Is Harry Potter Bad?
Vložit
- čas přidán 28. 12. 2022
- Yeah, it kinda is.
Thanks to @caelanconrad, @JessieGender1, @KatyMontgomerie, @Felixiroflife28, and @TheLeftistCooks
Buy the hat I'm wearing in the 2nd Act: www.etsy.com/shop/McIntoshJew...
Twitter: hootsontheweb
Instagram: hootsontheweb
Listen to my podcast: @RespecttheDeadPodcast
Patreon: / littlehoot
Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/littlehoot
Paypal: www.paypal.com/paypalme/amand...
Channel Amazon wishlist: www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls...
Caelan's Channel: / caelanconrad
Shaun's video: • Harry Potter
Lily Simpson's video: • A Brief Look at Harry ...
Creative Commons: docs.google.com/document/d/1z...
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @hootsyoutube - Zábava
I'm sorry, but questioning why all evil people were former Slytherin students or why all bad children end up in Slytherin is valid criticism. It is essentially saying that once the sorting hat arbitrarily decides you're evil enough at the ripe age of 10, you'll be doomed to live a life of crime.
I’d recommend the video from Quinn Curio about Slytherin and it’s problems, it’s a really entertaining!
@@JamesGallagher90 Neville wanted in hufflepuff and the sorting hat put in in griffindor.
@@poppie267 and he ended up freeing Nagini, noble hearted, etc so the point is that you aren't necessarily sorted by your base wish but what that wish represents, where you're actually needed and will thrive
@@JamesGallagher90 it's ironic bc in the movie the sorting hat verbatim is like "oh, anything but Slytherin, ey? well then it'll have to be Gryffindor" lmao it was so clear that it considered every aspect of a person: who they want to be vs who they are
It's sad that people are demonizing every aspect of JK's writing when there were actually good bits
@@gwengrasso1887 I have never saw the video but i will do it soon. Because Slytherin is one of the WEIRDEST things ever in fictional history.
Someone made a joke on twitter saying that if we had a Latin character on harry potter they would be called Andale Arriba and it makes me laugh every time because Joanne absolutely would do that
I’m Native American, so if I was in HP, Rowling would most definitely have me dramatically and mysteriously looking far into the distance as I dispense some kind of vague ‘wisdom’ 😭
And also not use a wand because apparently native american wizards don’t use wands either or something??😬
J.K. Rowling resisting the urge to name an Italian character "Icooka Dapizza"
@@nathanlabrador7664
Oh my god that’s terrible 💀
“Ándale Arriba” Lmao 💀😭
@@nathanlabrador7664bro what about Blaise zabini, last time I checked he wasn’t named Mario a tortellini 💀💀
when harry asks hagrid about why wizards and witches aren’t open about being magical, hagrid says “they’d(muggles) be asking us to solve all their problems for them.” which is such a demented reason why the witching world would be hidden. i wish hagrid said “unfortunately people aren’t always kind to folks they don’t understand.” or something which makes so much more sense and doesn’t make witches and wizards seem like selfish monsters.
although JK Rowling also isn’t too kind to folks she doesn’t understand.
that literally implies that they could fix the problems of the world but chose not to just because. if we're going with the whole wizards being pretty much white supremacist, it's very on brand and realistic that they choose to do nothing about it
Right like Hagrid could've talked about the Witch Burnings of the 1800's.
Which... Yeah, it would have been nice for wizards to help during the darkest time of our History. The secrecy but doesn't really work unless humans have some way to hurt wizards, which they don't, wizards are overpowered.
someone needs to teach the wizards about the saying "with great power comes great responsibility"
They mentioned that the witches never died they enjoyed the fire and pretended to die for fun@@gabebenson2367
One thing that's always bothered me is how Arthur Weasley's interest in muggles being presented as an intense interest is completely ridiculous considering his lack of knowledge.
If he was genuinely interested in learning about how muggle things work he could have- at any point- just put on a bit of muggle clothing, however mismatched it was, and gone to a few bookstores in his nearest town. He had muggle money for the Quidditch World Cup (which he struggled with.... Can you really not tell the difference between a 5, 10 and 20 written on a piece of paper? You literal idiot?) so there's obviously a relatively easy way to exchange Wizarding currency to it.
He could have had an entire home library and studied spark plugs, electricity, aeronautics, mechanics, engineering, muggle sociology, architecture, science, etc at his leisure. It makes him come across as a complete moron when he's stumbling over things a 5 year old muggle kid would know (again, when he professes that this stuff is meant to be an interest of his) or says that the thing he desires most is "to know how aeroplanes stay up" in book 6. Arthur, mate, READ. A. MUGGLE. BOOK. A kids book about aeroplanes. Just one. It's so annoying lol.
It's really idiotic and takes away from him as a character. Especially when you consider that his job in the Ministry is related to muggle objects so this isn't just hobbyist stuff but is potentially career-relevant knowledge as well.
I think it's just why would they bother with muggle books it's not worth their time
Also…. It’s a kids book - this part is supposed to be a bit silly and a source of humour….
@@lightdarksoul2097 For anyone else, sure. But this is a guy who professes an intense interest in Muggle stuff. Those other folks would find that muggle stuff equally worthless of their time, so why the distinction for him? He likes the stuff but doesn't care about the books? Seems odd.
@@bearlytamedmodels It's weird but also I doubt many books mention mundane things like rubber ducks.
@@lightdarksoul2097 Depends on the book. I'm sure a few histories of rubber manufacturing textbooks probably drop a line or two. It really depends on what books he goes for - and if he's interested in muggle objects, then the written equivalent of How It's Made would fairly easy to get his hands on, all told.
I never liked how the book made Cho out to be a whiny batch for mourning her DEAD BOYFRIEND! How is she supposed to react?
The book didn’t really make Cho out to be that way, though. That’s the interpretation of many fans, but when I read Order of the Phoenix it’s clear that both Harry and Cho act incredibly immature. Both experienced terrible trauma and the relationship was doomed from the start. Many fans don’t see this because the book is written from Harry’s perspective so it’s obviously biased.
imo the book portrayed chos and harrys toxic relationship really well, cho was obviously not over cedric and kind of used harry to deal with her grief (which is a real thing that happens), and harry was lowkey stupid getting into this relationship because it was clear that she wasnt ready for that 😭 and thats realistic as well because he was inexperienced and she was his first love
Like, in universe, everyone has at least one family member who got murdered or tortured to insanity, she's not special in that regard tbh.
@@anais559 yes and also we need to consider that they were both pretty young, they were like what, 15? I feel like if such a traumatic event happens to 15 year olds, that's how they'd react and I don't think they're being bad people
The books is through the eyes of Harry, he is our closest audience. Other than Hermione occasionally, he is the voice of reason. So of course
I didn't knew that the Dementors were fired for working with Voldemort. Now I'm imagining a wizard just walking into Azkaban and telling all Dementors that HR wants to see them. Now how will they eat? Imagine a Dementor on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign saying "Will work for happiness"
"Will suck for happiness"
No, but seriously, what happened to the Dementors after the last book? Did they kill them all? Did they put them in a reservation? Was there any Dementor who didn't chose Voldemort's side?
Why would Croatia want to see them?
"can you spare me some happiness?"
Stereotypical depressed teenager: like i have any
Come to think of it, how do you fire them? It's not entirely clear if they understand English, or care to in any regard. It seemed like they were only being kept there by a food supply, but the food supply is still there. The books don't mention any way to kill them. Maybe the Aurors stationed at Azkaban had to keep up a constant perimeter of patronuses?
So i think the "bad faith" arguments are valid. Dumbledoor was fine until you find out hes manipulate harry to die, and he willingly gave harry to an abusive household. He isnt creepy bc hes close to harry hes creepy bc hes litterally the other side of the coin to voldy. And slytherin being evil children isnt just clicks at school, its a systemic issue of creating an echo chamber and shoving it in the basement.
I don't mind Dumbledore's portrayal so much since Rowling seems to recognize at least some of his flaws, he comes under pretty heavy scrutiny in the final book. Slytherin definitely showcases some of her shoddier world-building, though. It may have started as a fun re-imagining of preppy cliques, but as we learn more about the Death Eaters and how they recruit Slytherin students, it's easy to draw parallels to echo chambers and the radicalization of young men. The apparent absence of Muggle-born students in Slytherin also starts to feel quite a bit more ominous. As you say, it doesn't feel like these ideas were ever adequately addressed.
I read the books using my library's e book rental. No encouragement to buy more physical copies, no new digital, and you help keep the public libraries open by using their services.
It occurred to me that ending each book with a Wizard OSHA agent coming in to berate Dumbledore would have been a hoot.
The OSHA agent is clearly Umbridge
@@nt_partlycloudy21 But OSHA is good.
At least a Little Hoot? :P
@@nt_partlycloudy21 Umbridge is OFSTED
@@nt_partlycloudy21Umbridge is the person who suggested to add standardized testing to the US education system
As an eastern european, I also disliked the portrayal of foreigners in the book series, especially that of eastern europeans. Krum is the only good eastern european because he prefers the West. Fleur is French, but she's always mocked for her accent and poor English. I could go on.
i'm russian-american, and, even as a kid, i felt really weird when i saw how eastern europeans were primarily portrayed as specifically evil. it honestly felt reminiscent of the bullying i faced when i was in elementary and middle school.
as a fellow slav, yes. not only evil! also poor, unwashed, and crude. never gon' forget krum marveling at their nice plates cuz they eat from, idk, a trough or something.
@@somerandomgoblin2583 better not watch James Bond
@@Random51960 i never have and i never will, it's not something that particularly interests me.
I’m also Eastern European, and I agree with you.
I would have loved to have seen Harry grow up to be a Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher who works through his PTSD by making sure his students are prepared to fight evil. He's happy as a husband and a father, but that uneasy feeling of danger never quite leaves him, so he never really stops training Dumbledore's Army.
A bittersweet ending to a bittersweet story.
YES!!!
Thinking back to Order of the Phoenix, this kid was HAPPY teaching Dumbledore's Army. In his spare time, he found himself planning lessons. He was super proud of his classmates when they made leaps and bounds. Why couldn't he have figured out in Book 5 "Hey, the career path I wanted to take was one thing, but I feel really fulfilled doing this other thing that is a different career path"? That's normal for people, especially teenagers! His character would have had a happy ending that way, in my opinion
yeah, i thought it was so obvious that harry was going to be a teacher when he grew up. it would fix that thing with the defense of the dark arts position being cursed too. and harry was in his element teaching dumbledores army in book 5. and after his experiences with snape being such an abusive teacher, it would also make sense for harry to want to be a nice teacher for other kids. also him becoming a wizard cop is SO wrong after everything joanne set up to be wrong with the wizarding world. he shouldn't become an enforcer of the law.
I really thought he'd become the next defence against the dark arts teacher too. He seemed to genuinely enjoy teaching, and he was constantly fighting dark wizards and magical creatures. Considering the running bit of something always being awry with the DAtDA professors, it would've been a pretty fun way to end his arc.
He becomes a wizard pig instead
Not to mention him becoming a bad father in the book that shall not be named, I never would believe that Harry the kid who grew up only wanting periential love and affection could neglect giving that to his own children and choosing work over his family when him choosing Auror seemed to come out of left field
Not to mention that Seamus, the only Irish character at the school, has an tendency to inadvertently blow things up and create explosives. In the 90's.
Wasn't that movie only ?
@@TheFiresloth
He was secretly an IRA mole
It was only the movie thing. There's nothing like that in the books if I remember correctly.
In the movies (I forget which one) he said that he's half blood: “Me dad’s a Muggle; Mum’s a witch. Bit of a nasty shock for him when he found out." which, with his Irish background and the weird IRA coding, appears to be a reference to being half Catholic half Protestant. Which is a weird detail to include imo.
@@maragevaudan477 Oh my god, that's such a good pick-up!
15:30 I once listened to a review which basically said that the Harry Potter universe doesn't have bad and good actions, it has bad and good people.
What the reviewer ment with this was that actions seen as bad when done by a bad person would be framed as acceptable when done by a good person :)
That's Shaun's video I think
@@ThatFreakingGinger yep. and case in point: all the unforgivables cast by the Golden Trio in the last book.
Like in life you mean?
The best criticism of the time turners in book 5 is still "Sorry guys, Neville knocked over time travel"
Ngl that is a funny way of writing out a magical mcguffan
It's just so obvious that the didn't notice how broken that thing was and needed a fix xD
@@oplars6487 honestly, nevermentioning again would have made more sense.
I've listened to Shaun's video on HP so many times, I read it in his voice.
@@Saphia_ I have a whole playlist of videos that's just people deconstructing hp and jk
I never read the books or saw the movies
I love how the Harry potter world has no magic schools in the entirety of central europe, west asia, central asia, south asia, southeast asia, and fucking china. This means that an enormous portion of the world has no magical abilities or great civilizations like China, India, and mesopotamia have never thought to build even one magic school
Also the fact that there's *one school* for the whole of Africa is ridiculous.
@@chrisogara770 the same for Latin America, I ask myself how does language work in this schools, because would the Spanish speaking people need to learn Portuguese? Or the classes would be bilingual? Or does only Brazilian people have magic?
@@bluester7177 the brazilian castle is also insensitive in that while, yes, the name is in portuguese, and, yes, it is located in the north region of brazil, it is a literal goddamn *incan temple.* we don't have incan roots, joanne
@@mccperin I know, she probably should have chosen Mexico but there was already a North American school or Peru for the Incan thing but its a small country (compared to Brazil) , so she just decided to put the country with the most people.
I do like the fact that there are caiporas protecting the school.
@@bluester7177 oh yes i love that aspect as i love our folklore!!!! however i think she should have chosen peru (since size is not an issue- i mean just look at the uk)
The thing that pisses me off about the house elf slavery is that she could just have written that dobby himself accidentally got himself into a magical contract that he later regretted, but was literally unable to break. The mistreatment from the Malfoys could still exist, Harry helping him get out of it could still exist and the big structural issue to be addressed could be how human wizards take advantage of their systems to hold other magical creatures under submission. Servitude doesn't equate to slavery, Joanne.
Servitude does equate to slavery. Being tricked or forced into a contract giving away your rights is absolutely slavery. Look at the irish people that came to America as "indentured servents". Thats a disgusting way to legalize slavery.
It would still be diferent than sistemic slavery. And it would allow our protagonist to actually solve the problem instead of helping a single person and then ignoring the rest
@@lollollolskeet yeah wtf. . .this is just wrong Katherine.
I always felt naming the elf freedom organisation ‘SPEW’, was Rowling mocking similar organisations. Like no one was going to join spew just on the name. And Hermoine would have known that too!
That and they could've been Brownies. They're basically British creatures who do maintenence around the house but unlike house elves they don't take disrespect. Abuse or tick them off and they'll mess you up.
11:12 If anyone's interested, the folklore actually goes that they aren't innately benevolent at all - they stow away in your house overnight and steal your food, but their sense of morality leads them to also do some household chore for the victim out of guilt.
This is why the brownie is so offended if they notice that you're inviting their 'theft' or try to actively 'pay' them in some way - once it becomes obvious you're trying to _let_ them "steal" from you in _exchange_ for household chores, knowingly exploiting its guilt when you aren't even actually upset about the food and trespass, they're understandably very upset and will never return to your house again or even wreak mischief against you.
I had never even considered the connection between Harry's messianic portrayal and a goblin selling him out to wizard-Hitler. God, it keeps getting worse.
I never read Harry Potter, but yea that
Sounds really bad....
@@raydgreenwald7788 as shitty as they are making it out to be you really are missing out. Worts and all
How the fuck did Rowling manage to write this many layers of antisemitic bullshit? I'm almost impressed, holy shit.
