The only teacher that treats Neville Longbottom like he isn't a complete waste of space is Professor Sprout. Weird how the only class Neville excells in is the one wherein his teacher actually teaches him.
TRUE! I want to believe that in the canon of the universe Neville is the teacher that looks out for the students that fall behind or get bullied and becomes the safe space for those that need a little extra support🥹
That is part of the reason why i really hate the Idea of Kids playing these charakters that are basically a laughing Stock, let alone the Fact that the Actor of Neville was asked to not get Braces cause it fit the charakter. No child, in the Time of Social Media should be made into a laughing Stock. Harry Melling the Actor of Dudley even told, how he was bullied, cause of his roll, and now that in the Time of Social Media. Wonderfull, thanks Joanne.
@@bloob9147absolutly, it could be so cute, teach Kids how it is ok if a boy prefers Flowers and it is ok to be a Introvert, but the Narative constantly makes fun of him, and how he is just so incompetend, even Hagrid maies fun of him, saying how he is less worth cause he is not so good in magic.
"one of the most dangerous things in the books: that loving, trustworthy adults will sometimes ask them to keep secrets and break rules for them" i about got chills from that
I finally got to the end and I was not expecting Hagrid to be the winner, but holy cow I had forgotten how much inappropriate stuff he got the kids into.
Lets not forget that not only was Dumbledore friends with wizard Hitler, he was *gay* for wizard Hitler. JKR really looked at her creepy old man character who spied on prepubescent boys sneaking about the castle and had a close relationship with a bigot during his younger years and was like, yeah, that's the one I'll make the singular gay character in this whole franchise now that its over. jfc
@@Poisonouscosmic Also, there is a very homophobic undertone to this - that gay relationships cause suffering whilst heterosexual relationships lead to happiness. Total rubbish but that JK's views in a nutshell!
And then she made wizard Hitler motivated by trying to prevent WW2 and the Holocaust. Nope, not kidding, he's the only wizard who actually wants to prevent all that. That whole situation in the prequel movies is just horribad across the board.
In the fourth book we see Cho constantly surrounded by her friends to the point where Harry has to ask her to step away for minute to ask her to the ball. In the fifth book after her boyfriend is horrifically murdered we see her often alone or just with Marietta. Meaning she was the only one who stuck with Cho after her loss, since I guess her other friends also thought she was being a drag? You know, what with her grieving and all? Idk i would also assume a friend like that was trustworthy, and if she ratted us out after being bullied and threatened I'd stick up for her too. I guess James Potter gets room to grow and change but and can be forgiven for bullying as a teenager but another teenager can't be forgiven for caving under pressure after consistently being a good friend? Nice.
"fleur delacour is one of my favourite characters" agreed, and her actress did a really nice job making her endearing despite rowling's attempts to make us bristle at her
The thing I always wondered (feared really) about the hatred of Fleur is that it is not only because she is super pretty, but because she is super pretty as a result of not being entirely human. She is part Veela and all the hatred might just be resentment and hatred of miscegenation. The whole series has deeply eugenic undertones after all.
I don't really think this has much to do with physical harm, but I've never really liked the way that Luna Lovegood is described. The character herself is delightful, but the fact that even the main characters call her weird and loony all the time and nobody seems to make much of an effort to connect with her on a human level. This is just kind of bothersome, because it implies that people like her, who read things that other people don't read and wear things that other people don't wear and believe in things that most don't, are weird and should have to be taken with a grain of salt by "the normal people". That's an odd message, especially since Luna is a way more interesting character than many of the people who call her weird.
it definitely contributed to my feelings of ostracization as kid, I was described as weird and off-putting and quirky (turns out it was just regular old autism lol) and I related very strongly to Luna, but none of the characters believing her or really wanting to be around her hurt, it added to the feeling that there was something wrong with me and if I could just be normal maybe I'd have more friends. It was nice though, having a character like myself, someone I saw in myself and could relate to. So, mixed bag I guess
@@skeleletonboi4533it also turned out that Luna was generally right and the other characters should have listened to her, so there was a real opportunity for it to become a positive message about not judging or discounting people just for seeming different if only there was a little more self-reflection depicted on the part of the protags for their earlier behavior toward her.
@@skeleletonboi4533 I think it's something the movies did well with Luna, because she's the same character, but you don't really hear that many people saying that she's weird or anything. Even friends of hers like Ginny and Harry think she's weird and Hermione and Ron essentially discredit her support of Harry completely because she wears unique earrings. She's a great character, but she's treated kind of awkwardly by JK Rowling. I wouldn't really expect any sort of understanding from JK Rowling, though.
I was a goth kid I the nineties. In Ireland. I therefore remember a time when being different in any way was a huge social problem.To me, Luna’s treatment reflects a time before any nerds or weirdos were respected for being cool.
Harry Potter is a boy who grew up in the muggle world just like Hermione. He’s our POV character. And we’re supposed to NOT be horrified when he’s just… okay with slavery? Despite having been raised in modern muggle society? He’s one of the first people to roll his eyes at S.P.E.W. We’re supposed to like this kid?
He literally inherits a slave at one point and his only complaint is that that particular slave sucks…. Even as a CHILD this bothered me. Dobby is his “black friend” but he’s still a racist.
@@raingilkes3502Harry initially hates Kreacher because he views him as responsible for Sirius' death. He also has no desire to own a house elf. It's not like he was like oh man, I wish I inherited a different one.
@@propogandalf That doesn’t negate the fact that he has no problem with the concept of slavery, or the idea of inheriting a slave, regardless of his personal feelings for him. He’s still pro-slavery and it’s never addressed as a negative trait. At no point is he bothered by the concept of slavery the way he should be. Your argument is weak.
@@adamdavis1648 It might explain it but considering it’s never brought up as an in universe explanation, it’s just behavior Harry performs/believes in, and we’re not supposed to question it. Which means one can only logically come to the conclusion that the author endorses these behaviors and beliefs. If at any point Harry had stopped and gone WOW MY AUNT AND UNCLE WERE WRONG you might have a point, but he doesn’t.
the elf situation actually really confused me as a kid. Like Hermione is right, they should be free, but why everyone is making fun of her? I even thought I was just not smart enough to understand it
Along with Moaning Myrtles traumatizing backstory, this threw me off so much as a child. I remember thinking "wait, maybe the next book will rectify this and both me and Hermione will be vindicated" That book never came
Remember when JK pretended that Hermione was supposed to be black the whole time… imagine, the whole world hating on the black girl for abhorring slavery
i think Hermione's hair is worth mentioning along with the incident with her teeth. at the yule ball, she puts her hair in a bun and makes it "sleek and shiny" with a potion and it's implied to be one of the reasons she actually looks nice for once, which really hurt my feelings as a kid because her representation for people with hair like mine was really important to me. don't even get me started on how disappointed i was with Emma Watson's hair in the movies. it really reinforced the idea that curls need to be straightened, or pulled back and hidden to make you beautiful.
Yes! I felt so bad after reading the Yule ball stuff. I have buck teeth and frizzy hair. Made me wish so badly that i could shrink my teeth too. Im still on the never ending journey of taming the frizz
@@twistedspike69 Let me know your secrets if you ever manage it. Mine was nice when I lived in a place that was dry as a bone, but now with humidity it's like it laughs at the concept of gravity. She got an international sports star interested in her with her horrid hair and personality, yet the (abusive) guy she was meant for only noticed her when she was willing to spend hours worth of effort to change an aspect of herself temporarily to be pretty enough to be worthy. Gimme a break.
Oh, regarding Lupin and the AIDs parallels, don't forget he has a kid with Tonks (which is it's own discussion about her, a woman who can literally turn her body into anything and had spiked, colourful hair, becoming a good little wife and mother when she found a man), and is worried about passing the condition to his children. And in supplementary material, we find out that Harry, Ron and Hermione, despite Harry and Ron apparently "revolutionising the Auror department", and Hermione being the literal Minister of Magic, were unable to make Wolfsbane potions free for everyone with lycanthropy, because of "lack of funding/support", despite there being spells to literally duplicate things, and potions, infinitely. Rowling is a neo-liberal who doesn't believe in any systemic changes, and has applied that mindset to a world of literal magic.
@@scarletsabre8383 Jesus, that is the most neoliberal thing I’ve heard in fiction. “Well we WANTED to change things but gosh darnnit people just didn’t care enough!”
@@VoidNull9222 "Guess all those people suffering will just have to pay for their healthcare, despite us living in what should be a post-scarcity society, since we can replicate food, water, money, and potion ingredients endlessly!"
@@scarletsabre8383hermione failed because of the way she went about it, she was trying to force something on the house elves without actually listening to them and trying to understand them.
Ron suggesting Tom Riddle earned a trophy for killing Myrtle and say that'd be "doing everyone a favor," is genuinely one of the most foul and hateful things I've heard coming from a protagonist of any children's book series... I mean, this video illuminated A LOT of hateful and disgusting things implied AND outright stated in this book series. Not to downplay any of the other stuff, but that part really got to me as someone who connected with Myrtle when I watched the films as a kid. I genuinely saw some part of myself in that character but was too young to understand what her character represented or how grim it was that she was bullied in life and death.
