Harry Potter: Dumbledore goes in jar

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Star Wars Holiday Special > Harry Potter: Dumbledore goes in jar

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Violet_Sky posted:

Tbf if the books were written from Harry's POV he probably wouldnt have given a poo poo about who some old man dated.

According to the author, Dumbledore really never got with anyone else:

JKR in interview posted:

The issue is love. It�s not about sex. So that�s what I knew about Dumbledore. And it�s relevant only in so much as he fell in love and was made an utter fool of by love. He lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently became very mistrusting of his own judgement in those matters so became quite asexual. He led a celibate and a bookish life.

So it's canon that Dumbledore:

1) Was turned evil by his gayness
2) Swore himself to celibacy so his gayness could never again lead him astray
3) Never scored

Like, she genuinely went out of her way to make the absolute shittiest "representation" possible without going full Ace Ventura.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2022 18:02

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# ¿ Dec 15, 2025 11:41

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

In Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore lost his jobs as Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump because the magic deer kept reading Daily Prophet propaganda.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2022 00:28

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

RoboChrist 9000 posted:

Lucius turned state's evidence after the first war

A few people have mentioned this detail, but it's not actually true. Karkaroff turned state's evidence after the first war, but Lucius didn't; he just falsely claimed he was under the Imperius and bribed a bunch of people to acquit him.

I never realized before that Lucius got off after the second war too, since I didn't follow the expanded universe stuff, but here's how the fandom wiki describes it:

quote:

By the time of the Battle of Hogwarts, Lucius showed that he was more concerned with his son's safety than Voldemort's cause, begging to be permitted to find him when the fighting began. Narcissa lied directly to Voldemort for Harry's sake when he informed her that Draco was still alive, and she and Lucius ran through the crowd, "not even attempting to fight, screaming for their son".

Lucius and Draco's crimes were forgiven due to their abandonment of Voldemort and his cause, and Narcissa's lie to the Dark Lord that saved Harry Potter's life in the Forbidden Forest in the Battle of Hogwarts. None of them served time in Azkaban due to the evidence he provided against fellow Death Eaters and his help to ensure the capture of many of Voldemort's followers who had fled into hiding. However, the revelation of their previous loyalty to Voldemort had invariably destroyed Lucius's prized and precious reputation and few people would forget the Malfoy family's previous loyalties.

So, uh, he turned state's evidence against people who had their guilt physically tattooed on their body and also he sat out a single battle in the war because he was busy with family issues, and that makes up for him being Heinrich Himmler twice over?

HIJK posted:

Is the Malfoy family getting away with everything based off real British history of nothing happening to Nazi lovers in the landed gentry or is it another symptom of j/k rowling's weird brain

Lucius getting off isn't like a British gentry Nazi lover getting off, it's like Joseph Goebbels getting off. It's absolutely not based on anything, and considering that the ending has the narrator approve it by objectively insisting "all was well" it's definitely a symptom of her brainworms.

Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Apr 10, 2022

# ¿ Apr 10, 2022 17:41

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Isn't there a scene early in Deathly Hallows after the broom duel chase scene where Harry is like "You were shooting stunners at them while they were in mid-air! That's practically killing them since they'll die in the fall" and Lupin is like "It's a war you idiot, and you almost got us all killed by not going past expelliarmus"

And then of course Harry never kills anyone and the book ends with him defeating Voldemort by casting expelliarmus so I guess Harry was right and Lupin was wrong and instead of killing Nazis you should just endure them until they accidentally break a secret magic rule and kill themselves by mistake.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2022 17:15

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Cranappleberry posted:

They've lost the war and all of them have family to lose which is being held hostage both at Hogwarts

The ministry fell in the middle of the summer, before term started; why did they send their kids back to Death Eater-controlled Hogwarts in the first place?

# ¿ Apr 11, 2022 17:18

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

ONE YEAR LATER posted:

Still thinking about how they straight up replaced a main character, who has numerous personal reasons to be involved in the plot, because the actor said that Rowling is wrong about trans women. Just total bullshit and WB should be getting dragged across coals for such a decision.

But of course Eddie "People Saying Negative Things About Rowling Is Disgusting And The Real Hate Speech" Redmayne won't be written out.

Skwirl posted:

I wonder what they called the Japanese magic school in Japanese translations of Goblet of Fire. Did they just phonetically spell out the English phrase "Magic School" in Japanese characters?

They don't call it anything, because it's not in Goblet of Fire. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang are the only other schools mentioned in the books at all; everything else, including Ilvermorny, is from Pottermore.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2022 16:45

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

YaketySass posted:

she should have named every movie after a different Gilderoy Lockhart textbook

# ¿ Apr 12, 2022 20:47

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

bobjr posted:

Actually was there any real follow up on that plot? Hagrid has his students work with dangerous and unpredictable new crossbreeds, which there were established laws against.

I think one was used in the Triwizard finals, but they're otherwise never brought up again, not even when Dolores Umbridge is looking for reasons to fire Hagrid.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2022 03:37

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Grundulum posted:

�There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don�t expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few who possess, the predisposition? I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.�

Harry�s hand shot up. �What is it, Potter?� Snape asked, irritated.

