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reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
The twin towers were apparited open your eyes muggles.

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Caidin
Oct 29, 2011

reignofevil posted:

The twin towers were apparited open your eyes muggles.

I mean when you put it like that it all really starts to come togeth-






What were we talking about again? And who are we exactly?

Mooey Cow
Jan 27, 2018

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Pillbug

Caidin posted:

What were we talking about again? And who are we exactly?

I'm you.

FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.
Which one of you is the Wizard Bumblesnatch!

FunkyAl fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Apr 8, 2020

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008

FunkyAl posted:

Which one of you is the Wizard Bumblesnatch!

Dr. VooDoo
May 4, 2006


I can’t believe you would see non-magic people in such a bad way! You must be a bad wizard! Now excuse me I need to wipe these muggle’s minds of what they saw because they are too simple to understand magic which makes them dangerous. It’s for their own protection, you see. I am the good guy of the story

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
Wizards, if I'm recalling properly, justify their hidden nature with the logic of "Well if we told the muggles, they'd never stop asking us to solve their problems!"



So it's assholes all the way down. I'm glad we invented nuclear weapons and they didn't.

dordreff
Jul 16, 2013

reignofevil posted:

Wizards, if I'm recalling properly, justify their hidden nature with the logic of "Well if we told the muggles, they'd never stop asking us to solve their problems!"



So it's assholes all the way down. I'm glad we invented nuclear weapons and they didn't.

i think the bad new movies try to establish it was actually because of them wanting to hide from witch-hunting, which makes sense except that the books include specific mentions of how witch hunters were never a threat to real wizards and were treated as a joke

FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.

*Cracks wizard staff against a boulder, casting the molecules of water from it and blasting it into a pile of grit and sand*

Why haven't I gotten your lesson plans for next month

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008

FunkyAl posted:

*Cracks wizard staff against a boulder, casting the molecules of water from it and blasting it into a pile of grit and sand*

Why haven't I gotten your lesson plans for next month

Sorry sorry!



Dr. VooDoo
May 4, 2006


How come wizard parents are awful and a-ok with their kids almost always dying? Like the goblet of fire tournament thing. Not only is death expected for the contestants but the water contest they literally kidnap their friends and trap them in a lake surrounded by murderous mermaids and a giant squid and not one loving parent objects

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
So in the books it is made more clear that THIS particular triwizard tournament is gonna be slightly less deadly than standard. I am pretty sure the classic triwizard tournament, which iirc was banned for like forty years or something prior to the hogwarts revival in goblet of fire, was actually way deadlier than the one Harry and co had to go through. The idea was that the challenges should be no problem for any wizard who had managed to make it to sixth year, theoretically. Harry meanwhile was like fourteen or some poo poo so yeah he nearly died all of the time that he was in there and in truth there was absolutely no justifiable reason for the adults in the situation to put him through that.

So let's talk about why they did. That comes down to this idea known as a "magical contract" which is when you swear a binding oath OF MAGIC and if you break that oath you loving die. Ron got forced by his rear end in a top hat older brothers to make a unbreakable vow (one kind of magical contract) when he was like seven and he got interrupted from finishing the spell like partway through and he still almost died. poo poo sucks. Now this raises a ton of questions which I will detail here.

1) Who is monitoring this? The reason I ask is because this kind of thing is just begging for lots of dumb loopholes or stupid justifications for whatever. For example Snape swears an unbreakable vow to help Draco Malfoy murder Dumbledore but of course he really doesn't do that he just kills Dumbledore himself. Worse there were tons of times where Draco could have been caught or otherwise stopped and even one time where Harry put Draco in the fuckin' hospital while Draco was hiding in a bathroom crying trying to work up the courage to be a big man and commit some capital M murder. Would the spell have triggered if Draco had died? How would it know? Draco wasn't present for the casting of the spell, his mom made Snape do it iirc! Would Snape just fall over dead the second he learned that Draco himself had died of bloodloss?

2) How can a goblet, which was made by wizards, really be so magically powerful that it couldn't just be disenchanted to prevent it from killing anyone? Why should the wizard equivalent of a random number generator even be equipped with a murder-spell anyway? rear end in a top hat wizards I'm guessing.

