"Dumbledore is Gay" sez Rowling

Harry Potter is not the millennial LOTR, it's the millennial Battlefield Earth.

People love CS Lewis and his worldbuilding is balls too, as Tolkien pointed out.

I do enjoy how the Wizards all make fun of "muggles" for trying to approximate magic, all while waiting months for owls with letters to arrive while the muggles get emails, texts, or snail mail in mere days.

A superior list.

More than 200 writers and publishers sign letter in support of trans and non-binary people https://t.co/bXG7z9bU0z

— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) September 30, 2020

I do enjoy how the Wizards all make fun of "muggles" for trying to approximate magic, all while waiting months for owls with letters to arrive while the muggles get emails, texts, or snail mail in mere days.

tbf I think it's made clear that Weasley dad's stance that muggle tech is actually very impressive and wizards should respect it more, while idiosyncratic in their world, is to be seen as correct.

Yeah but he’s seen as a weird fetishist, like a western hentai collector or something.

Funny you mention that, Rowling actually revealed in 2009 that Ron's dad loves hentai

xp right but I think narrative voice has it that it's an example of wizarding world's shortsightedness that he's seen as a weird fetishist, resonating with the general wizard bloodline obsession!

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-01/25/15/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/sub-buzz-28441-1485375523-1.jpg?downsize=600:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto

like I like that these wizards had strong olfactory coping mechanisms cos even if I knew the poo and pee would flee after a flick of the wand, dear god, the sensation of wading in it and smelling it for those 3 seconds would make me hurl

This is the YA fantasy version of Badger's Star Trek: TOS treatment.

re: that arthur chu thread, it's kind of astonishing how lazy and poorly thought out jk rowling's universe is, considering how big a deal it became

The vagueness made the Potterverse a great sandbox in which the fandom could play. Rowling has said many disturbing and distressing things, but you should have seen the butthurt entitlement when JKR started saying things that contradicted fans' cherished fanon.

You don’t even have to read that Arthur Chu thread to get that, is the thing, you just have to look at that map of wizard schools or read that tweet about wizards shitting themselves where they stood (!)

I'm with M John Harrison, world-building is for rpgs tbh

yeah but Harrison has style

When Rowling starts writing impressionistic mosaic novels set in the world of Hogwarts we can stop scrutinising the exactitude of that world. As it stands, the later Potter books are essentially bad RPG sourcebooks anyway.

In a book series of which a large part of the appeal is the world building, that world building should probably be a bit better than "before the wizards had plumbing they all shat in the corner."

It's just so weird to me that she didn't just leave it as a vague "which was a vast improvement on their previous system", but instead had to dive right into them being incredibly lazy and filthy.

Yeah but he’s seen as a weird fetishist, like a western hentai collector or something.

― seumas milm (gyac), Wednesday, September 30, 2020 12:17 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Funny you mention that, Rowling actually revealed in 2009 that Ron's dad loves hentai

― ✖, Wednesday, September 30, 2020 12:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

really underrated exchange here

Arthur Chu needs to bone up on his Latin, "imperio" is a perfectly fine Latin-y word for a spell that controls others. There's also the fact that Western magic has a long and grand tradition of using terrible Latin (and any other delicious-sounding words from antiquity) in their spells.

That said, fuck J.K. Rowling, I can't believe how shitty she is being on the trans issue.

Also before Europeans had plumbing they shat in pots and threw it out the window (or into the basement) so...

yes even versailles pretty notorious for people just shitting behind the drapes

xp yes, in pots, not literally on themselves

Not just a Euro trend:

https://livesandlegaciesblog.org/2015/07/15/of-chamber-pots-and-close-stools/

god help us all

I appreciate that yeah we can discuss the technicalities of JK as author and how fantasy fiction might work and still acknowledge that her public persona has been wicked, dishonest and destructive for years now

Also the current widespread acknowledgment of the toxicity of that persona makes shall we say robust critiques of her creative output particularly satisfying.

why couldn't they magick their excretions directly out of their bladders/intestines?

Yeah I feel double edged about that but fuck it's fair territory. I mean I don't think she's a good writer but I'm not strong on rules

xp obv

"Where they stood" doesn't necessarily imply "without even bothering to remove any clothing". One of my lingering disappointments with the Harry Potter books is how Rowling failed to make the school hallways as comically violent as they surely would have been given the combination of teenagers and the ease of both causing and healing bodily damage. Then again, magic in her novels is a cosmetic addition to the classic British school story. Her magic system simply won't bear very much scrutiny because the books aren't about magic, they're about schoolchildren, contrary to the way Lord of the Rings is about language and not hobbits.

I was willing to forgive a lot of the terrible stuff in the HP books (Rowling really, really wants to equate physical ugliness with evil which is some truly medieval bullshit) but once her true nature was revealed from incessant attacks on the trans community, it's hard not to revisit and re-evaluate all the questionable stuff in the HP novels.

why couldn't they magick their excretions directly out of their bladders/intestines?

Because the entire pelvic region is subject only to the supreme ironclad laws of biology which no human endeavor can ever change

you can imagine the Weasley twins developing a spell that makes you excrete out of your mouth, call it trittilo

f.hazel I.... don’t think it matters if they were clothed or not, they were still shitting on themselves like

this might be better for the bidet thread

otm about the magic. the stories are about wizards who can cast spells to do pretty much anything but there’s this pretty much total lack of interest in integrating this into the kids’ reality. the spells just kind of mimic guns, handcuffs, hypnotism etc

ditto the ghosts. it’s like, ghosts exist!! and then, well, they pop up now and then for comic relief. could never tell the difference between peeves and filch. when i read out loud to my kids they had the same voice.

people are immortal as ghosts and in paintings, but this is basically never explored or useful as a plot point, when obviously it should be, these are people from history, who you can talk to!