At least the goblin wasn't paid with thirty pieces of fucking silver.
@@circeowaggles not really. As a child I was completely hooked, seeing a lot of similarities between mine and Harry's upbringing, to the point of expecting a letter at my 11th birthday and being very disappointed and sad because apparently Polish kids don't get to attend Hogwarts (lolz), I read every book the day after it premiered in Poland and was overall a fanatic. However as adults my fiancé and I tried to re-read the series, in Polish and English respectively. The writing is TERRIBLE, the world building is TERRIBLE, JKR's bigotry seeps out of every letter. He had a little better time because Polish version is kickass, the translator did a fantastic job, but I was appalled at Rowling's style of writing and abandoned my efforts before I finished the 1st book. It's a zeitgeist thing, if you never experienced it while it was happening - you really shouldn't get into it now.
@UCwNOfedCZwgKl8ppqXK_bKA It's crazy you can't make your goblins ugly, hook-nosed, greedy, literally in charge of the banks, explicitly second class citizens not trusted by the rest of their society, and now, with the new game coming out, practice fucking blood libel without it being pointed out that you hit every single highlight of anti-Semitic propaganda.
Imagine being so excited to go to a magic school, to finally be amongst your peers and make friends and learn cool spells....only to be told by a mouldy old hat that you're in Slytherin and automatically everybody hates you just because.
Yeah
Ya I think she was a little too flippant dismissing the slytherin criticism in this video.
7:51 'Yup it's set in a high school, you got your central cast, your nerds, your preppy rich kids and your stoners, next'
Like stripping the fantasy setting, mundane books that fundamentalize the preppy kids as evil and the stoners as losers who will never get anywhere in life are also bad. They also tend to be bad in a lot of ways (eg. Tropey and uninteresting aside from it not being great to other people like that).
Saying eh it's a high school, there's groups is just so flat and lazy a way to engage with the criticism.
It's less automatically hated, more bad people just tend to end up there. It's not the best part of the books writing but it's not as bad as you're suggesting
The worst part is that the students most effected by this are also the least privileged. The wealthy pureblood Slytherins seem to get off just fine for the most part (well aside from the whole radicalized into joining a cult thing) but students like Snape, a poor half-blood, get totally screwed. Like, can you imagine Draco getting treated the way Snape was during Snape’s worst memory? No way, Lucious would have stormed the castle and demanded James’ head on a stick if Snape had been his son.
lmao, I'm sure they didn't care one bit which is why they were placed there. Took balls to be slytherin and own it. Idk why people have to add all this real world nonsense to fiction stories. Just enjoy it.
0:38 my aunt's second husband was named Harold Potter. We always just called him Uncle Harry Potter, back in the '80s when it was just another name.
He was a gregarious ol' coot and my friends loved my stories of his antics.
Until the late '90s when they started calling "bullsh*t" as soon as I mentioned his name. Even though they'd heard me talking about him for years.
Not even remotely relevant, I know. I just wanted to share.
that's so cool! whenever i read books that have characters with kinda unique names i always think that there might be someone in this world with that exact name and maybe even similar looks or life
@@hiyylight I always found it kinda sad. Like if someone had ever wanted to name a kid hermione or write a book with a hermione people would always relate it back to harry potter because it's such a distinct name and it's so unpopular that the only place many people will ever hear it is harry potter. The name is possibly forever tainted.
I am once again asking people to try out the Earthsea series, a beautifully-written series about a boy named Ged given too much power too young and facing the unfortunate consequences of that. The series follows Ged from his early days at wizarding school until he's an old man, and in the time you spend with him, and others, you also learn about the world of Earthsea- the many cultures within it, the awe-inspiring forces both in the living world and the dead one, and the magic system that grants you power over something (or someone) based on knowing a person or thing's True Name. All written with a philosophy based on LeGuin's own Taoist beliefs and knowledge of local Native American communities.
Truly the only books about Wizards for me.
Can I also recommend Amari and the Night Brothers? It hits the same notes as Harry Potter for me, but it's about a black girl that's bullied at school because she's poor and black, who then discovers that she's been invited to be a part of a magical world. Then she learns she has super powerful magical abilities that are innate, and she's feared and loathed for them. The entire book is about her discovering a love for herself and for people like her, and that she can teach the world to love her, too. The full series isn't out yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
And I have to recommend Percy Jackson and The Olympians,because of how Rick Riordan avoided big plot holes,actually redeemed the bully,and the status quo is actually challenged. In the aftermath Percy tells the Olympians to change and do better
Persassy:"All half-bloods must be claimed. All the minor gods deserve cabins and thrones. Hades deserves a cabin too."
Athena:" He is right that so many demigods joined the Titan Lord because they felt alone and unloved."
Unlike Harry being passive:" This is fine."
Earthsea is just amazing! I like how it's all about a man growing up to discover that magic is shady as fuck.
@@louc.6735absolutely goated series, can’t wait for the third book
So we'll said! 🫤💯
Hearing "Harold Potter" low-key messed me up for a bit, ngl. I even vented to a friend about not realizing that his name would indeed be Harold. Being named Harold on top of being an orphan is too much to bear. Fortunately, they let me know that his name is actually Harry and not Harold. It was a wild ride, though.
Ha ha ha yeah that was a bit
Harry is a British nickname for Henry. It never occurred to me that anyone would think he was Harold.
@@fabrisseterbrugghe8567 I assumed it would be Henry, but the idea of him actually being Harold is hilarious to me for some reason
Harold and Henry make much more sense than the "Hadrian" I constantly see in FanFiction lol
I have a cousin named Harold, but we’ve always called him Hal. Harold Potter is indeed cursed tho
Do you know what’s worse about the Castelobruxo name fiasco? Rowling can actually speak Portuguese. She has lived in Portugal, and speaks Portuguese fluently. Yet, she decided to name the Brazilian school something that, as a Brazilian person, I can guarantee would never be named in Portuguese, not like that at least. It’s also worth noting that this school supposedly precedes the Portuguese colonization, and, yet, has a full Portuguese name.
And honestly, EVEN if you were gonna choose one of the European languages, why not Spanish? All my love to Brazil, but most people in South America speak Spanish. By far.
@@lucasbakeforero426 most people in south America speak Spanish? you realize Brazil is the biggest and most populated country in SA by far?
Fairy tales are super unimaginative when it comes to names. Sleeping Beauty. Jack and the Beanstalk. Goldilocks is literally just Goldy Locks. Cinderella is Cinder Ella (in the German it's basically "ashy dirty girl"). Rapunzel is a mangled old word for a salad green. "Watercress, watercress, let down your hair!" Otherwise, words are gibberish word collections. "Rumplestilstskin". Caipora is from Tupi for "forest dweller". Should it maybe have a Tupi name? Sure, but then her Portuguese is useless and she'd just call it something in Google Translate Tupi.
In any case, I don't think that something that is basically a footnote needs a name like Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum.
@@babyblue3717 Yeah, Brazil accounts for almost half of the population of the continent. However, Spanish is still the predominant language of the region due to it being the official language of nearly all other South American countries. For what I have seen, Spanish speakers are at around 210 million, while portuguese speakers stand at 206. Sure, using "by far" was hyperbole, but my point still stands. Most latin american cultures identify with Spanish, which is the official language of the vast majority of countries in the region. It would make a lot more sense for the school to have it as its main language. Or make a second school.
I guess wizard also did colonization
Dumbledore: You know Severus, sometimes I think we sort too early.
Snape: Then shouldn't we change how this school is run?
Dumbledore: nope lol
I doubt the school governors would like that
Just had an idea - make the students go under the sorting hat every year - and one year Harry has displeased the hat and ends up in Slitherin - which he hates obviously - Hermione spends a year in Ravenclaw and prefers it - Ron goes to Hufflepuff and it gradually grows on him.
@@lostcause6100 I think the hat does listen to what you prefer so I think he'd just follow Ron
One problem with Rowling's worldbuilding which I think gets overlooked (and which is a lesson for other writers) is that her world is fundamentally static, and I think that comes from a place of stubbornness and insecurity. I believe she built a world which was entirely to her liking, with a bunch of fun and still widely celebrated features, and in her mind those features are unalterable. The wizarding world is a theme park (figuratively, but somehow now literally too), not a living breathing world that evolves over time. It's a fun eternal backdrop for adventure where you can also time out for a snack and a pint of butterbeer and meet some wacky characters. The idea that you can tear down the theme park because it's a bit chattel-slavery-y must have seemed ludicrous to Rowling. You don't got to Disneyland to criticise the institution of monarchy.
You nailed it. It's known she's a neo liberal. Her books show only an individual can be changed within an institution but you can't fundamentally change the system itself. (I.e, Ron makes fun of Hermoine for starting Spew, only Donny can be freed but not all house elves. Harry never questioned the ministry of magic only the person who ran it. It goes on and on)
"A fool and his magic are soon parted, if not his life." Maybe the leaky memory of your imagination lacks any and all object permanence because someone is grooming you. I guess I will have to refute something stupid you said, okay here goes.
Put down the pacifism and keep your hands in a non neutrality position, slowly step away from the middle ground of weak character. Your baseless plot has the right to Yolo & FAFO. You would have been right to consult a search engine for advice because we sure as shit do not answer unto you. If you cannot afford to question your input, my boot will be appointed for you to lick thereof as input. If you decide to think now, you may delete your comment.
I noted this in a comment on another video. Notice how everyone gets married to people they knew in high school. Nobody ever branches out of their pre-determined social circle, the world is static, circumstances are unchanging, and all is well. It just shows a fundamentally incurious writer determined to show us that her neoliberal hellscape was always good, and fascism was just an unpleasant interruption to that status quo, rather than the culmination of neoliberalism itself, and a lesson to be learned from. Like what's the point in telling a story if nothing ever changes?
@@Greg_Glassman she's not even a neoliberal, maybe in the 90s she was? By now she's just a basic, dyed in the wool conservative. The idea of advancing social values is an anathema to her.
@@pax6833- *THIS* ‼️🫤💯
The embodiment of loving motherhood in the series is also often verbally abusive to her children, even humiliating them with magically amplified verbal abuse in front of all their peers
not to mention canonically physically abusive...
To be fair, by stealing the flying car, Ron broke the law, almost was expelled and almost made his father lose his job. What he did was WAAAYYY worse tham what Molly did.
Asian parents fr fr
Wouldn't that be Lily instead of Molly? Molly to me is the image of exhausted motherhood
Can you imagine being a mother to Fred, George and Ron. You'd occasionally get pissed off too 😅
The time turner complaint is such an easy fix. All Rowling had to do was say "you can't actually change the past when travelling through time." The climax of Prisoner of Azkaban is a textbook closed loop.
But NOOOOOOOOO. Instead, we get "whoopsie, we broke time travel forever."
Was that in the book? I didn't re-read the books as often as I re-watched the movies, and the PoA movie made it so that everything that happened in those moments was caused by Hermione and Harry being in the past, like those two stones. It was essentially a closed-loop, unlike BttF1.
@@Daikon_Micucci ...
Ah crap, now you've got me wondering.
Exactly, something like "everything you do in the past has already happened" kind of thing. So if you travel back to "fix" things you're just following the timestream as it is. The end.
It's science fiction 101, I guess she didn't read enough of that genre.
@@Daikon_Micucci yes, it's a closed loop in the book too. That's the whole point of the scene where future Harry summons a Patronus and past Harry thinks it was his father summoning it.
what's funnier is how the Cursed Child completely misinterpreted how it worked, but that one technically isn't written by Rowling as far as I know.
To be fair, Hermione did explain on Deathly Hallows that even though she could multiply the food it would have less nutritional value. And when Ron asks her why she doesn’t cook like his mom she explains one of the rules of magic that is nothing can be materialized from nothing.
I feel like a majority of Harry Potter fans like the _idea_ of it more than the actual story.
There's a reason it was one of the most popular properties to write fanfiction about (and, for all the bad things she's done since then, JKR's condoning of fanfiction of her work fundamentally changed the way authors interact with fan works from then on. Anne Rice's "nobody's allowed to write fanfiction of my characters" and even Anne McCaffrey's "You can write fanfiction, but only if it would be totally plausible within the canon of the books that I wrote and follows all of the rules of the setting" fanfiction rules seem ridiculous in a post Harry Potter world). Rowling wrote an interesting, evocative world and then fumbled the execution of the actual story, which inspired a ton of other people to take a crack at it, and a lot of teenagers to take up writing as a hobby (just like it inspired them to take up reading as a hobby as children).
I think the criticism of the house system (specifically with Slytherin) is valid because it ties into Rowling’s views about good and bad. It also fits into the azkaban section bc I can imagine like… the slytherin to azkaban pipeline being a very prevalent thing you could fall into.
Picture this. You’re 11 years old, you’ve either discovered that there’s a secret world of magic, or you grew up in a world of magic eagerly awaiting the day you’d go to cool magic school. You get your letter, get your wand and your pet and all that stuff, and you’re ready for the sorting hat. You consider yourself a little bit of a clever kid, passionate and crafty with what you do. The hat puts you in Slytherin. Suddenly, now 3/4ths of the school now hates your guts. (This anti-slytherin bias is established to keep happening even after HP, as shown in Cursed Child). You’re treated like a menace, maybe you’re with kids who are actual menaces. And not good influences on you. But what can you do? You’re stuck rooming with these people for the next several, very formative, years of your life. You continue to fall in with the bad crowd, and you don’t have an outside opinion because you really don’t get to hear from the kids in other non Slytherin houses (because again, they now immediately hate your guts on sight). One day you get fed up with somebody who maybe spilled their drink on you, and you shrink them and put them in a teapot. Now you’re in prison. There’s no more Dementors, sure, but it’s still prison.
Basically what i’m trying to say with that big section is that the treatment of Slytherin is tied to several other problems in the series
Still a great video though! I just have a lot of feelings about Slytherin’s portrayal is all, lol.
The book is about the antiwhite narrative. Slytherin is a metaphor for Germany.
what do you mean the anti white narrative? As in JKR is against white people? Because im pretty sure thats not the case.
@@Siegfried5846true
This! Tho I’d say that Slytherin, more than outside treatment, is largely so bad because of the lack of outside treatment, they are an echochamber of shitty beliefs and they are kept away from outside perspectives and views, like you said during very formative years, they are doomed the second they’re sorted into Slytherin, the fact the sorting system wasn’t abolished at the end of HP is just another symptom of JKR’s neoliberalism it would seem.
@@MayvaAva Could you describe to me what “neoliberalism” is? I have many liberal beliefs myself and I’m not sure of the exact definition that of that term.
However, I’ll never not find it funny that the people that defend Rowling these days are the far right. 🤣
The Lavender Brown part hits hard. She died in the war, she gave more than any of the main three did, and yet she is belittled and made fun of.
Mauled by a werewolf. Werewolves have always been linked to male sexual predators.
Surprisingly similar to Umbridge and the centaurs.
In the books, she doesn’t die. Hermoine actually saves her
@@becauseyes8505 I believe it was later confirmed that she died, according to hp wiki. Buuut depending on your take on JK’s later addups to the hp series, one can definitely say she survived the attack since the book itself doesn’t confirm her death.
YES! Lavender Brown is literally so unappreciated, but she’s often portrayed as the annoying blonde who hurt poor little Hermione with “won-wons”. I hate how fans reduce her to a stupid side piece for Ron
@@LemonBelly-uc1pyI suppose the issue people have is that she only got interested in Ron when he became good at sports, Hermione liked him even when he was a dorky, scruffy little dweeb so in the eyes of the fans, she's shallow and Hermione is...deep?
