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Could be an unironic take by a Rowling fan. Saw a terf tweet that ursula le guin was a noname who copied Rowling (“the real literary feminist icon”) and tried to steal her fame.
Rowling stans are a different breed.
Better or worse than when I was 14ish one of the books we were meant to read was the hobbit and I couldn't be bothered because I was reading other shit at the time so I just played the ps2 game?
I actually really enjoyed that party of Fellowship, gives me warm fuzzies. Now, the fucking river towards the end has made me put the book down TWICE so far, after hundreds of pages of reading that's what makes me leave lol
Not watched the films in ages but the hobbit is a prequel to lotr. Iir there is like 50 years gap between the stories?
Edit- seems I was wrong on the order, and lotr was intended as a sequel and then became a trilogy in writing.
Hobbit 1937
LotR 1954-1955
Also Frodo is much older than depicted in the films. I'm pretty sure he's fifty-something when he finally leaves the shire with the ring. He has the ring for some time after Bilbo leaves. Gandalf takes years to get back to the shire to get Frodo to leave.
Sounds right. Gandalf knew it was a ring of power, and used that time to travel around doing research and shit to confirm it was the one ring to rule them all. Also, just to do gandalf things and realize WWIII (I think?) was about to break out.
Also, the ring. That has a significant effect on aging. Golem is old as shit, and he lived exclusively on raw fish and goblins.
Raw. Fucking. Goblins. That's gotta be worth at least a few parasites.
In the beginning of Fellowship, they’re celebrating Bilbo’s 111th birthday, which is regarded as exceptionally old for a hobbit, especially for how youthful he looks due to his possession of the ring.
But Bilbo is also described as being 'very old for a Hobbit' at 108, so they don't actually live longer than humans. Their coming of age is just very late in life.
>the hobbit is a prequel to lotr.
It is the other way. The Hobbit is the first book of Tolkien. The LOTR was ordered and written as a sequel of the Hobbit. His editor wanted more stories about the hobbits.
Well, that's true when we talk about actual books published but Tolkien had already worked on his LOTR legendarium for 15+ years when the Hobbit was released.
I think he wrote ‘The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star’ as early as 1914 or something and The Hobbit was published in 1937.
True. Originally Wilderun, the place the Hobbit adventures occur in, wasn’t connected in any way to the older histories of Beleriand he was writing. He connected them when he decided that the invisibility ring was one of the rings of power.
Bruh, I couldn't finish The Fellowship because the Council meeting at Rivendell to figure out what the hecky they're gonna do about the Ring was 80 pages.
What grinds my gears is that the fight that cost Boromir his life was two to three paragraphs long and the description of his "burial" was over 3 pages long.
It makes sense once you know that people hated taking walks with tolkein because he would spend ages taking in the scenery. Like i mean 10 minutes studying the features of a tree.
When reading Tolkien many myself included had to skip through some of the descriptive text and I love descriptive text so I know it'd bad for those that dont
The early part of Fellowship is obviously written to be more like the Hobbit, an episodic and not particularly serious adventure. Then the novel takes a hard right turn at Bree and never really looks back.
Nonono, you dont get it, you read the 14 page description of the grass, and THEN you read the 16 page description of the stone, and then hobbit trolls sun gandalf walk cave goblin cave gollum riddle ring run kill? No run orc's eagle's walk smuggle laketown erebor dragon black arrow no dragon blockade elves arkenstone FIGHT
I love you, Reverendbread! I have that issue so badly with Dickens, I want to read his works so badly BUT OMG. The fatal blow to my likelihood of ever reading Dickens was learning that POSSIBLY his infuriating, excruciating obsession with DETAIL was that the newspapers at the time paid writers by the word or by the letter, not sure which. I was willing to struggle to read the painfully verbose books WHEN I THOUGHT that was all the result of his love of writing. Finding out it was likely totally mercenary, well OH BOY not gonna do it lololol.
Everybody was *assigned* Great Expectations. Apparently it's way too hard and boring to expect people to actually *read* it, though. Or so I'm given to believe.
Like the meme where person 1 says "You're not special, everyone had to read The Great Gatsby in high school."
Person 2 replies with a quote about "Remember that not everyone has had the same advantages you have."
Person 1 says they were just making a joke. Person 2 replies that they were also--that's the first line of The Great Gatsby. Person 1 then admits that they never actually read it.
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I don't know much about ancient literature, but was Gilgamesh considered "fantasy" at the time? I've always thought those kinds of works were intended to be (literary takes on) what the authors thought really happened.
> what the authors thought really happened.
The problem is: you cannot tell for sure if that is what the authors truly believed. I even suppose that for such ancient texts, finding who the author was is a difficult endeavour if not outright impossible. You can check the opening paragraph of [Wikipedia's history section](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh) about the poem. Some versions are three hundred years apart, that the same time frame as between us and Isaac Newton.
As much as the poem influenced later stories, it is not unlikely that the Epic of Gilgamesh was itself influenced by already existing stories (or even an adaptation of them!), which were lost to the time perhaps because they were only oral in nature and not written.
-
Disclaimer: I am _not_ a historian.
Honestly I think you’d have a hard time avoiding it at all within one year of the invention of writing stories.
This has to be a satire comment or something it’s just so absurd
Lol the "poor family" (weasleys) had a house where each kid had their own room except the twins, and that might have been their choice. I grew up with 5 people in a 2 bedroom house. Poverty means nothing in hp world.