Rowling really, really wants to equate physical ugliness with evil which is some truly medieval bullshit)

This is the bottom line

The rank hypocrisy when she called out body shaming online

the conversational paintings always remind me of the ROM construct Dixie Flatline from Neuromancer

the ghosts and paintings are used as plot points iirc, like when they're trying to find the Ravenclaw themed Horcrux in book 7. but yeah it's not like a hard scifi "in a world where ghosts around, culture and society would be so totally different, let's explore that" kinda thing.

not to come to rowling's defense as she is obv terrible, but the books clearly begin from a "fun bedtime stories" mode, heavily loaded up with Roald Dahl and a grab-bag of silly fantasy elements. you don't really expect "world-building" there --- but when the books morphed into an epic YA fantasy series, they were still stuck with this fairly goofy, punny, kitchen-sink universe that makes no goddamn sense. each attempt to expand the wizarding world's geography and institutions beyond Hogwarts and Diagon Alley just made things less believable.

moaning myrtle's witnessing of historical events also is important, ghost-wise, but the series is full of other devices like the Pensieve for doing that kind of stuff. basically the issue is that the ghosts don't do anything of their own volition, just hang around waiting for someone to ask them the right question.

why couldn't they magick their excretions directly out of their bladders/intestines?

― mookieproof, Thursday, October 1, 2020 11:07 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ahem:

This is the YA fantasy version of Badger's Star Trek: TOS treatment.

― Quiet Storm Thorgerson (PBKR), Wednesday, September 30, 2020 7:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the books clearly begin from a "fun bedtime stories" mode, heavily loaded up with Roald Dahl and a grab-bag of silly fantasy elements. you don't really expect "world-building" there --- but when the books morphed into an epic YA fantasy series, they were still stuck with this fairly goofy, punny, kitchen-sink universe that makes no goddamn sense. each attempt to expand the wizarding world's geography and institutions beyond Hogwarts and Diagon Alley just made things less believable.

This is OTM. Rowling definitely a victim of her own success creatively, if the books had sold more modestly she likely either would have scaled back her misguided ambitions for the latter half of the series, or an editor would've done it for her. It would take a far defter writer to pull off the gradual tonal shift she was presumably going for.

imo the main point of arthur chu's thread is not that jkr makes mistakes. it's that she is now in a position where anything even slightly lazy or incorrect gets amplified. and while it's more amusing that anything when it comes to spell and name origin, there is quite a bit more at stake when you get something wrong about a whole group of people - and instead of understanding your responsibility, you insist on amplifying incorrect info - while knowing full well that your amplification will be used as a weapon against these people.

and jkr getting called out on these things (which have been well documented before) is exactly because she now presents herself as the "voice of reason" on transgender issues. so what was seen as a mere inconsistency or lazy research will be now similarly magnified. deservingly so.

speaking of inconsistencies in HP.. "The vagueness made the Potterverse a great sandbox in which the fandom could play." - it also allowed the fandom to call out things that are handwaved in the novels. http://www.hpmor.com/ even with its own failings is a great example of a fanfic that calls out all the ridiculous rules / spell names etc etc and tries to at least retrofit the magic system with some more consistent logic (often to hilarious and better results).

if i were to pick the most ridiculous thing though, it's the polyjuice potion. apparently, it's entirely possible - not just possible, but totally ok - to change your gender if you use magic. don't remember if this was just in the movie, but when a bunch of them takes the potion in the beginning of deathly hollows, fleur says (as she changes into harry): "bill, don't look at me, i'm hideous". a throwaway cheap comic relief line, sure, but now combined with everything else it's amplified to something nastier.

But could also be read in the "death of the author" spirit as a depiction of the visceral pain felt by people forced to present as a gender they're not (since Fleur actually IS a girl and would suffer that pain when appearing as Harry.)

HPMOR is one of the worst fucking things on the Internet, almost bad enough to make me feel sorry for JKR for getting famous enough for her work to inspire fic. It’s like, none of the things people like about the series written and delivered condescendingly and full of massive Do You Sees & it’s almost, almost enough to make me take back what I said about JKR being a lazy writer wrt the magic.

This reviewer otm, basically:

This story reminds me of reading Ayn Rand, where a fictional story is merely a vehicle for bludgeoning the reader with a "superior" worldview; characters espousing said worldview win out over those who don't in equal parts wish fulfillment on the part of the author and morality play for the reader. Rather than organic dialogue, the reader receives mini-lectures delivered using different characters as mouthpieces and/or sounding boards. In this chapter, it was the Sorting Hat waxing on thoughts of self-awareness in the Harry Potter analogue of machine consciousness, the author's professional bailiwick.

I'm sure you've all read the Ayn Rand's Harry Potter series from The Toast?

https://the-toast.net/2014/06/18/ayn-rands-harry-potter-prisoners-collectivism/

"HPMOR is one of the worst fucking things on the Internet" granted, still the way it exposes the various inconsistencies and plot holes is hilarious.

(this is not from HPMOR) like, why the hell wouldn't harry just talk to dumbledore's portrait to get at least some intel?