I have to say the seventh book made me unhappy. Like Joanne's idea of a Harry Potter book at its most mature was to have the most deaths and to have a big battle between the protagonists we should be rooting for and the painfully clear bad guys; only for nothing to be challenged to make the wizarding world grow for the better. I still read the series once in a great while, because, to paraphrase one of the best characters Star Wars had to offer in the past decade, I miss the idea of it, but not the issues I take with it. You have so eloquently put these issues to words, and for that I thank you.
I think you missed the point of the books as wasn't that what it built to the whole time
Speaking of Star Wars, it has painfully obvious bad guys and yet managed to make a world that grows when the bad guys get beaten, something HP couldn't do
@@tmbcyberman Well even when things happen like the first order to the empire it's obvious that the galaxy at least tried to change
@@tmbcybermanSorry, I think the general extended universe shows the world doesnt grow, it’s just proved to be an endless cycle of Jedi/Sith/Chaos/Jedi/Sith/Chaos throughout millennia…..
In contrast, I think the wizarding world does seem to grow - the old world has a desperate last grasp at power following a despot, and falls, and people who have more connection to the modern world take their place and move the WW towards some kind of modernity…. Maybe
The important thing to remember about Harry and Dumbledore's relationship is that the only event in all seven books that Dumbledore didn't plan for was the ring being cursed and that leading to his death (Snape killing him was a mercy kill).
Taking that into account (that Dumbledore knew about the prophecy all along and directed Harry at every opportunity to have confrontations with Tom Riddle and to want to kill Tom Riddle), it is clear Dumbledore intended for Harry to sacrifice himself to stop Riddle so that Dumbledore could be the hero and finish Riddle off after Harry's sacrifice. This isn't just last book and last two books retcons either. Dumbledore is described as elated and excited when he learns that Riddle found a way to get past the magical love protection at the end of Book 4. After all, how can Harry be a sacrificial lamb if Riddle literally can't hurt him.
Their relationship is thus creepy from Harry's point of view (the "groomed to die" issue) and sadistic from Dumbledore's.
Oh wow. I never thought of that. My mind is kinda blown right now
aaaaaannnnd this which is why evil/munipulative!dumbledore is a guilty pleasure fanfic read for me lmao
I completely disagree with this. Dumbledore wanted Harry to be happy and didn't want to give harry so much burden. Thats a reason Albus didn't tell Harry about the Prophecy end of 5th year. Dumbledore made a lot of mistakes. When harry found out about him being a horcrux he trusted in his mentor and accepted the task of sacrificing himself. When he and Dumbledore met in Limbo both reconciled. The relationship wasn't perfect it had ups and downs. In the end Harry did what he had to do and he trusted Dumbledore to the very end.
@@AhsokaTano1999 The main thing is Dumbledore was explicitly described as happy (ecstatic almost) that Riddle overcame the magic protection in book 4. Why is that a good thing unless Harry is intended to be sacrificed?
@@geoffreysorkin5774 Harry was a unintended horcrux Voldemort accidently created when trying to murder Baby harry. I could guess that dumbledore could hope that voldemort destroy his own unintended horcrux with that horcrux gone. Voldemort would seal his own defeat.
For me the dumbledore-harry relationship made me uncomfortable because dumbledore was so clearly making himself the saint in harry's world and grooming him to be a perfect weapon, but i agree there was absolutely nothing sexual or predator in THAT way in the books
Also the sexism with fleur and cho was so prominent even i couldn't help noticing as a child. Like fleur was very smart and clever but happened to be beautiful and not very good at english, so girls would mock her and portray her as dumb while making fun of her accent. Also cho just being the stereotypical "dramatic crying girl," even though her boyfriend literally died. i loved your comment about mothers being one of the only acceptable female traits, i haven't noticed it before
Also the movies make Beauxbatons into the “ladylike school for girls” and Durmstrang into the “manly school for boys”, which was a baffingly weird and dumb idea
I didn’t get creepy vibes when I was younger reading it til the later books when it’s much clearer he’s been using Harry the whole time. I didn’t recognize any groomer elements at the time. And looking back now and being aware that the only two confirmed gay characters both manipulated young boys to their own ends…that’s what makes me uncomfortable. If there had been other queer rep to offset it, it wouldn’t be as questionable. But if nothing else I do think it’s notable. Especially since werewolfism is an allegory for aids and the whole greyback thing. I don’t think I’d be able to reread these books today.
I mean he needed Harry to stop Voldemort he was the only one who could so that made sense.
Cho was being fair but she did go a bit too far at times, not really sexist though. They are all acceptable though.
@@kiramekiagreed
Literally! Him and Yoda are the same to me! Dumbledore is secretly the Actual Worst!!!!!
The funniest thing about the house elf situation, to me, is that it could have easily been fixed by just…letting the house elves be Brownies.
We already know Lucius Malfoy is a dick, and magic is soft enough to do whatever the plot demands of it, so why not just have Lucius cast a curse on Dobby so that even though Dobby was insulted by the Malfoys and tried to leave ages ago, he can’t. And even though the curse is against wizard rules, the kids aren’t old enough openly accuse Lucius and be taken seriously yet (if I remember correctly). You could even keep the “handing Dobby clothes breaks the curse” thing and just chalk it up to Lucius egotistically taunting Dobby by establishing such a simple key. Hell, you could still say the school largely runs on the favors of Brownies because they like the haunted old castle and all the magic therein (maybe even a fun scene where Harry walks in on Dumbledore chatting amicably with one!). Bam. Dobby still exceptionally needs to be saved without creating systemic wizard slavery. Wild how something like that didn’t happen, huh?
Maybe House Elves could be free, wild beings that move into your home and start doing things if they think you're really nice, and the Malfoys had one captured. Dobby could be the one elf that doesn't enjoy his work, specifically because it's compulsory. The rest of them could pity him and want to see him rescued, instead of thinking he's insane. Honestly there are a lot of ways to do it better.
you could make them bound to the house, like you described it with hogwarts (not owned by a family/person) and it would be so fun to have them have really specific odd house rules and get easily pissed and revengeful when you break one of them. Maybe in one house you really have to take off your shoes and wear pink fluffy slippers all the time. Or one where no lights are allowed from 12 to 5 at night, not even magical ones. And if you break the rules or treat them badly, just like in the original tales, their punishments can be really nasty. Like they are the real authority over the house while seemingly being subservient, cleaning, repairing... And every house has one by default, but maybe the one with the Weasleys is kinda chaotic and relaxed too, just like the house and thus not much of a help for Molly. Easy! No big change in plot and story needed, but instantly more fun.
All ideas in these replies are not offencive and also more creative and interesting than the original one, now I'm gonna search for fics that explore different ways the house elves thing could be done
I desperately want to see this in a fanfic now
I think this comment just turned me from someone who never saw the point in fanfiction into an avid supporter of it.
As a person who has autism and ADHD, I have always seen Luna and Neville as neurodivergent and I deeply connect to them. The way Neville is written is painful. He is seen as dumb and someone to pity due to his clumsy forgetful nature. When he eventually does become heroic those traits have disappeared or lessened.
As for Luna, she is always being made fun of. Even by the main characters. They just treat her marginally better and put up with her so they can be written as good people. The traits that she is made fun of for having are all really autistic-coded things. She has a niche interest that she hyper-fixates on, she doesn't seem to be able to read people and know social rules, she doesn't react emotionally the way most people do, and is just all around seen as weird.
It is so frustrating to go to a book expecting to be accepted and come away feeling like this is the only way to be treated because you are a burden to others unless you change.
@@help4343 It's not cannon but I've always seen her as such as have many. She has a lot of autistic traits. Even if she wasn't intentionally written as autistic.
another autistic person here, yeah it really sucks cause there are so many autism-coded characters that exist and everyone around them just disregards/makes fun of them. i knew i was autistic from a very young age, but i only really started thinking about things like portrayals of autism in the media in a critical way when i started to watch neurodivergent advocates on youtube.
it feels really alienating and depressing to a lot of us when, even when we’re escaping through fictional media, we get reminded that people don’t think of us as “normal” and we’re just things that people can laugh at without any remorse and then just discard us.
the good news is that more people are starting to be more open about their autism, which is definitely a good thing overall cause we have so many more people being open about their experiences and we’ll get more fictional stories with autistic characters written by actual autistic people too!!
so yeah, sorry if this is a bit much for you to read hahah but ik how it feels to feel like there’s no one around you that really “gets” you. the good thing is, there are a vast number of other autistic people out there who understand how we feel so it’s important to remember that no matter how isolated you feel, no matter how much others try and make you self-conscious of your differences, other autistics do exist, you’re not alone and things will get better!!
finally realizing why I felt such a connection to Luna, all these years later: "oh"
I have no idea if I'm autistic or not. I'm definitely ADHD, and Luna was probably my favorite character. I've always been drawn to "the crazy ones" in fiction. It sounds mean now to say I saw Luna as a novel source of entertainment. But that was just her goofier stuff, like having a giant lion's head hat to root for Griffindor, or talking about creatures no one else believed in. But there was also the charm to the fact she had no filter. I really like the characters that speak their mind without any concern for what others think, especially when they're still really nice.
lol
The time turner should have been exclusively something you can visit the past with and gather information, without changing anything. Maybe you can interact with it and try things out, maybe you are not actually there. It would nicely parallel the memory extraction thing, just that it would be the most powerful version of it. That way Hermione can still learn though nobody will actually remember her beint in all these classes. Just taking the tests. Being everywhere is a bit too suspicious anyway. But it doesn't work for saving the Birdhorse anymore. Still she could have written something else where massive amounts of important info gathered matter or, if you go with interaction , methods of saving it are tried out. Afterall info does matter at some point with slughorn. I think 🤔 she wrote herself into a corner and said F it time travel can't let the animal die.
I think I'd go with only being able to go forward and then back to the point you came from. Let's Hermione be everywhere at once but still makes the time Turner essentially just a divination tool. Also fits rather neatly with the current model of physics.
Plus having to preempt her time travel to make effective use of it is way more in character for her.
It’s a book about magical things. I see so many comments trying to ground this in reality because otherwise it is a shit story. Holy crap people, we read these books to escape reality. You ruin the books for yourselves and then blame the author of a fantasy story.
This is a flimsy argument. One person doesn't enjoy the same brand of escapism as another. For some, magic with rules, logic, or reason are more compelling than magic for magic's sake. @@jip5889
Even better, it’s something that had been set up in the future and sent back in time, designed to send the gang to a specific place and bring them back, then it destroys itself.
Have the gang somebod construct the turner in a future book
@@jip5889Nah, fantasy features are completely fine and very fun to immerse yourself in, but they still need to follow some sort of logic to be exciting, at least in my opinion. The way she wrote the time-turners they end up being very overpowered, because you can apparently just change any moment in history you want, and since characters already experience future changes in the present this also means that in Harry Potter everything that happens is predetermined and can't happen any other way. Which is... something you can include in a universe, for sure, but it also puts every character's choices into a different, possibly less meaningful perspective.
And when Rowling realized all of those implications, she just... put all the time-turners into the ministry of magic and had them get conveniently destroyed in a battle? (And then undid that decision with the later infamous theatre play.)
I don't think anyone here is arguing that time travel or other fantasy elements are unrealistic because they don't exist in reality, the issue is more with how Rowling chose to implement those features in her world, because it seems like she didn't really think about the consequences and details of some things.
Man that part about Tonks really bothered me, ever since I was young I hated that she became this sweet little wife and mother when before she was this cool, funny tomboy. I don't think she was written specifically to refute trans identity but I think her transformation into a more acceptably feminine character is a reflection of JK's larger ideology on gender and women. I truly hate the narrative that gender nonconformity is something that women have to grow out of to be truly mature and developed, its gross and weird, and it ties into the point about JK's idolization of motherhood. Just because married and had kids doesn't mean that it's a crucial step in the development of all afab people, Joanne.
i think you people look too much into it. it’s a children’s book, it’s not that serious. children don’t care about that stuff
I guess I always thought of latter-day Tonks as being sidelined rather than "tamed." I never thought of it like this before, thanks for your perspective.
@@nagini77 Man, people call me a kid hater for being childfree, but at least I don't think kids are stupid and undeserving of quality media.
@@LittleMissLounge That's not what was said, what was said is that young kids don't really care about gender and such unless you focus them on it and usually they don't pay too much attention to side characters' traits.
Doesn't mean kids couldn't have quality fiction, but it was never said kids are dumb, just that they don't focus on what we would.
@@Rafalgahr kids have sense of gender and can understand what a trans person is, genius
To be honest, Ginny did have other interests, she was almost as big of a prankster as Fred and George, and was a very talented Quidditch player... Which makes it worst that she literally puts everything in hold to be Harry's partner. At some point, in one of the many, many retcons of the adult group, Ginny was supposed to be a famous Quidditch player who just let everything to become a mom.
She also liked mocking feminine girls who dared to marry her brother. Very well rounded.
I don't think there's anything wrong with retiring your job to become a mother.
@@lauraslade5308 There isn't, it's just part of an unsettling pattern that runs through the books. Taken in isolation, you're right, there's nothing wrong with it.
@@Wveth I feel like most of these people just jump at shadows, let's be honest. As a Star Wars fan and as a Star Wars prequels fan I've experienced lots of people making up lies about the characters to have an excuse to hate on the characters and George Lucas. Like something as petty as claiming Jar Jar is racist
OK, in the spirit of full disclosure, I will say this, I ship harmony, I have since I was 11 years old, I am currently 34, now, my issue with Ginny is this, you are correct she did have a lot of interest, the problem is, we had to learn about them not through her, not through interactions, but through other people, like why is Hermione, the one telling Harry that Ginny has been sneaking out and picking the Lock on the broom shed so that she could fly at night, they had a really good opportunity to show him finding this out when he arrived at the Weasley's,, in second year, he could've seen her flying, he could've snuck out himself, met her down at the Apple orchard, and they could've started talking, and that could've actually built a friendship, and maybe their relationship wouldn't have seemed completely irrational when it suddenly appeared in half blood, Prince.
The "inappropriateness" of Dumbledore is in him putting Harry in an obviously toxic abusive family, which he had knowledge, right and ability to stop, for "his" safety (despite the fact, that Fidelius exists and there are other options, like blood ward or no, nobody even knew where to find Harry) and intentionally inflating his reputation (who else had a full control over the narrative of Harry's parent's and Voldemort's death? Who told the press? Snape?) to then protect him of said reputation and grow up a "humble", "normal" kid to eventually subtly skew Harry's social expectations via Hagrid and slotting himself into Harry's life who grew with desperate need for affection, familial love and validation from parentam figures, Dubledore kept dangling that validation and affection over Harry, kept the information about his family to a bare minimum, didn't do anything to better caretakers for Harry nor became one himself, all for the greater good. It a "grooming", just not the other kind. Dumbledore, without being "evil" engineered Harry Potter into being perfect champion of Light, who "grew from the humble beginnings" and knew only abuse, discrimination, mistrust, with only sources of validation drip fed him by Dumbledore, his allies and Griffindor. He was shown many times to not be all-powerful, but he definitely had power and authority to improve Harry's life on multiple occasions, he forgot to give Sirius a fair trial, he chose not to intefere on Harty's behalf "teaching" moment.
Dumbledore has no _right_ to be Harry's"mentor" or "father" figure, fiction or not, because after Voldemort and Snape he is singlehandedly the biggest cause of suffering in Harry's life. All for the greater good. 🤷♀️
And of all the injustices of the Magical society, Dumbledore used all his power and influence to ignore all, but the problem of muggleborn, while surgically making a few discriminated people fully depend on him, instead of trying to tackle the systemic discrimination. He even failed to teach the generations of schoolchildren to not be the bigots, his history lessons are canonically taught by dead boring ghost from the full on propaganda textbooks.
