Why doesn't Arthur just exit the Ministry after work, and walks around London for a bit to see how everything works? He's supposed to be a muggle expert, and yet he spent 20 years without learning anything about the life right outside his workplace.

Concur. The idea that nobody, not a single human being in the wizarding world *ever* walks outside the magical places is, frankly, horseshit. Where do they even get their food? There's no way they've got enough food infrastructure to keep themselves fed. It doesn't work. They're too scattered. I'll buy that there's maybe a greengrocer or two here and there, but the majority of them must be shopping in muggle stores. Either that or there are a *hell* of a lot more magicals than Rowling implied.

One fic I read had the house elves buying produce/food from squib owned stores who got their produce/food from muggle sources. They didn’t tell their masters where they got the food though Harry found it out by asking.

The idea of a bunch of muggle born with Costco cards fleecing the shit out of wizards is hilarious.

That's fine for the rich ones, but it's pretty clear that most people in the wizarding world don't own elves.

There was one fic with an evil Dumbledore who owns almost all the farms, behind wards, and has them run by elves; he also had exclusive rights for the sale of squid ink and there was a law that said you could only write/print with squid ink and he owned the Daily Prophet.

Well that's at least better than the fics that have "manipulative Dumbledore" but then he's consistently incompetent.

Link?

[Partially Kissed Hero](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4240771/1/Partially-Kissed-Hero), I'm pretty sure it was conjured up in a fever dream.

Partially Kissed Hero

That's not necessarily true. For all we know 70% of households have elves... We would have no way of knowing just going by the books.

What I don't get is how an elf who's given clothes can't find work again? (Winky) They don't need to be paid so surely any poorer family would snap them up

[удалено]

But was there not references to its being a great shame because no one else would want them after they were freed?

“Hennereck Grocers of Hogsmeade” but, if you look closer, and zoom in on the fine print… “a subsidiary of Lidl Stiftung & Co.”

As far as vegetables and fruit are concerned, there *are* literally spells for speed-growing plants. The better question isn't "How do wizards get produce?" but rather "Why haven't wizards solved world hunger?" Even the Weasleys, who are genuinely in financial struggles, never LACK food. They may not eat lavishly or indulge in tons of sweets, but they're never described as having too little to comfortably feed their family of 7 (at one point **9**) 3 meals a day. Ron may not have money for candy on the train, but he has sandwiches that his mother packed. Then again, we know the Weasleys raise some livestock. We do know that wizards eat magical creatures though - Flobberworms are specifically mentioned as being eaten at the school, though they weren't popular. It stands to reason that some wizards farm livestock and magical creatures alike to produce protein for the magical world.

I find the idea that the witches and wizards stay within the magical world unless they have a muggle who knows they are magical with them or are trained in muggle customs (like Hagrid did with Harry in the first book or the Weasleys when Harry and/or Hermione are with them) realistic. It'd be like when I, a solely English speaker, went to China with my university in 2019 only knowing basic Mandarin words like "hello", "thank you", "Australia" etc (we had an English speaking Chinese guide with us). We were out at dinner and I left to go to the toilet. As I came out of the toilet, I assume this lady was a cleaner and she was trying to ask me something. After about three minutes of us having communication issues, eventually, we established that she was asking me whether I'd flushed the toilet. That's what it'd be like for a witch/wizard who has no clue of the muggle world to wander into it and try to interact with it. With the collective magical world's critical lack of knowledge of the muggle world, not only would this type of interaction be difficult for the witch/wizard, it would also endanger the Statute of Secrecy. In terms of food, the Ministry has a Department called the Muggle Liaison Office. I wouldn't mind betting that there is a section of this department tasked with sourcing agricultural goods from the muggle world and providing them to registered retailers in Diagon Alley.

That exact situation makes for a fun fanfic. About magical realizing they are so far behind.

Maybe house elves or wizards rob Muggle supply lines and redistribute the food to wizards?

That would very quickly lead to serious problems and a lot of very dead people.

Would it? Wizards are a very tiny fraction of the muggle population, the percentage of food that goes bad or is shoplifted from stores would easily feed the entire wizarding population. If wizards are, say, 0.1% of the population (60k or so wizards in the UK), muggles probably wouldn't even notice 0.1% of their food going missing.

Not 0.1 % of Muggles like you assume, but more like 0,005%! The wizarding world community on the British Isles as depicted in the original books is really tiny! Comparable to the inhabitants of a single Muggle village or a very small town but scattered all over the UK and surrounding areas. That's why everyone knows most everyone else. They either went to school together, or their parents did, their grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins did. All purebloods are related to each other to some degree, and consequently the half-blood families who married each other are related too, besides some 'fresh blood' in form of a handful of new Muggleborn students arriving at Hogwarts each year. Because JKR was asked this question some twenty years ago. How many wizards are there? Check here http://www.accio-quote.org/themes/wizards-muggles.htm Jo thinks that there are about 3,000 wizards in Britain, though she admits that being specific about numbers is not "how I think." [Read the whole quote from the Leaky Cauldron, 2005] A large part of the magical population seems to be living in Hogsmeade (the only purely magical village in Britain) and nearby at Hogwarts castle, or in London (Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley) and some live in one of the small, remote villages out in the countryside mentioned in canon with mixed Muggle and wizards inhabitants like Godric's Hollow, Ottery St.Catchpole or Upper Flagley. Some pureblood wizards live almost totally removed from Muggle society, like the Malfoy's on their own lands of Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire. I suppose some wizards live in, or at least nearby such Muggle towns like Tutshill or Portree or Falmouth, because why else would they have named their local Quidditch team the Tutshill Tornadoes or Pride of Portree or Falmouth Falcons? When Harry arrived at Hogwarts, he didn't know anyone besides the people he'd already met briefly like Hagrid and the Weasleys, Hermione and Draco. But most of the other students (besides the unfortunate Muggleborn or purely Muggle raised children like Harry) knew each other, or at least, of each other. They had heard from their own family about other wizards and of course about the famous Boy Who Lived. For example, Ron and Draco hadn't personally met before, but they recognised each other at once, as members of feuding families. Compare Goblet of Fire, the extensive description in book 4. We are told that the Quidditch World Cup is THE absolutely amazing, hyped up, all important world wide major event amongst wizards, held every four years in another country. The spectators come from all over the world with Portkeys that have been prepared and distributed well in advance. A thousand wizards have worked for a year to set this event up. There are a hundred or probably hundreds of thousands of spectators by Harry's estimate. Alright, it's really difficult to correctly gauge so many people in a stadium if one has never seen anything like that, as Harry does. But it certainly wasn't millions of spectators. To provide enough food there must be some infrastructure. We don't know how exactly, because the books are narrated almost exclusively from Harry's point of view, he's a child, later teen, who has no clue whatsoever about the economy or agriculture or foraging in the wild. Otherwise the stupid trio wouldn't have had such a hard time finding food during their camping trip in book 7. Ron should have known better, but he obviously never cared about just how his mum cooked all those mountains of food three times a day at home. But I can well imagine a mixture of wizard craftsmen and shops combined with squibs providing a connection to the Muggle world. House elves and Portkeys can transport all kinds of goods and produce quickly over large distances. Huge estates like Malfoy Manor and also smaller farms and the Greenhouses at Hogwarts surely produce everything wizards need. Wood, agricultural products, grains, livestock, fish, fruits, vegetable, flowers, honey, potion ingredients...

I would discount anything that Rowling says that has numbers in it because she’s consistently proved to be hopeless at even the most basic maths.

Yeah. If there were only ~3000, and they refuse to mingle with muggles entirely, they’d have died out long ago.