3) How can a death eater posing as a defense against the dark arts teacher bamboozle this goblet and put in someone else's name anyway? Why would something which pretty much has to be infallible like an unbreakable vow in order to function at all suddenly find itself totally gung-ho to kill someone who never actually made an unbreakable vow, or any other kind of binding wizard's promise? I suppose we never actually test this so we can't actually be sure that Harry would have died at all if he tried to back out but Dumbledore seemed pretty sure about this when he told Harry he would and that his hands were totally tied.

reignofevil fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 9, 2020

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
So the answer to the question you asked, Wizard parents are reasonably certain that their 17 year old "adult" children will be able to handle the slightly less dangerous tournament. Which was dumb of them because obviously 25% of the participants died that year and that was with the safer rules!


As to their general acceptance of danger, well, wizards are kinda dumb.

FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.

reignofevil posted:

Sorry sorry!





Try to make the student Shamus, if you can.


Dr. VooDoo posted:

How come wizard parents are awful and a-ok with their kids almost always dying? Like the goblet of fire tournament thing. Not only is death expected for the contestants but the water contest they literally kidnap their friends and trap them in a lake surrounded by murderous mermaids and a giant squid and not one loving parent objects

Wizard parents all met and fell in love doing stuff like awakening cursed sarcophoguses

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

reignofevil posted:

rear end in a top hat wizards I'm guessing.

Its pretty clear that rear end in a top hat wizards were the norm for most of wizarding history.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


FunkyAl posted:

I have heard "the crimes of grindelwald" is about the wizards not intervening in the holocaust

Not only not intervening, but the one guy who pretends he wants to intervene as a humanitarian is Super Hitler

Mooey Cow
Jan 27, 2018

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Pillbug
I think the most hosed up thing about Harry Potter is, like, what the hell is a spell? Are they discovered, like cheat codes of the universe, or are people inventing them? If they're invented why aren't they ever making any new ones? Why don't Dumbledorf just make a Teleportus-Voldemortus-to-the-moonus spell?

Dr. VooDoo
May 4, 2006


Ugly people with no nose, send ‘me to the moon

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.

Mooey Cow posted:

I think the most hosed up thing about Harry Potter is, like, what the hell is a spell? Are they discovered, like cheat codes of the universe, or are people inventing them? If they're invented why aren't they ever making any new ones? Why don't Dumbledorf just make a Teleportus-Voldemortus-to-the-moonus spell?

Didn't Snape invent a "cut a motherfucker" spell when he was a kid?

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008

Lemniscate Blue posted:

Didn't Snape invent a "cut a motherfucker" spell when he was a kid?

Yes. Also I think Ron's brothers, Fred and George, also invented some spells in their time. So occasionally wizards do invent new spells they just are an incredibly self satisfied bunch and so for the most part they never try to push the limits of their already incredible magical repertoire.

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

reignofevil posted:

Yes. Also I think Ron's brothers, Fred and George, also invented some spells in their time. So occasionally wizards do invent new spells they just are an incredibly self satisfied bunch and so for the most part they never try to push the limits of their already incredible magical repertoire.

Admit it, would you be so different?

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW

reignofevil posted:

So the answer to the question you asked, Wizard parents are reasonably certain that their 17 year old "adult" children will be able to handle the slightly less dangerous tournament. Which was dumb of them because obviously 25% of the participants died that year and that was with the safer rules!


As to their general acceptance of danger, well, wizards are kinda dumb.

Hey now, that kid died from a bog standard kidnapping and subsequent murder. That could've happened at anytime! Anytime at all!

FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.
Har Ry Pot Ter

Lights Are Gon Na Blind Me

Sleeveless
Dec 25, 2014

by Pragmatica
Complaining that the politics of the wizarding world are impractical and the rules for their magic are inconsistent is like complaining that Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory doesn't follow OSHA regulations and Matilda's psychic powers don't follow the laws of thermodynamics.

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
I've wasted my life :eng99:

FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.
Rebuttal:The chocolate factory is full of imagination and a jazzy freewheeling attitude, wheras the harry potter books attempt to employ dull "realistic" concepts like banking, government, and school to the concept of "magic," yet does not have a logical explanation for where magic comes from, any attempt to make one, and the thermodynamic laws employed within are crappy and flimsy. Harry potter is thousands of pages of "it was poofity poof" and "he was the master wizard of poofity poof and dangerous of power unknown" and never "magic is dying" or "we're going into backwards dragon country where all the laws are upside down" or "there is one wizard with a different trick from the rest: duel monsters"

However mad props to you for sharing your opinion on the internet.