Dumbledore has moral right to be called moral paragon or Harry's "wise" mentor. He only dresses into an image of being wise and moral.
A lot of these tropes get a pass in stories, because it's some kind of "Fate", behind the scenes stuff. Imagine, if Ben Kenobi hired mercenaries to kill Luke's step-parents, so they won't hold him down from his Destiny, leaked Leia's involvement in Rebellion to the Empire and were indirectly responsible for the destruction of an entire planet. While secretly influencing upper echelons of Empire's government for the last 16 years.
He acted for "The Greater Good"
The Greater Good
The Greater Good
Harry understood at the end of deathly hallows why he had to live with the dursleys. Yes it was for protection and to keep his mothers protection charm alive. Dumbledore wasn't perfect. His mistake of his plan for harry was to protect his happiness he admitted this in the 5 book and regretted this. Dumbledore wasn't perfect he took the blame for Sirius death. I advise to reread Order of the Phoenix book. For Snape told voldemort about the prophecy in 7th book and he assumed it was gonna be either Harry or Neville. When He realized it was Harry he begged to Voldemort not to kill Lilly and he was gonna allow her to live but Lilly refused to stand aside and Voldemort killed her and caused this to put a sacrfical protection charm on harry and Voldemorts curse rebounded and struck him. I suggest re read the books. Apparently you don't seem to understand Dumbledores character. Again Dumbledore admitted his biggest mistake was protecting harrys happiness.
@@AhsokaTano1999 @AhsokaTano1999 You don't seem to understand Harry's childhood if you believe Dumbledore managed to protect any of his happiness.
You point out what books/JK says you should feel about this character.
I point out all the horrific things that books/JK fail to address and want you to accept as okay.
@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842 I do order of the Phoenix book explains why harry had to stay at the dursleys it was for his mother's protection charm. Book also explains he had to go back so the charm continues until his 17th birthday. Harry and dumbledore a entire chapter conversation about it. Harry understood he had to return to durlseys. Also in half blood book called out Vernon and Petunias poor treatment of both Dudley and Harry. My understanding of Harry's poor treatment was due to petunias resentment for her sister Lilly And She and Vernon try to stomp out all magic within Harry so he can live a normal muggle life.
@@AhsokaTano1999 Then you understand, that her mother's charm is moot. If this magic is fueled by love, then there was no love between Petunia and Lily or Harry. The charm failed to protect Harry from the parental abuse. And Dumbledore failed to protect Harry from parental abuse.
I repeat. The only reason Harry was in danger, because Dumbledore had created and spread a Saviour Child narrative. Nobody would've known that Harry is destined to vanquish the Datk Lord, because Dark Lord didn't tell anybody. Severus Snape TOLD him about prophesy and was responsible for Harry's parents death and Dumbledore allowed him to be around Harry and abuse him repeatedly in class environment, along with other children. If he had shut his mouth, Harry's parents could've been alive and he wouldn't need a protection.
If Dumbledore would've lied about Voldie's death, Harry wouldn't need to be protected and hidden, because nobody would've THINK to search for him, he's a baby. He could've grow up with any decent magical family, as safe as their own children, none the wiser. Or could've grow up raised by own parents.
His greatest mistake was to think he could be entrusted with decisions concerning children's wellbeing. He should be in jail.
P.S. Although, all of these are invalid in a face of the main one: JK Rowling is hack writer. If you don't agree with this one, I don't intend to continue talking with you.
The house system is a common thing in UK schools (my school had the same colour houses for instance) but making them sorted by personality instead of just family groups and random chance is silly.
Caltech uses a house system based on personality. Freshmen go through a period of rotation where they spend time with every house after which they can rank the houses in order of their favorites. Their votes are taken into account when they are assigned to a house.
In my school, we were sorted by family status and partly by personality
Houses aren't sorted by personality, but by generic traits
Yeah. One time I saw a comment that said: "He rewards kids for bravery, then puts all the brave kids in the same group"
You're silly. That was the point of the house SYSTEM. The hat superficially judged the students based on some obscure personality traits it detected for the few seconds it was in their heads and put them in different houses predeterming their future. The hat fought hard to persuade Harry that he was fit to be a Slytherin even though he didn't want to because the hat thought it knew better. Naturally, the majority of the students accepted the role the system assigned to them, be it a hero, an intellectual, a victim or a criminal, but there were exceptions, Snape and Regulus redeemed themselves, Pettigrew became the biggest traitor and Neville rose to become the hero he was supposed to be as a Gryffindor. The lesson was that your choices show who you really are far better than any authority
another funny point that Rowling retconned on Pottermore was the fact that wands are just tuning instruments, and those who can accurately use magic without a wand are extremely powerful. and yet the “beast” races who use magic without a wand are lesser than those who have to use a wand of their magic is too volatile.
maybe in the hands of a better writer that could be a commentary on how people in charge devalue skilled yet different people and deny them the ability to hone said skills..
Im pretty sure they state house elves are jacked as fuck so that just inaccurate
Also makes it extra strange that according to Rowling, all African wizards and witches cast spells without a wand..
Humans can use magic without wands just fine (see: African mages)
@@Emma-Mazewait what, where's that mentioned
If J.K wanted the House Elves to work, why not have them like the Brownies but make Dobby the only one who's actually a slave because he's in service to Malfoy's family?
The other elves live and work at Hogwarts and come and go as they please. They'll pinch and leave a mess for lazy students, but have all their autonomy.
Meanwhile, Dobby doesn't have the same autonomy as the others. So Harry and the gang rebel against Malfoy's father and get Dobby to be free
I've never read the books, but that's just my suggestion. I feel like the idea could have worked if it was just edited a little
Because it's only a minor subplot. It didn't and doesn't matter much to the larger story, so it wasn't worth delving too deeply into. This book was written in a time before people started aggressively gate-keeping the subject of slavery.
@@YourCreepyUncle.JK rowling had the audacity to say Harry Potter is anti-slavery book while in the universe she thinks normalized slavery of a entire race is normal because its what they like,people didnt complaint more back then because it was a children book but as the books "grewn up" a lot of this childish fantasy remained the same.
@@YourCreepyUncle. "Aggressively gate-keeping the subject of slavery" lmao wtaf
@@lordanonimmo7699 Rowling is very clearly anti-slavery, but she chose to depict a world where it is still accepted and normalized, so any victory achieved over the institution of slavery is going to be a relatively small one.
This is a perfectly valid artistic choice for a writer to make. Of course, with modern day histrionics set to maximum, everyone is now retroactively acting all offended. Many of you idiots can no longer tell the difference between fiction and reality, nor are you able to separate authors from their work.
You can't blame Rowling for your increased sense of melodrama and virtue signaling.
@@YourCreepyUncle. You cannot be anti-slavery, if the only meaningful conclusion you have about slavey is "you should be nice to your slaves or else they might turn on you". Also, they're not living on another planet. She depicted OUR world, except she focused on a secluded club of elitists who hord vast power and set themselves so far above the common law that the public isn't even allowed to know about them, let alone hold them accountable for their doings, which, aside from abovementioned slavery, include regular violation of identity, use of psychological torture on inmates and at least one case of theft on a massive scale.
Oh, and they're the good guys.
The Tonks stuff still hits so hard, man... Something about Tonk's and Remus' relationship never sat right with me when I was younger. IDK it always felt to me like she was just... unloved. Like, she was the one clinging to Remus who eventually 'settled' for her once she was 'fixed', but even then their relationship felt... cold? Like, as a couple they never felt quite as loving or close as other idealized couples in the book, and looking back now, knowing what I know about JKR, I can't help but wonder if there's a... 'damaged goods' mentality she had towards Tonks. (I haven't read the books in ages so maybe I'm misremembering their relationship. The vibes just always seemed... off)
well, in deathly hallows there is a scene where remus shows he is fully willing to leave his pregnant wife to fight at harry’s side so, uh. yeah a lot of things about their relationship were definitely off LOL
Part of me wonders if Rowling saw how deeply queer both of them felt to readers and decided to stick them together to "normalize" them, trying to banish the idea that Lupin was queer and depict Tonks as, essentially, a detransitioner (which, to be clear, is fine to be, but it's really gross when written by a known terf)
@@somedragonbastard or , you can still be queer and be with someone of the opposite sex....
@@egyptianspaceodin1373 I never said you couldn't??
I am not from the UK, so I do not know if this is a popular thing there, or if just some old authors like it...but... even in Clockwork Orange, in the UK version, Alex 'grew out of it'. One day he gave up violence, and wanted a wife and job. So, Tonks growing out of it... kind of fits. It is bullshit, but it fits the trope.
The thing that is crazy, is you can definitely do “protagonists as members of a fascist state” Fullmetal Alchemist did it. They didn’t do it perfectly, but honestly, at the very least, the protagonists all do have this realization that “oh my god, our government is actually fucking evil, we will have to work against them.”
It’s not perfect cause like, they kinda assume all the evil bad stuff as being part of Bradley’s doing, and Mustang is just kinda like “I’ll take his position and fix it from the inside,” at the end. Which isn’t the greatest point of view, we know that fixing things that way has plenty of issues. It’s still characters aiming towards a solution and not just going “okay the big bad issue is gone, we are going continue the shitty practices of our government because we benefit from it” like the HP characters personally do
???? are you okay?
becoming a general to have the power to overthrow the state via military coup is not “fixing things from the inside. his introduction is that of a revolutionary. he literally performed a revolution. that is the literal absolute opposite of someone working from the inside.
Oh i loved the first Fulllmetal Alchemist show until they went farther than the manga the anime went so weird after that. I have now plans to read the manga and watch the Brotherhood anime.
“Vol de mort” is Rowling’s attempt to say “flight from death” in French. While the similarity to the word “violence” probably helped nudge her towards the name, it has nothing to do with the Danish word for it.
And actually, even if I like Harry Potter, I have to say that, as a French guy, the name Voldemort just sounds really bad, it sounds like the name a child would invent.
Theres also the fact that the root word "volde" means "to wreak" and mort meaning "death", so his real name is "lord of wreaking death" but overall even as a kid i thought it sounded as weird and off-theme whimsical as "dumbledore"
@@Actinopterygiiguy i think Dumbledore is an adorable name personally
@@gabogabo6372 he was a child when he invented it tbf, I think he was 12
Tom Riddle I mean lol
I saw someone who talked about Remus Lupin and Sirius Black's ship and refered to them as Wolf Mcwolf and Dog McEdgy. And nothing ever has been so accurate
Didn't Sirius think Lupin was a traitor and trusted Peter more
its so funny seeing all the tumblr crowd going from i love harry potter to harry potter was never good
Yeah. I never liked HP; it's hacky writing. But at least now I like miss Rowling.
Because they made it political and politics changed it's a kids book not that deep.
because rowling's rowling-ing in recent years made them look at the series again under a more critical lens and it allowed them to realize the series was always problematic, and they just gave it a pass because of nostalgia and some unearned goodwill towards rowling
@@ultravioletcatastrophe And it became popular to hate on rowling so content creators pump up those critisisms.
People change I feel. I'm in my late 202s now. My personal experience with hp was that I loved the first four books when I was a kid in the 2000s. I casually grew disinterested in them as the series progressed. I experienced the fandom hype for hp in the 2010s and was very into it for about 6 months. I got away from it because tumblr harry potter fandom treated the books like they were perfect and jk rowling was a godly writer who planned everything in advance. Which is extremely ridiculous. Then Rowling started posting stuff online and I didn't like what I saw. I immediately became disillusioned with the introduction of American wizards and how bad the lore she made for them was. And then the fantastic beasts franchise happened and the cursed child happened which weren't very good. They made me question why I ever liked the original books. And I increasingly got exposed to criticisms of the books. And then finally in 2020 Rowling made her transphobia known and her behaviour has only worsened from there.
I know I'm not alone in this experience. The order may have been different for others, but the point is criticism was always there and people have been exposed to it for a long time. People were making fun of Rowling long before she was an open terf. I experienced a slow penguin walk of loving Harry Potter and being passionate in fandom as a 15 year old to the person who dislikes harry potter as a 27 year old. That was a long time. I think Rowling being an openly terrible person simply accelerated a process that was already happening. Its a lot easier to go full gloves off with how bad the books are when the writer is an open bigot than when they were a "beloved" activist. I put that in quotation marks because people have criticized her activism for being bare minimum for decades. The change may seem like its sudden. But anyone who was paying attention would know this didn't happen over night.
re: the romance thing: when I read these as a kid the Hermione Ron romance seriously threw me cuz Rowling wrote them constantly fighting, even moreso in the book where they started dating, whereas Hermione and Harry's relationship was generally supportive(when she wasn't being trashed or ignored by the writing at least >:T)
SAME! Hermione and Ron's constant bickering always read more like a sibling rivalry thing to me than anything else.
Ron and Hermione basically have a meet cute and spend the entire series lavishing attention on each other--Ron generally is the first to notice when Hermione is behaving oddly (such as in the third book) and Hermione nitpicks Ron for just about anything. They always bicker, but that's sort of an old romance trope isn't it? They liked bickering, they get angry when Harry is annoyed by it. It's like intellectual foreplay for them. I always thought it was so obvious that they were written to be together. Harry on the other hand, rarely cared about Hermione, and tends to be a bit mean to her sometimes in his head. He usu thinks she's being annoying or shrill or just ignores her a bit. Not to say that he hated her, but there was never much potential for romance there imo.
@@grasshopperye3593 obvsl I disagree with all of this but, just as obvsl, I dont care enough about it to argue with someone over it in 2023.
@@TheSuperappelflap XD
I also found Ron and Hermione's romance a bit puzzling, but it didn’t bother me much; what really threw me was Harry and Ginny as endgame. Not that I think them being happily married is unreasonable but their relationship is so poorly written. The entire story is presented through the eyes of Harry Potter; it is comprised of his thoughts and feelings. We get to see his first attempt at romance unfolding over the course of three books, its going through all stages of an early teenage infatuation that comes to nothing. However, suddenly when it comes to the supposed love of his life, we get nothing. He never expresses any interest in Ginny, never gives her a second thought (like, yes, he saves her in book 2 but I’m pretty sure he would try to help any other classmate in that situation), never even interacts with her in a meaningful way despite him being her brother’s best friend, and constantly spending time around her family. He basically just gets a boner one day and feels jealous that she is going out with some other guy: that’s it. And even after they start dating, we still don’t get to see any introspection regarding this great love. Eventually, them breaking up before Harry’s horcrux hunt and reuniting after the death of Voldemort are supposed to be extremely emotionally moving scenes but you just can’t care about any of it because you don’t feel invested enough in their love story.
I think the novels peaked at Goblet Of Fire. JK isn't really great at big plotty stuff (as seen from Fantastic Beasts) but hit on something with the format of small adventures, investigations, slice of life with clues crumbled in leading to a boss fight.
She's a mystery writer first and foremost, I reckon, and that's mainly what kept me turning pages as a kid.
I think parallel to that is how the characterisation changes at that point. In the earlier books, written with children in mind, the characters are written like small adults (as is common with children’s books, since it gives the characters more agency than realistic children would have, and that allows the readers to live vicariously). But starting somewhere in the fourth or fifth book, suddenly they’re realistically written like teenagers, and it feels strangely as though they lost maturity when they became adolescent. They’re overall more unpleasant to read about in the later books.
True. I loved all 4 books before Order of the Phoenix. I can barely remember Halfblood Prince, and I dunno if I even finished Deathly Hallows.
