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bobjr posted:The series establishes witches faking getting burned at the stake for the thrill of it, does that mean Jesus got crucified for fun? Lmao
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Oct 9, 2025 18:41
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Crown of thorns giving me a nice scalp massage
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Oct 9, 2025 18:41
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Grundulum posted:That’s the neat thing. Given how many calendars there are, any given day is probably the last day of the seventh month in *one* of them. You only recognize after the fact which calendar was the right one. As is traditional for prophecies!
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Oct 9, 2025 19:33
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The Chosen One is born at the end of Germinal (his mother just finished the book).
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Oct 9, 2025 19:35
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PriorMarcus posted:Do Wizards even follow the muggle calendar? Why would they? They are stupid and lazy and at least off hand, it seems like 'keep track of days and weeks' is one thing magic actually can't do. And doing so doesn't require technology that Hogwarts would break. So them just copying the muggles actually checks out.
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Oct 9, 2025 19:45
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PriorMarcus posted:Do Wizards even follow the muggle calendar? Why would they? They follow Juche years. Yes even before Juche 1, thet just went negative, like BCE
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Oct 9, 2025 20:02
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I remember a specific line in CoS "She rubbed hard on January 1st"
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Oct 9, 2025 20:15
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stev posted:Are the Nimbus brooms released annually, or is it just a coincidence that the Nimbus 2001 released the year after Harry got his 2000? chaining a bunch of brooms together to mine WizCoins
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Oct 9, 2025 20:40
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Maybe it's just a marketing thing. When I was a kid we had an "Atlas 2000" book with the Soviet Union in it.
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Oct 9, 2025 20:43
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I wanna know why they stopped releasing Andres, they got to 3000 and halted production
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Oct 9, 2025 20:52
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caspergers posted:I wanna know why they stopped releasing Andres, they got to 3000 and halted production https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHoNWwhzh3M
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Oct 9, 2025 20:53
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caspergers posted:I remember a specific line in CoS "She rubbed hard on January 1st" Listen, sometimes you gotta start the new year off with a bit of self care
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Oct 9, 2025 21:06
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josh04 posted:Jesus casting 'flippendo' at the money lenders I like this. This is a good post.
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Oct 9, 2025 21:14
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PriorMarcus posted:Do Wizards even follow the muggle calendar? Why would they? The first day of the Hogwarts school year was Monday Sept 1st, seven years in a row
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Oct 9, 2025 22:02
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That's why despite giving a small child a time machine so she can go to more classes they insist time travel is super dangerous. Someone managed to warp the entire calendar just to make bookkeeping easier for Hogwarts .
Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Oct 10, 2025 |
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Oct 9, 2025 22:07
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I would not be surprised in the slightest if wizard society only recently transitioned to the current muggle calendar system after continuing to use the old Roman calendar with too many days and an extra month partway through February for centuries after the empire fell.
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Oct 9, 2025 22:13
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The wizard calendar has 343 days, as that's just more magically potent
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Oct 10, 2025 00:07
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We'd know how the Wizard Calendar worked if Harry had ever loving paid attention during Astrology class
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Oct 10, 2025 00:08
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According to Robert Rankin, naming any of your inventions the '<something> 3000' is best, because if you look at it sideways, it's a butt pooping
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Oct 10, 2025 00:51
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Asterite34 posted:We'd know how the Wizard Calendar worked if Harry had ever loving paid attention during Astrology class Or if their history teacher hadn't been dead for decades, and everyone just sleeps through his classes because he doesn't know who's even in them to grade.
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Oct 10, 2025 03:51
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All we know about Astrology class is they meet once a month at night to track the planets and Harry never does his homework. Maybe where the planets are in the sky affect certain magics but it's not like Harry would know.
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Oct 10, 2025 03:58
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Harry's determined indifference to his schoolwork is interesting to me because it's emblematic of the balancing act that is his entire character between Chosen One and normal kid. Reading the books again, you realize Harry is largely ostracized from his fellow classmates in 2 or 3 books. I think she realized "you're a nobody but now everybody knows you and loves you" is a great escapist fantasy for one book, but not a whole series. So in Book 2 he's hated for supposedly being the Heir of Slytherin. Then in Book 4 he's hated for supposedly putting his name in the Goblet of Fire. And then again in Book 5 people think he's insane because of Ministry slander. (I suppose it's actually a kind of nice bookend that for his final year at Hogwarts he is literally the Chosen One now and is more beloved than he has been since Book 1) But my larger point is, in relation to Harry not giving a poo poo about Astrology, that is supposed to be how he's relatable. Yes it's Magic School, but it's still school, and kids hate school. The History of Magic class in particular being a total joke really resonated with me as someone who absolutely lovd History class in school but I was totally alone. It was definitely the one and only class where I noticeably put in more effort than any other student I knew. P.S. Getting back to Ron, I've heard a really dumb conspiracy theory online over the years that Ron is why Harry is a bad student. It's so frickin' bizarre but I've heard it multiple times and it just leaves me stunned each time. "Harry be Hermione if Ron wasn't there making him stupid and lazy." NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Oct 10, 2025 |
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Oct 10, 2025 04:18
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Ron is why Harry is a bad student, but only because Ron is Dumbledore.