�What�s the value of these potions on the open market?�

�What?�

�Why are you teaching children how to make these valuable products for ourselves at a schoolteacher�s salary instead of creating products to meet modern demand?�

�You impertinent boy��

�Conversely, what�s to stop me from selling these potions myself after you teach us how to master them?�

Source

Edit:

Harry and Ron stood before the Mirror of Erised. �My God,� Ron said. �Harry, it�s your dead parents.�

Harry�s eyes flicked momentarily over to the mirror. �So it is. This information is neither useful nor productive. Let us leave at once, to assist Hagrid in his noble enterprise of raising as many dragon eggs as he sees fit, in spite of our country�s unjust dragon-trading restrictions.�

�But it�s your parents, Harry,� Ron said. Ron never really got it.

Harry sighed. �The fundamental standard for all relationships is the trader principle, Ron.�

�I don�t understand,� Ron said.

�Of course you don�t,� said Harry affectionately. �This principle holds that we should interact with people on the basis of the values we can trade with them�values of all sorts, including common interests in art, sports or music, similar philosophical outlooks, political beliefs, sense of life, and more. Dead people have no value according to the trader principle.�

�But they gave birth to y��

�I made myself, Ron,� Harry said firmly.

Wow, it's just like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality except with fewer eleven-year-olds casually negotiating who plans to rape whom.

# ¿ May 29, 2022 11:03

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

I was super into Sorcerer's Stone PC as a kid, which was a platformer. Features:

Collect bonus Challenge Stars that give you extra house points which don't matter because it's rigged for you to always barely beat the Slytherins no matter what
They extra don't matter in potions class because Snape is like "lol I don't care about challenge stars" and then takes points from you which unironically owns
Prominently features the Flipendo spell, famous from the books for not being mentioned ever
Herbology class consists of learning the plant-murdering spell to murder plants which tbh seems like the most important part of herbology in this universe
The Lumos spell inexplicably creates ethereal moving platforms by casting it on gargoyles because this is a low-quality platformer so "creates moving platforms" is the only effect they could think of
Collect wizard cards for completionism but then never actually read them because honestly who cares

I played through that game over and over and over.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2022 12:31

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Shwoo posted:

I liked that there was a random Peeves boss fight where he just flies around insulting you the whole time. That seemed to fit pretty well.

Oh Potter you're ugly, but what can we do?
Everyone says you belong in a zoo!

# ¿ Jun 3, 2022 09:14

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

amigolupus posted:

Did we ever get a good reason why Wizard Hitler wasn't just killed after being defeated by Dumbledore? I know the story reason is so that Voldemort had to waste the entire year tracking down the previous users of the Elder Wand, and probably-maybe Dumbledore still had a thing for his fascist ex and wanted to spare him, but those are the reasons for those characters. Wizard Hitler's supposed to have terrorized a huge portion of Europe so you'd think people would've clamored for his execution. Especially since there are people like Krum, who came from a family affected by Grindelwald's reign and has no problem punching people who wear his symbol.

I forgot about that scene of kooky old man wearing a magic swastika getting punched out by violent antifa Krum who doesn't understand it's not really a magic nazi symbol.

As for why Grindelwald wasn't killed, it's especially weird because his prison, Nurmengard, seems to me like it was named in reference to the Nuremberg Trials, which did sentence a dozen nazi leaders to death.

Best guess? Dumbledore kept him alive because of some "well, I was able to change, so maybe Sexy Hitler can change as well" (which is also my best guess for why Dumbledore let Draco Malfoy keep just-barely-not-killing other students in book 6), and nobody else could actually defeat Dumbledore or break into Nurmengard to override his unilateral decision?

# ¿ Jun 12, 2022 14:56

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

amigolupus posted:

You can't even blame Krum for his reaction; Grindelwald happened in his grandfather's time so it's not even ancient history. Xenophilius was the one who sucked because he's a grown-rear end man who should've known better than to wear the symbol that got co-opted by Wizard Hitler. Being a kooky guy is no defense.

Oh, I don't blame Krum at all, he was absolutely in the right. What I mean is, I find it interesting that JKR went out of her way to contrive this situation where someone was mistaken when they were punching out the guy wearing a swastika because actually the swastika predates the nazis and the white guy covered in nordic runes was totally wearing the swastika for non-nazi reasons.

Mx. posted:

so do they make a big joke of history class at hogwarts so dumbledore can stop all the jewish students from learning about him stopping the man who wanted to stop the holocaust (who was also hitler 2.0 but it's ok there was no need to kill him)

That seems unnecessary because Rowling didn't bother putting any Jewish characters in the entire twice-the-length-of-War-and-Peace series in the first place.

I know she name-checks Anthony Goldstein at some point but I'm hardly going to count that as a character.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 05:18

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Also, is Anthony Goldstein in the books?

He's mentioned once or twice as like, one of a list of names of people who were at the DA. Nobody[1] would remember he existed if JKR hadn't cited him as proof that her books were super diverse and she totally included jewish characters.

[1]except fanfiction writers looking for a canon name to slap on their OC

muscles like this! posted:

Like Harry is Luna's best friend and even he treats her opinions like poo poo.

