Harry Potter

[@alexander8257]

I hate that we now know that the answer to “why didn’t the wizards stop H*tler” is “one guy tried but he was the Evil Wizard so they stopped him”

[@ВасилийМедведев-з5в]

Lmao, it's the idea of "no good actions, only good teams" brought to absolute. So, the bad guys wanna prevent Holocaust and WW2? Doesn't matter, they're bad, we gotta stop them. So what if we let Holocaust and WW2 happen because we didn't do anything? Doesn't matter, we're the good guys

[@IAmNumber4000]

Yeah that’s even worse 😂

[@kidcircuit1955]

Rewind Now Because that sentence had to be a joke

[@aileenzhao7951]

oh god

[@nonniperkl6273]

German gay man who sees the future I remind you.

[@geovaughan8261]

Fun fact: in the original tale of the Shoemaker and the Elves, from which Rowling takes primary inspiration for house elves, the Shoemaker and his wife end the tale by giving the elves new clothes and shoes as thanks for their help, and the elves are so happy that they dance out the door and never return, but the Shoemaker and his wife prosper from that day on. That’s right: the moral of the original tale was that *freeing house elves is the right decision and makes them happy*. Rowling doesn’t even understand the European lore she draws from, let alone those of other cultures.

[@pringlebatch]

I remember! In my copy of the story, they hear the elves singing when they get the clothes: "We look so fine, as you can see, We need no longer cobblers be!" Which I always thought was so wholesome 😊

[@jondoe7036]

And I mean in general folkloric house elves are fae with symbiotic coinhabitant sort of relationship with people with whom they share a house and would perform helpful or michievious acts depending on the level of respect and care people show them and their home. Where on earth is the idea of slavery even supposed to have come into that equation.

[@JustSomeDude42]

Honestly, if you needed the slavery aspect with the Malfoy’s (specifically) you could spin it as the Malfoy’s reverse uno-ing a fay creature in the deal. Whereas the traditional role of house elf and wizard occupant is more traditionally European folklore, some dark wizards trick their house elves into a less than ideal arrangement. Maybe have something akin to door to door house elves who promise to work without pay for a year and a day; then at the end the elf gets something magical out of it, idk. Maybe it’s they don’t get banished to the shadow realm for the next five before they have to do it again.

[@justanidiotmk2749]

​@@jondoe7036 Alongside that, you should NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE disrespect a fae so the fact they even got enslaved is surprising.

[@Mmmmilo]

I grew up with that story and hadn’t thought about it in 30 or so years. Getting this sudden blast from the past is amazing. Thank you.

[@scrantonrogueofthesilvertr9031]

The thing about Harry’s wealth is it would be so easy to just say because he’s a minor he can only take out so much out of his vault until he gets to a certain age. That happens a lot irl. Super easy plothole fix.

[@shelbyscout]

And yet she doesn't. That's the problem. Her books are filled with dozens of plot holes that could easily be resolved, often with a single sentence, but she is lazy and lacks the self-awareness to fix any of them.

[@Eucep]

Yeah was thinking that too, but indeed it's not in the books. Heck when I read them I thought that was the reason. He just had been given some pocket money and to go get more, well, that likely was once a year before heading to school.

[@becastockman981]

Wasn't it stated that by the end of his time at Hogwarts, his finances were starting to run a bit low? Like yeah, he had plenty of money, but it also had to last him around a decade. That might just be something I made up in my head as a kid to patch over this though lol.

[@Gshadin]

super easy, barely an inconvenience

[@haraberu]

@@becastockman981 That was my interpretation in the first book, that it was his middle class parents' life savings, equivalent to tens of thousands of mugglebux. An unbelievable amount for a child but not enough to spend it carelessly.

[@Faryonderer]

“They’re an inferior race, Hermione.” Hagrid said calmly.

[@basilbrush9075]

Yer an untermench, Harry

[@thewisp7447]

Man this meme never gets old

[@sixstringedthing]

Getting categorised by the Sorting Hat is a privilege reserved exclusively for the superior race.

[@Spyro-kt8gy]

Yer a grand wizard, Harry.

[@YEY0806]

​@@Spyro-kt8gy "but I'm not a racist"

[@a.evelyn5498]

It’s interesting how Rowling cites Hermione’s hair as a sign of her possible blackness when in the books Hermione’s hair is always made fun of, deemed ugly, her beauty transformation occurring when she straightens it for the Yule Ball…

[@miyukidawn9803]

Yeah. She didn't plan that at all. There is no many weird things, if she meant it from the start.

[@BitBlush]

I think we should accept it because it blows up in her face when reading over it with that context harry and ron making fun of a black girl that slaves are genetically meant to be slaves and thus subservient, both being rich or pureblood

[@kigathegoatttt9460]

Was she ever called ugly? I think the worst she was called was unkept. Malloy May have called her ugly, but cmon he’s Malfoy 😂

[@AD-qq9bk]

​@@kigathegoatttt9460 I don't remember in the books if she's called ugly, but Rowling has said in an interview that the first time she spoke with Emma Watson was on phone and she liked her. When they finally met she considered her to pretty and if it wasn't for the phone call she would ask to find another actress.

[@brookejon3695]

​@@miyukidawn9803 It's just very funny, isn't it? Even the stuff she pretends were intended subtext are ignorant and harmful lmao. She writes about Hermione's hair with the same prejudice black hair has received.

[@irisshea6313]

It’s funny cause the whole “harry is rich” set of plot holes could be resolved just by putting his inheritance in a trust or something

[@esobelisk3110]

Right?? Just have it so his parents set up a fund to pay for his school supplies + an allowance every year until he’s an adult. That way, you can still have the wish fulfilment of being able to buy a bunch of candy, without all the weird implications of Harry just having a pile of gold lying around. Like, it’s really not that hard to think of the concept of an amount of money that’s big enough to be a lot of money for a kid who doesn’t have to worry about the cost of living, but small enough that he couldn’t just buy his way out of any problem. You don’t even have to specify what that amount is, the reader can think about that for themselves. In fact, whenever possible, avoid introducing concrete numbers into your story, especially money - Rowling fucked this up on a previous occasion, with Voldemort being in his 70’s when he returns, which would make Slughorn pretty fucking old (but that’s a tangent).

[@cereal_chick2515]

The branch of law that concerns trusts is equity, and I think this video has amply demonstrated that Rowling is very much not a fan of that. (ty for giving me the chance to make this awful legal pun lmao)

[@ComicusFreemanius]

Even as a kid I was thought that

[@braedenneale845]

@@cereal_chick2515 this comment wins KZbin you’re a genius

[@Mario_Angel_Medina]

I was thinking the same thing. But judging by how she adressed questions like "why Harry couldn't see those creatures that are only visible for those who saw sonebody die, if he saw her parents die as a baby?", J.K. Rowling has a history of being oblivious to the simplest solutions

[@SesshyLover777]

I just had a thought rewatching this. Even if Harry being stingy with his literal immense wealth is a thing that JK, for SOME reason, really wanted to stick to, THAT COULD BE A CHARACTER THING SHE COULD'VE EXPLORED. He was poor, then suddenly rich. He could be afraid of giving his money away because of the life he's lived or even just routinely FORGET he has money and live like he always has and need to be reminded or something. And now I'm writing fanfiction too 🤦🏼‍♀️

[@CelestiaLily]

That quote about "threatening to make the series more interesting" feels like the *exact* hook where people's frustrations with HP can motivate such a desire lmao. Wanting to wrestle the series into a more living, changing, complicated world (and a better story) is an itch I'll personally leave unscratched, but damn the entire video and all the insightful points like yours just drives home how unfulfilled the HP premise was from the start :/

[@anthill1510]

Actually him forgetting that he has money or simply not being used to thinking about his money to solve problems would be quite realistic. I grew up poor and when I had a bit of money later there were several occassions where I simply didn`t think about using money to solve a problem, because I was not used to be able to do that.

[@tailbonetailbone9380]

Harry Potter has a really interesting premise and a very special place on a lot of people's hearts. It's also filled to the brim with moral, story and character issues, many of which are faults of the actor that she is incapable and/or unwilling to fix. It's only natural to want to "fix" the story and its universe, so that we can recover some of the wonder of exploring it for the first time.

[@arianawoosley2841]

@@anthill1510 That actually happens in the story. At several point in the book Harry reminds himself that he has a pile of money and how he has forgot how rich he is.

[@FraserSouris]

@@anthill1510 The problem is that the series already has Harry use his wealth plenty of times anyway to solve problems, even when surrounded by the Weaslys who don't have his money. For example, every year in Diagon Ally, Harry is able to easily afford any new robes, textbooks and supplies he needs for the new school year while the Weaslys have to rely on hand me downs or whatever. He funds Fred and George's joke shop with his earnings. It would be realistic if Harry didn't have to keep spending money for Harry to forget he could spend money.

[@ackee39]

i think the reason theres so much HP fanfiction is just because theres so many interesting ideas that JKR just refuses to explore, so the fans do it for her

[@killerkitten7534]

You know it’s funny cause that’s actually how I got into writing. I can’t remember what it was specifically but I remember reading one of the Harry Potter books as a kid and hating the way one of the characters was written, so I decided to make my own version of the chapter I mean I was 10 so it probably wasn’t that great, but it’s kinda amusing my writing hobby basically started because Rowling’s story building was bad

[@frayliths5374]

Can confirm, I'm literally making an AU that's also a rewrite right now

[@auroralong5437]

I can't recommend the fanfic Kaleidoscopic Grangers enough, legitimately fixes so many of the issues Shaun talks about

[@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD]

Yes. Whether or not Hermione turns into a snake to slither into bed beside Snape is criminally unexplored by Rowling.

[@randompromises1038]

I won't give Rowling any money and don't want to sit through her writing so does anyone recommend any good rewrites on AO3 I can read out of curiosity?

[@TheSassi14]

What I mainly wonder about: Why is Mr. Weasley's job paid so badly? The ministry's main job is to keep the muggles from descovering magic. He LEADS the department for making sure no magical artists get into Muggle hands... He should be a top earner!

[@morbidsearch]

I don't know. Why are nurses and teachers paid so badly in our world?

[@20dabarr58]

​@@morbidsearch Especially in work that is seen as lesser! Muggles are viewed negatively -- there are entire systems in place set to outright kill them, and even though that is seen as villainous, there are more subtle signs, such as the statues mentioned in the video, Muggle being used as an othering insult, etc. It makes perfect sense for an important role working for the 'lesser' Muggle group to be paid less, and could have be used as another example of the 'good' guys having poor morals

[@MrBell-iq3sm]

Because Rowling put very little thought into the inner workings of her world. She only created superficial aspects.

[@Bettersucksaul]

@@morbidsearchNurses are paid just fine, it’s their hours that make it not worth it

[@Moocow2003]

Why does the Ministry of Magic have cars but Arthur Weasley doesn't understand what a rubber duck is? It's a toy. That's not a tough thing to figure out. Not knowing how many stamps to use, that's fine, they don't use the Muggle postal system. But they do take baths and enjoy trinkets!!?

[@therandomguy519]

I lost it when you pointed out the scenario that if Hermione had been black all along and her mates were making fun of her for trying to end elf slavery lmao

[@warlordofbritannia]

Frederick Douglass should have just taken a chill pill and get over himself 😂

[@olivercharles2930]

@@warlordofbritannia Frederick douglass was an elf??

[@imadkahya6018]

England had black slaves??

[@magnusengeseth5060]

@@imadkahya6018 Yes. Mainly in their imperial holdings in America and the Caribbean.

[@jlrinc1420]

@@magnusengeseth5060 I did not know that, thanks. I wondered about it.

[@hj-ct2qi]

can we also mention how absurd it is that wizards even need slaves? we literally see in the books and movies incredible amounts of labor that wizards can do magically. why not just...y'know...cast a spell to clean your house instead of forcing elves to do it for you?

[@alisonpurgatory85]

And in book 6 Dumbledore and Slughorn literally do just that! reconstruct and clean a destroyed house interior in seconds

[@hj-ct2qi]

@@alisonpurgatory85 exactly. and even if we were to assume that somehow wizards couldn't necessarily do certain housework, cooking, etc on their own, or for big events etc., why not just have wizards who do that for a living? why aren't there wizards who specialize in magical housekeeping? catering? events, etc - just like in the muggle world? why does there have to be an entire enslaved race to fill those roles?

[@Hifuutorian]

Related to that: How are Ron and his family even 'poor' when magic like that exists? His family owns their own home, their dad is a higher up in the government, and they have fucking magic. It's so unimaginative and telling on JKR's part that she literally can't imagine a world where everyone just..lives decently lmao. There HAS to be poor people to feel sorry about that they're poor.

[@Pseudo-Fraxineus]

@@Hifuutorian but not poors that we should help in anyway! letting some try and fail and some succeed is the proper thing to do. it's nature! it's etiquette!

[@jak1165]

@@Hifuutorian In retrospect, its pretty obvious that the Weasleys are poor by choice is what Rowling is getting at.

[@anonymoussaga8723]

I just rewatched the KJK video, and the bit about Kaeley Triller openly admitting to getting pregnant by an underage boy, and Rowling being friends with her, struck me as confirmation of a really ugly implication in Harry Potter. Remember how Merope slipped Tom Riddle Snr a love potion, and got him to marry her and get her pregnant? And after he woke up he abandoned her (and gets framed as being in the wrong for it), and the text paints him as so arrogant and snobbish that he never married again because nobody was good enough for him? And that we shouldn’t judge Merope too harshly? As if he’s not actually a r*pe victim who would probably never be able to trust another woman again? I just have a terrible feeling that Rowling is one of those people who thinks it somehow isn’t abuse if it’s female on male.

[@ampix4669]

I thought the same when reading the 6th book too, like how Tom Riddle is treated as a horrible person for leaving a woman who basically had him drugged so that she wouldnt leave him. At the same time, I feel like the book tries to excuse her actions because she had been abused all her life and didnt know how to make Tom Riddle love her, so im not sure about what Rowlings intentions for that part were

[@woodgatejack]

There's a bit in _Half-Blood Prince_ that sticks in my mind since Rowling came out as a TERF. When Harry and Dumbledore use the penseive to see Dumbledore's memory of when Voldemort returned to Hogwarts under the pretence of applying for the Defence against the Dark Arts teacher. Voldemort corrects Dumbledore when he calls him Tom saying "They no longer call me Tom Riddle, nowadays I'm know as..." But Dumbledore cuts him off saying "Yes I know what they call you" and asks for his pardon, saying it was an old teachers's habit" However, Harry notes to the present day Dumbledore that he deliberately made a point of calling him "Tom Riddle" as not to let him control the conversation. Well that's just deadnaming. A nasty little passive agressive maneuver employed by transphobes. Also, fuck you Dumbledore! I think it's quite understandble for someone not to want to be named after their sick parent's rape victim!

[@angelnegra]

Not just that, but the whole 'children born from love potions can't feel love' aspect? Like, oh well, you're a product of rape, you will be an evil, loveless monster.

[@coffinflop]

@@angelnegra omg is that part of the lore??? i totally forgot about that, god it just gets worse and worse

[@angelnegra]

@@coffinflop Yeah, it was her explanation for why Voldemort was so evil and why love potions weren't supposed to be legal. Any kid born from a love potion copulation would never be able to love.

[@lrose5522]

I, too, consider turning to fascism every time I lose a competition

[@idontknoq4813]

Aw, Same mate!

[@OscarLangleySoryu]

Literally me!

[@rexdoom3848]

Mario kart can drive a man to dark places

[@sealogic4552]

@@rexdoom3848 is Shaun the little guy on the cloud in this analogy?

[@rexdoom3848]

​@@sealogic4552 no Shaun plays as dry Bowser because he is a skeleton

[@Shroom-Mage]

The worst part of the WW2 question is that the answer could have been obnoxiously simple: "There was secretly a wizard war happening in the background, with wizards battling on all sides."

[@Tom_Cruise_Missile]

"Wizards didn't kill Hitler because Hitler was a wizard" is literally fantasy WW2 101. Hitler was historically super into the arcane and esoteric, so it's a really common trope.

