J.K. Rowling needs to stop messing with Harry Potter - A general STFU J.K. Rowling MegaThread <3

[Truthspeaker]

Honestly I had always assumed dumbledore was gay and just never cared. It was more or less reinforced for me with the 7th books chapter involving dumbledore and grindalwald's relationship. So when she came out and announced that, I honestly did not care. I only began caring when hermione was retcon to being black. Was an issue since the retconning was an obvious attempt to appease an audience and to stay relevant post movies. From there it just seems to get worse.

Hermione wasn't retconned to being black any more than Gary Coleman was retconned to being a white woman. It's called "theater casting".

Rowling's comments on the matter were just made to fuck with people she disliked. Unlike Star Wars, there were already plenty of black characters in Harry Potter (Kingsley Shacklebolt, Lee Jordan, Angelina Johnson, one of the Slytherins in Malfoy's year). Their being there had nothing to do with the Current Year.

That said, foreigners of any kind at Hogwarts never really made sense. The Wizarding World is the most xenophobic, reactionary, and isolated society on Earth not ruled by the Kim Family. It's absurd to believe there wouldn't be prejudice against foreigners in a society so backward even educated adults can't figure out how postage stamps work.

But JK Rowling was never good at working out the fine details, nor was she good with the full implications of what life would actually be like based on the parameters she set.

 

[NN 401]

Hermione wasn't retconned to being black any more than Gary Coleman was retconned to being a white woman. It's called "theater casting".

Rowling's comments on the matter were just made to fuck with people she disliked. Unlike Star Wars, there were already plenty of black characters in Harry Potter (Kingsley Shacklebolt, Lee Jordan, Angelina Johnson, one of the Slytherins in Malfoy's year). Their being there had nothing to do with the Current Year.

That said, foreigners of any kind at Hogwarts never really made sense. The Wizarding World is the most xenophobic, reactionary, and isolated society on Earth not ruled by the Kim Family. It's absurd to believe there wouldn't be prejudice against foreigners in a society so backward even educated adults can't figure out how postage stamps work.

But JK Rowling was never good at working out the fine details, nor was she good with the full implications of what life would actually be like based on the parameters she set.

I always thought that was weird.

Like with the Indian and Chinese characters, don’t they have their own schools of magic in their native culture?

Magic outside of the west is treated very differently. and it made no sense to me why a bunch of immigrants, who are probably no more than 2nd generation, would send their kids to the school full of snobby upper class white British people.
Which also comes at the expense of their kids learning nothing of their own heritage and being beholden to a society that can’t event employ them as some others have pointed out.

Isn’t the whole premise of magical ability in Harry Potter based around genetic lineage?

As in you have to have some relation to a wizard at some point in your heritage to be able to do magic in the first place?

Are all the Indian and Chinese and black students actually mixed race? did a wizard rape one of their female ancestors during the colonial period?

Why would a society so hung up on titles and families even countenance allowing a bunch of immigrants with no lineage in?

Why would any immigrant want to be a part of this society which not even thirty years ago had large swathes of their population murdered and terrorized by these same radical purists.

 

[NerdShamer]

I always thought that was weird.

Like with the Indian and Chinese characters, don’t they have their own schools of magic in their native culture?

Magic outside of the west is treated very differently. and it made no sense to me why a bunch of immigrants, who are probably no more than 2nd generation, would send their kids to the school full of snobby upper class white British people.
Which also comes at the expense of their kids learning nothing of their own heritage and being beholden to a society that can’t event employ them as some others have pointed out.

Isn’t the whole premise of magical ability in Harry Potter based around genetic lineage?

As in you have to have some relation to a wizard at some point in your heritage to be able to do magic in the first place?

Are all the Indian and Chinese and black students actually mixed race? did a wizard rape one of their female ancestors during the colonial period?

Why would a society so hung up on titles and families even countenance allowing a bunch of immigrants with no lineage in?

Why would any immigrant want to be a part of this society which not even thirty years ago had large swathes of their population murdered and terrorized by these same radical purists.