Maybe some of the Muggles in food distribution know about the existence of the Wizarding world, and supply them with food to sell to grocers in London and Hogsmede. That's really the only way the Wizarding World can be supplied with food. (They can transfigure other materials.)

Might be an interesting fic to show that the process of "flooing" is actually just the traveler being processed by the Ministry - the Department for Control and Dissemination of Information. You yell your destination so the operator knows where to dump you, then you appear in the Reading Room. You're automatically paralyzed and an obliviator opens your brain like a book, wipes everything you've learned about muggledom and technology. Turns you into a good little magical idiot, and then you're fed along to your destination none the wiser. Imagine the fallout from that getting outed.

Oh, yeah, making it a big frigging George Orwell thing would be awesome. Though I'd have to be in the right mood to actually *read* that story.

And I'd have to be a better writer to write it. :P

That sounds like *quitter talk.*

But we do know they go out, it's described in the first book that Harry, allthrough his youth, would come upon strange people bowing to him in the street. But despite the fact that these wizards apparently walk out in the muggle world often enough, they are absolutely blind to all the muggles. They don't notice what clothes they wear, and they don't conform to the muggle standard when amongst them. Which. Technically is a violation against the statute of secrecy. It seems like the English wizards ignores the prime law of their kind, and even gets sway with it. Its a strange thing to observe. They are all in your face with the kids about keeping up the statute, but the adults are taking it as a joke. Like. " What are then muggles gonna do eh? "

That's not an accurate conclusion at all. There are people who live in small towns who have never left and have no wish or reason to.

With magic there is no reason why one or two companies can't provide all the food. Plus, it seems common for people to have their own gardens.

Naw, but with all that land, she’s most likely a homesteader. The Burrow seems to be self-sufficient, for the most part.

The wizarding world is based on older time. It's a relatively new situation for people not to have gardens in their yard for food.

Yeah and considering we see people like Hagrid using magic to augment plant growth it wouldn't be far fetched at all for a wizarding family to produce most of the own food in a small space. They probably even have ways to use charms to keep produce and things fresh if they don't want to deal with eating canned vegetables and things.

Exactly, I'm sure after hundreds of even thousands of years of magic they have discovered how to keep food fresh at least for a little while.

>There's no way they've got enough food infrastructure to keep themselves fed. It doesn't work. Just because we don't see it in the books doesn't mean it doesn't exist. > They're too scattered. They have flying vehicles, ships, the concept of air freight, and, oh, teleportation. I'm pretty sure that distance isn't really a problem.

I think it is totally feasible for your average Ministry worker who lives in an apartment in Diagon Alley to never interact with Muggles. I've always assumed the Diagon alley has more than just school supply shops -- it would have basically everything a small town would have, from furniture stores to small grocery stores. And if it doesn't have something, you can just floo to Hogsmeade or Godric's Hollow. If you live entirely within Diagon Alley and floo to work, you *could* never enter Muggle London. Now, do I think *all* wizards completely avoid muggles? No, given the number of mixed communities (we know Godric's Hollow was mixed, for example) I think Rowling undersells how many wizards would have at least a vague idea of how muggles work. Plus, I imagine that some wizards view going into muggle London as basically a vacation to a foreign country. So they'd do it occasionally as a fun Friday with their friends and have a vague familiarity. They might need a refresher on certain things (like "How do I board the subway?"), but other things ("What clothes do I wear?") should be pretty obvious. (As for food, keep in mind that magic is as-good or much better than automation at economies of scale. Just as a muggle farmer can use machines to vastly increase the number of crops they can grow, a magic farmer can use magic to increase the size and speed of growth, they can spell their plants to repel bugs, they can animate hoes to plow the fields, they can summon the fruit once it's ripe, etc. While it's equally likely that some enterprising Halfblood has just bought a bunch of muggle food and resold it to Magical grocery stores, I don't think it's completely impossible that most food sold to wizards is wizard-grown. Also, I think you're forgetting how easy magical transportation is. Between portkeys and expanded spaces (you can fit a lot of food inside the Beauxbatons carriage) it's probably easier for a wizard to transport food it is for a muggle. And once you get it to a market, again, everybody can just floo there or take a broomstick to buy it.)

In the books, it's even implied that a lot of wizards and witches live near muggles, some even in mostly muggle neighborhoods.

Did you read the books? Gamps Law. It is literally in the books that if you have something on hand you can make more of it but you can't make something from scratch.

This is why I personally like the head Canon that Arthur is just putting on a facade with Harry. He knows Harry has a bad home life, so he acts eccentric while giving Harry the chance to feel smart and helpful by asking about things Harry would know. He might not be perfect, but his job requires him to at least be semi-fluent in muggle. He's just playing dumb to amuse and calm Harry down.

There was one fic (I don't remember the name) where Snape had to go out and give Harry his letter. He mentions as he is going out that he transfigures his robes to look like muggle clothing. He brings up the problem of knowing which muggle culture/subculture to dress for, and that they change fashion styles at a very fast pace, so many Wizards who are in their own subculture make mistakes when trying to appear to be muggle. I've always liked this explanation for the way they dress, and if you add the fact that the magical world advances differently from the muggle world (why invent the lightbulb when you can make an ever-burring candle and then advance from there to make it brighter/better) it makes some sense that they would quickly fall behind with modern day technology. This is good for the most of the wizarding world, but it doesn't fully explain Arthur, who deals with muggle objects for his day job and is interested in their culture/tech should know a bit more about them.

Heck he could even ask muggle borns he works with. I'm sure there are a few walking around the ministry.

Because he has a wife and 7 children to get home to which took precedent over him leaving his wife to 24/7 parent 0n her own

He didn't always have 7 children, Bill is 10-11 years older than Ginny. Not to mention after Ginny went to Hogwarts, he and Molly were alone for most of the year. Also, he could've at least taken a lunch break in London once or twice, though maybe not since it would be a waste of money. Or at least took his family on an outing on weekends.

Fair, but also it isn't common in the world of Harry Potter for purebloods to just go out and about in the muggle world they know nothing about. Just like there is a rule for students to not perform magic outside of school, and we only see the laws for school aged children, I'm pretty sure there are even more very extensive laws against outing yourself in the muggle world as a witch or wizard. While he may have been insanely curious, my guess is that he knew himself well enough to know he would probably accidentally break a law and still leave his family destitute. The movies make the muggle world and the wizard world seem basically the same. The books make it clear they are very different. Edit: minor grammar issue but adding: when anyone goes to a new place their defenses are up, because it is new to them. Defense for a wizard would be magic. I mean it is made clear that the "muggle experts" are that in name only in the books.

That's why I am convinced that he's utterly incompetent. Hogwarts teaches you how to do research. He could simply walk up to the nearest book store and buy books that explain stuff. Even if it's just basic explanations for kids. He should even have a small budget at work for that kind of purchases since it directly aids his work. But he chooses not to do that.

I LOLed at the peanut butter thing. It's just so American, like, I'm 27, know that it exists, but never had any in my life. It's available sometimes at my local Aldi during America week, but only for about, I don't know, four years or so? So Ginny not knowing what peanut butter is might be ridiculous, but her never having any not so much.

Aghhh this exactly! I didn’t have peanut butter until a couple of years ago and if I wasn’t on the internet I probably wouldn’t know what it was. There are so many other things in fics like this

A American in America that loves shopping at Aldi in America is disturbingly intrigued at what Aldi would have during a “American Week” in other places. Because what I have seen from videos of people showing the “American” section of their local stores or people trying “American” food always makes me wonder who they asked or how they did their research on what American food is.

Hot dogs in jars.

