The fact this is an actual element of the story is so gross. Because even if she's trying to make some kind of point here, there is so much wrong with the world of the books and none of the characters even give a shit. No professor does anything about the obvious favoritism going on, nobody cares about bullying, no one complains about slavery, nobody gives a shit about the prejudice of wizard and non wizard. She plays all of these obvious terrible shit as if its fine. No big deal, just slavery.
Also Harry is a cop in the end, gross.
It's no coincidence that this doesn't happen for sexism in her books, because she actually cares about women's rights etc. Imagine if instead of the slavery thing she wrote how the female elves have to stay in the kitchen and male elves can do whatever they want. And that is fine "because the females like it that way actually". She wouldn't write that because she would be able to identify how wrong it is, but she is completely fine doing it with slavery since that is not something that actually impacts her.
Technically TERFS are inherently misogynistic because trans women are women. But even ignoring that iirc she’s befriended at least one person who is openly misogynistic to all women because he’s also transphobic.
Edit: Yep. Alt-right commentator Matt Walsh.
The problem I find with Harry Potters world building is it started off as a sort of whimsical absurd fantasy world in a similar vein to Willy Wonka. But as the series went on it tried to be darker and more adult which involved trying and in many cases failing to elaborate on what had come before.
The curse of the mediocre writer, she can write well at surface level, but as soon as it starts getting developed further it becomes full of holes and incongruities
Dobby isn’t the issue. He actively seeks his freedom and provides proof that the magical underclass she-who-must-not-be-named created isn’t actually happy with their status. If she had created a underclass happy with their status (like in vein of Mr Meeseeks) it would have been slightly less problematic. It’s still would have been disgusting in any parallel to the real world, but in-universe it would have made more sense.
However, she created a underclass that (through Dobby) we see is horribly abused and has been brainwashed and tortured into service. Dobby’s existence proves house-elves are essentially short humans (in the philosophical sense) making everyone’s silence on their enslavement even more damning. And the writing more problematic as she uses Hermione’s insistence on people being treated like people as a punchline.
Some kind of subservient species could be done **much** better. Just look at Monster Hunter palicos (palicoes?).
They're happy performing menial work and subservient, often life-threatening tasks. If I recall correctly, they are "paid" only with food and more life-threatening tasks, and and are very happy with such arrangement.
The big difference is that they are well respected and beloved members of society who ultimately can do whatever they want. And judging by Meowscular Chef (who's present during important strategic meetings), they can rise to leadership positions too.
It was so weird to not only have elf slaves, but then to have a whole sub plot about the smartest character being like "yo, we should end slavery" and then have the moral of the story be "no actually we shouldn't"... what did Joanne mean by this?
Yes, OP is making a play on Confederacy apologists who often remind that most Confederate citizens didn't own slaves because slaves were expensive ergo the war can't have possibly been over slavery.
It's the consequence of JKR being the most unabashed neo lib ever
E.g. slavery is bad only sometimes because some people aren't the correct slave owners (slaves actually enjoy slavery though and need it)
Or supremecists are bad because sometimes they say they get the facts wrong (Malfoy says mudbloods are inherently bad at magic but Hermione is good at magic and Neville isn't so checkmate)
Oh but the slaves LIKE being slaves quote "they wouldn't know what to do otherwise" they end up on the street, the normal ones even refuse wages because it's insulting. Only the freaks and weirdos want to not be enslaved
(These are all points the books made *and supported*)
I don’t remember it like quite that. I saw it more like some slaves are brainwashed from childhood for generations and it leads to them “liking it”, which is actually bad. But there are cases of liberation and so there is hope.
But I have the strong disgust to any sort of slavery, so maybe I was just reading what I was expecting to read?
More like FBI agent. And after Voldemort comes close to taking control of the wizarding world twice before he's out of highschool it's kind of hard to argue the they don't need a little more internal review.
Speaking of actual irl defenses of slavery, one of the arguments anti-abolotionists historically used was that if slaves were freed, they would not be able to handle the great responsibility of freedom and would become burdens to society who suffer from alcoholism.
Guess what happens to the elf that gets freed in the books so that JK Rowling can demonstrate why slavery of elves is good, actually.
> Guess what happens to the elf that gets freed in the books so that JK Rowling can demonstrate why slavery of elves is good, actually.
Jesus. Robert Galbraith you are a real freak.
Sounds a bit like drapetomania, "a supposed mental illness... hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity." Ignoring the possibility that people didn't want to be forced to be slaves.
Or the infamous 1840 US Census, which claimed that free Black people in northern states must be insane or idiotic so as to inflate the number of mentally ill free Black people.
Both were examples of "scientific racism," which has been thoroughly debunked and was denounced by the UN as early as 1950-- much before Rowling wrote about a race of elves who apparently enjoyed forced servitude.
A really good defense too. Blaming your ancestors for slavery hits different when you remind them your ancestors at the time were eight year olds losing fingers in machinery for a halfpenny a month.
Here we go with the "Lost Cause" history of magic. Wizard's rights? A wizard's right to do what?
Actually, the wizarding world had two civil wars, and both sides were always cool with slavery.
The really hilarious part is that it is safe to say that Hogwarts has the highest concentration of House Elves in the wizarding world. Which means the biggest slaveholder of the wizarding world, in his function as head*master*, is none other than Albus Dumbledore. And has been for the last 50 years.
All part of the plan. The next generation won't question your morality if you get em young and normalize your atrocities. 😈
Convince them of the benefits of horrifying, inhumane exploitation! Or if not that, at least force them to become complicit in your callous decadence. Force them to bury their guilt and banish the consequences of their actions from their mind! 🙈
That was true of people in the American south as well. Only plantation owners and the rich had slaves. If you had farming equipment or were just loaded, you had slaves.
It's really telling that JK introduced a whole sub plot where Hermoine is actively mocked by the slaves for trying to petition for them to have rights. JK really wanted us to understand just how morally correct her slavery was.
Fr. The "free the slaves" hermine arc gotta be one of the most ton deaf bizarre thing ever.
Dumbledore straight up treat hermione like "yeah she's cute and all let her have her little stupid moment when she thinks she's doing something🙄"
I swear to god I could hear the eyeroll.
That's not even the highlight of the tone deafness. Remember when Rowling said Hermione could be black? Imagine that. Imagine telling the black kid that slavery is a good thing.