Also though isn't matilda about matilda learning advanced laws of thermodynamics? just by reading about them? She's ahead of my grade for sure, I'm just the kid eating the big cake

Smirking_Serpent
Aug 27, 2009

crossposting from the r/relationships thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/g0nmmw/aita_for_grouping_guests_at_my_wedding_by_harry/

Aglet56
Sep 1, 2011
just want to say that i'm stoned as gently caress and this thread is incredibly entertaining

Mooey Cow
Jan 27, 2018

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Pillbug

Lemniscate Blue posted:

Didn't Snape invent a "cut a motherfucker" spell when he was a kid?

How did he make it? How come other people can use those spells without knowing what they do, they just say the word and poo poo happens? Can someone prank overload "accio" or some poo poo so instead it makes someone's pants drop when they say that?

Can you erase spells :thunk:

josh04
Oct 19, 2008


"THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"

This title contains sponsored content.

Dr. VooDoo posted:

The wizard governments and societies of Harry Potter are horribly dystopian. A small, select group of people with powers that could solve the world’s problems at large with a flick of their wrists chooses to hoard this power for themselves. They also decide what the people not in their elite group can and cannot know and will alter memories without consent to uphold this, up to and including the cause and nature of deaths of loved ones, treating them as little better than animals even creating a separate name name and category for them as if somehow they are less human than they are. Yet somehow these governments and societies are surprised when groups of their fellow elites take things to their logical end and create magic supremacy ideologies. Even at the end of the Harry Potter series the heroes have done nothing to stop this practice which only insures another Voldemort-like figure will rise in the future

wizards are basically the party from 1984. "idiot proles!" i think, as i walk into my cubicle job where mastery of time itself is used to make sure that racism still happens.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW

Mooey Cow posted:

How did he make it? How come other people can use those spells without knowing what they do, they just say the word and poo poo happens? Can someone prank overload "accio" or some poo poo so instead it makes someone's pants drop when they say that?

Can you erase spells :thunk:

Harry could've learned about all that but he was too busy whipsawing between intense states of grief, anger, and paranoia.

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
It's time we talk about how magical community has basically two punishments available, either they suck out your soul



pictured above


or else you get rubbed on by a magic silver substance that murders you instantly




Trials? What the gently caress is a trial. Wizards don't have those but occasionally they will hold a crucible where anybody can offer up testimony and then you just get arrested on the spot for crimes against the state. Why yes wizards do have the power to grab memories out of people's brains and then watch them like a magic television program that they can hang out inside and walk around like they were present in the room at the time the memory was created. Why do you ask?

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008

paragon1 posted:

Harry could've learned about all that but he was too busy whipsawing between intense states of grief, anger, and paranoia.

Honestly, me too!

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW
Years of systematic child abuse and cold indiiference as his only experience of humans should probably have affected Harry more deeply tbh but "barely able to function because of trauma" probably isn't a great power fantasy for 12 year olds.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW
Oh yeah the Wizengamot kangaroo court is hosed up. Yeah just have parliament put me on trial, gently caress it. Let's just insist the defendant is an incredible liar and send them to hell prison instead of using one of the thirty truth telling spells or potions we have in the back.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW
Probably the most realistic part of the series tbh.

reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
My favorite harry potter book is the fifth one which tends to be people's least favorite because Harry spends all of his time brooding and yelling at people because they are being shits to him but it also contains some of my favorite scenes like the one where Harry discovers cold tea has been left at his doorstep by his dickweed cousin Dudley Dursley and he thinks so little of him and is so used to being put down upon in the relationship that he spends time mulling over whether his cousin is legitimately dumb enough to believe that the cold tea left on the floor in front of Harry's doorway was some kind of trap to cut his foot when he stepped on it. Only later does he realize that after saving his cousin from getting soul-sucked that now Dudley is trying to make a peace offering in his own cowardly way.

josh04
Oct 19, 2008


"THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"

This title contains sponsored content.

the first half of fantastic beasts, where the american wizard society are just a bunch of pre-ww2 fascist shitheads, is excellent.

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FunkyAl
Mar 28, 2010

Your vitals soar.
I'm going to request someone be loving around with this thread's title. There are at least five fine one liners on this page alone.

Sleeveless posted:

Complaining that the politics of the wizarding world are impractical and the rules for their magic are inconsistent is like complaining that Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory doesn't follow OSHA regulations and Matilda's psychic powers don't follow the laws of thermodynamics.


Aglet56 posted:

just want to say that i'm stoned as gently caress and this thread is incredibly entertaining

paragon1 posted:

Years of systematic child abuse and cold indiiference as his only experience of humans should probably have affected Harry more deeply tbh but "barely able to function because of trauma" probably isn't a great power fantasy for 12 year olds.

These are my nominees for america's home video

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