[@warlordofbritannia]

@@Tom_Cruise_Missile Now I’m imagining Shitler putting a wand to his temple as Russian artillery shells are faintly heard thumping in the background 😂

[@hooting-ton5215]

In the Dresden Files they justify it by saying: "We're a WIZARD council, not a human council." When the main character said: "We could have stopped the Nazis during WW2." An old Wizarder counters with the fact that if they made every single human answer for their crimes, they would have to wipe out every nation in the world. I.e. The British empire, the Americans and so on and so forth. It was also hard to tell who was who without 20/20 hindsight and of course absolute power, corrupts absolutely. I know Jim Butcher has some uh... 'weird' writing with Dresden but I think that's good as any justification.

[@naluzoniro]

And/or they could have tried and failed

[@Tom_Cruise_Missile]

@@naluzoniroit's the easiest out imaginable. "Why didn't magic kill Hitler? Hitler had magic too so we couldn't" problem solved. Ofc Rowling couldn't do that though...

[@PixelaDay]

Shout out to Quinn Curio's video "Uh, Rowling Why Does Slytherin Still Exist?" which complements some of these points really well. What got me was when she went through Slytherin house's defining traits and showed that a lot of them are just negatively worded versions of traits the other houses also have (Slytherin fraternity = bad, but Gryffindor loyalty = good). Very much supports Shaun's points that the difference between the "goods" and the "bads" in HP is mostly a matter of aesthetics, not ideology.

[@moscanaveia]

You find plenty of liberals whenever you open a fascist's lunchbox. This point about Slytherin's continued existence partiicularly makes me lol, because recently in Brazil some right wing liberals have made complete asses of themselves by defending that Germany erred by banishing the nazi party and criminalising openly vouching for that ideology. They believe, in their dumb liberal brains, that only good ideas can prosper and flourish in the free marketplace of ideas, so there is no risk in letting nazis say nazi shit with impunity.

[@camelopardalis84]

@@moscanaveia I shed a tear every time I realise that I can't go on speaking tour in eight grade classrooms and discuss the idea that all supposed Holocaust survivors are crisis actors here in Switzerland.

[@nimbus6988]

@@moscanaveia hello fellow brasileiro lets go cair na porrada with monark?

[@moscanaveia]

@@nimbus6988 Monark little fish, I wanna skewer Kimbundinha. E fora Bozo

[@quinnmcgee7323]

That vid is great, Quinn Curio's such an underrated creator

[@Nikkiflausch]

I only just realized that HP‘s final showdown is a perfect payoff for all that JKR has done with the books too. Like Shaun said, „racists are technically wrong on the facts“, but there is no such thing as changing people or overcoming flaws. Harry Potter wins because the wand doesn‘t listen to Voldemort who mistakenly believes it‘s „his“ - Harry wins because Voldemort is technically wrong on the facts. No changes needed. If only Voldemort had done his proper research!

[@alewiina]

This is such a good point omg, you are completely right 🤦🏻‍♀️

[@TCHorwood-xq7mw]

I don't think JĶR knows what proper research is.

[@luckyspurs]

The film knows how bad the wand law ending is. They have Harry say it in an awkward afterthought exposition dump scene.

[@brookejon3695]

​@@luckyspurslmao oh yeah he just goes "uh, I dunno, I think the wand liked me and not him" and then he snaps it in half and yeets it off a bridge, which is excellent comedy if you're viewing it in that light

[@jefflabbecomedy]

Ron's broken wand always bugged me too. Ron was very sensitive about being poor, so what. At a certain point those misfires were harming him, and making him seem like a worse student than he was. It's insane that the school didn't discreetly pay for a new wand, or Harry didn't sit him down and let Ron's ears go red or whatever and tell him point blank that he needs a new wand.

[@mikyto7313]

It's nonsense the school didn't have a stock of 'second-tier/training' wands at the ready. Kids would be breaking their wands DAILY.

[@notayoutuber4496]

No but really, I'm still so mad that McGonagall bought Harry, who's already a trustfund baby, a racing broom, but she's totally fine with Ron getting injured and potentially killed because of a broken wand. Like??? Some teacher she is.

[@jefflabbecomedy]

@@notayoutuber4496 Seriously! And scolded him on the regular. "Weasley! You really must replace that wand!"

[@sandpiperr]

@@jefflabbecomedy For real! Even if she's not willing to buy it because he's not as special a Harry, she's Ron's teacher! In any other school setting, if there was a student who had a vital supply that was damage to the point of being dangerous to them and they didn't replace it as instructed, the next step any teacher with two brain cells would take is to get in touch with their parents to see what's going on!

[@victory8928]

Hadgrid literally saw the result of his wand malfunctioning due to the broken wand there was literally no excuse for the staff to not investigate and help Ron.

[@ugolomb]

48:50 - This could have been the explanation for why Hermione's greatest fear (as shown in her Boggart) is academic failure: she fears (and not without reason) that if she doesn't excel at everything, she'll be thrown out of the wizarding world. Except one never gets the sense that the author realizes this point: the implication within the books is that, if Hermione had been a muggle going to a regular muggle school, or a pureblood going to Hogwarts, her attitude towards academic achievement would have been just the same. Instead of presenting her as an outsider desperately trying to excel in order to hold on to what others can take for granted, she's merely portrayed a nerd. If fear for her very legitimacy was *supposed* to be the in-universe explanation for Hermione's "Being expelled is worse than death" attitude, then it was poorly written, since Harry -- our point-of-view character -- never gets the point, and nobody comes close to explaining it to him.

[@sully42O]

the fact that i never even considered this speaks volumes on how disappointing the character writing of harry potter is. imagine, after years of getting book after book in which Hermione is written off as ‘lol she’s such an academic nerd’, she drops on the audience that she works so hard because she’s afraid if she’s not a perfect model minority, then the wizarding world will never accept her and Harry Potter realises that she’s right. He is forced to confront the truth that his perfect, escapism fantasy world is not actually so perfect. Hagrid’s attempt to comfort Hermione in book 2 “theyve get to come up with a spell our hermione can’t do” is re contextualised, as well as Hermione’s entire character. This all would’ve served to make Hermione a deeper and more interesting character and could’ve served as a super effective wake up call for Harry. But lol no, thanks JK

[@ugolomb]

@@sully42O Just occured to me that JK ignored a perfect opportunity to do this in book 5. She could have had a plotline where Umbridge tries to get Hermione expelled, and McGonnagall and/or Dumbledore manage to pull the perfect-academic-record card to protect her; but after Dumbledore is gone, Umbridge makes clear that one minor slip-up and Hermione is out, even mentioning specifically how much she'd enjoy snapping Hermione's wand. Harry either witnesses the event or is told about it later, and he finally realizes the true reason why Hermione is so afraid of being expelled. This would fit in perfectly with Umbridge's character (foreshadowing her prominent role in the Ministry/Death-Eater campaign against muggleborns in book 7), and weave the point naturally into the story. But, as you said, no such luck

[@sully42O]

@@ugolomb dude i’m crying at how your random youtube comment manages to do more with Hermione’s character than JK’s entire 7 book series. It would be so good if they inserted that conflict into book five because for me, that marks the turning point in tone (I know book four is when Voldemort comes back but the first like 3/4s of it are the usual HP fun). It would be so interesting to see Harry start to realise that evil doesn’t start and end with Voldemort, it’s been in Hogwarts this whole time. Also like you said what a great way to foreshadowing the role Umbridge will take on and it would make her even more hateable (which i didn’t think was possible lol). This comment perfectly illustrates why Harry Potter is such a frustrating series because it had all the pieces in place to tell a profound story with compelling themes but JK just failed to recognise that. I know fanfiction gets a pretty bad rep but Harry Potter honestly has some of the best ones out there simply because the fanfic authors realise what they have on their hands

[@ugolomb]

@@sully42O Indeed. I sometimes feel as if Rowling places all the dots and then fails to connect them -- even in her own mind. There are so many examples of this... I remember using the trial scene at the start of Book 5 to explain to my kid why seperation of powers is important -- why it's wrong for the same person to be a government minister, a legistlator and a judge, all at the same time. Except, my point is that *no one* should have that much power, whereas Rowling's point was only that *Fudge* shouldn't have that much power, and she never moves beyond that

[@SilentProti]

Don't remember which book, but at one point Harry thought he's gonna get expelled and was hoping dumbledore would let him help out Hagrid at least to stay in the magical world.

[@stevencleere4912]

"there are no good or bad actions in the Harry Potter universe, only good or bad TEAMS." Is my biggest takeaway from this. Essentialism and tribalism.

[@matteodotdpsatgmaildotcom2451]

She's basically a football hooligan LOL

[@alisonpurgatory85]

We shouldn’t be using tribalism to mean sectarianism. Tribal societies don’t deserve to be compared to JKR lol but srsly it does reinforce some bad cultural conditioning and popular beliefs about tribal and indigenous societies being less ‘civilized’ and ‘advanced’ than the industrialized first world colonizers

[@thunderbird3304]

Her reaction to Vladimir Putin likening his ordeal with hers basically confirmed this. It's not that she disagreed with what he said, but because he's in "the bad team," she basically told him to shut up

[@juniperrodley9843]

@@alisonpurgatory85 Yeah, thanks for saying this. Essentialism and *sectarianism* are the big things in HP.

[@johnvinals7423]

@@juniperrodley9843 Eh, Sectarianism has weird anti-Muslim connotations in modern times at least. Essentialism and factionalism works just as well.

[@AngryNerdBird]

The phrase "Sorry guys Neville knocked time travel over" made me crack up.

[@miccassidy6337]

I now want to see a comedic, meta-humor fantasy series that has that (maybe change the name) as a line.

[@allosaurustime]

Absolutely me too

[@Phantasmaphobic]

this would absolutely be a rick riordan chapter title

[@miccassidy6337]

@@Phantasmaphobic Percy Jackson and The Accidental Knocking Over of Time Travel would be an awesome book name.

[@allosaurustime]

@@miccassidy6337 “its a good job annabeth does her homework”

[@eoghan.5003]

35:43 "there are no good or bad actions in Harry Potter, there are only good and bad teams. And you can tell the bad team because they're ugly, and fat, and covered in snakes." Shaun's ability to make such a savage yet insightful critique in two sentences here is so impressive.

[@IsisAlv]

and it's a laser focused criticism too. people had pointed out before that Dumbledore favored Griffindors and Harry's group, but i can see now that it's more than that

[@sadoldguy4380]

@@IsisAlv So pure tribalism, the fundamental sin of all primates, leading to Dunbar's number.

[@damkylan3]

Indeed. Additionally, thanks for the timestamp, because the line after that always give me a good laugh. The casualness with which Shaun refers to Harry as "such a cheap bastard" gives me the chuckles.

[@theotherauthor740]

“covered in snakes” made me burst out laughing lmaooo. it’s so true though. 💀

[@devil-sad]

JK Rowling really does seem like the sort of person who only supported Labour because her parents told her to. She picked a "team" without ever really understanding politics beyond "we're good, they're bad".

[@theoneandonlysoupemporium]

"Harry Potter and the Skull from Merseyside who Patiently Explains Why Its Not Good to Reassert a Hierarchical Racist Status-Quo After Defeating Wizard Hitler" was probably my favourite of the series

[@galactic85]

LMFAO

[@linsprtpc]

This one wins.

[@cremetangerine82]

I need this in novel form!

[@brookejon3695]

Honestly, this one has the best audio book narrator out of the entire series. The rest are so inconsistent. (BTW if anyone wants an audiobook series with a REALLY competent narrator, read The Wandering Inn series narrated by Andrea Parsneau. She's hands down the best voice actor I've ever heard do audiobooks. Every race, culture, area of origin, and individual has a unique and identifiable voice with vocal quirks unique to them and their background.)

[@justhannah3960]

I need this book, tbh.

[@sydroper4761]

“Defeating Voldemort at this point should mean defeating his supremacist ideology” This made me remember a whole side plot in one of the books where Harry finds out Filch is a “squib” (someone born into a magical family but isn’t magical themselves) and the wizarding world basically treat him like a second class citizen, and then she…never did a single thing with it.

[@TheKat12364]

right. do squids go live in the muggle world, do others somehow find weird jobs like Filch. there arent supposed to be many of them but still.

[@lindenshepherd6085]

@Kat Del It’s kind of implied that Muggle-born wizards are the result of Squibs quietly marrying into muggle families and the magic “gene” only expresses itself generations later.

[@akshaydalvi1534]

@@lindenshepherd6085 Yeah, I think voldemorts mom is a squib, Im not sure though. Its amazing how many different types of classes you can make once you start separating people like that, but ofcourse nothing actually comes from all this.

[@pm6127]

And of course the only important squib character in the movie deserves this abuse because he is a bad & ugly person.. really deep writing

[@brad7504]

@@TheKat12364 yes squibs can live in the Muggle world. Harry had a squib neighbor when he lived with the dursleys. In the first book I think they refer to as like a crazy cat lady of some kind but we don't learn of who she really is until Harry saves Dudley from the dementors

[@Cheezbuckets]

This is probably my favourite Harry Potter retrospective because of how you address the themes and messages and the contradictions rather than just ice cold takes on surface-level things like “here’s why Hogwarts is a dangerous and why that isn’t logical because real schools have safety regulations.”

[@Cal6009]

"Those poor slaves wouldn't even know what to do with freedom" is literally a real life argument made about slavery.

[@thomdotexe]

makes you think maybe she knew what she was doing...

[@pathevermore3683]

pregerU's videos about american slavery lean heavily on this idea.

[@pathevermore3683]

@ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ yeees. PU is trash

[@lepthymo]

Really badly wanna write a fic where somone with actual socdem vakues enters Hogwart. D20, the live action D&D show, actually has a great series about this.

[@motherfreya2840]

Where would you be without Tevinter?

[@Luna-celeste]

I remember back in my Harry potter phase, my favourite character was Cedric Diggory. So of course I was so excited about there being an entire stage play about trying to save him! I went to London to watch it myself. Imagine how I felt when the “he was so embarrassed he became a deatheater and murdered Neville Longbottom!!!” Stuff happened. The whole reason why I liked him so much was because he was just a nice dude. And now he’s a murderer??? Because he got embarrassed????

[@My20GUNS]

Lol you could say Cedric is J.K.'s version of the Joker 💀💀💀

[@TwentyOneCatz]

That whole play read like terrible fan-fic. Like the fact that the trolly witch was actually a new breed of monster as well? What the actual fuck.

[@Luna-celeste]

@@TwentyOneCatz YEAH! And the “Voldemort’s daughter” character came off like someone’s edgy self insert OC. So stupid

[@CNWhatImSaiyan]

@@My20GUNS Ironic since his actor is the latest Batman lol

[@Zac_Frost]

Well, that's all fan fiction and doesn't matter.

[@edgarallenhoe3518]

I guess Harry's attitude toward money never bothered me as a kid because it resonated with the way I, a lower middle class kid deeply anxious about money, would probably treat a surprise fortune: buy myself a couple of nice things, and then try to forget about it because I was scared of losing it. The thing is, that makes sense if the windfall is like... $50,000. Harry is probably a millionaire. At some point in the series, he stops being a Dickensian orphan and starts being a teenage boy with a massive trust fund.

[@stephaniewilliams6756]

Yep spot on analysis

[@chriss780]

yeah i mean it also would have been a super easy question to solve "oh yeah but trust/ will/ bank says you can't use it till you're an adult, or can only take a trivial amount out of before then or whatever

[@Bluecho4]

@@chriss780 In another comment, I said that there should even be a character - a reasonable adult authority figure - who is in charge of Harry's trust. Someone who gives him spending money, but can veto any big purchases or withdrawals. Someone like McGonagall, or a goblin working at the bank. So Harry needs to make his case to when he needs lots of money, and over time develops a rapport with on a personal level.

[@ShnoogleMan]

To be fair, it never really says exactly how rich Harry is in terms of muggle money.

[@Eldrahan]

I always figured it /was/ like $50,000. Harry's parents, as best as I can tell, were ordinary people who worked ordinary jobs, not independently wealthy. So if they have, say, 6 months salary saved up in their bank accounts, it would seem like an unfathomable sum of money to an 11 year old, but not actually enough to just buy solutions to any major adult problems.