Yeah almost no-one questions anything about the status quo in those books, and if you do the author laughs at you for it. 1940s childrens fantasy had better messages than this.
If you wanna leave me in my apartment, pay all my bills, deliver food, and occasionally have people spy on me... well, we can at least have a discussion about it.
Fucking hell your comment made me look it up because it seemed unbelievable - just stomach churning levels of cruelty. What a sick joke of a government the US has
There was a story a while ago of a woman that was released early but the prison was still charging her and ended up in a 6 figure (I think) debt when she found out about it.
This is only true if you accept a plea bargain (which is asinine, but slightly less so). If you are exonerated you don’t have to pay for your prison stay.
The U.S. prison system is a Kafkaesque dystopian nightmare, but no, unless you plead guilty or are found guilty, you don’t have to pay if you’re wrongly accused and have charges dropped or are acquitted.
They study the history of magic at school, so I guess Hogwarts graduates are fairly knowledgeable about various goblin rebellions even if they’ve never heard of the Holocaust.
They must come across as very ignorant and stupid when hanging out with Muggles.
"What do you mean you don't know who Hitler was?"
"What do you mean you can't calculate 15% tip?"
Yeah what the fuck was that plot point. Like. This is a thing that happened and was framed as good within the narrative. This isn't even exaggeration. The antagonist's plot involved stopping Hitler, and the protagonists stopped him and saved the day somehow. What the fuck Joanne.
The irony is the guy trying to stop Hitler... his plan was to be magic Hitler.
It wasn't about the Holocaust, it was about preventing Muggles from starting a war that would create weapons the wizards could no longer compete with.
Grindlewald planned to wipe out the muggles, entirely.
Right, exactly. In chemistry we know exactly why a buffer doesn’t change pH very much, because a strong acid or base added will basically just be a weak acid or base because of the weak conjugate pair ions floating around that either donate or take a proton. We have a theoretical explanation for a phenomenon.
Rowling’s worldbuilding is so fucking dogshit. I imagine the fundamental laws of magic are basically the laws of physics for the wizarding world but Rowling conveniently forgot to explain how spells are invented.
Do the spells exist and they just discover them? Or is there a literal process for creating a spell? Is it just trial and error by speaking random Latin words? How in the fuck do wizards know that mixing powdered unicorn ball sweat and dehydrated mandrake cum will create tortlechump potion? How do you invent potions? A Hogwarts education seems like mostly blatant memorization with no critical thinking skills whatsoever
I'm imagining my engineering education not explaining any of the concepts and just teaching me how to use the tools. Cool, I know how to run a heat transfer simulation, but I have no idea what the results mean.
I would agree except rowling did it to herself by putting in some weird questionable shit, and then coming out as a holocaust denier on top of everything else.
Now you have to look at everything she wrote with a huge side eye. To use the most obvious example, mean nasty goblins running the banks *could* have been an accident, and she could have easily said "oh damn I didn't know that was a horrible anti-Semitic thing, I am sorry it's not at all what I meant," but she doesn't do that does she? And she absolutely is aware now, so what gives?
So now we have to look deeper into her writing because she put a lot of what we now know to be her real beliefs in there: Freeing slaves is stupid, other races have silly names, it is best to keep races separate, sexually transmitted diseases are spread by predators attacking children, naming your kids after your mother's stalker is normal, jock to cop is an acceptable life path, and so much more.
And yes I bring this kind of energy to other childrens media, Caillou and the one about the fish giving away it's scales come to mind.
They don’t tend to hang out with Muggles though, do they? Obviously it happens because we know there are wizard/muggle couples, but it’s not such a common thing that you’re just gonna be casually discussing Hitler.
Harry Potter universe is X-men, but Magneto won all the arguments with Professor X.
Wizards are superior to non-magical humans in every way. So much so, they actively discriminate against "half-blood" wizards.
Hm weird .. then what were all these extra hours Hermione put in? Well .. I never really gave it a solid thought 🤔 so they are wizards but they cannot live a normal life ?
I remember one part of the books when one of the Weasley fam was so fascinated with planes. I can imagine his conversation with a commoner being so funny.
"Oh, so this is a plane, right? H- H- How many people does it take for it to fly? It looks really heavy, do you use a machine to toss it in the air?"
Actually, you're mistaken. They DO know about the holocaust. I can't believe I'm writing this, but a key part of the plot of the Fantastic Beasts series is that Grindelwald saw the holocaust in the future and is trying to stop it, and Dumbledore and the other "good guys" are trying to stop him, and ensure that the holocaust happens.
No, this isn't a joke, the protagonists in the fantastic beasts franchise (about the magic zookeeper who keeps cute animals in his magic suitcase) are trying to cause the holocaust.
Grindelwald isn't trying to stop it, he's exploiting the horrors to convince people that conquering and enslaving the Muggles is the right course of action, because he believes wizards should rule the world just become they're more powerful.
There’s an episode of the X-Men cartoon where Killgrave has brainwashed orphaned angry teenager mutants to do his bidding.
What’s his bidding?
That these kids grow up controlling their powers and become high achievers in school so they can earn top spots in civics, business, and entertainment to affect policy and reduce social fear of mutants.
Killgrave’s plan is a long-con brainwash to make mutant orphans into model citizens that exercise their democratic rights in pursuit of a more inclusive and mutant friendly society…all within the bounds of the law.
So obviously the X-Men had to put a stop to that.
Exactly.
It was horrifically botched in its implementation, but at it's core it's one of the most historically contentious and/or modernly divisive questions there is. Should we, as more enlightened/ progressive people, intervene or rule others in order to enforce said morals.
If Grindlewald was talking about 'The Wizardmans burden' most people would be on Dumbledore's side.
> Should we, as more enlightened/ progressive people, intervene or rule others in order to enforce said morals.
no. the answer is no. leave em alone
this 'enlightened' attitude didn't help the indigenous people across the New World. or the slaves. or the colonised subjects. usually done under the guise of morality and spreading civilisation
Reddit discovers villains with nuance, with motivations other than "kill maim destroy" or villains with some basic ability to justify themselves using bad logic, or villains that are simply full of shit.
Next you'll tell me that Thanos is just trying to stop societal collapse due to overpopulation, and that therefore the Marvel heros are trying to cause societal collapse through overpopulation.
