Transcript
00:00:00All right, so over the last year, there are three things that have changed my life.
00:00:02The first one was having a baby girl.
00:00:04The second one was discovering Claude Code.
00:00:05And the third one was getting absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter fan fiction.
00:00:10I know it's weird.
00:00:11This is not one of the usual videos on the channel where we talk about productivity or
00:00:14like AI or like how to build a business.
00:00:16But because I've been making YouTube videos for the last like nine years, sharing things
00:00:19that I find interesting, I'm going to talk to you about Harry Potter fan fiction because
00:00:22I have been literally evangelizing it to everyone I know.
00:00:26And so if you are like me and you're a Harry Potter fan and you're open to trying something
00:00:29new, then hopefully this video will give you some of my favorite Harry Potter fan fiction
00:00:33book recommendations.
00:00:36Before we talk about the specific books, I'm going to zoom out a little bit and I'm going
00:00:39to explain what fan fiction actually is in case you are like me and unfamiliar with the world
00:00:45of fan fiction.
00:00:46So back in the day, you know, I'd heard of fan fiction as a concept and I used to think
00:00:51that fan fiction was basically just, you know, some teenage girls who were like taking scenes
00:00:56from a book and like turning it into like, you know, spicy romantic sex scenes or some something
00:01:01like that.
00:01:01And from speaking to my wife, who's friends at school and her were into that sort of thing,
00:01:06like for glee fan fiction, that actually is broadly what the, you know, what the teenage
00:01:11girls were into.
00:01:12But it turns out that that description is actually missing quite a lot.
00:01:15And that would be like saying that like all books are basically just Fifty Shades of Grey.
00:01:19It's like, no, obviously they're not.
00:01:20All books are obviously not just Fifty Shades of Grey.
00:01:22And I was a dumbass for characterizing fan fiction as basically being like, you know,
00:01:27romantic-y smut for teenage girls.
00:01:29That was my bad and totally my loss over the last like 20 years of not like exploring it
00:01:33myself.
00:01:33So this was my impression of fan fiction up until about the middle of 2025 when I stumbled
00:01:39across a thread on Reddit that was talking about Harry Potter and the methods of rationality.
00:01:45I was like, huh, Harry Potter and the methods of rationality.
00:01:47This actually rings a bell.
00:01:48The reason it rang a bell is because over the last like five or so years, I've heard
00:01:54about three different friends independently recommend Harry Potter and the methods of rationality.
00:01:58The one that comes most to mind is my friend Cliff Weitzman.
00:02:01He's been on my podcast a couple of times, featured on the channel.
00:02:03He's the founder of a company called Speechify.
00:02:04He and his brother, I was hanging out with them one time and they were both gushing about
00:02:09this Harry Potter fan fiction called the methods of rationality.
00:02:11At the time I was like, oh, come on, like fan fiction.
00:02:13Like why would I read Harry Potter fan fiction?
00:02:15And I just sort of kind of ignored that recommendation, which was, you know, to my discredit.
00:02:19And a couple of other people have recommended this specific fan fiction to me over the years.
00:02:22And then I saw it on Reddit like last year and I was like, okay, I think it's time I actually
00:02:26give this a go.
00:02:26It's now been recommended by enough like disparate sources for me to, for me to give it a chance.
00:02:30And immediately I was hooked and I was just so totally like, man, words cannot describe
00:02:37just like how much this book just completely gripped me all the way through.
00:02:41So this is kind of, this was sort of my gateway drug into the world of Harry Potter fan fiction.
00:02:47And so this is my first book recommendation for people getting into Harry Potter fan fiction,
00:02:50which is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yukowsky.
00:02:54Interestingly, Eliezer Yukowsky is also like one of the OG AI safety researchers.
00:02:58And he's recently come up with a book called If We Build It, It Will Kill Us All or something
00:03:02like that, which I haven't yet read.
00:03:03But it's kind of random that he wrote this Harry Potter fan fiction like many years ago.
00:03:07Anyway, so Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is 662,000 words.
00:03:12Now, the entirety of all seven books of Harry Potter are about 1.1 million words.
00:03:17It's split up into six books within that.
00:03:20So each book is its own like anime arc kind of thing.
00:03:22And the idea behind Methods of Rationality is that it follows Harry in an alternative universe
00:03:27where instead of Aunt Petunia marrying Uncle Vernon, she actually married a guy who's like
00:03:32a professor of chemistry at Oxford University.