TL;DR: Another missed opportunity from Rowling, even though there's an blurb about an wizarding school on top of Mt. Fuji, plus there's four other schools that were mentioned as the series went on.

 

[Truthspeaker]

TL;DR: Another missed opportunity from Rowling, even though there's an blurb about an wizarding school on top of Mt. Fuji, plus there's four other schools that were mentioned as the series went on.

That causes its own problems, though.

Japan has twice the population of the UK. Shouldn't it have twice the schools?

The US has six times the population of the UK. Why does it have only one school?

Furthermore, why is the only school in North America in the US? The Spanish got to the New World way before the English, and even if they hadn't, Mexico was orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anywhere to their north and most of what was to their south.

Why wasn't the school built in Mexico? The Aztec civilization was basically Dubai for practitioners of dark magic. Was it white supremacy? Clearly not, since even the most racist wizards and witches in the story never even imply they hold any of the prejudices actual muggles posses.

But Rowling also explicitly established that Amerindians didn't have wands, and that both wizarding schools established in the Americas were built by Europeans. Their inactions led to foreign invaders destroying their entire way of life, and left them second-class citizens a stranger could recognize as inferior by seeing their skin was bronze instead of beige ever since.

That's not even getting into every other country with a grievance against European Colonialism. Even when Europeans changed things for the best in spite of the atrocities, like in the Americas, there's no way the reactionary primitives which make up most of the Wizarding World would give a fuck about human rights or muggle welfare.

I know JK's capable of thinking thorny, downright horrifying issues through to their logical conclusions. She's an expert with figuring out the interrelations of personalities; and her best characters (in order: Snape, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Sirius, Molly Weasley) have utterly convincing backstories and arcs which hold up, in my book, to any of the greats.

But so much of her world is needlessly preposterous. She's in dire need of a ruthless, nerdy, possibly-even-autistic editor who cares about detail and continuity. A Comic Book Guy, who's not afraid to tell her that Quiddich is the stupidest idea for a sport in the history of civilization: and she should either come up with actual rules, that real people could make a game out of; or be forced to let him come up with the rules, and write the game based off those instead.

But if she didn't get that before selling her first milliin books, there's no way she'll ever get it afterwards.

 

[NerdShamer]

That causes its own problems, though.

Japan has twice the population of the UK. Shouldn't it have twice the schools?

The US has six times the population of the UK. Why does it have only one school?

Furthermore, why is the only school in North America in the US? The Spanish got to the New World way before the English, and even if they hadn't, Mexico was orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anywhere to their north and most of what was to their south.

Why wasn't the school built in Mexico? The Aztec civilization was basically Dubai for practitioners of dark magic. Was it white supremacy? Clearly not, since even the most racist wizards and witches in the story never even imply they hold any of the prejudices actual muggles posses.

But Rowling also explicitly established that Amerindians didn't have wands, and that both wizarding schools established in the Americas were built by Europeans. Their inactions led to foreign invaders destroying their entire way of life, and left them second-class citizens a stranger could recognize as inferior by seeing their skin was bronze instead of beige ever since.

That's not even getting into every other country with a grievance against European Colonialism. Even when Europeans changed things for the best in spite of the atrocities, like in the Americas, there's no way the reactionary primitives which make up most of the Wizarding World would give a fuck about human rights or muggle welfare.

I know JK's capable of thinking thorny, downright horrifying issues through to their logical conclusions. She's an expert with figuring out the interrelations of personalities; and her best characters (in order: Snape, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Sirius, Molly Weasley) have utterly convincing backstories and arcs which hold up, in my book, to any of the greats.

But so much of her world is needlessly preposterous. She's in dire need of a ruthless, nerdy, possibly-even-autistic editor who cares about detail and continuity. A Comic Book Guy, who's not afraid to tell her that Quiddich is the stupidest idea for a sport in the history of civilization: and she should either come up with actual rules, that real people could make a game out of; or be forced to let him come up with the rules, and write the game based off those instead.

But if she didn't get that before selling her first milliin books, there's no way she'll ever get it afterwards.

