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Sydin posted:According to google Arithmancy is just divination, but with math instead of the stereotypical fortune teller poo poo. It must really suck though because literally nobody uses it ever over the course of the entire series and the only reason we know it exists is because Hermione took it as an elective. You know, so she could never use it. This just makes me more certain that it's a bit. Divination but with math is probabilities. They're just learning Stats.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:38
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I also love that Harry and Ron choose to do blow off classes for their electives explicitly yet neither chooses to do Muggle Studies. You know despite Harry growing up as a muggle and Ron being inundated in all the muggle poo poo from his dad.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:40
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Zore posted:Flying (which seems to just be a one and done first year course? Just teaching a bunch of 11 year olds to fly on a broom once. Its literally never mentioned again after the Remembrall scene in book 1) This happens not uncommonly with swimming in the UK, one or two years of lessons. PeterWeller posted:This just makes me more certain that it's a bit. Divination but with math is probabilities. They're just learning Stats. You might say they're learning... the methods of rationality.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:56
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Zore posted:I also love that Harry and Ron choose to do blow off classes for their electives explicitly yet neither chooses to do Muggle Studies. You know despite Harry growing up as a muggle and Ron being inundated in all the muggle poo poo from his dad. We could've gotten the joke from Futurama too where Harry keeps pointing out that the professor is wrong about how some muggle thing works and then gets docked points for it.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:04
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Dirty Monkeys Seldom Bathe Regularly
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Aug 21, 2020 02:55
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Sydin posted:According to google Arithmancy is just divination, but with math instead of the stereotypical fortune teller poo poo. It must really suck though because literally nobody uses it ever over the course of the entire series and the only reason we know it exists is because Hermione took it as an elective. You know, so she could never use it. It has one plot related thing in book 7 -- Its teacher gets redshirted off in the opening chapter because JKR said that a teacher was going to die in the final book and she didn't want it to be any of the ones people cared about
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Aug 21, 2020 04:51
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Zore posted:I also love that Harry and Ron choose to do blow off classes for their electives explicitly yet neither chooses to do Muggle Studies. You know despite Harry growing up as a muggle and Ron being inundated in all the muggle poo poo from his dad. IIRC, Ron thinks his dad is nuts for tinkering with muggle tech and isn't interested at all, while Harry asks what's even the point of taking Muggle Studies since he's lived as one until he got to Hogwarts. It's really frustrating how Harry and Ron not only took the minimum number of electives, they also picked the ones that would give them the least amount of work, the lazy assholes. What's worse is that Divination and Care of Magical Creatures had no practical use to Harry for the Horcrux hunt. Meanwhile, I think Hermione taking Arithmancy and Ancient Runes was what helped her develop her bag of holding and those warding spells they used while camping.
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Aug 21, 2020 07:47
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its supposed to reflect childhood, but frankly if school taught literal magic kids would be all over that poo poo as a metaphor for a nominal education as a prelude to immense privilege otoh....
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Aug 21, 2020 08:32
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I think after a year at Hogwarts most kids would be bored with it again
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Aug 21, 2020 11:28
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amigolupus posted:IIRC, Ron thinks his dad is nuts for tinkering with muggle tech and isn't interested at all, while Harry asks what's even the point of taking Muggle Studies since he's lived as one until he got to Hogwarts. And yet throughout the whole goddamned thing everyone keeps talking about Harry being a good wizard. No. He's a poo poo wizard who happened to have potential that he's wasting.
