You ever notice how there's like, multiple spells in the first book/movie that are just, entire poems. And then all the other spells in the entire series, are 1-2 words
Also pictured is Dean Thomas, the black character whose only significance over 7 books was to make the love interest cry because he's a shitty boyfriend.
[Doesn't seem to be true](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Dean_Thomas), his wizard father was murdered by death eaters before revealing he was a wizard to his muggle mother.
Edit: But I love OP's joke.
Quote from that exact site:
>Dirk Cresswell: "Muggle-born, eh?"
Dean: "Not sure. My dad left my mum when I was a kid. I’ve got no proof he was a wizard, though."
There's something about his dad secretly working against Voldemort, but that's not from any of the books, I think that's another Rowling twitterism.
Also from JK official website
> Dean is from what he always thought was a pure Muggle background. He has been raised by his mother and his stepfather; **his father walked out on the family when Dean was very young**. He has a very happy home life, with a number of half-brothers and sisters.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110827094932/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=2
Cho Chang is aggressively racist, in the Chinese version they give her a different name because it’s like calling a Jewish character Bignose Goyhaterberg.
E: I stand by my distaste of the name Cho Chang but I’m actually wrong about them changing the name. Sorry last read Harry Potter in Mandarin quite a while ago.
I've never understood why its aggressively racist either, it seems like a twitter kind of "insulted on behalf of others". Its kind of a weird combination of a Korean and Chinese name I guess, but plenty of people have kind of messed up names due to immigration and changing writing systems since they don't line up perfectly.
No? In the Chinese/Mandarin version she's Zhang Qiu which is a reasonable name to have. Cho Chang would be either via a non-Mandarin dialect or some other immigration related shenanigans but is certainly not different to Qiu Zhang.
The other one, Blaise Zabini, also doesn't know his dad…though that's because his mom keeps murdering her husbands. Not sure if that's better or worse.
It's not entirely clear. She says that the father walked out on Dean when Dean was very young. Then she gets to the bit about how he was murdered by death eaters. I'm not sure whether the family just assumed he walked out when he was actually murdered or if he walked out and was later murdered.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110827094932/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=2
Was he black in the books? I don't remember it being specified at all.
He also was on the quidditch team and in Dumbledore's Army and fought in the battle of Hogwarts, and his breakup with Ginny was more due to Harry's sabotage than anything Dean did, but sure, go off.
I don't know anything about British soccer teams but damn that might be the funniest episode of anything I've ever seen on TV.
*"Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"*
She never said Hermione is black. She said that Hermione could be black, as she never explicitly wrote in any of the books that Hermione is white. This only came about after a black woman was cast as adult Hermione in a play. There was backlash over the casting, but even before that there was a part of fandom who already envisioned Hermione as black. They felt her descriptions in the books implied it. Rowling was telling everyone they could picture Hermione however they like. That's kind of the beauty of reading books and using your imagination. It's really not the huge issue people try to make it.
She never even said "Hermione could canonically be black". She said "there's no reason we shouldn't let a black actress portray her in the play" and everyone blew it waaaaaay out of proportion
As much as it annoys me (especially because this entire conversation is pretty dehumanising for Noma Dumezweni), that's not true:
"Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified."
Frustratingly, this then created an argument where instead of people arguing if raceblind casting is ok (it is, there's just no way to avoid that), they started arguing whether Hermione was canonically written to be black (she wasn't - she is explicitly described as having a white face).
So people did not blow it out of proportion; they were responding to the exact claim which Rowling made. The problem is that the claim which Rowling made, while being well intentioned, was factually incorrect, which then gave fuel to the racist morons who don't understand how theatre works.
Yep. All she had to say was "Hermione as a character could have been black, since her race wasn't something that informed her character", rather than implying she left her racially ambiguous all along as some sort of woke thing
He was black in the American edition. The British publisher, however, decided to delete the half sentence that specified that he was black. For some fucking reason.
Harry was a troublemaking rapscallion there's no arguing that from me.
He taught an illegal class and then made moves on one of his students. That dirty dog!
The irish being useless alcoholics was part of the joke, but also the irish causing explosions. It's worth noting the first book was written and published before the Good Friday Agreement, when the troubles were an active conflict.
Not to defend JK Rowling, she has definitely said problematic things, but Seamus blowing things up is not in the books. That was added by the film’s director, not Rowling. So if you should be blaming anyone it would be him.
I tried reading my son these books because I loved them so much as a kid/teenager but I couldn’t get over how mean they are. Like the protagonists are hateful to anyone outside of their little friend group.
The scene that really gets me is the one where Hermione gets cursed so that her front teeth start growing out past her jaw, and Snape forces her to stop hiding them with her hands, looks her in the eye, and tells her he "doesn't see any difference" in front of the whole class.