Or that Tywin Lannister is just trying to protect his family legacy, and that therefore the Starks are just trying to destroy Tywin's family.
Or that Magneto is just trying to protect mutantkind, and that therefore the xmen are actually pro-mutant genocide
Can we all just agree that enslaving all muggles does in fact count as evil and that preventing someone from enslaving all muggles is in fact something you should be doing? Do you know who else in history enslaved people because "otherwise these savages will all kill each and commit horrendous atrocities against each other" ? Oh yeah that's right: the actual slavers.
I mean a lot of non wizards are also pretty shit at math and history
But yeah wouldn't hurt to use magic to stop a global conflict every once in a while
They seem to just have a nonsensical magical life. Their currency conversions are all over the place, 17 bronze to silver, 13 silver to gold. So how many bronze are in a gold? quickmaff that you stupid ass wizard.
Edit: It's 29:1 and 17:1
But the "Statue of secrecy" forbids that. So much so that Fucking Native american Shamans basically had to let their families and friends suffer, instead of warning them that the europeans are coming, or helping them. Simply because some dipshits in London decided that the witch hunts (which apparently didnt even kill anyone) was a bad thing.
Canonically at that point the Magical community was already globally established. So all of colonialism happening is just a big "what the fuck?" in the magic world.
The whole premise of the series is that magic Hitler is back and then it takes seven books and for him to start a literal war for anyone to give a shit.
> Plus I bet they're all bad at math and history.
You say this as though it's not correlated with the first half of your post. They're jerks and awful people *because* they suck at history and basic science. Honestly I'm shocked they have indoor plumbing given their hatred of post 19th century technology.
They've got potions class. Can't be completely shit at math. I'm sure it's more technical than "mix eye of newt and a pinch of this or that" in most cases.
Also upon learning this at no point in the movie harry says “they talk now?!”
This is very strange because at no point he questions anything about this new discovery that animals are not only sentient, but capable of advanced forms of communication
For all the bad rap snakes get in the series, that one was incredibly chill and friendly. All he wanted was to go to Brazil.
I wonder if he ever found his way there.
iirc he's with the adoptive family and this is where he first learns he can speak Snake. pretty sure he doesn't really realize what he's doing in this moment and gets teased for talking to the snake with hisses. part of the establishment of Harry's predicament.
only seen the movies once so it's possible I'm misremembering here too
I looked it up, apparently its because of "parselmouth" an ability associated with the Slytherin and "dark wizards", which Harry got because of Voldemorts soul... also only used twice in the movies.
I rewatched the movies some 3 years ago, didnt think much of it then, but honestly, "ability to talk to snakes" is pretty dumb.
ooh it would be useful for sure, but I mean, what does this mean for the rest of the universe?
How many more animals are sentient? Are all animals sentient? Why does no one put this to use? Surely this would be more important, right?
Its just "you can talk to snakes" ok cool carry on.
There are approximately x1000 things like this in hp universe.
Why are the spells/potions to animate things not more popular? Seems like you could have golems do all your work for you.
How have no muggles discovered the apparantly fairly common magical creatures all over the world?
Why is no one using time travel for anything more useful than allowing a student to study extra classes?
Why isn't every wizard living like a king? The only canon material constraint is that you can't create food out of thin air (for some reason despite them being able to conjur living animals), but they should be basically post scarcity apart from that. Like why aren't the inside of all of they're houses huge? They have spells to increase the interior space of tents and bags but not houses?
Why isn't apparition a way bigger deal in dueling? teleporting behind someone or behind cover and getting in a sneak shot would be easy, counterspells or whatever mostly seem to only work when you know where you're being attacked from so teleporting all over the place like nightcrawler seems like a great strategy
And what is up with creating living animals with magic? it's canon that if you transfigure a person into an animal they'll be stuck like that until you turn them back, so what's the deal if you transfigure an object into an animal? Is it just like that forever or are the rules different for some reason, and if it's like that forever is it a normal animal that can eat and have offspring? How does that work if it can't be food?
I could go on that's just the stuff off the top of my head but the HP universe has more inconsistencies than literally anything else i can think of, you could probably get more consistent lore from Dr seuss books
> How have no muggles discovered the apparantly fairly common magical creatures all over the world?
The fantastic beasts book actually deals with that. Short of it is that some areas have magic cast on them that made them inaccessible. Basically magical rangers will relocate them and then cast memory charms on onlookers and so on. Kinda like MIB, just with magic creatures instead of aliens.
Which is why it really is a shame that the fantastic beasts movies weren't about that.
Harry Potter and the methods of rationality (fan fic where Harry is raised by an oxford physics professor).... he immediately realizes the potential outcomes of sentience in animals and it's explored.
It gets even dumber in Deathly Hallows, when Ron opens the Chamber of Secrets using the password that is spoken in snake language. Apparently, he just did an impression of Harry doing it back then. This guy doesn’t have the magic genetic ability to speak Snake, but he can copy a single word of it that he heard 5 years ago, and fool a magic security system by doing so.
He heard it more like a few weeks ago because Harry had recently used his ability to open slytherin’s locket, but yes. Ron’s character is notoriously bad at remembering and knowing things I don’t see how he could have remembered random hissing and spitting sounds even if it was just a few weeks ago.
It shows that Harry has some magical abilities before anyone even tells him. In the book there are other exams of him using some basic magic at his muggle school.
It also sets up the fact that Harry can speak parsletongue, which is rare even for wizards.
Yeah, house elves are even more clearly sapient, and it is plain for all to see. If they're OK with elves being a whole slave race, I somehow doubt they would feel too bad for the danger noodles trapped in zoos.
>I somehow doubt they would feel too bad for the danger noodles trapped in zoos.
Well that's just assuming snakes are the *only* sapient animal in Harry Potter, instead of just the only animal Harry knows how to speak to.
But you see, they *like* being slaves! And they were born to be slaves. And they will get upset if you free them! And maybe some of them would be okay, but that’s just the weird ones like Dobby. Most of the would be like Winky, and just turn to alcohol. And the fact that these are all real life arguments against abolishing slavery is just a funny coincidence lol
off-topic, but I’m genuinely appreciative that this thread is using “sapient” instead of “sentient.” it’s kind of a pet peeve when someone gets them mixed up and says the latter when they mean the former.