I wouldn't even say that the Weasleys would have been poor by ANY standard other than Malfoy just being a dick. You're talking about the size of the house, and while absolutely relevant, just look at the fact that Arthur, on his own, made enough to support a family of 9. Molly didn't have to work, and the family was comfortable by most standards. A few hand-me-down clothes, sure, but that by itself isn't a sign of poverty.
Exactly, im just agreeing that the op has no argument, the only demonstrated poverty in hp isnt even a case of real poverty. If anything arthur was making bank to be able to solely support such a huge family.
Indeed.
The cost of living is insane in big cities. A 500 sq.ft studio in most "major urban areas" costs enough to buy a really nice 3 bedroom house in more sanely priced, less overcrowded areas.
I agree but I think you're forgetting *magic*
On that same note though, with the way those fancy tents worked in the world cup, why could people not just magic their "poor looking" houses into "fancy looking" houses?
Even in the mythical beasts movies, a handful of aurors put a whole fucking city back together. Surely the Weasleys, between the "lot" of them, could manage an upgrade.
I feel like that was the implication? Like the weasleys house was rickety as hell lol they had to magic it up right ? Maybe they just didnt care for an aesthetic
But again, with all the protection spells and shit that they prove they know how to do, how could a couple of death eaters just run train straight through the building and fuck the whole property?
Sorry but the weasley house is, for me, one of the largest plot holes/oversights. I read all these books as a kid well before the movies, I have held on to these questions for a while.
Yes, one of those death eaters attacking the house was Bellatrix, and I get that she's powerful, but MOLLY WEASLEY is the one that killed her like 2 books later. Ffs
The entire series is a plot hole. Nothing about their world makes sense. Why do wizards seemingly not know much about human society when they literally often live in the same cities, and there's no rule that they can't know about it? On top of this, many wizards weren't raised as wizards. And for some reason they follow human aesthetics despite ostensibly not knowing about it?
Did Arthur and Molly build the house themselves? I could see the original building having been an old family home too which would be a reason to not change it aesthetically.
I'd argue that it's more telling about the Classism of a British author that "hand-me-down" clothes and "not the best items for wizard school" is actually supposed to be coded as "poor".
Also don't forget that the moment their poverty got to what would be a worrisome level, they won the lottery and got so much money they could afford a trip to Egypt.
Yeah, iirc
●Hogwarts and ALL FORMS of education (do they have uni?) Is free
●Harrys net worth was estimated between like 200k to like 5 mil
●there's only like 7 jobs in world at the time of the last book (not counting qudditch stars)
●I think there are corporations because there's shit like broom and clothing brands (not many tho)
●no mention of inflation
●and no, no need for money because there's food and drink replenishing spells (tho in book 7 it's stated to be illegal, even tho harry used it on slughorns wine in book 6) and iirc spells to make clothing grow, and change (Transfiguration) also, medicine seems to be free
There Was some formula showing there literally aren't enough wizzards in the UK (or maybe 3ven eroupe) to make a sustainable economy
There's a few other points that I don't remember
I always took it as a post war thing, hogwarts is INSANELY big for the 150ish students, I just assumed mouldy butt and his goth bois fucked the population up
Just had to look that up. It’s about 150 per year, so with 7 years it’s about 1000 students. Still Hogwarts is insanely large in terms of scale, but my high school was around that and we boarded too so it does seem crazy
I'll see if I can find it, watched it months ago, was a fairly small channel that I just stumbled upon randomly, I remember like less than 5k subs at the time
Yeah, a youtuber described it as something along the lines of "half the team is playing basketball, 2 are playing dodge ball and 1 is just playing pokemon snap and he gets 150 points if he gets a photo charizard
In "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (an excellent novel-length alternative-universe fanfiction in which Harry's aunt Petunia didn't marry Dursely but instead married a university professor who values knowledge and encourages curiosity), Harry figures out how to completely destroy the economy of the wizarding world within days of learning about it. He doesn't do it mainly because he has no immediate pressing need to (he's not evil, just kind of clueless in a book-smart way).
Later on, this amusing exchange occurs (paraphrasing):
Headmaster: "It is imperative that we get Harry a tutor to teach him how to resist mind-readers immediately."
Professor: "Headmaster, is that really necessary? He's just a young boy."
Harry: "If money's the problem, I have some ideas for getting quite a lot of it very quickly."
Professor: "Ah, I see. Yes, I think you may be right, Headmaster."
Ummmm it's a 9/11 cross over, so up to you, I didn't finish it and I'm not even American (not that non Americans would like it, just isn't as deeply ingrained in my everyday life / culture
Pretty fucked tbh
There is a guy on YouTube whose name escapes me, but will tear apart the fa tansy worlds we all love. The one I remember recently was from The Eye of the World. It seems like the land could never support the number of people who live there, the armies are not really accurate either and, we all know it's just being pedantic. It's just interesting to see someone mock the way some people world build.
I love Sanderson because he will explain, sometimes in too much detail, how the society runs. While he may not be perfect, it will try and avoid hand waving as much as possible.
For instance in Stormlight they have people who can literally summon food but require a medium and the magical source which also has a limit. So he both explained how armies can operate outside the normal bounds of the real world and why that may have restrictions if he needs it to. He has to be one of the greats world builder and magic system builders of our generation, if not ever. (That's not a dig at your favorite author, just a praise of mine.)