As the series goes on the adventure investigations decrease and the character moments increase. I still enjoy them for the reasons I stated, clues crumbled into a bunch of isolated interesting moments, I just think Goblet is the best example of the format, and Azkaban comes close.
Interesting, I always thought the GOF was where things were starting to go downhill. The concept of wizard olympics was good, but the execution fell flat for me. The first three books were fine, nothing special but good for kids.
GOF was the book I realized Harry was a bit of a Gary Stu. They said "no one underage can be part of the contest for safety reasons", but when Harry gets in, it only raises a few questions. I bet if it was anyone else, they would have been kicked out and possibly injured/killed. You have to ask yourself, if Harry wasn't the "boy who lived", what does he have left? You always know going to beat Voldemort within a few pages, so there's little tension. Neither of them had much personality, so it's hard to root for either. It's hard to root for or care about any of the characters really.
The SPEW plotline was cringy and uncomfortable. Shaun's video touched on this. It felt wrong how they said to never judge someone for a stereotype (ex. Hagrid being a gentle giant, Hermione being smart muggle born), but they don't question the elves for being slaves. It doesn't pay off as they are still enslaved and the worst part is this plotline is played for laughs. Why do all the jokes in the Harry Potter series have to be being cruel to someone else? (slavery, fatphobia, disabilities, appearance, heritage, race)
When Voldemort killed Cedric Diggory, I just didn't care. We haven't seen this guy for most of the books, so why should we care he's dead? He's nice and supportive and that's about it. A stereotypical Hufflepuff. JK should have build a connection between these two and- gods, the set up and pay off in these books is terrible.
The only reason I finished the series is because I thought "okay, these have to get good at some point. Why else are they so popular?" Nope, they only got worse. Half-blood Prince was my least favorite because of the slow pace, boring and unmemorable story, and . . . I actually don't remember enough to critic it.
(Edit: Grammatical errors)
Oof, this is a messy analysis. 4/10, never reading again.
About Harry and Dumbledore's relationship: Honestly, I don't even think it's that much of an innapropriate relationship. I used to agree with that take. I used to think that it "compromises Dumbledore's impartiality" but I've been working at a school since about half of this year (2022) and It really changed my perspective on this.
First of all, simply showing affection to your students isn't necessarilly a bad thing and is important to build the trust At least where I work, teachers and even school employees on higher level disciplinary positions have very affectionate relationships with students (and, no, it's not in a sexual way, and in fact I'd say that having this kind of relationship is important so the students feel like opening to teachers about abuse at home). And, often that affection crosses generations, as older teachers see the children of their former students coming to their classes.
And, while Dumbledores does get closer to Harry than most students, it's not as if he's letting Harry do absolutely everything. Harry, Ron and Hermione get into Detention. They get in trouble. Sometimes with the Ministry. Besides, except for the sixth year, when Dumbledore gives harry very much needed private classes, they really don't meet that much more than other students. They usually meet at the end of the year, when Harry needs to learn something about the things that happened the years before or when something happens that requires intervention... Other times he's just there being headmaster...
Yes, you could probably say Dumbledore dedicates more time to Harry than to any other student. I don't think that's bad. I've discovered in my short time that teachers and educators in general do have students they spend more time with than other, and often they build better relationships with those students (even if, more often than not, these are the "problem" students)... Because the educators often find out problems the students have at home which might be negatively affecting them, and often they try to intervene and help as they can.
And, yes, that compromises impartiality. That's not the ultimate end all be all. And, no, it doesn't mean "bad" kids get better grades than they deserve, I assure you. Most of the time It just means kids who have need for extra care have a chance at getting it.
Seriously, what should Dumbledore do? When Harry tried to save people and was confronted with the ghost of the dude who killed his parents, should Dumbledore have scolded him? Should he have scolded the children for trying to save the life of Ron's sister? All the complaints Dumbledore would have against their behaviour was that the children put themselves at risk, and even he has to admit that the school teachers, while trying their best, ultimetly failed at ensuring the kids felt safe (and even that they WERE safe).
I mean if a malnourished, physically underdeveloped orphan that is as good a person as Harry mostly is turned up at my school, you bet your ass I would keep an affectionate eye on them. Just, you know, I would probably keep myself from turning them into a child soldier...
@@beethovenjunkie ok, but that's not what most people mean when they talk about Dumbledore's relationship with Harry.
Harry is going through it in these books, he definitely needed an IEP. I don’t think dumbledore deciding he needs to be a little bit more hands on with that particular student was an unreasonable conclusion at all 😂
@@beethovenjunkie one thing to remember about Dumbledore’s plan is that he is operating from the knowledge that he doesn’t get a say in whether Harry fights Voldermort or not. According to the prophecy, it happens whether he keeps Harry safe or not, so he might as well actually prepare him for that inevitability
I feel like Dumbledore didn't pay ENOUGH attention to Harry lol. He's an orphan, he's the chosen one, he's Muggle-raised. They should have had like optional tutoring/clubs for Muggle-raised kids, and counseling or support group for kids like Neville and Harry who are basically being abused. A Slug Club whose point is to help the STUDENTS.
The magical blood lines fascinate me. I know that the Ilvormorny story contradicts this theory I had but I liked the idea that Squibs were a result of inbreeding for the pure-blood families. Muggleborns are like how magic actually originated or perhaps squibs were what lead to muggles, fun question of which came first, the muggle or the wizard.
Also it should be noted that you are considered a pureblood if you can trace your magical ancestry back I believe three generations. So Harry's mother being muggleborn and father being pure blood makes him a half blood. Harry Marry's Ginny so his kids are still halfbloods. Assuming Albus married a pureblood then his kids would still be half blood because their grandmother is muggleborn. Finally if Albus's child married a pureblood the children would be considered purebloods. because three generations back is Albus's Grandchild > Albus's Child > Albus > Harry&Ginny you don't go back far enough to get to Lily so the kid's considered a pureblood, again assuming that there aren'y any half blood marriages in the interim in which case you have to start over. That said you can technically have it so that four generations back all of your ancestors were muggleborn and still be considered a pureblood if the right matches were made. I find the nobility rationalization to be kind of fun.
It's all dumb really especially since even the malfoys had relations with muggles before the law changes and then they said they were still pure
I remember sorta liking harry potter as a kid and then being like "holy shit what about the time when aunt petunia almost hit harry as a child with a heavy cast iron pan.. and dumbledore just let him go back there when they put him in a tiny box for years?" and then everything became completely ruined. its like hey were gonna take this severely abused child and he can do all the work bye.
Yea its been two months anyway as a response.
Your arguments are exceptionally poor. harry doesnt get hit with a frying pan in the movies. how would I know that if I didnt read the books? I read the books. this is completely irrelevant and not an argument. in fact the books are far worse than the movies and make my point much stronger. anyway. books or movies.. I didn't say "harry shouldn't live there." I'm merely pointing out that half the adults in the movie and books. moreso in the books. did fuck all about the severe and very criminal abuse because harry had to live there. Ok. so show up every week randomly. and if hes still being abused. Punish them with magic. they are breaking the law. they are criminals. Who cares if harry is safe from Voldemort if he gets severe brain damage or more likely dies when he gets hit with a cast iron pan for burning food he is being made to cook? If they are cool with attempted murder and him staying there is in all likelihood saving their lives. then they can deal with being magically forced to not attempt to murder harry. its not that hard. Its not morally wrong. otherwise harry can stay with Dumbledore himself. If Dumbledore can single highhandedly have harry with the dursleys and nobody in the magical government has any say then he can have harry with him. This is the future of the entire society at stake. Dumbledore can house harry at Hogwarts if hes willing to be breaking probably several rules and regulations and laws already and for some reason cant just make the dursleys behave better. Don't try to argue "oh he cant keep an eye on him at all times." then why have harry come to hogwarts at all? hire some private tutors. have him get his education in private at secret locations. do literally anything but have him at the school publicly where he indeed runs into trouble all the time. your subjecting him to child abuse. who cares if its a few more months a year right? hes safe isnt he? This is why I consider Dumbledore a manipulative sociopath. He literally makes sure to pick the objective worst option at every single turn that causes the most child abuse to happen. its either that. or its poorly written. pick one. all he has to do. is put literally any precautions in place to make sure harry isnt severely abused due to him objectively bypassing every sensible child protection law that would be in place. and all is forgiven. but he didnt do that. it would have been so easy. he already has missus figg there. its not that much harder to take just one step beyond that and then guarentee harry is alot safer. instead. every adult just completely ignores the child abuse. its not "harry doesnt live there" or "do literally almost nothing or literally nothing in alot of cases" theres an in between.
Iirc the narration even mentions that it was a heavy swing aimed at his head. That moment always stood out to me, considering this is a pretty lethal thing to do to an adult, much less a child. It made me wonder, was Petunia ready to catch a murder charge? At least manslaughter. But it's just brushed off as no big deal. Do the Dursleys routinely do things that would kill Harry if he didn't have horcrux durability? Nobody minded this too much?
The Dursleys stick out like a sore thumb. They are these Roald Dahl kind of characters, like they came from a different universe where everyone's personality is over-the-top cartoonish and exaggerated. Their personalities are depicted in a much less realistic fashion than any of the other characters. They are just mean for the sake of being mean. I actually think the Dursleys were directly inspired by Dahl's works (think of the Wormwoods, Matilda's parents and brother, who seem like a blueprint for the Dursleys.)
I just recently had a discussion on how pointless it was that Harry grew up the same type of family as Matilda, it does in no way serve the story.
@@AlchemicKitten I don't think it's pointless; it very much serves to help the reader identify with Harry, because a feeling of being mistreated for no reason and having the worst possible life is a common perception in readers of the target age range. It's a big part of why those kinds of stories are so successful and it emphasizes the contrast of Harry finding his "real" family (i.e. magical society) afterwards.
But I do agree, the Dursleys feel very out of place compared to the rest of the characters. They don't make much sense when put alongside everyone else.
That was his best place to hide at though...Dumbledore had no other choice.
I always dreaded Luna appearing. While I loved her insights and basically everything she did (that Quidditch commentary lives rent-free in my head), every other character around her suddenly decided to make it known how odd she is and mocking her. Like she was some sort of circus animal to be tossed at with peanuts. Worst of all? She never did anything against it or showed hurt, so that made it completely okay. Ron was a particularly bad offender and I really couldn't stand him in the later books as he climbed the army ranks of status quo defending characters.
At least she wasn't repackaged into something "acceptable" by Rowling's standards like poor Tonks. Though she did get the nuclear family ending shoehorned as well.
I always loved Luna, and I thought the more conventional kids mocking her for being weird were the ones with the problem. I used to think that's what Rowling thought too, but these days, who knows?
I love Luna and she didn’t deserve to be bullied of course, however she does say ridiculous things and is exactly like a conspiracy theorist who would make up these weird scenarios that doesn’t exist and it’s cool and fun and all, but she’s like a flat earther and in real life people would make fun of that. It’s not just normal being herself, she often just genuinely tries to spread conspiracies that does feel exist
@@benoitbrown9400 not really, she’s portrayed the same way in the wizarding world. She says stuff that’s obviously not true and I’m not talking about the beasts. She makes weird stuff up about the world and political figures as well that’s just weird. It’s why people find her ridiculous, that’s why I say she’s more of a flatearther it isn’t about the beasts stuff
@@benoitbrown9400 but in this world she IS considered a crazy conspiracy theorist and her theories are all wrong so?
@@benoitbrown9400 but Hermione is still proven right in these things, and we know what Luna says about a lot of the people isn’t true
Ginny actually has a personality in the books. But... she is just basically the perfect 'pick me' for Harry.
She's smart, but not as smart/ powerful (threatening) as Hermione. Her interests are pretty much the same as Harry's- most notabley quidditch, joke shops, hanging with Harry's friends and getting into trouble.
She dates just enough guys to prove she is popular and attractive- but she isn't overly emotional or too boy crazy (Cho, Lavander).
She's the perfect girl who is everything Harry could want. But she doesn't have a defining chaactoristic- nothing makes her come to life.
Luna is weird, Hermione is smart, Ron is (usually) funny, Harry is brave, Draco is a bully, Neville is sweet and a victim, the twins are pranksters- but Ginny is.....???
I see a lot of people call Ginny fiery a lot so it seems like she does have a defining characteristic
@@clover2739 We are TOLD she's fiery.
But she rarely gets to show it.
Heck, people say the movies water her down, but the scene where she jumps over a wall of fire to go fight alongside harry is the most badass thing we've seen her do as far as I can remember.
@@ruleofoz2207 I don’t think in the books we were ever told she’s fiery, people call her fiery because that’s literally just her personality. Yeah jumping through the literal fire is badass but that’s not what a fiery personality is, when they talk about movie Ginny they more mean her actual personality is bland in comparison
Ginny is umm... Well this is kinda hard..
Y'know what imma just call her the goddamn antichrist and be done with it
Maybe she was just bearable.
yeah the fatphobia was REALLY nasty to experience. I was a fat kid and was bullied horribly for it, in ways that gave me legit PTSD, and HP did NOT help. I think that + my family's fatphobia really caused me to grow up with some awful internalized ideas about myself and my body.
fatphobia? no, obesity is a major cause of early death, it's not good, if you are fat you should do whatever you can to lose weight. people are disgusted by it because it is absolutely unhealthy.
"fatphobia"
No such thing.
I started to notice the fatphobia almost as soon as I started reading the books. It's so awful and distasteful. I'm pretty sure almost all of the fat characters in HP were portrayed as evil, right? But that itself wouldn't be SO MUCH of a problem if the books didn't keep mentioning their fatness in distasteful ways.
@@PatPatych I've never been fat.
@@PatPatych Just because I'm not fat doesn't mean I shouldn't care about how much fat people suffer. And being fat isn't always a choice, it can also be related to slow metabolism, hormonal conditions causing weight gain etc.
Can it be that you only saw the movies? Your description of Ginny makes it seem like that is the case. Book!Ginny is an actual character, unlike the movie cardboard you described.
Thank you! I thought the exact same
She's still not that well done in the books. Rowling was lazy and didn't bother reintroducing her into the story until it was more than half done.
For real, in the movie their relationship comes out of nowhere because they don't build it up at all. They we're supposed to have started dating in book 6 and then he breaks up with Ginny (cause he's trying to protect her I think) at Dumbledores funeral, which was also not in the movies...
She’s not all that great in the books either. Her traits include jock, has/had a crush on Harry, dates boys, and becomes Harry’s wife. That’s it.
So combining your analysis of the house elves with Shaun's, she wanted to have a brownie that didn't want to do chores, and when people were disappointed she stopped the house elf slavery story, she just said the slavery was alright. It seems like she could have easily solved the problem by giving all the other house elves the same agency as brownies, and just have Dobby tricked or forced into servitude somehow.
yeah!
Esp with the clothes angle, I'd love an arc where they get liberated & reparations & they all get incredibly chic + fancy & into high concept fantastic fashion & the story could communicate this over an evolution of fabulous outfits, looks, & materials.
One way to fix them would be keeping the very tetchy natures of house elves and having them just. Like cleaning. Their culture has little use for money and they get antsy when they can't be busy, but rather than a race of natural slaves they just. Move into houses and quietly tidy up at night, making their own clothes out of second hand fabric and helping themselves to small amounts of food. But if the homeowners are unkind, rude, take advantage of their love of work or worse, insult them with gifts of food or clothes, they just. Leave. hit the bricks. Make like a tree and leave. However, one rather nasty curse is used to bind house elves to families as slaves, a curse that is only broken when they're given a gift. Dobby, being an unusually friendly and gregarious elf, was easily caught by the malfoys, desperately wanting to be free but bound by a curse. This would also mean that instead of being someone railing against slavery and being mocked for it, Hermione is rudely declaring she knows best for another culture, as she jumps to the conclusion that ALL house elves are slaves as they aren't paid, rather than people with a very different outlook on the world who would simply leave if someone offered compensation, like the historical brownies.