I agree, it's very unfair and closed-minded of Harry not to consider that maybe she's right and Sirius Black is actually rock star Stubby Boardman in disguise.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2022 04:53

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

The one time he kisses Cho, Harry's thinking about Luna.

I forget if it's in the books or if it's movies-only, but right before they kiss Cho points out there's mistletoe above them, and Harry responds that "It's probably full of nargles anyhow", remembering that Luna had said nargles tended to infest mistletoe.

This might be the only time Harry gives Luna any thought when he's not directly prompted by her presence.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2022 21:21

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

As a kid, when Harry said in book 5 that he wanted to be an auror, I always assumed it was a "well, apparently I'm going to be spending all my time fighting Voldemort for the foreseeable future,
I may as well get paid for it instead of needing to take a separate day job" thing. I never understood why he still became an auror after Voldemort was permadead.

As for how much Rowling planned: the deluminator's use in the last book feels like a very blatant "I want to make it seem like I had everything planned from the start but really I had no clue" situation. Look, an object from book one came back to be important in book seven! ...doing something completely unrelated to its original function for no apparent reason to the point where it may as well be a completely different object. It's like Chekhov's gun except instead of firing the gun in act 3 they use it as a trumpet to play some music.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 16:54

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Sydin posted:

All of Harry's interactions with Aurors in the books that I can remember are actually negative, lol:
-Arresting Hagrid under false pretenses in Book 2
-Arresting Hagrid under false pretenses again in Book 5, and this time they almost kill Mcgonagall as well in what the Daily Prophet definitely reported as an "Auror involved shooting" in which "an elderly woman was struck by a stray stupefying spell" in the next morning's paper.
-Arresting Dumbledore under false pretenses
-Scrimgeour, who was up until very recently head of the Aurors, turning the Ministry into a security theater and trying to convince Harry to be their cheerleader for morale reasons

Like Harry never actually has a positive interaction with an Auror or is saved by an Auror or whatever that would catalyze his desire to become one. He thinks he's being trained by a former great in Moody, but really it's a death eater in disguise who's unsurprisingly able to pretty seamlessly play the role of lovely retired cop.

Aurors are also presumably involved in trying to arrest Harry for conjuring the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup, and his trial at the start of book 5, and falsely imprisoning Sirius Black without a trial, and executing Barty Crouch Jr so he can't testify, and letting Lucius Malfoy walk free after both wars. Why the gently caress would Harry want to support the british magical legal system?

Tonks, Actual-Moody, and Kingsley Slavemanacles are aurors who Harry interacts with as members of the Order of the Phoenix... but they're illegally acting outside their capacity of aurors, and even then they're just another few adults who don't tell Harry anything or appear to accomplish anything.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 18:32

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

W.T. Fits posted:

Nah, that wasn't the Aurors. That was Fudge being a stubborn idiot and insisting on bringing Dementors with him (for his own protection, allegedly) when he went to question Crouch, and the moment they got in the room the Dementors just immediately pounced on Crouch and sucked out his soul before Fudge could call them off.

So still the Ministry loving things up because of their colossal incompetence, just not the Aurors in this specific case.

Ah, I didn't remember the details, fair enough.

...but I don't see any aurors arresting Fudge for murder so I'm still gonna call them complicit.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 20:50

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Alhazred posted:

It's kinda weird how everyone is so shocked when Malfoy uses the mudblood slur but have no quibbles about using slurs like muggle and squib.

Those don't seem to be considered slurs in-universe. They do sound like slurs, but so do hogwarts and mugwump.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2022 06:30

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Alhazred posted:

Squib and muggles are words that describe a negative quality about people. Wizards don't want to be muggles or squibs. So they should be considered slurs but aren't.

This definition of slur seems too permissive. I don't want to be deaf, because hearing is convenient, but that doesn't mean the word deaf is a slur. Cis folks are glad to not be trans, but that doesn't mean the word trans is a slur.

"Squib" also seems to be the term used by squibs themselves; the two squibs we meet, Filch and Mrs Figg, both describe themselves that way.

(Also it's hosed up that JKR made the two squibs we meet such terrible people.)

# ¿ Jun 17, 2022 07:48

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Tenebrais posted:

Mrs Figg was well-intentioned but also she explicitly made sure Harry never had a good time at her house so that his uncle/aunt would keep getting her to look after him, which is exteremely hosed up

This is what I was thinking of, it feels super gross.

She also let him continue believing magic wasn't real and his parents died in a car crash.

She "kept an eye on him" for Dumbledore, but I'm not sure what good that's supposed to do. She didn't do anything when the Dursleys locked him in or hit him or starved him, and if Death Eaters killed or abducted Harry, she wouldn't notice he was gone for weeks.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2022 08:35

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

I never realized before that the protection he needs to renew at the Dursley house each year was separate from the whole melt-Quirrell's-face protection, and only protects him while he's actually at the Dursley house, but the wiki confirms that that's correct.

