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I do like how the main series ends with Harry telling his son it doesn’t matter what house he’s in, only for Cursed Child to show it actually does matter and he gets shunned for it.
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Feb 9, 2022 15:51
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bobjr posted:I do like how the main series ends with Harry telling his son it doesn’t matter what house he’s in, only for Cursed Child to show it actually does matter and he gets shunned for it. tbf Harry legitimately doesn't care (and there's a bit in the second half where the father-son issues they later develop aren't magically solved by Albus being in Gryffindor) but the other kids sure as poo poo make fun of him and his self-esteem issues don't magically go away just cause Harry said a nice thing on his first day of school
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Feb 9, 2022 16:21
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I looked it up and apparently JK didn't say there were 6,000 wizards in Britain, she said there were 3,000, 1,000 of which were students at Hogwarts.  This is such a ridiculously low number it's unreal. As an example for Voldemort to match the the same level of death in the British wizarding community as COVID-19 has inflicted on the US, he and the Death Eaters would need to kill... nine people. Over two years. A population that small would treat every death - and frankly every birth - as a huge and momentous event. The classic writers don't understand scale problem, but in the other direction.
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Feb 9, 2022 18:26
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"wizards can live a long time, but 99% of them die in their 20s and 30s from terminal stupidity" - jk rowling, by implication
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Feb 9, 2022 19:06
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Jazerus posted:"wizards can live a long time, but 99% of them die in their 20s and 30s from terminal stupidity" - jk rowling, by implication As soon as they aren't living in a room with a bunch of other teens, most wizards die of magical masturbation mishaps.
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Feb 9, 2022 19:41
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Theres also random diseases only wizards seem to get and die of like dragon pox. Unless regular people can get it to and don’t know, and die from something they’re unaware of and have no idea how to cure.
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Feb 9, 2022 20:09
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I wonder how many Muggles get mauled to death by fantastic beasts that they don't know how to stay away from. Because wizards and witches don't want to be bothered, you see.
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Feb 9, 2022 20:42
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Guy A. Person posted:tbf Harry legitimately doesn't care (and there's a bit in the second half where the father-son issues they later develop aren't magically solved by Albus being in Gryffindor) but the other kids sure as poo poo make fun of him and his self-esteem issues don't magically go away just cause Harry said a nice thing on his first day of school Do only random kids make fun of Al for not being in Gryffindor, or do his Weasley cousins join in on it?
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Feb 10, 2022 04:17
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Sydin posted:I looked it up and apparently JK didn't say there were 6,000 wizards in Britain, she said there were 3,000, 1,000 of which were students at Hogwarts. whole lotta broken homes in wizard britain
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Feb 10, 2022 05:52
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I feel like writers usually underestimate population sizes in total and way overestimate army sizes. This is just a really, really egregious example of it because once you get down to 3,000 total people having a hereditary body of 200 people running the government is basically a representative democracy.
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Feb 10, 2022 07:01
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There isn't enough staff either for 1000 students.Barudak posted:I feel like writers usually underestimate population sizes in total and way overestimate army sizes. This is just a really, really egregious example of it because once you get down to 3,000 total people having a hereditary body of 200 people running the government is basically a representative democracy. How so? Because every family is presumed to have at least one member?
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Feb 10, 2022 07:55
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YaketySass posted:There isn't enough staff either for 1000 students. Given older wizards seem to live inordinately long lives, yes. Hell at a household level assuming 3 to a household 1/5th of all households could have a seat at the table. Its still not a true representative democracy, but like, the numbers of people are so low that it would actually be difficult for it to not be an ok sampling of the larger population.
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Feb 10, 2022 08:50
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If there are even just 30 people in the Wizard Parliament that's 1% of the population, or the equivalent of the US Congress having 3.3M voting members. Like at that point if you don't know somebody who gets to vote, you know somebody who knows somebody.
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Feb 10, 2022 08:57
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YaketySass posted:Because every family is presumed to have at least one member? Well there aren't any lesbians in the books, so
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Feb 10, 2022 09:54
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Sydin posted:If there are even just 30 people in the Wizard Parliament that's 1% of the population, or the equivalent of the US Congress having 3.3M voting members. Like at that point if you don't know somebody who gets to vote, you know somebody who knows somebody. The Wizengamont who are the unelected and power behind the society has 50 members (not 200 like I was thinking). Not everyone who works in the ministry is a wizengamont member, so the number of people in government is >50, but even assuming were limiting it only to those who are explicitly enfranchsed with political power it would be like the US having 5 million representatives
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Feb 10, 2022 09:55
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2000 adults in the country but they have to accommodate 100,000 world cup patrons. Now consider most of the government is various cops, and a large chunk of the population is planning to sabotage the match with a KKK march. No wonder Ludo Bagman turned to gambling. I ain't keen on organizing that poo poo.