00:03:34And so Harry grows up in this loving household where his parents are like total nerds, or
00:03:39at least his dad is a total nerd.
00:03:40And he's got all of these books around him.
00:03:42And he learns about the scientific method and how science works and how history works and
00:03:46how maths works.
00:03:47And so when he gets his letter at the age of 11 saying you've been accepted into Hogwarts
00:03:51School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he's like, wait, what?
00:03:54And he doesn't believe it.
00:03:55And then Professor McGonagall comes to his house and like has to convince him that like magic
00:03:59is legit.
00:04:00Then he's like, whoa, sick.
00:04:01And then he goes to Hogwarts, but instead of being Harry, he's like Harry, who's sort
00:04:05of this sort of autistic savant type character where he's like super, super, super sciencey
00:04:10and clever and mathsy and like giving Hermione a run for her money.
00:04:12But also he's a bit like socially inept and, you know, a little bit obnoxious and struggles
00:04:18to make friends and stuff.
00:04:20And so that is kind of the premise of this, of like what would happen if Harry went to
00:04:23Hogwarts, but actually was like testing the principles of magic to sort of understand the
00:04:28physics of, of the magic system of Harry Potter.
00:04:30So for example, you know, Wingardium Leviosa, what the hell, how the hell did someone come
00:04:34up with that, with that incantation?
00:04:35Like, what does it even mean?
00:04:36Like, why is it that those specific words in Latin lead to that particular thing?
00:04:39Like if you were to change the incantation, what would happen?
00:04:41Huh?
00:04:41Is there a limit to what kind of weight or mass you can lift with Wingardium Leviosa?
00:04:45And so he's running these freaking experiments with Hermione because she's into this stuff
00:04:48as well.
00:04:48Obviously she's a nerd.
00:04:49And so that's just like scratching the surface.
00:04:51That's sort of like the premise.
00:04:53And the method of rationality is 662,000 words basically covers Harry's first year.
00:04:58So the Philosopher's Stone is a thing.
00:05:00It's still Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but man, like it's just so sick.
00:05:05I don't want to give more away than this.
00:05:07And the really cool thing is because this is like super, super popular, the community around
00:05:11it, like people who have enjoyed reading this fan fiction actually have created their own
00:05:16like audio book version of it.
00:05:17One thing I should have said is all fan fiction is completely free.
00:05:20J.K. Rowling does not allow anyone to monetize it.
00:05:22So you're not allowed to monetize it.
00:05:23So you can read all Harry Potter fan fiction for free on the internet.
00:05:26It does not put any money into J.K.
00:05:27Rowling's pocket if that's something that concerns you.
00:05:29And so the fans of the methods of rationality have actually turned it into a whole audio book
00:05:34with like, you know, sound effects and like voice acting and the whole shebang.
00:05:38So I read it and I read the first, I don't know, 200,000 words of it.
00:05:41And then I listened to the next 462,000 words of it.
00:05:44And it was really, really, really good.
00:05:45So I will put some links in the video description to how you can download this.
00:05:49It is slightly annoying, the process of reading fan fiction, because there's like these two
00:05:53websites, fanfiction.net and then AO3, and mostly they're available in EPUB format.
00:05:57And so what I do is I use my Kindle and I send the EPUB to my Kindle and then I read it on
00:06:01the Kindle.
00:06:01So that would be my recommended approach to fan fiction.
00:06:04I'll put a link in the video description to all of the relevant EPUB files so that you
00:06:07can just send them to your Kindle if you want, or you can read them on your phone, or I'm
00:06:10sure you can find a way to read the EPUB files.
00:06:12There's no romance in methods of rationality, unfortunately, because Harry's freaking 11.
00:06:16There's no R-rated stuff, so you don't need to worry that this is any of these, like, you
00:06:19know, Fifty Shades of Grey nonsense.
00:06:20There's going to be more of that in some of the books that we're going to talk about further
00:06:23down the line.
00:06:23But this is sort of like pure, it's just really good.
00:06:26It's really good.
00:06:27It's got some elements of the Hunger Games in it.
00:06:28It's got some elements of like, oh man, I don't want to ruin it.
00:06:32I want it to be a surprise when you start reading it and you're like, holy freaking, whoa,
00:06:38whoa.
00:06:38I recommended it to a few friends, practically all of them who got through the first like
00:06:42five chapters because, you know, it's a bit of a slow start.
00:06:44It's like a TV show or an anime.
