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It's like Dumbledore - and the books themselves - say, they sort too soon. Dumbledore was ambitious and selfish in his youth but grew out of that over the course of a few centuries. And Dumbledore says the "sort too soon" line in reference to Snape who, even if you insist on his selfishness to the end, was decidedly not ambitious later on in his life. But really, for all the takes in here about how hosed up the HP world is, the House System is the worst of the lot so far as I'm concerned. Childhood is such a fundamental part of developing character - which means your character isn't actually set in stone yet - and can more or less determine the entire rest of your life. Maybe some of those Slytherins wouldn't have been Nazis if they hadn't been forced to room with Nazis who preached Nazis tuff all the time and also having to sleep with the knowledge that speaking out would antagonize the Nazis they had to share a bedroom with.
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Dec 17, 2020 19:39
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Slytherin is the house for edgy goth kids not the loving Hitler Youth boom done I fixed it.
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Dec 17, 2020 20:07
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Like maybe Hogwarts should have done something about the Nazi house in the first place. Like maybe disband it after Voldemort's defeat instead of just leaving it around for more kids to become radicalized.
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Dec 17, 2020 20:13
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Love how Rowling realized she'd hosed up by making Slytherin just straight up Hitler Youth and created an entire character to be a "good" Slytherin who more embodies the ambition aspects of the house instead of the race purity ones. Except even he's kind of a piece of poo poo and ducks out of the final battle until the last possible minute when he's mostly assured of what side will win.
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Dec 17, 2020 20:13
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Sydin posted:Love how Rowling realized she'd hosed up by making Slytherin just straight up Hitler Youth and created an entire character to be a "good" Slytherin who more embodies the ambition aspects of the house instead of the race purity ones. Except even he's kind of a piece of poo poo and ducks out of the final battle until the last possible minute when he's mostly assured of what side will win. Well and the problem is the “we sort too soon” line is in that same book so it undermines the entire idea that Slytherins can be just as brave and good because your wise wizard granddad is saying to the most heroic one “you should have actually been a Gryffindor” Really she should have just established at some point that even tho all the antagonist teens are Slytherins there are a few who are not totally poo poo by having a few of them occasionally act happy when Harry saves the school and their friends lives, or not have them all clear out before the battle of Hogwarts (oh but don’t worry some of the 17 year olds totes snuck back in its canon).
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Dec 17, 2020 20:28
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Sydin posted:Love how Rowling realized she'd hosed up by making Slytherin just straight up Hitler Youth and created an entire character to be a "good" Slytherin who more embodies the ambition aspects of the house instead of the race purity ones. Except even he's kind of a piece of poo poo and ducks out of the final battle until the last possible minute when he's mostly assured of what side will win. This was such a minor, nothing character that I have no clue who you're talking about.
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Dec 17, 2020 20:35
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Who What Now posted:This was such a minor, nothing character that I have no clue who you're talking about. Slughorn
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Dec 17, 2020 20:44
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Like, as early as Book 2, we have this line from Dumbledore: “Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue — resourcefulness — determination — a certain disregard for rules...” And in Book 5, Sirius' ancestor says: :It looks to me as though you would have been better off in my own house. We Slytherins are brave, yes, but not stupid. For instance, given the choice, we will always choose to save our own necks.” I think she wanted Slytherin to have an element of at least neutrality to it but Slughorn really is the first good Slytherin we meet and he is vain, greedy and cowardly. I really like Half-Blood Prince for all sorts of reasons. But in the same book that gave us Slughorn, she also tried to undo 5 books of making Malfoy the typical Stephen King psychopathic bully. Now we're supposed to feel bad for him. And on the flip side, she gave us two lovely Gryffindor characters to show us the negative side of Gryffindor traits but it still just doesn't even out. I feel like she kinda ran into the same problems as Tolkien did with his orcs. Both LOTR and HP are very Christian works in their ethics. JK wanted some diversity and "realism" but at the end of the day her promoted ethical worldview has no place for people like Slughorn who, if not evil, are still decidedly not good. Ambition and greed are anathema to a Christian worldview. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Dec 17, 2020 |
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Dec 17, 2020 22:27