She was literally bullied and Murdered in a race based hate crime. Forced to be stuck in the room she was Murdered in. How is she anything but a sympathetic victim
@The80sWolf_ she was literally the victim of a hate crime. And her only real character flaw is being kinda annoying and lacking social cues. Not all the other things jkr forced upon her as a charater
J. K. Rowling's idea of morality is kinda weird. It's ok to be mean and a bully as long as you're in the good guys team so yeah, Ron gets a pass of course
very interesting that when a traumatized teenage girl is crying she’s weak and dramatic, but when Hagrid, an adult man, is crying because of the consequences of his own actions he deserves sympathy and it’s these childrens’ job to make him feel better
It’s like JKR’s entire ego and self-worth hinges on the fact that she overcame an abusive relationship and so she views women that are currently struggling with trauma as weak so that she can feel strong in comparison. As a full on adult smh
I love Ursula K Le Guin so much. Her Earthsea series is SO much better than hp 😭😭 I’m reading The Left Hand of Darkness rn, and let me just say. Ursula had better views in the 60s than Just Kidding Rowling does now.
@@_halo_09Have you read _Always Coming Home?_ It's very different, quite the experience, and you might want to ease yourself into it by reading the short story "May's Lion" first; but it's probably the world's best post-apocalyptic novel (although "novel" is too incomplete of a word).
That doesn't surprise me one bit. It's sad that Le Guin had to see a subgenre that she practically pioneered (youth wizarding academy) in the hands of such a jerk four decades after the fact.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is another good HP alternative. There’s forty books total with several subseries. They’re surprisingly progressive and empathetic overall. The early books can be a bit rough, but later on, they’re full of diverse and strong representation, particularly for women and neurodivergent people. There’s queer representation (albeit limited) in the City Watch series from Feet of Clay onward and Monstrous Regiment. I’m especially impressed by how the City Watch crime series is able to consistently sidestep copaganda. Night Watch, Small Gods, and Monstrous Regiment are my favourites.
I definitely wouldn't feel so passionate about HP's plot holes, weird world building and problematic choices, if it never had such a big place in my heart.
Accurate. I grew up with the movies and was honestly very glad I waited til adulthood to read the books. Bought a British set used, and for the first time in my life was actually annoyed that I essentially got a signed copy lol Seller didn't list that. Understandable these days lol
HP was there for me when I was a basically friendless child. It was heartbreaking when I found out about JK Rowling’s views, and when upon rereading the books/rewatching the movies after years I saw all those problematic things that as a kid I simply didn’t notice
Fleur is a talented, intelligent, loyal, strong, genuinely kind person. She is very much in love with Bill because of who he is and how he makes her feel. I find it interesting that Rowling has the other women ridicule and belittle her endlessly, especially Molly, when she's exactly the type of person you should want to fall in love with your son and vice versa. What little we see of Bill and Fleur's relationship is healthier by far than, for example Ron and Hermione's, or Remus and Tonks's.
@@interestingemail561 I’m choosing to believe that she turned 18 before meeting Bill, but I definitely see your point. Then again, JKR calls Lolita “a tragic love story”, instead of a cautionary tale of how sick pedophiles really are.
@@interestingemail561I honestly did not remember that at all 😢 ffs But like... For once pretending that that isn't incredibly weird because it's fiction... They are better 😅
My friends and I have a running conversation that Harry Potter is the single most incurious protagonist possible for an Urban Fantasy. The kid has no desire to learn or know more, outside of combat spells. History? Theory? Current Events? those have to be imprinted into his skull via blunt force trauma.
he's so weirdly unlikable lol. intellectually curious? no, this child who grew up in our world finds the details of literal magic boring. empathetic? no, he's coldly callous to everyone who isn't part of his dumbledore-based little cult mindset. physically weak but mentally or morally strong? no, he's a famous jock. poor kid who fought his way up? no, he has literal mountains of money. we're supposed to like him because he's an orphan and because the books keep ripping any father figures he finds away from him (and because i guess he just isn't interested in viewing the weasleys that way) but like... hermione essentially orphans herself at the end lmao
@@supernova9361 The job of the "fish out of water" protagonist in an Urban Fantasy is to ask questions. To establish the rules of the setting, the magic system, all that. Percy Jackson, Valkyrie Cain, whoever your mortal protagonist who gets dragged into the supernatural is they are the audience surrogate. What we know about the world is what they know about the world.
this is all so criticized for no damn reason. Harry is the protagonist, and the eyes of the story-eyes that are quiet and always absorbing-but he’s only one of THREE leaders. Hermione is the curious one-it’s sort of her duty as a character… she leads in her own way and balances out Harry and Ron. It’s why she rocks. Harry is boring because Harry is a stoic and a savior. Ron is a soft goofball because Ron is the heart and the family. Hermione is the intellectual because Hermione is the problem solver and holds wicked logic. They all need each other to fill out flaws, that is the POINT. I find that people are really quick to project dumb ideas onto things that have ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN instead of just taking the story for what it is. So what? Because someone doesn’t speak it makes them incurious? That’s so silly. I find that the most curious people are also often the most composed. How could the one character in the story who wants to save others the MOST be deemed un-empathetic? Get a grip ❤️
There's a conversation to be had here about abuse victims coming to need direction from a controlling person to do anything, and after being "let go" they find themselves lost because they've lost that direction.
A thing that really pisses me out about Filtch's characther and treatment is that even if it was unintencional being a squib is the closest we have to disability being adressed in Harry Potter. I mean the biggest diference between a squib and a muggle is that by being born from a wizard family in the wizard world it is expected that they'll be able to peform magic but they have a rare condicion that stops them from doing something that is socialy expected for them and are excluded and ostracized for it. Filtch message isn't that untalented people are jealous and bitter, that's Petuania's, no Filtch message is that disabled people are jealous and bitter and society should adress it by pitting them, isn't Dumbledore nice for giving a job to a disabled man while giving him no acomodations and clearly treating him as less, what Rowling is saying is that disabled people just deserve to be mocked and pittiet and accomodating us is insane. Not only that but Filtch cleaning the magic school by himself without magic also enters in the stupid idea that actually giving acomodations to disabled people is way more ofensive. We need to deserve a place by hard work and be thankfull for it. A thing I internalized hard, I had - and still have but less - a strong need to always be a "high funcional" autistic person, refusing accomodatjons I clearly needed as to not midly inconvenience people and botling all up, laughting at being making a mockery cause the fact they were making fun of me was better than the only other alternative media gave of being pittied (it is not true people can actually just like you). So yeah I absolutly hate how Filtch and all the squibs are treated in this series.
Yeah i wrote something like this when someone said if you remove all the bad stuff from HP you would have a complete different story. I made some chances about Filch caracter and this is what i came up with in like 20 minutes. Filch loved his cat because it was the last gift a sibling of him gave before they died (in the story my way he was the black sheep of the family, because he was the only one who couldn't do magic in the family, and his family comes from a long family-tree of witches and wizards). Him and that sibling were close because they were the only person that respected him and tried to understand him. The job at Hogwards was just a reason to leave his family, because after the death of his sibling he didn't had no one expect his cat. In the story how i would write it he isn't a guy who wants to harm children. He is just a grumpy old guy with a cat. At least that is what Harry sees first, but in book 6 Harry would be walking in the halls and hears a voice of a young witch or wizard thanking Filch. Harry will pop his head in the room because he never would think someone would be thanking Filch. He will see Filch helping a physically disabled student and learned this way Filch has a softer side and isn't just a grumpy old man with a cat. Harry will then do some self reflecting and realize he was a lot of the time a jerk to Filch for no reason (like when he was 12 and made a mess while Filch just cleaned up the halls, he could have at least used a spell to dry himself of so Filch didn't have to do extra work). A while then he will go to Filch and will give him a apology for being a little jerk all these years, Filch who is a normal acting adult will accept his apology and tells him he is thankfull that Harry is grown up enough to say sorry, something adult like him struggel with sometimes, he will tell Harry then some of his backstory (like his experience as a disabled person and how people can be so rude to you for no reason except they can do magic and he can't). Filch has good relationship with the disabled witches and wizards (and i mean that he is a father figure to them) and it's one of his favoriete things of his job (to be abel to help children who in some way are like him). After Voldermordt dies Filch is no longer a janitor, he is a teacher in the school and he teaches the studenten that you shouldn't treat people bad because they are different from you (like people like him, people who are born from non magic parents, people who are hybrides and the magic creaors) to make sure their that the children who still have parents with pure-blood believes that thinking that way is not okay. Like we could have this but JK had to be a hatefull person.
RE:The entry on Dudley. I've been fat all my life and I was a huge Harry Potter fan as a kid. I can tell you for sure that seeing the way Dudley was described really laid the foundation for years of internalized fatphobia to build on. I was never bullied for my size, but seeing just how vitriolic fat people are treated in media was enough to give me low self-esteem and body image issues I am still unlearning to this day as an adult. The thing about the Dursleys being described in such a nasty hateful way, I thought that I must be one of the good ones because despite being fat, I wasn't anywhere near the size that Dudley was supposed to be. Another commenter mentioned that JKR uses "fat" to describe the bad fat characters and "plump" to describe the good fat characters, and they're 100% right. It just instilled in me at such a young age that being fat was bad and evil, but you could be plump or chubby and it was fine. So yeah JKR can get bent.
Same here. Being a fat kid and a Harry Potter fan could be rough sometimes because of how the books, who spent a lot of time preaching love and acceptance, and go 'ew lol' at fat people-but its okay because they're bad people. The only saving grace for me was Mrs. Weasley being 'plump' and nice.
It does not surprise me that Joanne is the type to not have any compassion for a woman crying in distress in a bathroom, to the point that she wrote an entire character making fun of them. She's so demented.