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Feb 10, 2022 10:19
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Angepain posted:Well there aren't any lesbians in the books, so Ok I looked this up out of curiosity and there is in fact one canon lesbian now thanks to a now-discontinued mobile game. Also sharing this brilliant moment of wiki writers scanning the source material for anything remotely relevant: genuine representation of lgbt issues posted:After the ending of the 1994 Quidditch World Cup, Ginny Weasley picked up that her brother, Ron, might have been romantically interested in Viktor Krum, though it can be assumed that she was teasing him.
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Feb 10, 2022 10:38
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:2000 adults in the country but they have to accommodate 100,000 world cup patrons. Now consider most of the government is various cops, and a large chunk of the population is planning to sabotage the match with a KKK march. No wonder Ludo Bagman turned to gambling. I ain't keen on organizing that poo poo. The elf slaves and brainwashed muggles probably help a little bit.
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Feb 10, 2022 10:50
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I forgot that camp director is basically brain damaged the last time we see him.
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Feb 10, 2022 14:24
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:2000 adults in the country but they have to accommodate 100,000 world cup patrons. Now consider most of the government is various cops, and a large chunk of the population is planning to sabotage the match with a KKK march. No wonder Ludo Bagman turned to gambling. I ain't keen on organizing that poo poo. As a wizard FIFA official, it is simply customary that stadiums that can accomodate 100k+ be built regardless of the country's population. *gets handed a bag of galleons*
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Feb 10, 2022 15:13
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Galleons aren't accepted currency outside of wizard uk. They probably use Euros for FIQA
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Feb 10, 2022 15:54
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Barudak posted:FIQA association quidditch? is there rugby quidditch?
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Feb 11, 2022 22:28
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Zoran posted:association quidditch?  there are all kinds of quidditch ps: good for Quidditch https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-pop-culture/quidditch-change-name-citing-jk-rowlings-anti-trans-positions-rcna9149 quote:Real-life quidditch, inspired by the magical game in "Harry Potter," is changing its name, citing author J.K. Rowling's "anti-trans positions in recent years." Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Feb 11, 2022 |
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Feb 11, 2022 22:59
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Vince Vaughn movie The Internship features a quidditch match.
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Feb 11, 2022 23:06
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Zoran posted:association quidditch? I was actually thinking more like FIBA where the A is now meaningless, but I do believe its mentioned in some extra source material americans play a sport which is a mixture of american football and basketball and seems to have like, actually watchable rules, so yeah its real.
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Feb 12, 2022 00:27
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Barudak posted:in some extra source material americans play a sport which is a mixture of american football and basketball and seems to have like, actually watchable rules, so yeah its real. It's called Quodpot, it's described in Quidditch Throughout the Ages, and your team has to get the ball in a cauldron at the end of a field before it explodes. Sounds rad
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Feb 12, 2022 00:42
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I'm surprised with her love of national stereotypes, Rowling just didn't give the American wizards gun-wands.
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Feb 12, 2022 01:52
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:
I think they should call it Broom Block.
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Feb 12, 2022 02:03
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TinTower posted:I'm surprised with her love of national stereotypes, Rowling just didn't give the American wizards gun-wands. Robert Pattinson tried to hold his wand like he was wielding a gun in a Diehard because he thought holding it like I wand was "dorky" I know he's English but that sounds like an american thing to do if I ever heard one.
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Feb 12, 2022 02:27
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i feel like cedric was supposed to be kinda dorky in a very classic pretty-boy-protagonist way so just add that to the stuff that sucks about the goblet film
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Feb 12, 2022 02:34
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Pththya-lyi posted:It's called Quodpot, it's described in Quidditch Throughout the Ages, and your team has to get the ball in a cauldron at the end of a field before it explodes. Sounds rad Thank god the sorcerors stones don't exist so that Quodpot legend Bom Trady finally had to retire due to old age.
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Feb 12, 2022 02:45
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Cranappleberry posted:Robert Pattinson tried to hold his wand like he was wielding a gun in a Diehard because he thought holding it like I wand was "dorky" It kinda makes sense if you're worried about your wand getting knocked out of your hand. Of course, another way to prevent that would be a wand wrist-strap, which nobody seems to have thought of in the history of wizardom.
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Feb 12, 2022 07:25
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Buttchocks posted:It kinda makes sense if you're worried about your wand getting knocked out of your hand. Of course, another way to prevent that would be a wand wrist-strap, which nobody seems to have thought of in the history of wizardom. you would think so. It's a huge weakness/oversight. You are disarmed or similar so now you are completely screwed. What if muggle cops zip tie your wrists? Gonna hope that your innate magic saves you? The major African wizard school teaches their students to do magic with their hands and fingers. The purpose of wands (or any similar object) is just to make it easier to focus the magic and amplify the effect. It seems like a pretty huge gap in Hogwarts education to tie nearly all of their magic to a single, easily lost object.