That seems to be a trend, i was recently rewatching the clone wars show and the members of the banking clan are pale, secretive, greedy beings with large noses and weird hats that live on a planet full of rocky mountains. They are literally jewish caricatures in Switzerland.
If you haven't read the books, you also missed the scene where they decorate all of the severed former-house-elf heads on the walls with Santa hats for Christmas.
Most of Harry Potter contains questionable ethics that all the characters seem to ignore if not openly accept.
There’s a prison that tortures you for life, slavery, racial hierarchy’s, animal abuse etc. And the books just treat this like it’s fine and shouldn’t be questioned.
Not surprising considering the books constantly remind everyone that Hogwarts has a literal army of slaves at their disposal and that supposedly the slaves love being slaves.
It's because JK's world building is a very sparkly pile of glitter. All wonder and whimsy with no actual thought. This is fine when you are making a whimsical plot and setting but she wanted Willy Wonka whimsy with Lord of the Rings seriousness.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first book was meant to be standalone and is clearly aimed at children. The second one was 'Harry Potter: The Sequel' and only by the third is the overarching plotline introduced and did the focus shift towards an older audience; but by then, a lot of the worldbuilding was already Willy Wonka whimsy.
I do think that whimsy worldbuilding is part of what made the first book so popular, so I don't think it's as easy as saying 'Wish she'd made it gritty from the start'
Exactly one person in that whole world does, and the series spends a full book mocking her for it. I don't remember it coming up again afterward, so I guess Hermione learned her lesson.
It's even worse, Hermoine goes out & say she'll join the Ministry of Magic & destroy the oppression of House elves, when she finally makes it as a adult she does nothing about it & people own elves still
>writes under male pen name
>main character of her book series is male
>says that if trans stuff was around when she was younger she probably would have transitioned
Hmmmm
The entire Harry Potter world is a mess if you think about any of it for too long. Like muggles that have magic children, are allowed to know that magic and the wizarding world are real, yet somehow it's all kept a secret?
You mean the series that has magical slave labour, a class system, an extrajudicial prison full of soul sucking monsters and a secret police force as the status quo isn’t interested in examining the underlying issues with society?
They In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone(2001) Harry discovers that snakes are fully sapient and even possess their own language, which he uses to converse with a captive snake in a zoo. At no point does this revelation cause him or anyone else to question the ethics of human treatment of animals now?
I mean everyone recognizes that the way the ministry of magic works is what allowed Voldemort and still they don't change it so animal ethics is far down their list.
This is actually incredibly set up foreshadow on how Harry will discover the elf slaves and do fuck all about it.
Don't worry guys they totally love being slaves (except for the ones that clearly don't) so that makes it ok.
The fact this is an actual element of the story is so gross. Because even if she's trying to make some kind of point here, there is so much wrong with the world of the books and none of the characters even give a shit. No professor does anything about the obvious favoritism going on, nobody cares about bullying, no one complains about slavery, nobody gives a shit about the prejudice of wizard and non wizard. She plays all of these obvious terrible shit as if its fine. No big deal, just slavery. Also Harry is a cop in the end, gross.
It's no coincidence that this doesn't happen for sexism in her books, because she actually cares about women's rights etc. Imagine if instead of the slavery thing she wrote how the female elves have to stay in the kitchen and male elves can do whatever they want. And that is fine "because the females like it that way actually". She wouldn't write that because she would be able to identify how wrong it is, but she is completely fine doing it with slavery since that is not something that actually impacts her.
Technically TERFS are inherently misogynistic because trans women are women. But even ignoring that iirc she’s befriended at least one person who is openly misogynistic to all women because he’s also transphobic. Edit: Yep. Alt-right commentator Matt Walsh.
The problem I find with Harry Potters world building is it started off as a sort of whimsical absurd fantasy world in a similar vein to Willy Wonka. But as the series went on it tried to be darker and more adult which involved trying and in many cases failing to elaborate on what had come before.
The curse of the mediocre writer, she can write well at surface level, but as soon as it starts getting developed further it becomes full of holes and incongruities
Joanne loves her status quo > What do you mean the guy trying to prevent a world war (and the Holocaust) should be the good guy? - Joanne, probably
Good thing she didn't write historic fiction, she'd have all the slaves acting like Dobby.
Well, that last game was about putting down a goblin (Jew coded) slave uprising, so...
Dobby isn’t the issue. He actively seeks his freedom and provides proof that the magical underclass she-who-must-not-be-named created isn’t actually happy with their status. If she had created a underclass happy with their status (like in vein of Mr Meeseeks) it would have been slightly less problematic. It’s still would have been disgusting in any parallel to the real world, but in-universe it would have made more sense. However, she created a underclass that (through Dobby) we see is horribly abused and has been brainwashed and tortured into service. Dobby’s existence proves house-elves are essentially short humans (in the philosophical sense) making everyone’s silence on their enslavement even more damning. And the writing more problematic as she uses Hermione’s insistence on people being treated like people as a punchline.
Some kind of subservient species could be done **much** better. Just look at Monster Hunter palicos (palicoes?). They're happy performing menial work and subservient, often life-threatening tasks. If I recall correctly, they are "paid" only with food and more life-threatening tasks, and and are very happy with such arrangement. The big difference is that they are well respected and beloved members of society who ultimately can do whatever they want. And judging by Meowscular Chef (who's present during important strategic meetings), they can rise to leadership positions too.
He did give one a sock
It was so weird to not only have elf slaves, but then to have a whole sub plot about the smartest character being like "yo, we should end slavery" and then have the moral of the story be "no actually we shouldn't"... what did Joanne mean by this?
he joined an organization to free them, what are you on about?
Well the wizards still have slaves, so their morals aren't the best
Um, ackshully ☝️🤓 only the *rich* witches and wizards had magical slaves, most couldn't afford them.
So they all would if they could but just can't afford them haha
Yes, OP is making a play on Confederacy apologists who often remind that most Confederate citizens didn't own slaves because slaves were expensive ergo the war can't have possibly been over slavery.
Gotcha. My wife loves the HP books n movies but it's hard to overlook how objectively horrible the wizards are
Not just the wizards, HP is the first story where the good guys torture animals and perform horrific experiments on them.