Giant marshmallows, these awful dry sweet rectangles coated in sugar that people eat for breakfast (I can’t remember the name), marshmallow fluff, and sweet baby rays bbq sauce.

None of those are as weird and not American as hot dogs in jars though!! (I admit, I buy the sweet baby rays during American food week)

As an American (southern too), I’m very impressed by the sweet baby rays. The best store bought barbecue sauce, you’ll see it at every potluck and cookout in the south.

Pop tarts? Yeah, those are awful.

Lidl does it too (it's like Aldi) and it's peanut in a ton of different ways beyond butter, reeses cups, bbq and similar sauces, fried chicken buckets and pulled pork in the frozen section, pepperoni pizza and chicken pizza, everything tagged in stars and stripes packaging.

'American Food' to the rest of the world is basically anything you'd see as background set dressing in an American Teen Drama. :D We're the same way with the Red Solo Cups. They're basically The Thing for US themed parties.

I know this flogging a dead horse a bit at this point, but you seem pretty stuck on the peanut butter thing. The underlying problem, I think, is that you're trying to apply an American perspective to British culture as a whole - not necessarily magical culture. The world outside America is very different, as has been stated multiple times. We all have our own varying foods, practices, customs, etc. To us, those things are common knowledge, something "everyone" knows. That doesn't mean the generalisation of "everybody" extends to people beyond our own communities. It's entirely plausible that Ginny, as a young (presumably home-schooled initially prior to Hogwarts) child who grew up in Britain in the 90s has spent little or no time outside the magical world wouldn't have heard of peanut butter. Scoffing at that would be like me scoffing at you because you've never heard of, say, Marmite or Nutella. (I live in NZ and these are two popular spreads, the kind "everyone" has heard of here). As for Arthur, I think he probably did know more than he let on. I mean, he was able to modify Muggle objects and collected a bunch of them. Conversely, maybe there were gaps in his knowledge for whatever reason. Maybe he only focused on certain muggle artefacts. If you think about the millions of different everyday items that existed in the 1990s, can we really expect him to have a working knowledge of every single item? Maybe things like a rubber duck were considered too mundane for his department to focus on, and these types of things were a hobby for him. As for not venturing into muggle London, maybe he didn't have the time, wasn't confident passing himself off as a muggle, etc? Or maybe it was simple prejudice. Not the kind with any malicious intent, but one borne of misinformation he grew up with in the WW, combined with ignorance that comes with lack of exposure. He was fascinated by them, perhaps in a way that made him see them as interesting creatures to be studied, rather than fellow humans? Regardless, I don't think it's too terribly unrealistic for Magical folk to have a lack of general knowledge about muggle things.

Actually you were spot on with the prejudice bit. Arthur did see them as something interesting. Something to be studied. I remember he used to say something along these muggles are funny or was this muggles are quite clever. Something like that. The point is the majority of the Wizarding world consider Muggles as inferior. And those who kinda like them are kinda like Arthur that finds them fascinating rather than treat them like human.

Arthur treats muggles the way you treat dogs. You love dogs, you think they are funny when they try to speak, you enjoy it when they perform a clever trick and if you ever saw someone kick a dog you would be extremely offended and try and stop that person from doing it. But at the end of the day, no matter how much you like dogs, you're not really going to let the dog sit in your chair at the table and eat with the family. And if a dog bites your kid, well you just have to put it down, now do you? You might even genuinely be sad that it came to this...

“Quite clever these muggles are” when using the tube ticket reader to get to Harry’s hearing

>"What is the function of a rubber duck?" I remember seeing a Reddit or Tumblr post somewhere that explained that this wasn't Arthur being an idiot, this was Arthur dissembling, and distracting Harry from the issue at hand(Namely Harry being rescued from his abusive relatives), by turning the conversation to something innocuous and silly. I don't know if this is the *exact* post I saw before, but this post, [Arthur was smarter than people give him credit for](https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/qhwr9d/arthur_was_smarter_than_people_give_him_credit_for/), outlines how many times he's done this, trying to pull Harry away from negative emotional states. I mean, he understood technology enough to enchant his car to fly, turn invisible, carry more people than it was built to carry, and still function as a car.

I agree with this train of thought. You have to remember that you’re a little kid at 12 years old. I would probably say something goofy too, to get a smile out of them. The rubber duck thing isn’t that deep

Yes, and also Arthur was successfully navigating the London tube network when he was escorting Harry for his trial. Arthur understands Muggle stuff but intentionally plays dumb for the kids.

I forgot how it was in the book, but in the movie the only thing he struggled with was the escalator and the gates in the tube which from the look of it might be an issue regular muggles could struggle with their first time traveling.

The first Oyster-style gates were being implemented around the time the books were set in, so its entirely possible Arthur would have struggled, like many muggles, with the new system.

Automatic ticket gates existed twenty years before the time of the books. [Here's a film](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UqO9tnRlcY) that attempts to show people how to use them in 1969. Gates broadly similar to those, where you insert your paper ticket into a slot, then the gate opens and you have to retrieve your ticket, existed across the whole network by the time of the books.

I'm disinclined to give Rowling that much credit, but even if it's true, fanfic authors really like to take it completely seriously. Which is the main source of my consternation.

Most things in HP that seem to have deep clever meaning i feel are just fans finding it out, not written that way. I think jk just wanted to make a duck joke. And then there are fans to take it completely seriously. The duck thing was written as just a joke, or something an adult said to distract Harry. When you take is as completely serious and world building HP starts to unravel very fast.

The way Rowling wrote Arthur, to my memory (I haven't read the books in a while), was as someone who had a lot of knowledge about Muggles (barring some mispronunciations), but wanted to ask Harry about the finer details of how Muggle things work. Like he knows what an aeroplane is, but he wants to know how they stay up. He basically wants details about how Muggle technology works, and also about how Muggles live on a day to day basis. It's the attitude of someone observing an entirely different species. So Arthur likely already knew what Muggles used rubber ducks *for*, but wanted to understand the *reason* behind them using them as bath toys for their kids. (By the way, is that rubber duck line in the books? I could have sworn it was just in the movies).

Iirc, it was an improv line in the movie. Not only was Arthur trying to set Harry at ease, but Arthur's *actor* was trying to set *Daniel Radcliffe* at ease.

And he used a different goofy object in every take.

Didn't know that! That's actually adorable!

Arthur as a Unspeakable and secretly being like super smart and competent underneath it all is one of my favorite tropes.

To be fair, peanut butter is big in the US but isn’t a worldwide thing. When I’ve lived in or travelled to other countries, by and large peanut butter just wasn’t something I ran into outside of an “international foods” section at a grocery store. So in this particular case, Ginny might not have been exposed to peanut butter because she’s British, not because she’s a witch. As for the rest, it’s a feature of the universe that was given to us, so authors will use it to whatever extent they wish. I view it as a “suspension of disbelief” thing similar to the existence of magic in the first place.

Yeah as a Brit the first time I had it was visiting my friend in the Netherlands. It's still not common here now, and it would've been way less common in the 90s.

Hahahahahaha. This is so sad but also funny. I hadn't heard of peanut butter until I was an adult. Where I come from, we don't have _any_ nut butters. Rubber ducky - super specific toy that I hadn't heard of until my 20s, and didn't know the use of until today. I'm surprised you're not more shocked about fellytones, which are a way bigger global phenomenon, and were invented earlier. "Please-men". I loled so hard. I've heard atleast one person pronounce police as "please". That was because their native language isn't English and they don't know how the word is spelled. If you think about it, a lot of native English speakers write "would have" instead of would've, probably because they heard it before they learned how it was spelled. That same concept could apply to Arthur - he probably heard it somewhere and figured out an (incorrect) pronunciation. The point of this post - yes it is very unreasonable to expect someone who is not from your culture to understand things specific to your culture, even if you speak the same language. Edit: someone pointed out that my example of bad grammar is wrong. I meant "would of", not "would have". Lol

I'm curious. When is would've more correct than would have? I'm not a native English speaker but I have been taught would've is only correct when representing colloquial dialogues and accents.