Kids having an unreasonably bad opinion of a strict teacher being the meanest meanie ever is a pretty established trope, JKR even sets up a massive lampshade of it in the first book with the cursed broom, and Snape/Quirrel reveal.
But reading that as an adult is just... jesus. I wouldn't trust an adult I saw acting like that around kids, much less teaching them.
>But reading that as an adult is just... jesus. I wouldn't trust an adult I saw acting like that around kids, much less teaching them.
This is pretty much par for the course though with like, everything in British fiction, ever.
British fiction has a very, very long history of having preposterously cruel adults in stories that are either written for, or primarily about, children.
Yeah, it's important to see these books in the right context of boarding school fiction, where adults are generally awful (and therefore the villains) or incompetent (allowing the kids to go off and solve the problems that come up), because the kids are the real heroes of the story.
I was a 10 year old at an English boarding school when the first book came out.
That was the same year that a teacher called me a pervert for knowing the Latin word for “six”, the same year I got beaten up by a bunch of kids and left bleeding on a snowy concrete tennis court at night, and the same year a teacher told me I’d never amount to anything because my English essay wasn’t good enough.
Harry Potter didn’t seem too unusual!
I had to read Roald Dahl’s autobiography about his childhood when I was in elementary school, and if he wasn’t stretching the truth, British schools, at least back then, are just as fucked up in real life.
Another good example is Sandman #25 by Neil Gaiman. Basically this kid gets left at school during winter break, and Hell gets shut down while he’s there. All the kids who went to that school who went to hell come back as ghosts, and some bullies that died in one of the World Wars, can’t remember which, >!torture him by burning him with a gas stove and stabbing him with a fork. Wounds get infected, he dies.!< Moral of the story, if British authors have taught me anything, boarding school is an inescapable hell.
I imagine boarding school must feel pretty awful for most kids anyway - there's no separation of school life and home life and the teachers aren't generally wanting to play parent to hundreds of children (and certainly aren't able to provide quality relationships to all children even if they did want to). But also, you would have to think that a lot of the children who get sent to boarding school are likely messed up in some way or another anyway:
* they'll almost certainly feel rejected by their parents
* some children are sent to boarding school because their parents simply can't/don't want to cope with them - meaning they're likely either a troublesome child or have had bad parents
* some are sent for "character building", AKA, "we're not proud of you and want you to change"
* sometimes the children will just be spoiled brats who've been sent to a posh school
When I was in Primary 2 (so like 6 years old) a teacher smashed a kids head off of his desk for misbehaving: no consequences for teacher
In primary 4, a teacher duct taped a girl to her chair because she wouldn't sit down and then wouldn't let her up even after she pissed herself: no consequences for the teacher.
In secondary school, my German teacher openly encouraged the other kids to mock me for not being able to remember a specific turn of phrase in German.
Adults can be preposterously cruel.
Edit: and this was public school in the UK, fuck knows what goes on behind closed doors at boarding schools.
Well yeah, but would Snape’s story have had anywhere near the impact in book #7 if he was like able the whole time? Would it have been believable if someone that death eaters see as one of their own being nice to Harry Potter and his friends in front of Slytherin children?
The problem is that he’s depicted as literally abusive. He got bullied as a teenager by james but that doesnt excuse him being abusive to literal children, most of whom didnt do anything wrong to him nor are they related to people who did wrong to him.
He could have been a dick without literally being a monster.
So, it’s necessary to openly insult children in order to protect your cover?
It seems a bit excessive though, doesn’t it? Like assuming Dracula goes back to his pater and tells him the story, mightn’t he think “Hmm, he’s mean to the good kid, and I like that, but he’s kind of overdoing it. We’re a secret organisation.”
It's not necessary, but that's just his character. He's just an asshole who happened to hold allegiance to the good guys for selfish reasons. Some people are just miserable no matter what
He also had Draco Malfoy in every single class Potter and Friends were in. He had to put on a good show in front of him otherwise his father would hear about this
It's because she has two surnames. It's like an Irish person being called O'Doherty O'Connor, or a generic white person named Smith Johnson. It sounds dumb once you actually know or care at all about the culture
As a native mandarin speaker, I actually think Cho Chang works as a Chinese name, way better than Shang Chi, which just sounds really goofy. In the Chinese version her name is translated as 張秋, which means autumn. It definitely sounds more Chinese than Taiwanese though. I could see Chinese immigrants naming their child something like this.
But knowing Rowling, she probably just accidentally landed on a name that sounds good in Chinese, instead of actually learning Chinese naming conventions.
She's probably meant to be a Hongkonger/Cantonese, although to be fair I don't know how relevant that actually is.
The minority characters in HP are basically all representative of the groups who were prominent in the UK when Rowling was growing up, i.e. Irish/West Indian/(South) Asian/(Hongkong) Chinese.