Jk Rowling: Trans people can't use the bathroom that aligns with their gender! Think of all the vulnerable cis women in them! Woman/girl: *is vulnerable in a bathroom * Jk Rowling: _Disgosting_
Funny thing about the time turner... Hermione could, and presumably should, have been able to use it to get as much sleep as she wanted. She should have been the best rested student in her year, because she could just turn time back a few hours and have a nap at any time.
Well, not exactly, because then there would have been two napping Hermiones in her bed a lot of the time, right? Other people waking up and noticing that is probably not a risk her character would ever take. And finding another location for those naps would have involved wandering through the school at night, so a lot of rule breaking.. again, not in character for her.
@@Anna-zk5zj hermoine breaks the rules all the time, when she thinks it’s warranted. If McGonagal had given her an ok, or some 24/7 magical hall pass, i think she would’ve been down
@@Anna-zk5zj These are things McGonnagal should have arranged for though. 60 Hermiones from different times could have easily napped together in the room of requirement (although of course Rowling doesn't come up with any ideas until the picosecond she needs them in a story, so the RoR deffo wasn't something she was thinking of
One of the big things that stood out to me rereading hp as an adult is that: Ron is a TERRIBLE influence on Harry. When something iffy happens, Hermione is always the one who says "Harry that sounds bad, you should talk to an adult," and Ron always says "Don't do that Harry, they'll just think you're crazy or take away your fun" like when Harry starts hearing voices from the snake in chamber of secrets, or gets the Firebolt. Ron really sucks and Hermione deserved better friends
Ron's entire purpose is basically to make the other two look better, when he isn't informing them on magical culture neither grew up in. Why the character has a fandom is beyond me.
A thing that makes the Winky case even worse is that even if Rowling tries to say that theres no paralelism between black slaves and elfs, she actively uses anti liberation propaganda. One, in particular, was the belief that liberated slaves become alcoholics because they lack a purpose in life beyond serving their masters... Sounds familiar
The Umbridge thing is SO revealing. Like, "oh no you said all that out loud Joanne!" revealing. I feel like if she met that woman now she'd just be like "well that's a man".
The immensely-telling irony is that Joanne became a different version of the thing she claimed to hate, i.e., a person who uses their own morality and goodness as a shield and an invisibility cloak.
@@dinosaysrawr True, but on the other hand, if you go back and read closely there's always been an intense distrust of tall or large women and girls, or women who do femininity in not exactly the 'correct' second-wavey way, in her writing.
@@michaeltonus3888 .yes! This very channel has a video underscoring how none of Joanne's female characters emerge unscathed, and woe be unto you if you happen to be fat, ugly, too masculine, or too feminine!
Fun thing about Hagrid referring to the centaurs as “mules”; mules are half-donkey half-horse hybrids. Hagrid is literally calling these people half-breeds while he is dealing with being persecuted for his half-giant status by umbridge. Why this specific word choice, J.K?
Rowling doesn't or at least didn't actually understand racism, in its many awful intricacies. I'll hazard to guess I don't myself, but there's more to racism than just negative stereotypes. If that's all racism really was, if "facts" were all it took to set people straight, it wouldn't be such a widespread thing, not as we know it anyway. More often the real driving force behind racism is the belief that "other" races are of lesser value, regardless of an individual's intent, merit or circumstance. So with Hagrid, the racism is simply that he is assumed to be more violent and malicious than he really is simply because he is half giant. To be racist against the centaurs in Rowling's world would be to assume something about them that simply isn't true. To call them mules by contrast isn't insulting, but descriptive in Potter world. You know, written by someone who doesn't actually get that belittling slurs are psychological tools racists use to reduce the value of the groups they address. Now she may have actually caught onto this later, as 'Crimes of Grindlewald' has the character give a speech about how he doesn't hate the non magic, while calling them literally every slur we know of for them and then some, but simply expressing that the non magic is of "different value", the way a "beast of burden" is of different value. THEN he gives people an excuse to want to attack them, after establishing their value is that of cattle. If it was just muggles use nuclear weapons and must be destroyed because of that, that sentiment would diminish once muggles stop using nuclear weapons. Similarly, if it was just about half giants being violent sadists, that would diminish once prominent half giants proved they weren't violent sadists. That one speech in the movie was a much deeper and more disturbing insight into racism and why it persists than anything written in the Harry Potter books.
McGonagall buys a broom for a student that is well known for having a massive fortune in his vault. Yet can't be bothered helping Ron, a student from a famuily that's notoriously poor get a replacement wand after his breaks.
Like it's probably the actors that help making the caracters more likebel. I get why Ron became so pissed at Harry and said it's unfair that Harry has all this money, how wouldn't you be.
It's also kinda messed up that you have to buy your own equipment for the school sports team? A sport where more expensive equipment can provide a _significant_ advantage, as we see in later books?
The final kicker in the "divination is a feminine field and gets looked down on" subplot is that a male character, Firenze the Native American-stand in centaur, comes along and is seen as the bigger expert who dismisses Trelawny's work as fussing over the small and irrelevant things when the bigger things actually matter. Totally not imitating red pill rhetoric about men being inherently better better and more productive than women or anything.
@@DieVorleserin-ok8zr Because Rowling is lazy and isn't good at female characters. Part of me thinks that it was to avoid the question of whether centaurs have mammaries on their human half and whether they cover them, especially since the centaurs of HP don't wear clothes and have no interest in human customs, but I don't believe that Rowling would think that deeply into a lore she seems to resent exploring. Side note, centaurs not having mammaries on their human half at all seems like a concept that's very underused. Of course, that would never happen in HP; Rowling would hate the idea of a female centaur looking indistinguishable from a male like that.
haven't finished video yet but wanted to add on Voldemort and the implication children born from SA are incapable of love/being loved (because to my memory he was conceived when his father was under the effect of a love potion) is just so gross to me too
Jesus Christ that's horrible. What a sick thing to imply in a book written for children. People born of rape (who know) already struggle with it. Joanne has serious issues.
This is just a stupid generalization. Just because a person who has a traumatic past becomes a villain doesn't mean that anyone who ever faces those traumas will definitely be evil. This is such a stupid and immature mindset. If these kinds of things make you people think the author is sick then you shouldn't even touch asoif as its beauty would be lost on you.
Another thing about Ron's "Fraternising with the enemy" line: He just tried to get a date with Fleur. Which would be exactly the same thing, if he hadn't failed. The hypocracy is real.
Ron says it out of jealousy. Ron says a lot of cruel things out of jealousy, anger, indifference or because it's ingrained culturally. And he never gets pushback; it's always Hermione being all emotional and silly and Harry being indifferent.
I thought it was intentional to point out that Ron *is* being a jealous hypocrite, but i realize alot of things that I thought were meant to be called put never actually are in the books....
I was under the impression that Fleur was part Veela which meant she was basically part Siren, which forced Ron into being infatuated with her even if he wasn’t before.
The reason JKR writes so many adult characters that never seemed to progress past their high school selves (Sirius, Lupin, Snape) is because SHE is the same way. Still a bully.
@@isadorav3949 entertaining ourselves from a much harder life that Molding has right now. None of us non millionaires can do what she's doing, can we? And if you call us losers from writting comments, what do you call Moldy here cciberbullying women on her Twitter account for her thousands of followers to see? Such a caring woman, am I right?
@@isadorav3949 "What are you doing besides writing youtube comments?" Says the person all over this comment section defending JKR. You know you can just not click on these videos, or read these comments, right?
@@Spamhardthat’s because almost all of the comments are massive reaches from people who have never actually read the books or didn’t understand anything about them...
@@isadorav3949Advocating for women? Really? By participating in a massive harassment campaign against a woman participating in the Olympics because she didn't present "feminine" enough for her and her transphobia rotten brain couldn't help itself? Spectacular advocacy - literally hurting and damaging the very group she claims to speak and advocate for. Try again.
It continues to strike me how cruel these books are. At her heart JKR is a cruel person who enjoys being nasty to people. Of course she doubles down when earnest fans try to call her in on her blinkered views: on some level she seems to revel in it.
Quick! How would JKR describe you? Me: Julie was a plain, chubby spinstress, with fat fingers, no chin, and a mannish nose. She taught magical psychology - a silly subject for silly girls with silly feelings. Whenever a child got seriously hurt or punished on school grounds, Julie would complain at staff meetings - making her a proper nag.
I'm transmasc without any HRT or top surgery, so I don't want even start thinking how JKR would describe me 💔 But I enjoyed your description! I think you're a great person :)
Alright, let’s see how I can make or translate this into something more objective… Julie, is an average looking, 5’7 human woman who’s not fat, but chubby, has a small chin, and prominent nose. She teaches magical psychology, which also involves alternatives in psychological treatments that may or may not include magic spells. She reports at school meetings about serious incidents where children get hurt.
What a fun game! Here's mine: "She was a thin woman with big buckteeth, a strong jawline and sharp cheekbones. Her hair was dirty blonde and boyishly short, which made her facial features look even more masculine. She wore black all over: black jeans, a denim jacket with all sorts of embroidery patches sewn on the back and and a t-shirt that had a 70's rock band's logo on it and looked like she had picked it from her father's closet. Harry thought she would have looked quite cool actually had the embroidery patches on her jacket not included various political movement signs. Her overall aura gave a strong impression of a woman who never had been nor ever was going to find a man to live with." I really think due to being a slim tomboy on the other hand JKR would label me as a cool not-like-other-girls, on the other she def would put me in the same box with Luna and/or Hermione with SPEW: a haha funny weird bullied woke sjw who will never get a man. The best plot twist? I'm non-binary.