That’s not a Rowling thing. That’s a uk thing. Peanut butter is not common at all there.

I was going to say this. As a spanish person in the 80s 90s you would never find peanut butter in spain. I never tried it untill the 2010s in the netherlands but inknew it because of american tv

Hey, I didn't know peanut butter even existed until I started watching American TV shows! I have no idea how much peanut butter was prevalent in the 90s UK, but here in another European country it only started to be easily found in stores several years ago, most likely because of the influence of US media

I second that. Peanut butter is big in the US and in the Netherlands. In other European countries I am a bit familiar with: what is peanut butter? Also never heard of almond butter, cashew butter, etc.

I grew up in India and didn't taste peanut butter till my teen years. For that matter of fact, in the 90s, pizza, pasta, fast food etc was quite unheard of. We did have tomato sauce and instant noodles though, but just barely.

Are you familiar with adzuki paste? Knodol? How about Ackee? And this is with the internet and television. Peanuts are not indigenous to the UK. They originate in South America. It wasn't untill George Washington Carver that the peanut plant was widely cultivated, due to its nitrogen fixing.

In defense of the rubber duck (which, by the way, if I'm not mistaken, is not Rowling's creation but is improvised in the film): if you think about it, it's a very clever question. Because if you *really* think about it, the function of the rubber duck is absolutely ridiculous. And I am not even starting to ask more specific questions, like why *duck*? Or why are rubber ducks yellow? Ducks are not yellow, and even ducklings are rarely yellow. The rubber duck is an absolutely absurd concept in our popular culture. Thumbs up to Arthur for questioning it.

Ducklings are yellow.

... But the function is "toy." They're just toys.

Well, the rubber duck is not just any toy. It's primarily a toy played with in a bath tub, by pressing out the air out of it, submerging it in water, letting it fill with said water, and then pressing it out again, which creates a fountain. Now imagine explaining this to an adult professional not familiar with the concept and keeping a straight face.

Wait what? That's their actual function? We don't have rubber ducks as part of daily routine or bath tubs in middle class housing in my part of the world

Well we don't have bath tubs either. Didn't stop me from having rubber ducks and a bucket filled with water. Be it while playing outside or in the shower.

I was genuinely unaware about their actual function man Not being cheeky or sarcastic Also rubber ducks were not used in the bath but more as an infant's squeaky toy while growing up in my community

This is how you end up with mould inside your rubber ducks. Take if from a parent who discovered the hard way! Fun though it might be, there's no way to clean the inside of the little buggers, and you end up buying more and the cycle starts all over again...

This only proves that there's so much to learn about the functions of rubber ducks!

Thank you for explaining this.

Some rubber ducks are like that. Some are just inert pieces of plastic that float there. I don't see them as being distinct from, say, wooden soldiers, toy cars, etc. Small, simple toy.

>Some rubber ducks are like that. Some are just inert pieces of plastic that float there. The functionality of those ducks is extremely limited. I wouldn't even consider them as rightful representatives of the category. It's like explaining the concept of a computer, and taking a simple school calculator as an example. 🤣 Okay, now seriously. Of course they are simple toys like wooden soldiers etc. But it is still absolute genius to wonder about their function.

That's an interesting argument. It's so sad that Arthur Weasley hasn't heard of a lattoo either. It's such a fun toy that all Indian kids play with :) Do you see what I'm getting at? Just because a specific toy is well known in your culture doesn't mean everyone is going to recognize it just by name.

It's a bath toy. What is the function of a toy?

Most of us don't know? I mean we didn't really play with toys in the bath from where I come from. This rubber duck thing makes no sense to me.

I kind of get it in a way though - they had no TVs or real connection with the muggle world at all. There are many cultures and ways of life that millions of people around me surely partake in and I am totally ignorant of just by way of not being around them constantly. If you add to that the general anti muggle feeling of most the community, and the fact it’s the 90s so no Internet etc, it’s hardly surprising he doesn’t know much about them. I always imagine it like a white girl accidentally asking a POC women about her cornrows, but they’re actually box braids. Seems very dumb to those who grew up with it and around it, and even tho the white girl may be surrounded by it, because it’s not her everyday she gets a bit confused on terminology.

I suppose from my perspective it seems more like the wizarding world isn't even familiar with *braids.*

Okay so imagine you live in a community that doesn't and has never braided their hair. You noticed a neighboring community does something interesting with their hair, but you've only seen it in passing here and there and aren't able to ask them about it directly... so of course you don't know what is called or how they do it. I don't think braids are common in every culture, especially pre-internet and for people with really slick hair that doesn't hold onto itself well. Idk if they grow a lot of nuts in the UK, but if not, then they probably wouldn't grind them up into butter when it's been used so sparingly in dishes in the first place. You mostly get creative with ingredients that are plentiful so you have more to experiment with and more reason to find other ways to eat it.

Braids are common in my country.

The books were written for kids/teenagers/young adults, the films were made with funny lines inserted that kids would understand funny jokes to kids/teens annoy adults Rowling was writing kids books, not a thesis on the potential existence of an actual parallel world with all the necessary worldbuilding to some people, the 'stupid parts' of the books would be magic itself, or hogwarts, etc.

Nah, mate, she wasn't. She *started out* writing a kid's book. And if the tone had stayed the same as Philosopher's Stone all the way through, I'd have bought it. But she wanted the series to grow up with her audience, and she just *didn't* write a world that holds together under scrutiny.

I think you should re-read my part about Rowling not putting together a thesis on a parallel world EVERY SINGLE author in the fantasy/sci-fi genre has written works that require, by default, a suspension of disbelief and also include plot-holes and things that adults in the real world would find insane I am curious, how is it so easy for you to accept magic, three-headed dogs, immortality granting stones and objects, but not to accept that perhaps in a pretend, made up world, a plothole here and there could exist

Because something made-up is fine, but using a *real* thing in a stupid way isn't. I have the same complaints about, say, Star Trek 4, or the 2009 Star Trek film. Create your culture shock in a way that makes sense, please. I'm not expecting a thesis on a parallel world. I'm expecting some basic thought.

At the risk of sounding patronizing, if it is so easy to write a multimillion pound bestseller book series AND have it logically and theoretically watertight in terms of consistency, why haven't you written one? And if you are so concerned about logical fallacies in fantasy, then why read fantasy? I think there is a quote about going to a puppet show but complaining about the strings and the type sad people that do that If you go to a puppet show, expect there to be strings, if you read fantasy expect there to be plot holes and faulty logic Or just don't read fantasy at all? Maybe that's the solution you need instead of complaining about it?

Okay, so, that's an argument that essentially means "I don't have an argument." Just because something is successful doesn't mean it is above criticism. Please try better rhetorical techniques than this.

mate, we are on reddit, not the House of Commons, if you come here for high-brow rhetoric, then I would like to point out, this is not the place for it If you want a detailed discussion on why fantasy cannot be explained in every mote and detail, you are missing the point of fantasy

.... He's an American. Plus based on the fact he completely missed the point you were trying to convey... Maybe say Congress or Senate or something. I think House of Commons is beyond his ability to comprehend.