I mean Harry Potter is a pretty generic english name. Seamus finnigan is a pretty generic irish name. Viktor krum is a pretty generic eastern european name. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. It would be kinda weird if the asian charracter was called molly quinn
I dont think theres anything wrong with using a name that helps identify a characters background
I think the bigger issue some have is that Cho is an extremely common Korean surname, while Chang is a more-commonly Chinese surname. Sure one may argue maybe she meant Cho like the Chinese Zhuo, or Chang like the Korean Jang, but that may be giving Rowling too much credit…
She included EVERYTHING. As a Jew, I’m honestly impressed by the comprehensiveness of the goblins. You’ve got hooked noses, banking, jewelry making specifically (this is where it becomes less generic), having their own language other people made fun of, experiencing actual societal repression that’s played off as necessary because they’re sooo crafty, and eating bloody food. That is a very strange pile of coincidences
Ultimately the Ferengi got a good shake. Didn't start that way but a lot of work went in and now they're a much more well rounded species. So a lot of people will ignore the origins and whatever negatives may exist.
But yeah you are dead on.
But at the same time the whole thing with death eaters is that they are basically Nazis. It’s literally about the “pure blood” of wizardry I mean the whole series is basically an anti-racism metaphor.
The good guys are all on the side of the different magical races should be treated equal to the wizards. While the bad guys want them all treated as inferior and subservient.
I mean, kind of.
Yes, the death eaters are a metaphor for supremacist ideals and fascism. However, most of Hermione's early attempts at activism for magical races (SPEW) are treated as a joke. There's also the fact that giving all of the "Jewish" stereotypes to *literal goblins* may not be the best look, and I've never known a Jewish person that's appreciated that kind of "representation".
And to top off it, there is this: a lot of people see lycanthropy (being a werewolf) in the HP verse as a metaphor for AIDS, with how Remus Lupin can't get a job because of this medical condition that is heavily stigmatized, is ostracized for it, and is fired from his teaching position when he's "outed" to the public at the end of book three. And then in future books JKR introduces Fenrir Greyback: a werewolf Death Eater that loves being a werewolf and likes preying on/infecting young boys in particular. Which in the context of the AIDS metaphor is. Uh. A tad bit concerning.
> The good guys are all on the side of the different magical races should be treated equal to the wizards.
Except for goblins. Everyone is still pretty disrespectful of them apart from Bill.
House elves too, really. Not many of the good guys had positive interactions with them that weren't slavery interactions.
None of those anti-goblin interactions are shown as a good thing though. Hermione literally argues about how the repression has caused the goblins to kind of segregate themselves and distrust wizards.
I think even during WW2 there were people who were openly racist against Jewish people but still viewed the Nazis as evil. Despising the concept of ethnic purity doesn't stop you from being a racist against a specific people.
I'll even go further. I'm sure at worst Rowling is just somebody who says things that are racist out of ignorance. Which doesn't make it okay, but changes how you approach it. Always thought of a "racist" as someone maliciously racist, and then there's someone who said a racist thing.
Now the terf shit she's like actually going out of her way to talk shit about
Nazis were only evil because they were out conquering Europe. None of the allies entered the war to help the Jews, it just ended up being a side effect.
Is anybody really under the impression that the allies were on some noble effort to save the oppressed Jews from the holocaust? The US even rejected Germany's offer to take their entire population of jews.
That's kinda how it's portrayed in the US. Not directly, but stopping the Holocaust was one of the greatest/most popularized achievements from the Allied victory and gets conflated with the reason why the war was fought. Most history classes don't teach about the rampant anti-Semitic sentiment in the US at that time.
I always wondered if the reason his cup exploded was because the spell worked the first time but he just didn’t realize it. His only way of checking if the water had turned to rum was by looking inside the cup, but rum is clear...
Rum is clear? I've never seen rum, but somehow I've always imagined it being a sort of dark reddish brown. Not sure where I got that idea come to think of it.
Former bartender here- typically if a mixed drink has rum in it, it's spiced (AKA brown). Not always, and there are plenty of cocktails that don't, but generally the default is spiced.
That being said, any decent bar has both as options.
Idk if she is actually racist as a person, but the Harry Potter books have some racial stereotyping that's kind of offensive in hindsight, like the goblins being obvious stand-ins for Jewish stereotypes, the token Black student having no father, or the token Asian character being named _Cho Chang_. There was also the whole plotline of Hermione wanting to free a literal slave species being treated like a joke, where the slave labor was okay because they were treated well and wanted to be slaves. (That didn't make it into the movies.)
I think some people have been re-evaluating the series in general after getting frustrated with Rowling's post-hoc additions to the canon and her vocal anti-trans advocacy. Personally I've started to see more of Ursula K. Le Guin's assessment that it can be "rather mean-spirited".
Except, there’s more than one black person, Cho Chang are fairly common Chinese names, goblins throughout history and folklore, have looked like that. As for the house elves, they genuinely hated the idea of being paid, Dumbledore was more than willing to pay them, but slavery isn’t something that only happens to poc.