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slughorn at least dueled voldemort and was almost killed along with Sexiest Auror/MoM Kingsley Shacklebolt and Professor "I'm my own grandmother" mcgonagall. Like snape, wanted to avenge Lily and repair the damage he had done but was obviously afraid to confront Riddle. He clearly wanted to avoid direct confrontation but was also disappointed all the Slytherin kids up and walked out on Hogwarts so he did what he could, which was call in all his favors and contacts. Not saying he is a good guy or a hero but he was more in line with what to expect from the average Slytherin before Riddle. Tons of non-slytherin kids were assholes and bullies. As mentioned by others, most people bullied Neville (including teachers) and Luna except Ginny and Hermione. Zacharias Smith was a dick to everyone. The Slytherins were Hitler Youth because of their parents being the highest ranking nazi party members that were in families known for inbreeding and racism. Most lived lives of privilege and freedom from consequences, as well, except the people on the margins like Greyback and other icky people who they only associated with because they needed thugs. Snape perpetuated this privilege while abusing basically everyone else so that didn't help. Plenty of Slytherins or people from pureblood families outside the Weasleys and Potters turned out fine, though. Obviously there was streaks of racism, inbreeding and so on but most were happy to keep it as systemic oppression rather than outright enslavement/imprisonment of muggleborns. They already had slaves to kick around and excellent accountants to treat like crap (whole other can of worms with that). Plenty, like The Blacks, balked at the extremes Riddle and Grindelwald were willing to go to. Ironically, Umbridge was actually hated even by the other Slytherins of her time in school because of her extreme ambition, her cloying attitude/sucking up, devotion to authority and bureaucratic nonsense. Rather like Hermione in the beginning and Percy before he comes to his senses. Oh and her lack of pureblood credentials.
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Dec 17, 2020 22:46
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Cranappleberry posted:Ironically, Umbridge was actually hated even by the other Slytherins of her time in school because of her extreme ambition, her cloying attitude/sucking up, devotion to authority and bureaucratic nonsense. Well except for Malfoy and his toadies, who got special privileges from Umbridge they could use to bully others. Which makes it even funnier that he's suddenly supposed to be sympathetic in Book 6. NikkolasKing posted:I think she wanted Slytherin to have an element of at least neutrality to it but Slughorn really is the first good Slytherin we meet and he is vain, greedy and cowardly. Right, both Gryfindor and Slytherin attract talented, ambitious wizards, the difference is that Gryfindors use those abilities to help others, while Slytherins are really only interested in helping themselves. If you removed the blood purity stuff from the books and just left it at that, Slytherin would be fine and also an interesting foil/temptation for Harry, particularly in Book 5 where he feels he's being locked out of the loop by his friends and allies despite everything he's accomplished up to that point. But because the story has nazis, we need a place to put them and they all end up in Slytherin. There are no Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw Death Eaters. So Slytherin just becomes the nazi house and that drowns out anything else they could potentially be about and makes all the moments where people point out Harry could have actually fit well there ring hollow because for all his faults Harry is not going to embrace blood purity ideology.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:06
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Guy A. Person posted:poo poo, sorry if I implied anything sexist or creepy here about women tricking men into taking their wealth, I was honestly just making a bad joke about Ron being dumb Accidents happen. No worries.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:28
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Sydin posted:If you removed the blood purity stuff from the books and just left it at that, Slytherin would be fine Yeah, if you remove a defining characteristic, thing no longer represents characteristic. Weird.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:42
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Yes that's what I'm getting at: you cannot have a house that 11 year old children are sorted into and is also openly the nazi sympathizer house and not have it be problematic as gently caress.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:52
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NikkolasKing posted:Like, as early as Book 2, we have this line from Dumbledore: To be honest I kind of liked that Malfoy's characterization shifted to "kid with aristocratic parents who ends up way over his head". It kind of reminds me of alt-right assholes who talk violence but usually (but not always  ) pussy out at the end (thankfully). He's still a shithead by the end of the series but it adds some texture to him.I'm willing to give JK a pass with Slytherin because Hogwarts is obviously based on old school British boarding schools and one house holding all the haughty rich kids deep into race science seems to be about par for the course given British politics and history Feldegast42 fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 00:00
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amigolupus posted:Didn't George end up marrying his twin brother's girlfriend and had a kid they named Fred Jr.? Because you can potentially read it as the two only hooking up because neither can let go of the fact that Fred died and they see the ghost of Fred in each other. Undoing Voldemort curses may involve drinking poison while being ripped apart by zombies so you should really only undertake that if it's worth doing.