Instead we get literal actual slaves. Joy.
@@KiwiLombax15 I like this! This would have solved it so easily. This is now my new headcanon. Thank you!
@@KiwiLombax15 THIS! This is now my headcanon!
another thoroughly upsetting & problematic aspect is the queer-coding of werewolves. like, when Lupin is introduced, his lycanthropy making him an outcast is portrayed sympathetically as an allegory for AIDS (a parallel that Rowling confirmed was intended & baked into the character). which would be all fine & good. but then we get the only other named werewolf in the series, Fenrir Greyback, who is a violent predator that deliberately chooses child victims to infect & positions himself nearby to them every full moon to make sure he gets the job done. which, if lycanthropy is still a metaphor for AIDS... yeh, that's deeply fucked up
That's so true
We gonna ignore the number of people that knowingly go without protection while having STD's? Moreover, you have two characters in this aids allegory. One is good and caring, the other is bad and predatory. Sounds like a pretty good ratio to me.
@derek96720 it doesn't change the fact that JKR depicted a queer character, who is essentially a survivor of AIDS, as a literal monster.
@@derek96720 except the good character turns into a dangerous fucking monster unable to control himself to potentially infect others or outright murder them, which I hopefully don't need to explain why it's not accurate to how AIDS actually works since I hope we're well out of the age where people with AIDS were all seen as demonic dangers to society due to the rampant misinformation of the 80's.
So this plot point works both as an uncomfortable homophobic allegory as well as anti AIDS patients.
To be clear, I don't think this was what Rowling intended to get across, I believe she wanted something more like an allegory for bug chasers for the villain without also villainizing the LGBTQ community and AIDS patients, but good intentions mean shit if you can't translate them into writing, that's why you actually think this shit through and don't just willy nilly throw whatever social issue allegory in your story without considering the implications of what you write.
Sometimes Rowling is just spiteful, but just as often she just doesn't know what the fuck she's doing, and that unfortunately negatively reflects on her writing.
Even without the bug chaser allegory I'd say it's still problematic, like you can't have your AIDS allegory literally turn people into fucking monsters unable to control themselves like that's not harmful to the demographic you're allegorying for, that's bad AIDS stereotyping not reality, so werewolves in Harry Potter utterly fail at being a respectful allegory.
Not to say Rowling had malicious intents but this is what happens when you just apply allegories to a bunch of old folk tale creatures without thinking through the implications of what you're writing, and Rowling is notoriously shit at thinking things through.
"Hogwarts is so dangarous, every year children get hurt or die, how is that school still running?", someone who went to school in U.S.A.
"Pirate the movies...in Minecraft" might be the sentence I needed to finally cope with this.
After thinking about what Tonks and Lupin represent and their development, yikes, you can have two characters be in a relationship and relate to each other without changing who they are to fit the norm for a married couple, I think we're more than ready by this point to see unconventional couples represented in media
Lupin was queer coded, so I’ve heard by many fans. Being a werewolf was a metaphor for HIV and being gay in media for a long time. I think even the actor that played him had some experience playing queer roles before.
I’m done with queer bread crumbing also. I only get excited about representation that is explicit and nuanced nowadays.
@@butterflypooo just because there has been some examples of people viewing werewolf's are representation as homosexuality and aids doesn't mean that's the case for lupin
@@soso-mx8nb multiple ppl think so though, and I think JK herself said this at some point.
Also wasn’t Tonks like 10 years younger than him or something
@@soso-mx8nb The director of the Prisoner of Azkaban movie actually saw Sirius/Remus as being gay. Many others who read the books also saw Remus as being queer-coded.
Tbh the "trial" scene in Book 5 just killed me. If the prime minister serves as chief judge and prosecution in a case about a teenager using magic, it is no wonder fascists took over without any noticing
voldemorts fascist?
@@NikoCigoj Yes.
@@NikoCigoj Yeah? Like, slytherin as a whole is strongly akin to fascism. "Salazar Slytherin" was actually based on Antonio Salazar, Portugal's fascist chief of state.
@@The_Vanni thats interesting, but i didnt know that slytherin is now a fascist state too. kinda ruins the escapism of the books.
Wasn't that part of the point though? There could be some actual political insight there, whether it's deliberate or just accidental from bad writing.
People have talked the timeturner-thing to death, I'm sure, but I find their retcon especially grating since it wasn't actually needed. In the story, they are established to work only on stuff that the user had not observed to actually have happened, since the timeturners themselves "only" created a stable time loop, and not a separate new timeline.
Example: at the end of the third book, Harry sees his "father" save him and his friends from the Dementors when they're escorting Peter Pettigrew back to the castle. Later on, after using the time turner and arriving back at that point in time, he realizes that it wasn't his father who saved him at all but a future version of himself. So he does what that future version did, and saves his past self and his friends. At no point is there any deviation from the previously established timeline, everything that happened before happens in the same way, except that the second time around Harry, that is to say we, the readers, get to see the full picture.
Now, that does hilariously bring up some very meaty philosophical questions about the nature of reality in the Harry Potter universe, ones that I don't believe Rowling was interested in or equipped to explore, since the timeturners and their functioning seem to imply a more concrete argument for determinism than we could really find in the real world. Since if you can't change the future, even when you know it, having lived through it once already, then what does that say about free will? If you can't change your fate even with actual time travel, then what hope of control over your life, actual, meaningful control, could you possibly hope to have?
I started falling out of love with the Harry Potter brand by the time the fourth movie rolled around, which coincided with my least favourite novel in the series, Half-Blood Prince. It occurred to me back then that the series as a whole had become too aware of its own massive popularity and felt like it was written by an author thoroughly buying her own hype and writing it foremost for the kinds of fans spending hours in forums, editing HP Wiki articles and shipping characters. It seemed to me she revelled in goading those readers along by almost smugly dropping hints and details whenever she spoke in public about her work. Looking at Pottermore and the myriad of retconning and adding of superfluous detail to the Wizarding World she engaged in way past the core series' relevancy, I recognize this as part of her MO as an author now.
It was then that I started questioning the hype and even without the series' present baggage I came to the conclusion that the author's literary style is pretty pedestrian and artless, and that her strengths lie in reconfiguring all manner of fantasy tropes rather than contributing in meaningful ways to the genre outside of generating massive profit through media.
I don't regret my time spent with the series back when I enjoyed it, but I don't think it deserves to still stand as an artistic equal next to classic juggernauts like LotR or even Star Wars, brands which engage in the same kind of trope reconfiguration and merchandise production, but which did it earlier and better creatively with their original releases.
Grew up in a very conservative christian household. My mom found my friends copy of harry potter in my room before I could finish it and only hid it in the garage because I begged her not to burn it since it wasn't mine. She met with my friends parents that same day and returned the book (politely, very religious and highly convicted but not rude to other people). My dad (parents divorced) heard about it and then we listened to the book on tape every morning on my way to school when I stayed at his place. Good times.
Your mom would most likely adore JK Rowling now after her anti-trans tantrums.
No diss to your mother or any Conservative Christian, I am also Christian but:
Harry Potter has as much chance of teaching you about witchcraft as Back to the Future has of teaching you how to time travel.
My favorite part of that story (aside from your awesome dad) is that THOSE are the type of people Rowling panders to these days 🤣
Based mom
When I was first reading HP and started seeing how the house elves were happy being enslaved, I assumed Hermione would be vindicated eventually. Of course "solving slavery" wouldn't be simple, and the house elves were instilled with this ideology for centuries. She was always the one in the right! She was the smart one! Besides being smart and supporting Harry's adventures, I thought this was going to be the big thing she accomplished, showing that one ordinary person really can make a difference with compassion and determination.
And yet...
Why would you expect that a teenage girl, in the middle of a war, would also succeed in overtrowing the century old oppression that house elves face and that they also have entirely internalised ? A fight like that takes much more time than destroying horcruxes, just like prejudices against muggleborns will not dissapear with Voldemort. It's heavily implied that Hermione continues the fight into adulthood, when she has more political savy and clout. The books series just doesnt continue on.
@deldarma4509 Because without it then the war was for nothing really, nothing changed, the world is still broken and all the bad things that existed with voldemort still exist, the racism and slavery in the magic world existed before voldemort was born, those were the things that enabled him to raise to power really. As how the story ends, it's only a matter of time before ir happens again with someone else
@@raulponce9012 So all the books that depict racism and inequalities should have all of them be magically completely destroyed by the end ? If the heroes dont destroy the inherent prejudices in the heart of everyone and every institution in the world then its a bad book that supports préjudice ? Can you give me an example of one book, movie, ANYTHING where that happens ?
@@deldarma4509 ..because its a children's fantasy series where harry personally defeats wizard hitler? Like, grow up. Unrealistic shit happens all the time in hp. personally destroying the dictator of an uprising isnt exactly something youd expect of a child either, and yet, these kids go out and do the impossible all the time. like seriously, your argument is painfully nonesense.
@deldarma4509 Well, for firsts I say, no, it doesn't have to be that way, but there at least has to be some hope of change or something thst might indicate to us that, yes, things aren't okay still, but now we can start doing better; with that said maybe im biased, having read this booms when I was already an adult, but I feel like the protagonist and "heroes" of the story didn't quite understand at all what are those things that weren't right in the world, and just simplified it to Voldemort being the source of all evil. This isn't necessarily bad, because they are young people (well, most of them), but I felt like the writing already had set my expectations that things needed change outside of just defeating voldemort and that the characters experienced how it wasnt just voldemort that was the problem, but the whole society they were supposed to feel safe in and even the people who werent necesarilly directly associated to Voldemort but had beneficiated from him, so when that didn't happen I felt very disappointed and felt like at the end maybe one villain was defeated, but none of the characters understood that this wasn't the end, or that, the root of that villains evil wasn't destroyed. Another problem, is for me personally, a lot of those characters that were supposed to be the heroes of the story kind of felt like they were part of the problem and quite disliked then to the point of me looking at them more like antagonist and less than heroes. With that said I enjoyed reading the books, I just think that most of them set a lot of expectations that aren't met in a satisfying way at the end
I completely agree with your points, but I have something to inver: I loved the books as a child, and I think a huge part of that, and therefore I think a huge part of the series sucess was that it felt so real. As a kid when you slowly enter the world of adults you start to more and more realize how the world is a very flawed place and most people are doing nothing or very little to change it. Seeing Harry enter into the wizarding world and then seeing all these big issues that don't get adressed felt just very real for me. I also saw my school as a very dangerous place where I didn't feel safe, my parents were also sometimes a little bit racist, althoug they were loving and good hearted people, we are all living in a world where the global economy is running on the backs of slaves, and nobody really fixes it. I don't think that Rowling did this on purpose, but I think her way of more ore less just blatently mirroring our own, flawed world in the wizarding world just felt very real and made me feel validated.
At the same time I realized when I recently watched one of the movies how bad the caracter of Dumledore really was as a kind of Mentor figure for both Harry and also Voldemort. He visited the jung Tom at the childrens home and recognized his big powers, but did nothing to help him overcome his apparent childhood trauma. Why even let a wizzard child life in a normal orphanage? Could there not be a special programme for orphant children within the wizzarding community? And then he repeats so many of those mistakes with Harry. They know how awful his family are treating him, still he remains in their custody for a very long time. And Dumbledore just vanishes out of Harrys life without any explanation and keeps him in the dark for so many things. And he has no insight in his wrongdoing with Tom ore with Harry...
40:25 This thing about the toilets is a fascinating little window into JKR's messed up psychie. Nevermind that absolutely nobody needed to read about this detail in the first place. She had the words "waste disposal", "toilets", "vanishing spell" set on the desc, and SOMEHOW, instead of the "toilets enchanted so that they vanish the waste" which is what any sane person would think of, they combined into this hillarious abomination.
The especially disappointing aspect of Rowling's awful politics infecting her work is how perfect this particular universe could've been as a lens through which to dismantle anti-trans bigotry. A man is able to pass as a freaking rat for more than a decade in this franchise, yet a trans person altering their body to match their gender identity is too far? I guess Rowling only believes in shapeshifting when it's being done illegally in a bathroom by a bunch of twelve-year-olds intent on impersonating their schoolmates.
It’s a work of fiction. She wrote a fantasy book about witches and wizards. grow up
What's awful is kids letting politics, and social media tell them what to think, and who to like.
@@choppedandbobbed9729 Good thing that's not happening.
@@dovescry123 Ah yes, no work of fiction has EVER had a basis in reality or a deeper message. lmao
@@Venjamin Rowlings work is best anti racism metaphor on paper, and it's been proven that the government is using social media to influence the masses. Musk exposed it when he bought twitter.
Something that bugs me on a character writing level is that not only did Harry go from a closet-bound impoverished nobody to being lumped with the "Chosen One" status and celebrity within the Wizarding World, he immediately became incredibly wealthy through inheritance, status and gifts.
Ron grew up in a very modest and poor household but within the Wizarding World, and Hermione grew up in a more or less "Middle-Class" environment but only found out about the Wizarding World with her acceptance letter at ten or so years old.
I feel there was a lot of missed opportunity to actually delve into the characters with those aspects of them in mind, and especially the opportunity for Harry to bond with them over things they share, there could have been real class solidarity between Harry and Ron over their low-wealth upbringing, a struggle they could've shared.
I would've loved to hear Harry and Hermione be equally confused about the way stuff in the Wizarding World works more, or to really drive home the fact that Hermione isn't just interested in learning because she's a nerd, but because she's playing catch up and overcompensating for how new it all is to her, and for Harry and Hermione to maybe bond over some cultural touchstones from their non-magical upbringing.
And between all three of them, I would've loved to see more instances of how the sorts of things that seem so obvious they aren't taught in books and such be blind spots for Hermione and Harry that Ron has to fill in, or Ron and Harry need help with the components of non-magical life, like if instead of knowing the spell to make fire Hermione is in a situation without her wand and draws on girl scout knowledge or something that she would've done as an extracurricular activity in the mundane world.
But Harry's writing and characterisation feel like excuses for him to not have those opportunities.
By having him literally locked in a closet most of the time and not allowed to watch TV or that sort of thing, he doesn't get to engage in nonmagical culture or pop culture in a way that Hermione could.
Having him immediately become super rich and super famous as soon as he enters the Wizarding World eliminates the poverty through-line he could have had with Ron, when Ron can't scrape enough cash together for a fresh uniform or to get a new wand we see Harry getting gifted fancy brooms and legendarily powerful magical artefacts or outright buying an entire snack cart on a train.
And that's what fan-fiction is for: fleshing out details or outright fixing flaws in an established set of characters. I view it in a similar way to how I view something like mods for a Bethesda game haha.
@@OsirisLord 1000% hit the nail on the head.
Damn, Hermione was middle-class to you? I thought her parents were doctors or dentists (high paying jobs) and as an Englishman myself, she speaks pretty bloody posh. I see what you're saying, and I agree it would have been awesome. I just don't think JKR's generation were taught to interrogate class issues like that.
Insofar as economic situation and how this differs between children, I remember being actively told not to pursue thinking about that by both my parents and my teachers as a kid and I'm only 26.
JKR being from my mum's generation would not have thought that this theme belongs in "children's entertainment", and I am sure the author viewed this as children's entertainment for quite some time. A focus on the disparity between children leaves a gap that requires explanation - "Ok, we have class-income disparity. But why?" JKR would not have wanted to answer the "why" so she simply never staged it. Perhaps she lacked the skill to answer the "why", perhaps she didn't want to commit to any ideological explanation, since that'd turn off anyone who isn't a tory lmao.