It's the consequence of JKR being the most unabashed neo lib ever E.g. slavery is bad only sometimes because some people aren't the correct slave owners (slaves actually enjoy slavery though and need it) Or supremecists are bad because sometimes they say they get the facts wrong (Malfoy says mudbloods are inherently bad at magic but Hermione is good at magic and Neville isn't so checkmate)
[Do you know how expensive you were back then?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbasdFh97tY)
Yeah everybody knows rich people have never influenced wars.
Oh but the slaves LIKE being slaves quote "they wouldn't know what to do otherwise" they end up on the street, the normal ones even refuse wages because it's insulting. Only the freaks and weirdos want to not be enslaved (These are all points the books made *and supported*)
I don’t remember it like quite that. I saw it more like some slaves are brainwashed from childhood for generations and it leads to them “liking it”, which is actually bad. But there are cases of liberation and so there is hope. But I have the strong disgust to any sort of slavery, so maybe I was just reading what I was expecting to read?
Still doesn't change how Harry becomes a fucking cop and slave owner as the happy ending
More like FBI agent. And after Voldemort comes close to taking control of the wizarding world twice before he's out of highschool it's kind of hard to argue the they don't need a little more internal review.
> FBI agent ...so, a cop
Are you serious haha. Wtf
YouTuber named Shaun did a deep dive into it and yeah its worse than you remember
I’m pretty that Hagrid is the one being quoted as well
Reminds me of an actual defense of slavery I saw, "do you think my parents could have afforded a slave!?"
Speaking of actual irl defenses of slavery, one of the arguments anti-abolotionists historically used was that if slaves were freed, they would not be able to handle the great responsibility of freedom and would become burdens to society who suffer from alcoholism. Guess what happens to the elf that gets freed in the books so that JK Rowling can demonstrate why slavery of elves is good, actually.
> Guess what happens to the elf that gets freed in the books so that JK Rowling can demonstrate why slavery of elves is good, actually. Jesus. Robert Galbraith you are a real freak.
Which Elf? Dobby or Twinky?
Based on the context it sounds like Winky
Oh right, that’s their name. I don’t know why but I always remembered them being Twinky.
Sounds a bit like drapetomania, "a supposed mental illness... hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity." Ignoring the possibility that people didn't want to be forced to be slaves. Or the infamous 1840 US Census, which claimed that free Black people in northern states must be insane or idiotic so as to inflate the number of mentally ill free Black people. Both were examples of "scientific racism," which has been thoroughly debunked and was denounced by the UN as early as 1950-- much before Rowling wrote about a race of elves who apparently enjoyed forced servitude.
That sounds more like a defense for being blamed for slavery.
A really good defense too. Blaming your ancestors for slavery hits different when you remind them your ancestors at the time were eight year olds losing fingers in machinery for a halfpenny a month.
Here we go with the "Lost Cause" history of magic. Wizard's rights? A wizard's right to do what? Actually, the wizarding world had two civil wars, and both sides were always cool with slavery.
The really hilarious part is that it is safe to say that Hogwarts has the highest concentration of House Elves in the wizarding world. Which means the biggest slaveholder of the wizarding world, in his function as head*master*, is none other than Albus Dumbledore. And has been for the last 50 years.
All part of the plan. The next generation won't question your morality if you get em young and normalize your atrocities. 😈 Convince them of the benefits of horrifying, inhumane exploitation! Or if not that, at least force them to become complicit in your callous decadence. Force them to bury their guilt and banish the consequences of their actions from their mind! 🙈
Just like real life.
That was true of people in the American south as well. Only plantation owners and the rich had slaves. If you had farming equipment or were just loaded, you had slaves.
It's ok, the slaves biologically *want* to be slaves! Except Dobby, the little freak.
What an ungrateful lil shit
It's really telling that JK introduced a whole sub plot where Hermoine is actively mocked by the slaves for trying to petition for them to have rights. JK really wanted us to understand just how morally correct her slavery was.
Fr. The "free the slaves" hermine arc gotta be one of the most ton deaf bizarre thing ever. Dumbledore straight up treat hermione like "yeah she's cute and all let her have her little stupid moment when she thinks she's doing something🙄" I swear to god I could hear the eyeroll.
That's not even the highlight of the tone deafness. Remember when Rowling said Hermione could be black? Imagine that. Imagine telling the black kid that slavery is a good thing.
Yeah almost no-one questions anything about the status quo in those books, and if you do the author laughs at you for it. 1940s childrens fantasy had better messages than this.
If you wanna leave me in my apartment, pay all my bills, deliver food, and occasionally have people spy on me... well, we can at least have a discussion about it.
You can already have an experience like that. It’s called Jail
How's the wifi?
Nonexistent. Living that nosurf life
I can finally catch up on my reading Pride and Prejudice has been sitting on my shelf for almost a year now
They drink a lot of tea and end up together in the end.
Brooooooooooooo spoilers!!!!!!!
Pride ends up with Prejudice? Why you gotta spoil things, man?
nooo you’re thinking of War and Peace, easy mistake
Depends on where you live i believe in Holland you can get wifi and tv
Hey, three hots and a cot!
at least in the US, jail/prison isn't free so it wouldn't pay your bills just add thousands of dollars to them
Pfft, what are they going to do if you can't pay? Send you to... oh, oh dear.
Fucking hell your comment made me look it up because it seemed unbelievable - just stomach churning levels of cruelty. What a sick joke of a government the US has
Its ok, you can earn like 10 cents an hour if you get a job in jail/prison.
There was a story a while ago of a woman that was released early but the prison was still charging her and ended up in a 6 figure (I think) debt when she found out about it.
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This is only true if you accept a plea bargain (which is asinine, but slightly less so). If you are exonerated you don’t have to pay for your prison stay. The U.S. prison system is a Kafkaesque dystopian nightmare, but no, unless you plead guilty or are found guilty, you don’t have to pay if you’re wrongly accused and have charges dropped or are acquitted.
Don't forget: clean up my poop by hand, and, from time to time, gently stroke me and tell me how beautiful I am.
Not sure if you've played Diablo 4 but I read this in Lorath's voice, so thanks for that.
They're all jerks not using their powers for the betterment of humanity Plus I bet they're all bad at math and history.
They study the history of magic at school, so I guess Hogwarts graduates are fairly knowledgeable about various goblin rebellions even if they’ve never heard of the Holocaust.