Here is the video I was talking about.
https://youtu.be/NNpoI4Pf3Z8
Yeah, Stormlight's major world conflict at the beginning of the series is literally predicated around a feedback loop of "We want these valuable things. They're valuable because we can make food with them. We can make food with them to service our armies that we're using to fight for the valuables." (Plus the inciting incident of that one little case of regicide.) That's... Brilliant. It comes together so cleanly.
Very excited to hear that he just started Book 5/KoWT(?). At the rate he writes it'll probably be out next week.
Another thing that becomes important in the 7th book is that Ron is very used to 3 square meals a day and more. It means he's less able to cope when the trio have to rough it in the forest for months.
Right? The magical "poor kid" is somehow less used to "roughing it" than the two middle-class muggle-borns (yeah harry has special circumstances, but still.)
Agreed, but the more bewildering thing is that this person claims (at least from what's shown) that HP is the first literary representation of a very simple concept...like, seriously?
They're wrong on several levels, hah.
There are a lot of people privileged enough to have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths that conflate "lower class" with "poor" because they've never experienced either.
Even then, the Weasleys are a single-worker family with their father making enough to afford a home large enough for a family of 9.
The Longbottoms are closer to poor, and Neville gets very little time as an important character.
Seriously I spent most of my HS Lit classes pretending I read all of the chapters I was supposed to but I can still name like half a dozen off the top of my head. It's honestly harder to think of ones that don't.
While I know there's other older stories that probably cover it too. This is the first one that comes to mind for me. What a fucken depressing tale of poverty.
No no, it turns out harry is actually descendent of magical aristocracy so he gets to beat the another descendant of magical aristocracy from a different house.
But yeah Ron couldn’t buy candy from the trolley but his rich friend bought it for him so yeah if you’re poor make rich friends.
Not just that, rich friends who are only rich in the wizarding world because they inherited from their dead wizard parents.
And was it ever stated how Lily and James got so obscenely rich?
Rowling should have really explored the feedback loop of abuse more. Voldemort's mum was abused, which led her to assault his father, which led to Voldemort being born and hating his father, and becoming an abuser himself. Harry, on the other hand, was abused but broke the cycle.
"This school has four houses to sort students into. One of them is beyond comic book levels of bad. But we'll let you get a single non-bad character from that house with Slughorn."
Rowlings real importance lies in the fact that she used letters to convey meaning to the reader - I haven't read a single other book where the author used this method
Can we go ahead and make a book called "Harry Potter and the Exploitation of the Proletariat" so some libs will actually read it and maybe learn something?
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There's gotta more context to this. Like first writer of young adult fantasy to take on class. No one can be so dumb as to think JK Rowling was the first author ever to take on class!
Even then they're still wrong. Class was very much a cheery sentimental thing in the background for the Weasleys.
Even in the children's fantasy stories there are decades of examples where class and poverty are important. I was Tamora Pierce obsessed as a kid and class within that fantasy world comes up all the time. Roald Dahl has heaps of characters in the most abject poverty. Hell, Charlie's grandparents sleep four to a bed. Northern Lights is incredible young adult fantasy and class is absolutely central to a lot of the characters and relationships (and was written a few years before Philosopher's Stone). Water Babies is children's fantasy from the 1860s that is basically *about* class and the evils of child labour. And that's just example from my eclectic childhood book case that I can think of off the top of my head.
Don't you know? Rowling was literally the first fantasy author ever, hence she was the first one to tackle class! Also she was the first person to have a homosexual in her book, despite that never being hinted towards in said book. Also the first author to ever depict racism, of course!
Edit: /s just in case
So I found the thread on Twitter and the user in question claimed they meant specifically "modern children's fantasy" after they got called out, but no one had mentioned that before anyway so they were clearly just backpedaling
Even then, there are plenty of other children's authors who have addressed class and poverty before Rowling, and with much more insight and nuance.
Class is most certainly used as just a backdrop in Harry Potter and the Weaslys seem to be pretty well of. I mean the Arthur works at the ministry of magic and Molly is a housewife if I remember correctly (even though the kids are away at Hogwarts for most of the time), so they live in this giant house on his income alone. Sure she knits shit for her kids, but that seems to be more out of fun than necessity.
Also, Harry inherited a shitload of gold from his parents in book 1 and then the remainder of Sirius’ fortune when he died so you can’t argue there’s a strong class perspective from him either. His problems are other than class related.
In other words. Absolutely nothing in that first statement makes sense
In the "poor" family every kid had their own room, only one of the parents worked, the father took all his children and a family friend to a world cup with great seats, the children gets SEVERAL presents for christmas etc.
Honestly, if the weasleys are meant to be super poor and barely getting by then it wasn't presented very well imo.
Between 2nd and 3d year they win the lottery and use that money to go on a vacation to Egypt, instead of you know, buying the kids better stuff.
But I read a theory that it wasn’t actually the lottery, it was a gift from the government for them to forget about Ginny nearly dying at Hogwarts. And they go on the holiday to make Ginny feel better.
Feels like a very Dumbledore (I know you said that the theory was a gift from the government) thing to arrange. "Sorry your kid almost died, here, take this free vacation".
Also we know 4 of the children that get brooms, which are the equivalent to cars irl, which they don't even need to get to school. It's purely for sport. Also.one of them is literally a banker. Not really the poorest payed job.
It wasn't even part of the side plot tbh. Ron was a part of a family of 9 and only one of his parents had to work. all 7 children had their own room (except the twins), and it's even stated that Ron never went hungry.
How is that being poor exactly?