Children in the UK were historically schooled with children only of their social class. This of course has been done away with formally, but it still remains for the wealthy. For the story to actively ignore and not address the differing touchstones of social class, from an English upper-class perspective it's almost *raising the Weasleys up to Hermione's level, or at the least, acknowledging they are equals in some way* and I think to JKR this might have been the aim.
I do agree that the books would be better with the elements you've mentioned!! Just, from the perspective of a woman approaching 60 writing kid's entertainment in an occasionally class-obsessed society, it comes off differently.
SO basically changin the three of them...
It happens enough in the books, I think. Keep in mind that Harry Potter is meant for pre-teens to teens. Yes, you can challenge kids with these things, but there are far more important narratives to advance in the books. It is in the end not about the wizard society, it is about destiny and what that means to you. (At least how I interpret it)
thank you so, so much for bringing up jk rowling writing 'evil' women as masculine cause ngl as a girl with 'ethnic' features, reading hp from the age of seven onwards gave me sooo many insecurities and I don't doubt many feel the same.
??????? I swear you people keep making things up to be offended by
@@barboralitvanova5111 what do you mean by "you people"?
@@numnut154 people that are so determined to find something wrong with people they disagree politically they have to make up nonsense to validate their positions.
@@barboralitvanova5111 If it's this easy to keep pulling out examples of problematic things in her writing, then maybe her writing is just problematic. If she additionally keeps close friendship with horrible people, then maybe she's just a horrible person.
I'm reminded of the time she tweeted for clout that she loves the idea of Black Hermione (despite having clearly written about Hermione's *white face* ); mix that with the idea that Hermione was just being a haughty nag about *ending slavery* and...oof. Just oof.
@@JJ-qo7th lol there isnt anything problematic about her writing. You are misrepresenting the text to purposely fit your propaganda. Maybe get a brain and start thinking for yourself.
that bit about tonks hit an chord with me. i was a young queer kid but i never really was super into it so i dont really have any complicated feelings on it, just sheer disgust and loathing for the author
And remember, it's never too late to pick up Terry Pratchett. If you want an established whimsical magic world that's straight overtly pro lgbtqia+, Rimworld doesn't disappoint
Yes! The Discworld series is my absolute favorite! “The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.” R.I.P. Sir Terry!
Also Terry Pratchett was shading JK before it was cool.
I think that’s partly why I managed to avoid the HP universe. I had already discovered better authors by the time HP was beginning to come out(granted I was just about the prime age for the audience too). I’m just now getting into Pratchett as an adult but there has always been better fantasy to read if that’s what one is looking for. The HP series was an entertaining book series for children but I don’t think it holds up to more mature literature at all.
@@MrDirtydaves Yes I managed to avoid reading Harry Potter because I was into the Geronimo Stilton Thea sisters series and reading Harry Potter as a teenager I'm not impressed with what it does at all, when I could see better writing from other people
I m a huge fan of both Terry Pratchett (author and person) and JK's work. Pratchett's world is very, very, very precise, and extremely deliberate. JK s never was neither. But i did fall for some of her characters. She s good at them.
90% of your slavery discussion is right, but I have to disagree with your last point. Sirius is explicitly criticized for mistreating Kreacher, it’s framed as though his abuse is what caused Kreacher to betray Sirius. Doesn’t change the larger point that Harry treats him better but still keeps him as a slave.
That’s true
harry kept him as a slave because he was in the hq of the order of phoenix and it secrets if free would have gone to the two evil black sisters told
@@brucenadeau2172 I'm not sure you can justify being a slavemaster, but either way, he could have freed Kreacher after the war was over.
@@Jurgan6 And you know he did not do that how?
@@helios9025 it doesn’t really say, does it? Rowling had an epilogue, she could have said what happened to elf slaves but didn’t. You can give her the benefit of the doubt if you like.
I want to give some benefit of the doubt to harry ending up as a magic cop bc that job probably involved a lot of hunting down deatheaters who went into hiding (like christopher lee did!) but i can't deny that even as a kid i found that part of the epilogue unsatisfying and i never really understood why he didn't go back to teach at hogwarts. Leading the da was a clear demonstration that he was actually really good at teaching defense against the dark arts, and what better place for the guy to settle down than the one place in his life he could truly call home? And there would finally be a professor taking up that position permanently, breaking its rumoured curse. It seems like such a fitting conclusion to his arc i have no idea why joanne didn't go for it
I believe she had ideas simmering about future detective novels set in the same world with harry as the main character, ideas that ended up as cormorant strike bc she didn't want to be known as a one trick pony and thought of a really cool new protagonist name
After reading the comment section and specifically the part where "the time travel thing makes sense because obviously, you cannot change the past with time travel except in the way, that it was already changed ", aka: The time travel has already happened, you are in a stable loop.
Yes, this is internally consistent.
It also means, that in the Potter Universe not only is there no free will, the characters are unable to ponder the question of free will, else they would realize, they have no free will (and I think this would be a big thing, that fundamentally shakes the psychology of everybody in this universe).
Philosophical horror.
all events will/already have occurred because of the influence of your will
you can make it work, but rowling certainly didn’t want to
Great video as always! I'd also add that Voldemort is not a very compelling villain. He's incapable of feeling love or empathy which allows him to do such evil acts, and it's like... ok?? Why should we be interested then? The story, like all stories, is about the lead choosing to be a hero, and it just doesn't have the same impact when the villain didn't choose to be a villain.
She even draws so many parallels between Harry and Tom Riddle as though they represent two different paths taken, like she's writing the next Anakin/Luke parallel, only the dark side/light side choice doesn't really work if you tell us there wasn't actually a choice.
The biggest parallel between the two of them, imo, is that Harry is equally non-compelling. His centrism is so bland and he has such a weak moral compass
It seems like the fact that these were children's books is lost upon many people today apparently. Though towards the latter half of the series the audience aged into tween to young adult demographic, the characters are still written with a similar simplicity,
The creativity of the character development seems to fall pretty well in line with would be appropriate and expected for a story meant for 7-14 yr old readers.
But I suppose the fact that there are many people pushing 40 yrs old at this point, who are still part of the 'HP fandom' ... That shouldn't come as a complete surprise
I agree, he wasn't complex, but I don't think he was as simple as having no empathy. That alone would not be a motivation to do anything, why would you. He also has a giant inferiority complex. What I dislike way more is that he was portrayed as basically evil from the get go. Like as a child in an orphanage. How was he treated in that orphanage for that to happen? Sure, there's a debate if psychopaths are born or made, but as I said, no empathy alone is not a driving factor. And he isn't portrayed as "just" curious. Even at that age. Although, if we grant her leeway, I suppose we could say Dumbledore is an unreliable narrator.
@@Romana6794 the target audience being young is not a good excuse for simplistic characters. Children who are old enough to read chapter books are surprisingly capable at handling more challenging themes and nuanced characters. I'm reminded of how often Kamen Rider, an enduring Japanese franchise and touchstone cultural icon that targets a 6-12yo demographic, takes on ambitiously complex stories with nuanced characters, albeit wrapped up in a toyetic candy coating.
Dude, Voldemort is literally the fantasy reincarnation of Hitler. It is voldemort mind that disturbs, cause unfortunately we can find it in many human beings (and politicals) even in real life.
Nothing too original, but for children can be very effective!
Oh man, the part about Tonks.... I felt that. She was honestly one of the coolest characters, and then JK just... removed everything that made her Tonks? What?
I remember that being such a disappointment of a character development. A betrayal, even.
I had the same experience!!! She was SO cool and was the reason I begged my mom to get a purple streak at 13, and then lo and behold she becomes a wife, a mother, and then dies all in like half a book. That cannot be forgiven
@@GuardianSpirits13 I dont think it's necessarily a problem that Tonks becomes a wife and a mother and dies in the span of half a book when a war breaks out that kills lots of members on both sides. I think Joanne just wanted Teddy's life to parallel Harry's in that both parents died to protect the future of their child. The real problem with Tonks is that she loses her personality in order to become those things. She could have been a purple haired, cool, shapeshifting mom, even a trans/nb icon who doubles down as a brave parent who would do anything to protect her/their family - spouse and child.
If anything, Tonks should have been the one to make Remus reconcile with his wild side, even embrace it. The down side to marrying is that it would change her last name assuming she takes on the Lupin name, but she could hyphenate it and continue as Tonks, or, hell, even change her first name to Tonks.
@@SocialistStrike That is true and it would have been cool to see more gender exploration with her character, but I think the thing that feels icky to me is that both her and Remus are gay-coded, what with the AIDS/werewolf analogy. But we know JK is a coward and a bigot so she could never do that to her precious ocs
@@GuardianSpirits13 Good old "bury your gays" trope. Sorry, but that was already tired and stale when they did it on Buffy.
@@thing_under_the_stairs well presumably in the Harry Potter AU where JK isn't a terrible person infusing her fiction with that particular brand of politics and Tonks and Remus are *allowed* to be openly queer, then the outcome may have been different. Either way, I personally think that writing queer coded characters just to then have them "grow out of it" and settle into a "traditional" hetero family dynamic is just as bad if not worse than having openly queer characters who happen to die. But idk maybe that's just me
What you said about the Goblins isn't true. They don't look the same in the books as they do in the movies and Griphook doesn't betray Harry to Voldemort. He simply leaves when the plan to break into Gringotts goes sideways and it had nothing to do with money. He wanted the Sword because of Pride over it being made by Goblins not because it was worth anything. He even refuses to accept actual money instead of the sword
It's also not true that Luna and Hermione are the only "interesting" female characters, that positive depictions of femininity are only tied to motherhood, or that Ginny is a flat character (in the books).
And I think that, for children-turned-YA book, the point about Griphook having a different cultural understanding of property was pretty clever.
I guess HP is now too tied to many different cultural perceptions and background to be discussed fully objectively.
Asides from stuff like the stupid naming of Cho Chang or Castelobruxo. God what a disaster!
@@andreab380 Ginny is not a flat character in the books.
@@moonknightish Perhaps you misunderstood me. I meant that it's not true that Ginny is a flat character, so we agree...
@@andreab380 Ah, ok yes, I must have misread it, apologies
Funny that Goblet of Fire's your favourite. That one always bugged me because it was like the antithesis of a good mystery novel. Once everything was revealed, instead of going back and thinking "Ooohhhh!! It all makes sense now.", you look back and go "Now that I know the whole picture... This all makes even _less_ sense. Every character is just making inexplicably insane decisions for the sake of advancing a plot they aren't even aware of. If anyone had stopped and acted like a normal person with an intact brain, the whole convoluted scheme would have immediately fallen apart."
Edit: Also, feel free to get me nicer clothes and challenge my atheism. If someone understands what I should wear to look better, go for it. As for the atheism, I dated a Catholic for 5 years, so I know how to take challenges to be beliefs - or lack thereof - without being (too) pedantic and douchey in response.
Edit 2: It's kind of hilarious that someone who needs to hold a tiny stick to do anything, and immediately becomes powerless when it (very frequently and easily) gets knocked out of their hand is somehow considered superior to just being able to blast forth magic from themselves - you know, like an _actual_ sorcerer and not just some dweeb dependent on a prop.
Edit 3: Writing off the existence of Slytherin as just the equivalent of preppy rich kids in high school is kind of a massive over-simplification and is completely side-stepping why its existence is so bizarre. It's more like if 25% of your high school peers were just openly Hitler Youth members, the school for some reason endorses them, and everyone else just kind of brushes it off like "Ehh, it is what it is I guess." It's clear that any bloodthirsty psychopath would immediately end up in Slytherin regardless of their social status. Hell, Voldy himself was a penniless, poorly-socialized urchin living in an orphanage when Dumbledore found him. Also in reality, the majority of prison inmates were never preppy rich kids. The books try to pass it off as "Noo, they're not evil. They're just... Ambitious." despite every single instance of them indicating that their defining characteristic is actually "malicious". So, yes, having a house where literally every future murderer is placed in and everyone knows it and just accepts it is pretty weird.
Also, it's pretty clear there's a sort of dominant/recessive hierarchy to which characteristics get you where: brave overrides smart and evil overrides everything.
Smart: Ravenclaw
Smart _and_ brave: Gryffindor
Smart, brave, but also a sociopath: Slytherin
My main annoyance is pretty similar to the Shallow criticism #1, the OSHA thing.
But for me, it's not about danger, it's about "Whimsy for whimsy's sake"
Since the wizarding world here exists alongside the normie world, the impracticality of whimsical things becomes more glaring. Why the moving staircase? Why the living chocolate frogs? Why do you have to run into a wall to get to the train?
Sure, those things are creative and cool for the young boys and girls... But as someone who played a lot of Harry Potter video games, that shifting staircase is a pain in every iteration. Imagine actually using it, even ignoring all the danger. And again, the problem here isn't whimsy, it's that better alternatives exist. I would accept, like, I dunno... A magical elevator? Or, oh, eight elevators, each being moved by one tentacle of a giant sentient squid. That system makes more sense, is easier for the student, and feeding a giant squid sounds easier than providing a power and all the logistics of eight elevators.
In things like LOTR, or something like that, whimsy is more defendable. Because there are no alternatives. Why do elves have this weird magical thing? Well, that's simply how things are, there are no alternatives. Oh, Dwarves have a technological alternative? As if distinguished elves would use the loud and steamy technology of those pesky dwarves.
There, no problem.
The "whimsy for whimsy's sake" is a holdover from the time when the first three Harry Potter books were meant exclusively for kids aged 8-12.
To add to your examples, Hogsmeade is an incredibly crucial location in Book 3 and a big source of angst for Harry feeling alone even while at Hogwarts but after that book it loses all its relevance. A full blown almost ancient wizarding village next to one of the most prestigious schools of magic turns into just a bunch of cute cottages and delightful tea shops for dates, while all the action gets centered on London and Diagon Alley.
I always felt like the marketing of the series insisted on calling it "darker" later on while all these elements chugged along in the background, away from our eyes if it got too corny. In later books the characters spend less and less time in Hogwarts and more time in the Burrow/Grimmauld Place or traveling. These places are noticeably less quirky and the only other abode we see which tries to be quirky, the Lovegood's place, gets blown up almost immediately.
They tried to push away the ages it was meant to be marketed at in the beginning hoping to catch up with an older audience and their matured needs, but the first four books had pretty morbid imagery at most times. A two faced man and a three headed dog trying to kill our protagonist, a young girl murdered in a bathroom, getting stalked by death portents and dealing with the betrayal of a family friend and finally a murder in front of our eyes and something which resembles a satanic sacrifice/sexual assault scene in a graveyard. And that's just the first four books.
The whimsy lost its hold by deliberate choice in the fourth book and to ram it home Rowling tried very hard to keep the focus on Harry's trauma in Book 5. I don't think Rowling meant to change tack from the beginning because that kind of careless whimsy is a feature of a lot of books written by adults for kids, at least in Britain looks like.
regarding the magical staircase, i think it could still work with some minor tweaks.
It's a really cool concept and could make sense to save space, but maybe to change it so that the person ON the stairs decides which direction they go rather than it moving at random
"Whimsy for whimsy's sake" is one of the first thoughts that came to my mind once the world of wizards is revealed. I'm 30 years old but I didn't grow up with this franchise, I've never read the books and had never watched the movies until a few days ago. I understand those first few books were clearly aimed at children and I could see why it was the cultural phenomenon it became, the atmosphere was great and at times I felt like a kid again, but the whimsical elements were so overused that it got old real quick, so it could have been handled better.