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Aug 21, 2020 12:17
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Man with Hat posted:And yet throughout the whole goddamned thing everyone keeps talking about Harry being a good wizard. No. He's a poo poo wizard who happened to have potential that he's wasting. He can't be a good wizard, he's a cop
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Aug 21, 2020 14:54
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Man with Hat posted:And yet throughout the whole goddamned thing everyone keeps talking about Harry being a good wizard. No. He's a poo poo wizard who happened to have potential that he's wasting. Isn't he really good at expeliarmus and nothing else? He's the wizard cop equivalent of your friend who picks the cheesiest character and just spams one attack
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Aug 21, 2020 20:01
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Isn't he really good at expeliarmus and nothing else? He's also good at flying and Expecto Patronum, the anti-Dementor spell. Though it's amusing in the fifth book when he's teaching it to the other students and it seems like everyone is capable of conjuring up a corporeal patronus with barely any effort, and Harry muses it's because they're not trying to master the spell while facing down a (fake) Dementor the way he did. Edit: Oh, and summoning charms.
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Aug 21, 2020 20:11
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Harry's gimmick is that while he's not a super genius wizard or anything, he's reasonably talented and can generally get good results at whatever he bothers putting his mind to. It's just that the list of things he puts his mind to is pretty short because he's lazy and entitled. I do like how at the end of Goblet when the main villain reveals himself, he just absolutely lays into Harry for being a layabout who took zero initiative to prepare for any of the tournament challenges, and so the guy had to bend over backwards to feed him helpful hints.
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Aug 21, 2020 20:33
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That plus he's in reasonably good shape and athletic enough to like run and dodge.
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Aug 21, 2020 20:36
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amigolupus posted:IIRC, Ron thinks his dad is nuts for tinkering with muggle tech and isn't interested at all, while Harry asks what's even the point of taking Muggle Studies since he's lived as one until he got to Hogwarts. I mean, Care of Magical creatures absolutely should have come in useful during the Horcrux hunt is the worst part. They ran into a ton of magical creatures like the Dragon in Gringotts where uh that came up. But Rowling had the class mostly be an extended 3 book 'Hagrid is a terrible teacher' punchline so 
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Aug 21, 2020 20:47
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amigolupus posted:It's really frustrating how Harry and Ron not only took the minimum number of electives, they also picked the ones that would give them the least amount of work, the lazy assholes. What's worse is that Divination and Care of Magical Creatures had no practical use to Harry for the Horcrux hunt. Meanwhile, I think Hermione taking Arithmancy and Ancient Runes was what helped her develop her bag of holding and those warding spells they used while camping. By the time they got to choose their electives it was obvious that they were going to have to be spending a lot of time and energy dealing with attacks from evil wizards, doing the absolute bare minimum necessary to stay at Hogwarts so they had more time to investigate and train was a perfectly logical decision. Man with Hat posted:And yet throughout the whole goddamned thing everyone keeps talking about Harry being a good wizard. No. He's a poo poo wizard who happened to have potential that he's wasting. It's theory vs practice, Harry actually accomplished a shitload of things which is ultimately what matters. It's like someone who spends all of their schooling studying music theory scoffing at how bad a musician their peer is because they spent that time actually recording songs, making connections, forming a band, and booking gigs instead.
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Aug 22, 2020 16:13
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It’s been said before but Harry is the epitome of a privileged white upper class male who fails upward due to mediocrity and said privilege.
dialhforhero fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Aug 22, 2020 |
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Aug 22, 2020 18:31
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dialhforhero posted:It’s been said before but Harry is the epitome of a privileged white upper class male who fails upward due to mediocrity and said privilege. Or else Voldemort was
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Aug 22, 2020 18:34
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They are basically adjacent on a circular scale of traits exactly opposite of each other.
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Aug 22, 2020 18:41
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See that kid over there, the one that was orphaned and abused for his entire childhood and has an entire death cult actively trying to murder him? Priveleged little poo poo.
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Aug 22, 2020 18:56
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dialhforhero posted:They are basically adjacent on a circular scale of traits exactly opposite of each other. kind of a point is that harry and voldemort have a lot of traits in common, albeit mostly because voldemort never grew out of his edgy teenager phase
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Aug 22, 2020 19:13
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Hot take: I too would have been absolutely terrified of having Harry dumped on my doorstep. Also, why not send Harry to some volunteer wizard parents in like, Switzerland or NYC instead right in Voldemort's old stomping grounds with his relatives.