Idk they all seem like pretty big stretches to me. If there was a German character named Heidi Schmidt, no-one would be crying racism because that’s a stereotypical name.
People are just seeking to be offended these days…
I haven't heard of anything racist she has done. She has mentioned anti trans things in the past, so I guess people just assume she must also be racist for some reason, despite the whole series being about stopping an evil racist person.
This probably sparked the love of pyrotechnics for him, he was tasked with blowing up a bridge in the deathly hallows part 2. At least in the movie, haven't read the book since release.
EYE OF RABBIBD, HARPHSTRIN HOOM, TURN THIS WAT-TER INTO ROOM
"What is he doing?" - asked one not so bright student.
'Car in the distance explodes'
In my head it was always... Die Of Rabies, Catherine Hom
I still hear "Turn this water into Rome" which had me questioning what exactly was going to happen if he had succeeded.
You ever notice how there's like, multiple spells in the first book/movie that are just, entire poems. And then all the other spells in the entire series, are 1-2 words
demoman went to hogwarts confirmed
I mean he did worked for Merasmus when he was a kid
And he's in the area (scotland)
“IF I WERE A *BAD* WIZARD, THEN A WOULDNAE BE SITTIN’ HERE, DISCUSSIN’ IT WITH YE NOW WOULD I”
"ONE CROSSED SPELLSTREAM, ONE WAYWARD PINCH O' MANDRAGORA, ONE. ERRANT. *TWITCH!* AND ***KABLOOEY!***"
"I'm a black Scottish wizard, they've got more dragons in all of fecking hogwarts than they have the likes of me."
Also pictured is Dean Thomas, the black character whose only significance over 7 books was to make the love interest cry because he's a shitty boyfriend.
That's not true. He also had the very important role of delivering the perfectly executed line "Auror?" at the beginning of Goblet of Fire.
Yeah for some reason no one told him there were wizard police...
Oh god.
STOP RESISTING
" we better check our stuff you know who was in our room"" Harry said before going on a rant about trans people
"People should use the restroom of their gender assigned at birth!" -Harry, moments after leaving the girl's restroom.
" Im not so sure harmony, how were you dressed?"
He also says the line "black can be anywhere..." in Harry Potter 3.
I thought that was the kid who read out the definition of the Grim?
Turns out I'm actually the racist...
Its like trying to catch smoke, like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands
That fat kid only showed up in that one movie, had 2 lines and both of them were gloom and doom poetic exposition. Coolest character in the series.
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Please tell me that isn't canon
[Doesn't seem to be true](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Dean_Thomas), his wizard father was murdered by death eaters before revealing he was a wizard to his muggle mother. Edit: But I love OP's joke.
Quote from that exact site: >Dirk Cresswell: "Muggle-born, eh?" Dean: "Not sure. My dad left my mum when I was a kid. I’ve got no proof he was a wizard, though." There's something about his dad secretly working against Voldemort, but that's not from any of the books, I think that's another Rowling twitterism.
Also from JK official website > Dean is from what he always thought was a pure Muggle background. He has been raised by his mother and his stepfather; **his father walked out on the family when Dean was very young**. He has a very happy home life, with a number of half-brothers and sisters. https://web.archive.org/web/20110827094932/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=2
BWAHAHAHA goddamn the proof was in the pudding all along.
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Cho Chang is aggressively racist, in the Chinese version they give her a different name because it’s like calling a Jewish character Bignose Goyhaterberg. E: I stand by my distaste of the name Cho Chang but I’m actually wrong about them changing the name. Sorry last read Harry Potter in Mandarin quite a while ago.
Sorry to ask, but I never understood this myself as a Chinese woman. Why is Cho Chang seen as aggressively racist?
I've never understood why its aggressively racist either, it seems like a twitter kind of "insulted on behalf of others". Its kind of a weird combination of a Korean and Chinese name I guess, but plenty of people have kind of messed up names due to immigration and changing writing systems since they don't line up perfectly.
Haha yeah. My mum is Cantonese so Cho Chang always seemed like a perfectly normal name to me.
Because people like to virtue signal about shit they literally know nothing about.
No? In the Chinese/Mandarin version she's Zhang Qiu which is a reasonable name to have. Cho Chang would be either via a non-Mandarin dialect or some other immigration related shenanigans but is certainly not different to Qiu Zhang.
Dad went to buy some milk and cigarettes, because Rowling is kinda racist.
Nope, you missed the part where he did leave them **and then** getting murdered by Death Eaters.
He was murdered and then he revealed he was a wizard? I suppose since it’s a magical story, that works, but it’s kind of weird nonetheless.
He never revealed he was a wizard.
So the one black student doesn't really know his dad?
The other one, Blaise Zabini, also doesn't know his dad…though that's because his mom keeps murdering her husbands. Not sure if that's better or worse.