So... he goes there for a few weeks each year... to renew the protection... that only protects him for a few weeks each year while he's there? What's the point of that? Why not just not go there at all, and keep him safe the same way the keep him safe in July the other eleven months of the year? At least Grimmauld Place doesn't have dementors trying to suck out his soul or Uncle Vernon trying to strangle him.

It gets even dumber in the last book when they go "Hey, we're going to keep you in this house until the exact moment the protection falls, at which point we will be surrounded by Death Eaters trying to kill you since they know exactly where and when you'll be vulnerable, because clearly this is safer than just going straight to Grimmauld Place when the year ends."

It seems like JKR just decided the book format required each book to start at the Dursley house, and made a half-baked attempt to justify it.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2022 18:51

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Hogwarts classes:

Transfiguration: requires magic
Charms: requires magic
Defense Against the Dark Arts: requires magic unless Umbridge is teaching it
Potions: squib-accessible in the actual text, I guess JKR said in an interview it requires magic because she's awful
Herbology: squib-accessible? I genuinely don't remember any spellcasting being involved in herbology in the books (but there's a lot of incendioing in the PC Book 1 game)
History: squib-accessible
Astronomy: squib-accessible, literally a muggle subject
Arithmancy: squib-accessible, it's math
Divination: squibs probably aren't going to be any worse at it than anyone else who's not a true prophecying seer or whatever
Muggle Studies: squib-accessible
Ancient Runes: squib-accessible, this is just the magic version of learning to read latin and hieroglyphs
Care of Magical Creatures: squib-accessible? I guess some specific creatures might need spells but I don't remember them doing any spellcasting in this class in the books

Maybe I've forgotten some of the side-classes but the point is, squibs should be able to take most of the Hogwarts curriculum with no problem, it's just not done because Dumbledore and the other wizards are bigots.

amigolupus posted:

Not only had McGonagall warned Dumbledore about the Dursleys right before he left Harry on the Dursleys' front porch (in freezing November weather, I might add), Hogwarts also magically creates letters that are addressed to where the students are staying, so someone should've seen that Harry's letter said, "Cupboard Under the Stairs."

Dumbledore knew.

His spy Figg who reports to him knew the Dursleys were cruel enough that she needed to make Harry's visits with her completely joyless or they would end. And then at the end of book 5 Dumbledore says this: "Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well � not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle�s doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years."

He 100% knew.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 06:46

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Mazerunner posted:

because her stated justification is that part of the brewing process is just to pull out a wand and cast a spell on it at some point

So she forgot that "There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class" was how Snape introduced the class?

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 16:35

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

amigolupus posted:

Then I remembered this is the same guy who visited an abused 11-yeard old in an orphanage and wrote him off as pure evil and never tried teaching him about the ethics of using magic against others.

The movie version of that scene is great because they cut any dialogue that actually makes Tom seem in any way wrong, but then have the camerawork and adiegetic sound effects frame it like he's the child-antichrist in a lovely horror movie.

Like, imagine if Dumbledore showed up when Harry was eleven and saw that Harry had stolen some of Dudley's old broken toys, that he had hurt Dudley when he was mean to him by dumping him into a snake exhibit, and that he could talk to snakes and was distrusted by his adult guardians. Apparently, by Dumbledore's standards here, that's all it takes to be an irredeemable monster!

Harry's lucky he hadn't learned any control of his magic by the time he got his Hogwarts letter, or Dumbledore would probably have fed him to Fluffy right then and there.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 23:22

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

"the villain of oliver twist is oliver twist for stealing things instead of being a good orphan" �dumbledore probably

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 23:28

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Dumbledore declined being Minister of Magic, which proves he doesn't want to lead, which proves he would be the best leader.

Instead he is merely Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the United Nations, which are leadership positions he was fine with accepting?

# ¿ Jun 26, 2022 22:12

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Violet_Sky posted:

Don't forget Daphne Greengrass

I don't think she meets the "side character that got enough personality to be more than a blank slate oc" requirement, since her name is mentioned literally once in the books as one of a list of students taking OWLs?

edit: unless you count the oddly widespread Fanon Ice Queen Daphne of the Enlightened Centrist Neutral Grey House of Greengrass

Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jul 1, 2022

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 02:46

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

In the movies they gave Seamus a personality trait of "accidentally sets stuff on fire" because he didn't have any.

Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil are Other Girls (Like Whom Hermione'sn't) and that's their whole personality. Nobody else has any character traits. Anthony Goldstein is jewish.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 17:10

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Ghost Leviathan posted:

IIRC, that was kinda on purpose by Rowling who wanted to give the weasel (and redheads) a positive association.