Knew it was gonna be a wild ride when the big bad Voldemort was bottom of the terrible character list 😂 Not gonna lie though, I always loved Hagrid as a kid and it’s kind of heartbreaking to come to terms with the fact that he was just as disappointing of an adult character as all of the others, at the top of the list no less. Snape? Dumbledore? Been there, knew that. But the realization that Hagrid spent the entire series making the kids take care of his shit and getting drunk cut deep. I think Rowling was trying to make him a sympathetic gentle giant character, and it worked when I was young, but as an adult I can’t imagine knowingly letting literal children take the fall for my incompetencies and put themselves in danger
@@poppie267 No I see it as what it is as usual, I'm not obsessed eiher. EDIT response to the comment below this one: I don't refuse to see the truth though I see it instead, and no I'm not your obsessed little stalker friend.
This is true. I also think there’s valid criticism of the middle class/suburbia, but I see it as a part of the wider criticism of capitalism, which Rowling wouldn’t ever do. Plus, it’s perhaps too complex and propagandistic for a children’s book anyway. What bothers me too is the idea that conformity is bad and boring when the muggles do it, and Harry being different from them is an interesting and good thing from the book’s point of view. The Dursleys want Harry to be “normal,” and appearances being important is a bad thing. But then in the magic world, we still get judgment over physical appearances and “weird” characters (like Luna). It’s jarring to contrast that, which is fine bc it’s the magic world, and the criticism of the Dursleys
@@hydrogen3266 thank you and OP for pointing this out! i was just about to comment on this same thing, but you summarize it in a much more elegant and effective way than i could, which i very much appreciate as a suburbia resident and suburbia critic myself
This is super random and such a small, throwaway line, but I want to talk about the line in the 4th book you mentioned: Ron tells Hermione that he'd "rather go alone than with -- with Eloise Midgen," and Hermione retorts, "her acne's loads better lately -- and she's really nice!" When I was a kid, I thought acne was so cool. My parents told me that they had acne when they were teenagers, and that I would probably have acne too, and I was SO EXCITED, because I thought of it as a mark of growing up. I legitimately could not wait to start getting pimples. I remember one time when I was eight or nine, I got hives because of an allergic reaction, and I thought it was acne, and I was absolutely overflowing with happiness because I thought I was becoming a teenager. But I remember reading this line as a nine- or ten-year-old, and I remember being bewildered by it. Eloise Midgen became prettier when her acne went away? Eloise Midgen was unattractive-- like a "troll," in Ron's own words-- because of her acne? I don't want to go overboard and claim that this line was the sole cause of my hatred of my acne problems that did, in fact, arise when I hit puberty, but I think it was the first time I was told that pimples are unattractive. And yeah, I hated my acne when I actually started getting it (around age 13 or so). I thought it made me absolutely hideous, to the point that I LOVED wearing masks out in public when covid started, because they hid my face. Funny how just a few years of hearing that acne makes someone ugly was able to completely change my opinion on this thing that I thought was so fascinating and exciting before. (Sorry for the long comment but once I started writing I realized how much I had to say about this lol) (Edited for spelling and grammar)
I also gladidly wore masks during covid and well into 2023, i didnt want to let go of my shielding mask, my self esteem issues were (still are but better) sooooo bad :( (If It can help, thousands and thousands of people look for "details" and "imperfections" in people, so that just gives you a cool character design that stands out
Hmm, I think you might have come to dislike it, or at least feel neutrally about it anyways. The experience of having it isn't very pleasant, and it is technically an infection. However, it is interesting to wonder how you would have felt about it in the absence of our social environment. You seemed to have a very body positive outlook that I am honestly envious of even as an adult. Hope you kept it in some other areas.
I had severe acne for many years and I thought that line was discouraging and it did not help my already low self-esteem. I also felt for the poor girl trying to curse the pimples away.
As someone currently rereading the books as an adult with critical thinking skills, it's really insane just how unlikable most the characters are all the time. McGonagall in particular, their actors do a lot of heavy lifting in the movies !
At least she tried to keep Harry away from the Dursleys and give him a more loving family And was the only one to suggest stitching up Harry’s scar as a baby
@@tahraethestoryteller6079yeah I actually disagree with OP here since mcgonagal did surprisingly good on the series. she did have one drawback when she unfairly punished neville for Sirius break in. Neglecting that he only kept password list because Sir Cadogan constantly changed it. i did not say that Neville did not deserve point taken / light detention, I just disagree with extreme measure she taken to make sure that he alone cannot know the password.
@@dodixaber8968It just reminds me of typical ableism displayed in the school and workplace. They don’t mind the way you accommodate yourself until somethin absolutely insane happens then they decide you broke a rule.
I was expecting all the vowels to virtually disappear & simply become "TH TP THRT WRST CHRCTRS N HRR PTTR SSSSSSSSS" because they were in a register beyond human perception. 😂🤣
I think this video is a great argument against the whole ‘why can’t we all just act like someone nice wrote Harry Potter’ thing or the people taking the black mould joke seriously. JK Rowling’s biological essentialism and judgemental tendencies aren’t new phenomena, she’s been putting them in her work at every given opportunity. Pretending her transphobia is separate from the misogyny, racism, fatphobia, and antisemitism in her books is super disingenuous, because even the smallest bit of analysis of her character work shows the sheer hatred she holds towards anyone who doesn’t fit her standard for normalcy She used to act like a liberal icon who’s on the side of anyone who doesn’t belong, but the open disgust, hatred, and fascist sympathies we’re seeing now has always been just slightly below the surface for her
Ahh, her "standard for normalcy" is exactly what we should examine! I've noticed it especially badly with the way she depicts women - if they are even SLIGHTLY different from her in appearance or lifestyle, they are to be hated.
@@Levacque literally, like she claims to be a feminist but she holds so much contempt towards young girls in particular. If a girl enjoys femininity in her works, she’s vapid and annoying or just plain evil, and masculine girls are ugly and also evil. To be a good person, girls have to be feminine enough that they could become conventionally pretty if they tried, but not so feminine that they actually care about their appearance. They constantly have to be pitted against each other, and they can never be friends with other girls unless they’re related because other girls are awful It’s not surprising how much she hates trans women, because she doesn’t seem to believe you can have a positive relationship with womanhood. She seems to think only her experience with womanhood is valid, so trans women who absolutely love being women have to be faking to get off, and androgynous/masculine women who are comfortable in being women have to be lying. She seems so deeply insecure that I’d almost feel sorry for her if it hadn’t turned her into such a vicious bigot
Also, anyone else mad that Peter Pettigrew is described like an old man when realistically he's a man in his mid 30s? The thinning hairline and the white hair are... a choice.
I think Rowling tried to make sense of Peter aging so rapidly bc he aged in rat years, since he was in rat form for so long. It doesn't make any sense, once you consider that by that logic Rita Skeeter should've died already, but still: Rowling had an old rat, so she needed an old man to go along with it. Plus, old age can add to his ugliness and she certainly appreciated that
Some people do grey and bald earlier than others. I started going bald at thirteen. VERY slowly, but it still started. I knew a guy who was fully bald at 17, and he didn't start balding at 13 like I did, it just rapidly started falling away. I've seen guys in their seventies with still all their brown hair and women in the fifties all grey. A choice to be sure, but in this case somewhat plausible.
I was also gonna say as previous commenters mentioned that balding sing just for old men. My husband was balding in his early 20’s and has been shaving his head for the last 6 years.
Guys I'm aware that people have receding hairlines, balding or graying in a vast spectrum of ages, but that's not the point. I am fairly certain JK didn't give Peter those traits to represent a person with those traits, she gave them to him because they are ""ugly"" (BIG quotations). She just used, as always, very basic and trite writing shorthand to make an evil character ugly, so that there's no doubt they are bad. It's plausible, in a real world, but plausibility is not something she had in mind, I don't think.
I think with Ginny there was a huge missed opportunity to say that this emotionlessness and bullying personality that she seemed to develop was exactly BECAUSE of feeding her soul into Tom Riddle's book. Long term consequences? What are those??? Instead we have internalized misogyny. Man, imagine the things joanne could do if she didn't suck as a person.
Yeah, this was a point I'd honestly never considered, that Ginny toughened herself up because of being victimized by Riddle and deciding to never be vulnerable again. As opposed to JKR's explanation of "being around boys makes you a better person tee hee". I think JKR herself forgot about Ginny being possessed tbh
Ginny could have been such an interesting character and her experiences in CoS could have been used to build a bond between her and Harry who could have realized at some point that she's putting on a brave front but she's still dealing with the fallout from her first year. Instead, Harry forgot that she had been possessed by Voldie? God, the women in JKR's romances always get the short end of the stick.
RIGHT like a competent author (or at least one who doesn't hate women this much) could have turned Ginny's arc into a really interesting commentary on how even after the abuse is over, grooming can leave scars on a person and impact their ability to connect with others and their sense of self. Instead Harry and Ron are just like "wow it's a good thing Ginny got groomed and possessed so now she doesn't have that annoying ass personality anymore"
Also, the part about her pouring her heart to Tom Riddle could have been great as a cautionary tale about how abusers might seem kind at first, and how trusting strangers is dangerous (especially with the development of social media afterwards, and with forums at the time). But no, she *had* to make it misogynistic.
Hi, person who grew up as a fat kid reading HP here. Since you asked: The sad thing of it is, fatphobia is so deeply internalized by certain parts of my family that I laughed right along with all the Dudley jokes despite them very much being the kinds of things that I heard about myself from school bullies. It was just another thing in my life that reinforced all that self-hatred I would then have to spend many, many years unlearning.