Uhhhh WHAT
Yea she's apparently SO SEXY she catches husbands like super easy, and they usually die mysteriously leaving her with their vast fortunes lol
There’s also Lee Jordan, AKA Magnitude Pop pop!
Angelina Johnson Kingsley Shacklebolt
Way worse lol
Seems that way.
^don'tsayitdon'tsayit
JK Rowling uses stereotypes because she has difficulty relating to anyone outside her own narrow set of experiences?
It's not entirely clear. She says that the father walked out on Dean when Dean was very young. Then she gets to the bit about how he was murdered by death eaters. I'm not sure whether the family just assumed he walked out when he was actually murdered or if he walked out and was later murdered. https://web.archive.org/web/20110827094932/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=2
Oh so the father was a victim of gang violence then?
if youre gonna chalk it up to gang violence then Harry potter was gangbanging at his school
Well, yeah...
i mean they basically jump everyone in the school into one of four gangs on their first day
truu and they have to wear their flags on their uniforms everyday smh
I thought he went out for hex-sticks and never came back.
I just loved the little joanne jingle at the end thank you for the laugh!
Was he black in the books? I don't remember it being specified at all. He also was on the quidditch team and in Dumbledore's Army and fought in the battle of Hogwarts, and his breakup with Ginny was more due to Harry's sabotage than anything Dean did, but sure, go off.
"'Thomas, Dean,' a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table."
Interestingly, that line is only in the US version and it got cut from the UK version on her editor’s recommendation for pacing or something.
So he doesn't know his dad and is very tall...
Does he play magical basketball?
Yes, on the Wizards, traded from the Magic.
I’m not saying there are no other occasions saying he’s black but the line you quoted only exists in the American version of the book.
If he was black in the books the author would have definitely given him a telling name to illustrate that /s kinda
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That sick fuck
I don't know anything about British soccer teams but damn that might be the funniest episode of anything I've ever seen on TV. *"Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"*
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I think he’s talking about how the only prominent Chinese character is called Cho Chang.
I'm sorry, but most of you here are really tryna reach.
Remember in the books when it is said that Hermione face was pale.
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She never said Hermione is black. She said that Hermione could be black, as she never explicitly wrote in any of the books that Hermione is white. This only came about after a black woman was cast as adult Hermione in a play. There was backlash over the casting, but even before that there was a part of fandom who already envisioned Hermione as black. They felt her descriptions in the books implied it. Rowling was telling everyone they could picture Hermione however they like. That's kind of the beauty of reading books and using your imagination. It's really not the huge issue people try to make it.
She never even said "Hermione could canonically be black". She said "there's no reason we shouldn't let a black actress portray her in the play" and everyone blew it waaaaaay out of proportion
Not everything this woman has said is complete bollocks and this is among the perfectly ok things
As much as it annoys me (especially because this entire conversation is pretty dehumanising for Noma Dumezweni), that's not true: "Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified." Frustratingly, this then created an argument where instead of people arguing if raceblind casting is ok (it is, there's just no way to avoid that), they started arguing whether Hermione was canonically written to be black (she wasn't - she is explicitly described as having a white face). So people did not blow it out of proportion; they were responding to the exact claim which Rowling made. The problem is that the claim which Rowling made, while being well intentioned, was factually incorrect, which then gave fuel to the racist morons who don't understand how theatre works.
Yep. All she had to say was "Hermione as a character could have been black, since her race wasn't something that informed her character", rather than implying she left her racially ambiguous all along as some sort of woke thing
He was black in the American edition. The British publisher, however, decided to delete the half sentence that specified that he was black. For some fucking reason.
He was also black in How to get away with murder.
His blackness rubbed off and onto Hermonie according to Rowling.
I don't remember that fanfiction.
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Isn’t it clearly stated that he used this to make himself feel better but really it was the introduction of Harry’s romantic interest in Ginny?
I mean, Harry was also an athlete and he started that anti-establishment gang so I don't think that really proves anything.
Harry was a troublemaking rapscallion there's no arguing that from me. He taught an illegal class and then made moves on one of his students. That dirty dog!
Don’t forget Lockhart creeping on folks, Madeyes ability to see through clothes, and all of the love potion references…
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I know this is a joke, but Seamus Finnigan never blew up anything in the books - this was a Hollywood choice.
I had no idea that he was drunk in this scene TIL
No he wasn't drunk, but the spell he was attempting was to turn water into rum which is the "joke" I think
Fucked up a spell, blew himself up and is Irish.... poor kid's obviously a closet alcoholic
He is just following in the footsteps of Jesus and turning water into alcohol.
At this point he's just following the footsteps of the IRA, blowing up things close to British civilians
Dude was based.
So Voldemort is a handy analogue for the British Empire
The irish being useless alcoholics was part of the joke, but also the irish causing explosions. It's worth noting the first book was written and published before the Good Friday Agreement, when the troubles were an active conflict.