If she wanted to give weasels a positive association then she shouldn't have turned Draco Malfoy into one. :colbert:

# ¿ Jul 3, 2022 03:44

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Rowling deliberately making one of her two gay characters a pedophile tracks with her handling of lycanthropy as an AIDS metaphor, where one of the only two werewolves in the series has "loves preying on children and infecting them with AIDS" as literally his entire character.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2022 08:29

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Snape being a potions prodigy might help if he actually taught anything. All I remember him doing in class was saying stuff like "Today you imbeciles will be brewing the Plutonian Potion, instructions are on the board," and then yelling at people after their potions had already exploded or melted their cauldrons or started releasing noxious fumes or whatever.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2022 11:48

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

or Stan Shunpike, jailed by Minister Head Auror just to look like something was being done, which didn't make Harry think twice about becoming a cop at all

# ¿ Jul 12, 2022 16:28

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Also the kid he hexed was a junior proudboy who spent all his time with the other junior proudboys talking about how eager they were to graduate and join the genocidal terrorist's ethnic cleansing and torture army (we see Lily calling Snape out on that in a flashback). So like, really finding it hard to fault James too much for using his wand to punch a nazi piece of poo poo.

edit: Snape told Lily it was okay because he thought she was One Of The Good Ones but for some reason Lily still broke off their friendship

Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jul 14, 2022

# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 04:54

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Nucleic Acids posted:

Fandom Snape versus Real Snape will always be such a fascinating thing.

I'm truly impressed by the mental acrobatics used to hammer the square peg of Real Snape into the round hole of Fanon Snape. Some of them seem to comb through every page of the books and find some way to make apologia for each and every action he takes.

fanon versus canon posted:

Myth: Snape's questioning of Harry in their first lesson was unfairly hard.

Harry's very first Potions lesson is often seen as evidence of how punitive and unfair Snape is, because of a fanon idea that the questions he asked Harry were unreasonably difficult. Snape certainly makes a rather uncalled-for snide remark about Harry being a celebrity, but it is very likely that Draco - a whiny, sneaky kid who is away from home for what may well be the first time in his life, and who knows his new Head of House as a family friend and quite possibly as his godfather - has already told Uncle Severus that Famous Harry Potter was nasty to him on the train, and has presented it as Harry being rude and self-satisfied. And Snape has already looked up at the Sorting Feast and seen Harry apparently glaring at him - in fact wincing with pain from his scar, but the two expressions are almost identical - so he will think Petunia has raised Harry to hate him; and like Harry he probably associates that meeting of his gaze with Harry's with a sense of the presence of evil which is in fact coming from Quirrell.

The sequence of events is that Snape makes his keynote speech, to which Harry listens fairly attentively (although the idea that he makes notes belongs to the films). Harry and Ron then turn to look at each other instead of the teacher. Snape will want to know whether they are genuinely confident and knowledgeable enough to feel they don't need to pay attention, or are just slapdash. He must be very wary of Ron, since his most recent experience of the Weasley family is the Twins, who are often outright criminal: indeed we later see George launch an unprovoked physical assault on Snape which could have killed him (he tries to knock Snape off his broom in mid-air by aiming a Bludger at him). Snape will be wary of Harry too for a wide range of reasons, and will want to know if Harry will be the Potions star his mother and many of his father's ancestors were; but having an awkward and difficult personality he tries to find out in a clumsy way.

So he asks Harry a series of three increasingly easy questions. Questions two and three could at a pinch be answered by an informed Muggle (bezoars, for example, were described on The Antiques Roadshow on 4th September 2016), but Harry can't answer any of them. He isn't apologetic about it, either, but stiffly resentful (because he associates critical, overbearing adult men with Vernon - but Snape doesn't know that), and just as he told Vernon to give a job to Dudley so he tells Snape to ask Hermione - whose insistent hand-waving is intrusive, since Snape had asked questions specifically of Harry, not of the whole class.

Because the first question related to the Draught of Living Death, which is a NEWT-level potion, there's a fanon assumption that Snape was asking Harry impossible questions; but in fact there are several clues that Snape is asking Harry about items from a first-year textbook which Harry has actually read. Snape's comment on Harry's failure to answer is "'Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?'", and Harry's answering thought is "He had looked through his books at the Dursleys', but did Snape expect him to remember everything in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi?" It seems clear that Harry believes the questions relate to his first-year Herbology textbook.

The fact that Hermione knows the answer - even though at this point she has probably been to Diagon Alley only once, a few weeks ago, and won't have had time to do much extra reading - tends to bear this out. Indeed, Hermione says on the train that she has learned all their set books by heart, and that she has "got a few extra books for background reading", and then mentions three books on recent wizarding history - not in-depth Potions texts. And you have to wonder why Rowling would choose to write Harry as thinking that the questions related to a textbook he had already read, if she didn't mean this to be so. She has already established that during the previous month at the Dursleys Harry had found that "His school books were very interesting. He lay on his bed reading late into the night ... "

The fact that Snape asks Harry about asphodel, aconite and a bezoar even suggests that he may have deliberately chosen questions relating to entries near the beginning of the alphabet and therefore of the book, to increase the likelihood that Harry would have read them.

There may have been a secret message buried under the question, because in the Victorian Language of Flowers the combination of asphodel and wormwood means something like "my regrets follow you to the grave", with bitter sorrow linked to a lily, and if so it would be unreasonable to expect Harry to understand the message. But he didn't need to understand it in order to answer the questions - just to remember what he had read within the previous four weeks. If he had just said "I'm sorry sir, I did read the book but I'm afraid I don't remember that bit" Snape would just have harrumphed a bit and moved on, but instead Harry's coldly cheeky response (which is really aimed at Vernon) escalates the back-and-forth hostility which began with Snape's remark about celebrities.