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Dec 18, 2020 00:15
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I kind of want the alternate history where Dumbledore is drunk off his rear end that night, hasn’t gotten any of the memos, or whatever else, and hires Tom on the spot.
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Dec 18, 2020 00:22
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"Boarding school teacher is secretly a fascist sympathiser" is a bit of a "dog bites man" type scenario.
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Dec 18, 2020 00:33
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I loved Draco and Snape since I was like 7 and I got slytherin in every goddam quiz, from the official one to the ones going "what do u like, potions or herbology?" and "would you wear cargo shorts and a tank top or a black hoodie with thumbholes cut in the sleeves?" Snape will always be my hot goth daddy. But like, the problem with slytherin is all the redeemable stuff is headcanon. Draco being a lil nazi, whose race science spiels and calls for murder in the first books because of his lovely parents and upbringing is great! That's the Draco I loved and read a shameful number of sexuality-exploring fanfics about. I expected him to have an actual redemption! Snape as a perpetually catty bitch who played favourites with his students, but learned from his mistakes and became a double agent because he realized that calling his crush and bff a slur, at 14, was awful, and learned a little from that... that's my Snape. But no. Draco's redemption is that he can't bring himself to commit cold-blooded murder as a teenager. Snape was a committed nazi stormtrooper until Hitler went after his teen crush. Salazar Slytherin left a racist child-murdering snake in his chamber. The climactic battle sees all the slytherin kids cower in the dungeon because their defining traits are all headcanon and their actual trait is "Hitler Youth."
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Dec 18, 2020 00:57
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The four houses thing would work so much better if all those qualities were just stereotypes rather than literally the reason they're in there. Like houses in real schools that have them. You just choose a house to apply to when you start at school, or get randomly assigned, and everything about them past that is just normal teen out-group rivalries and banter. Everyone knows the Ravenclaws are all huge nerds and the Hufflepuffs are all pushovers, just like whatever they said about the kids who learned French instead of Spanish or whatever. Maybe Slytherin happened to be the house all the rich racist kids went to so there's a lot of bad influences there, without a magical artifact scanning your brain and saying "yes, you are racist, go join the officially sanctioned Racist Squad to start making connections".
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Dec 18, 2020 01:51
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And again there’s so many opportunities to show that someone who is ambitious, resourceful and cunning might befriend/ally with/suck up to someone like Dumbledore (the headmaster and one of the most beloved wizards in the world), Harry (the most famous person in the wizard world who keeps having cool poo poo happen to him) or even Hermione (the smartest kid in the school who ends up being Minister of Magic). I get having the Slytherins hate Harry in general and especially his own grade being dominated by Draco’s influence, but between the Tri-Wizard tournament in book 4, Harry being the only one teaching good DAtDA in book 5, Harry becoming super famous/girls crushing on him as the “Chosen One” in book 6 and then a war against a fascist dictator in book 7; well a few paragraphs with the occasional Slytherin wishing him luck or sucking up or hitting on him would go a long way. Like even in a group of people looking out for themselves, you’d think a handful would be like “living under a fascist dictatorship is not what I want for my own ambitions”
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Dec 18, 2020 01:57
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The Slytherins do seem en-masse devoted to this one particular dude getting to be wizard Hitler. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. .
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Dec 18, 2020 02:00
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A brave slytherin students defiantly against he who must not be named at the Battle of hogwarts. "This ends now, Voldemort. Nobody will be wizard Hitler but me!"