Maybe she's only listing off the most prestigious schools in the world, but it still doesn't cover an lot of things. Such as the elitism that comes between someone who went to an Ivy League college and a public school graduate. And speaking of other countries, why not throw in Australia? I heard that the Aboriginals were the spiritual and mystical type.

 

[millais]

Maybe she's only listing off the most prestigious schools in the world, but it still doesn't cover an lot of things. Such as the elitism that comes between someone who went to an Ivy League college and a public school graduate. And speaking of other countries, why not throw in Australia? I heard that the Aboriginals were the spiritual and mystical type.

Yes, the Abo penchant for sleeping on roads is no dumber than this Anglo Wizard penchant for shitting on the floor instead of building indoor plumbing and municipal sewage system.

 

[Safir]

She is just writing her own fan fiction at this point. What kind of audience is she aiming for?

Herself, as is always with fanfiction.

Very few people were ever interested in Dumbledore's sexual orientation, even less his sex life.

Also, sex was never brought up in the original book series, even in the latter books when the main characters were older and their hormones should be in uproar (I think they mentioned make outs at best). So for her to suddenly bring up intense sexual relationships in relation to the franchise is just weird.

Because she isn't into teens or seniors. But now that Dumbledore and Grindelwald are played by middle-aged men she has the hots for, she wants to Make The Bois Kiss.

 

[Truthspeaker]

Herself, as is always with fanfiction.


Because she isn't into teens or seniors. But now that Dumbledore and Grindelwald are played by middle-aged men she has the hots for, she wants to Make The Bois Kiss.

Johnny Depp hasn't been good looking in like ten years, on account of being a balding, haggard substance abuser.

Being fair to Rowling, I assumed Dumbledore and Grindlewald did it the moment after she said Albus was gay and in love with with Wizard Hitler. There's never been a suggestion that wizards have taboos against sexual relationships between adults as long as you don't knock up a muggle or a giant or a werewolf or any other race wizards see as beneath them.

Even Voldemort, the most racist and reactionary wizard ever depicted in the story, never took a crack at Dumbledore for being overly fruity, and he killed his own father and grandparents for being muggles.

It's James and Lily's relationship I never understood. It's common for wizards and witches to live well over a century, but James and Lily got together at the end of their schooling. Lily mostly disliked James throughout schooling; but he was handsome, rich, and not racist enough to call her a mudblood in front of the whole school, so he ended up winning out.

But assuming her and James didn't plan on getting assassinated in their early twenties, shouldn't she've been worried that the handsome, impulsive wizarding heir to a literal giant pile of money she married in her late teens wouldn't exactly take to monogamy?

Sure, it's a children's story, but so was Star Wars, and Leia worries the same thing about Han in ESB. Sure, Lily was basically everything a man could hope for, but so was Elin Nordegren, and every single woman Tiger Woods cheated on her with was well below her league.

It's hardly the hardest detail to swallow in a story where the fourth book revolves around a sporting event that displaces the only profitable sport in existence for an entire season, where two of the three events are invisible to spectators, but it's hardly unimportant.

 

[NN 401]

Johnny Depp hasn't been good looking in like ten years, on account of being a balding, haggard substance abuser.

Being fair to Rowling, I assumed Dumbledore and Grindlewald did it the moment after she said Albus was gay and in love with with Wizard Hitler. There's never been a suggestion that wizards have taboos against sexual relationships between adults as long as you don't knock up a muggle or a giant or a werewolf or any other race wizards see as beneath them.

Even Voldemort, the most racist and reactionary wizard ever depicted in the story, never took a crack at Dumbledore for being overly fruity, and he killed his own father and grandparents for being muggles.

It's James and Lily's relationship I never understood. It's common for wizards and witches to live well over a century, but James and Lily got together at the end of their schooling. Lily mostly disliked James throughout schooling; but he was handsome, rich, and not racist enough to call her a mudblood in front of the whole school, so he ended up winning out.

But assuming her and James didn't plan on getting assassinated in their early twenties, shouldn't she've been worried that the handsome, impulsive wizarding heir to a literal giant pile of money she married in her late teens wouldn't exactly take to monogamy?