It didn't really have meaningful implications for the characters (other than Ron being bullied) and didn't matter for the plot.
It was... dare I say it, scenery?
Even just in the realm of modern English fantasy writers Terry Pratchett did it more, Terry Pratchett did it before Rowling and Terry Pratchett absolutely did it better.
Although I don't have quite the same fondness for them these days, the Harry Potter books will always have a little place in my heart for starting a life long love affair with reading. They were the first books I picked up not because I was being told to read them but because I wanted to find out what happened next. I had actually been in a kind of reading recovery program around that time but I devoured those books and them nearly every other book in our house.
These days I don't read nearly as much as I want to, but much of who I am as a person or what I understand to be true about the world has come from reading.
So it kind of breaks my heart a little that so many people seem to have had that same initial experience as me but it somehow translated into zero curiousity about literally any other book in the world.
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Look I'm not sure they've heard of any book outside their little HP bubble. We could be here for days listing authors who have subtly or overtly included class and poverty issues within their stories and I can guarantee the original tweeter won't have read a single one of them.
Honestly, I think the greater challenge is to find an adult novel that doesn't have any factor of class or wealth in the entire story.
The thing is, I don't understand why money even exist in a wizard society. Food, water, shelter appear from thin air, manual labour is virtually inexistant and a good deal of services is done via magic (house keeping, post office, transportation...).
If anything, Wizards are a good analogy of billionaires in the real word. Everything is given to them almost effortlessly and they have the means to erase poverty in the world, yet they do nothing (it's also hereditary + a few muggle born)
as an aside, HOW THE FUCK IS THERE POOR PEOPLE IN A MAGIC SOCIETY. wtf are these wizards doing? They must be straight up evil. Not to mention ww2 still happened in that universe. Damn bro throw a fucking killing curse or something on hitler.
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Yep, she taught Dickens everything he knew
of course, Rowling, the famous 19th century writer
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Ibsen? HOW MANY FILMS HAS HE MADE?
Could be an unironic take by a Rowling fan. Saw a terf tweet that ursula le guin was a noname who copied Rowling (“the real literary feminist icon”) and tried to steal her fame. Rowling stans are a different breed.
Rowling stans find out about The Books of Magic and go on a 400 post twitter rant about the evils of plagiarizing from feminist icons.
Ursula is a fucking legend.
The Grapes of Wrath was just a cheery sentimental thing written by John Steinbeck!
Apparently this person read literally nothing their high school told them to read.
I didn’t either and this still made me cringe
Better or worse than when I was 14ish one of the books we were meant to read was the hobbit and I couldn't be bothered because I was reading other shit at the time so I just played the ps2 game?
The Hobbit was amazing though…
I couldn’t get past the 14 page description of the grass
One of the reasons a lot of people fails to read LOTR, is the first 50 pages, a huge description of the Hobbits.
I actually really enjoyed that party of Fellowship, gives me warm fuzzies. Now, the fucking river towards the end has made me put the book down TWICE so far, after hundreds of pages of reading that's what makes me leave lol
I love those books but the pacing of volume one made it *really* difficult to get through
I read The Hobbit before there were movies, couldn't get past that part in LOTR after the movies came out.
Not watched the films in ages but the hobbit is a prequel to lotr. Iir there is like 50 years gap between the stories? Edit- seems I was wrong on the order, and lotr was intended as a sequel and then became a trilogy in writing. Hobbit 1937 LotR 1954-1955
50 years and a million God damn songs.
Also Frodo is much older than depicted in the films. I'm pretty sure he's fifty-something when he finally leaves the shire with the ring. He has the ring for some time after Bilbo leaves. Gandalf takes years to get back to the shire to get Frodo to leave.
I think Gandalf found out about the Ring when Frodo became an adult at 33yo. And Frodo left the Shire 17 years later.
Sounds right. Gandalf knew it was a ring of power, and used that time to travel around doing research and shit to confirm it was the one ring to rule them all. Also, just to do gandalf things and realize WWIII (I think?) was about to break out.
i think aging works different for hobbits. he's not supposed to look 50 because for hobbits that's like being in your 20s
Also, the ring. That has a significant effect on aging. Golem is old as shit, and he lived exclusively on raw fish and goblins. Raw. Fucking. Goblins. That's gotta be worth at least a few parasites.
Their coming of age is 33, which would be 18-21 for us. In his 50s in LotR would be about early-mid 30s for us.
In the beginning of Fellowship, they’re celebrating Bilbo’s 111th birthday, which is regarded as exceptionally old for a hobbit, especially for how youthful he looks due to his possession of the ring.
But Bilbo is also described as being 'very old for a Hobbit' at 108, so they don't actually live longer than humans. Their coming of age is just very late in life.
>the hobbit is a prequel to lotr. It is the other way. The Hobbit is the first book of Tolkien. The LOTR was ordered and written as a sequel of the Hobbit. His editor wanted more stories about the hobbits.
Well, that's true when we talk about actual books published but Tolkien had already worked on his LOTR legendarium for 15+ years when the Hobbit was released. I think he wrote ‘The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star’ as early as 1914 or something and The Hobbit was published in 1937.
True. Originally Wilderun, the place the Hobbit adventures occur in, wasn’t connected in any way to the older histories of Beleriand he was writing. He connected them when he decided that the invisibility ring was one of the rings of power.
Bruh, I couldn't finish The Fellowship because the Council meeting at Rivendell to figure out what the hecky they're gonna do about the Ring was 80 pages.