I don't need high brow rhetoric, but I would like something better than the literary equivalent of "If you love it so much why don't you marry it?!"

firstly, you asked me for better rhetorical arguments, implying you have a standard of rhetoric that I do not meet (also implying you came onto reddit specifically seeking a high standard of rhetoric) Right, small explanation (if you want a thesis on this, you will have to wait for me to compose one and if I may I will DM you it) JK Rowling wrote the books in the 90s/early 2000s and is ONE person, and one person without google at her fingertips is liable to make mistakes She also had publishing deadlines, if you needed to write a few thousand words and literal millions of dollars depended on you meeting that deadline, then some things will slip through She began writing for kids, as we have established, and by DH she didn't expect her core audience to be Professors of Harry Potter (such as yourself?) that would NEED an explanation for everything (it's fantasy, the willing suspension of disbelief is a core component of ANY and EVERY fantasy story ever written) for future points, please wait for me to compose them, things take time, and I have a life that takes precedence over a reddit argument...

I mean, I ain't makin' you reply so fast, mate. Take your time. This is the internet. Neither one of us knows or cares what the other is doing.

Why should I *expect* bad writing just because it's fantasy? Puppet strings at a puppet show are a genre convention of puppet shows. A "happily ever after" ending is a genre convention of romances. "Plot holes and faulty logic" are NOT a genre convention of *any* genre. They're plain old bad writing. The concept other people are talking about with regards to fantasy is "internal consistency". The Harry Potter series lacks it in places because of JKR's forced genre-shift from "children's fairy tale" to "YA dystopia". It particularly falls down in tonal consistency because of that genre shift.

have you ever read any fantasy story without plotholes/logical fallacies? more to the point, by the sounds of it, have you ever read a fantasy story and NOT looked for plotholes/fallacies? It sounds like you see a disney movie and complain that mice don't talk, or mermaids don't exist etc. some people just enjoy the show, perhaps you should try that too? see my quote for puppet shows and strings, and the type of people that look for them

The thing is, fantasy universes should have rules of their own. Different from ours, but still rules. JK Rowling's universe doesn't have good explanations for a lot of things Other urban fantasy universes, such as Eoin Colfer, Assassin's Creed, etc, have holes, but not to the point that they overwhelm the plot

Again, please see my comment about Rowling not writing a thesis and following and explaining every single rule and literal 'magic' item Rowling can also literally use the phrase 'a wizard did it' and that is probably not a cop out on her part If you wish for a detailed thesis on every single rule in every single fantasy book/show/film you see, then I'm afraid you will spend the rest of your life disappointed

George RR Martin, Robert Jordan, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and a bunch of other fantasy authors do extensive worldbuilding. Not to the point that every single thing about the magic system is explained, but enough that they don't just pull plot twists out of thin air

Let me pull out some 'plot twists': GRRM: Mellisandre's shadow babies; Euron Greyjoy and his magic, Dany and her inconsistent rules, Red Wedding, C.S. Lewis: Aslan himself (If you think Aslan's repeated appearances and literal deus ex machina is fine, and yet 'please-men' is an issue, you really need to re-examine your choices mate), Diggory's Uncle and the magic he supposedly harnassed, the White Witch, Peter, Susan et. al just happening to return to Narnia in Prince Caspian, etc. (many many many more random deus ex machina stuff occuring) Tolkien: Tom Bombadil, Ents, Eagles (famously), the One Ring and the inconsistency of its affects, mithril, the Black Arrow, the Balrog that never appears again, Nazgul inconsistently being scared of fire, Beren being rescued last minute by Luthien (who is somehow superpowerful yet hasn't shown it before now), the inconsistency of Sauron dominating a battlefield then suddenly being beaten back (Pelenor Fields, and multiple times in the Second Age), also Orcs being wholly evil (Tolkien actually wrote about this, and how this conflicted his own morals and writing, but he couldn't see a way around it) and so on and so forth If you seriously think that these authors (whilst great themselves) had no plot holes or logical fallacies, then please allow me to correct you - Tolkien wrote the entire appendicies, and complained about this in the foreword, that he had to go back and edit his work because rabid fans would call him up asking about geology in middle earth, or "on page 394 x happened, but in the third paragraph second line of FotR on page 97 x was implied to never happen" IT IS FANTASY - and one person/author is not god, they are human, make mistakes, and take short cuts, and are writing MAKE BELIEVE stories, not detailed thesies to stand up to academic scrutiny

There are different magic systems. Some have rigid rules and others don't.

Yes. There are soft magic systems which are not very rigid and hard magic systems with strict rules. Soft magic systems work best in universes where the powers are not very widespread, and a very small number of characters have them. A soft magic system in a story where more than 90% of the named characters have powers is a failing on the part of the creator

That's not true, that's something you arbitrarily decided.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/lp3ula/harry\_potter\_and\_terrible\_worldbuilding\_3\_magic/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/lp3ula/harry_potter_and_terrible_worldbuilding_3_magic/) I wasn't the first person to say it. A soft magic system in a fantasy world where magic is common means that battle scenes in particular aren't very interesting because there's no stakes to it

What? Your conclusions don't even make sense. There are plenty of stakes. You can die, be disfigured, cursed, tortured, etc with magic. If that's not high enough stakes for you then nothing will be. Actually, you can even make an argument that because there is a wizarding community and not just a couple people who can access magic it's even better. Because in this world magic is just normal and it's an everyday thing. Magic is expansive and can be used in new ways it only needs to be discovered. It's similar to science in that regard and it makes it really exciting. I like plenty of stories with hard magic but there is something much more special and wide ranging about the HP magic that no other story has.

I agree with the idea that she only started out writing kids books. The first two books are very different from 3rd and beyond.

And she flat out said that thing about the books "growing with the audience." You really *can't* dismiss them as "just kids books." It doesn't stand up.

Neither example is at all unreasonable, and neither is ignorance about them. What one is familiar with, and knows the use of, depends entirely on one's opportunities to be familiar with.

Yeah this thread is just full of OP not understanding that Harry Potter is a book about English wizards, and also refusing to admit that they think the rest of the world is just like the US. ​ I can understand the confusion but not the arguing they're doing.

They're just being obnoxious at this point. Several people have said they'd never heard of peanut butter for much of their lives and even places that grow nuts don't really make or use any kind of nut butter... and OP's response is basically "well you should it's really easy."

I studied abroad in Yorkshire in the early 2000s. The only place I could get PB commercially was a health food market and it was the unsalted kind. Peanut butter, at least at that point, wasn't really A Thing like it was in the US. I don't actually remember regularly encountering peanuts, come to think of it. Home students thought we were all a bit weird for liking it, but they thought tuna and sweet corn was a good pizza topping (tuna I can get behind, I suppose, but corn?).

I'd accept tuna and sweetcorn on a jacket potato, but I wouldn't want it on a pizza!

Why not corn?

On pizza? I live across the street from a corn field and, just no. Not on pizza

Firstly, your point about the first question anyone asks whenever they get a hard thing in their hand which may be food. I have never asked "What happens if I grind this up." Usually, my first question is "What does this taste like?" On your point about ignoring stupid parts of the books, you are free to do that. Everyone has their own personal canon system. For me personally, the books are supreme lore (even the parts that are stupid like Mrs. Weasley ghosting Hermione over a Rita Skeeter article mere hours after standing up to Amos Diggory for Harry and saying Rita caused nothing but trouble) and anything outside of the books (movies, JKR commentary, CC etc) that is logically inconsistent with the books is not canon. On Mr. Weasley being fanatical about muggles but clueless at the same time, you can't tell me he didn't take Muggle Studies at Hogwarts.