[@Ellisepha]

An idea for solving the timeturner problem: a) make them rare and incredibly regulated and B) the one Dumbledore gave Hermine was already pretty old and broken, and would only work for roughly a year or so anyways. And then when they save Sirius, it literally breaks down immediately. Still a better solution to "oops we accidentally pushed over the shelf with all time machines ever."

[@szatan9717]

Yeah, it does present a better solution. Alternatively, it could be that the bigger the change you're making or the further back you go the harder it is, or the less power the time turner has, just introduce a limit for them.

[@KOTEBANAROT]

whats weird is that its literally an hourglass. when it mentioned that this is a hourglass i genuinely assumed that the sand in the glass represents the amount of "time" you can turn back. i.e. you always waste "sand" when you go back so you have to be real stingy. kept expecting the "sand" to start running out while theyre saving sirius lol

[@WinterPains]

Or even what I thought was the canon answer this whole time: it creates a closed loop.

[@celldh0825]

Or better yet have them not exist at all and have them save the hippogrif in the present day

[@coolpizzacook]

Alternatively, it was given to Hermione by Dumbledore. Make it an artifact Dumbledore has, one of a kind. Just another oddity hidden within Hogwarts. Dumbledore takes it back at the end and god knows where that old guy put it.

[@warrendriscoll350]

Did anyone else notice the glasses were taped to the skull's head? I love that detail.

[@greyisnthere]

Yes! I was staring at this piece for 25 minutes before catching that haha. Really amazing art.

[@chrstfer2452]

Spellotape saves the day again

[@emgeejay]

“the skull’s head”

[@Kriegter]

megadeth

[@hvaleos666]

Feels very Terry Pratchett

[@rowanoak_]

20:38 "All Is Well, But We're Keeping The Slaves" sounds like a Douglas Adams novel

[@JBHUTT09]

I think there WAS a way to answer "why didn't the wizards stop Hitler" and that would be "because the Nazis had their own wizards". You could absolutely have a magical war waging in the background of WWII in this setting. And it's such an obvious answer that I'm shocked she didn't just use it.

[@cf3714]

Pretty sure it's cannon that Grindelwald joined up with Hitler and made him a zombie army.

[@willowarkan2263]

​@@cf3714wait wasn't he the guy trying to stop the Nazis, that's a shift.

[@stingerjohnny9951]

@@willowarkan2263 Fuck me running, we can’t even agree on what characters are where. Rowling, honey, what the fuck are you DOING?!

[@rosethorne9155]

That would require her to be a thoughtful, insightful writer, which, as we have seen, she is not. 😵‍💫

[@berengustav7714]

Magic on both sides of WW2? Rick Riordan writing the Lightning Thief book:"write that down!"

[@edselgreaves6503]

I remember excusing all of these things you were talking about with "JKR will redeem ALL THESE CHARACTERS in the final book!" Maybe not Vernon, but Petunia and Dudley, and SPEW, and the Slytherins will all get their final triumph in the 7th book that will make everything come full circle! Once i read the part where McGonagall sentences every single underage Slytherin student to the dungeon while their parents are out there preparing to attack and potentially kill or die for Voldemort's cause, i realized JKR had absolutely zero interest in redemption. Her worldview is astonishingly black & white.

[@nemo-zl1vm]

I was sooo disappointed when not a single Slytherin volunteered to fight to defend their school. The entire series seemed to be moving toward a point showing that the Sorting Hat delineations are BS and that people are much too complicated to be sorted into 4 groups. Hell, the epilogue basically reaffirms this. Throughout the series both Draco and Snape, two major Slytherin characters, are shown to be complex characters with motivations born from good intentions, at least in some circumstances. You can be ambitious and valorous. You can be cutthroat but still generally benevolent. But no, every Slytherin wimped out at the final battle and got put in jail for time-out.

[@peanutbutter4980]

​@@nemo-zl1vm You should also take into account they wouldn't be fighting strangers, their parents could very well be in the end of a fatal spell. The fact they were forced to stay in the dungeons is the real problem, as none trusted nor tried to understand the other reasons apart from Voldermort's win benefiting them.

[@poppie267]

@@peanutbutter4980 Nah it is bad writing simple as that. You really go too far into simple things my simple minded friend.

[@ScaryMason]

@@poppie267many times I say to myself “I’m thinking about this harder and longer than the person who wrote it” Books fire up your imagination. It’s depressingly common to read books that lack imaginative thinking, have flat characters, and cliche story.

[@poppie267]

@@ScaryMason And in case of Rowling who is one of the most black and white authors out there i can totally see how many people make so many fanfictions about her characters. Considder the fact how flat most of them are.

[@noelvaldez96]

Honestly if I wrote a whole children’s series and people were asking me questions like “why didn’t the wizards stop WW2?” I just say I didn’t think about that when I wrote the series. Instead of doubling down on how I had everything all planned out.

[@washbasin948]

Yeah, that's probably the best response.

[@pinoarias8601]

Because German Voldemort did nothing wrong.

[@Prankmeister1990]

Rowling could’ve easily pivoted that into the systemic racism of wizardry, but that would mean having wizards agree with Nazis and that’s a can of worms she isn’t skilled enough to tackle. Not that she’s skilled enough to handle half the themes she tries to write about.

[@will_from_pa]

I mean, that would require honesty and not sniffing your own farts, which is beyond Rowling

[@pitpat2928]

yk come to think of it, it was probably the most embarrassing thing for her to realize she never actually thought abt that when her main bad guys are wizard not-sees. it’s exactly the kind of thing i point to when i talk abt unconscious biases coming through in an artists work, there’s no escaping it.

[@chengong388]

The morality implied in a story for children is arguably more important than stories for adults.

[@galactic85]

Exactly. I already commented on this but we use children stories to help teach kids about ethics. When you are an adult it's easy to watch movies or read books and evaluate things with more nuance. When I was a kid i saw Indiana Jones as a straight up hero but now that I'm an adult I realize he was always intended to be more of an anti hero. Yes it's totally awesome that he fights the nazi's and frees child slaves, but he is kind of a dick and is literally stealing artifacts from other cultures and breaking the law. They literally call him out as being a "grave robber" during the dinner scene in temple of doom. I can still watch and appreciate Indiana Jones now and I still like the character but I view him with more complexity than when I did when I was a kid. When you are a kid you just automatically identify with the protagonist and come to naturally assume they are operating with the correct moral authority because the narrative says they are the "hero."

[@cabbage-soup]

children's books started out as morality tales. like rousseau's emile, they were v specifically written to teach children how to act morally and in a way that is acceptable by society.

[@nmociahfgow]

More children's communist books!

[@marocat4749]

Great stories for children, are for adult too. Its a story for children only give the license to be more silly, not be worse.

[@marocat4749]

@@cabbage-soup Yeah and brothers grimm, even if they were sanatized over years, they were for adults. Dunno same proably for yokai and other mythological stories that became childrens storie. That were folk stories pretty often before becoming that.

[@coricognitions]

Honestly I think Rowling forgot Harry was rich for most of it. She gave him loads of money so she didn't have to think about his finances logistically, and then forgot about it

[@HeavyMetalGamingHD]

she forgot about so much stuff.

[@zoeotaku5608]

rich and green = EVIL YUCK WEALTH rich but red = homely knightly honourable wealth

[@agilemind6241]

I think she just didn't make it more explicit that Harry can't just access his money whenever he wants. Throughout the books we NEVER see Harry access his bank account or his money without a legal guardian with him - which is logical, even in our world minors can't just get a inheritance and use it for whatever they want. It is held in trust by some kind of legal guardian that controls how much they can spend from that fortune until they are legally adults.

[@coricognitions]

@@agilemind6241 true but like if Harry Potter asked someone to bend the rules for him on that front I'm sure they woulda figured something out

[@brookejon3695]

And then later, iirc, Harry realizes he doesn't have much money left because the entire walk-in vault packed with gold turns out to barely cover 6 years of school supplies for one child. The lore is just nonsense.

[@the26thLetteroftheAlphabet]

i love how the main proof for Hermione being black is her hair. hair which is only actually described as pretty/beautiful/sophisticated when it is combed and slicked to be straight.

[@Niobesnuppa]

Also pretty weak proof, since plenty of white people have big curly hair too.

[@aliza_h]

oh god 💀

[@luckyspurs]

Only suddenly noticing the attractiveness of all the black and asian characters at the Yule Ball. Like, 'oh you all dressed up a bit and acted establishment'.

[@renvocals]

Much like Hermione's campaign, Dobby's self-inflicted abuse isn't treated seriously. Knocking himself out, bruising himself, and ironing his hands for ffs - it's all played for laughs. Comic relief characters are fine but "abuse as the punchline" has never sat well with me, and that's without considering the entire issue of him being a literal chattel slave.

[@inazumarai7690]

the fact that he was doing it in front of harry, when his master wasn't even there was horrifying to me

[@themuch21]

​@@inazumarai7690Harry did try to stop him from abusing himself. He was abusing himself too loudly afterall and the dursleys might hear it.

[@inazumarai7690]

@@themuch21 i wasn't trying to say that harry didn't do anything about it, it was just really surprising to see that abuse was such a core part of dobby's life that he does it to himself when no one does it to him. it's ingrained into his mind

[@ariatrent6263]

Yeah, I remember that really bothered me at the time. Still does.

[@Nicole_thePrincess]

@@inazumarai7690What’s even more fucked up, is how victims of child abuse do similar to themselves as adults. I’ve never ironed my own hands, but I’m overly hard on myself, I verbally beat myself up constantly. It’s as if the abuse one endured conditions them to accept it, even when they are taken away from that abuse. 🥲

[@Chris-hx6tr]

This is so on point, especially the part about goodness being something inherent to "the good guys" no matter what they actually do. Rowling makes such a big deal about the unforgivable curses being indefensible under any circumstances and even takes the time to explain WHY they're wrong, only to have Harry and his friends later using or attempting to use every single one of them with zero negative consequences or even concerned introspection.

[@shocknawe]

Main character = infallible moral authority.

[@ajknight8640]

Snape is the perfect example - he’s Bad the whole series, killing Dumbledore, forcing students to use the torture curse on first years, even comes up with a new torture curse BY HIMSELF. But then right at the end he’s vindicated and becomes Good, and suddenly everything he did is justified. Literally the switch just flips from Bad to Good and Harry thinks, “the perfect man to name my son after!”

[@agilemind6241]

I'd say JKs grand philosophy is that personality traits are innate and fixed and have a moral dimension to them. You have enough of the "Good" personality traits and you're a good person who can do no wrong, where as having the "Bad" personality traits makes you a bad person and everything you do is bad. Snape isn't redeemed by anything he does, but by revealing his true self and true motivations: He was loyal and loved deeply therefore he's a good person and always was. Likewise Draco is revealed to lack the ambition and ruthlessness of a "Bad guy" thus becomes more of a neutral figure. It's a pretty common view among right-leaning people: e.g. criminals are criminals because that's just who they are - you can't rehabilitate them, dumb people are just dumb because that's who they are no amount of special training/teaching will fix that so just let them fail.

[@Nemo12417]

The thing with the Unforgivable Curses I don't mind that much (well, aside from the torture curse). The Imperious Curse sounds nasty and can certainly be used for evil, but as a way of subduing someone who is dangerous, like the Carrow lady? I don't really find that horrifying, we've seen the spell used on Harry and it's not inherently dangerous in the short term at least. As for Avada Kedavra, well, if you're fighting someone who fully intends to kill you and subduing them isn't an option, I fail to see why instant death = bad, when if anything, it seems like a humane means of execution. But yeah, the series has a lot of double standards. The biggest problem is that it started as a silly kids book and then tried to be mature.

[@marieking5969]

I think a big red flag for me was when McGonagall called Harry noble or whatever for torturing a death eater. Like…even when I first read it, that felt wrong. Could’ve just neutralized him, which you would think is what the good guy would do

[@viy2959]

I’m sorry, but…Cedric, one of the nicest characters in the series, who literally goes out of his way to make sure that his opponent is being treated fairly becoming a death eater because he lost a tournament is just… well, I’m beginning to think that maybe Rowling isn’t great at consistent characterization or something…

[@patrickhackett7881]

The screenplay was not written by Rowling-- it is pretty much an official fanfic

[@viy2959]

@@patrickhackett7881 She is listed as one of the authors of the stageplay and was involved in the story. She is heavily involved in all adaptations of her work. But I don't think she fully wrote the script, no. The characterization is still at least partly on her.

[@patrickhackett7881]

@@viy2959 You'd understand if you read fanfiction. Time travel fix it attempt, Voldemort having asecret daughter with Bellatrix Lestrange, Ron's characterization, the homoeroticism between Albus and Scorpius (which is Harry/Draco but next gen)-- those ideas are from fanfiction that existed before CC. JKR clearly didn't do much of the writing, if any.

[@flawlesswill1987]

@@viy2959 JK neither write it or the script, why not cry about Jack Thorne who actually did write it? because you havent been told to be mad about him thats why

[@viy2959]

@@flawlesswill1987 As I said, she is heavily involved in all Harry Potter related media. So either she approved this, or she didn’t say she didn’t like it. Which I assume she would have if she didn’t think it was consistent and for some reason it was allowed to happen anyway. I’m not crying about it. Or mad about it. I just think it’s bad writing. My personal issues with Rowling have nothing to do with my feelings about her writing. Or the writing she approves other people doing, I suppose. Honestly, if I find it anything, I mostly find it funny.

[@AlterBridgeJericho]

Cedric Diggory did the equivalent of losing a Spelling Bee and coming to school the next day in a Nazi uniform

[@epicbruhmoment6985]

It's like if you saved someone from getting hit by a bus and they said "thanks but I gotta hurry to my Klan meeting."

[@mr.j3rs3y]

@@epicbruhmoment6985 Oh god this is darkly hilarious 💀

[@cfnretro6448]

Explain plz😂

[@GhostLight06]

I think Cedric becomes a Death Eater in The Cursed Child, after he’s sabotaged during the Triwizard Tournament.

[@Anna-pe6hb]

Ok but the funniest thing here is that, if cedric had lived, wouldnt he have known that the tournament was rigged? I mean, who would be ashamed of losing anything thats rigged against you, thats literally the perfect excuse for not winning??

[@happytofu5]

Holy crap, the story about S.P.E.W. was thought as a punchline? Reading it as a kid I was completely convinced that it was a story about Hermione being right, but not able to fight against a system that is so deeply ingrained in the world that a) she can't fight it alone and b) even "good" characters do not see the problem and c) her not being able to convince them. I saw it as a tragic story, not as a punchline! I am shocked.

[@j2dragon109]

Yeah, I always assumed that the problem was the fact that the house elfs like slavery - presumably because of some magical curse or something like that, and Hermione was incorrect in how she was trying free them not in fact that she wanted them free

[@ninaschust3694]

me too.

[@sasentaiko]

Yep! But it’s not just her overt activism-everything Hermione thought was treated with “foolish girl” dismissiveness. The story’s overall disrespect of Hermione was very difficult to swallow. Her personality was constantly played for laughs in the books, in the service of making Harry relatable as an Everyman. We absolutely can see all the casual misogyny from “good” characters as tragic for Hermione’s character. But the author never brings us to the conclusion that it’s wrong to attack Hermione’s femininity or personhood for being studious and assertive. Her encyclopedic knowledge gets used for plot shenanigans, but she’s not valued like a Ravenclaw. More like, she’s valued as part of Harry’s crew _despite_ her “flaws”.

[@AnimatedStoriesWorldwide]

You can see it as you wish. If you are left leaning and you need to make an hour long video, you can victimize everybody in the book that isn't rich, normal weight, weight or powerful and go on a tirade about how awfully unfair life is. Trans elves are real elves!

[@brynjames3779]

Me too! It left a bad taste in my mouth when people made fun of her for it and I was also disheartened when she wasn't successful in the end. The aim of it being a joke and social commentary feels so wrong

[@Marlodrama]

“Rowling frequently threatens to make the series more interesting” i love when people deliver absolute third degree burns in a completely normal and conversational tone 😭😭😭

[@rpggaming1976]

well she did so its not really a burn.