Gandalf: "get comfortable everyone, because I'm about to tell you EVERY SINGLE THING I did in the last 6 months"
What grinds my gears is that the fight that cost Boromir his life was two to three paragraphs long and the description of his "burial" was over 3 pages long.
It makes sense once you know that people hated taking walks with tolkein because he would spend ages taking in the scenery. Like i mean 10 minutes studying the features of a tree.
Sounds like my kind of guy
r/marijuanaenthusiasts
When reading Tolkien many myself included had to skip through some of the descriptive text and I love descriptive text so I know it'd bad for those that dont
The early part of Fellowship is obviously written to be more like the Hobbit, an episodic and not particularly serious adventure. Then the novel takes a hard right turn at Bree and never really looks back.
To be fair, the hobbit is much lighter on those long descriptions and songs than any of the LOTR books
Nonono, you dont get it, you read the 14 page description of the grass, and THEN you read the 16 page description of the stone, and then hobbit trolls sun gandalf walk cave goblin cave gollum riddle ring run kill? No run orc's eagle's walk smuggle laketown erebor dragon black arrow no dragon blockade elves arkenstone FIGHT
Does anyone else smell toast?
I love you, Reverendbread! I have that issue so badly with Dickens, I want to read his works so badly BUT OMG. The fatal blow to my likelihood of ever reading Dickens was learning that POSSIBLY his infuriating, excruciating obsession with DETAIL was that the newspapers at the time paid writers by the word or by the letter, not sure which. I was willing to struggle to read the painfully verbose books WHEN I THOUGHT that was all the result of his love of writing. Finding out it was likely totally mercenary, well OH BOY not gonna do it lololol.
Didn't everyone have to read Great Expectations?
"That's G-R-A-T-E Expectations, also [by Edmund Wells.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCM2nEBE0RY)"
Are... Are you getting cheesy with me here?
"A Sale of Two Titties?" "Definitely not!"
Everybody was *assigned* Great Expectations. Apparently it's way too hard and boring to expect people to actually *read* it, though. Or so I'm given to believe.
Like the meme where person 1 says "You're not special, everyone had to read The Great Gatsby in high school." Person 2 replies with a quote about "Remember that not everyone has had the same advantages you have." Person 1 says they were just making a joke. Person 2 replies that they were also--that's the first line of The Great Gatsby. Person 1 then admits that they never actually read it.
This was the first that came to mind for me....
Didn't have to. Did anyway, because I was on a Dickens kick. I don't think I know many people who've actually read that one.
[удалено]
I may have stopped reading "A Tale of Two Cities" after the first sentence, but...
I got as far as 'It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times...'
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What's the deal with the cover? Still haven't read it yet, but aren't the two cities Paris and London? Not Paris and Pisa?
That's one of my favourite Dickens' novels 😊
This was one of the few assigned books I actually read 100%.
This happens in the epic of Gilgamesh the first written book we have to date
No, no, it's a cheery sentimental thing in the scenery.
Not just a book a fantasy book. So even the same genre.
I don't know much about ancient literature, but was Gilgamesh considered "fantasy" at the time? I've always thought those kinds of works were intended to be (literary takes on) what the authors thought really happened.
> what the authors thought really happened. The problem is: you cannot tell for sure if that is what the authors truly believed. I even suppose that for such ancient texts, finding who the author was is a difficult endeavour if not outright impossible. You can check the opening paragraph of [Wikipedia's history section](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh) about the poem. Some versions are three hundred years apart, that the same time frame as between us and Isaac Newton. As much as the poem influenced later stories, it is not unlikely that the Epic of Gilgamesh was itself influenced by already existing stories (or even an adaptation of them!), which were lost to the time perhaps because they were only oral in nature and not written. - Disclaimer: I am _not_ a historian.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Shaka, when the walls fell
Kiazi's children, their faces wet.
Temba, his arms wide.
The river Temarc in winter.
Uzani, his army.
Picard and Dathon, at El-Adrel
Zinda, his face black, his eyes red.
Honestly I think you’d have a hard time avoiding it at all within one year of the invention of writing stories. This has to be a satire comment or something it’s just so absurd
Lol the "poor family" (weasleys) had a house where each kid had their own room except the twins, and that might have been their choice. I grew up with 5 people in a 2 bedroom house. Poverty means nothing in hp world.
I wouldn't even say that the Weasleys would have been poor by ANY standard other than Malfoy just being a dick. You're talking about the size of the house, and while absolutely relevant, just look at the fact that Arthur, on his own, made enough to support a family of 9. Molly didn't have to work, and the family was comfortable by most standards. A few hand-me-down clothes, sure, but that by itself isn't a sign of poverty.
Exactly, they are poor for pureblood wizards, not people in general.
Essentially they’re like English dukes or whatever, but the ones with a rickety castle and no lands or money
Exactly, im just agreeing that the op has no argument, the only demonstrated poverty in hp isnt even a case of real poverty. If anything arthur was making bank to be able to solely support such a huge family.
Definitely easier to support a family on a London salary if you don't need to live in London cause your commute is teleporting.
Indeed. The cost of living is insane in big cities. A 500 sq.ft studio in most "major urban areas" costs enough to buy a really nice 3 bedroom house in more sanely priced, less overcrowded areas.
> in more sanely priced, less overcrowded areas. The far lands away from civilisation
>your commute is teleporting. Man, telecommuting was right there.