00:06:45Like, you've got to give it a little bit of time.
00:06:47Replied to me being like, holy moly, like, I cannot believe how good this is.
00:06:50One of my friend's moms, she's in her like, she was like 65 or something.
00:06:53She, you know, is a big Harry Potter fan and was like, oh my God, this is incredible.
00:06:57So like, it really spans all age groups.
00:06:59And so I would totally recommend Harry Potter and the Methods of Irrationality.
00:07:03Book number two is The Debt of Time by an author called Shaya Lonnie.
00:07:10This is 727,000 words.
00:07:13So again, the entire Harry Potter series is 1.1 million.
00:07:15This is 727,000 words.
00:07:18And man, I wish it was 1.5 million.
00:07:20Like, I could not get enough of this book.
00:07:21So sick.
00:07:22This is also split up into like four books, I think.
00:07:24But like, you know, it's all in one EPUB file.
00:07:26So you read it on your Kindle and like loads of shit is going on.
00:07:29And you're like, wait a minute.
00:07:30I'm like 1% through the book.
00:07:31Oh my God, how big is this?
00:07:32And so then I started looking at word counts.
00:07:34And I was like, yes, basically the longer the better in my book.
00:07:36What happens in The Debt of Time?
00:07:38So this is a fan fiction based on Hermione's point of view.
00:07:41Everything happens the same up until the end of The Order of the Phoenix.
00:07:45So you now have the end of The Order of the Phoenix.
00:07:47They go into the Department of Mysteries.
00:07:48And then The Order of the Phoenix comes along.
00:07:50And then the famous duel between Bellatrix and Sirius.
00:07:53And then Sirius dies.
00:07:54Sorry if you haven't read it.
00:07:55But Sirius dies, goes through the veil.
00:07:58And Harry's like, oh my gosh, Sirius is dead.
00:08:00Like, oh my God, all that kind of stuff.
00:08:02And it's like a really sad moment because we really like Sirius Black.
00:08:04So that happens at the end of The Order of the Phoenix.
00:08:06And then at the end of The Half-Blood Prince, again, as you know, spoiler, Dumbledore dies.
00:08:09You know, Snape does this thing where he, Avada Cadaver is Dumbledore.
00:08:12And so The Debt of Time starts out at the end of The Half-Blood Prince.
00:08:16So just before The Deathly Hallows, when they're about to go off on their little camping adventure
00:08:19to find, you know, all the Horcruxes and stuff.
00:08:21And Harry says to Hermione, he's like, Hermione, mate, like, there's got to be a way to bring
00:08:25back the dead because we got to save Dumbledore.
00:08:26Like, we can't do this shit without Dumbledore, right?
00:08:28There's got to be a way to bring back the dead.
00:08:29And so Hermione obviously then goes to the restricted section of the library to try and
00:08:33figure out, like, is there any kind of rituals or dark magic or blood magic or any of this
00:08:37sort of stuff that can bring back the dead?
00:08:39She realizes that she can't really bring back Dumbledore because he was Avada Cadaverad
00:08:43and you can't bring back someone from that.
00:08:44But she sees this little thing that's like, there's this ritual, this blood magic ritual
00:08:48that lets you bring someone back from beyond the veil.
00:08:51And she's like, wait a minute, the veil.
00:08:53Sirius went through the veil.
00:08:55He didn't really get Avada'd.
00:08:56He got veiled.
00:08:57So could I bring Sirius Black back from the dead?
00:08:59All of this happens in, like, chapter one of, like, 300 chapters.
00:09:02So I'm not really giving much away.
00:09:03This is, like, literally the premise of the book.
00:09:04So Hermione manages to bring Sirius Black back from the dead.
00:09:07You wouldn't think that this would be a premise worthy of 772,000 words.
00:09:14But it really is because Sirius's presence in the Deathly Hallows changes everything, right?
00:09:20Because now it's not Harry, Ron, and Hermione on the little camping trip.
00:09:22It's Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Sirius because obviously he's helping him out trying to find
00:09:25the Horcruxes.
00:09:26And I'm going to leave it at that.
00:09:27It's so, so, so, so good.
00:09:29It's incredible.
00:09:30There is some romance and, like, a handful of R-rated scenes in this.
00:09:35They're not really central to the plot.
00:09:37So if you're weird and you don't like R-rated scenes, you are welcome to, like, skip those
00:09:42because they're not that central to the plot.
