most laypeople understand it stops being about the story or the media and starts being about using that as a template. Thats how a lot of sci fi franchises get big by simply expanding outwards with expanded universes.
JK Rowling being a transphobe aside she also struggled to do this. She doesn't really play super well with other creators and WB has also used bottom dollar dev teams to make new games. Jam City Games tried to make a cute slytherin girl for Hogwarts Mystery, for example, but that was stuck as a low budget clicker game with limited reach and the characters involved never really caught on.
Some people have gone so far as to say this trend is a psyop, but we already know the people involved are literally not capable of making something like this break out and become popular. It really does just seem to be an organic art trend from where I'm standing.