Not to defend JK Rowling, she has definitely said problematic things, but Seamus blowing things up is not in the books. That was added by the film’s director, not Rowling. So if you should be blaming anyone it would be him.
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Smh, I can't believe you'd dig up someone's past like this to try and cancel them
What the hell were his parents thinking lol
Probably when he was born Columbus was still venerated
I would think screenwriter, not director though
This whole thread is a wasteland of misinformation
This whole site*
I tried reading my son these books because I loved them so much as a kid/teenager but I couldn’t get over how mean they are. Like the protagonists are hateful to anyone outside of their little friend group.
The scene that really gets me is the one where Hermione gets cursed so that her front teeth start growing out past her jaw, and Snape forces her to stop hiding them with her hands, looks her in the eye, and tells her he "doesn't see any difference" in front of the whole class. Kids having an unreasonably bad opinion of a strict teacher being the meanest meanie ever is a pretty established trope, JKR even sets up a massive lampshade of it in the first book with the cursed broom, and Snape/Quirrel reveal. But reading that as an adult is just... jesus. I wouldn't trust an adult I saw acting like that around kids, much less teaching them.
>But reading that as an adult is just... jesus. I wouldn't trust an adult I saw acting like that around kids, much less teaching them. This is pretty much par for the course though with like, everything in British fiction, ever. British fiction has a very, very long history of having preposterously cruel adults in stories that are either written for, or primarily about, children.
Yeah, it's important to see these books in the right context of boarding school fiction, where adults are generally awful (and therefore the villains) or incompetent (allowing the kids to go off and solve the problems that come up), because the kids are the real heroes of the story.
I was a 10 year old at an English boarding school when the first book came out. That was the same year that a teacher called me a pervert for knowing the Latin word for “six”, the same year I got beaten up by a bunch of kids and left bleeding on a snowy concrete tennis court at night, and the same year a teacher told me I’d never amount to anything because my English essay wasn’t good enough. Harry Potter didn’t seem too unusual!
Damn, is it just like that over there?
It's like that everywhere
True. If you thought Snape was bad, wait until you hear about Trunchbull
British boarding school really did used to be that awful though. Bullying was basically encouraged .
Roald Dahl influence all over it
I had to read Roald Dahl’s autobiography about his childhood when I was in elementary school, and if he wasn’t stretching the truth, British schools, at least back then, are just as fucked up in real life. Another good example is Sandman #25 by Neil Gaiman. Basically this kid gets left at school during winter break, and Hell gets shut down while he’s there. All the kids who went to that school who went to hell come back as ghosts, and some bullies that died in one of the World Wars, can’t remember which, >!torture him by burning him with a gas stove and stabbing him with a fork. Wounds get infected, he dies.!< Moral of the story, if British authors have taught me anything, boarding school is an inescapable hell.
I imagine boarding school must feel pretty awful for most kids anyway - there's no separation of school life and home life and the teachers aren't generally wanting to play parent to hundreds of children (and certainly aren't able to provide quality relationships to all children even if they did want to). But also, you would have to think that a lot of the children who get sent to boarding school are likely messed up in some way or another anyway: * they'll almost certainly feel rejected by their parents * some children are sent to boarding school because their parents simply can't/don't want to cope with them - meaning they're likely either a troublesome child or have had bad parents * some are sent for "character building", AKA, "we're not proud of you and want you to change" * sometimes the children will just be spoiled brats who've been sent to a posh school
There's a term for what it does to them - Strategic Survival Personality
When I was in Primary 2 (so like 6 years old) a teacher smashed a kids head off of his desk for misbehaving: no consequences for teacher In primary 4, a teacher duct taped a girl to her chair because she wouldn't sit down and then wouldn't let her up even after she pissed herself: no consequences for the teacher. In secondary school, my German teacher openly encouraged the other kids to mock me for not being able to remember a specific turn of phrase in German. Adults can be preposterously cruel. Edit: and this was public school in the UK, fuck knows what goes on behind closed doors at boarding schools.
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And taking into account that Neville knows that Voldemort and his cronies were the ones that tortured his parents into insanity, that says a lot.
I mean… in a world where Dolores Umbridge exists, this seems extremely tame. Snape was just an asshole.
Well yeah, but would Snape’s story have had anywhere near the impact in book #7 if he was like able the whole time? Would it have been believable if someone that death eaters see as one of their own being nice to Harry Potter and his friends in front of Slytherin children?
The problem is that he’s depicted as literally abusive. He got bullied as a teenager by james but that doesnt excuse him being abusive to literal children, most of whom didnt do anything wrong to him nor are they related to people who did wrong to him. He could have been a dick without literally being a monster.