Myth: Snape deliberately broke Harry's vial of potion after the Pensieve incident.

We do not know whether or not James and Sirius really did strip young Severus and display his genitals at the end of the "Snape's Worst Memory" bullying scene, or only threatened to, but assuming that they did, Snape almost certainly believes that Harry has witnessed this and is laughing at him because of it. From his point of view Harry has been complicit in a minor sexual assault against him, and he behaves in an odd and traumatized way, initially blanking Harry out. This is consistent with a known psychological phenomenon whereby people who have suffered a sexual assault in the past and have coped with the aftermath, but then suffer a second assault, are often catapulted right back to their starting point and lose all the progress which they had made in recovering from the first assault. It is quite on the cards that Snape would, at least for a week or two, regress to thinking and acting as if he was a humiliated sixteen-year-old again.

Then Harry takes a completed potion up to Snape's desk, and turns to walk away. Behind him, his vial falls to the floor and breaks, and Snape gloats over his misfortune.

It's usually assumed that it's canon that Snape himself deliberately knocked Harry's vial off the desk, and that's certainly possible - but in fact it's only implied, not stated. It could have been knocked over accidentally, either by Snape, by the swirl of Harry's robes, or by another student... as wynnleaf has pointed out, we aren't even told that Harry himself thinks that Snape knocked the vial over deliberately.

Even if he did, it's just nuisance-value. All the evidence suggests that Hogwarts uses the exam system which was normal in British schools when Rowling and I were girls. The only results which have any effect on your future are the state exams at the end of fifth and seventh year: marks given for course-work and for other years' exams exist only to tell students whether they are doing as well as they will need to do to pass their state exams.

Note also that Harry seems sure that if Snape actually marks his well-made potion, he will mark it highly, whatever else is going on between them. Harry does not expect that Snape will ever allow personal bias to affect his assessment of a student's performance (at least in regard to something as objective as a finished potion), even when he is in great emotional turmoil.

[Snape does seem very unfair in sixth year when he asks the class how to tell the difference between a ghost and an Inferius, and then criticises Harry for saying that a ghost is transparent and an Inferius isn't - but it seems from his reaction that he mistakenly believes himself to have said "What is the difference...?" rather than "How can you tell the difference...?"]

Myth: Snape hates Harry irrationally.

In the first book, Dumbledore suggests that Snape dislikes Harry because of his contorted feelings about James - but this forms part of a conversation in which Dumbledore is, at the very least, being "economical with the truth". Dislike of James may well be a factor for Snape, but we've no firm evidence that it's a major factor.

He has plenty of other reasons to dislike Harry - a lazy, cheeky student who cheats, lies, steals, copies other people's work and deliberately causes a potentially life-threatening explosion in class, and who begins their relationship by communicating with Ron in class just after Snape has finished making his keynote speech, and then is arrogant and chippy about his own inability to answer three increasingly easy questions. Plus, there are rumours flying around that Harry will be the next Dark Lord and Snape the Legilimens can probably sense the taint of Voldemort which surrounds Harry's scar, without knowing that it's not coming from Harry himself, and even before that first disastrous lesson Draco may well have whined to Uncle Severus, his parents' friend, that Famous Harry Potter and his new friend Ron were nasty to him on the train. This will of course make Snape think of the way James and Sirius picked on him on the train on his first day - especially as Ron is the brother of the Twins, who are like a more overtly criminal version of the Marauders, and enjoy picking on Slytherin first years.

As a Legilimens Snape will also be able to sense Harry's hatred of him and sense that Harry constantly lies to him, but probably without knowing that Harry often has virtuous reasons for lying.

So, the fact that Snape dislikes Harry is not evidence that his understandable dislike of James is anything more than an additional irritant. When Snape feels that Harry has done a good job during an Occlumency lesson he praises him, in a dour sort of way, and unlike Sirius he isn't at all angry with Harry when Harry behaves sensibly and impartially and breaks up the building fight between Snape and Sirius. This strongly suggests that Snape's primary problem with Harry is that Harry is a bad student: when he thinks Harry has done a good job, he no longer has a problem with him.

This is evidently quite deliberate on Rowling's part, not just my interpretation of a throwaway line. Rowling has allowed the fen to see a chart she used to plan part of OotP: it has a column for the Occlumency lessons and one square is labelled "Snape grudgingly approves ish".

Insofar as Snape's bad history with James makes him more sensitive to bad behaviour by Harry, and more likely to react strongly to it than he might with another student, it's going to be a lot more complex than the "I don't like your dad so I'm going to take it out on you" that powers Hagrid's unprovoked attack on Dudley. As the fanwriter duj puts it, "Harry embodies all Snape's regrets, mistakes and miseries rolled into one." In no particular order:

Harry has Lily's eyes in James's face, constantly reminding him that the bully who made his life a misery also got the girl.

Harry looks at him with hatred in Lily's eyes - the same hatred he saw in her eyes when she rejected him.

Harry hates Potions which Lily loved, and that seems like an insult to her memory.

Harry hates Potions even though (according to Pottermore) the Potter family have a long history of Potions excellence, and Harry's failure at the subject seems both perverse and a disappointment.