[@Marlodrama]

@@rpggaming1976 on the contrary, I think some of the most scalding remarks are the ones that hit on a piece and of truth.

[@rpggaming1976]

@@Marlodrama lol no at all it's him trying to talk shit. The books and movies were interesting if they weren't they wouldn't have sold.

[@Marlodrama]

@@rpggaming1976 so you fully just didn’t listen to the essay… why are you in these comments again??

[@devarious5004]

@@Marlodrama What you described is the original and literal definition of the word "irony", where the speaker is using words that express something besides their literal intention. It's always really cool to see it used because it never fails to create some extremely spicy burns.

[@3ftninja132]

"Oh black girl Hermione, when will you stop talking about how slavery is wrong, it's getting on my nerves" - Harry Potter, the boy physically and mentally abused by his family because he is magical, and they're not.

[@iplayeddishonored2475]

@@ivanasukjadic1423yes, we agree, you don’t have any reading comprehension

[@thechh8297]

​@@ivanasukjadic1423just here to point out that your reading comprehension sucks.

[@SorowFame]

@@ivanasukjadic1423probably not but Rowling said she could be read as black so it’s an entirely valid interpretation to take per the author. The implications are far worse if she is though.

[@krethro]

​@@ivanasukjadic1423I think Rowling said that originally hermoine was mental to be black

[@as3609]

@@krethro No, she never said anything of the sort. Hermione is, and was always intended to be, white - and to be 'read as white'. JKR retroactively suggesting that H could be black was simply a token concession to the baying mobs of self righteous collectors of oppression - thankfully, it was the last concession she ever made to such bigots. Rowling stays based.

[@WolfenRyujin]

I personally feel that the first scene where something better was dangled in the face of the reader was in the first book. When Harry had to put on the sorting hat and got told "You could go to Slytherin". There could've been something there, showing maybe that people in the "evil"-house aren't all that bad, going a bit deeper then just skin deep... the impact of him drawing the sword in the fight against the basilisc would've been more impactful too.

[@PH0B0PH1L1A]

someone actually wrote some damn good fanfic about slytherin harry on Ao3 ages ago. wish i could remember the author. better writing than anything JK could do lmao

[@spinoza2326]

@@PH0B0PH1L1A On The Way to Greatness?

[@EcstaticTeaTime]

It was always a problem to have an evil house in a school, not to mention how who these kids are before puberty decides who they will be for the rest of their school careers and shape who they are as adults. You can still have Draco, Crab, and Goyle be mean to Harry, you can still have Snape be a teacher on a power trip, and you can have examples of good students still coming from the house. Snape is the reason why Draco and his goons can get away with being bullies. Easy. Then you introduce a Slytherin other than Draco who is competitive with Hermoine but not a butt and add in a Ravenclaw to start rounding out a super smart study group, since Ravenclaws are known for their intelligence (that always bugged me that we don't really see the house actually being smart or that they get enough points awarded to their house to maybe be competition for Gryffindor and Slytherin.) Harry is a jock; give him a happenstance with a Slytherin who end up on the quidditch team for some healthy competition and geeking out about the game with Harry and Ron. Or heck, have a secret baked goods/handmade goods sale going on under the teachers' noses involving some Hufflepuffs and an ambitious Slytherin being their marketing/sales associate. There were plenty of ways to throw in "Not all Slytherins" with just a few sentences even in the limited view of Harry's. The only Hufflepuff I remember is Cedric, which means she did near nothing for one house, barely included Ravenclaw, and always had it posted as Gryffindor vs Slytherin.

[@KD-ou2np]

And it could also call attention to the fact that the noble or admirable qualities our hero has can easily be twisted. It could make you think about how, even though we like to pretend we are nothing like those we hate, we might be exactly like them, it might be easier than we realize to end up like them.

[@brookejon3695]

​@@KD-ou2npabsolutely. Many negative traits are just positive traits that have been twisted or brought to an extreme

[@Raptorman0205]

It's rather ironic that Emma Watson would go on to become that activist that Rowling so criticized Hermione for being.

[@michealforguson5317]

I laughed. Because that is hilarious. Oh, sweet sweet irony.

[@assassino1480]

It's perfect. I hope Rowling is pissed about it.

[@bartz0rt928]

Like she read her character and thought, "this makes sense, actually".

[@mpazinambao2938]

Isn't it ironic...

[@lady8jane]

@@bartz0rt928 Because ... it does. She's a smart one IRL as well. :D

[@GormTheElder]

Another thing on the slavery of elves: Even if we take it for granted that elves like to serve, that does not translate to ending slavery being a bad thing *because house elves could still serve if they wanted to if slavery was ended* There is no part of their service that requires them to be property. Therefore, if you end slavery, those who wanted to serve could serve and those who wanted to be free could be free. Slavery has litterally no benefits to elves, even if we take for granted that servitude is good for them. Noone brings this up in any of the novels. Edit: this comment really blew up. Thanks for the engagment! I wanted to share some further points I noticed about the potter universe: In a world where most labour and productive processes have been made redundant, the weasley family is still poor. It is litterally more easy for Rowling to imagine a world where kids try to catch a sentient ball while mounted on flying brooms than imagine a world without poverty. On this note, the Weasleys have a lot of children. It is heavily implied that this is the cause of their poverty. They also have a rat for a household pet, if the association with "breeding like rats" wasn't already clear enough, pointing towards a social darwinism still present in a lot of angloamerican liberalism The wizarding world is an ethnostate. It is established that all "muggles" that posses magical abilities have wizard or witch ancestry to some degree. The Wizarding would could probably end world hunger and all diseases if they wanted to (they have for themselves), but chose to isolate themselves instead. Their utopia is only for those that have the right heritage and ability.

[@pax6833]

Rowlings writing of slavery is basically a word for word copy of what white supremecists used to justify RL slavery, which is deeply disturbing.

[@eccentriastes6273]

I guess this is sort of acknowledged in the fact that Dumbledore, because he's such a good guy, is willing to free and pay elves if they ask for it (but of course Dobby is the only one who asks). But if that's the ethical thing to do, or at least a bare minimum, it raises the question "Couldn't all wizards just adopt this policy? Furthermore, shouldn't they be required to by law, so that they aren't keeping elves in forced servitude?" There is no argument against this, it just leads to the conclusion that Hermione is right. But instead of following that line of reasoning, Dumbledore's beneficent policy towards elves is only used to undermine Hermione by reaffirming that most elves really do like the status quo. Incredible.

[@GormTheElder]

@@pax6833 another interesting aspect of that is that you can easily imagine that a rather large portion of slaves were probably socially conditioned into being compliant and servile, and it's entirely possible that elves, as sentient beings, only *appear* to like servitude because they have been conditioned to act like it. If it truly was genetic, then someone like Dobby becomes very hard to explain. It all opens up a whole can of worms about nuture/nature that is never addressed.

[@sarahgent2674]

@@GormTheElder I always assumed that Dobby wanting to be freed was just because the malfoys were comically abusive to him ("bad" slave owners vs everyone else who are "good" slave owners). I think this is probably what jk intended but honestly it still makes no sense cause winky and kreacher also have absolutely Horrible times under their families, and she hates being free in a way that dobby loves being free, which doesn't seem like it's solely to do with having escaped the malfoys

[@godofpencils01]

@@GormTheElder Also also, the wizarding world has no apparent analogue to real world slavery, apart from the existing slave institution of house elves and maybe goblins in the past? That's sort of implied but glossed over. But the muggle world definitely does, and Harry and Hermione should probably be aware of that. At no point does their understanding of non-magic history come into it and inform any objections they have to slavery, or any understanding that no race is ever 'happy in slavery'. That last point should be particularly poignant, because from love potions to the Imperius curse, both characters are fully aware they are in a society where MIND CONTROL IS A THING.

[@mmm-px6wc]

What bothers me the most about Ron's broken wand is that, isn't the school supposed to care for their students? Isn't Ron's broken wand a threat to him and to other students, to the point that he actually gets injured using it? Wouldn't any reasonable school give him a spare wand to at least keep him safe? Also, mcgonagall didn't have any problem buying harry an expensive broom, which was not necessary, but she couldn't for the life of her provide a wand for her own student? "Best magic school on the planet" it is.

[@clover2739]

Yeah I know the wand chooses the wizard and all that, but the wand Ron used wasn’t his own anyway, it was an old one from his older brother that was in bad shape, so surely he could’ve used a spare until school finished. Unless spare wands aren’t a thing

[@-piras]

I mean people keep saying USA is the best country in the world, soo the book gets that right

[@marshallhelm5923]

Hermione literally almost dies within three months of attending Hogwarts.

[@thetribunaloftheimaginatio5247]

"They don't go to the police because it's dull." --Alfred Hitchcock Had Ron's wand-issue been solved quickly, the story would have been over and you'd be bored to tears.

[@nevinusa7164]

Tbf this IS a school that considers it normal to punish students by sending them into a forest full of monsters, so I imagine the safety of the students isn't exactly their top priority

[@wizardcud]

Every time I’m reminded that Rowling actually wrote the “most people thought instantly of his penis” bit of Casual Vacancy I shrivel up a little, she’s such a weird freak lol. That book is wild and is a perfect mirror of her transphobia and obsession with body policing

[@MrBell-iq3sm]

Given she once said 'becoming a man would have been appealing in that time ...' talking about her past, she has some serious projection vibes.

[@lightningstudios3630]

I don’t think most people instantly think “how does he wash his penis” whenever they see a fat guy, I think that’s just you Rowling

[@the_last_ballad]

It's really weird, as I have been to gay bathouses. Where gay men gather to work out, hang out, and frequently hook up. There absolutely were older guys that could be described that way there, and even in a sexually charged atmosphere where everyone was nude(as it was in the sauna/shower/hot tub area) my first thought wasn't of their dicks. So, yeah, extremely weird...

[@DavidJCobb]

​@@MrBell-iq3sm agreed like i _know_ that "person who is anti-X is secretly X" is a played out trope and 90% of the time it has the unfortunate effect of blaming groups for the bigotry against them but, like, c'mon. cis women don't _write_ stuff like that passage. just huge, _huge_ vibes like "manhood is wasted on people like this. manhood should go to someone more deserving, who'd take care of it and treat it well. (someone like me.)"

[@brookejon3695]

​​@@DavidJCobbthose last few lines had me rolling 😂 Edit: or, should I say, Rowling? ...I shouldn't.

[@Marshmellow3971]

The idea of the good guys winning the war against the bad guy only to realize that the world at the end still looked a lot like the world the bad guy wanted to create isn’t a bad idea. It would work really well in a dark fantasy story where the characters existed in shades of grey. But that’s not how the moral battle in HP was framed.

[@nenmaster5218]

!

[@nenmaster5218]

@@cat-le1hf ??

[@grandkhan9261]

@@cat-le1hf unfortunately, it is unlikely that ASOIAF will end at all

[@vdawg27]

Yes also this is hunger games

[@kennedypatterson8652]

Yeah that’s literally just the hunger games and it was great

[@tylerbalazic4592]

Growing up obsessed with these books then feeling as an adult that Rowling betrayed her fans only to realize as a slightly older adult that we just thought so much better of her than we should have makes everything make so much sense.

[@lukemccann8930]

It's a weird feeling having the fantasy writing equivalent of being someone who grew up in the south and shifting understanding of the civil war. Honestly has felt very similar to me lol

[@RedKincaid]

As a kid I like to read and reread and rereread books until I got sick of them. Harry Potter went from my favorite book series to one I thought was uncomfortable and confusing over the course of my first 8 times reading through.

[@Ugly_German_Truths]

I grudgingly have to agree. Pushing Rowling close to the worldview of Ayn Rand explains why Slytherin can slide so far from its ideals with the horribly incompetent "spy" Severus Snape doing the exact opposite of what he would have done in the real world or in a better author's world (not telling the "good guys" he had to treat everybody but the Deatheater spawns horribly so they would think he is their man is STUPID and backwards. He supposedly PLAYS a reformed former Baddie and thus should play nice with the team Goodity and make excuses to Team Voldemort that he cannot prefer their children and has to be fair and nice and a prototypical good teacher to NOT get discovered as Voldemort's infiltrator. And Voldemort should understand it and applaud him for making this effort just to keep an eye on Dumbledore.) being their protector and inciter of their behavior... The ministry Slytherins also are equally bluntly obvious about their preferences and Lucius Malfoy is presented as a prominent member of the Nobility or what passes as such and did not get Ostracized for his "inventive" defense of having been brainwashed by magic... WHY isn't that the deathknell for him being seen as anytrhing but weakminded and "burned"? Who can trust a wizard that was under a spell for YEARS and acted as if he enjoyed it? He should be done with any public trust or being asked for advice... instead he is shown as a type of Eminence Gris... yeah sure. Totally what would happen. Then there is Dumbledore. Having the highest concentration of power in the wizarding world, but never changing anything in the wizarding world. Giving out second and third and ninety ninth "chances" without any cost like remorse or showing the will to change, while showing the non bullying students that they better not attract attention, so that they will not be singled out for hexing or beatings... Allegedly being a champion of the muggleborns, but not acting to protect them or improve their status in the wizarding world. Being shown to be generous and non prejudicial for giving Hagrid a place to live after expulsion (but not working hard to exonerate the clearly innocent half giant) and for letting Remus Lupin study at the School (but no further Werewolves getting this privilege are ever mentioned later, not even after the war was won... making it feel like he just wanted loyal minions and not truly help disadvantaged persons that should get the same chance as everybody else. And finally... do we even need to mention the Epilogue??? NOTHING CHANGED... Ron still is biased against the muggle world and cannot even learn how to drive without brainwashing the teacher/tester... not to mention how he still has problems to keep the Statute of Secrecy for a normal interaction and threatening obliviations about trivialities! Harry still encourages him and otherwise did what was expected of him, instead of putting his fame and influence as leader of his generation into making changes and helping the muggleborns to get a fairer chance... and he named one son after two "fatherfigures" he basically never knew and the other son after the two men who doomed him to 17 years of hell and many almost lethal "adventures" in the school... yay. and the initials show the name of a SNAKE. with both the Parseltongue bias and the Slytherin bias standing against such a stunt. Totally normal behavior of a mentally balanced and stable person. Why not Cedric John Potter? (John was Remus middle name) or Ronald Hermes Potter? Even Collin would have been a better choice than "Albus Severus". That's almost as if the Parents of Ivan IV actualy did christen him "the terrible" at birth...

[@AVeryComplicatedHatSituation]

This is exactly how I feel. I've noticed the rumblings about Rowling for a while, but didn't pay much attention because I loved the books. Perhaps I should find better books, though.

[@teahaze]

@@RedKincaid It became really distracting in later rereads noticing how frequently a character's specific physical trait is referenced, like umbridge's fat fingers, slughorn's walrus mustache, and snape's greasy-ass hair. It's like anti-character development.

[@jacobhogan3208]

I'm just sitting here thinking about how "Hermoine could never understand the concept of slavery" has to now mesh with the "She was a black girl the whole time" retcon.

[@yuumakadiri1513]

Black Hermione's ancestors watching her in the afterlife like: 😐

[@Voltorb1993]

that's one big yikes right there

[@worldcomicsreview354]

Ah yes, the whole world is the USA, I'd forgotten...

[@jacobhogan3208]

@@worldcomicsreview354 I'm a Canadian.

[@mathiasrryba]

@@yuumakadiri1513 it would've been her grandparents, possibly her parents too

[@pinkusdean1178]

hearing how much she depicts women with masculine features as bad and ugly really hit close to home as a woman with PCOS, ever since I was around 10 i've had imense body hair and my weight has been a problem to manage (insuline resistance is a bitch) so I was made fun of it and was self concious about it for most of my life, even now at 23 I struggle somedays with my facial hair and body hair. i've even had women think I was trans in the bathrooms and berate me for it!

[@CorwinFound]

I'm sorry you deal with A-hole people like that. The paradox of TERF-ism. In their effort to hurt trans people, invariably because so few trans people are actually out there, 9 times out of 10 they are hurting cis women and girls. Yay feminism eh...