I remember finding Dudley really uncomfortable to read about, but then just assuming I was wrong for feeling that way because everyone else around me thought it was acceptable. And kinda learning to think it was funny I guess?
I literally didn't even realize how internalized my fatphobia and self hatred was until watching this video. This series was my outlet as a kid, I must've read it at least 20 times. Thanks for breaking this down for me!
@@rinsuu9848 I’m (non)functionally a stick bug but you kind of exactly summed up how I felt about this as a kid. In other media too. ‘I can tell somethings wrong with this but… no one around me seems to have a problem with it? I guess there isn’t anything wrong with it’ even if it took a lot of self convincing
@@rinsuu9848As a fat admirer, I come from a family where extreme fatphobia was like a religion. I resented the abuse but also didn’t know any different back then, and I didn’t know who I was yet either. I had a very strange mix of feelings towards fat characters like Dudley. Empathy and schadenfreude at the same time. It was incredibly toxic.
One thing that's always bothered me about the Petunia/Lily thing is... i don't really understand why squibs can't attend magic school when most subjects... don't really require magic anyways. Literally all of these are available : potions, herbology, arithmancy, history of magic, care of magical creatures, muggle studies, ancient runes studies, astronomy...
Ikr, like the kids at least deserve the basic chance to learn math and history. I think there's a pottermore article saying that squibs can't do potions? But still, squibs can't attend muggle schools - their only chance to receive nonmagical knowledge is at Hogwarts. Besides, it's seriously insane that "muggle" subjects aren't considered important to Hogwarts students. Things like debate skills, economics, accounting/business, geography, or second language courses (the kids at beauxbatons all know English, why don't Hogwarts students have the chance to learn French?). Literally everyone would benefit from these subjects being available, and squibs would be able to learn them too.
@@V123_4 backpacking off language electives, you'd think that since almost all HP spells are just butchered latin and greek roots smushed together, the kids would be taught at least the basics of both. We certainly do that in grade school english, and in some tiny way it does help you figure out some bigger words by splitting them into smaller pieces. You'd think spells would be the same
This has been annoying me too! Like, sure, you gotta keep the spells secret from the mundane world, but we already have medicinal potions and herbs. Is it really that big of a problem to teach the muggles how to brew up some bone healing juice?
i'm pretty sure muggles cant visit hogwarts since all they'd see is bunch of ruins and rubbles. can't see why they couldn't cast some spell on petunia tho so that she could see what there really is lmao
this bothered me as a kid! i had always hoped that there would have been some kind of redemption(?) or integration efforts for squibs but it never happens. the wizarding world is built upon hierarchy and the status quo can never be shaken
I will NEVER be over the sheer audacity JKR had to do the whole "No one is born good or evil, it's our choices that make us who we are" and then turn around and go "Actually, Tom Riddle was always a lost cause because he was a rape baby". What the actual HELL, Joanne?
I think the point being made was that "choices are more important that abilities", meaning that just because someone is talented doesn't mean their lives hold more value if they use that talent to make people miserable. That Voldemort was one of the top three wizards alive that we know of, a highly exceptional individual who was prodigious even as a child, but his presence in the world was a net negative in ways the largely unremarkable Harry Potter's never could be. I thought that was a pretty good lesson, not the whole "born evil so you're hopeless" thing but "judge by what he does, not by what he can do". That Voldemort could have easily lived a long, happy, productive life but instead only lived an average lifespan chasing immortality and creating legions of orphans along the way.
I just realized that Hagrid is the magical world equivalent to someone keeping a chimpanzee as a pet/replacement child and then being surprised when it inevitably grows up and mauls someone’s face off.
It's shown in the books that half giants aren't just tall but physically more resistant to harm than other wizards. It makes perfect sense that what is simply "a little rowdy" to Hagrid is homicidal terror to everyone else. It wouldn't just be someone keeping a chimpanzee as a pet, but some double tendon quadruple muscle fiber mutant with two hearts who is actually stronger than the chimp and doesn't realize that pretty much no one else is.
They way the movies treated petunias character when saying goodbye to harry i appreciated more. "I also lost a sister" she says That moment gave her more depth as you hope humans can have. She was angry, sad, heartbroken, defensive and defeated. I took that moment as she was fighting with the fact that her relationship with lily will never be repaired. And maybe that Harry is the reason that lily is gone like a "youre the reason why my sister is gone so youneed punishment" even tho he was a baby and thats insane blaming a baby but that trauma reaponse being fueled into traumatizing others happens. And making her character nothing but a bitter woman sucks and is boring
@@MylingCyrus this, yeah! I also used to see Petunia's treatment of Harry as a trauma response to Lily dying. It's not exactly rare either. When mothers die during childbirth, it's not extremely rare that the living parent (or other members of the family) might see the baby as the "culprit" of the mother's death, even though, as you said, blaming a baby is irrational. Pain is often irrational after all. And living with Vernon, who also hated everything magical (something she also sees as taking her sister away from her), you could see it as her never being reprimanded for blaming little Harry, only making her worse to cope with that trauma. I feel like, while not justifying her, that would've been more interesting for the character
@@naos8116 Didn't Dumbledore basically force her to agree to keep him? If I recall correctly in one of the later books the Dursley's want him kicked out and then Dumbledore sends a howler saying something to the effect of "remember the agreement" and she instantly shuts up and goes from wanting harry to leave to keeping him locked in his room.
It's wild that the Weasleys are always seen as "the poor family" when the dad has a job with the government and Bill apparently helps literally make the entire economic system possible at all
They have only 2 providing adults (3 if Charlie sends money from Romania) for 8 people (and then Harry). But they don’t have to provide for their children most of the year, only in summer. So they’re considered poor by the pure-blood standards since they don’t have generational wealth, but I guess they’re more middle class with low per-person income.
@scarletsabre8383 I think his department isn't well-regarded, though. I assume he gets paid less than other department heads, given how Lucius Malfoy addresses him
@@xletragedyx Even so, you'd think a department head would be paid enough to properly send his kids to school, or be given government-funded/subsidised materials... oh wait, I forgot who's writing this. No social safety nets allowed, just let Ron go to school with a broken wand that will actively hurt himself, others, and his education, because if he can't afford a new one, fuck 'em
also Pettigrew as a grown man was sleeping in the same bed with a kid, letting Ron cuddle him for years??? thats one of the worst things for me that happened in HP. (also I love your tshirt)
I never understood why squibs don’t do clerical work. Does Hogwarts have a records room? Accounts that need balancing? There have to be some jobs that wouldn’t be made trivial by magic. As it is, no wonder Filch hates these kids. They have no respect for him and his work and leave him with messes to spend hours on that would take seconds if they cleaned up after themselves. That warrants some dark muttering, in my opinion.
You're so right. It really messes me up that squibs are apparently barred from Hogwarts. Like I understand that they can't do magic or brew potions, but why can't they learn the history of magic? Or idk, math?? (Arithmancy or whatever?) Maybe squibs wouldn't be so useless if there was literally any attempt to formally educate them past the age of 11. I bet a squib could do some mean research in the library if you let them. Or teach calculus, history, debate skills, or even muggle studies. It's such a missed opportunity, and it says a lot about how Rowling sees people with disabilities that squibs aren't even worth being given a chance to learn in her world.
In fact I still need a good reason why Dumblydoor insist to employ him to begin with? Unlike Trelawney he does not have anything to add and it seemed extra cruel making him do janitorial work manually when Hoggywarts employed hundreds of house elves.
Like he could be considered disabled in the magic world, Dumbeldoor could have at least talked to the children and say to not be little buttholes to people with no magic, he could have hired Filch for classes on why it's not a bad thing to have no magic and that you shouldn't be a butthole if someone is born with no magic/are born from parents with no magic it at least make less Malfoys.
@@denaoc it’s easy to read hermoine as autistic and fred/george as having ADHD, and hagrid is heavily implied to have some kind of mental delay that makes him childlike, but luna is the most overtly and explicitly neuroatypical child in the series, and the only kid i think we’re *intended* to see as definitely neurodivergent.
i totally see neville as neurodivergent too! he doesn't learn well from the typical school system, but when he's taught in a way that suits him, he flourishes (when harry teaches him). he's also really passionate about herbology which could be seen as a special interest
We can include (in some reading) Snape too. Besides, the chemistry teacher that Rowling had and based Snape one, was very probably an autistic man. Search about that teacher and how he helped Rowling's mother to have a job while she was ill, just to add more reasons to be angry at Rowling.
19:55 I'd also say that in context of hp "fat" kind of... Is a bad word. Because if a fat character is supposed to be unsympathetic they're fat, if they're supposed to be sympathetic (like Molly Weasley) they're "plump" or smth like that. So although normally "fat" is obviously not a bad word, but in context the association is pretty clear.
@@szatan9717 Le Guin was an absolute treasure who tried to warn us about Bob; but she also gave her far more benefit of the doubt than was ultimately merited.
It seriously perplexes me that the main bad guys' whole thing is seeing non-magical people as scum, and that's bad, obviously, but then every non-magical character is a pathetic, incapable, evil slug.
All of Rowling's descriptions are extremely judgemental, rather than evocative. They tell us how to feel, they don't show us how to feel. It feels like the author hates her characters (that are female).
not to mention the amount of female characters considered “unattractive” (or from an objective standpoint, stereotypically masculine) or described in a negative light vs the amount of male characters held by the same standard
Oh she definitely doesn't like women - or specifically, she doesn't like any women who have slightly different desires, sensibilities, or appearances from her own.