Harry reminds him of his confused and guilty feelings about James, who tormented him, saved him, tormented him again and then died through his fault, and if the bullying by James happened on a very regular basis (as the phrase "relentless bullying" used on Pottermore suggests) then he probably feels a twitch of fear and nausea and humiliation every time he sees Harry. In modern psych-speak, seeing James's face on Harry is probably "triggering" for Snape, it will activate his fight-or-flight reflex, and flight isn't an option when he's teaching.

When Harry looks in the Pensieve he appears to Snape to be continuing the bullying by James and carrying it forward into the present day, as if it had never stopped. If James did indeed go on to strip him and display his genitals he will expect that Harry has watched this, and will feel therefore as if Harry has taken part in a minor sexual assault against himself.

The fact that Harry is an orphan is a constant reminder of Snape's fault in relaying the prophecy to the Dark Lord, and his failure to put it right by saving the Potters.

Harry is the thing Lily died for and because of.

Harry's fame as The Boy Who Lived is stolen, it was Lily who was the heroine.

Snape has dedicated his life to protecting Lily's child, it's partly for Harry's sweet sake that Snape is stuck in a teaching job he appears not to enjoy instead of pursuing a glittering career in Potions research, but Harry seems Hell-bent on getting himself killed - and the fact that Harry continues to despise Snape even after knowing that Snape is trying to protect him is a slap in the face, a rejection of his efforts to put his error right.

Harry was raised by Petunia, and Snape expects Petunia to have taught Harry to hate him.

Harry is a Parselmouth who smells of the Dark Lord.

Harry is supposedly the best hope for a free world, and for Snape's own survival, but he really doesn't look like he'll be up to the job and has little interest in learning the skills he'll need.

Snape's experiences with Lily must leave him fearing rejection, and now he thinks Harry is supplanting him in Dumbledore's affection. Which is true up to a point, except that it's partly guilt because Dumbledore is taking a bigger risk with Harry's life than with Snape's (even though it didn't pan out that way in the end) and not even giving Harry much choice about it, whereas Snape does at least have the option of walking away.

Harry is very annoying in his own right - any teacher would be annoyed by a student who behaved towards them the way Harry behaves towards Snape - and Snape is a twitchy, excitable person at the best of times. Given the combination of Harry's poor behaviour with the whole extra layer of misery and guilt which he represents to Snape, it's really not surprising that Snape finds him very hard to take.

On one level, Snape seems especially harsh and cruel, or especially, irrationally jealous of a James-lookalike dating a redhead, when he gives Harry a long series of detentions after the Sectumsempra incident and so prevents him from spending the summer days at the end of sixth year with Ginny. This is especially noteworthy since we know from The Prince's Tale that by this point Snape believes that Dumbledore has raised Harry as a kamikaze sacrifice and that the boy may not have much longer to live. But there are several layers to this.

To start with, neither Harry nor Draco tells Snape that when Harry cut Draco he was acting in panicked self-defence as Draco tried to Cruciate him. Harry does not allow Snape to see how shocked he was by Draco's injuries but instead behaves in an arrogant self-righteous way, as if Snape is committing an offence by being angry with him for half-killing another student. Harry's apparent lack of remorse after nearly killing a classmate must remind Snape all too horribly of Sirius and James (who also showed no remorse for what they had nearly done, since even though James drew the line at actual murder he continued to bully and humiliate Snape even after having saved his life). Snape must feel that the horror and grief he had felt when he learned of Harry's likely fate had been wasted on an unworthy object, and he may also hope to drive a wedge between Harry and Ginny - red-haired Ginny for whose sake he had clutched at a chair-back when he heard that she had been taken to the Chamber of Secrets - because she is still only fifteen and he is afraid that Harry's private war with Voldemort will get her killed, as it did Lily.

Nevertheless Pottermore stresses Snape's continuing unwillingness to hurt Harry physically, even when Harry is trying to hurt him. Referring to the aftermath of Dumbledore's death, it says: "... we completely understood Harry's blind rage when he chased after Snape and the Death Eaters. // What was really interesting was Snape's reaction to Harry in the aftermath. Initially he deflected every spell and didn't return fire, rather than jinxing Harry or putting him out of action, which would be a lot easier. Snape only returned fire when Harry persisted in chasing him while taunting him, and even then he used spells to keep Harry down rather than actually injuring him significantly. It must have taken a surprising amount of skill and control to keep Harry at arm's length and out of harm's way."

Myth: The Death Eaters equate to Nazis or the KKK.

It may well be that Rowling had the Nazis vaguely in mind when she wrote about the race laws which Umbridge introduces, but the Nazis would kill anyone who was even a quarter Jew or gypsy, whereas the Death Eaters, and even Umbridge, will spare anyone who is even a quarter wizwitch.

There are superficial similarities between the Death Eaters and White Supremacists, but the dynamics are different. White Supremacists, at least where they occur in predominately white countries, are members of a majority who have been in power for centuries and don't like the idea that they may now have to share their toys with others. Pureblood supremacists are a minority within an already tiny minority, possessed of certain advantages but hiding in fear from the very Muggles whom they affect to despise but who outnumber wizwitches six thousand to one, and who in the past have done their best to hunt wizards into extinction.