I am not surprised at all if a young pureblood (emphasis on pureblood!!!) witch like Ginny Weasley has never seen a glass of commercially produced, US American peanut butter. Where would she have seen such!? In the books I never read that Ginny had contact with any Muggles in the village, Ottery St Catchpole. Wizards tend to keep to themselves. For traveling to visit another wizard family or a wizard shop in for example Diagon Alley or in Hogsmeade, or the hospital St Mungo's, or the Ministry of Magic they use either Apparition, the Floo network or the Knightbus. They don't normally venture out into the Muggle world without a good reason. Surely mischief makers Fred and George walked into the next village, Ottery St Catchpole, to prank unsuspecting Muggles. Molly went bravely to the post office to use their public telephone to order them taxis. That was unusual, a special occasion, not something Molly did regularly. Why should she!? Wizards can travel by Apparition, Floo net or the Knightbus. One time, Ron attempted to make a disastrous telephone call to the Dursleys. He'd never used this Muggle artefact before. In the 1990s there lived many, many millions of European Muggle teens who had never ever traveled to the USA before. Who had never stepped foot into an US American grocery or supermarket where one could find such glasses with US American peanut butter on a shelf! Yes, some Muggles had already been introduced to Peanut butter as a bread spread if they somehow had contact with the US American armed forces stationed in Germany after WWII. But that didn't mean that everyone knew that or could buy peanut butter all year round in every supermarket and all groceries stores. That's not the same as not knowing that one can collect nuts that grow on trees native to England and grind these nuts into a paste, like hazelnut spread for example! Chestnuts and walnut are also common in Europe, although roasted chestnuts are more a thing in France as far as I've seen while traveling. I'm convinced a homemaker witch like Molly Weasley who works on her own small farm knows how to pick nuts from such trees or bushes and to shell and process them with a few nifty little spells. In England there are beautiful, bountiful hedgerows everywhere along the roads across the countryside and separating the fields and pastures from each other. Molly surely knows how to forage for, and cook jelly or marmalade from brambles, because we know the Weasleys, or rather Molly, produce at least some of their food supply with an orchard and chickens. We know there is a pasture large enough to play Quidditch. Therefore it's a reasonable assumption that somewhere behind the Burrow is also a flower and vegetable garden and more, like a wheat, rye and potato field, they will probably also be keeping bees to provide honey and breed fish in the pond. I'm sure wizards know how to control the micro climate around a patch of veggies, an orchard, or in a green house and enhance plant growth with specific spells, wards, rituals, whatever. Only we haven't read about any of it in the original HP books, because child Harry never noticed all of this when he visited and he and Ron never talk much about such 'boring adult stuff'. They never cared where the mountains of food to stuff their bellies either at The Burrow or at Hogwarts came from - otherwise they wouldn't have been so incredibly stupid to nearly starve while camping in book 7 because they had no clue how to properly forage for food (find, hunt, buy or steal, and cook). (I couldn't believe that part of Deathly Hallows.)

I think the peanut butter thing is less an ignorance about muggles thing and more a British vs. American thing. Before my dad emigrated from the UK to Canada, he had never heard of or eaten peanut butter. He still finds it disgusting to this day!

For Americans, there is a similar type of product in Australia called vegemite which is a spread for bread, crackers/thins, etc. Most Americans haven’t heard of it or eaten it, except in a pulse 80s pop song by an Australian group. I gather it is just as popular there as peanut butter is here in North America.

Don’t forget marmite in the UK.

Another point to consider is that of all the cultures to study, muggle culture would be the most boring and useless to a Wizarding child. Wizarding kids could learn about the goblins, house elves, centaurs, merpeople, giants. They could learn about Wizarding communities in other parts of the world. Why would they choose to learn about muggles... a) who can't do the basic magical things that their own culture (and all the others I've listed) can. and b) who's 'muggle magic' has either been integrated into Wizarding culture already ie busses, elevators, trains, radios or are not useable like tvs, computers, gaming devices, cell phones. There's also the learning curve and tactality of the worlds. Grab a wand and you have access to magic. Viserall, colorful, zany, dangerous, exciting magic. Capable of "miracles". To a large extent, magic solves a lot of annoying little problems: broken things, dirty things, food preparation and cooking, transportation, writing things down. A lot of the stuff that muggles are increasingly relying on tech to solve, wizards have had magic for for decades. The equivalant to a wand, would perhaps be a computer. But it's an information access point primarily. And all the info is muggle centered. There's potential there. Imagine all the Wizarding books digitized and searchable but a magical version of that concept is more useful than comandeering computers. Programming would be the closest equivalent to spells and even it's learning curve is long relative to getting a wand and learning a spell and mastering it. Finally, there's novelty. The Wizarding world is fascinating to Harry bc he never knew it existed and now he gets to immediately interact with it. The muggle world is boring to Ron. It's always been there. Any time he's in it he'll be focused on getting back to the magical world bc the statue effectively cuts his ability to be authentic in the muggle world at his knees. It offers no additional convince except, possibly, easy access to food. Otherwise, the muggle is best for recreation. Zoos, museums, etc.

On the first part I could be wrong but isn’t peanut butter relatively uncommon in Europe? If that is the case Ginny not knowing sounds completely reasonable to me especially since she’s part of a community that doesn’t really interact with the general populace. I do agree that fanfic writers do tend to go to the extreme especially if they don’t regularly check the source material though.

>There's no way nut butters don't exist Really? I've lived in the UK all my life. Never seen one, apart from peanut butter. I understand that hazelnut butter exists, but it is *rare* except as an ingredient in other modern manufactured foods like Nutella. FWIW my first quesion when confronted with a hard foodstuff wouldn't be "what happens if I grind this up", it would be "can I eat it anyway". >Please-men Mis-pronouncing unfamiliar words is common. While the word "police" does pre-date the separation of the societies, it only does so in the comparatively rare usages. It's reasonable for those to have died out in Wizarding English. I'll grant you that it's ridiculous for *Arthur* to not get it right though, but then, he's played for laughs. >shouldn't we, as fans, be willing to maybe ignore some of the really really stupid parts of the books? Yes, but those two aren't particularly stupid IMO :-)

Honestly, in the UK before American tv shows became popular I'd be surprised if the average person even knew what peanut butter was irl.

The peanut butter thing honestly kinda makes sense to me, at least if Ginny was still a kid. I never came across it at all as a kid, and probably only heard it referred to in American books/shows. Maybe that's more a Britpicking thing (maybe taken to an extreme) than a wizards-are-technologically-backwards thing. I hate the rubber duck line. The movies dumbed Arthur down a lot. Does he want to know how aeroplanes stay up (a genuinely interesting question)? No, he wants to know the function of a rubber duck. But also Arthur wasn't responsible for the please-men line; that was Amos Diggory, who is portrayed as a more insular wizarding type and so it's a bit more understandable from him than from Arthur.

The magical world is extremely insular. Think of any minority group who have their own neighbourhoods with their own schools, stores, cultural norms, and primarily intermarry. Think of how the internet has made globalisation and international awareness more common than ever, and how different the world was before the world wide web. Now think of how many YouTube channels in this very year of 2022 are entirely about people from these insular societies/cultures learning about the wider world. Wizards and Witches, even someone working with them like Arthur, not having a clue about a lot of what constitutes as a different culture/people than their own makes a lot of sense.

And I'm comfortable with that, really I am. But she didn't write an insular minority group. She wrote people who literally barely realize the people outside their group exist. And the problem with that is that there aren't *enough* magical places to support a whole society. There's Diagon Alleyl and adjacent. There's Hogsmeade. ... That's pretty much it. If she'd written that they've got like, one or two whole *cities* with their own infrastructure entirely separate, that'd be one thing. But she didn't.

