|
Boba Pearl posted:I did not know house systems existed in real life, that is horrifying. Yeah, that's a darkly amusing aside; most of the terrible poo poo like the rampant (fantasy) racism and classism, 'pranks' that look more like death threats, abusive teachers, useless authority figures, and cold-war level factionalism and abuse is apparently just normal British boarding school stuff.
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2022 08:07
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Dec 16, 2025 21:27 |
|
|
Jazerus posted:in the grand scale of hp fanfiction 14,500 is a rounding error altho it's a respectable category size for properties not connected to a slave-owning boy wizard Hard to train another generation of kids to casually brutalize the natives if you don't dehumanize them at home, after all.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2022 11:17
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:There's a pretty good chance that Riddle was ruthlessly bullied by one of Lucius' older relatives when he was a freshman. You could, if you tried a little, make Voldemort sympathetic. His decision to burn down magical society, and to tear apart his own soul, is in very real ways Dumbledore's fault for deciding an impoverished orphan was inherently evil on meeting him and doing such wonderfully caring things as sending him back to London for the summer during the Blitz while not allowed to use magic to protect himself. Deciding to use the snobby assholes who bullied him at school for not being in their social class to do it, while at the same time getting a ton of them killed, would be just the way to strike back at a society that clearly hates him for existing. By the time he blows himself up trying to kill Potter he's barely even a person. Funny how one old man managed to create two Dark Lords just by having zero empathy, but is somehow supposed to come off as grandfatherly to Harry while also preventing any responsible adults from actually stopping the constant attempts to kill him. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Apr 24, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2022 13:23
|
|
|
I mean his idea for catching a madman who's supposed to be dead was a series of traps three 11 year olds, two of whom had known about magic for less than a year, could beat in half an hour. Rowling is really good at saying what she believes the characters are after the fact, and really bad at writing them the way she sees them, likely because she's a lovely human being herself.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2022 13:50
|
|
|
Sydin posted:Dumbledore doing absolutely nothing to step in to prevent the kid he knows was pretty hosed up from his childhood from going back to an orphanage where everybody hates and/or is terrified of him every summer for seven straight years is really loving stupid. It gets even dumber when you realize how old he is. Dumbledore grew up in the tail end of the Victorian era. How do you suppose they dealt with kids coming out of workhouses and the abject poverty common in the worse parts of the cities when he was a child? Not like magic appears along class lines, and Rowling's little world only includes middle class and above first gen magicals as named characters.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2022 02:01
|
|
|
"Here's a list of school supplies to buy, starving waif who owns a single set of clothes and has never worn shoes! Remember not to lose them over the summer when you get sent back to your starving parents as another mouth to feed!"
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2022 04:58
|
|
|
Asgerd posted:Didn’t they specifically tell him “Well you could probably stay for the summer under normal circumstances, but unfortunately there’s a mysterious monster rampaging around the castle attacking people, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that now would you?” Left this window open and didn't hit send. The whole Chamber of Secrets thing was when Riddle was 16. So he'd been at school and getting sent back to the orphanage every summer for five years.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2022 06:33
|
|
|
Yeah, one of his best friend's parents are medical professionals, and thus mandatory reporters too. Suppose she never mentioned anything to them in several years of knowing this that might make them concerned, like him literally having to be broken out of his house, or introduced them to the obviously underfed kid in ratty oversized clothes at the train station. Leaving aside stuff like why his primary school teachers didn't catch on. Given wizarding morals, they probably did, repeatedly, and got mindwiped since the guy who insists he has to stay in an abusive situation has a high position in the government.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2022 01:04
|
|
|
She did effectively write it out of the series between getting canceled due to giant snake, murder tournament, Rowling's unintentional self-insert toad, and then living in a tent. As usual because she did not in any way plan ahead so was stuck with it being an annual thing in the world. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Apr 26, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2022 11:16
|
|
|