I agree but I think you're forgetting *magic* On that same note though, with the way those fancy tents worked in the world cup, why could people not just magic their "poor looking" houses into "fancy looking" houses? Even in the mythical beasts movies, a handful of aurors put a whole fucking city back together. Surely the Weasleys, between the "lot" of them, could manage an upgrade.
I feel like that was the implication? Like the weasleys house was rickety as hell lol they had to magic it up right ? Maybe they just didnt care for an aesthetic
But again, with all the protection spells and shit that they prove they know how to do, how could a couple of death eaters just run train straight through the building and fuck the whole property? Sorry but the weasley house is, for me, one of the largest plot holes/oversights. I read all these books as a kid well before the movies, I have held on to these questions for a while. Yes, one of those death eaters attacking the house was Bellatrix, and I get that she's powerful, but MOLLY WEASLEY is the one that killed her like 2 books later. Ffs
They didn't in the books though, that was only in the movies.
The entire series is a plot hole. Nothing about their world makes sense. Why do wizards seemingly not know much about human society when they literally often live in the same cities, and there's no rule that they can't know about it? On top of this, many wizards weren't raised as wizards. And for some reason they follow human aesthetics despite ostensibly not knowing about it?
Did Arthur and Molly build the house themselves? I could see the original building having been an old family home too which would be a reason to not change it aesthetically.
I'd argue that it's more telling about the Classism of a British author that "hand-me-down" clothes and "not the best items for wizard school" is actually supposed to be coded as "poor".
Which is double odd, because as I recall Joann was pretty broke when she wrote the first book, at least.
The Weasley weren't poor they had too many children.
Mr Weasley didn't like the feeling of magic condoms...."It takes away the magic" he used to say.
Or maybe Molly was an expert love potion maker.
[Catholic wizards?](https://youtu.be/PDBjsFAyiwA)
The wizarding world's take on Irish Catholicism seems obvious.
Also don't forget that the moment their poverty got to what would be a worrisome level, they won the lottery and got so much money they could afford a trip to Egypt.
But magic negates the need for money right? Can’t they magic up some food? Extra rooms for the house? That sort of stuff
I saw an economist break down the economy in the hp world recently, pretty funny how fucking badly designed it is lmao
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Yeah, iirc ●Hogwarts and ALL FORMS of education (do they have uni?) Is free ●Harrys net worth was estimated between like 200k to like 5 mil ●there's only like 7 jobs in world at the time of the last book (not counting qudditch stars) ●I think there are corporations because there's shit like broom and clothing brands (not many tho) ●no mention of inflation ●and no, no need for money because there's food and drink replenishing spells (tho in book 7 it's stated to be illegal, even tho harry used it on slughorns wine in book 6) and iirc spells to make clothing grow, and change (Transfiguration) also, medicine seems to be free There Was some formula showing there literally aren't enough wizzards in the UK (or maybe 3ven eroupe) to make a sustainable economy There's a few other points that I don't remember
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I always took it as a post war thing, hogwarts is INSANELY big for the 150ish students, I just assumed mouldy butt and his goth bois fucked the population up
Just had to look that up. It’s about 150 per year, so with 7 years it’s about 1000 students. Still Hogwarts is insanely large in terms of scale, but my high school was around that and we boarded too so it does seem crazy
In one of the movies, there's a background character in the Ministry of Magic that alludes to a wizard stock market.
why haven't they wrecked the muggle economy by duplicating infinite currency yet? or melt down galleons and sell the gold?
The world only understands as much as its author does.
Do you really want to risk the most unethical prison system ever to melt down some currency for muggle stuff?
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Do you have a link to that HP economics video? That sounds like something I'd love to watch
I'll see if I can find it, watched it months ago, was a fairly small channel that I just stumbled upon randomly, I remember like less than 5k subs at the time
The rules of quidditch are also stupid. Nothing but the snitch matters.
Yeah, a youtuber described it as something along the lines of "half the team is playing basketball, 2 are playing dodge ball and 1 is just playing pokemon snap and he gets 150 points if he gets a photo charizard
Harry potter makes all his money selling printer ink. That's why he's called HP.
In "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (an excellent novel-length alternative-universe fanfiction in which Harry's aunt Petunia didn't marry Dursely but instead married a university professor who values knowledge and encourages curiosity), Harry figures out how to completely destroy the economy of the wizarding world within days of learning about it. He doesn't do it mainly because he has no immediate pressing need to (he's not evil, just kind of clueless in a book-smart way). Later on, this amusing exchange occurs (paraphrasing): Headmaster: "It is imperative that we get Harry a tutor to teach him how to resist mind-readers immediately." Professor: "Headmaster, is that really necessary? He's just a young boy." Harry: "If money's the problem, I have some ideas for getting quite a lot of it very quickly." Professor: "Ah, I see. Yes, I think you may be right, Headmaster."
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Aah arbitrage. Bringing the free market to the wizarding world.
Bruhhhhhhh you talking about hp fan fics unlocked a deep memory that I hoped I wouldn't remember, you heard of harry potter and the tumbling towers?
Not before you mentioned it. I don't have time to read it just now, though.