I also watched the LOTR movies for the first time this year (still haven't read the novel) and the experience was drastically better because of what you said: there's no equivalent. I can still appreciate the value in Harry Potter, and I think many people let Rowling's personal beliefs get in the way of critiquing the actual story. I understand that art is an expression of the artist's worldview so it is sometimes hard to separate the art from the artist, however I was hoping for a more technical critique but I guess I'll have to look somewhere else. I'm still at one third into the video though, so maybe the technical stuff is there as well. Sorry if this comment is full of grammar errors, English is not my first language.
I personally feel like the read on Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry being creepy hinges way more on the retcon that Dumbledore was keeping Harry safe all this time but totally knew he’d have to die to maybe defeat Voldemort then like him being gay thing, like he’s constantly putting this kid in danger and is like…congrats Harry you lived
Yes! I was coming to the comments to say this too. The phrase “groomed to die” is often used to describe what Dumbledore did to Harry.
@@VirtuallyViktoriyan Yeah it's real hog to the slaughter behaviour which makes every interaction in retrospect feel unnaturally cold-blooded 🥶
same. I always felt like he was basically raising him as a pig for slaughter but acted as if he actually cared about him and thats what i dislike about him
@@spntageous5249 Retrospectively from a writing perspective it also undercuts a lotta tension to have that be a secret Harry doesn't know until that exact moment. Like can you imagine if got that information in 5th or 6th year and like has to really work through his own feelings to get to that moment of heroism...but nah...it was planned all along
Yeah and given how JKR made Dumbledore gay after the book/movie were made meaning it is just window dressing.
I dont like that many of the points covered can beboiled down to "The world and characters in it didnt start or end up in in places that sufficiently reflect my personal political praxis."
These kinds of critiques are boring, lazy, and creative dead ends. I was hoping this video would have substance to it, but it's another video essay echoing opinions your audience already holds, rather than a fresh perspective. I guess thats not entirely your fault, but that's kind of what happens when youre reviewing the Harry Potter series in 2022/23 or whenever this came out. If I was one of your Patreons, Id be annoyed that this is something I helped fund.
This is a year-old video already but just wanted to say:
I'm not saying that fanfiction writers are as good as book authors but...... if I had a penny for every fanfiction that has taken the story and added beautiful worldbuilding and politics (that make sense and are interesting!!), took away plots/details that made no sense on the books and even developed the characters in such a way that I felt I understood their motivations and relations with others better I'd have... A LOT of pennies.
Found the American 😂
You know? Back in the early day, when this book was being debated at the Supreme Court level, its defenders were largely the very marginalized goups the books eventually disparaged. The irony is not lost on me.
Well. I'd still defend it not as a good book but rather from an anti censorship except you know , literal Nazi propaganda , viewpoint.
Why was it being debated at the Supreme Court?
@@ethancox9737 Christians at the time believed that the book would cause children to turn to Satanism.
So, they were checking out the book from the library and then paying for the "lost" book. Eventually, a librarian actually did this with every copy in her county. It made it to the Supreme Court to determine whether stealing and then paying for the book was unlawful censorship by a government employee.
The court ruled that it was.
Thank you for mentioning Ginny! I swear that was the most horrible character writing I have ever had the privilege of reading and I thought this back in the day as a teenager. To be fair, Rowling tries to give Ginny development in the last two novels, but even then she comes off as unlikeable. It really struck me as a case of youngest child and only girl syndrome. If you have the books already and can go back and re-read, look at how she treats her brothers, Fleur, and even Gabrielle for even daring to have a crush on her dear Harry. All the fans even way back loved to come at me with the only reason people dislike Ginny is b/c of the movies. Nah, it was there in the text too. This is one of the characters that you're supposed to like and as a reader with her being the love of the protagonist's life you want to get invested in her as a character. Sadly, that didn't happen. I ended up being annoyed, like why is she even here?
Thank you! I never liked Ginny! Whenever people said, "Oh, their relationship is so much better in the books; they ruined it in the movies," all I could think was, "how so? How can you ruin what is already bad?"
@@GothMusicLatinAmerica Agreed, I think it would have irritated me less had Rowling taken the time to flesh out the whole they were both possessed by Voldemort thing. It is a plot point she could have built their relationship on, but because Ginny doesn't appear again in any significant way until HBP, it turns into a high school level mean, shallow, popular, jock girl gets with the trust fund kid. Don't get me started on their exchange as Harry goes off to fight Voldemort. "I never gave up on you, not really." Ugh way to show that she never outgrew the hero worship phase.
there are A LOT of people who like Ginny in the books tho
@@nagini77 I realize that. From what I've gathered in talking to fans of her character in the past, I think on the surface they see sporty, popular, girl who has a crush on the guy who will never notice them and identify with that. Also, I think the Harry/Ginny relationship as a whole for them was wish fulfillment. Harry, Ron and Hermione getting to be apart of the same family is a talking point I've heard a lot too. Rowling's execution of the writing was just poor. For a long time people would just get plain mad if you said J.K. Rowling wrote anything less than perfect. I think the upside of her being a bigot is that people are taking a second look and seeing the writing for what it is.
@@nagini77 and some people like getting spit on and eat pasta with ketchup.
7:50 See, this is one area that I can see American audiences being okay with, but does ring really odd in the UK? Because we *don't* tend to fall into neat social divides like that in high school. It's always weird to see that in US media: the idea that nerds or preps or jocks are these focused cliques and you'll fall neatly into one. It tends to be more a matter of friend circles. Two popular kids might hate each others guts, and wouldn't be seen dead together. The sports kid may laugh at one swot, but have a soft spot for another because he's from a rich family and took everyone on a theme park trip.
The house system is a relic from actual UK public schools, which pretty much... do still have that, it's just nowhere near as important or treated as seriously as it is in Harry Potter. I do feel it has potential: there's a reason it's such a major focus of merchandising, but it's... eh, it's not a FATAL flaw, but it's not what it could be
my first high school had houses and it was such a weird shock to move schools to one that didnt. like we're all just completely randomly assigned??? all our ties are the same colour????? i hadn't even questioned the house system and just assumed it was how every school was since the only media i had really consumed at the time was harry potter LOL
Those last few sentences really hit hard. I think that the cultural shift from speaking about things, events, or people as good or bad to speaking about them as complex is a good one. Some of us are becoming mature enough to allow two things to be true at the same time, such as having good memories about 80s movies and now seeing the levels of bullying or sexual assault in them that has made them age poorly. I think there is a big chunk of the population that isn't ready for two things to be true at the same time, so criticizing those things means to them that they are being criticized for who they were or who they still are. It's part of the reason the current events in Gaza/Israel are so difficult to talk about; black and white doesn't work here, and many of those who came of age during the Cold War aren't equipped with the vocabulary to understand the situation with any depth.
hubris of youth.
i assure you that critical thinking, nuance, and complex moral positions are not features of the current youth, while being absent from older folk.
you do hit on something. mccarthyism has had a major impact on thinking in the u.s.
It's curious that nobody ever mentions how Filch is treated in some one the books (though it's left out in the movies) - he's mocked quite ruthlessly for being a squib and it's implied to be the reason for his bitterness towards the kids, even though he didn't choose that.
It's all part of the wizarding world's obsession with magical blood purity. Imo it's the events of the witch hunts and enactment of the Statute of Secrecy that created their social castes and is the direct contribute to the European Wizarding Civil Wars (Grindelwald and Voldemort for sure, probably indirectly causing the goblin wars as well).
Like in universe there's enough to explore and start to connect wizard's ideology of magical superiority over those without magic and how it dictates their laws and culture. The text presents it fairly neutral, not willing to endorse any true changes that would threaten the statute.
I never really got why he worked there ngl
Can I just say that Nymphadora Tonks nailed the punkrock aesthetic in the movies. Like if I was the actor I would be begging to bring that outfit home with me. Maybe I'm biased to the hair color shifting, but damn, give me that.
Natalia Tena just showed up in her own wardrobe and refused to change clothes. Just take a look at her in John Wick 4, or in the wild, she is always fantastic.
@@oz_jones No, actor is gender neutral.
*Actress
@@MacheteSquad actress*. stop trying to erase the existence of women.
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 You're hilarious. Of course I've gotta continue erasing women, that's why I also refer to women as mayor, juror, doctor, instead of mayoress, juroress, and doctoress. Making gender neutral names for professions is the one true way to keep women down!
I think Voldemort seems nice. If you remove the first and last letter, you get the Norwegian word for great mother 😊
Imagine everyone's golden boy Harry Potter fighting a war against "Great Mother". Truly would've been a different series, and one I would watch.
@@spongecakes1986 I am a death eater 😂
Also aren't squibs just... Disabled? Because idk the way they're treated in the wizard society feels less like racism and more like ableism
Rowling seemingly decided to wait until her books were published, the movies were made, a new movie series was started, a freaking theme park was put together, and her merch saturated human civilization, a civilization, it should be pointed out, that was part way through a stressful pandemic that was forcing a lot of people indoors, before publicly joining the League of Disappointing Authors. That timing.
(And yes, I did steal the LDA from Tales From a Multiverse.)
Well if you all hate her don't buy her merch. You're keeping her rich ya know.
@@asarishepard8171 I've very confused. Why do you think "THAT Guy" currently supports her financially in any way. Did you mean that dig for someone else?
@@diribigal probably for everyone. Hate the thing, dont buy the merch.
@@asarishepard8171 Let me try to rephrase my question. On this video whose title suggests criticism of Harry Potter, and where the end of the video basically says you should not "keep her rich", most people you'll find in the comments section agree with your "don't buy" command. But since you're phrasing things like a gotcha command for "everyone", I assume I'm missing your point. For instance, are you trying to say "it's as simple as 'don't like, don't buy' and therefore any comments or more nuanced discussion as in the video is not worth spending time on"? I'm honestly asking because it's not clear to me what you're trying to convey.
Eeh, Rowling was quite vocal for a long while before. Ppl just don't listen to those who call out dog whistles and recognize assholery
This is a relatively minor point, but I think also we can talk about technical issues in Rowling's prose. It's full of "said bookisms", words that can replace "said". Characters are constantly exclaiming, retorting, querying etc, and when they're not they're always "saying blankishly" but almost never just "say" anything. Said bookisms kinda stand out, and call attention to a feature of english writing that otherwise just blends into the background. When you trust your readers to interpret tone from context and from their understanding of the fully realized characters you've written into your books, all the saids you need to put in around dialogue tend to just vanish. But as soon as you think you need to say "Hermione called Ron a complete idiot, in a tone that indicated she was annoyed at him." you're constantly putting your audience at arms length, and kinda speaking down to them.
Rowling also doesn't really understand the value of metaphor in descriptive passages. She constantly compares things to other things, but it always takes the form of a simile, rather than a metaphor, which is a very important distinction. As a lot of people have humorously pointed out her descriptions of things are absolutely riddled with the phrases "what appeared to be" or "what could only be described as". I suspect this is to give the narrative voice it's characteristically arch tone, I think this also distances the audience and kind of reduces the impact of some of her genuinely most imaginative set pieces.
Finally a note about length. People always say the books get longer as the audience grows up, but that's not exactly true. The first two books are about the same length, and are pretty short. The third book is, I'd estimate, about one and a half times the length of the first two; longer but still perfectly reasonable. Then suddenly books four and five like, quadruple or quintuple the length of the first two books. Then an editor finally gets a little bit of a handle on the situation and book 6 and 7 are like noticeably shorter than books four and five, but still really quite long for YA novels. Now when I was reading them as a teen the length didn't really bug me, because I kinda flew through them anyway. But if the idea was for increasing length to progressively challenge readers whose skill at reading is presumably growing alongside the books I don't think she succeeded, unless there's some educational theory I've never heard which posits that teenagers rapidly develop massively longer attention spans in the mid teens, and then lose some of that capacity in the later teen years. I mean who knows, but that seems unlikely. All joking aside, managing the length of your writing is a technical writing skill that authors can work on and get better at. And I think we know that that isn't a skill that Rowling has exactly mastered.
the fact that "snape ejaculated" is a real thing in those books is proof enough of that
1a1😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
1a1😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
I'm sorry that I'm talking off topic, but I was surprised by the thesis about said bookisms.
in my country, it is just nessecary to use these, and if your explanation for direct speech does not look like "character a barked and glared angrily at the gloomy character b, who turned his gaze to character a with a sly smile," then you will be considered the most mediocre writer.
and no one here thinks that the author looks down on the reader, everyone thinks "wow, what a smart author, since he managed to describe so much about an event that could be described in two words" and "authors that constantly use word "said" suck, cause they have not imagination to use domething else"
apparently, it's just because of the difference in cultures.
When I took a publishing course in college, my Editorial professor brought up HP as an example where the author started rejecting the need of an editor by Book 4, hence the obvious jump in length and being perhaps overstuffed with scenes that don't serve the pace well. Obviously, I don't have evidence that JKR was refusing editorial advice, but I *have* worked with authors who do this, so I figure there is likely some truth in there.
Great video, have always thought Harry Potter was a lazy excuse for fantasy so it is refreshing to hear people confront it in the last few years. Love that the last words of the vid are 'in Minecraft'
After the video game I disagree
The thing that always put me off the books was that the world was created FOR Harry, and not the other way around. Rules in the world only existed so Harry could break them and be a hero
Reading the Hufflepuff students as stoner kids...makes them so much more entertaining and interesting. Cedric just wanted to rip some bingers and chill in a giant bath, let him live man.
They live right next to the kitchens specifically for late night munchies.
I don't get that. Hufflepuffs are like the nicest and hardest workers, and yet are constantly overlooked as "lame and useless" in favor of some arrogant houses that are filled with richies. Isn't that just a reflection of real life...
@@miss_conduct.You got sorted in Hufflepuff didn't you
@@miss_conduct. they aint the hardest workers im pretty sure ravenclaw is the one for smart people hufflepuff is just for people who are chill like that
I love how Ravenclaw students are supposed to be smart as fuck. Yet there´s no a single fucking good wizard from that house. The best wizards of all time are Dumbledore, Voldemort and Grindelwald and they were Slytherin, Gryffyndor, and Grindelwald didnt even study at Hogwarts.
I've finally been reading LeGuin's Earthsea cycle, which clearly was an influence for Rowling that she never acknowledges. It's frustrating given the larger themes in the Earthsea books. I don't love the justification of monarchy, but the sense of responsibility to the world - both the human and nonhuman - seems a good foundation for writing something with a more communist vision than this unselfconscious reflection of the current neoliberal world.
I gotta read these at some point, my old English teacher recommended her books at some point and he had a great taste in literature
@@lilaboxx They are excellent and worth the read. A bit misogynistic which surprised me given that LeGuin seemed progressive.
@@d.w.stratton4078 I remember we watched a documentary about her in class and I think there was a part where she reflected on that, it's been a while tho so I'm not sure. Well, we're all a product of the time we grow up in with the ability to learn and grow
@@d.w.stratton4078 I agree on all points.
@@lilaboxx I read the Earthsea trilogy in the 80's. It's worth the time.
22:43 that's a dutch language poster, btw. not a german one. This isn't a gatcha this is me noting that antisemitism was pretty much normalized throughout europe and the netherlands was very much complicit in that.
My very special pet peeve with The Goblet of Fire: The Hungarian Horntail had only one head. If JKR had done even a modicum of research on Hungarian folklore, she'd have known that Hungarian dragons *always* have multiple heads - seven in most cases, but there are dragons with three, nine and even twenty-four heads. (There's even a contemporary children's book about a little dragon who's an outcast because he only has one head and is considered a freak by his fellow dragons.)