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Aug 22, 2020 20:19
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The explanation IIRC is that Lily giving her life to save Harry gave him magical protection that somehow also extended to Petunia because of their shared blood, so as long as he considered the Dursley's "home" in some manner, the protection remained in place and Voldy couldn't hurt Harry. Of course nobody bothers to explain this to Harry until like book six, and also Dumbledore makes no effort to stop the Dursley's from treating Harry like poo poo, and also Harry didn't even really need the protection until Voldy resurrected in Book 4 since he was just a weird spirit thing and all the Death Eaters got spooked and went into hiding, so Harry absolutely could have just chilled at the Weasley's or whatever until then. Okay look there answer is that it was just a framing device in Book 1 to make the magical world seem that much more appealing to Harry over the terrible, abusive muggle one, but then the fun little kids story about funny wizards turned into a sprawling epic and Rowling had to retcon a reason for why the oh-so-wise and just Dumbledore let Harry get abused by his foster family for sixteen years.
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Aug 22, 2020 20:45
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The best part of that is that Harry is on the straight and narrow rather than the more likely outcome of being a malevolent psychopath from being treated like dogshit
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Aug 22, 2020 23:37
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Harry also had a really fat trust fund, didn’t he? He basically inherited the fortunes of the Potters and the Blacks and got that sweet Gringotts interest. Not that wizard finances make any sense in the first place. https://twitter.com/mesut_ausil/status/1185349964785840129?s=21
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Aug 23, 2020 03:21
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Ror posted:Harry also had a really fat trust fund, didn’t he? He basically inherited the fortunes of the Potters and the Blacks and got that sweet Gringotts interest. Not that wizard finances make any sense in the first place. that's like the first thing he does in the wizarding world, go collect the interest off his trust fund.
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Aug 23, 2020 03:24
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The reason Harry has a trust fund is because his grandfather invented a hair styling potion that sold like gangbusters and he spun it off into a company he later sold for loads of money, which he left as inheritance for James. No seriously, that's not a joke. Look it up. Harry is a trust fund kid because his grandfather started Wizard Ulta.
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Aug 23, 2020 03:31
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Everyone in this series seems really short sighted. Like they could be doing all kinds of insane things but mainly what magic is used for is replicating normal things but they're magic so they're funner, or maybe keeping exotic pets.
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Aug 23, 2020 04:00
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:Everyone in this series seems really short sighted. Like they could be doing all kinds of insane things but mainly what magic is used for is replicating normal things but they're magic so they're funner, or maybe keeping exotic pets. Harry should have been amazed at the opportunity he's been given and obsessed with learning and mastering all the skills suddenly available to him, instead he slips into "Oi m8 'ogwarts is shite I'd rather grab a pint and watch the broomie match with me lads" in like a year. So it's actually very believable that all of magic society is just complacent with their incredible powers.
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Aug 23, 2020 04:49
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Harry Potter is Batman without an Alfred to shepard him around the world to amazing tutors to make him the absolute best at everything, but it's still hard to feel like he's the underdog when he's so rich and famous just from luck beyond his control, despite the really bad thing that happened to him. Although it's easily possible that there just plain aren't expert wizard tutors out there to learn from. It doesn't seem like there's that high of a bar to become the greatest wizard in the world, everybody's pretty bad at stuff. Maybe that's why the Ministry of Magic gave Hermione a time machine to help her take all the electives at once. It's just so drat rare a wizard gets motivated to be the best they could be. See actually I love that. Not the large prime number exchange rate between denominations that's just a joke on pre-decimalization british currency, but just the fact that they care enough about their fictional currency to goddamn give it a name and give a name to the various denominations rather than going with the lazy fantasy thing of just calling it "gold, silver, copper". Commodity money is for losers. Debase that poo poo! It's just some nice background detail for texture.