Ugh. Veela. Reminds me of one of Rowling's other creepy points. Mind control: capital crime Veela using lust magic on an all-ages audience at an international sporting event: Cool! Molly Weasley getting her husband via love potion: Funny romantic anecdote.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2022 23:33
|
|
|
Piell posted:Prison of Azkaban, Chapter 5 The twins were selling them out of their shop later on too, now that I do a bit of googling. Which is again, some side-eye at Rowling, having your good guys casually selling essentially magical roofies. quote:“There you go,” said Fred proudly. “Best range of love potions you’ll find anywhere.” Half Blood Prince, Chapter 6
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2022 02:30
|
|
|
You want another sketchy thought, remember Lockheart, the guy whose usual pastime is mindwiping people, recommending 12 year olds get Snape to teach them how to make them at Valentines.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2022 05:32
|
|
|
I got my niece started on T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon's pen name. Mostly fantasy and horror stuff, but her couple of middle-grade fantasy novels are under it as well.) She really enjoyed A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54369251-a-wizard-s-guide-to-defensive-baking Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Apr 27, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2022 10:23
|
|
|
ToxicFrog posted:I mean, it's loving magic, there's no reason you couldn't have fancy sportscast overlays even for the live audience showing the current location of the flying walnut and stuff without leaking that information to the players. You'd think that, but then they held the second task of their bloodsport under a lake where the audience just kind of sat around for an hour waiting for someone to surface, then the same thing for the third staring at a hedgerow. Zore posted:Yeah, you could keep about 90% of the joke if instead of being perplexed by literally anything Arthur was instead a huge Muggle-Weeb who has accidentally backed himself into being a bog-standard middle age dude that the Wizarding World treats like he's this radical member of a counterculture. Arthur's another point where Rowling's classism shines through. He's supposed to be the example to Harry of what a normal dad would be like, and seen as a harmlessly eccentric good guy. He's also the government's expert on non-magical technology, and doesn't really conceptually understand television or electricity in the mid 1990's. Harry, an 11 year old mostly raised in a cupboard, understands technology better than he does. But he has the job, rather than any of the dozen or so first-gen wizards who come out of Hogwarts each year with families still living in the normal world keeping them up to date, because even as a 'poor' pureblood, he's of the Right Breeding. Charming while it was a fairytale, but once the story turns serious... Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 27, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2022 20:55
|
|
|
Rotten Red Rod posted:He pretty much ruined his own reputation alongside Tim Burton by doing gutter tier stuff like Alice in Wonderland and Pirates 4. He'll always have a following and make money but a lot of people are sick of his shtick, myself included. He's just not nearly as interesting an actor anymore. It's deeply weird for someone like me whose main first impression of him was Fear and Loathing.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2022 07:00
|
|
|
I gotta keep laughing at that movie. Been out 3 weeks, dropping rapidly in income, and has made back $79m on a $200m budget. Hopefully this finally kills Rowling's movie making credentials. For amusement, the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie has done $161m in 4 weeks in comparison.
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2022 09:16
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:It's definitely a thing where if you say "Hey, maybe the IDF should shoot fewer children and medical personal" you immediately get accused of anti-Semitism. A lot of people have a very hard time distinguishing between criticism of the actions of the state of Israel, and criticism of Jewish people. Many of the very same people are apparently in UK politics. Back to thoughts about Rowling's dumbass world building: Wizards don't know what television is. They barely understand radio. They also drive first-gen wizards out of their society. How exactly are we supposed to believe that nobody in that world's actually spilled the beans? Not like the wizards would know if the BBC ran a 3 night TV special. I'd guess that either they're killing a lot of first-gens and writing it off as having 'left', or the real world is humoring them.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2022 06:12
|
|
|
Grundulum posted:We’ll exile Napoleon to Elba. Surely putting him on a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean will be sufficient. In related news, wizards do not learn Muggle history at Hogwarts. They don't learn Wizard history either, per Rowling the One Guy teaching it has been dead for over a century by the time of the books and has no one to replace him because nearly everyone drops the class as useless the moment they can.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2022 10:35
|
|
|