00:09:43But there is sort of, like, a few different threads of romance, which I personally really
00:09:47like.
00:09:47It wasn't overdone.
00:09:48It's not like Fifty Shades of Grey where it's, like, literally the only point is, you know,
00:09:51the storyline is kind of secondary.
00:09:53The romance and all that stuff is sort of primary.
00:09:55This is very much, like, the romance is a thread that goes through it.
00:09:57The R-rated scenes are, like, skippable if you don't like them for whatever reason.
00:10:01But man, this is an incredible story.
00:10:02Absolutely incredible story.
00:10:03And I literally cried when it ended.
00:10:05It was, like, the same tears I shed at the end of the Deathly Hallows.
00:10:08I had those tears at the end of the Death of Time.
00:10:10So that would be recommendation number two.
00:10:13Although, to be honest, you can probably read this in any kind of order, depending on what
00:10:16you like.
00:10:16I would recommend starting out with the Methods of Rationality, though, because it's so easy
00:10:19to listen to because it's an audiobook kind of by default.
00:10:22You can turn all the rest of these into audiobooks using something like Speechify or something
00:10:25like that.
00:10:26But, like, obviously, it's better when it's actually recorded as an audiobook with voice
00:10:29actors and with, like, sound effects and background music and all that kind of stuff, which
00:10:32is what you get with the Methods of Rationality.
00:10:36So now we're going to come to book number three.
00:10:39Book number three is a series of four books that totals currently 1.4 million words.
00:10:46Again, the entirety of Harry Potter is 1.1 million words.
00:10:49So these four books are longer than the entire Harry Potter series.
00:10:51And so you add in another Goblet of Fire and you get, like, the Rigel Black Chronicles,
00:10:56these four books.
00:10:57The first four books are sort of like one arc of the anime.
00:11:00And the fifth book, the author, her name is Murky Blue Matter, has started writing the
00:11:04fifth one.
00:11:05But the last update was in, like, June 2022.
00:11:07And so I'm like, what I recommend you do is, if you trust my recommendations on this,
00:11:10is you read up until the end of book four, which is the first arc of the anime.
00:11:14And it sort of rounds the series together very nicely.
00:11:17And I will let you know, or you can keep an eye on the Discord forum, when book five becomes,
00:11:23like, is, you know, becomes more active.
00:11:24So this is one where I was not expecting to enjoy it, because the premise of the Rigel Black
00:11:30Chronicles is that it's an alternative universe.
00:11:32Now, in this alternative universe, two things are crucially different.
00:11:36Thing number one is that Voldemort does not become an evil Dark Lord.
00:11:39He actually becomes a politician, the politician Lord Riddle.
00:11:42And he's the head of, like, the pure blood supremacist kind of party.
00:11:45And he manages to pass through this legislation that makes Hogwarts only available for pure
00:11:50blood students.
00:11:51And so you're not allowed to go to Hogwarts unless you're a pure blood.
00:11:53Obviously, Dumbledore's trying to oppose this.
00:11:54So Dumbledore is sort of like the opposition political faction to Lord Riddle and his soap
00:11:59party is what is what they call it.
00:12:00But there's no Death Eaters.
00:12:01You know, there's no like people getting crucioed and killed and stuff sort of is like in the
00:12:05background.
00:12:05But it's not it's not like it's not like the foreground like it was in sort of canon
00:12:08Voldemort's like evil reign.
00:12:10So it's quite like politically based if you're into that sort of thing.
00:12:13But the second crucial twist in this alternative universe is that Harry Potter is in fact Harriet
00:12:19Potter.
00:12:20She's in fact a girl.
00:12:21Now, why is this meaningful?
00:12:22Well, it's meaningful because she really wants to go to Hogwarts.
00:12:26The reason she really wants to go to Hogwarts is because she has a love of potions.
00:12:29And the best potions master in the world is Master Severus Snape.
00:12:32And he teaches at Hogwarts.
00:12:33And so Harriet Potter, the daughter of Lillian James Potter, really, really, really wants to
00:12:38go to Hogwarts to study under Master Severus Snape because she's freaking addicted to
00:12:41potions.
00:12:41She's like a potions savant, a potions prodigy.
00:12:45She's been reading like Potionier Weekly since she was like three.
00:12:48She's been experimental brewing in her spare time.
00:12:50She knows everything about potions, but she's not allowed to go to Hogwarts because she's
00:12:53a half blood because James is pure blood, pure blooded Potter family.