Sure, it's a children's story, but so was Star Wars, and Leia worries the same thing about Han in ESB. Sure, Lily was basically everything a man could hope for, but so was Elin Nordegren, and every single woman Tiger Woods cheated on her with was well below her league.

It's hardly the hardest detail to swallow in a story where the fourth book revolves around a sporting event that displaces the only profitable sport in existence for an entire season, where two of the three events are invisible to spectators, but it's hardly unimportant.

Rowling was asked, a long time ago, about why lily basically married an asshole.
She responded with something a bit disturbing about how women sometimes get taken by a certain kind of man. I’m paraphrasing here but it wasn’t some glowing endorsement of Lily’s decision and how it was true love.
Something about it made me think she was talking more about herself and her first marriage.
Maybe that’s why James Potter is depicted so ambivalently and why he is conspicuously second fiddle to Lily’s power of love schtick.

 

[Truthspeaker]

Maybe she's only listing off the most prestigious schools in the world, but it still doesn't cover an lot of things. Such as the elitism that comes between someone who went to an Ivy League college and a public school graduate.

This can't possibly be the case. The Weasleys are working-class Cornish, and the Malfoys are blue-blooded Normans.

Harry being a legacy and coming from a wealthy, aristocratic family was established; Hermione being part of an affirmative-action program by the dedicatedly anti-racist Headmaster Dumbledore also makes sense; Lilly Evans benefitting from that same program makes sense; as does Snape, who was depicted as by far the most talented and intelligent wizard of his generation.

But if the sixth-born, dipshit, Cornish son of the least-respected pureblood alive qualifies for seven years of beer and pie from slave laborers, they have to be serving all of the British Isles. If they're the only school in a country of sixty million, wizards should be so afraid of extinction, even the most rabid pureblood supremacist would support taking muggle women as concubines to stop their society from dying out.

There are probably more Faroese than Wizards. But there's a fucking pro-sports team in bleeding Cornwall of all places?

Rowling's admitted before that she's bad at math, and worse at geography. It reminded me of when Rian Johnson admitted he was a bad screenwriter, and my reaction to both is the same: fine, but what you've been attempting to accomplish is something you need to be at least good at to succeed, and you have more than enough money to hire someone to compensate for your weakness.

There's no need for any writer to be ashamed of hiring help: J.R.R. Tolkien developed Elvish on his own because he was a polyglot and a philologist. George R.R. Martin hired a linguist to develop Dothraka'i and Valyrian because he's not a linguist. Rowling can afford to have a geographer, a game designer, a sports journalist, a historian, and a statician on call at £200k pounds a year for the next half-century, and she wouldn't come close to denting her fortune.

Rowling was asked, a long time ago, about why lily basically married an asshole.
She responded with something a bit disturbing about how women sometimes get taken by a certain kind of man. I’m paraphrasing here but it wasn’t some glowing endorsement of Lily’s decision and how it was true love.
Something about it made me think she was talking more about herself and her first marriage.
Maybe that’s why James Potter is depicted so ambivalently and why he is conspicuously second fiddle to Lily’s power of love schtick.

Rowling might not want to admit that a relationship this popular and romanticized was never intended to be an endorsement.

I've dunked on Rowling quite a bit for her mathematical and geographic illiteracy, but she knows people well enough to understand a man like James Potter couldn't possibly stand to have sex with only one woman for potentially the next century.

She'll get grief, but she really should admit that good relationships and good dramatic potential don't necessarily overlap. Most emotionally healthy adults figure this out on their own in their mid-20s; but the Harry Potter Twittersphere contains precious few of either emotionally healthy adults, nor people in their mid-20s.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

Holy shit she is insane lol. Shitting all over her work for woke points.

 

[Silence of the Troons]

 

[madethistocomment]

I always thought that James got his shit together in like sixth or seventh year and stopped acting like a prick and that's why Lily ended up falling for him. Where are you guys getting the idea that he never changed?

 

[Silence of the Troons]

I always thought that James got his shit together in like sixth or seventh year and stopped acting like a prick and that's why Lily ended up falling for him. Where are you guys getting the idea that he never changed?