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Dec 18, 2020 02:05
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Guy A. Person posted:And again there’s so many opportunities to show that someone who is ambitious, resourceful and cunning might befriend/ally with/suck up to someone like Dumbledore (the headmaster and one of the most beloved wizards in the world), Harry (the most famous person in the wizard world who keeps having cool poo poo happen to him) or even Hermione (the smartest kid in the school who ends up being Minister of Magic). The closest thing to this I can ever recall happening was I think one of the girls who invited Harry to the Yule Ball in book 4 was mentioned to be like a 5th or 6th year Slytherin, and that he was afraid she was going to beat him up when he turned her down.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:07
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Should've had a big reveal that the house that produced the most Death Eaters was actually Hufflepuff. The felt powerless and overlooked, and a charismatic alpha offered them a chance to be on top. When they get caught/exposed they immediately revert back into whimpering "b-b-b-but we were just following orders, we was" types.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:11
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josh04 posted:The Slytherins do seem en-masse devoted to this one particular dude getting to be wizard Hitler. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. Seriously, literally all of them deciding their best bet for survival is to back the creepy snake perv who randomly murders his underlings for petty reasons, what a proud and insightful group W.T. Fits posted:The closest thing to this I can ever recall happening was I think one of the girls who invited Harry to the Yule Ball in book 4 was mentioned to be like a 5th or 6th year Slytherin, and that he was afraid she was going to beat him up when he turned her down. lol oh yeah I forgot about this
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Dec 18, 2020 02:15
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Really all the House stuff was pretty bad. The series would have been much stronger if Hermione was Ravenclaw and Ron was Hufflepuff but Harry was friends with them anyway because he realizes that grouping people by broad personality types is dumb. Then you could do a thing where Harry thinks all Slytherin are bad because of Snape and Draco but then some random side Slytherin shows up and saves the day in like year 3 or something and joins the main crew.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:39
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Rowling is vehemently against Aw who are we kidding, she's against both!
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Dec 18, 2020 02:58
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muscles like this! posted:Really all the House stuff was pretty bad. The series would have been much stronger if Hermione was Ravenclaw and Ron was Hufflepuff but Harry was friends with them anyway because he realizes that grouping people by broad personality types is dumb. Then you could do a thing where Harry thinks all Slytherin are bad because of Snape and Draco but then some random side Slytherin shows up and saves the day in like year 3 or something and joins the main crew. That wouldn't be "true to the British experience" or whatever people were going with back when people felt like giving Rowling the benefit of the doubt.
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Dec 18, 2020 03:00
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Regalingualius posted:I kind of want the alternate history where Dumbledore is drunk off his rear end that night, hasn’t gotten any of the memos, or whatever else, and hires Tom on the spot. Dumbledore defeats Voldemort by later hiring him as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and waiting out a year.
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Dec 18, 2020 03:43
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Who What Now posted:Rowling is vehemently against Harry Potter dates an indian girl in book 4. Dates an asian girl in book 5. Okay? You guys got your diversity? Settles down with a nice white girl. No, the other one. Rowling's self-insert was destined for her childhood friend insert.
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Dec 18, 2020 03:56
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the whole Slytherin Problem could be more interesting and complex if there were a fifth house to spread out the negative traits. There could be one house that is ambitious and cut-throat but not racist, and another that is the old-money racist pricks who are just mediocre at everything else. A fifth house would also mix up the inherent two-tiered house rivalries in favor of something more ring-like (e.g., rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock). The fifth house would be called Scharffenberger and its animal would be the elephant seal.
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Dec 18, 2020 08:05
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muscles like this! posted:Really all the House stuff was pretty bad. The series would have been much stronger if Hermione was Ravenclaw and Ron was Hufflepuff but Harry was friends with them anyway because he realizes that grouping people by broad personality types is dumb. Then you could do a thing where Harry thinks all Slytherin are bad because of Snape and Draco but then some random side Slytherin shows up and saves the day in like year 3 or something and joins the main crew. Being friends mainly with the people you cohabit a dorm room with is fine as a practical aspect of being at a boarding school, the trouble is that despite veering away from having the house system literally predict your character for you by having Cedric Diggory be the champion of Hogwarts and an all-round good guy, "Slytherin is Evil House" only gains momentum until the final battle when Rowling pretty much has everyone treat being a Slytherin like a form of original sin. The problem isn't that they sort too soon, Dumbledore, it's that people are still talking about how being in house X means you have quality Y past the age of 14 for some reason.