00:12:56But then Lily Evans was famously a muggle born.
00:12:58And so Harriet Potter is a half blood.
00:13:00The whole premise is that Harriet Potter is trying to get to Hogwarts.
00:13:04And this is still like chapter one, by the way, so I'm not like giving that many details
00:13:06away.
00:13:07Now, Sirius has a kid.
00:13:08That kid's name is Archie.
00:13:09And Archie is a pure blood wizard who really does not want to go to Hogwarts because he
00:13:13really wants to be a healer.
00:13:14And the American Institute of Magic, which is the Hogwarts of America, has a really good
00:13:19healer's track.
00:13:20And so Archie really wants to go to AIM.
00:13:22Harriet does not want to go to AIM because, you know, the American Institute of Magic accepts
00:13:25half bloods because they're like anti pure blood supremacy and all that kind of stuff.
00:13:28You know, rightly so.
00:13:28And so Archie and Harriet concoct this big plot where they're going to swap places with
00:13:33each other.
00:13:33So Archie is going to pretend to be Harry and go to the American Institute of Magic, where
00:13:39he meets Hermione Granger, who's a, you know, muggle born who also goes to AIM to try and
00:13:42become a healer.
00:13:43And Harriet Potter is going to polyjuice herself into becoming Archie Black, a dude.
00:13:48And she's going to go to Hogwarts to try and learn potions from Master Severus Snape.
00:13:52Now, Harriet masquerading as Archie gets sorted into Slytherin and ends up sharing a dorm room
00:13:57with like Draco Malfoy and like those people.
00:13:59And so and becomes like Snape's protege, shall we say.
00:14:03And all of this shit happens in like chapter three.
00:14:04And then you've got 1.4 million words of stuff that happens as a result of this like swapperoo.
00:14:12And the reason I was not expecting to enjoy this when I first like saw the plot summary
00:14:16because someone recommended it on Reddit, I was like, oh, come on, this is going to be
00:14:20one of these trashy, crappy boy swaps and pretends to be a girl.
00:14:24A girl pretends to be a fucking boy.
00:14:25Oh, it's going to be some it's a boy girl thing kind of nonsense.
00:14:28Oh, yeah.
00:14:29But then, you know, these guys on Reddit were pretty keen.
00:14:31And I was like, you know what?
00:14:32I really should not judge a book by its premise.
00:14:35I should not judge Harry Potter fan fiction by its premise.
00:14:37And I'm so glad I did.
00:14:39Again, I cried when this one when when this one was over.
00:14:41I regret how fast I read I read it because I was like, oh, man, I could have I should
00:14:45have savored this for like twice as long as I did.
00:14:47I would say this is actually of the five that I'm recommending, probably my favorite one.
00:14:51And I'm so sad that like the author has not made any updates since like June of 2022.
00:14:56She apparently like moved to Taiwan and had a baby and stuff.
00:14:58And the discord group for this is still active.
00:14:59There's still like I think like a thousand people on there sort of waiting desperately for
00:15:02Violet to like, you know, write her updates on the thing.
00:15:05So Murky Blue Master, if you if you happen to be watching this video, please, we need book
00:15:08five.
00:15:08We need it.
00:15:09We need it.
00:15:09We need it so badly.
00:15:10It's so sick.
00:15:10Anyway, links will be down below to like the pubs and stuff.
00:15:13It's incredible.
00:15:14Absolutely incredible.
00:15:15You will not regret reading the Rigel Black Chronicles.
00:15:19All right.
00:15:20Now we come to recommendation number four.
00:15:21By the way, if you actually follow these recommendations, the next two years of your life are sorted by
00:15:25just like going with my Harry Potter fan fiction recommendations.
00:15:28And I'm sure I'll have more beyond that point.
00:15:29So like, honestly, just like follow my recommendations in the in the right reading order.
00:15:33And I guarantee your life will change.
00:15:35Anyway, book number four is called Backwards with Purpose.
00:15:37How many words is this?
00:15:38This is a bit short.
00:15:39This is only 392,000 words, which is about a third of the entire Harry Potter canon, because
00:15:43that's 1.1 million words.
00:15:45So again, I was I was sad by how few words were in this.
00:15:47I was like, it's only 336,000 words.
00:15:49This is really good.
00:15:50It's split up into two books.
00:15:51For any of these things, I would say don't look up any spoilers.
00:15:54Don't even look up the titles of the books, because I'm going to be as minimally spoiler
00:15:58as I possibly can.