Yeah, there was one point in the fifth book where Harry asked Sirius or Lupin about why his parents had married each other after witnessing James bully Snape and Lily lash out at him because of it when taking a dip in the memory sieve (I don't know if that's what it's called in English but the Swedish translation is "minnessåll"). The person he asked replied that they started going out in the seventh year after James had calmed down and stopped being a brat.

 

[Muttnik]

Doesn't change the fact that James and his buddies literally almost got Snape killed by a werewolf until James felt guilty. Guy may have done the right thing and got better but what the fuck that's messed up.

 

[iRON-mAn]

It's in chapter 29 of Order of the Phoenix

Spoiler

‘Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around,’ said Sirius, shrugging, ‘he couldn’t stop himself showing off whenever he got near her. ‘

‘How come she married him?’ Harry asked miserably. ‘She hated him!’

‘Nah, she didn’t,’ said Sirius.

‘She started going out with him in seventh year,’ said Lupin.

‘Once James had deflated his head a bit,’ said Sirius.

‘And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,’ said Lupin.

It's not surprising that in the current climate idiots think that the girl falling for the popular, sporty, good looking guy acting macho is 'problematic'.

 

[Muttnik]

It's not the macho thing. I think it's just the fact that James did shitty, awful things when he was going through his arrogant streak and doesn't really make up for them beyond being nicer and a bit more mature. Did he try to apologize to Snape for beating the shit out of him/almost getting him killed/being an overall douche? No. We never see or hear about that. So he shapes up, yeah, but you never hear in detail that he really made amends for any of the stuff he did. That's just shitty writing on Rowling's part. The movies aren't any better because we never hear ANY explanation that James changed to begin with, which just makes him look like an asshole bully that unjustly got the girl in the end.

 

[iRON-mAn]

Rowling isn't a great writer sure, but we are seeing this all from Harry's perspective. I've never read any of the books and thought 'gee, I wish we could stop this dark lord stuff and find out all about James Potter's reformation and redemption'. It's just not pivotal to the main story and there's really no good reason to include it outside of James/Lily shippers fighting with Snape/Lily shippers.

I mean, Snape literally gets so angry that Lily stands up for him that he calls her a mudblood and ends up joining a murderous, racist cult because he feels so let down by the world. The only reason given for his change of heart is because Voldemort went after Lily. He was willing to see the whole world burn until it affected him and some one he cared about personally, and he get way more leniency than James Potter does.

 

[madethistocomment]

Rowling isn't a great writer sure, but we are seeing this all from Harry's perspective. I've never read any of the books and thought 'gee, I wish we could stop this dark lord stuff and find out all about James Potter's reformation and redemption'. It's just not pivotal to the main story and there's really no good reason to include it outside of James/Lily shippers fighting with Snape/Lily shippers.

I mean, Snape literally gets so angry that Lily stands up for him that he calls her a mudblood and ends up joining a murderous, racist cult because he feels so let down by the world. The only reason given for his change of heart is because Voldemort went after Lily. He was willing to see the whole world burn until it affected him and some one he cared about personally, and he get way more leniency than James Potter does.

Also, didn't Snape use Sectumsempra to slash James open in one of the memories in the memory sieve? He nearly killed the him, too, and I'm fairly certain he didn't apologize for it.

Neither incident of almost-killing is okay in the slightest, but it's not like Snape was a totally innocent victim. He did nasty shit to James, too.

 

[Muttnik]

I think the difference is that Snape is framed as 100% a polarizing anti-hero character whereas James was shaped from the beginning to be this well-loved hero that everyone spoke highly about until you find out what an asshole he was. Snape was by no means a misunderstood victim as he did his own fair share of awful shit. But the book portrays him as a nasty, flawed person that acted with courage and conviction and maybe even some redemption but was ultimately still a nasty flawed person worthy of just as much pity as contempt. It wasn't so for James because it just feels like he gets a free pass since everyone's judgments about him are colored with awe or friendship.

Snape and James were both equally horrible people. The only difference is that one is very clearly supposed to be seen that way and the other basically got rewarded with the girl and a legacy even though he didn't do that much to make up for it in the grand scheme of things.