Okay, so here’s the story about how I messed around with the whole “Tom Ackerley Harry Potter” thing. Buckle up, it’s a bit of a ride.
It all started when I saw some stuff online about Tom Ackerley, Margot Robbie’s husband, and people joking about him maybe being a secret Weasley or something because of his ginger hair. I thought it was hilarious and my brain just went, “What if…?”
First thing I did was hit up Google. I wanted to see if anyone had already done anything cool with this idea. I found some fan art and a few forum posts, but nothing that really scratched my itch. I wanted to see a deepfake, or a short story, or something more substantial. So, I figured, why not try it myself?
I decided to try and create a manipulated image, like a movie poster, blending Tom Ackerley into the Harry Potter universe. Seemed easy enough, right? Wrong.
I started by grabbing a bunch of images of Tom Ackerley and some promo shots from the Harry Potter films. My goal was to somehow make him look like an older Weasley brother that nobody knew about. I messed around with Photoshop for hours. I tried changing his hair color to a more vibrant Weasley red, adding freckles, and even tried to give him a Hogwarts uniform. It looked… terrible.
The biggest problem was the lighting. The lighting in the Harry Potter photos was just so different from the regular photos of Tom. No matter what I did, he always looked like he was just pasted in. Plus, my Photoshop skills are definitely amateur-level. I was getting frustrated, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet.
I then pivoted to trying to write a short, funny scene. I figured I could write a scene where this “lost Weasley brother” shows up at the Burrow and causes some chaos. I started writing, but honestly, it was pretty lame. I’m not a natural writer, and trying to capture the tone of the Harry Potter books was way harder than I thought.
I kept at it for a few days, tweaking the image and the story. The image got slightly better, but the story was still cringe-worthy. Finally, I decided to just embrace the absurdity of it all.
Here’s what I ended up doing:
- I created a really bad Photoshopped image of Tom Ackerley in a Gryffindor sweater, looking awkwardly out of place.
- I wrote a super short, silly scene where he accidentally sets Ron’s hair on fire with a poorly aimed spell.
- I posted both of these on my social media, fully embracing the fact that it was all terrible.
And you know what? People loved it! They loved how bad it was. They loved the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing. It wasn’t high art, but it was fun, and it got a few laughs. Sometimes, that’s all that matters.
The takeaway? Don’t be afraid to try something silly, even if you’re not sure if it’ll work. And sometimes, the best things are the things that are just plain bad.