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Dec 18, 2020 10:49
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The generous interpretation is that Slytherin wouldn't be nearly as bad most of the time. Keep in mind we saw the year level with four children of Death Eaters (and of course they all would've forced the Hat to put them in Slytherin no matter what), so the little wizard neonazi kids were half the house in that year level and took it over.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 10:56
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that sounds like a house for surrealism and at last I have a home at hogwarts (e: the elephant seal one)
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Dec 18, 2020 11:04
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Hogwarts will become a kaleidoscope of houses. The great hall will be aplomb with motley and at the end of each year everybody wins because the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
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Dec 18, 2020 13:10
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The solution to the problem turned out not to be making Slytherin any more noble or good but in fact to include seventy to one hundred six additional evil houses in what would go on to become known as the "Hogwarts 2000".
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Dec 18, 2020 13:12
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"Hogwarts 2000" is probably the weakest of Pulp's singles.
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Dec 18, 2020 13:19
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Sydin posted:Well except for Malfoy and his toadies, who got special privileges from Umbridge they could use to bully others. Which makes it even funnier that he's suddenly supposed to be sympathetic in Book 6. Well, tbf. There is Peter Pettigrew. A bonafide Griffindor Death-Eater. Would have made for an interesting nature vs. nurture theme, if it got explored. But looking back on the books, it probably was sheer accident. [edit] Hold on. Am I crazy or wasn't Tonks' mother Slytherin as well and married to a muggle-born? So she might also have been somewhat decent. [/edit] Guy A. Person posted:Well and the problem is the “we sort too soon” line is in that same book so it undermines the entire idea that Slytherins can be just as brave and good because your wise wizard granddad is saying to the most heroic one “you should have actually been a Gryffindor” Actually, now that I think about it I read in an interview about an abandoned subplot for Book 4. Apparently we were supposed to get a girl cousin of Ron that was actually a Slytherin and was supposed to be not full on nazi but instead an antagonistic ally. Supposedly that got scrapped by the editor and we instead got Rita.  [edit2] Found it: http://web.archive.org/web/20040803113633/http://www.jkrowling.com:80/textonly/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=3. Misremembered a bit, no editor, JKR did that all on her own. Did she even have editors by this point?[/edit2] Mistaken Identity fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 13:29
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There was a missed opportunity for Harry to question the house system when he found out that his dad was a terrible bully and made Snape's life miserable just for the hell of it. But no, all his dad's friends come rushing in to defend James, so Harry never thinks about it ever again.Tenebrais posted:The four houses thing would work so much better if all those qualities were just stereotypes rather than literally the reason they're in there. Like houses in real schools that have them. You just choose a house to apply to when you start at school, or get randomly assigned, and everything about them past that is just normal teen out-group rivalries and banter. Everyone knows the Ravenclaws are all huge nerds and the Hufflepuffs are all pushovers, just like whatever they said about the kids who learned French instead of Spanish or whatever. Maybe Slytherin happened to be the house all the rich racist kids went to so there's a lot of bad influences there, without a magical artifact scanning your brain and saying "yes, you are racist, go join the officially sanctioned Racist Squad to start making connections". Speaking of stereotyping, Hufflepuff's an interesting casualty of it. The Sorting Hat mentioned how Helga Hufflepuff didn't bother with silly requirements and just wanted to teach children, which makes her the only decent educator out of the four founders. But at some point in time, it got changed to the house that values loyalty. It makes me think that people weren't comfortable with Hufflepuff not having a defining trait and saddled it with one.
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Dec 18, 2020 13:54
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The initial characterization wasn't that all slytherins were evil, but that all evil people were slytherin, but this got lost over the course of the septilogy.
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Dec 18, 2020 15:07
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