Regalingualius posted:And he didn’t stop and reevaluate until it personally affected him, by way of getting in a fight with his anti fascist brother and accidentally killing their sister. People focus too much on the wrong Dumbledore. Aberforth's the good one, just a grouchy old bastard who wants nothing to do with anything but running his dive bar for people the rest of the magical world fucks with constantly. ... you know, anti-fascist Aberforth's a solid idea, and explains a lot of his attitude towards, you know, everything in Jo's world.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2022 05:44
|
|
|
exmarx posted:he fucks goats dude That's what Rowling likes to imply, but yet it leaves him as the brother with the less sketchy partner.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2022 13:54
|
|
|
Also because his brother and Grindlewald's aunt are the only ones still alive who could give firsthand memories of what the two of them were actually like, so it was vital he be discredited.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 11, 2022 21:27
|
|
|
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. Note Wizard Hitler also didn't get put in the soul-devouring hell-prison either, just a normal cell run by the Wizarding UN. As opposed to the wizard UK that throws random people in with dementors to be seen to be doing something.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2022 01:11
|
|
|
The whole narrative goes well out of it's way to punish Luna for being a bit odd in a world full of magic. Her mom blew herself up at 9. Her dad's a conspiracy theorist who completely lost the plot after her mom died, and spent the end of the war in Azkaban for going quisling and failing to betray the protagonists effectively leading to their house getting blown up. Her only friend before school was Ginny Weasley, who calls her Loony to her face. Repeatedly. She's bullied at school to the point that her own housemates are stealing her poo poo and locking her out of the common room in her pajamas. In a drafty Scottish castle. In midwinter. By that point it was her fourth year so this has been ongoing without any of the staff, prefects, or even upper year students doing a drat thing about it. Next book calls out that she spent the 5th school year wandering around barefoot because they stole and hid her shoes. She was even sad when they got a decent DA teacher because the club meetings were 'Almost like having friends.' Another of Rowling's wonderful messages: 'bullying the weird kids is normal'.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2022 04:51
|
|
|
Not a one of those who went even gives her benefit of the doubt after she demonstrates with the Thestrals that she actually does know things they don't.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2022 05:51
|
|
|
IIRC isn't that also where he finds out that Neville's home situation is just as bad, too? You know, the ultra strict grandmother who can't deal with him at all because she sees her son instead, and the uncle that keeps legitimately trying to kill him to make him show accidental magic? Every time you look closer at anything in this series it gets more hosed up.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 14, 2022 22:03
|
|
|
W.T. Fits posted:Technically, they can't arrest him for murder because the victim wasn't physically dead, just missing his soul! Spell that painlessly kills someone by (apparently) ripping out their soul? Permanent trip to hell-prison. Siccing a creature that does the exact same thing on some one? He got what he deserved.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2022 00:20
|
|
|
Kevin DuBrow posted:It would have been funny if the books had Arthur Weasley be a hardcore muggle weeb, know everything about the muggle world and even have a computer with an internet connection. How is he so clueless about everything mundane if he's genuinely interested in the subject? Like if you went to the muggle library you'd learn that dentists don't get paid in teeth or whatever. Because his position is a sinecure for the guy who's socially unacceptable among the nobles but still technically of their social class, so he gets stuck with a makework job none of them want that pays well enough to maintain his family so he doesn't complain. amigolupus posted:I like how Dumbledore says Hogwarts is where Riddle can learn how to use and control magic, nothing about ethics or why you shouldn't abuse it by casting curses on Muggles who can't defend themselves against it. I mean they certainly don't teach ethics. Or demonstrate them, given Snape's still on the payroll until the day he dies, even after outright assassinating his predecessor (with some cooperation). How're you going to teach the consequences of people's actions when the History teacher's been dead since the Pax Brittanica was still a thing and only really talks about how the non-humans are going to rise up and kill the wizards if they don't grind them firmly enough under heel. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jun 20, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jun 20, 2022 09:16
|
|
|
BigglesSWE posted:It’s like in Waterworkd where apparently people who have evolved to be able to breathe underwater is shunned and hunted by regular humans. Like, wouldn’t it be insanely useful to have such people around? Well, when you see Muggles as outright not understanding the basics of how the world works since they're kept in the dark, and understand that if that was done to you you'd go apeshit when you found out...