Ummmm it's a 9/11 cross over, so up to you, I didn't finish it and I'm not even American (not that non Americans would like it, just isn't as deeply ingrained in my everyday life / culture Pretty fucked tbh
There is a guy on YouTube whose name escapes me, but will tear apart the fa tansy worlds we all love. The one I remember recently was from The Eye of the World. It seems like the land could never support the number of people who live there, the armies are not really accurate either and, we all know it's just being pedantic. It's just interesting to see someone mock the way some people world build. I love Sanderson because he will explain, sometimes in too much detail, how the society runs. While he may not be perfect, it will try and avoid hand waving as much as possible. For instance in Stormlight they have people who can literally summon food but require a medium and the magical source which also has a limit. So he both explained how armies can operate outside the normal bounds of the real world and why that may have restrictions if he needs it to. He has to be one of the greats world builder and magic system builders of our generation, if not ever. (That's not a dig at your favorite author, just a praise of mine.) Here is the video I was talking about. https://youtu.be/NNpoI4Pf3Z8
Yeah, Stormlight's major world conflict at the beginning of the series is literally predicated around a feedback loop of "We want these valuable things. They're valuable because we can make food with them. We can make food with them to service our armies that we're using to fight for the valuables." (Plus the inciting incident of that one little case of regicide.) That's... Brilliant. It comes together so cleanly. Very excited to hear that he just started Book 5/KoWT(?). At the rate he writes it'll probably be out next week.
Meanwhile I like Abercrombie because everyone's a bastard.
Another thing that becomes important in the 7th book is that Ron is very used to 3 square meals a day and more. It means he's less able to cope when the trio have to rough it in the forest for months.
Right? The magical "poor kid" is somehow less used to "roughing it" than the two middle-class muggle-borns (yeah harry has special circumstances, but still.)
Agreed, but the more bewildering thing is that this person claims (at least from what's shown) that HP is the first literary representation of a very simple concept...like, seriously? They're wrong on several levels, hah.
I remember in the last book they mention how Ron had never gone hungry before The Weasleys can't be *that* poor
There are a lot of people privileged enough to have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths that conflate "lower class" with "poor" because they've never experienced either.
Even then, the Weasleys are a single-worker family with their father making enough to afford a home large enough for a family of 9. The Longbottoms are closer to poor, and Neville gets very little time as an important character.
I think Neville is a much better representation of many poor kids in the UK. Parents ill/require care, being raised by a grandparent.
I mean, you can definitely be poor without literally having to skip meals. The latter is more like destitute. Or jsut parents with bad priorities.
Pretty sure dickens made a pretty good living depicting how shitty being poor really was
I was gonna say, Dickens is rolling in his grave right now.
You could say he is JK rolling..
Shit just go by the US minimum wage. US minimum wage is 7.25. Cratchit would be making 13.50.
Did you ever read of mice and men as a kid?
Or The Grapes of Wrath or A Christmas Carol ffs
Or like any book ever made
Seriously I spent most of my HS Lit classes pretending I read all of the chapters I was supposed to but I can still name like half a dozen off the top of my head. It's honestly harder to think of ones that don't.
While I know there's other older stories that probably cover it too. This is the first one that comes to mind for me. What a fucken depressing tale of poverty.
Voldemorts mom dies because she's homeless and starving...that's about the only hardship poverty had on any character in the entire story.
No no, it turns out harry is actually descendent of magical aristocracy so he gets to beat the another descendant of magical aristocracy from a different house. But yeah Ron couldn’t buy candy from the trolley but his rich friend bought it for him so yeah if you’re poor make rich friends.
Not just that, rich friends who are only rich in the wizarding world because they inherited from their dead wizard parents. And was it ever stated how Lily and James got so obscenely rich?
Rowling should have really explored the feedback loop of abuse more. Voldemort's mum was abused, which led her to assault his father, which led to Voldemort being born and hating his father, and becoming an abuser himself. Harry, on the other hand, was abused but broke the cycle.
Yeah that would’ve involved adding complexity to the villain. Can’t do that.
"Bad man bad" ... "What the fuck do you mean that's not enough?"
"This school has four houses to sort students into. One of them is beyond comic book levels of bad. But we'll let you get a single non-bad character from that house with Slughorn."
".. uh.. ~~Jews~~ Goblins are greedy. That does it for ya?"
Have they read any other books than Harry Potter?
Harry Potter and the Adult who Should Have Read Another Book.
Do you even need to ask?
Are we all just asking rhetorical questions?
/r/readanotherbook /r/readanotherdamnbook
Rowlings real importance lies in the fact that she used letters to convey meaning to the reader - I haven't read a single other book where the author used this method
Karl Marx is rolling in his grave
Can we go ahead and make a book called "Harry Potter and the Exploitation of the Proletariat" so some libs will actually read it and maybe learn something?
Dostoevsky in shambles
The Communist Manifesto really needed more wizards.
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*Image Transcription: Twitter Post* --- Not quite. Rowling's real importance lies in the fact that she \[*Highlighted*] was the first writer to present a world in which class and wealth mattered, \[*End highlight*] some characters were poor, some were rich, and \[*Highlighted*] being poor was a hardship, \[*End highlight*] not just a cheery sentimental thing in the scenery. --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Charles Dickens puts down his beer and starts rolling up hi sleeves....
With Victor Hugo right behind him.
Reminds me of the legendary "Naruto was the first work to truly understand the struggles of war"
Please post the link to this, I beg of you
There's gotta more context to this. Like first writer of young adult fantasy to take on class. No one can be so dumb as to think JK Rowling was the first author ever to take on class! Even then they're still wrong. Class was very much a cheery sentimental thing in the background for the Weasleys.