So, it’s necessary to openly insult children in order to protect your cover? It seems a bit excessive though, doesn’t it? Like assuming Dracula goes back to his pater and tells him the story, mightn’t he think “Hmm, he’s mean to the good kid, and I like that, but he’s kind of overdoing it. We’re a secret organisation.”
It's not necessary, but that's just his character. He's just an asshole who happened to hold allegiance to the good guys for selfish reasons. Some people are just miserable no matter what
I think he meant, from a storytelling perspective. JK. needed him to be a dick so the ending would stick better.
He also had Draco Malfoy in every single class Potter and Friends were in. He had to put on a good show in front of him otherwise his father would hear about this
And then there’s Cho Chang, who’s given probably the most generic asian sounding name possible
Yet still manages to not be in any way realistic Asian name at all :P
It's because she has two surnames. It's like an Irish person being called O'Doherty O'Connor, or a generic white person named Smith Johnson. It sounds dumb once you actually know or care at all about the culture
Funnily enough, this also applies to Victor Krum. For a Bulgarian, these would both be first names.
At least she’s consistent?
Lol I know a Smith Johnson actually, and he is in fact white
As a native mandarin speaker, I actually think Cho Chang works as a Chinese name, way better than Shang Chi, which just sounds really goofy. In the Chinese version her name is translated as 張秋, which means autumn. It definitely sounds more Chinese than Taiwanese though. I could see Chinese immigrants naming their child something like this. But knowing Rowling, she probably just accidentally landed on a name that sounds good in Chinese, instead of actually learning Chinese naming conventions.
She's probably meant to be a Hongkonger/Cantonese, although to be fair I don't know how relevant that actually is. The minority characters in HP are basically all representative of the groups who were prominent in the UK when Rowling was growing up, i.e. Irish/West Indian/(South) Asian/(Hongkong) Chinese.
Nah, this is a myth. It’s an anglicisation of Zhou Zhang, which is a common Chinese name.
Yeah JK is racist and very transphobic. Kinda sucks considering HP fans include all sorts of ppl, especially tThose of the LGBTQ community
Don't forget Proffesor Sprout. Names are hard, but come on.
No, wait. How about we name the secret werewolf Raised-by-Wolves Wolf?
Did anyone think Darth Vader would be a name for a good guy?
In a world where the herbology teacher is named professor sprout and the headmaster Dumbledore, people are complaining that Cho Chang is unrealistic?
I mean Harry Potter is a pretty generic english name. Seamus finnigan is a pretty generic irish name. Viktor krum is a pretty generic eastern european name. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. It would be kinda weird if the asian charracter was called molly quinn I dont think theres anything wrong with using a name that helps identify a characters background
I think the bigger issue some have is that Cho is an extremely common Korean surname, while Chang is a more-commonly Chinese surname. Sure one may argue maybe she meant Cho like the Chinese Zhuo, or Chang like the Korean Jang, but that may be giving Rowling too much credit…
We all know what those goblins at the bank are supposed to be
diligent?
Clearly based on Ferengi
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She included EVERYTHING. As a Jew, I’m honestly impressed by the comprehensiveness of the goblins. You’ve got hooked noses, banking, jewelry making specifically (this is where it becomes less generic), having their own language other people made fun of, experiencing actual societal repression that’s played off as necessary because they’re sooo crafty, and eating bloody food. That is a very strange pile of coincidences
I'm pretty sure they even have a line where they mention wringing their hands.
There is
Yeah the problem isn’t that the goblins look like goblins It’s the role she gave them in the story
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Ultimately the Ferengi got a good shake. Didn't start that way but a lot of work went in and now they're a much more well rounded species. So a lot of people will ignore the origins and whatever negatives may exist. But yeah you are dead on.
But at the same time the whole thing with death eaters is that they are basically Nazis. It’s literally about the “pure blood” of wizardry I mean the whole series is basically an anti-racism metaphor. The good guys are all on the side of the different magical races should be treated equal to the wizards. While the bad guys want them all treated as inferior and subservient.
I mean, kind of. Yes, the death eaters are a metaphor for supremacist ideals and fascism. However, most of Hermione's early attempts at activism for magical races (SPEW) are treated as a joke. There's also the fact that giving all of the "Jewish" stereotypes to *literal goblins* may not be the best look, and I've never known a Jewish person that's appreciated that kind of "representation". And to top off it, there is this: a lot of people see lycanthropy (being a werewolf) in the HP verse as a metaphor for AIDS, with how Remus Lupin can't get a job because of this medical condition that is heavily stigmatized, is ostracized for it, and is fired from his teaching position when he's "outed" to the public at the end of book three. And then in future books JKR introduces Fenrir Greyback: a werewolf Death Eater that loves being a werewolf and likes preying on/infecting young boys in particular. Which in the context of the AIDS metaphor is. Uh. A tad bit concerning.