00:15:59So I'm not going to tell you the title of book two, because the title of book two somewhat
00:16:03gives some of the game away from book one.
00:16:06So do not look at what the title of book two is, if you trust my recommendations on this.
00:16:09I did not.
00:16:09And I'm so glad I didn't.
00:16:10Here's the premise.
00:16:11Backwards with Purpose.
00:16:12The premise is in the Battle of Hogwarts, the final Battle of Hogwarts, the good guys
00:16:15win.
00:16:16Sure, Voldemort gets defeated.
00:16:17But Voldemort is a lot more vicious than he was in canon.
00:16:20And he decides, screw all the Hogwarts students.
00:16:22I'm going to take some fiend fire and I'm going to unleash it through the entire school.
00:16:25And so the Battle of Hogwarts ends with pretty much every man, woman, child in Hogwarts
00:16:30having been like burned alive by fiend fire.
00:16:32And so the only survivors really that we care about is Harry, Ron and Ginny.
00:16:37They are the three survivors of the Battle of Hogwarts.
00:16:40Hermione's dead.
00:16:40All the Weasleys are dead.
00:16:41Dumbledore's obviously dead.
00:16:42He died in book six.
00:16:43McGonnell's dead.
00:16:44Everyone's dead.
00:16:45Except Harry, Ron and Ginny.
00:16:46This is set like three years after the events of the Deathly Hallows.
00:16:49And Harry, Ron and Ginny are freaking depressed.
00:16:50They're like on the verge of killing themselves because they're like, literally, what's the point
00:16:53of living?
00:16:53The Wizarding World is a shell of its former self.
00:16:55All of our loved ones are dead.
00:16:56Like Hermione's gone.
00:16:57Everyone's gone.
00:16:57They ask the question, what if we went back in time and we were able to save more people?
00:17:03We were still able to defeat Voldemort, but like, you know, the cost was too high.
00:17:06What if we could save more people in the final Battle of Hogwarts?
00:17:09They go to Dumbledore's portrait in Hogwarts.
00:17:11Again, all this happens in like chapter one, so no spoilers.
00:17:13They go to Dumbledore's portrait at Hogwarts and like, Dumbledore, mate, we need to go back
00:17:16in time and we need to stop all these people from getting killed.
00:17:19And Dumbledore's portrait is really helpful.
00:17:21He's like, guys, there's this dodgy ritual called the Tears of Merlin that will take you
00:17:25like four years to do, but it's like this massive-ass potion.
00:17:28But this potion can actually help you travel back in time.
00:17:30Time turners only go so far, but the Tears of Merlin will take you back to 1991 or like,
00:17:35you know, Harry's first year.
00:17:36Except you'll, the three of you will go back in time and you will have perfect knowledge
00:17:41of everything that happened the first time around.
00:17:43And so all of this happens in like chapter one.
00:17:44And so the next 333,000 words of this are what happens when Harry, Ron, and Ginny go
00:17:50back in time to year one, i.e. the Philosopher's Stone when they're like 11 and 10, with all
00:17:55of the knowledge, all of the powers, all of the skills that they've got, but they're in
00:17:59the body of a frickin' 11-year-old, 11-year-old, and 10-year-old, and they're going to Hogwarts
00:18:02for the first time.
00:18:02And they are trying to change time in a way that doesn't like timey-wimey destroy the
00:18:08world, but in a way that like ensures their victory without like all these people dying
00:18:13along the way.
00:18:13Just imagine this.
00:18:14Imagine Harry and Ron and Ginny going back and already being frickin' legendary, which are
00:18:17like, you know, frickin' like insanely powerful, like witches and wizards.
00:18:21Ron has Scabbers, obviously we know who Scabbers really is, like, they know all of this stuff.
00:18:25They're like, holy f*cking sh*t, Scabbers, that f*cking, like, but wait, we can't let him
00:18:30know about it because like, we don't want him to like f*cking like run away and like, you
00:18:33know, stage the Azkaban mass breakout that happened in book three because Scabbers is like, we
00:18:37obviously know who Scabbers is, all this sort of stuff, and they have all this knowledge,
00:18:41right?
00:18:41So imagine what their interactions with, you know, when Snape giving Harry grief in like the first
00:18:45potions class and Harry is not really 11, he's really like f*cking 25 and he's already been
00:18:50through all of this sh*t and he knows that Snape's a good guy and he knows that Snape
00:18:53used to love his mom and he knows all of this stuff.