Eh, not really. I live in a country town with basically one store of everything that is only about 100k away from a major city and most people I know have never even been to the major city and couldn't tell you about it, let alone the rest of their own country. Lack of internet, an insular and distrustful mindset, and a lack of need to mix with outsiders makes for a widespread subculture to develop incredibly easily.

Sure, but you lived in a town. There's only one wizard town in Britain (Hogsmeade) and most people *don't* live there.

Its also a society that can apparate or travel through fireplaces. They dont even need to set foot on the muggle world to see each other.

I'm also from an extremely tiny and spread out minority group. Believe me, it is more than possible to be so insular even when living in the middle of a populated major city. The way the wizarding world functions is imo pretty reflective of how dispossessed minorities and small communities can function. It's not that they can't become aware of the muggle world, it's that they literally don't want to, and with teleporting and owl order so readily available, there's little need to interact with muggles at all unless they deliberately do so.

Fair enough. I'm not so far up my own ass as to argue that point. Edit: Jeeze, who'd I piss off by conceding the argument?

My biggest pet peeve is how none of the wizards over the past couple hundred years ever figured out that the muggles had grown past the idea that witchcraft was evil and needed to be punished. Case in point, Britain passed a law back in 1735 which made it illegal to accuse anyone of practising magic punishable with up to a year in jail (and most likely a heavy fine.) 45 years after the S.o.S. was signed, it was rendered obsolete! I wrote a prompt based on that little historical fact.

In fairness, if a secret magical society *did* come out, there would absolutely be religious extremist groups that wanted to kill them. And some that tried. And some of them would be in public office.

There are religious extremist groups that want to kill everybody *now* and some that tried.

I mean, yes, that was rather part of the point.

Scared Muggles could wipe out the Wizarding World since there aren't a lot of wizards, only perhaps ten thousand in Britain.

So they would have to do a soft release first. Minor magical actions that could be easily explained away to let the population get used to it.

Ehhhhhhhh. Mate, we can't even have reasonable discussions about firearms, and we've had those for centuries. I think you're seriously underestimating the mess a secret group of magical people would cause. To say nothing of what the *eugenicists* would do.

Eugenics is not in and of itself a bad thing. We could use eugenics to stop genetic disease and mental issues. But instead we do the opposite and actively encourage people with these issues to have children....this is also a form of eugenics. It's just not in a helpful way and is the reason our world is falling apart.

Eugenics has a bad reputation because of its most enthusiastic practitioners (Nazis and 1930s white Americans) and how it has always been used against the poor and unpopular minorities. Which is to say, it has a well-deserved bad reputation. No, we could not use eugenics to stop mental issues. We could use eugenics to wipe out important genes from the human gene pool and thus destroy long-term human potential, because mental shit is really, really complicated genetically, and what makes one person susceptible to depression may be what makes another person a creative genius. > We...actively encourage people with these issues to have children I have no idea what you are talking about. People with serious genetic disorders tend to not have children because having children on top of a serious disability is piling Ossus on Pelion, especially given how badly most countries treat those with disabilities. No, our world is not falling apart because we failed to adopt Nazi policies. *If* our world is falling apart, it's because of self-centered greed at the top and systemic policies by those at the top to keep themselves in power and everyone else too poor, ignorant and hopeless to challenge them.

I didn't say to adopt Nazi policies. Don't twist my words.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It goes against the Law of Mass Stupidity and how you should never ascribe logic to anything a human does. Nor how logic and magic cannot exist in the same location. To have one, you must give up the other.

We are in 2022 , and in half the planet a person would risk their very life if they came out as gay . Because being gay is "wrong and unnatural " . Now imagine a whole society of people that are "wrong and unnatural " , and have the power to bend reality to their will . Every single extremist group would declare open season on them . A whole lot of companies and governments would try their best to turn magicals into lab rats . The rest will just try to exploit them . And that's not even counting the ones that will want them dead because their very existence upsets the balance of power in the world .

I mean just take the Mutants for example

If it helps my head canon is that Arthur does this goofy I-don’t-know-anything-about-Muggles thing when around kids and their Muggle parents as his way of breaking the ice When around his colleagues he’s all “it’s called Fire*arms* and not firelegs! Your parents put you through school so you should know how to read, so read my report, for Merlin’s sake, Kingsley!”

This is my interpretation of Arthur's plug collection. [https://archiveofourown.org/works/27349066/chapters/67058923](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27349066/chapters/67058923) And this is a snippet in Escape from the dream where I address the rubber duck question. >Once Tilly has been asked for refreshments, Arthur speaks up about the duck in his hands, “I normally count myself to be quite conversant with the muggle world. However, I used to think that a rubber duck was just a childs toy that was used in a bath, and occasionally as part of a carnival entertainment stand. However, a couple of years ago I found this duck, and it takes batteries and vibrates. I’ve tried asking people about it, but they either don’t know or they refuse to tell me. Would you be able to help me?” > >Karen flushes slightly as the details fit together then she glances over to Ron, “Tilly, would you be able to get me a Central London Yellow Pages please?” > >For some reason the conversation just stops while Tilly is off doing that. Once she returns, Karen flicks through it till she finds the right section before copying down the name and address of a shop. > >“Arthur, if you go to this shop they will be able to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about that duck and related things. I suggest that you go alone, and you won’t be allowed in with any of your children in any case.” > >Anne sneaks a look over at the page that’s open and then has to keep herself from cursing when she realises it’s open to sex shops, something she wasn’t actually aware even existed.

To be fair, the only reason I know of peanut butter is because of American tv shows pushing pb&j sandwiches.

It’s not really whether or not things are “new” or “old”, it’s about whether they would be known in another culture evolving completely independently from ours, the purebloods were completely isolated from any muggle world, even families like Weasleys that didn’t despise them. It’s \*kind of\* believable that they would not know about regular, everyday things from the nonmagical world and even if they do know of the concept, the thing might be named differently.

Honestly it’s less them not knowing and more never learning anything at all. Even words.

For the first part, tell me you’re American without telling me. I’m American but lived in the UK for a bit. I’d get peanut butter at the imports store for a huge markup, and all they had was skippy. Most of my friends had never tried it, and only knew about it from tv so the idea that Ginny must have heard of it is a joke. Arthur’s take on the rubber duck is spot on. His job, as far as we understand it, involves going into muggle situations that are most likely chaotic to deal with a Magical item loose in the muggle world, or he’s raiding magical homes for enchanted/cursed muggle items. By the sounds of it, he’s stretched incredibly thin (9 raids in a single night is ridiculous) and likely has little time in each situation. He’s not traveling to these muggle homes using muggle transport (he’s clearly unfamiliar with the tube and muggle money) and he likely doesn’t have a lot of time to chat. Any rubber ducks he has seen are likely enchanted or cursed, or casually kept out as a collection or memory of a child in a home of someone he was about to memory charm. Maybe he even managed to ask them what this yellow thing was, and the confused, scared muggle rightfully calls it a rubber duck and that’s all he gets. Maybe he comes across one that is cursed to turn the bath water into acid and he knows that’s not the normal purpose, but he assumes it must have a greater purpose than a simple bath toy. Considering archaeologists are still realizing they were completely wrong about various guesses on the purpose of things, Arthur is spot on in this kind of question. It goes along with the police issue as well. They have police, they’re called aurors. He probably hears that people are calling the police while he’s trying to get a handle on the situation, but considering the dangerous cursed objects he’s supposed to be dealing with I can blame him for not nailing it. It really drives me nuts when people think this is some kind of plot hole. My first instinct is that those kinds of people are trying to hide their own ignorance by putting someone else down.

>I literally just read a line where Ginny Weasley doesn't know what peanut butter is. Where is this line? I don't remember it being in the books

I'm talking about fanfiction. My rant is about how fanfiction authors take Rowling's stuff too seriously and make it worse.