[@fomxgorl]

trans woman here. im sorry that happened to you. you don't deserve it 🫂

[@ariatrent6263]

Fellow PCOS sufferer here 🫂

[@pedro-pascals-armpit]

yup. even if you're a cis woman who just has narrow hips and broad shoulders, the bigotry against trans people will be directed at you too. i used to have a buzzcut, but i have fat tits, and i was *still* regularly misgendered, especially by old white men. none of us are safe from this shit.

[@lilaniloxi]

That sucks man, nobody deserves that :(

[@anmanarrative]

I recently started re-reading the Harry Potter books specifically to take a more critical look at them, and I'm just getting into Order of the Phoenix. It gets to me in retrospect how the solution to Kreacher's story arc (and house elf slavery in general) is just to treat them kindly, when Hermione is one of the only characters who was nice to Kreacher from the get go. Everyone else is mean to him but Hermione isn't, even with how many insults he throws at her specifically. So does kindness only count to a house elf if it comes from their owner? And the same with Winky in Goblet of Fire, every time she had a breakdown Hermione immediately tries to comfort her and shows concern about her wellbeing even though everyone else, even her fellow house elves, treat her as more of a nuisance. And yet her desire to give house elves rights is still constantly treated as a joke throughout the series.

[@camille1324]

I genuinely think she put that in to be like, the house elves are racist too so u don’t have to feel bad for them.

[@AnimusBehemoth]

@@camille1324 Holy crap, you're right. She does the same thing with every scorned creature to whom one of the main cast tries to reach out. That's insidious.

[@jacksyoutubechannel4045]

I think it's treated as a joke because she's condescending to them. They actively desire to do the thing they are doing, and Hermione won't stop forcing her human desires onto the house-elves. I don't think it would've been treated as a joke if it _weren't_ distressing and insulting to the house elves. Most of all, it's not supposed to be a slavery/freedom metaphor. It's a _trade union_ joke. I understand people's desire to draw some sort of parallel with real slaves, but you're reading something in that didn't exist. Rowling needed a character that we could eventually like, but somehow _had_ to do bad things to Harry. So she made a character who couldn't refuse orders. She didn't want that to be _too_ dark for kids (not at that stage of the books, at least), so she made Dobby the odd house-elf out who wasn't happy with his master (like, "Don't worry kids! All the _other_ house-elves are happy little creatures, and Dobby's happy now, too!). She also thought it eliminated what would've been a troublesome aspect of these characters being responsible for the housework at Hogwarts. She didn't want _slaves_ to be working there. So, instead, these creatures are so happy just doing their jobs that they laugh the the girl who tries to "unionize" them.

[@lilyovalle7254]

@@jacksyoutubechannel4045 I mean, It still fails at that because unions are made to stop the kind of treatment Dobby was enduring

[@buncha3arrows195]

@@jacksyoutubechannel4045 Saying that slavery is bad isn't condescending, wtf???

[@tyleralmquist7606]

I think the problem at the end of the 7th book is not the fact that they still have houses at Hogwarts, but the fact that Albus is worried about being put in Slytherin. That means that all of the stereotypes and bigotry surrounding the houses are still in place, so that scene where everyone is sitting together without any segregation in the great hall is completely undone

[@2tired2p15]

Well the entire house system is fundamentally built on stereotypes so the problem is still the system itself

[@Bluey306]

you know how in that epilogue scene, harry then tells albus how it's ok if he gets sorted into slytherin because "one of the bravest men" he knew was in slytherin? your comment makes me wonder: wait so was harry just waiting for this final moment to tell that to his son?? at no point albus severus potter wondered about his name, or at no point did harry tell his kids stories about how slytherins Aren't That Bad Really before any of them went to hogwarts?? or maybe he did, maybe harry told albus severus about the men he was named after, but the whole Slytherins Had Some Good People Too moral either went whoosh over his head or harry conveniently left that part out. this is less of a critique (although it still is) and more...just funny to me i guess. i suppose it works as a reveal for the reader, at the very least, but lmaooo edit: (although now that just makes me think of rowling could've still fitted in the reveal by making albus severus potter nervous and excited about which house he'd be sorted into, because naturally he wants gryffindor because that's what his parents and relatives were in, but whoa wouldn't it be cool if i were sorted into slytherin like the guy i was named after, which as father says was One Of The Bravest Men He Knew!!!1!!!11)

[@tyleralmquist7606]

@@Bluey306 i always kinda read it as Harry just reiterating the point about his name rather than just telling him for the first time, but if it’s the first time it’s an interesting theory

[@Gahanun]

Why are you talking about bigotry? The house system literally sorts people by their personality traits. Just because the protagonists don't want to follow the values of Slytherin doesn't make Slytherin inherently evil.

[@Til_What]

The entire system is dumb. You inherently put 4 groups of people in an us VS them situation, then fuel the rivalry with a point system that assigns weird, arbitrary values at random with absolutely no guide lines or coherency. Not only dividing the students but even the teachers responsible for the various houses, giving them free reign and incentive to use favoritism at every opportunity. If they want the kids to have a sense of rivalry, they could....I don't know....make them compete in some kind of competitive sport? Oh wait.

[@choles523]

the fact that the school chose to gift the rich student with the latest broom so he can join a sports team but not buy the poor kid a new wand when his current one was ruining his academic career

[@CamJames]

checks out. Ever seen the shit student athletes get for free in colleges with huge sports programs?

[@choles523]

@@CamJames lol so true

[@sbagel95]

Wait when did they gift the rich kid with the latest broom?

[@prinnywizzard9608]

​@@sbagel95 The very first book? You could argue it was a personal present from an individual, *not* from the school, plus it was more for the house team than Harry himself, but it's hard not to feel it's double-standards 😅

[@MarLuSpeaks]

It isn't a surprise though, when sports are treated as more worthy than academic achievement. Sports give you credits. If you're good at sports but your academic intelligence is decent at best, your grades are fine. And someone good at sports is more likely to obtain a scholarhip than someone whith higher academic intelligence.

[@miroslavkolarov484]

"Oh, no, look, I'm writing Harry Potter fanfiction" is such a hilarious line

[@Jess38044]

I read the series for the first time as an adult, but had come across a lot of harry potter fanfiction and idea/concept exploration beforehand. Oh boy, some of the things I'd read were so good and had me so intrigued about the series, that when I actually read the books I was so disappointed 😂

[@jimena6194]

I literally only engage with the fandom through fanfiction because it doesn’t support Rowling, plus tons of authors deal with these issues in a much better manner

[@goingunder2548]

Can we make this into a meme?

[@justaghostinthesea]

The whole "Hogwarts House Elf" problem could be solved in an instant jf she just made them ACTUAL EMPLOYEES. Have them be freed House Elves who came to Hogwarts to make an honest living.

[@CamJames]

many slaves in America sold themselves back to their owners after being freed. She didn't even have to think that hard.

[@GemGames3]

I read House Elves are based off German Elves who would secretly come into houses and clean them and leave, but they would hate any sort of payment as they saw it as an insult.

[@baintreachas]

and you could still have social commentary on activism by Hermione… idk, using their issues to further her own social standing (maybe SPEW is a performative organization, something she hopes to use in a future political career), while still being casually classist/racist and not understanding them, their issues or their culture very well. Then she meets Dobby and maybe sees parallels to her own treatment as a muggleborn, could tie into a larger character arc as she matures and finds her identity… etc etc

[@tbotalpha8133]

@@baintreachas Stop, you're threatening to make the story interesting.

[@drohit1207]

@@baintreachas I love the fact that random internet comments can make more interesting stories than an accredited author. But the point of this entire video is to show that JKR isn't really a very good author regardless.

[@ciarangallaghercg]

As another point to Ron's broken wand being completely mishandled, it's absolutely insane to imagine the school would allow a student to have a broken wand. That's the magical equivalent of allowing a kid to carry around a gun that can randomly misfire and then at minimum expecting that child to use the gun in classrooms filled with other children. The fact Ron only manages to injure himself with the wand is a complete miracle and the school doesn't seem to care a jot. Anyway, this might be one of my favourite videos to come back to time and time again, cheers for the great content.

[@AvgJane19]

LITERALLY THIS

[@stingerjohnny9951]

Well, it’s pretty clear that Hogwarts never cared about the safety of their students. I don’t even need to list examples off, you could probably think of examples as you read this.

[@NukkuiskoHyvinVaiPois]

​@@stingerjohnny9951 I always wondered why the ministery of magic hasn't set down some safety regulations. And possibly fired Dumbledore for the constant endangerement of kids that happens under his watch. Like imagine being in charge of children and thinking "I should totally keep this tree on the yard that will beat children into a bloody pulp."

[@MrSignman65]

@@NukkuiskoHyvinVaiPois Safety regulations are government overreach by Hogwarts standards.

[@somitomi]

@@NukkuiskoHyvinVaiPois The funniest thing about that is that they didn't just leave the tree where it was, it was put there to keep children away from a secret passageway. Becuase that's absolutely the best way to do that, it's not like there's magic that can make entrances practically undetectable or hide entire buildings from everyone except those who have been told about it by a specific person.

[@mjr_schneider]

One little detail about the books that I always found odd was how Salazar Slytherin is said to be the only one of the four founders of Hogwarts to have been opposed to admitting muggle-borns. Keep in mind that Hogwarts was supposedly founded in the year 1000 by four pureblood wizards, and apparently three of those wizards were progressive and tolerant enough all the way back then that they allowed them to attend their school. And yet, a thousand years later in the present day, the presence of muggle-borns in the wizarding world is _still_ controversial and Dumbledore is hated by the universe's conservatives for being accepting of them. So the conservative, anti-muggle-born faction have been out of power at Hogwarts for its entire history and yet for some reason they're still mad about muggle-borns being there a thousand years later. Now maybe this can be explained in-universe by some historical whitewashing a la "The founding fathers were actually anti-slavery", but what it reflects is an author who is deeply uncomfortable with established institutions being tainted by association with past injustices. It can't be that Hogwarts used to ban muggle-borns and only recently began admitting them, no it has to have always been good and all its flaws have to be pinned on Slytherin.

[@TheHopperUK]

It occurs to me that some of these problems with the wizarding world's lack of progress and weird opinions would be solved if wizards were essentially immortal. Like, say wizards live for five hundred years. It wouldn't help the ubermensch issues but it would explain their politics a bit.

[@resistyranny_0992]

Pure blood power! Muggles and mubloods are trash and are lower beings.. salazar had it right, that's why slytherin is the only house I would accept at hogwarts. And I'd be damned if my wife isn't a pure blood too.

[@__a_4444]

@@TheHopperUK Immortality kinda already exists and is implied to be possible by the existence of those little immortality macguffins called Horcruxes Voldemort splits his soul into. I think it's implied wizards used them before but nobody had gone as far as splitting their soul into 7.

[@attentivechair3248]

What an excellent point. I always found this whole "they were all progressive but Slytherin" not making any sense. If basically all English wizards went to Hogwarts for 1000 years, then how did a very progressive school create wizards that were very wizard-supremacist, racist, etc? It looks like Slytherins are basically the richest and most influential wizards too, so what gives?

[@siukong]

I see this as a pretty common pitfall among fantasy and sci fi stories. Many of their authors just seem to be flat out bad at understanding long time spans when doing their worldbuilding. They'll just casually throw things out like "oh we've been at war for 5000 years" or "the ruling family has reigned for a millennium" not getting just how crazy these lengths of time are. Maybe not not completely implausible depending on the specific context, but usually not well justified in a world still inhabited by humans with normal human lifespans (life expectancy and the general flow of generations is the underpinning of a lot of the rhythms/patterns of history).

[@georgejones4960]

starting to think that JK has never written a new HP story that takes place in the post-canon future because then she'd have to admit to herself that problems still happen when "good people" are in charge

[@sammyvictors2603]

Jk has this pathological inability to admit she did wrong or made a mistake. She obviously needs to seek therapy. But I doubt she will.

[@wies9395]

@@sammyvictors2603 Nuh-uh she is a billionaire (or was at some point), obviously she is always right!!!

[@Blacknight8850]

That stuff Hagrid says about how house elves need to be kept as slaves for their own good and refers to them as "their breed" could, in a better book, be a really good undermining of Hagrid as this loveable uncle-type figure as the POV characters' worldview matures and becomes more nuanced than the whole "good team / bad team" morality. "This guy who's nice to me and wants to stop the villains can still be a bad person" and all that. You know, if this series wasn't written by someone who considers change to be the one thing worse than people who are transgender or fat.

[@MrGksarathy]

Transgender people also want to change, so I think that anti-change stuff plays into her transphobia.

[@AlexisHiemis]

@@MrGksarathy I think you are onto something here, Rowlings obsession with people knowing 'their place' probably means she wants us trans people to cast ourselves into the role of abominations by nature and just accept that we are supposed to have a lowly status and literally beg for acceptance just like Hermione was cut down as soon as she was getting to pushy in her attempts for change instead of overacchieving and therefore begging to be accepted by the cool wizarding world.

[@sholem_bond]

Or it could even be used to build up Hagrid's complex issues with his own heritage as someone who's part-wizard and part-nonhuman, by giving him internalized speciesism that he needs to overcome throughout the series, and maybe that could tie into doing more interesting stuff with Grawp... if the series had, like, a better writer

[@unknownuser3926]

Expecially because Hagrid is obsessed with the care of creatures seen as evil and dangerous, the idea he thinks Buckbeak is "misunderstood" and deserving of care and freedom but elves just exist as things to be owned and treated as their masters see fit seems very contradictory.

[@CulturalMarxist4985]

She saved the 'undermining of the good guy' twist for Dumbledore in the last book. The bit where Hagrid talks about the house-elves is just a small part in the fourth book, and I really doubt it was ever considered seriously or thought into.

[@TheRealKLT]

“I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the 'incredible originality' of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a 'school novel', good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

[@socialismandrevolution8299]

Satenmadpun also made a great video about all the flaws of Harry Potter and pointed out that the main reason why it was so popular was the setting of Hogwarts, which provided great escapism for many people. Beyond that, there really just wasn't a lot to it.

[@blahaj420]

god I love le guin, a true legend

[@legrandliseurtri7495]

''ethically mean-spirited'' Oh my gosh that roast.

[@allenkeettikkal3149]

Honestly I wouldn’t have really minded the books even if it was predictable. The problem is the fact we suddenly realize that JK Rowling’s incoherent political views were in her work from the start. Apparently JK Rowling has a weird tendency to worsen problems than fox them.

[@heilmodrhinnheimski]

Ursula, please stop being so based, I beg of you

[@ChiefLibrarianAhriman]

"He was actually just one bad day away from becoming a fascist murderer, sorry about that". Shaun, even when you are covering important issues with these books, it never ceases to impress me how you manage to insert comedy.

[@sksthrowaway2270]

Isn’t this just the plot of Joker (2019)

[@sunbleachedangel]

I mean, it's also true

[@sunbleachedangel]

@@sksthrowaway2270 no?

[@elsanto2401]

Guys he was Jokerfied!!!

[@acchuptalaily7353]

So Batman became the Joker after one bad day

[@quertie420]

56:07 ITS FUCKING CRAZY HOW SHE UNINTENTIONALLY RECREATED THE TUSKEGEE EXPERIMENTS WITH HER SLAVE CHARACTERS IN HER WIZARD BOOK FOR KIDS AND HAD HER POV CHARACTER SAY "if my friend were here she'd be mad. her being mad is annoying to me so i'm not going to tell her"

[@quertie420]

like.... this was going to an american audience by the time he was introduced (i don't remember specifically but the internet says book 7/8) this book was being printed in america.....

[@joannamyers1268]

In the Chamber of Secrets, why on earth did none of the teachers notice that Ron's wand wasn't working? They could have easily gotten him a new wand themselves or sent an owl to his parents, but they didn't even talk to him about any of that. A wand isn't a luxury for a wizard, it's an important piece of equipment they need all the time, especially a kid in school.

[@peeblekitty5780]

Yeah, like if a kid had a broken school-essential chromebook or tech (it's the best parallel I can think of considering the value and multi-use of a wand but ik it doesn't translate back many years) the school wouldn't just go "oh well, guess you'll just fail this entire year" like what-

[@YEY0806]

@Peeble Kitty Honestly, I think Hogwarts would be an actual terrible school to go to

[@kevintyson1947]

lmao! While I do agree with you, you know that that doesn't happen in real life in most schools right? students come into class with no pencils, pens, paper and more and most teachers dont care especially if they are middle or high school age like in the HP books. That is NOT their responsibilities to buy a student an equipment that probably costed the equivalent of 120 Euros.