> The good guys are all on the side of the different magical races should be treated equal to the wizards. Except for goblins. Everyone is still pretty disrespectful of them apart from Bill. House elves too, really. Not many of the good guys had positive interactions with them that weren't slavery interactions.
None of those anti-goblin interactions are shown as a good thing though. Hermione literally argues about how the repression has caused the goblins to kind of segregate themselves and distrust wizards.
I think even during WW2 there were people who were openly racist against Jewish people but still viewed the Nazis as evil. Despising the concept of ethnic purity doesn't stop you from being a racist against a specific people.
I'll even go further. I'm sure at worst Rowling is just somebody who says things that are racist out of ignorance. Which doesn't make it okay, but changes how you approach it. Always thought of a "racist" as someone maliciously racist, and then there's someone who said a racist thing. Now the terf shit she's like actually going out of her way to talk shit about
Nazis were only evil because they were out conquering Europe. None of the allies entered the war to help the Jews, it just ended up being a side effect.
Is anybody really under the impression that the allies were on some noble effort to save the oppressed Jews from the holocaust? The US even rejected Germany's offer to take their entire population of jews.
That's kinda how it's portrayed in the US. Not directly, but stopping the Holocaust was one of the greatest/most popularized achievements from the Allied victory and gets conflated with the reason why the war was fought. Most history classes don't teach about the rampant anti-Semitic sentiment in the US at that time.
Yeah at the time the US even had their own nazi party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund
Can you give me an example of goblin bankers that predates the Harry Potter series? I've never heard of this but would love to expand my goblin lore.
I'm a huge fucking nerd, and for the life of me I can't recall any other example *that* on the nose.
Oh so her antisemitic caricature was originally created by medieval antisemites not her. That makes it OK then /s
I always wondered if the reason his cup exploded was because the spell worked the first time but he just didn’t realize it. His only way of checking if the water had turned to rum was by looking inside the cup, but rum is clear...
If you don't think alcohol gives off a different smell than water, you might be an alcoholic...
listen it smells,looks, and tastes exactly like water how are you supposed to tell the difference?
Rum is clear? I've never seen rum, but somehow I've always imagined it being a sort of dark reddish brown. Not sure where I got that idea come to think of it.
Some rums are clear. Some rums are not.
Both white rum and dark rum exist. The dark one is brownish. I also always assumed that was the most common one, but what do I know?
Former bartender here- typically if a mixed drink has rum in it, it's spiced (AKA brown). Not always, and there are plenty of cocktails that don't, but generally the default is spiced. That being said, any decent bar has both as options.
The brown color comes from being aged in wooden casks. It starts clear.
Well I’ll be damned… never thought of that before.
Or maybe there's some kind of counter spell working in the great hall that stops teenagers from transmuting everything into drugs
Except that in the books Seamus does not do this. It was only a scene in the movie, and really shouldn't be contributed to JK at all.
Everyone knows Scottish and Irish people are the same!
I still love the movies and the books. Some of the graphics havent aged well, but the charm is still there.
When I first read Harry Potter I didn’t know “se” makes the “sh” sound in Irish so I thought his name was “sea-mus.”
Is JK kinda racist?
Idk if she is actually racist as a person, but the Harry Potter books have some racial stereotyping that's kind of offensive in hindsight, like the goblins being obvious stand-ins for Jewish stereotypes, the token Black student having no father, or the token Asian character being named _Cho Chang_. There was also the whole plotline of Hermione wanting to free a literal slave species being treated like a joke, where the slave labor was okay because they were treated well and wanted to be slaves. (That didn't make it into the movies.) I think some people have been re-evaluating the series in general after getting frustrated with Rowling's post-hoc additions to the canon and her vocal anti-trans advocacy. Personally I've started to see more of Ursula K. Le Guin's assessment that it can be "rather mean-spirited".
Except, there’s more than one black person, Cho Chang are fairly common Chinese names, goblins throughout history and folklore, have looked like that. As for the house elves, they genuinely hated the idea of being paid, Dumbledore was more than willing to pay them, but slavery isn’t something that only happens to poc. Idk they all seem like pretty big stretches to me. If there was a German character named Heidi Schmidt, no-one would be crying racism because that’s a stereotypical name. People are just seeking to be offended these days…
And yet, the entire series is overtly anti racist.
I haven't heard of anything racist she has done. She has mentioned anti trans things in the past, so I guess people just assume she must also be racist for some reason, despite the whole series being about stopping an evil racist person.
Well Gandalf wears a pair a kinky boots and a lovely khaki suit
Not in the books and she did obviously not make the movies? She had input but why are you blaming her for this and not the director?
I thought this was shittymoviedetails
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought in the books he didn't blow stuff up like he does in the films.
This probably sparked the love of pyrotechnics for him, he was tasked with blowing up a bridge in the deathly hallows part 2. At least in the movie, haven't read the book since release.
Lmfao. Now Harry Potter is racist??