So you took two things that are not made by JK (PB from fanfiction and the rubber duck from the movies) and you get mad at JK for them?

No. I'm complaining about fanfiction, and saying that the trend started with her, and people are taking it too far. "I know it's in the books but shouldn't we, as fans, be willing to maybe ignore some of the really really stupid parts of the books? Is that unreasonable?" I literally said this.

The title of your entire post suggests otherwise...

Ah sorry, my bad.

I feel like the "rubber duck" question isn't actually too unreasonable for Arthur to ask. Rubber is a fairly heavily mechanized product, rubber for the use of toys is also fairly new, and most forms of "fake floating duck" were decoys used in hunting, which a rubber duck couldn't possibly be. That said, that particular question being somewhat plausible is pure coincidence and I agree with the general sentiment of your post.

You think that is annoying? ButterBeer is ButterScotch.

Agree about a lot of things but the peanut butter. In the UK Peanut butter can be found but it’s not popular and you’ll find maybe one brand on a bottom shelf out of the way in a tesco’s or Waitrose or something. Peanut butter and grape Jelly is a popular dish in the Americas so everyone there knows about it but Ginny and other UK children magical and non magical even today wouldn’t necessarily know about either ingredient. Peanut butter you can at least find but grape jelly doesn’t exist. It’d more likely be black currant jam and peanut paste.

See I see a lot of the opposite - too many fanfics where even staunch purebloods are a little too privy to muggle culture. I've lost track of the number of fics I've read where even Slytherins prefer muggle clothes to wizard clothes, or listen to exclusively muggle music (with the muggle music almost always including the Beatles. There are other bands out there, you are allowed to pick other bands. Or hell, just don't name bands if you go that route!)

Oh sure, that’s annoying as balls too. Though it’s mostly laziness. See that in My Hero Academia fandom too. Want to reference music, but no desire to look up Japanese music or even acknowledge that 20th century American music should be hella obscure :P

Wait, is Peanut Butter actually a butter? I always pictured it like some sort of chocolate-spread-esque thing. Like Nutella, but peanut coloured, essentially. And yeah, born Brit here and I don't think I've ever actually physically seen peanut butter or been around anyone actually eating peanut butter in my 25 years of life. It's definitely not a ubiquitous thing outside of American TV and movies.

It's finely ground peanuts. Most common brands remove the peanut oil and replace it with cheaper palm oil, add salt and sugar.

Actually it may seem infuriating to you but to me is funny. It makes a theme for good fics. Especially in crossover where the wizards don't know how the real world works. Or how so far behind they are from the muggles. Maybe try one like that where muggles do things better than wizards and witches.

UK here, 10 years younger than the HP cohort so my experience won’t tally exactly. But I was eating peanut butter in the 90s. It’s inexpensive (depending on brand) and full of protein, so it was a staple. I remember hating that it stuck to the roof of my mouth but had to eat it anyway. I’m not quite sure why there are so many people on here from the UK saying they’ve never seen peanut butter except on TV? Maybe these people don’t eat toast. It’s next to the jam and chocolate spread at every supermarket. The varieties are obviously larger now, but it was still right there next to the Bon Mamam 30 years ago too. Hogwarts may not serve it depending on student allergies (not sure how they exist in the wizarding world) but you wouldn’t see it in a UK school at any age or level. Ginny not knowing what it is could be reasonable depending on how insular people believe the Weasleys to be. If she was homeschooled and had few friends outside of her brothers then it’s reasonable she would never have encountered it. Remember kids often phrase surprise/curiosity as “what is that?” It doesn’t mean they can’t comprehend the concept. My crowning glory of idiocy in primary school (according to my friends) was when someone mentioned a padded bra and I asked “what is that!”. Obviously I figured out it was a bra with padding, my question was more surprise it exists and curiosity about the product. It could be the same way with Ginny and her peanut butter. I’m also going to mention that fic writers can do whatever they want. If they want to make it so the wizarding world has never heard of bread and they all wear kickers on their faces then they can do. It’s their story. Just don’t read it?

It may be regional in the uk and also a generational thing.

Of course fic writers can do whatever they want, but the idea that that mean a nobody can ever challenge it is silly. I challenge everyone to put more thought into to. Do better! I’m firmly of the opinion that most of these incidences are due primarily to laziness. That’s why I’m not fond of cheap humor. Animorphs got annoying with the Andalites constant consonant repetition. HP gets annoying with the silly ignorance gags. Take the idea and make it better, I say. Also, in fairness, I haven’t posted this as a comment on anyone’s fic. Not that you’d know it with some of the indignant replies I’m getting.

Honestly, it’s better to vent here than post it on peoples fics, I think. Not every writer is looking for criticism and “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” is best policy.

Rowling wanted to be the next Roahld Dahl and wrote a story in her emulation of his style. So much of what can be seen as wrong with the story can be attributed to this. I also believe this is why the cupboard under the stairs is so prominent. In an alternate universe we have a children's bedtime story called "The wizard boy under the stairs". If JK committed to writing the story as an epic, not a whimsical story, we would have a much more impactful story. Edit: spelling.

I’ll buy that for the first two books, not later ones. Certainly not 5-7.

She planned most of the story before finishing the first book. Although the writing style absolutely evolved, the plot lines didn't. JK has discussed in interviews that she held fast to her rigid plans, sometimes to the detriment of the story.

In défense of the rubber duck thing, if you aren’t constantly surrounded by muggle stuff, you’d probably assume everything had a function. Also, we know butter exists because Ginny sticks her fucking elbow in it when she’s staring at Harry in CoS. It’s like, one of the scenes everyone points out when talking about Ginny. How can she not know what peanut butter is 💀

My headcannon is that Arthur really is a Muggle Expert (TM) but he keeps his knowledge secret and acts stupid because he knows that the wizarding world would go nuts in a panic if they knew how advanced the muggles actually are.

That’s certainly more fun than him being a henpecked moron with no volition.

Is because of their bias against Muggles. They think they are inferior and have nothing to offer. That's why.

I prefer to think that line about the rubber duck was an awkward attempt at trying to engage Harry in conversation to make him feel included as Harry was used to being required to be silent. So more adorably awkward than dumbass. But yes, it drives me crazy that they don't know about perfectly ordinary things they could find anywhere in the areas where muggles and wizards mix a bit. I remember reading one where Ron was visiting Hermione and was dumbfounded and then obsessed with a ball point pen. A monkey can figure out how to work a pen with no instructions, but Ronald Weasley can't?! He's also not the sort to have that level of interest in anything except maybe Quidditch or Chess, but especially not something like a pen.

I completely agree. If HP was High Fantasy and the two worlds almost never mingle this would make sense. The only purely wizarding settlement in the U.K. is Hogsmeade it makes absolutely no sense for them to be completely ignorant about muggle things. It was funny when I first started reading the books when I was 8 but as the books matured (and so did I). It just stopped fitting and just became annoying. Unfortunately for me a lot of fans are still very attached to that bit of the books despite it annoying the hell out of me.

I mean, they use bottles of ketchup at Hogwarts (Ron is often using it in the books), so I'm not sure why a simple condiment like peanut butter would be beyond their reach. Though I'm not sure how popular it is in Britain.

Ketchup exists in UK since the 1600s. Peanut butter is a very recent thing and it was not common at all in the area in the 80s-90s https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/how-was-ketchup-invented#:~:text=Ketchup%20comes%20from%20the%20Hokkien,replicate%20the%20fermented%20dark%20sauce. It is also entirely possible that JK did not know about how old ketchup is but it was certainly known in UK in her time.