[@joannamyers1268]

@@kevintyson1947 This isn't quite the same as not having pencils. For one, kids can borrow pencils or pens from other kids, but a wand is far more complicated. We've seen, not every wand works well with someone else, and also, every kid only has one, which makes it difficult to share. For another thing, this school has, or used to have, funds to give students who don't have the money for supplies, as we saw with Tom Riddle. That suggests a precedent for providing a student a new wand, even if it is a cheaper loaner wand.

[@peeblekitty5780]

@@kevintyson1947 "or sent an owl to his parents". A middle or high school would definitely send an email or something home if their student was missing a vital piece of equipment (and possibly lend them a substitute to give back at the end of the school day)

[@omegailijevich4005]

I remember being upset AS A CHILD to see the SPEW plot line played for laughs. I found the treatment of goblins really upsetting and genuinely thought Hermione would prevail over the people taunting her. I was also a young girl who identified with Hermione, so it was strange to see her made out to be some kind of self-righteous fool for trying to seek change. Rowling always claims that Hermione was an “empowering” character for girls, so it’s genuinely baffling that she would punish her and make her seem annoying for trying to increase political freedoms for the oppressed? when no one else was doing so?

[@daraghokane4236]

Hagrid goblins like serving it's there Nature. Hermione but the first one to be free is happier. Hagrid hes just wired the exception proving the rule. It reads like Hagrid always believed Goblins should serve, this now seeing evidence that he was wrong doubles down and dismises it.

[@Rubberman202]

I think you mean house elves, not goblins.

[@sarahshroom]

i feel the exact way you do. i identified with hermione quite often and thought it was great she started SPEW. always bothered me how she was played off as being obnoxious

[@19arthur89]

@@sarahshroom that's the real world though. And through all the criticism she stuck to her guns. That's the real message.

[@safala]

Right? It also bothered me to no end that Harry wasn't as enthusiastic(?) as Hermione about SPEW. As the MC, I thought he'd be the one doing the correct things or at least supporting the ones who do. This is one of the many reasons I don't like Harry as a character. Yeah, characters can (and are supposed to) have flaws but when your character is supposed to be this great guy who will fight against the evil, I thought it would be necessary for him to stand up for the injusticed.

[@qrangejuice8225]

Harry's possession of a massive pile of gold is such an easy thing to make a non-issue, too: just make it so that he can't withdraw much more than what he needs for school supplies each year because of wizard law or somethint else. Then you can have the nice "oh my parents had ridiculous levels of generational wealth" AND also the "I'm constrained by money" struggle, AND you get payoff when he comes of age in book 7 and can finally access his money freely! It's literally a cure-all!

[@dragonfire72]

Or write that there are laws similar to the US’s, where if you deposit a large sum of money, you get investigated for money fraud. So if Harry gives the Weasleys a large sum of money, they fall under legal investigation, making the situation worse for them

[@roerd]

I thought the same, a few words about how the the gold is kept in the wizard-world version of a trust fund would have solved this issue.

[@Webbedtrout]

Basically how rich people with massive inheritances actually live. Most of the time the money is tied up in a trust with very explicit limitations on how to spend the money and the trust moreover is controlled by a trustee which can be someone like Dumbledore as he already had control of the account before.

[@shadowmaster1313]

Yeah I realised watching this video that I think I headcanoned reading the books that Harry could only access the vault for so much money in a year until he was an adult (because that would be sensible) but that's not actually in the books is it?

[@mortenlunddk]

They address it in book 3, when he wants a firebolt broom. He has no source of income and still four years left at Hogwarts so he is worried about his finances he can't just spend it on whatever he wants and he has his Nimbus 2000 still at that point.

[@shoopmahboop1374]

Its so funny to me that every other iteration of Harry Potter besides the books tried to scrub the whole slavery thing as much as possible, and i just imagine so many people telling J.K. Rowling to tone down the whole slavery thing

[@zoufordham]

On the house-elf thing, JK literally could've made all of them like Dobby and, hear me out, could have made Hogwarts a refuge for house-elves who needed somewhere to work following being freed or having run away from being enslaved, whether for wages or not, instead of giving them all Stockholm Syndrome like poor little Winky had. They deserved so much better.

[@judeconnor-macintyre9874]

Or they could have made House Elf's like the house spirit's they're based on.

[@Crydus]

Winky could have stayed the way she is in this case as an example that some wizards abuse several generations of house elves so far that some elves actually have such a behaviour.

[@Gloomdrake]

@@Crydus minus the victim blaming

[@sottosopravoce]

You know it's bad when even the Oompa Loompas get a better deal.

[@liriocorrearosa1173]

She could have explored the fact that slaves didn't had anywhere else to go due to discrimination. That the wizard society is so bigoted that they don't see house elves as equal capable as wizards, then, they have no choice but serving, since no one would pay real money for their services. Obviously that would take some writing maturity Rowling doesn't have, also she would need to explore how bad is this capitalist world (since she made the wizards capitalists too, anyway) where people recieve ridiculous wages (in this case, none) for exhausting work just because they were born "wrong". But she'd never do that. She's a neoliberal, as Shaun has pointed.

[@moretyquira]

The thing is that Rowling could've easily kept the "house elves love to work" thing without the slavery aspect by quite simply making it that you have to treat the house elf well if you want them to stick around and you attract them to you by being kind to them, similarity to how elves/brownies work in folktales. Then you could have this whole underground elf trade where elves are being trapped by magic and forced to stay with their masters by being tricked, which is what Dobby is in and what Hermione fights against because wizards feel entitled to their servitude but she gets a bit overzealous and assumes that they're all slaves. Keeping the element of "listen to the ones you're fighting for" without ya know, defending slavery??? This would keep aspects of the brownie (which is what Rowling based the elves on) while making it clear that you don't own them. I don't understand this whole "you own them thing" in Rowling's version because in a lot of the original brownie stories they played pranks, are easily offended, demand offerings from the house, usually in the form of food, and will leave if you take advantage of them. The only aspect that Rowling took was the clothes thing, which for brownies would be seen as offensive to them if they were offered clothes (or baptised) and would leave to go find a new home to take care of. They weren't slaves, they were fully independent, prideful creatures who would protect and take care of the house in exchange for offerings and often believed themselves to be better than humans. Brownies at Hogwarts would probably torture the students for not cleaning up after themselves or when they behaved like brats, which honestly would've been way more interesting (like the whole bludger thing that Dobby does, that absolutely would be something a brownie would do to a student if they felt that the student was being bad). Imagine if at the end of every meal, the students had to leave a treat for the elves as a gesture of gratefulness. You could even have it so Dobby likes clothes and that's what makes him weird according to the other elves.

[@sarahnade8663]

I love how in this comment you've already created fan fiction that's way better than what Joanne wrote in her book.

[@SpukiTheLoveKitten75]

I know! The house elves could've been like those Doozers from "FRAGGLE ROCK"! Creature's whose very nature is the love of work.

[@patternrecon5271]

African slave owners Arab slave owners Jewish slave owners Berber slave owners Ottoman slave owners Tartar slave owners Moor slave owners

[@cjboyo]

Exactly! Make it a symbiotic relationship instead of an exploitative one. That would 100% allow them to remove the disturbing drapetomania-esque characterization of Dobby

[@lettuceprime4922]

@@patternrecon5271 - Trans Atlantic slave trade was worse than all of them

[@Aaarrrgh89]

The worst part about the time travel is that it didn't even need fixing. It is clearly established (and then undermined by the stage play) that you CANNOT CHANGE THE PAST. Harry and Hermione only fill in details they were not previously aware of when they use the Time Turner, anything they directly observed stays the same. So, since Harry was present at Cedric's death, he already knows that no time traveler showed up to save him, so any attempt to do so would fail. Clear, simple, logically consistent explanation. And Rowling just completely ignore it.

[@Newfiecat]

It was nice, simple closed-loop time travel. You're right, it didn't need fixing.

[@cthulhutheendless1587]

I still think Rowling considered time turners too OP to exist in her universe. Even if you couldn’t change the past directly, imagine the mayhem Harry or Voldemort could wreak if they had access to existing in several places at once. Harry could retrieve all horcruxes simultaneously or Voldemort could carry out concurrent assassinations, etc…. It complicates the story so much, and Rowling probably didn’t want to get too sci-fi with her fantasy books

[@GotWrackspurts]

@@cthulhutheendless1587 exactly, so long as you don't need to be in the same place twice, you could continuously relive a single day and do whatever. No conflicting interactions or use of the same objects, but still it veers pretty close to omnipotence to just leave in

[@MrSamulai]

Disagreed. If future events couldn't affect the past, Harry couldn't have gone back in time to save Sirius and himself from the dementors. There might be an alternative past where he survived but Sirius didn't, so he went back to save them both, but only remembers the altered events because the moment he changed something it had always been so. More to the point, if they couldn't affect anything in the past, why go there in the first place? Could you at any point radically change the present by NOT using a time turner? It's the usual swiss cheese writing mixed with time travel. It's beyond repair.

[@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick]

I love the idea of “pics or didn’t happen” time travel.

[@scootinand]

41:29 holy shit. I never even thought about that when the whole "Black Hermione" thing came up. Harry "my black friend got all haughty about slavery and I grew up to be a rich cop" Potter

[@shazzy544]

Oh my god, the parralel between Winkie becoming a depressed alcoholic after being freed and post-abolition stereotypes about black people becoming depressed alcoholics without the guidance of slavery, that hit different. This is actually outrageous.

[@maristiller4033]

Holy shit I never even MADE that connection before…but yeah I remember even as a child being somewhat uncomfortable with the house elves as “happy slaves” being a child with a modicum of awareness

[@ollympian_art]

@@maristiller4033 i grew up only watching the movies, so i was under the impression for a long time that “slavery is bad” was actually a core part of the HP story. i thought it was just slytherin who kept house elves because yknow, slytherin are the evil ones, harry and his friends all knew it was bad and wrong for the elves to be enslaved. but… no. i guess not. and really, why didnt rowling take that route?? just have the malfoys and other slytherins keep house elves and all the gOoD wizards know it’s bad? then maybe when harry gets older he can campaign for elves to have a choice in whether they want to work for humans because his great friend dobby who triumphantly died a free elf taught him that slavery is bad regardless of if it’s wizards or muggles doing it? what part of rowling’s mind decided that “actually slavery good” was a better idea than that?

[@seelfire4725]

@@timog7358 okay simple question: what would make a person start drinking more: living their whole life in slavery or responsibilities of being a free? but please.. think real hard about this. it is really really really diffucult to notice, a WHOLE LIVE IN SLAVERY or living on your own. please conside wisely

[@timog7358]

@@seelfire4725 you cant have a drinking problem when you cannot drink alcohol (being not free). i dont know what your point is

[@jm6406]

@@timog7358 justifying continued enslavement as protecting them from… too much alcohol? Idk man, doesn’t sound right to me

[@alexandercave5714]

An excellent deconstruction of the whole 'slave race' narrative can be found in the Doctor Who story 'Planet of the Ood'. In an earlier story called "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit", the Ood were introduced as a slave race that, according to the humans using them, possess a low-level telepathy that meant that their only purpose was to serve. Like Harry at the start of CoS with Dobby, the characters of the Doctor and Rose are horrified by the fact that humans believe that the Ood would simply become depressed and die if freed, since they would have no-one to serve, which is a worryingly similar idea to the one Rowling presents in the character of Winky. Rose is even mocked by crewmates when they suspect her of being a "friend of the Ood", but unlike Hermione who is presented as being incorrect and unreasonable when trying to form SPEW, Rose is shown to be absolutely correct both in this episode and later in 'Planet of the Ood', an episode that takes an incredibly strong stand against slavery and completely rejects the whole house elf/slave race narrative. The episode reveals that the Ood are peaceful, telepathic creatures that were captured by humans, lobotomised and then sold as slaves in vast numbers. The episode makes it very clear that there is no such thing as a slave race and instead draws uncomfortable parallels to the modern world, an example being when Donna says that she can't imagine slaves on modern day earth, only to be shut down by the Doctor asking her "who do you think made your clothes?" It's an absolutely fantastic deconstruction of the same 'slave race' narrative that Rowling upholds, and it ends with the Ood being freed and gaining rights equal to those of the humans, shutting down the oppressive and violent company that was enslaving them and creating a better world. It's not a perfect episode, and I'm probably not doing it justice by explaining it (plus, it was unfortunately ignored by later showrunners Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, who made the Ood into generic servants again), but it is a far better story than Rowling's house elves, actually deconstructing and discarding the 'slave race' narrative rather than doing what Rowling does by letting the good guys keep house elves because they're the good guys.

[@heatherrockwell9012]

Another important thing here is that Planet of the Ood wasn't actually intended at the time Impossible Planet aired. The writers of the latter realized in hindsight that they really should've resolved that arc, so they expanded on it and made it less... concerningly open-ended. The point here being that you can like, retcon things in *good* ways. You don't have to be like J.K. and just decide not to deal with inconvenient social issues. Also, I never realized that they just dumped that arc- that's very irritating.

[@rf_switch]

Wonder how Russell T Davies would do if he made a show in the Potterverse

[@Rexotec]

@@rf_switch he'd make everyone trans and gay and it'd be wonderful

[@Fragile_Media]

@@Rexotec we don't deserve RTD do we?

[@Fragile_Media]

I was literally on the exact same wavelength when that part of the video happened. There's also the addition of the Ood being enslaved because they literally have no choice, their brains are in their hands and they can't not be peaceful creatures Rowling could have done something similar, with the house elves being quite small and frail in appearance

[@lmn977]

You mentioned that the dismissive pay-off to the elf/slavery arc is in Book Four when Winky doesn't want freedom, but I'd argue that it's even more disappointing and comes at the end of that book. Barty Crouch Jr (the book's villain) reveals that he and his father had been using Winky to abuse, control and imprison each other for years prior to her release. She witnessed and was forced to participate in all of it (including covering up two murders) and was evidently very upset and frightened. But they forbade her from telling anyone. If we read that chapter with an eye to Winky's experience (and tbf, it's easy to miss it because the whole chapter is a horror story of familial abuse and a massive tonal glitch in the series), it turns out her experience has been similarly unbearable to Dobby's. Her drinking, which was played for laughs earlier in the book, now turns out to be (likely) a response to everything she's endured. So Harry hears an account of an elf who, despite not wanting freedom, still turned out to have been abused. He should be newly galvanised to free more elves. Right? Like, it turns out many people treat their elves appallingly, even when they're not a Malfoy, and it goes unnoticed and there's no regulation. But Winky is barely mentioned again in the series except as a ~comical~ alcoholic, and Spew remains a punchline.

[@ugolomb]

Winky's story (and even, to some extent, Dobby's) could have been used to prove that simply freeing the house elves isn't enough. Dobby is happy to be freed, but then finds it extremely difficult to find a new (paid) job and to fit it in with the other elves; Winky treats her freedom as another trauma she endured. So this could have been a sobering lesson for Hermione, that freeing elves has to be done with care, to ensure that they could also *enjoy* their freedom. Instead, even she seems to simply forget about the idea altogether, instead of setting out to improve upon it.

[@barrybarry7159]

@@ugolomb That would require JKR to think about what she writes, something it seems she very rarely wants to do

[@SteveCrafts2k]

​@@ugolomb Or that simply freeing house elves won't undo centuries of indoctrination and slavery. What she needs to do isn't simply to free them, but to abolish or at least cripple the racial hierarchy altogether. But no, stick to the status quo or whatever.

[@ugolomb]

@@SteveCrafts2k With the Epilogue set merely 19 years later, I wouldn't have expected to see the hierarchies abolished altogether, even in a fantasy setting. In real life, even centuries aren't enough. But she could at least have shown the main characters being aware of the deep-rooted problems and starting to work towards a solution. She didn't even go that far. As I said in another comment, a simple gesture like having Kreacher still working for Harry, but with clothes (meaning he's now being paid and *choosing* to stay rather than being forced to) would have been at least a minor indication that things are starting to move in the right direction...