This. I actually don't mind that the characters are flawed. I think it's good for kids to experience flawed characters and learn how to be better people from the mistakes the characters make and grow from. But that's kinda the thing with Harry Potter. I don't think Rowling intended for any of her main characters to be as flawed as the writing makes them out to be. We're supposed to support Ron, Harry, and Hermoine. Even when they permanently disfigure a child for having realistic fears. There is no learning moment to be had from that incident. Save 'snitches get stitches' which is just not a good concept to be teaching young children.
I'm only just a lil bit in, and the "people can't really change" is so real because there were MULTIPLE instances where it looked like evil characters were going to switch sides and even team up with Harry (notably Draco and Dudley) but they just...didn't...and when I was a kid I never knew why but it's because Jkr really sees people as being born good or bad
Forreal!! Draco was perfectly set up for a TRUE redemption arc... But no. He just manages to survive & then grows up to have a family at a comfortable distance from the others he spent his school years terrorizing. What??
@@ZijnShayatanica after Harry saved Dudley from the dementor and the dursleys were accusing Harry of being at fault, it was so weird that Dudley just...didn't back him up. At all. I think Jkr THINKS people can change...but she BELIEVES that you are either born good or born bad. James is the other example. Born good, so him "changing" from being a bully to a good man is a foregone conclusion that doesn't need explanation.
@@powernade Forreal... Imagine going through such a traumatic experience, your parents don't believe you, a kid who you always thought was trash [largely because your parents indoctrinated you into hating him] still saves your life despite how poorly your treated him... And virtually no payoff.
@@ZijnShayatanica It was a perfect opportunity to show that EVERYONE even the precious golden child is harmed be abusive parents...but that doesn't fit in the black and white worldview. Oh well.
@@powernade At least a lot of us who grew up w/ the IP still managed to learn positive things about character growth, largely by being big enough nerds that we practiced media literacy before we even knew what it was. 😅
Rowling actually confirmed that Marietta's scars would never go away and said it's because she "loathes a traitor" so we're evidently meant to think she deserves to be maimed for life.
I'm sure that if we asked her now something like "hey, it seems like she was actually threatened into it, do we know anything about her mother's job and if she has a father and if he also works? Was there a possibility that if Umbridge got her mother fired she would have ended up homeless or unable to get access to basic necessities?" She'd be like "oh no, her father has a high paying job and there was little risk to their financial stability" or "she's actually rich and her mom only had a job at the ministry to do bad stuff" or something. Maybe even "she wasn't threatened she started talking by herself". It's just hard for me to believe that if she had to actually think about her writing she'd turn to victim blaming
Re: Lupin and the boggart lesson Also, like, you just found out that a 13 year old child’s biggest fear is another member of staff. Like, I know “Harry Potter and the School Investigation By Child Protective Services” would be a real genre shift but… Edit: accidentally said Neville was 12 at first
I remember thinking back to this when jkr kept repeating Snape is morally grey cause... No he isn't??? He's just a shitty person who did some good things, like come the fuck on, Neville's parents were tortured until insanity by members of a terrorist death cult and his greatest fear is a teacher???
@@szatan9717he is morally grey, and it makes sense that Neville’s boggart wasn’t to do with his parents, for one, he wouldn’t have been there and probably was not constantly thinking about it (his parents were aurors, they were being targeted, they wouldn’t keep their child with them knowing that) and Neville was seeing snape very frequently, so obviously something like that would be at the front of his mind, while his parents being tortured wasn’t.
Can I just say we need justice for Grubbly-Plank. An incredibly qualified and competent Care of Magical Creatures professor who didn't get the job because Dumbledore hired someone with no education past age 14 (ish, I don't remember for sure) and is not allowed to have a wand and who absolutely is unqualified in every way to teach. And even though she was done dirty like that she still subs whenever it is needed.
For a while I thought Hagrid got like a teaching course or something at least to prepare since he wanted the job so bad. The first lesson was him getting over excited. But, nope, Dumbledore just gives him the job? He's not even doing Hagrid a favor, he's setting him up to fail when students tell their parents they don't feel they are learning much. Might have been nice if Hagrid decided himself "I know about creatures, but passing on years of working knowledge is not something I'm good at yet. I'll ask Dumbledore if Grubbly-Plank can be professor instead and I'll shadow her as an assistant in lessons." Might have been nice character growth
@@zenebeanI kinda of wish he was accompanied by someone. Like at least make it two years where is he is assistant or in formation or anything. Not just thrust him in an environment like that. He's a half giant in a school full shocked of little prejudiced kids. He don't usually has to take care of 30 kids for 7 hours in rotation for 5 days a weeks for a difficult discipline. He might be very knowledgeable in magical creatures but that's the surface sheen of being a professor.
On Hermione being blamed for the article Rita Skeeter wrote, it's even more gross when you consider she was an adult woman, probably in her forties, writing these stories about three teenagers. It's also hilarious how we were supposed to see Hermione as in the wrong for letting the teachers know about the mysterious Firebolt that Harry received. When it was thought that Sirius was out to kill him. I mean, if they can't win without that potentially cursed broom, maybe the Gryffindors aren't as good at quidditch as they believe themselves to be. And maybe they take quidditch a bit too seriously if winning is more important than a player's safety.
I kind of hate how quidditch is a nepotism game, just pay to win. A good broom is a massive advantage, and gives the rich kids a big advantage. Harry may be good but he also has a shit ton of money, and can afford to be better than everyone else. I think they should all have to play with the same type of broom with the same stats in a school. Hogwarts is incredibly classist in a lot of ways, and i don't think they ever really handled that in the novels
@@sacrilegioussasquatch Yeah, it's weird how certain teams/players had that advantage. Like, the reason Slytherin and Gryffindor probably won against Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw as often as they did was they each had a rather rich person on their team (Harry and Draco). And it was his professor/head of house who got him his first broom..
@@sacrilegioussasquatch Harry has a ton of money but somehow he gets gifted both his top of the line brooms, one by the school, while Ron gets to use a broken wand. And an adult woman sending a Howler to a 14 year old? What? Even if what Rita had written in the Prophet were true, why is an adult involving herself in teen drama and publicly humiliating a child? And we're supposed to think Molly is this badass motherly angel.
@alien-vu7yl why the hell didn't harry help him? Better yet, why the hell is there no set of school wands? Sure they won't be a fit to the student but it'll still help a lot of people.
Was the book the first thing that made you feel bad about your teeth ? I don't know about you but when I was a kid, 80% of kids were pieces of shit that would made you feel bad about anything about you, positive or negative. Hermione's went thru the same crap. So yeah, the characters uses "fix".
Hermione having to tame her frizzy, curly, poofy brown hair to "become pretty" really messed me up as a kid. I have big curls that were unmanageable as a kid because I didn't use the right products, and I was ashamed of having curly hair. My mom always straightened my hair whenever Picture Day came around, or whenever we'd go to family events. I related to Hermione as a kid, being a socially awkward nerdy girl with big poofy hair, and I think I internalized her "glow up." I hope JKR feels all warm and fuzzy at night to know that I've since embraced my curly hair... after I cut it short to look more masculine! I'm one of those "confused autistic girls who's been BRAINWASHED by the trans cult!" that she oh so lovingly wants to protect. Screw you, Rowling. Curly hair is awesome and so is being an autistic trans man!
Really says a lot about Maggie Smith's acting chops that she is the reason why McGonagal was my favorite teacher for a while(we all know Lupin's the goat, though). Rest in peace.
Yeah, Lupin was definitely my fave - as someone who was struggling a lot [chronic illness, queer, lotsa trauma], I appreciated that he was still surrounded by people who loved & respected him, even if society was trash.
Small note: but "abstinence" technically only means to abstain from something. We typically only hear it reference to abstaining from sex, but I think it has a broader understanding over there. Not that it was appropriate to be talking about getting drunk (with the friars) in a kid's book either.
@@Rayne_StormsI think it’s due to realizing how the books deeper messages did have affects that you can look back on and say “yeah that definitely made me internalize x y part of myself.” Maybe that’s me though, I look back at manga I did that for as well 😂
@@thomasstone3480yeah, that sounds like her. I try to avoid fully interacting with her, but sadly she crawls out of her black mold infested cave to spew trans misogyny.
Opinion of one single British person: we almost exclusively use the word abstinence to refer to abstinence from alcohol, to the extent that this section about the fat lady was hard to understand. Slut shaming … what? When?? I’ve googled it and discovered that in North America it seems to usually refer to abstinence from sex. I would not even have listed ‘sex’ in my top five things one might abstain from. To a British child-audience the whole joke is that adults seem to want to drink a whole bunch of wine before Christmas and then none at all EVER AGAIN immediately afterwards, and this seems fair enough to me. I want to clarify that I am not hating on your interpretation and I am finding this video a really interesting watch, well done and thank you for the huge effort you have put in, the work really shows.
33:50 I think people remember a lot of these characters as being better written than they actually were because the actors in the movies gave great performances.
Seriously, I’m pretty sure a good chunk of the Snape apologists exist because Alan Rickman was such a talented actor and gave the character a lot more life than what we had on the page.
@@VoidNull9222yeah, the charisma of Alan Rickman saved sooo much of this mess. And I think Molly, Arthur and pretty much everyone was just... Less extreme 😅
This is seriously big with Ron specifically. Never read the books as a kid, only watched the movies. I liked him! Now that I'm reading it as an adult (my wife's copies) I absolutely HATE Ron.