00:18:55Imagine what would happen and how sick it would be if you could do that.
00:18:59It's the next 332,000 words and it's got like some murder mystery elements.
00:19:03It's got like secret puppeteer, puppet master whose identity is unknown kind of elements.
00:19:08Again, like when I, when I find myself describing these like book recommendations, it would be
00:19:12very easy for someone to dismiss it, to be like, when we're at 10, let's just destroy the Horcruxes,
00:19:15right?
00:19:16Cause we know what they are and we know where they are.
00:19:17I was like, but no, it's not that simple.
00:19:20It's obviously not that simple because if it was, it would be like 5,000 words, not 332,000 words.
00:19:24It's a really, really good premise.
00:19:26It's time travel done really, really well.
00:19:28A lot of books in the Harry Potter fan fiction world and other fan fictions have the concept
00:19:31of time travel, but obviously time travel is hard to, it's hard to get right.
00:19:35I think everyone kind of agrees JK Rowling sort of screwed up with the whole time travel
00:19:38thing because you know, you introduced the time turner in the Prisoner of Azkaban and then no one
00:19:42mentions it until they just happened to get destroyed in the hall of prophecy or whatever
00:19:45in the, in the department of mysteries in like book five at the end of book five.
00:19:49But like the time turner would have solved a shit ton of problems.
00:19:51Right.
00:19:52But like from book four onwards, it's as if time turners don't exist except like a perfunctory
00:19:56mention at the, you know, in the department of mysteries in order of the Phoenix.
00:19:58And so JK Rowling didn't do time travel that well because there's all sorts of plot holes.
00:20:01Like why couldn't you have time, time turner to stop Voldemort from like rising in book four,
00:20:04you know, all of that kind of stuff backwards with purpose.
00:20:06The two books do the time travel premise really well.
00:20:09And one thing in, in, in books in like fiction in general is that, you know,
00:20:12there's this idea that sometimes, uh, what's it called?
00:20:15It's a trope.
00:20:15The idiot hat, I think is what they call, what they call it, where it's sort of a character
00:20:19is wearing the idiot hat where they're doing something that you're like, oh, it's so obviously
00:20:22a fricking stupid thing to like, why would you do that?
00:20:24Right.
00:20:24But they're wearing the idiot hat because they have to, for the sake of the plot.
00:20:27There's maybe a couple of, a couple of instances of the idiot hat being worn in
00:20:30this whole series backwards with purpose.
00:20:31But, but for the most part, like the characters are intelligent.
00:20:34They take the time to understand how time travel works before like screwing around with it.
00:20:38It's, it's not as simple as, oh, why couldn't you just dot the dot?
00:20:41Because they will have thought of that and it will not have worked for various reasons.
00:20:44So they might've tried it and resulted in all sorts of catastrophes.
00:20:47So really, really, really good short series.
00:20:49Not 332,000 words only backwards with purpose by dead woodpecker.
00:20:56And then finally, book number five, I'm going to mention is called Manacled.
00:21:00And it's by the author, Sen Lin Yu.
00:21:02And how long is this?
00:21:02This is 371,000 words.
00:21:04Again, Canon is 1.1 million.
00:21:05So it's about 0.4 times the length of the entire series.
00:21:08And it's really good.
00:21:08Now, Manacled is interesting.
00:21:10It's actually been turned into a proper book.
00:21:11It's been turned into a book called Alchemized, which came out recently, like a few months ago,
00:21:15and sold like hundreds of thousands of copies in its first week.
00:21:17Manacled is a Harry Potter fan fiction that's set in a post-apocalyptic Voldemort has won era.
00:21:23So Harry's dead.
00:21:24Ron's dead.
00:21:25Everyone's dead because Voldemort won the final battle of Hogwarts.
00:21:29And basically the premise is right.
00:21:30I'm talking, I'm talking with my, with my mouth full,
00:21:32but like we're supposed to be having lunch and my steak's getting cold.
00:21:34But basically the premise is Voldemort has won.
00:21:36All the good guys are dead.
00:21:37But you know, the Death Eaters and the pureblood families lost a lot of,
00:21:40you know, good guys and stuff during the war.
00:21:41And so Voldemort institutes a breeding program.