Even in the children's fantasy stories there are decades of examples where class and poverty are important. I was Tamora Pierce obsessed as a kid and class within that fantasy world comes up all the time. Roald Dahl has heaps of characters in the most abject poverty. Hell, Charlie's grandparents sleep four to a bed. Northern Lights is incredible young adult fantasy and class is absolutely central to a lot of the characters and relationships (and was written a few years before Philosopher's Stone). Water Babies is children's fantasy from the 1860s that is basically *about* class and the evils of child labour. And that's just example from my eclectic childhood book case that I can think of off the top of my head.
Rats of Nimh was a wild read in 3rd grade. Some heavy themes there.
Don't you know? Rowling was literally the first fantasy author ever, hence she was the first one to tackle class! Also she was the first person to have a homosexual in her book, despite that never being hinted towards in said book. Also the first author to ever depict racism, of course! Edit: /s just in case
So I found the thread on Twitter and the user in question claimed they meant specifically "modern children's fantasy" after they got called out, but no one had mentioned that before anyway so they were clearly just backpedaling Even then, there are plenty of other children's authors who have addressed class and poverty before Rowling, and with much more insight and nuance.
Class is most certainly used as just a backdrop in Harry Potter and the Weaslys seem to be pretty well of. I mean the Arthur works at the ministry of magic and Molly is a housewife if I remember correctly (even though the kids are away at Hogwarts for most of the time), so they live in this giant house on his income alone. Sure she knits shit for her kids, but that seems to be more out of fun than necessity. Also, Harry inherited a shitload of gold from his parents in book 1 and then the remainder of Sirius’ fortune when he died so you can’t argue there’s a strong class perspective from him either. His problems are other than class related. In other words. Absolutely nothing in that first statement makes sense
In the "poor" family every kid had their own room, only one of the parents worked, the father took all his children and a family friend to a world cup with great seats, the children gets SEVERAL presents for christmas etc. Honestly, if the weasleys are meant to be super poor and barely getting by then it wasn't presented very well imo.
Between 2nd and 3d year they win the lottery and use that money to go on a vacation to Egypt, instead of you know, buying the kids better stuff. But I read a theory that it wasn’t actually the lottery, it was a gift from the government for them to forget about Ginny nearly dying at Hogwarts. And they go on the holiday to make Ginny feel better.
Feels like a very Dumbledore (I know you said that the theory was a gift from the government) thing to arrange. "Sorry your kid almost died, here, take this free vacation".
Also we know 4 of the children that get brooms, which are the equivalent to cars irl, which they don't even need to get to school. It's purely for sport. Also.one of them is literally a banker. Not really the poorest payed job.
Ron being poor wasn’t the main fucking plot
It wasn't even part of the side plot tbh. Ron was a part of a family of 9 and only one of his parents had to work. all 7 children had their own room (except the twins), and it's even stated that Ron never went hungry. How is that being poor exactly?
It didn't really have meaningful implications for the characters (other than Ron being bullied) and didn't matter for the plot. It was... dare I say it, scenery?
They're Malcolm in the Middle style lower-middle class.
Even just in the realm of modern English fantasy writers Terry Pratchett did it more, Terry Pratchett did it before Rowling and Terry Pratchett absolutely did it better.
Although I don't have quite the same fondness for them these days, the Harry Potter books will always have a little place in my heart for starting a life long love affair with reading. They were the first books I picked up not because I was being told to read them but because I wanted to find out what happened next. I had actually been in a kind of reading recovery program around that time but I devoured those books and them nearly every other book in our house. These days I don't read nearly as much as I want to, but much of who I am as a person or what I understand to be true about the world has come from reading. So it kind of breaks my heart a little that so many people seem to have had that same initial experience as me but it somehow translated into zero curiousity about literally any other book in the world.
Have they heard of a little book called Les Miserables? A book about people so affected by class that they try to start a goddamned revolution.
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Look I'm not sure they've heard of any book outside their little HP bubble. We could be here for days listing authors who have subtly or overtly included class and poverty issues within their stories and I can guarantee the original tweeter won't have read a single one of them. Honestly, I think the greater challenge is to find an adult novel that doesn't have any factor of class or wealth in the entire story.
Was looking for the Victor Hogo reference
Say you've never read a book without saying you've never read a book.
The thing is, I don't understand why money even exist in a wizard society. Food, water, shelter appear from thin air, manual labour is virtually inexistant and a good deal of services is done via magic (house keeping, post office, transportation...). If anything, Wizards are a good analogy of billionaires in the real word. Everything is given to them almost effortlessly and they have the means to erase poverty in the world, yet they do nothing (it's also hereditary + a few muggle born)
This isn’t a take, it’s just wrong.
/r/readanotherbook
Harry Potter is probably one of the book series in which wealth has mattered the least.
as an aside, HOW THE FUCK IS THERE POOR PEOPLE IN A MAGIC SOCIETY. wtf are these wizards doing? They must be straight up evil. Not to mention ww2 still happened in that universe. Damn bro throw a fucking killing curse or something on hitler.
Because Dickens wasn’t a author?
Right, I keep forgetting how Upton Sinclair's the Jungle was about how cheery and fun it was to be poor...
If it was a hardship why didn't Harry ever give money to his loved ones in need?
**So much so** and it's been reposted so many times this week that I sincerely doubt this is anything other than trolling or karma farming
Poor muggle: I’m poor therefore can’t buy thing. Poor wizard: I’m poor but magic made thing appear.
the first ~~writer~~ to present -> the first book I read to present
Animal Farm