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Aug 23, 2020 05:12
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Also they think Muggle money is too complicated
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Aug 23, 2020 05:23
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It would actually be interesting if one of the subplots in the book was that muggleborns tend to do better in school and resultingly end up as better wizards/witches because they actually have an appreciation for how incredible magic is while people born into it just find the whole thing mundane. And how this chafes against the whole pureblood superiority complex and so you have this steadily growing crop of muggleborns entering the ministry who are clearly better and more engaged than their peers, but are being kept down by bigotry. And that this goes full tilt once Voldy takes things over and suddenly there's this group of incredibly skilled and knowledgeable muggleborns on the run that Harry could recruit into some kind of force to oppose Voldy - not just physically, but ideologically as well. You even have Harry set up as somebody uniquely able to bridge the gap by having a pureblood father, a muggleborn mother, having been born in magic society, but ultimately raised by muggles. Oh wait that would mean Harry would actually have to stand for something and try even a little bit instead of playing with his broomstick, crying about Snape and having Hermione do his homework for him. Nevermind.
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Aug 23, 2020 05:36
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Harry becoming a lazy entitled jock as soon as he gets to Hogwarts is immensely frustrating because an entire culture opened up in front of him and he doesn't even bother to research its history or traditions or holidays or anything. Hell, he doesn't even research any magic that isn't taught in his classes. Hermione really should've been the protagonist, is what I'm saying. Sydin posted:The explanation IIRC is that Lily giving her life to save Harry gave him magical protection that somehow also extended to Petunia because of their shared blood, so as long as he considered the Dursley's "home" in some manner, the protection remained in place and Voldy couldn't hurt Harry. Of course nobody bothers to explain this to Harry until like book six, and also Dumbledore makes no effort to stop the Dursley's from treating Harry like poo poo, and also Harry didn't even really need the protection until Voldy resurrected in Book 4 since he was just a weird spirit thing and all the Death Eaters got spooked and went into hiding, so Harry absolutely could have just chilled at the Weasley's or whatever until then. The explanation is really stupid and contradictory. If the spell hinges on Harry considering the Dursleys as "home", then it would have broken years before the first book started. He may not have said the words, but everything about how Harry reacts when it comes to the Dursleys screams that he doesn't consider them his home or family.
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Aug 23, 2020 08:15
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You could probably trace a lot of that to the obvious inspirations for Harry Potter; British boarding school lit where your average protagonist is a lazy rascal audience-identification schoolboy and where anyone who actually wants to do the work is a bit weird but potentially useful. Harry treats magic as stand-ins for things like arithmetic, Latin and legal studies taught by humourless, emotionally stunted old men with hair-trigger tempers.
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Aug 23, 2020 08:39
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What if instead of becoming a cop, Hermione stuck to her roots as the one person who cares about injustice and eventually got elected Minister of Magic on a platform of "we could save countless lives by helping the muggles"
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Aug 23, 2020 14:51
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Of course they don’t teach math at hogwarts, you can just fuckin wave a wand for like 41 times 16 or whatever and the numbers appear in glowing green letters in the air, duh
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Aug 23, 2020 15:28
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Also structures stay up due to magic not due to boring things like physics and engineering so why learn a single math
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Aug 23, 2020 15:30
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Hedrigall posted:Of course they don’t teach math at hogwarts, you can just fuckin wave a wand for like 41 times 16 or whatever and the numbers appear in glowing green letters in the air, duh Hedrigall posted:Also structures stay up due to magic not due to boring things like physics and engineering so why learn a single math I guess the laziness of wizards shouldn’t be surprising when they couldn’t be bothered to not poo poo themselves and just fix it with magic.
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Aug 23, 2020 18:11
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Coach says I got so many teams scouting me for quidditch the only math Im gonna need to know is the number on the check
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Aug 24, 2020 01:12
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