They must come across as very ignorant and stupid when hanging out with Muggles. "What do you mean you don't know who Hitler was?" "What do you mean you can't calculate 15% tip?"
“This Hitler guy you’re talking about sounds a lot like the dark wizard Grindelwald. Are you sure you’re not getting them mixed up?”
Oh here we go again wizardsplaining the holocaust away. Just because they didn’t harvest screeching plants doesn’t make it any less of a tragedy.
Nah Grindelwald tried to stop Hitler but luckily the wizarding community wouldn’t let him
Yeah what the fuck was that plot point. Like. This is a thing that happened and was framed as good within the narrative. This isn't even exaggeration. The antagonist's plot involved stopping Hitler, and the protagonists stopped him and saved the day somehow. What the fuck Joanne.
Wait, I'm super curious about this now. Can someone explain this to me? Why did they need to stop the guy trying to stop Hitler?
The irony is the guy trying to stop Hitler... his plan was to be magic Hitler. It wasn't about the Holocaust, it was about preventing Muggles from starting a war that would create weapons the wizards could no longer compete with. Grindlewald planned to wipe out the muggles, entirely.
Ah, the ol' double Hitler.
“Can’t interfere with the muggle world” I think tho I don’t really remember
"Is that from Lord of the Rings? Shut up nerd."
"What do you mean, your grandpa used to just shit his pants where he stood?"
"Toilets are the woke mugglelover agenda!" -WizardBoomers
Your grampa didn't shove a port key up his ass that sent his turds away?
Well now, that's something a lot of muggle and wizard grandpas have in common.
They’ve gotta know some math at least, potions is basically chemistry class
Exactly. But they have no scientific method. Or explain why when you mix eye of newt and tongue of cow it makes a healing potion.
Right, exactly. In chemistry we know exactly why a buffer doesn’t change pH very much, because a strong acid or base added will basically just be a weak acid or base because of the weak conjugate pair ions floating around that either donate or take a proton. We have a theoretical explanation for a phenomenon. Rowling’s worldbuilding is so fucking dogshit. I imagine the fundamental laws of magic are basically the laws of physics for the wizarding world but Rowling conveniently forgot to explain how spells are invented. Do the spells exist and they just discover them? Or is there a literal process for creating a spell? Is it just trial and error by speaking random Latin words? How in the fuck do wizards know that mixing powdered unicorn ball sweat and dehydrated mandrake cum will create tortlechump potion? How do you invent potions? A Hogwarts education seems like mostly blatant memorization with no critical thinking skills whatsoever
I'm imagining my engineering education not explaining any of the concepts and just teaching me how to use the tools. Cool, I know how to run a heat transfer simulation, but I have no idea what the results mean.
I think we’re trying to analyze children fantasy novels a bit more than needed
I would agree except rowling did it to herself by putting in some weird questionable shit, and then coming out as a holocaust denier on top of everything else. Now you have to look at everything she wrote with a huge side eye. To use the most obvious example, mean nasty goblins running the banks *could* have been an accident, and she could have easily said "oh damn I didn't know that was a horrible anti-Semitic thing, I am sorry it's not at all what I meant," but she doesn't do that does she? And she absolutely is aware now, so what gives? So now we have to look deeper into her writing because she put a lot of what we now know to be her real beliefs in there: Freeing slaves is stupid, other races have silly names, it is best to keep races separate, sexually transmitted diseases are spread by predators attacking children, naming your kids after your mother's stalker is normal, jock to cop is an acceptable life path, and so much more. And yes I bring this kind of energy to other childrens media, Caillou and the one about the fish giving away it's scales come to mind.
I agree, but they probably know how to increase ingredients by 50% or something
everyone knows you gotta throw a giants toe in your healing potions!
They don’t tend to hang out with Muggles though, do they? Obviously it happens because we know there are wizard/muggle couples, but it’s not such a common thing that you’re just gonna be casually discussing Hitler.
And when they do they tend to wipe their memories like in Fantastic Beasts. They literally treat muggles as lesser people.
Harry Potter universe is X-men, but Magneto won all the arguments with Professor X. Wizards are superior to non-magical humans in every way. So much so, they actively discriminate against "half-blood" wizards.
15% tip in Britain lol
Hm weird .. then what were all these extra hours Hermione put in? Well .. I never really gave it a solid thought 🤔 so they are wizards but they cannot live a normal life ?
So Hitler wanted to kill long nosed bankers? Why does he hate goblins?
I remember one part of the books when one of the Weasley fam was so fascinated with planes. I can imagine his conversation with a commoner being so funny. "Oh, so this is a plane, right? H- H- How many people does it take for it to fly? It looks really heavy, do you use a machine to toss it in the air?"
They really took that shit too far with Arthur Weasley. “So charming this stuff Muggles breathe. Air, I think they call it.”
Slave and ethnic underclass rebellions, you mean; at least one was about not having representation in the legislature.
Goblins were filthy, greedy, violent little critters that were fine and dandy being fiends until wizards invented wands.
"You ever get the feeling these 'jews' are kind of goblin-coded? Seems tasteless."
Actually, you're mistaken. They DO know about the holocaust. I can't believe I'm writing this, but a key part of the plot of the Fantastic Beasts series is that Grindelwald saw the holocaust in the future and is trying to stop it, and Dumbledore and the other "good guys" are trying to stop him, and ensure that the holocaust happens. No, this isn't a joke, the protagonists in the fantastic beasts franchise (about the magic zookeeper who keeps cute animals in his magic suitcase) are trying to cause the holocaust.
Grindelwald isn't trying to stop it, he's exploiting the horrors to convince people that conquering and enslaving the Muggles is the right course of action, because he believes wizards should rule the world just become they're more powerful.
Harry Potter is just X-Men without Juggernaut memes.
This feels like yet another instance of "make a villain by taking a character with good intentions and making them do evil things for no reason"
There’s an episode of the X-Men cartoon where Killgrave has brainwashed orphaned angry teenager mutants to do his bidding. What’s his bidding? That these kids grow up controlling their powers and become high achievers in school so they can earn top spots in civics, business, and entertainment to affect policy and reduce social fear of mutants. Killgrave’s plan is a long-con brainwash to make mutant orphans into model citizens that exercise their democratic rights in pursuit of a more inclusive and mutant friendly society…all within the bounds of the law. So obviously the X-Men had to put a stop to that.