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Oct 10, 2025 05:32
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The cake at Nick's 500th deathday party says he died on the 31st of October 1492, so the wizards are probably supposed to use the Gregorian calendar. Which didn't exist in 1492, but I doubt Rowling was thinking about that, and it's not a huge difference. There's also Harry's parents' graves with the random bible quote, which says they died on the 31st of October 1981. Though the wiki page I used to double check that information also says that book 4 had the 31st of October as a Saturday and the 22nd of November as a Tuesday, so maybe wizards are just really blasé about dates in general or Halloween in particular. Maybe they just really really love Halloween, so they keep the day going for weeks. That would fit with all the plot important stuff that keeps happening on that day.
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Oct 10, 2025 05:51
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Maybe the mold had taken hold by book whatever
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Oct 10, 2025 07:40
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NikkolasKing posted:P.S. if Harry hadn't already been besties with Ron he'd just have been friends with Sean and Deamus
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Oct 10, 2025 07:57
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Santini posted:Maybe the mold had taken hold by book whatever All the ghosts were trying to eat moldy food at the Deathday party in Chamber of Secrets, so Mold Theory does have more evidence than you'd think.
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Oct 10, 2025 11:18
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Santini posted:Maybe the mold had taken hold by book whatever she didnt have castle money while she was still writing the books, but the mold being sentient and following her from place to place is a theory i'll get behind
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Oct 10, 2025 13:21
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Zombies magazine posted:she didnt have castle money while she was still writing the books, but the mold being sentient and following her from place to place is a theory i'll get behind I don't like any theory where the mould gives JK an out for being awful, so instead I'm going to say that JK is sentient and following the poor innocent mould from place to place.
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Oct 10, 2025 13:44
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PriorMarcus posted:I don't like any theory where the mould gives JK an out for being awful, so instead I'm going to say that JK is sentient and following the poor innocent mould from place to place. The mould is the only thing keeping her from saying the fourteen words
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Oct 10, 2025 14:27
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Wherever she is for any length of time the mould manifests. Papa Nurgle's trying desperately to save her from her brain worms.
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Oct 10, 2025 14:39
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Guy A. Person posted:Ron is definitely insecure about his "poverty" but because Rowling is a lovely writer what "poverty" means specifically to wizards in the series usually amounts to "can't afford luxury or name brand items for their kids" so the whole thing is kind of muddied. One thing I found interesting is that if Ron hadn't befriended Harry and/or there hadn't been a war to worry about, then there was a good chance Ron would have followed Percy's path and also get himself cut off from the family. Ron mostly keeps it to himself, but he does bemoan how the family's lack of money means that he and his siblings can't have nice things. In book 1, he got pissed during the train ride when Draco immediately clocked him as one of the Weasley kids. The Mirror of Erised showed that he wanted to stand out from the rest of his brothers and not just be another Weasley kid, so that's ambition right there. And while he loves his dad, he also doesn't respect his dad's interest in technology. So he'd probably get why his dad wanted to get a job at the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, but not why he'd keep staying at a dead-rear end job when he still had 5 kids who had to be supported financially at school. In this Harry-less scenario, Ron would have gotten a job at the Ministry for lack of anything else to do. He'd probably find himself not taken seriously by everyone just because of who his father is. He would keep quiet about it, but there would have been some built-up resentment towards his dad. And he would definitely blow up about it at some point and say some things that can't be taken back. All this to say that upon looking back on the series, I do think Percy is probably the one who comes across the best in the family (other than Charlie, who was cooler but didn't get ruined by Rowling trying to write more about him). 