00:21:44And what he does is that all of the women that we know and love from the Harry Potter series,
00:21:48including Hermione, including Ginny, you know, all of the girls from the Harry Potter series,
00:21:52they all get like press ganged into this forced breeding program where they have to basically
00:21:56become the concubines of these like pure blood heads of houses and stuff,
00:22:01so that they can like repopulate the wizarding world with like pure blood and all that crap.
00:22:05All of that happens in like chapter one.
00:22:06So that's sort of like the premise that we're going into this with.
00:22:09It's like super, super dark.
00:22:10The interesting thing here is that Hermione ends up as Draco Malfoy's girl,
00:22:15where he and all of the other like Slytherins, Death Eaters and stuff,
00:22:20are basically forced by Voldemort to do this like forced breeding program.
00:22:23So this is super dark, all sorts of trigger warnings as you can imagine with this sort of premise.
00:22:26It's really, really, really dark.
00:22:28You've got a lot of torture.
00:22:30You've got a lot of like, I mean, other than the Cruciatus curse,
00:22:32you don't really see like what could magic do if you were really intent on causing someone pain
00:22:38and harm. You don't really see that kind of thing.
00:22:39You don't see, you know, you hear intimations about how, you know,
00:22:42the first wizarding world pre-Voldemort being vanquished by Harry back in the day,
00:22:46you know, when, you know, the Pruitts died and when like, you know,
00:22:48the order was first a thing.
00:22:50You hear about how it was like really terrible and all these people like died and stuff.
00:22:53But it's all like in the background.
00:22:54You don't really see it firsthand up close.
00:22:56But in Manacled, you see a lot of that firsthand up close.
00:22:58And it's sort of like Voldemort and the Death Eaters,
00:23:00but like a level of viciousness ramped up like 10x to what it is in canon.
00:23:04And like the Order of the Phoenix also having to do like really dodgy things to like,
00:23:09does the end justify the means?
00:23:11Like if they're inventing all of these like insanely powerful curses to like destroy our people,
00:23:15and we're like trying to not cause too much collateral damage, like, you know,
00:23:19all of this sort of stuff.
00:23:20So there's a lot of these sorts of themes that are overlaid on this background of like this forced
00:23:24breeding program and this sort of relationship in inverted commas between like Draco Malfoy
00:23:28and Hermione Granger and like the whole backstory and all of this stuff.
00:23:32Super, super dark, super depressing at times, really quite like disturbing in a lot of places,
00:23:36but really, really, really good and really hard to put down.
00:23:38And it's been turned into like this phenomenally bestselling book that people seem to love.
00:23:41So these are my Harry Potter fan fiction recommendations.
00:23:44I'll put a link down below to the EPUB files for all of them.
00:23:46I'd love to hear a comment down below if you like some of these.
00:23:48And I'm in the market for more Harry Potter fan fiction recommendations.
00:23:51I'm currently reading Alexandra Quick series, which starts off a bit slow.
00:23:56That's 1.5 million words.
00:23:57It's even longer than The Rise of Black Chronicles.
00:23:59It starts off a bit slow, but like I'm starting to get into it now in like book two.
00:24:02And there's a few others that I've read over the, you know, over the last few months,
00:24:06but I'm not, I'm not really mentioning them here.
00:24:07In particular, I read, you know, there's quite a few Harry Potter fanfics.
00:24:10They're not serious.
00:24:11I think they're called crack fix in like the terminology where it's sort of like,
00:24:16you know, there's one I was, I was reading called The Seventh Horcrux.
00:24:19And it's sort of like when Voldemort tried to kill Harry, when Harry was a baby,
00:24:21you know, Voldemort's soul latched onto Harry.
00:24:23And, you know, we all know this.
00:24:24Obviously Harry's a Horcrux, but, but actually Harry is,
00:24:26is actually a Dark Lord because Voldem, part of Voldemort's personality is now in Harry.
00:24:30And so Harry is like this like evil Dark Lord character when he gets into Hogwarts,
00:24:33but it's a bit too jokey.
00:24:34It's a bit too non-serious.
00:24:36It's like, it's like banter and it's like supposed to be funny and stuff, but I much
00:24:39prefer it when the books are written with sincerity as if it's an actual book rather
00:24:43than just sort of poking fun at a premise.
00:24:45So that's why I read a few of these poking fun ones and I didn't really enjoy it.
00:24:48I love it when they're sincerely taking the premise,
00:24:50like super sincerely and they're really, really good.
00:24:52So anyway, that's it for this video.
00:24:54Thanks for watching.
00:24:55See you next time.
00:24:55Bye.