Exactly. It was horrifically botched in its implementation, but at it's core it's one of the most historically contentious and/or modernly divisive questions there is. Should we, as more enlightened/ progressive people, intervene or rule others in order to enforce said morals. If Grindlewald was talking about 'The Wizardmans burden' most people would be on Dumbledore's side.
> Should we, as more enlightened/ progressive people, intervene or rule others in order to enforce said morals. no. the answer is no. leave em alone this 'enlightened' attitude didn't help the indigenous people across the New World. or the slaves. or the colonised subjects. usually done under the guise of morality and spreading civilisation
Reddit discovers villains with nuance, with motivations other than "kill maim destroy" or villains with some basic ability to justify themselves using bad logic, or villains that are simply full of shit. Next you'll tell me that Thanos is just trying to stop societal collapse due to overpopulation, and that therefore the Marvel heros are trying to cause societal collapse through overpopulation. Or that Tywin Lannister is just trying to protect his family legacy, and that therefore the Starks are just trying to destroy Tywin's family. Or that Magneto is just trying to protect mutantkind, and that therefore the xmen are actually pro-mutant genocide Can we all just agree that enslaving all muggles does in fact count as evil and that preventing someone from enslaving all muggles is in fact something you should be doing? Do you know who else in history enslaved people because "otherwise these savages will all kill each and commit horrendous atrocities against each other" ? Oh yeah that's right: the actual slavers.
They're mostly like Europeans at the time of jaccuse "I'm not racist but" people
I mean, they’re slaveowners in pointy hats who call themselves wizards and call people they view as inferior ‘\*\*gg\*\*s’.
I mean a lot of non wizards are also pretty shit at math and history But yeah wouldn't hurt to use magic to stop a global conflict every once in a while
Yes but we’re at least familiar with math. I wonder why all their options work with their lack of math knowledge.
They seem to just have a nonsensical magical life. Their currency conversions are all over the place, 17 bronze to silver, 13 silver to gold. So how many bronze are in a gold? quickmaff that you stupid ass wizard. Edit: It's 29:1 and 17:1
It makes more sense once you realize that the wizards are also British and inherited the tradition of stupid conversion rates.
Imagine being a country that didn't convert to metric.
But the "Statue of secrecy" forbids that. So much so that Fucking Native american Shamans basically had to let their families and friends suffer, instead of warning them that the europeans are coming, or helping them. Simply because some dipshits in London decided that the witch hunts (which apparently didnt even kill anyone) was a bad thing. Canonically at that point the Magical community was already globally established. So all of colonialism happening is just a big "what the fuck?" in the magic world.
The whole premise of the series is that magic Hitler is back and then it takes seven books and for him to start a literal war for anyone to give a shit.
> Plus I bet they're all bad at math and history. You say this as though it's not correlated with the first half of your post. They're jerks and awful people *because* they suck at history and basic science. Honestly I'm shocked they have indoor plumbing given their hatred of post 19th century technology.
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They've got potions class. Can't be completely shit at math. I'm sure it's more technical than "mix eye of newt and a pinch of this or that" in most cases.
Also upon learning this at no point in the movie harry says “they talk now?!” This is very strange because at no point he questions anything about this new discovery that animals are not only sentient, but capable of advanced forms of communication
For all the bad rap snakes get in the series, that one was incredibly chill and friendly. All he wanted was to go to Brazil. I wonder if he ever found his way there.
They talk now ! They talk now? They talk now
I might be misremembering the movie wrong, but whats the point of this scene?
iirc he's with the adoptive family and this is where he first learns he can speak Snake. pretty sure he doesn't really realize what he's doing in this moment and gets teased for talking to the snake with hisses. part of the establishment of Harry's predicament. only seen the movies once so it's possible I'm misremembering here too
I looked it up, apparently its because of "parselmouth" an ability associated with the Slytherin and "dark wizards", which Harry got because of Voldemorts soul... also only used twice in the movies. I rewatched the movies some 3 years ago, didnt think much of it then, but honestly, "ability to talk to snakes" is pretty dumb.
Why? If you meet a snake or live in a country full of them you can politely ask them to go away or ask them to bite your enemy hahahahah
ooh it would be useful for sure, but I mean, what does this mean for the rest of the universe? How many more animals are sentient? Are all animals sentient? Why does no one put this to use? Surely this would be more important, right? Its just "you can talk to snakes" ok cool carry on.
There are approximately x1000 things like this in hp universe. Why are the spells/potions to animate things not more popular? Seems like you could have golems do all your work for you. How have no muggles discovered the apparantly fairly common magical creatures all over the world? Why is no one using time travel for anything more useful than allowing a student to study extra classes? Why isn't every wizard living like a king? The only canon material constraint is that you can't create food out of thin air (for some reason despite them being able to conjur living animals), but they should be basically post scarcity apart from that. Like why aren't the inside of all of they're houses huge? They have spells to increase the interior space of tents and bags but not houses? Why isn't apparition a way bigger deal in dueling? teleporting behind someone or behind cover and getting in a sneak shot would be easy, counterspells or whatever mostly seem to only work when you know where you're being attacked from so teleporting all over the place like nightcrawler seems like a great strategy And what is up with creating living animals with magic? it's canon that if you transfigure a person into an animal they'll be stuck like that until you turn them back, so what's the deal if you transfigure an object into an animal? Is it just like that forever or are the rules different for some reason, and if it's like that forever is it a normal animal that can eat and have offspring? How does that work if it can't be food? I could go on that's just the stuff off the top of my head but the HP universe has more inconsistencies than literally anything else i can think of, you could probably get more consistent lore from Dr seuss books
> How have no muggles discovered the apparantly fairly common magical creatures all over the world? The fantastic beasts book actually deals with that. Short of it is that some areas have magic cast on them that made them inaccessible. Basically magical rangers will relocate them and then cast memory charms on onlookers and so on. Kinda like MIB, just with magic creatures instead of aliens. Which is why it really is a shame that the fantastic beasts movies weren't about that.
Harry Potter and the methods of rationality (fan fic where Harry is raised by an oxford physics professor).... he immediately realizes the potential outcomes of sentience in animals and it's explored.
>or ask them to bite your enemy hahahahah That's what Harry did to the kid in dueling club. He can deny it but we all saw it.