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Oct 11, 2025 15:51
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amigolupus posted:One thing I found interesting is that if Ron hadn't befriended Harry and/or there hadn't been a war to worry about, then there was a good chance Ron would have followed Percy's path and also get himself cut off from the family. Ron mostly keeps it to himself, but he does bemoan how the family's lack of money means that he and his siblings can't have nice things. In book 1, he got pissed during the train ride when Draco immediately clocked him as one of the Weasley kids. The Mirror of Erised showed that he wanted to stand out from the rest of his brothers and not just be another Weasley kid, so that's ambition right there. And while he loves his dad, he also doesn't respect his dad's interest in technology. So he'd probably get why his dad wanted to get a job at the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, but not why he'd keep staying at a dead-rear end job when he still had 5 kids who had to be supported financially at school. This is a really solid write up about why Percy himself may have acted the way he did, but I think the fact that Percy did it pretty much precludes Ron from doing it. Like, as much as he wants to stand out from his family, this is never really presented as him wanting to break out and away from the family, he very much looks up to his 2 oldest brothers and cares deeply about Fred and George's opinion of him (which is why he ends up being kind of a poo poo Prefect for fear of them thinking he's a lame hall monitor) as well as having a type of ill-conceived (at least in later grades) protectiveness of Ginny. And while I don't think we explicitly find out what Charlie and Bill think about the Percy situation all the other school aged kids are pretty loving pissed at him, so Ron doing anything of the sort seems super unlikely. I also think this means Ron just blindly going into the Ministry for lack of any other ambition is also unlikely, because Percy did it and took the path that he thought would give him the most success (selling out his father) and the rest of the family and Ron thought this was a poo poo move. It's hard to say what he would have done because every option we know about seems like he just did it because his pals or brothers were doing it (by the time of the sequel play he was an Auror with Harry for awhile but had quit to help the alive twin run the joke shop) and it's unlikely he even would have ended up with Hermione to have her be the breadwinner. I think this is more of a product at the poo poo way Rowling actually fleshes out her world to give Ron any major options outside of the few she spends any time on (Copy, other Government employee, athlete, shop owner, teacher [end of list]).
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Oct 11, 2025 17:48
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Part of the problem with job options is that "wizard" in the broader literary tradition that Rowling draws from is normally a job unto itself. You're not a wizard who's also a cop or a movie star or a private detective, you're a wizard. Maybe in the service of a king or something, but doing or studying magic is your main profession. You don't need anything else. It's also tough when the grand total of your country's formal education system is a single primary school. Good luck learning how to be a wizard lawyer or wizard civil engineer with just a high school diploma.
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Oct 11, 2025 18:10
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This is in no way a defense of Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling, but I think some of the faults being discussed are the result of subjecting the books to a level of scrutiny they were never expected or written to withstand. Or maybe not, I've never read any of them and do not intend to.
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Oct 11, 2025 18:26
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This is in no way a defense of Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling, but I think some of the faults being discussed are the result of subjecting the books to a level of scrutiny they were never expected or written to withstand. This is a valid take for the first two, maybe first three books. But not after that. If the books had remained Dahl-esque whimsy and not become inept political thriller or whatever, then yeah, a lot of the criticism of the worldbuilding we've all been doing would be utterly insane and akin to Cinema Sins nonsense. But, you know, they didn't. Rowling decided to go snorkeling in a petri dish.
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Oct 11, 2025 18:34
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This is in no way a defense of Harry Potter or J.K. Rowling, but I think some of the faults being discussed are the result of subjecting the books to a level of scrutiny they were never expected or written to withstand. Yeah this is true, though the latter half does invite it upon itself as it shifts from dahl inspired kid's books to massive doorstoppers with a big focus on wizard politics
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Oct 11, 2025 18:34
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As discussed ad nauseum itt, one of the odd? unique? things about the Potter books is that they start as whimsical children's books and take a hard swing to being pseudo-adult thrillers midway through in a way that throws up all these awkward questions. whoops, beaten twice over.
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Oct 11, 2025 18:34
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Wingnut Ninja posted:Part of the problem with job options is that "wizard" in the broader literary tradition that Rowling draws from is normally a job unto itself. You're not a wizard who's also a cop or a movie star or a private detective, you're a wizard. Maybe in the service of a king or something, but doing or studying magic is your main profession. You don't need anything else. Being a wizard lawyer is easy as poo poo because you can just have people thrown into Wizard Depression Hell Prison on the vaguest suspicions of anything with seemingly no due process and maybe a half-hour trial if you're famous enough and know someone important. There's no expectation of justice from any corner, you can sleepwalk through that job. Being a wizard civil engineer is slightly harder, but having ready access to teleportation and TARDIS space warping brute-forces a lot of logistical hurdles
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Oct 11, 2025 18:41
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There's still the issue though, as I mentioned, of there being apparently no meaningful pool of skilled labor in the wizarding world. Like, again, other than cooking - and not to knock on that, cooking is both an art and skilled labor - we never see the house elves performing skilled labor and even if we assume every single wizard family will have at least one squib child that's still not enough.
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Oct 11, 2025 18:43
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