@@kristyns1640 haven't gotten to fully watch the video yet but according to some time stamps I saw he's pretty far up there in the terrible character list, and I'm both dreading and anticipating it 😂😂 I'm sure I can guess why that is, and again a big case of "the charisma of the actor completely saved this character"
It's the film actors for sure, but fanfiction authors did a _lot_ of heavy lifting for those of us who were reading the books as they released. I thought this with the video she did on the female characters in HP, too; there were so many times I thought to myself "But what about that time when-- oh wait, that was fanfic."
You'd think Harry and Hermione would be able to bond over the fact that for BOTH of them, a world of magic is totally new and foreign to them. But no, it's never really acknowledged. When Ron and Harry were fighting in book four, that could have been an opportunity to address that oversight and provide an opportunity to have their relationship grow, but no Hermione is boring and lame for spending her time learning as much about magic as she can. Which I think would be the more normal reaction to suddenly being thrust in a new world...
Crazy to me that even after the ten hour video essay "A Brief Look at Harry Potter", Shaun's 3 hour breakdown of the series, many many hours of other criticisms I've watched, and your other two videos, theres still new discourse to throw in the mix. Exellent video as always, I enjoyed the character slander, especially those I hadn't considered, such as Fred and George and Hagrid.
With regards to Hagrid, as Shaun pointed out, he's just as bigoted as Vernon Dursley in many ways. He shows up in the first book, is quick to anger when Dumbledore is insulted, and so uses magic (which isn't legal for him to have) to disfigure a child, who didn't even make the insult, to the point it required surgery. And just like Vernon, he wants to keep the magic and non-magical worlds separate, and even tells Harry that people would be wanting magical solutions to all their problems, so they're better off being left alone... when wizards can cure all non-magical diseases, regrow bones in an afternoon, and infinitely duplicate food and liquids. They, and Rowling, are just lazy when it comes to helping regular people.
@@scarletsabre8383 yes, I knew Shaun's arguments when it comes to Hagrid's bigotry, but I never considered that he was putting a crazy emotional burden on a bunch of children that he's weirdly friends with. It was a new perspective for me that I never thought about
@@puffinatheart5565 You could even make the argument that because Hagrid was kicked out of school, and since this is Rowling's neoliberal world, there are no social safety nets, was basically thrown to the streets, he never really grew past his school years socially/emotionally, and feels a connection to the kids and is socially/emotionally stunted to be basically on their level, since he's been working as groundskeeper and only ever interacting with schoolchildren since he was one himself
@@scarletsabre8383 yeahhhh JKR is a neoliberal, she doesn't believe in social safety nets etc. She also is terrible at world building lmaooo Dumbledore has a habit of picking people up off the street and hiring them at his school. This is probably meant to show his benevolence etc. but it really does just seem like these people have nowhere else to go. Filch should be able to get a job somewhere that doesn't involve him doing stuff he hates, right? Maybe he can do paperwork or something, idk. Hagrid has a love of magical beasts, maybe he could work with Charlie or something. Hagrid isn't stupid when it comes to how magical creatures ought to be treated, just with the social aspect of explaining it. He could work at a magical zoo or do something like Newt did with his magical rehabilitation program, idk. It just shows such a lack of care for the world and a lack of respect for people who are put in bad positions. They just need a benevolent person like Dumbledore to help them. Idk I feel like there's a deeper message here about JKR and how she sees those less fortunate than her
There is a 1.5 hour long video discussing the politics of the Wizarding World in which the creator straight up says it's only a couple steps away from fascism... as the system is completely immoral, species-est, and authoritarian... doesn't take much for the worst of the wizards to seize control... they just need to be a bit more authoritarian than the regular government.
There should probably be timestamps on the video, so viewers can skip past the opening where she’s incredibly patronizing and condescending to her audience for several minutes. Actually I’m… starting to think that attitude is going to last the whole video 💀 I wish it didn’t because her actual points are very good.
@@Fantallanaa little harsh but I kinda agree. I feel like Li Speaks and Haley Whipjack are creators with similar styles that she could learn a lot from?
@@Fantallana I really like her tone in this. To me it counds condescending, but not to the audience - to Harry Potter and JKR, which I personally just see as really fun sarcasm, in a video that is a very extensive critique of how bad these characters are. So I think it's fun and fitting
Not only that about Voldemort's mother: it also kind of implies a bad message about being a baby who was born from a r*pe. It teaches the lesson that if it happened to one of your parents, you're likeky to turn out to be evil and trash beyong repair or Growth, just like Voldemort. Oh what a heartwarming message for children 😢
The A Nightmare On Elm Street series is also kind of guilty of this, but at least Freddy’s evil for OTHER reasons: Bullying, abuse, bad parenting, and a deal with literal demons to have an outlet for twisted vengeance. Edit: Part of the reason why Voldie became that way was because he was conceived as the product of a _love potion._ I just rechecked, and he’s a product of literal female rape, apparently.
The biological essentialism is so bad. Harry is exactly like his parents even though he grew up in the exact same environment as Dudley. Every single person with bad biological parents turns out to be bad themselves. On the other hand adoptive parents apparently have no influence on how you turn out to be. Harry would have been the same person, had he been raised in an orphanage, by other foster parents or his biological parents instead of the Dursleys. It's inconceivable that someone with "good" parents becomes bad because of circumstances or character flaws. Who you are and will become is predetermined as soon as you're born in this world view. Quite scary honestly. The emphasis this puts on genes gives me the ick.
@@anjad.3656, He didn't grow up in the exact same environment as Dudley... Was Dudley locked under the stairs and only allowed out to care for his parents?
@@anjad.3656 thats how it usually works though? In real life if you have an abusive household you will internalize the bad behavior. It takes a lot of work to unlearn toxic behavior. Harry wasn't a good person all the time either, he was quite angry in the fourth and fifth book because he didn't know how to deal with his emotions and trauma. Harry isn't always likeable, he is grappling with trauma and an abusive household. As someone else mentioned he didn't grow up the same as dudley, dudley was the golden child and loved, while Harry was ABUSED. And yet Harry could rise above his abusive circumstances. Draco as a foil to Harry couldn't rise above it, until the very end. You just hate JK rowling and try to reach for reasons to bash her books because you don't like her, instead of engaging with the media beyond your narrow minded hatred. A little ironic, isn't it.
That isn't what it implies at all. Voldemort wasn't given a proper support system either which didn't help, he could have grown and changed...he just chose to be evil. That isn't what the message actually is though.
What always stuck out to me about Harry Potter is that in every other bit of children’s media I consumed as a kid, there’d always been one arc, one episode where the main good guys did something that was mean or cruel or lied to their parents and needed to learn a lesson. I don’t know if I can think of any major moment in Harry Potter where our good guys did something fucked up and it was treated as wrong. There are no good or bad actions in Harry Potter, only good and bad people
Yeah, when you think about it, Harry turned out to be a Nepo baby who grew up to be a cop and named his son after one of his abusers, who directly caused his parents to be killed
i have a feeling if you rewrote the harry potter series without the racism, anti-fat bias, and everything else thats terrible, by the time you were done you'd have a completely different series with a different plot and ending
@@lenabluejay1166please do !! i love reading rewrites of series’ that had good ideas but bad executions. in fact, i’m sure some folks have already done similar rewrites for HP, but don’t let that stop you from taking a crack at it yourself!
Harry Potter starts off as a suburbia comedy and transitions to a mystical mystery. Having deeply flawed characters helps keep things mysterious because you don't know exactly who is messing up and who is deliberately messing with things. Well MAYBE you do, but one has to admit there are many potential candidates. The fact that some of these characters were supposed to be seen as ideal(Hagrid, father figure, really?) does make me want to reexamine the series, or would if this lady didn't upload a four hour video doing it for me.
I did already 1 minor caracter. Filch as a disabled person (in his world) who doesn't get the respect he deserves because he is born from a long family of witches and wizards. His cat was a gift from a sibling who only understand and respected him (in his family) but died just before he got a job at Hogwards. He is pretty much the same (expect for wanting to harm children he is just a grumpy old man. Who you think as a child is just a grump but later as a adult you can see his point). Maybe in like books 6 Harry will find him helping one of the physically disabled students who he has a close bond with (like a father and child bond) that shows Harry Filch has a softer side and isn't just a grumpy old man with a cat. After seeing he may have been a bit of a jerk to Filch when he was younger, giving him a apology for how he acted all these years to him. Filch the adult forgives him and says he is used to people treating him like this, because of the way he is born and tells him some of his story. Later telling him that a job here is sometimes hard but getting to help children who are in some way like him brings him joy, Harry will learn from this and will treat people like Filch with respect.
I'm unsure how much inspiration it took from Harry Potter (probably not a lot), but I feel The Owl House has a lot of parallels while also just being a better story
The case against Rubeus Hagrid is so much worse than you’re making it out to be. Remember, when Harry first met Draco Malfoy and Draco was really racist, and Hagrid’s way of comforting Harry was to assure him that he wasn’t being racist *to Harry specifically?*
Rowling doesn't think what Merope did to Tom Riddle Sr is rape. Rowling doesn't believe that a cis woman can SA someone. I believe in Britain only a cis man can be legally charged with raping a cis woman, so if that's true Rowling certainly seems to agree.
@@symonewest5449 I don't believe it is only a cis man and a cis woman, for example a cis man can be charged for doing that to another man. However I think in the law the crime has to involve penetration for it to count so no a cis women could not technically be charged (would probably still be investigated tho especially if it involved drugging a person). It's a heavily regressive, harmful law a lot of countries still have that needs to be changed.