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2022 05:43
|
|
|
Rotten Red Rod posted:Oof. It bears repeating, why is she like this? Because she's a rich white woman who's never addressed her own trauma so takes it out on anyone she perceives as getting what she might have wanted because despite her wealth and fame she's still bitterly unhappy.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2022 02:48
|
|
|
Grundulum posted:That makes even less sense than being a TERF. Dumbledore is (apparently) gay and never got that kind of stuff attached to him. Why Grindelwald and not Dumbledore? Dumbledore being gay was an off-the-cuff retcon to score points for looking progressive 20 years ago, and Rowling's brain worms have gotten way worse since then.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2022 10:50
|
|
|
Edgar Allen Ho posted:Yeah I definitely think she meant for them to be gay. That's what the horny teen fandom got at the time. She doesn't get points for leaving it subtext and then tweeting it out later for queer cred. That really holds true for all of the characters of their generation, really. Lupin, Sirius, Snape, and Pettigrew are all wrecks of human beings, but at least Lupin and Sirius got that way by being hosed over by the shittier parts of wizard society rather than signing up with the fascist and then getting cold feet.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 10:06
|
|
|
Oh, no doubt, and chances are high IMHO James stopped him solely because it would screw up his chances with Evans if he knew her former best bud was going to get murdered by his friends and did nothing. Mind you we could also talk about why Dumbledore had a teenage werewolf on campus and his idea of 'protecting' the students from him was a house with a tunnel straight onto the grounds guarded by a tree that a first year spell could get past, and on the outskirts of a town so that if he somehow managed to get out of the unobserved building overnight he'd be right next to a population center. As opposed to something sensible like transfiguring him into a rock for the full moon or using any of the multiple things like the Draught of Living Death that only really exist as macguffins. Wizards: pretty much universally assholes. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Jul 12, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 11:20
|
|
|
Heh, yeah. Snape's supposed to be a prodigal potions expert, right? Now count how many times his students blew themselves up for either lack of anything resembling lab safety or deliberate sabotage of each other's extremely volatile work. Hogwarts definitely has an expected death toll.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 11:27
|
|
|
Yep, but none of the other teachers thought that was odd. Or the repeated deaths of their defense teachers. Or a creatures class where the instructor retired 'to spend more time with his remaining limbs'. Hell, look at Moody, they didn't even consider it odd that their defense teacher was using the spells that are supposed to be a one-way ticket to a lifetime in hell prison on 14 year olds. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Jul 12, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 11:52
|
|
|
Nissin Cup Nudist posted:If Sirius told Snape "yo, there's a werewolf under the angry tree" and Snape went anyway, I'd chalk that under attempted suicide rather than murder Honestly given their legal system and who runs it, Siris'd probably get a medal or something. His family would love him for knocking off an uppity first-gen and a werewolf at the same time, and making Dumbledore look bad in the process.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 21:54
|
|
|
bobjr posted:It would have been funny if instead of James being a jerk who off page turns everything around over like 6 months and starts dating Lily, he was just kind of a nice guy who didn't like being around an increasingly bad Snape. That could even actually be the case. Like he's so wrapped up in trying to keep his homeless raised by monsters best bud, the utterly bereft of social skills and confidence werewolf, and the even more weak-willed Pettigrew all from crashing and burning that he comes off as an rear end in a top hat by association.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2022 03:50
|
|
|
Jazerus posted:james was a brat, but sirius was dangerous, and in the process of managing the sociopathic tendencies drilled into sirius by his family, james couldn't really stop sirius from starting poo poo with snape without alienating him entirely. this is the most generous interpretation of james's behavior in snape's memories Yeah, the kindest interpretation I can come up with is that all the bullying was an outlet for what could have been seriously murderous behavior on Sirius' part. I would entirely buy that Sirius was totally trying to kill Snape, even if only subconsciously, as that is how he was brought up to deal with threats to his people and baby Death Eater Snape was absolutely a threat to James.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2022 12:11
|
|
|
Guy A. Person posted:Yea, we only later get hints of how dark the First Wizarding War got, but presumably Voldemort and the Death Eaters were pretty powerful on the night of the Potters' murders, so Dumbledore somehow finds out what's happened (probably had people watching the house who saw the explosion) and surmises what's happened, sends Hagrid to scoop up Harry and take him to the Dursleys (even if he can't fully confirm the love protection at this exact moment it's still probably safer to drop him off with some muggles where basically no Death Eater is going to remotely suspect him to be) and then once poo poo has reversed and the Death Eaters are on the run he explains everything to whoever the minister is at the time. One of the things people point to as justification for Dumbledore being evil is that he apparently had a way to know the Potters were being attacked but didn't go himself. He also never apparently took a minute after to check on the Potters' closest friends who -also- worked for him. Working for Dumbledore is a good way to get used and discarded it seems.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2022 07:01
|
|
|
Cranappleberry posted:love conquers all. We've been through this!!! Clearly all those other parents just didn't love their kids enough.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2022 20:58
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Dec 16, 2025 21:27 |
|
|
Empirical proof that Snape never really loved Lily. 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2022 22:26
|
|