If the Death Eaters equate to any American racist group, it's not the Ku Klux Klan but the Nation of Islam; a militant wing of an oppressed minority, who have become as bigoted as their erstwhile oppressors.

The dynamic is similar to the setup of the made-for-tv 1991 film called Blood Ties, which was shown at least three times on British TV and might well have been seen by Rowling....

SPOILERS coming up if you haven't seen the film....

It's about vampires, but these vampires aren't supernatural beings but a surviving remnant of another and more predatory human species, who refer to themselves as Carpathians. They are physically superior to Homo sapiens, much stronger, more agile and longer-lived, but their numbers are tiny and because of their wolf-like behavioural peculiarities they have been ostracised and hunted to the verge of extinction. The moral core of the film is about what happens when a persecuted minority turn inward and start to see themselves as not only different from but superior to their persecutors, and start to treat them as beasts, as prey, which is effectively what's happening with the Death Eaters (especially after Umbridge gets involved).

(Okay, that last part wasn't about Snape but it's too batshit to not post.)

Meanwhile, Malfoy stans just ignore literally every time he appears in the books to rewrite him as a pure-souled tormented hero.

edit: lmao holy poo poo

same snape stan posted:

Severus apparently uses "Mudblood" freely in fifth year, but Lily has evidently tolerated this up until the underpants incident, and since he's a half-blood in Slytherin himself his use may have been ironic or self-protective. He calls Lily a "filthy little Mudblood" when he is angry and desperate, but there are several questions here which bear on the extent to which he might have been truly bigoted and might truly have bought into an anti-Muggle or anti-Muggle-born agenda.

We don't know whether he's saying Lily is filthy because she's a Muggle-born, whether he's implying that her blood is literally dirty - but he probably isn't. We occasionally see it used that way by other characters, but in most cases where characters in the Potter books - or Rowling herself - use "filthy" as a form of profanity, it's a general emphatic like "bloody" or "blasted". That's probably how Snape himself uses it, since he also applies it to pure-blooded James ("Your filthy father"), so you have to think of it as if he had said "bloody little Mudblood".
[...]
It's unpleasant of him to use a racially-offensive term, of course it is, but he's half-Muggle himself so to some extent he has rights over offensive terms used of people with Muggle blood, just as black people have rights over offensive terms used about black people.

Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jul 14, 2022

# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 13:47

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Dumbledore explicitly says that Lily's blood protection is what kept Harry alive in Deathly Hallows:

Deathly Hallows, Chapter 33 posted:

"But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse," Harry started again, "and nobody died for me this time-- how can I be alive?"

"I think you know," said Dumbledore. "Think back. Remember what he did, in his ignorance, in his greed and his cruelty."

Harry thought. He let his gaze drift over his surroundings. If it was indeed a palace in which they sat, it was an odd one, with chairs set in little rows and bits of railing here and there, and still, he and Dumbledore and the stunted creatures under the chair were the only beings there. Then the answer rose to his lips easily, without effort.

"He took my blood," said Harry.

"Precisely!" said Dumbledore. "He took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily's protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he lives!"

"I live... while he lives? But I thought... I thought it was the other way around! I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same thing?"

[...]

"You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind. He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived.

"And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.

"He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does Voldemort's one last hope for himself."

Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him.

"And you knew this? You knew-- all along?"

"I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good," said Dumbledore happily, and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while the creature behind them continued to whimper and tremble.

Later in the conversation, Harry and Dumbledore discuss the Deathly Hallows extensively, but neither of them gives the slightest indication that they might have had a hand in Harry's survival. They're basically irrelevant to the book that bears their name. The only important thing that happens with them is that some wand ownership bullshit lets Harry kill Voldemort with a nonlethal spell that makes Voldemort's own spell backfire because god forbid Harry be required to cast anything except expelliarmus ever.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2022 11:23

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

I'm starting to think Rowling might not be too keen on people making alterations to their own bodies.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2022 15:56

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Regalingualius posted:

Didn�t the books also indirectly say that trans poly potions are legit? Since Barty Crouch Jr�s mom used one to swap places with him in Azkaban.

And in book 6, Crabbe and Goyle polyjuice into little girls to act as lookouts for Malfoy. And in that completely unnecessary setpiece at the start of book 7, Hermione and Fleur polyjuice into Harry.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2022 16:15

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

The real problem with time-travel is when future-you just walks up to you and slaps you, and then you're like, dang, guess I gotta go back in time and slap myself

# ¿ Aug 16, 2022 07:33

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# ¿ Dec 15, 2025 11:41

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

The Deathly Hallows could easily have been cut entirely, but only the first three books are actually named after the main focus of the book. The other four are all named after some barely-relevant set dressing.

The weird thing is that in a book whose main focus is "do a scavenger hunt for a bunch of magical macguffins", JKR decided that it needed to be spiced up by adding... a few other magical macguffins to hunt?

# ¿ Aug 23, 2022 16:07

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Star Wars Holiday Special > Harry Potter: Dumbledore goes in jar

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