[@Pihsrosnec]

The worst part is there's no mention that if unpaid labor was simply made optional instead of enforced slavery, there wouldn't be an issue even accepting the idea that most elves like being slaves. there's no reason given as to why elves couldn't just be given the option to opt out of slavery whenever they like instead of having to be dismissed by their master. it's even implied that some other elves are explicitly like dobby in that they actively dislike being slaves, and yet a solution that would benefit this minority without interfering with the majority in any negative way and would likely bring an end to slavery overall by simply normalising not being enslaved to the elf population is never even brought up. if the elfs really like working and really wouldn't accept being payed, then why aren't they allowed to decide that for themselves? why are they unable to leave of their own volition? why is the work of elves actively hidden with very little direct communication between elves and humans if the elves are happy with their conditions? why are circumstances like dobbys accepted as collateral damage when they could be avoided entirely? none of this is ever brought up at any point and it's infuriating!

[@loloverlord1664]

It is so weird for me to look back at the Harry Potter saga with this dialogue where Hagrid explains "Dobby may like freedom because he's weird" to justify systemic slavery. At this point, I would have accepted something much darker, like maybe Dumbledore revealing "The house elves are not natural living beings, they were conjured by a forgotten master of the dark arts as a twisted, very nefarious experiment, and he designed them to be obediant and feel pain much more intensely than we do. So creating them was evil, but the magical world just use them because it's convenient, and we never had any proper reflexion about the ethics of our relationship with other magical creatures before Hermione, so here we are!"

[@jrhooman]

"oh no look, I'm writing Harry Potter fanfiction". This just goes into show how much better the series could have been if only JKR wasn't the way she is.

[@otto7588]

Okay, I love this video and agree with a lot of it But its just little guys who like being slaves. It doesnt need to be a backhanded political statement or something, she just wrote these new characters for her story. I dont see how it correlates with real world slavery

[@loloverlord1664]

@@otto7588 Any fictionnal slavery correlate to real world slavery. Fiction resonates with people because they recognize the real problems behind it.

[@caramel9154]

@@otto7588 what _is_ there for the little guys to like about being slaves? like at least fae in mythology usually get something in return for doing chores (or they just rock your shit tbh) but their elves are forced to do labor and are unable to be their own people. i mean if this is something they were forced into for centuries, the 'liking' of being a slave could be akin to how an abuse victim 'likes' staying with their abuser- the familiarity is more comforting than going out into the unknown, unprepared. Dobby might be an outlier since he is actually prepared.

[@otto7588]

@@caramel9154 their brain likes it? They have been made to like it? My point is that I really have no idea why people get mad over it. Its a fantasy world. And one guy said "all fictional depiction of slavery has to do with real life slavery" thats just incorrect

[@ashenesoterica]

...Y'know, I used to say Rowling's biggest flaw as an author is an inability to write a keystone villain worth a damn. And this video kind of explains why that might be to me; if nothing else, what she identifies as evil, as what *makes up* a villain, and makes them compelling to her, is just utterly off the mark. To speak nothing of what she considers good. Also, I deeply respect how much homework you did for this video's sake. Thank you. This was very nicely, if not expertly done. edit : Also it's kind of hilarious to me how Radcliffe caught hell for being in a raunchy comedy when Rowling wrote garbage like people wondering as to the state of a sizable fellow's dangly-bits and, far as I've heard, caught not even mild purgatory for it.

[@redpup112]

I think it's because no one read the Casual Vacancy. /joking I legit never heard of the book until I watched this video for the first time.

[@sandpiperr]

I swear I think of something else every time I watch this video! The part about 'what does the logic that racism against Muggle-borns is wrong because Hermione is really good at magic say to Hermione?' really puts her in a whole new light! In the book, she's just portrayed as an uptight, bookish nerd, but, with this in mind, it might very well be that her obsessive fixation on academic achivement might come from anxiety that, since she's Muggle-born, she has more to prove. In her mind she HAS to be very good at magic, because being a medicore wizard, on top of being Muggle-born, will mean that no one will ever accept or respect her in this world that she really is kind of an outsider in. She might very well think that being good at magic defines the entirety of her worth, which is really pretty dark!

[@mlgcactus1035]

To bad J.K doesn't address this beyond "racism le bad"

[@alim.9801]

Oh God, like gifted kid syndrome mixed with wizard racism

[@bigoofsushi6979]

​@@alim.9801She's basically a model minority if you think about it... Which is pretty sad.

[@approximated_nerd]

liberals will never, ever have the balls to do this, unfortunately.

[@brycebitetti1402]

​@bigoofsushi6979 I'm slowly starting to realize why this franchise has so much fanfiction when Rowling comes up with such interesting character concepts but is too short-sighted and blinded by her own political views that she fails to grasp the gold that she's created.

[@lane6216]

The irony that Rowling tried to make Hermione black after the fact, and Hermione is the one that was trying to help the house slaves….oh dear.

[@stevendemayo3631]

Huh? She didn't try to make her black, she just said that Hermione could have been black in response to people freaking out about a black actress being cast in the play. She has said an endless amount of stupid things but that isn't one of them

[@EspeonMistress00]

​@@stevendemayo3631That is a stupid thing tho. "Could have been black" can be easily debunked by her own books. And no I am not talking about the infamous "White face stuck out from behind a tree" line.

[@DevilboyScooby]

"Hermione was looking very brown" -PoA, the chapter where she buys Crookshanks. You just wouldn't say that if she was black.

[@EspeonMistress00]

@@DevilboyScooby Or that one instance from the later books where she uses a joke telescope made by Fred and George that punched one of her eyes and Harry remarked how half her face looked a lot like a panda bear.

[@EspeonMistress00]

@@DevilboyScoobyOr how any actually black characters that have few lines are described to have dark skin when they are introduced but the MAIN character who is apparently black isn't even described as such.

[@cosmo_junk]

also worth mentioning how all the female characters who don't live conventional married lives are killed off

[@miccassidy6337]

Or how she created a Tonks, an androgynous character who hated her birth name and could willing change to be her true self, made her become more 'mature' and feminine and in a relationship with Lupin (another lgbtq+ coded character), made her a mom and housewife, and then killed her off.

[@cosmo_junk]

@@miccassidy6337 absolutely. any deviation from tradwife femininity or manic pixie dream girl femininity (arguably luna) is punished.

[@akimbofresh8109]

True. In reality they just buy cats before they inevitably unalive themselves.

[@akimbofresh8109]

@@cosmo_junkFalse! I also sort by top comment.

[@akimbofresh8109]

@@cosmo_junkHarmless people don’t try to force others to think like them or be canceled.

[@ironeius]

The thing about Harry becoming an auror (along with the destiny of the rest of the main cast) makes less and less sense the more you think about it. Clearly JK wants to go the fantasy ending route where the main charachters go into positions of power*. Problem is, with her "modern" setting, while emulating stories where we see charachters becoming monarchs and aristocrats, she makes her main trio become cops and beaurocrats. But it also makes zero sense in the context of the books themselves. The Ministry is always an hostile (or indifferent at best), distant and barely knowable entity. It is represented as complex and too detached from real things to be a solution. Now, the main setting of the books is the Hogwarts school. It is a wonderful place full of mysteries, which is presented as a safe haven for Harry, the first he comes to know. He is deeply affectionate towards school personnel of all stripes, from the principal (whose opinion is presented as the wisest and always morally right by the narrative) to the groundskeeper. Harry is highly defensive of Hogwarts and at some point he creates a peer education club for a subject that is not being taught properly, a subject that is deeply important to Harry. The path laid in the books would have only makes sense if Harry became a Defence Against Dark Arts teacher, Hermione principal of Hogwarts and Ron an administrative, or new groundskeeper or librarian or maybe if JK wanted to seem progressive a stay at home dad. The finale leading our main charachters into ministry work is like watching a train run on the same straight tracks for miles for then just teleporting onto a different set of tracks just before arriving at a completely different station than the one it was directed to.

[@MattEldritchHorror]

That kind of reminds me of how the story of the Ugly Ducking can be interpreted. The bullying the duckling received was wrong, not because bullying is evil, but because the duckling was a baby swan the whole time.

[@sasentaiko]

Ooh, I like your career picks for Harry and Hermione! I don’t think the book conveys respect for education as an institution. When a hero settles down as a high school teacher, that’s portrayed as a strange choice. It seems that the Hogwarts faculty are only prestigious for the sake of giving the students a fancy pedigree. To me it’s not such a leap for the protagonists to take over powerful positions because, as Shaun said, it’s all about “the wrong hands” vs “the right hands”.

[@BrianJT]

meanwhile, all the hp fanfics where they decide to give harry godlike power and make him dumbledore 2.0 :p

[@DinsRune]

My headcanon is that Harry went into law enforcement so he can have the thin veneer of being held accountable while hunting down dark wizards and pure blood supremacists.

[@mrh8142]

@@MattEldritchHorror that's how I always interpreted it as a kid. I haven't thought of this story in a long long time, but wow yeah there's definitely a parallel here

[@marianne95]

I remember feeling uncomfortable with the ‘squib’ plot line for Filch, even as a kid. it felt like an extremely heavy handed and bizarre way to integrate the concept of wizarding disability into the story. especially because filch is considered the disgusting, lonely outsider that relies heavily on an animal for support. he is also the entire castle’s ONLY caretaker and has to do everything by hand because of his lack of magical ability. with no support from the school board. it’s such a strange idea to suddenly introduce a wizarding disability as the punishment for the mean character that everyone hates... and then sweep the idea under the table (at least she’s consistent). the idea of squibs could have been an interesting world building element - especially as the story is primarily set in a magical school that teaches gifted students. an exploration into the outsider members of the community who are born without magic could have been very interesting - but instead the concept is introduced on a whim as a way to explain why a character is so pathetic and nasty. god. maybe it’s a good idea that she forgot about the squib idea. I think an introduction of a disabled character (johnny mcwheelchair or something) would probably have been disastrous.

[@drawingsticks5333]

Yeah, that storyline just made me immediately sympathetic to Filch because 1) I would also be absolutely pissed at students making a mess if I had to clean it all by hand myself 2) it must be terrifying to know that the kids could overpower you easily.

[@r.r.4809]

Johnny McWheelchair 💀💀💀

[@glupik1234]

I remember feeling really, really uneasy when reading that scene where Harry discovers that Filch is a squib. The whole character of Filch afterwards became something that would bother me, though I couldn't yet formulate why. I haven't read hp since the last book came out, and now remembering all these details is 💀💀💀💀

[@weareallbornmad410]

I remember being shocked at that too. Hating and mocking someone for a thing they had no control over, and/or using them as servants surrounded by what they can't have, and giving them a name that basically means "dirt" on top of that... it was just so obviously cruel to me, even as a ten year old.

[@vaiyt]

Squibs are perfectly consistent with the rest of the views in the books. Bigotry is a disagreement on facts, and squibs are objectively inferior, so they're fair game for the good and bad guys.

[@gokuxsephiroth4505]

There's so much I *could* say to this video, but the concept of Cedric becoming the joker because he lost a tournament as a literal child is hilarious to me. Like... That's the same villain backstory as that dude from "Meet the Robinsons".

[@bookwerm4life19]

Honestly, it leaves me in hysterics. Like-- y'all mean to tell me he was *embewassed* so he decided to become a murderer?? Instead of marrying Cho and having a good life?? The fuck??

[@ashikjaman1940]

Don't insult Goob like that, he wasn't a fascist he was just pissed at one specific guy

[@jackhumbach9086]

He actually becomes batman

[@diegovegas3850]

@@jackhumbach9086 ha ha ha 😆

[@spi231]

About as bad as Infinite from Sonic Forces.

[@mooglefluff]

Something not mentioned is Moaning Myrtle. She's a perfect example of how the Wizarding world fails both the people its trying to protect, and how it governs magic. She was bullied terribly at school, and then brutally murdered in a hate crime - and the Ministry's response is to lock her in the school where she both died and was bullied, just because she was annoying (not harming, she cant, shes a ghost ffs) her abusers. The line where she says "I tried to kill myself but then I remembered I was already dead" is SO dark and Rowling plays it all for laughs

[@damaskusseraph6046]

One solution to the “harry is rich” thing that could keep the story in line is that since he’s a minor he is on a pension and can’t access his full bank account till he’s an adult.

[@damaskusseraph6046]

@@cat-le1hf truth

[@juliall255]

@@cat-le1hf BAD DA BOOM

[@mikripetra9704]

The solution from A Series of Unfortunate Events! It wouldn’t even be hard.

[@benadrylcucumbersnatch9401]

@@cat-le1hf Yeah, JK doesn't really do that

[@ki-youngjang4067]

The hilarious thing is that most Harry Potter fanfics use this rationalization as to why he cannot spend his money.

[@terrencewalsh9098]

I honestly can't believe I never realized how insane Harry becoming an auror was. Hogwarts is obviously complicated for Harry. But the idea of having a home, a place to belong, is integral to his arc. In choosing to become a teacher, even after Moody (a man obsessed with and consumed by martial authority and VIGILANCE!!!!!) tells him he'd be great, Harry has an opportunity to do the one thing (besides quidditch) that he's demonstrably enjoyed and excelled at in his young adulthood. By becoming a defense against the dark arts teacher, he's fulfilling a societal role that he, as an individual, is uniquely qualified for. Who better, right? Nearly anyone can become a decent auror, and two decent aurors can equal the power of even the greatest among them. But a teacher is a singular slot in a closed society. He could have served the wizarding world in a role effectively predestined for him, what with the curse Voldemort has placed upon it. He could teach and help and be present at the center of magical power and development, all occuring at the place in this world he first called home.

[@falconeshield]

But, no. MET police it is!

[@FraserSouris]

As much as I don't like saying this, I disagree. I'd argue Harry being an Auror makes sense for his character. Harry's character has always been "I gotta get involved and do the right thing". He was willing to abandon Dumbledore's Army and Quidditch in order investigate Malfoy. He has always been about investigation rather than empowering others.

[@terrencewalsh9098]

@@FraserSouris KZbinr Austin McConnell makes a great point when he says HP novels aren't about magic. They're mystery novels set in a magical world. In that sense, you're right. But I think your example is misguided. Harry investigated Malfoy based on prior bias and, if we're honest, borderline obsession. It circles back to what Moody said. Harry would have made a great Auror if great Aurors are obsessive maniacs who doggedly pursue hunches with no regard for truth. Harry being an Auror is good for Harry. Literally anything else is better for the wizarding world.

[@FraserSouris]

@@terrencewalsh9098 *>"Harry investigated Malfoy based on prior bias and, if we're honest, borderline obsession. It circles back to what Moody said. "

[@terrencewalsh9098]

@@FraserSouris Your argument is well-reasoned. I think my issue is one of writing. Harry doesn't feel to me like a precocious detective in a magical world. He feels like a normal-ish kid thrust into a world of mystery. That he excels at solving them feels less to me like natural inclination and more that the author hand-held the characters, going through the motions. It might be a pessimistic reflection on a childhood favorite that drives me to feel this way. Harry never struck me as smart, only lucky. Solving the mysteries of the (first three, at least) books seemed... convenient? to me. And even those were heavily supported by Hermione. Oh, and Ron was there too I guess. Your argument makes plenty of sense, though. A character like Harry, living in the world that he does, would be hard pressed to AVOID becoming a detective.

[@wanderinghistorian]

"Rowling frequently threatens to make the story more interesting." I love this.

[@michaelharvest931]

And I love your virtue signalling 👏

[@priceoffame]

@@michaelharvest931 You good?

[@michaelharvest931]

@@priceoffame Brilliant thanks. I very much enjoyed this breakdown of JK written works

[@unslaadkrosis3489]

@@michaelharvest931 meaningless buzzword from an empty headed simpleton.

[@topphatt1312]

@@michaelharvest931 Why are you acting all weird and high and mighty? You sound like a crazy person.

[@EvenFlow391]

I saw this shared elsewhere, but if JK Rowling was writing a Mexican wizard character, she would have absolutely called Andres Arriba.