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Feb 12, 2022 13:45
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But wands know who the real wizard is when you land a disarming hit in a duel. Could a simple wrist strap trick them?
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Feb 12, 2022 13:56
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Could you supplement your wand with a literal gun?
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Feb 12, 2022 14:03
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Zesty posted:Could you supplement your wand with a literal gun? Wizarding America invented what are effectively bayonets but with a wand strapped to the gun instead of a knife
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Feb 12, 2022 14:34
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How bulletproof ARE wizards? I know Shield Charms are a thing, and according to the wiki an extremely powerful one can withstand colliding with a guy on a horse mid-gallop, but can that stop a bullet? I'm not worried about the time to cast the thing in response to danger as immediate as a gun being fired at you, since the Weasleys were just selling coats and poo poo enchanted with it at a joke shop, so I guess you can have an "always on" version. Which is good, because apparently even most high-level Ministry officials are utterly mediocre at actually casting it in a form effective against even mild hostile spells, let alone a rifle round to the head.
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Feb 12, 2022 14:50
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Jazerus posted:i mean, you're definitely supposed to be charmed by the people around harry, but from book 2 onward it's supposed to be clear that the system doesn't work. the school board and courts are trivially corrupted by a known nazi in book 2, and then the minister is shown to be a moron in book 3; in book 4, everyone from the ministry is either overly zealous in upholding a clearly pedantic and hypocritical legalism, or a complete buffoon. the ministry is quite clearly consistently operating at a sub-bojo level of competence throughout the series, even very early on. I've said it a lot but Harry Potter is seriously one of the most brilliant and masterful satires/parodies of the End of History, liberalism, and centrism ever put to paper. Just, like, by accident. If Rowling didn't give us mountains of evidence via Twitter and interviews and poo poo of what an idiot she is, people in future generations would probably think she was some brilliant leftist satirist tearing down the status quo in a scathing and comedic critique. Like the books almost go out of their way to point out that Voldemort and the fascism he embodies are a symptom and not a cause and that the rot is endemic to the wizarding world and has permeated basically every aspect of its culture and society, and yet they act like when he's defeated hooray, problems are over forever! Like it's not even just a leftist reading; Harry is textually weirded out by the racist statue in the Ministry the first time he visits, well before Voldemort's take-over. The book goes out of its way to point out the rot is already there and Voldemort is just a symptom, and even has Harry loving notice it. Not to mention how coming of age stories usually have the protag recognizing their own agency and to some extent gently spurning their mentor/parental figure as they come into their own; instead Harry is proudly and explicitly 'Dumbledore's man' to the very end, despite the books going out of their way to point out how problematic Big D is. Like it's so loving on-the-nose. The books go out of their way to show that the system is completely rotten to the core and that Voldemort and Grindlewald and all the other villains and problems are symptoms of this rot and will keep being produced until meaningful change is enacted, and yet at the last minute our heroes all decide that actually fighting and dying for this perverse staus quo is cool and good. Rowling made a masterpiece by complete accident and I have no idea how to really process that.
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Feb 12, 2022 16:20
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Like it's not even just a leftist reading; Harry is textually weirded out by the racist statue in the Ministry the first time he visits, well before Voldemort's take-over. The book goes out of its way to point out the rot is already there and Voldemort is just a symptom, and even has Harry loving notice it. TBF with a lot of the stuff like this, Harry is just a passive observer, when he first sees the statue the text just describes what it looks like. Later Dumbledore explains to him that the multiculturalism it displays is "a lie" because wizards have been mean to the other races, but like, the unspoken implication is "this is still a good goal to strive for, the one where house elves and goblins are lovingly looking up at their wizard masters". Like it's liberalism 101: if we are just really, really nice to each other but change nothing about existing power structures, then things will gradually get better until its perfect. We shouldn't immediately free all house elves and get them psychiatric help for their obvious brain washing and smash whatever structures lead to their enslavement, we should just be nicer to them in a slow, methodical way, introducing things like "paid work" slowly over generations until eventually they are equal (in like a thousand years but most realistically never).
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Feb 12, 2022 16:37
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Guy A. Person posted:Wizarding America invented what are effectively bayonets but with a wand strapped to the gun instead of a knife Do wands come in different calibers? Are there, like, rifle-sized wands? Is there a cannon equivalent of a wand? Mega-wand? Wizards have had plenty of wars; they should have advanced their war-magic technology much further than they have.
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Feb 12, 2022 16:37
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