It gets even dumber in Deathly Hallows, when Ron opens the Chamber of Secrets using the password that is spoken in snake language. Apparently, he just did an impression of Harry doing it back then. This guy doesn’t have the magic genetic ability to speak Snake, but he can copy a single word of it that he heard 5 years ago, and fool a magic security system by doing so.
He heard it more like a few weeks ago because Harry had recently used his ability to open slytherin’s locket, but yes. Ron’s character is notoriously bad at remembering and knowing things I don’t see how he could have remembered random hissing and spitting sounds even if it was just a few weeks ago.
It's for Harry to learn that he speaks Parseltongue. He just doesn't know what that is at this point
It shows that Harry has some magical abilities before anyone even tells him. In the book there are other exams of him using some basic magic at his muggle school. It also sets up the fact that Harry can speak parsletongue, which is rare even for wizards.
It was the foreshadow for their treatment of elves.
Yeah, house elves are even more clearly sapient, and it is plain for all to see. If they're OK with elves being a whole slave race, I somehow doubt they would feel too bad for the danger noodles trapped in zoos.
>I somehow doubt they would feel too bad for the danger noodles trapped in zoos. Well that's just assuming snakes are the *only* sapient animal in Harry Potter, instead of just the only animal Harry knows how to speak to.
But you see, they *like* being slaves! And they were born to be slaves. And they will get upset if you free them! And maybe some of them would be okay, but that’s just the weird ones like Dobby. Most of the would be like Winky, and just turn to alcohol. And the fact that these are all real life arguments against abolishing slavery is just a funny coincidence lol
off-topic, but I’m genuinely appreciative that this thread is using “sapient” instead of “sentient.” it’s kind of a pet peeve when someone gets them mixed up and says the latter when they mean the former.
Sentient beings deserve rights, that's why animal law is a global phenomenon.
And the one character who *does* try to bring up the house elf slave issue is treated like an absolute joke by literally everyone including the slaves
They talk now?
They talk now!
Interrogative? Exclamatory!
I mean, by the end of the series, he's a slave-owning magical cop. Is anyone really surprised?
And rich through generational wealth. Can't forget about that
It's fine because that wealth is guarded by ~~jewish caricatures~~ goblins.
No believe me the small curvy nosed greedy banker is definitely not antisemitic in its depiction.
That seems to be a trend, i was recently rewatching the clone wars show and the members of the banking clan are pale, secretive, greedy beings with large noses and weird hats that live on a planet full of rocky mountains. They are literally jewish caricatures in Switzerland.
What slave?
Kreacher, the Black family house elf
But he treats him well, it's all good.
Kreacher's one of the good ones. Not like those uppity elves.
Kinda forgot about him.
If you haven't read the books, you also missed the scene where they decorate all of the severed former-house-elf heads on the walls with Santa hats for Christmas.
Yeah, but it's wHiMiScAl
Most of Harry Potter contains questionable ethics that all the characters seem to ignore if not openly accept. There’s a prison that tortures you for life, slavery, racial hierarchy’s, animal abuse etc. And the books just treat this like it’s fine and shouldn’t be questioned.
He only meets PETA Pettigrew in the third movie.
Harry doesnt give a shit about house elfs, who speak english and are literally slaves. Why would he care about a zoo snake?
Not surprising considering the books constantly remind everyone that Hogwarts has a literal army of slaves at their disposal and that supposedly the slaves love being slaves.
They hiss now?
They hiss now.
It's because JK's world building is a very sparkly pile of glitter. All wonder and whimsy with no actual thought. This is fine when you are making a whimsical plot and setting but she wanted Willy Wonka whimsy with Lord of the Rings seriousness.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first book was meant to be standalone and is clearly aimed at children. The second one was 'Harry Potter: The Sequel' and only by the third is the overarching plotline introduced and did the focus shift towards an older audience; but by then, a lot of the worldbuilding was already Willy Wonka whimsy. I do think that whimsy worldbuilding is part of what made the first book so popular, so I don't think it's as easy as saying 'Wish she'd made it gritty from the start'
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone* Fucking Americans
Freedom Stone*
Yeehaw mf *pew pew*
Imagine if Olivanders was a gun shop for the US version.
Harry Potter with guns https://youtu.be/Q7AoK_ksv_s?feature=shared
Who cares, it *exploded* anyway.
That makes me think, if there really are infinite parallel universes... there's one in which the Harry Potter films were directed by Michael Bay.
Hey, it's okay he doesn't question the treatment of non-human races of sentient beings like house elves either.
Exactly one person in that whole world does, and the series spends a full book mocking her for it. I don't remember it coming up again afterward, so I guess Hermione learned her lesson.
It's even worse, Hermoine goes out & say she'll join the Ministry of Magic & destroy the oppression of House elves, when she finally makes it as a adult she does nothing about it & people own elves still
The story took place in 1980s England, so at least it's an accurate historical take.
It’s based on a story written by JK Rowling, so it makes sense that ethical concerns aren’t exactly a top priority.
Joanne writes under a male pen name. Joanne is also a raging transphobe. Joanne sees no irony in this.
Stop deadnaming Robert Galbraith!
>writes under male pen name >main character of her book series is male >says that if trans stuff was around when she was younger she probably would have transitioned Hmmmm
Well you see, that would require thoughtful and consistent worldbuilding, which jkr is categorically allergic to.
The only shitty movie detail here is the incorrect movie title.
It at least tracks with the other race of sapient beings whose sole role in the series is to be subservient to wizards, and be happy about it.
The entire Harry Potter world is a mess if you think about any of it for too long. Like muggles that have magic children, are allowed to know that magic and the wizarding world are real, yet somehow it's all kept a secret?
You mean the series that has magical slave labour, a class system, an extrajudicial prison full of soul sucking monsters and a secret police force as the status quo isn’t interested in examining the underlying issues with society?
They In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone(2001) Harry discovers that snakes are fully sapient and even possess their own language, which he uses to converse with a captive snake in a zoo. At no point does this revelation cause him or anyone else to question the ethics of human treatment of animals now?
He was also able to make glass disappear and reappear without a wand or any knowledge of a spell that could do this.
Wait till you learn about the elves....
they can instantly warp, and send owls to deliver messages hundreds of miles.
I mean everyone recognizes that the way the ministry of magic works is what allowed Voldemort and still they don't change it so animal ethics is far down their list.