[@Fluffypinkdragon1984]

I think the name would involve tacos since that's stereotypical

[@sixstringedthing]

"Ah, Signor Potter! Welcome to Magia de la Casa!"

[@tartarustrommler5454]

@@sixstringedthing That's too much grammar. it'd be Magia Casa or Casa Magia.

[@off_ZeMoon]

​​@@Fluffypinkdragon1984 Vivataco Nacho - Mexican Wizard from Castelobruxo who loves tacos and nachos

[@kidcrumpet3333]

Nah he’d be Jose Alberto Hernandez Juarez

[@TurboNemesis]

The point that racism against Hermione could be considered correct if she weren't good at magic is extra shitty. It implies that she overworks herself to the point of needing time travel to complete her school load not only because she enjoys academic accomplishment but because she *has to* to prove she's worthy as a person.

[@TheAdrift]

That is both a Big Oof™ and a GREAT point. It's like Rowling is holding her up as "one of the good ones," who defies all the stereotypes and "is pretty smart... for a Muggle." But the second she steps out of line and agitates for systemic change, BAM, suddenly the entire narrative turns on her. It seems unbelievable that she probably didn't intend to do that, but JK has stated elsewhere that Hermione is her favorite character, sooo... maybe it somehow WAS unintentional? Maybe JK thought she was just portraying some kind of character flaw of Hermione's? I certainly don't think being a favorite character of the author's means that they have to be a flawless Mary Sue, but It's a real mask-off moment for the author, where it's blatantly obvious that Shaun is spot-on with his "bigotry = bad attitude" assessment of her mind. Rowling is polite, so she CAN'T be bigoted... so she thinks 😒

[@mikewaters2126]

The worst part is that there's genuinely interesting stuff to explore there. Jody in Daria is an example of a very similar character. Pushed to succeed in order to defy stereotypes, with her actions and worldview reflecting that. The difference is that the Daria writers knew what they were doing, and Rowling's just a racist shithead.

[@-mangozandbananaz-1410]

The worst part about this is that Rowling could actually do something with this idea - Hermione could have a memorable character arc where she learns she doesn’t have to do any of that to be “worthy.” But no, Rowling just wants to be a racist instead.

[@riskreward3941]

jk said she based hermione off herself, wild

[@someone3195]

Hmm, got an actual question. Why is racism, sexism not valid, if those ppl r indeed proven to be not as good as others? Like...racism against wizards with muggle parents, means, you think they are not as good as pure-blood wizards. And if they are indeed not as good, then...it's not racism anymore? No? Like...if they r not as good, then it becomes a fact? I'm a girl, and I feel like I do indeed need to prove my worth, as an engineer. And I usually think, that if my male peers r better than me, then all the sexist ideas, I have been against, my whole life will be proven right. Your position seemed quite novel to me, so wanted to learn more. I'm actually curious.

[@silveirona]

Unfortunately I have eternally-entrenched encyclopedic knowdlege of this godforsaken franchise inside my brain and when you mentioned the beheaded house elfs I immediately remembered that the whole house was hexed so that nothing could be removed from it and thus the Christmas hats were a way to make the house more homely... And isn't that a perfect encapsulation of the franchise as a whole? Insignificant and offensive band-aids over structural problems and a shrug-emoji acceptance of the status quo?

[@LyriaSiders]

Ok, but I feel like even if the beheaded house elfs are unremovable, that still doesn't mean you have to decorate them to make your haunted hexed house more Christmas-y.

[@sarahgent2674]

I have so many questions now. Can we put them all in a closet? Even if we can't move them can we put a blanket over or something? I feel like if I moved into a house with a bunch of racist stuff all over the walls that I couldn't remove, I would invest in blankets

[@jensanruby6739]

@@sarahgent2674 You can't move them, but yeah blankets or pillowcases, literally anything. Hell, alot of these characters are rich. Remove the walls if you have to

[@Bettersucksaul]

Holy shit this just makes it so much worse...

[@cambriaofthevastoceans6721]

@@jensanruby6739 yeah, i think I'd at least wall it off.

[@EricSandwich]

Shaun going "oh no I'm writing Harry Potter fanfic" makes me realize why Harry Potter is such a fertile source of fanfiction writing: it's a fairly complete world but has these enormous holes in structure and character. So people flood in with their own explanations or rewrites. And this is totally by accident, Rowling managed to dominate by being a B writer, great at setting things up and terrible at resolving them

[@elliot__agares]

Yes, there are some fics that 100% deserve to be a book instead of JK's harry Potter because omg

[@MattEldritchHorror]

Sounds similar to something like RWBY

[@four-en-tee]

Sounds like Game of Thrones, lol

[@agogobell28]

God damn, I never realised how true this is.

[@QuintessentialFlyer734]

Totally agree! The best HP fanfics I've read explore the Slytherin students in particular, how they were labelled so negatively at such a young age and how the post-Voldemort social order would have looked like.

[@acecat2798]

"Actually, the final sentence of the final novel, prior to the epilogue, is Harry wondering if he can get Kreacher, his slave, to bring him a sandwich." I feel like that sums up everything I need to know about these books.

[@GrrmPleaseWrite]

One of the most heartwarming moments of the book in its proper context.

[@alackofgames913]

​@@GrrmPleaseWrite damning with faint praise is one of my favorite pass times

[@sixstringedthing]

Good Guys: We just want a nice stable magically whimsical slave-owning society, without being bothered by muggles. Bad Guys: What the Good Guys want, but muggles and mudbloods could also make great slaves.

[@YEY0806]

​@@sixstringedthing American politics in a nutshell

[@thevarietychannelofyoutube4769]

​@@sixstringedthingWhat a wholesome message for kids

[@louisedohn7149]

The final battle against Voldemort basically has Harry going: "Ah, but Mr. Riddle. You may have screenshotted the Elder Wand NFT, but I bought it! It is clearly not yours to use! The wand must obey the rules of the blockchain!"

[@vt_973]

UNDERRATED COMMENT OMG it really is as arcane and incomprehensible as that

[@ShnoogleMan]

There are so many ways it could have been better. Perhaps because the horcrux was in Harry, Harry also became master when Voldemort did. Then, when Harry sacrificed himself and got Voldemort to kill the horcrux, he in effect defeated the piece of Voldemort within himself to become the true master. That would have been a much better ending.

[@SnakeThisLife]

I rate this comment 9.7/10

[@bibsp3556]

"Let's say, you own a unique piece of arcane technology. You take that elder wand, and you NFT that" - Gary Vee, probably

[@glitchedoom]

Harry Potter and the Non-Fungible Ape

[@oops383]

In HP its interesting that when slavery is the topic “it’s just their culture” but with the goblins, they’re seen as thieves for taking back goblin made artifacts after a wizard is dead though it is their culture to treat wizard customers as renters

[@TheTdroid]

I think rephrasing it to "It's just wizard culture" is more apt. House elves are happy being slaves because it is in wizard culture and goblins are thieves because their culture isn't part of wizard culture. Everything is to serve the status quo.

[@Sizzox]

Well of course? Humans in general are selfish. This is not an error with the books, it is very accurate to real life.

[@isabelmcgaugh711]

@@Sizzox I feel like you may have missed the point of the video. This issue isn’t that these elements are present, as you said it adds to the realism. The issue is that there’s no resolution or even push back to these problems offered by the hero’s of the story.

[@thevarietychannelofyoutube4769]

It's because the goblins are supposed to be Jews

[@waynewayne8419]

@@isabelmcgaugh711 ohh yeah are the same resolutions offered in real world? How long did it take to breakdown slavery in the world? The video is good but the guy doesn't even understand what slavery is about but just drones on and on about bs all the time but what would you expect from a British guy.

[@jazwhoaskedforthis]

As a child growing up in poverty in an abusive situation, I thought I was relating to Harry not being able to buy gifts for anyone or himself and feeling guilty for causing anyone to spend money or anything else. Now that I’m grown and have some money of my own, I realize the instant I had any money at all I was SO eager to share it and solve problems with it. Harry literal-moneybags Potter seriously just sat around acting like a poor kid who didn’t know how money worked. Your twist about Ron having two wands was such a simple solution.

[@sylas3265]

Especially since Ron’s wand was a hand me down so she even had the “family heirloom” reason for Ron to keep it in his pocket. She had every chance and just didn’t take any

[@jazwhoaskedforthis]

@@sylas3265 Dude YES. As a poor kid, breaking anything that would cost money to fix is so anxiety inducing. She could have had him trying to scrape by with good enough. And the family heirloom thing- oh man, breaking a family heirloom when you know your family is broke would be gut wrenching. He might’ve even been in denial or just afraid of having to admit it to his family and be a burden on everyone. Having it just be a funny gag until it became plot convenient was so lazy.

[@ninjahunter101]

You could even keep the 'Lockhart uses broken wand' pay off by having Harry order some wands from Ollivander's for Ron to try, but they don't work so Ron has to keep using the broken wand anyway. Rowling already established in the very first book that wands are picky so they could just have Mcgonogall periodically give Ron a wand to try, it doesn't work, so Ron keeps using the broken wand, Lockhart steals it and it backfires: boom. Plot intact and Harry gets to show that he will gladly use his money to help the closest thing to a happy family he has.

[@shizachan8421]

@@jazwhoaskedforthis The thing is that if you do math, Wands aren't even that expensive. Wands cost 7 galleons and 1 galleon is around 5 pund sterling, so one wand would cost arouns 46 US Dollar, lets be generous and say 50. And thats from Ollivander, the guy who is said to be the best wand maker currently, so we speak about a product of the highest quality. So it isn't that expensive. Also if the family is so poor, I never understood why Molly Weasley never applied for a job. Or rented parts of their property, which seems to be quite big. I mean, she ended up killing Bellatrix Lestrange, who is described as a Voldemorts best lieutenant and therefore an incredibly proficient witch, so we can assume that she would be highly qualified and from the second book one, all of her children are in a boarding school, which means she could easily work. And maybe divorce her deadbeat husband who decides to not get promoted and secure his family a better income because he likes toying around with muggle stuff.

[@agilemind6241]

@@shizachan8421 Because the sort of cornerstone of Harry Potter is the differing values of the different characters which is seen to be a kind of innate personality that determines the House they are in at school and their entire future more or less. The Weasley's aren't poor because of bad luck or social oppression - Molly and Arthur went to the same school as the Malfoys and had many of the same opportunities - the main difference is that the Weasleys value family and love over money. Arthur does a job he loves and makes him happy rather than one that makes him the most money, Molly stays home and looks after the kids and home because that is more important to her than having new things. While the Weasleys are poor they aren't unable to support themselves - they have no shortage of food, no leaky roof of their house, no broken car they can't afford to fix.

[@j.bat.8235]

"Why didn't the wizards use a time machine to stop Hitler?" ... Other than they most likely agreed with him, you mean?

[@luckyspurs]

JK Rowling probably wouldn't have wanted Nye Bevan getting into government any earlier.

[@SapphireCarbuncle009]

What's interesting about the bit about Harry not using his family fortune throughout all Book 2 to help the Weasleys is that of all things, the fkn tie-in video game on the Game Boy Color addressed it by having him say it's strictly for helping with school-related fees like books and whatnot. Hell, there's even an instance where there's a robe Ron really wants but can't afford, but if you buy it and equip it on him you get an extra bit of dialogue where Ron thanks Harry for the selfless gesture. A fuckin' cash-grab video game wrote these characters better than the source material.

[@tylerwood1865]

The basilisk was impossible so I never beat it but I loved that game!! That and the third one for game boy advance.

[@Lucifersfursona]

Lowkey one of my favorite things about Harry Potter is how almost anyone can write more interesting stories with the source material than the material itself tells.

[@MrJimheeren]

@@tylerwood1865 the trick with the basilisk was being on a high enough level and having lots of health potions on you. But I remember it took me and my brother an hour or so to defeat it

[@MrJimheeren]

All the Harry Potter games where actually quite good. Even looking back with rose tinted glasses. The pc game and GB Color were some of my favorite games when I was young

[@maxanderson3733]

@@MrJimheeren I don’t know. The new Harry Potter game looks a bit too fanficy and most of the games had their moments but weren’t great overall

[@sagekaley]

as a child, while i enjoyed the books, they also bothered me a lot. i was poor and abused and i dreamt of someday having enough money to take care of myself and my friends. reading harry potter always made poverty feel so shameful, in a unique way from the shame i already felt. in a way, it felt like seeing someone like myself deciding that other poor people were embarrassing to see. i hated that. to see harry gain my dream and not use it was so painful. to see hermione mocked for wanting a better life for abused and used people was painful. i hardly had the words to describe why. i didn't gain them until i got older. but the way she mocked fat people, poor people, people with "manly hands", people who were clearly neurodivergent and so forth. it felt so ugly that as i got older, i just stopped being into the books. so like. i get why some people insist children didn't recognise it and i'm sure plenty of children didn't. and i understand why some people insist the backlash against her is recent. but for me, personally, it's incredibly validating to have those things that made me uncomfortable and hurt as a child in her work reevaluated now. like again it's fine if someone didn't notice it as a kid but i get irritated by the "no kid noticed it anyway" because i certainly did. and it hurt.

[@ShirDeutch]

@@bacicinvatteneaca everything?

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

@@ShirDeutch why?

[@jawamedia1529]

The only thing that bothered me as a child was everyone's reaction to SPEW, and how she gave it up a few books later because no one cared. For me, I wanted Hermione to be doing something like that when she was an adult, because that's the type of person she is. I mean, she should've been able to get some muggle-borns on board since they were taught about slavery, so they should see the parallels. It felt like an attempt for Rowling to go "see, I know slavery is bad, and Hermione knows it's bad, but it isn't technically slavery, so I'm off the hook"

[@yungwooloo]

Thanks so much for sharing this! These perspectives are really valuable, as even as adults many of us may not have noticed the attitudes towards various groups without them being outlined.

[@agilemind6241]

@@jawamedia1529 Yes, for me when I read the book that first mentions SPEW was when I definitively decided that Hermione is the actual hero of the Harry Potter books, and from then on I just go increasingly frustrated that we had to see the story from Harry's perspective rather than hers.

[@Eudaletism]

"They're happy where they are" is literally an argument slavers used. Many slaves did smile and act super-submissive and agreeable as a method of self-protection and appeasement.

[@ettaetta439]

Plus, after slavery was abolished, many slaves did go into alcoholism due to a healthy dose of PTSD and having absolutely no job openings, as no one would hire black people. This provided further "proof", that slaves were useless without white people, rather than them just being discriminated against. How did she write the actual caricature of a slave having been released from their shackles through the views of a white racist and not question it at all?

[@isaacburrows8405]

@BradyExists she's fucking weird yo

[@drd444]

But that was the point. She was pointing out that the wizarding world is set in its ways and that the system is so ingrained into society, no one sees the issue. She wouldn't have made Hermione (her own self insert) an activist if it wasn't for the fact that she thought it was a bad system herself. In no way is slavery portrayed as good. In fact, the happy house elves is rather chilling.

[@drd444]

@BradyExists Dumbledore offered to pay, but they didn't want it.

[@ettaetta439]

@@drd444 did you watch the video? I'm not trying to insult you btw, the video goes way into how JK Rowling seems to defend the existence of house elves and it's very, very well said. I can timestamp for you where he starts to talk about it, if you'd like to listen to the reasoning why everyone is talking about this.

[@LabMatt]

There is one detail in the Legend of Korra that I found really interesting: Season 1, the main antagonist was leading a group of non-benders Season 2, the main antagonist was a waterbender Season 3, the main antagonist was an airbender Season 4, the main antagonist was an earthbender It's a huge contrast with The Last Airbender, where almost all the major antagonists were firebenders How many antagonists there are in the world of Harry Potter that aren't/weren't Slytherin, other than Pettigrew?

[@samniel]

Lockheart was a Ravenclaw, but he's less an antagonist and more of a comedic annoyance. And I don't know which house Umbridge went to but it could've been Slytherin considering how much of her squad were in said house. Actually, that reminded me, she's mentioned that Lockheart was based on someone she knew "who is probably telling people he's the inspiration for Dumbledore" and Umbridge was based on a teacher she had. While writers do this sort of caricature of people they know all the time, it's always felt kind of gross.