@@eyeballjay Why such "regressive" ever came into existence is beyond me. Drugs are as old as human language. And anyone with any sexual curiosity at all will quickly find out the sexual organs can and will act against their conscious wishes.
The last time I checked, English law defines rape as the unwanted penetration of the vagina, mouth or anus by a penis, and the penis can be "constructed", i.e. if the perpetrator is a trans man. If the penetration is done with a foreign object, it's classed as sexual assault, as is rape perpetrated by a woman to a man or woman. According to the letter of the law. I think the definition needs reform. Calling it sexual assault when the sexes are switched just serves to downplay the seriousness of the crime.
Doubling down on Dumbledore because, even though it's not in the books, Rowling wanted it and how she's getting it: it's very telling, in light of her current queerphobic spiralling, that the only two explicitly queer characters we ever got in the series were retconned into it _after_ the books were finished, and every portrayal of their queerness in subsequent works has been entirely subtextual and implicit. But even regardless of that, even pretending that it was spelled out in the books loud and clear, what do we end up with? One of the only two canonically gay men in the HP lore is literally Wizard H*tler. The other deliberately chose a life of celibacy and abstinence because the one time he allowed his sexual orientation to factor into his life, he ended up literally tearing his own family apart, and nearly became a menace to society at large. Wow, Joanne. Thanks for the representation.
As a queer person, even when I was a fan of the books (so before all this came to light), her after-the-fact token gays never sat right with me. We're real people, not points on a "woke checklist" to keep your books relevant. How about writing something about us where our identities are actually part of the story? Or at least mentioned even once in the story?
I want special honor for Tonks! She can be read as nonbinary person early one. And it's all just to change completely and become perfect wife and mother (and even here you could argue because she give birth like 2 weeks before going to finale battle. Postpartum is definitely perfect time to go to the war. It's so messed up...)
Dumbledore wasn't explicitly gay in the books, but he was implicitly gay in exactly the way that homophobes of that time imagined an openly gay man from the very first appearance in the series. Which was in the first few pages of the first chapter of the first book. He was always gay if you didn't give Rowling the benefit of doubt on her bigotry.
12 women/female characters when you include Winky that's rather telling when you think that generally speaking the women get less book time than males and quite a few are rather basic characters
I was surprised being reminded of that! I had misremembered, I was convinced that Dudley had actually done something. But I guess as children, we take the narration at face value, and the narration tells us that it's funny, and that he deserved it for... what? Generally being mean because he was raised to think that's the way to be? Basically being a child? So we laugh and act like he deserved it. But being reminded of that as an adult... yeah, that's messed up.
@@lenabluejay1166I don’t remember if it’s also the case in the book, but in the movie, Hagrid catches Dudley *eating Harry’s birthday cake that HE BROUGHT FOR HIM after the Dursleys refuse to even acknowledge Harry’s birthday at all* after he tells Vernon not to insult Dumbledore in front of him. And that was why he cursed Dudley. So I can understand why he cursed Dudley in that context, but I do agree that it doesn’t make sense that Vernon also wasn’t cursed or why Dudley was cursed at all in the books if he didn’t do anything in the books.
@@horakhtythecreator6911 I hadn't remembered that in the film, it's a long time since I've read the books but I would guess that the film added that to make Hagrid cursing Dudley more understandable (but still, that's a child, and yes he needs discipline but that's not a proportionate punishment). I could be wrong though, like I said it's a long time since I've read the books, so maybe it's in the book too.
Additionally, I thought it was sad that Percy felt he had to hide the fact that he entered into a relationship with Penelope Clearwater because he just knew he would only be met with teasing and mockery, so he ended up staying alone in his room even more than he was before then.
wow. watched this all the way through going "yep...yep", and then we got to the end and started talking about the trio's relationship with hagrid, and i said "wait, what??!!" i was a very parentified kid, forced into inappropriate roles of responsibility and overly intimate relationships with familiar adults. because that was normal to me, i sought intimate relationships in school with teachers, not my peers. i replicated that pattern into adulthood and struggle with boundaries in relationships to this day. it's an incredibly difficult thing to unpack when you grew up changing diapers and paying bills and emotionally reassuring parents. the conclusion that the inappropriate and unbalanced teacher-student relationship is the most dangerous message in harry potter is really hitting me because i didn't see it at all. which might be proof of how insidious it is. reading that as a kid only reinforced to me that it was normal and necessary to take on the burdens of adults. oh my god.
yeah, that one took me by surprise, too, and i wasn’t parentified at all. so if it escaped your notice, and it escaped my notice, im sure lots of kids just absorbed it uncritically like you and i did. very unnerving
Cannot stand JK Rowking, and Harry Potter is ruined for me. With all that said RIP Dame Maggie Smith. A wonderful actress and a big part of my childhood. 🌹
@@phoebevaughan5095 this feels so weird i saw a edit of her getting older and celebrating her being a actrice for a very long time (most women during her younger years would stop after a few years, but she stayed acting and became a beloved figure) i just feel like i just heard that my grandma best friend died while i only saw her yesterday still alive.
James Potter’s and Lily Potter’s “love story” reminds me of too many pastors that I knew and worked with. They all loved to tell how they basically stalked and harassed their partners until they gave into dating and eventually marrying them. So romantic and definitely not worrisome at all
Misconception: Apart from James asking Lily to go out with him in SWM we have no indication he constantly harassed her. When Snape, in one of his DH flashbacks, tells Lily that James likes her, she’s surprised and doesn’t believe him, and this takes place in their fifth year. I don’t deny that James’s character was pretty terribly written even for someone who never really appears, but let’s not make him worse than he was
@@evyrys2725To be fair, it’s still a pretty reasonable assumption, considering the woman who wrote him is pretty bigoted just from how she wrote her own damn series 😂
@@evyrys2725 As you said, we don’t have much information to go off of, but i would still argue that his bully behavior and depicted entitlement are traits that are concerning especially when it comes to Lily, who is friends with object of his bullying (Snape). Who’s to say that Lily didn’t feel pressured to be with James because maybe she hoped to help him be a better person thus leaving her friend and others alone?
@soph1377 She stopped being friends with Snape 2 years before she and James got together. It was because Snape called her a mudblood. After that the whole Remus Snape attempted murder happened and after that they stopped bullying him. The war was also starting so they became more mature especially in year 7. Thats when Lily and James got together.
Now that I think about it, the Norbert situation in the first book is even worse because Ron gets bitten by norbert and actually poisoned and Hagrid has the gall to blame this literal child that he guilt tripped into helping him for being injured by a situation he caused and which Ron ends up being hospitalized over, for which if I remember right Hagrid makes him lie about the cause of his injuries
Between the Marietta Edgecombe stuff and how Rowling’s responded to the actors who have distanced themselves from her, it seems that Rowling takes “disloyalty” INCREDIBLY personally, no matter the circumstances behind it.
I love how salty Rowling is that Daniel took a stance against her and basically told her "I might have become famous thanks to your work, but that doesn't mean I owe you blind obedience." She really is the real-life equivalence of Dolores Umbridge😂
1. Not only did Dumbledore not try to show Tom Riddle a different path, he also directly demonstrated to this 11yo boy that might makes right by setting fire to the closet that held all his worldly possessions and thus making hive give the stolen things back through fear and intimidation. He did teach a lesson there. 2. When Rowling was asked about Marietta's boils in an interview she said they faded somewhat eventually but some scarring remained permanently and added "I loathe a traitor". Which is... such a normal thing to say about a teenager who told the teacher about a banned club at school because she wanted her mum to keep her job. Also Hermione really permanently disfigured another girl, huh. This has always reminded me of acid attacks tbh. 3. I dont really agree with the "it's inappropriate to use slut for a children's book" take, since the books were more YA by HBP and children aren't that sheltered anyway, but yeah the whole Merope plot is an ugly mess. Also, Rowling has said that the reason Voldemort was incapable of love is because of the way he was conceived, which is just such a wonderful message to send to children who were born of r*pe or even just one night stands or w/e. 4. When Snape says it it's cruel, when McGonagall says it it's funny. When Voldemort uses the torture curse it's evil, when Harry does it it's gallant according to McGonagall. Like this woman really called torture gallant. 5. The fact that Barty Jr, a death eater with azakabn induced lunacy, was able to go around Hogwarts disguised as Moody for a year, turn students into ferrets and teach them about unforgivable curses, which he performed in class, and none of this was seen as out of character behaviour for the real Moody, wizard cop and friend of Dumbledore, really speaks for itself. 6. Some of my "favourite" Molly things that are less well known - she always makes Ron dry sandwiches with the ingredients he hates, for some reason. And always makes him maroon sweaters, which is his least favourite colour. Molly has a cousin who is a squib but according to Ron "we don't talk about him" and she complains about muggles in King's Cross in book one. 7. I disagree with Sirius having tunnel vision about Peter. Yes, he does wish to hunt him down after 12 years in Azkaban when he is not mentally well. But the first thing that Sirius did right after James and Lily died was offer to take care of Harry as his godfather. Only when Dumbledore basically stole Harry out from under him via Hagrid did he give Hagrid his motorbike to transport Harry and went to hunt Peter. Sirius is absolutely far more like his family than he would like to think (that's what makes him so interesting to me) but I dont think we can judge him too harshly for actions taken when he had just freshly escaped from torture prison and was living on the run eating rats. He deserves criticism for all the bullying and how he continued to treat people he saw as beneath him even as an adult. Prime example is Kreacher, his literal slave that he abused. But then that did lead indirectly to his death, so I guess you could argue there's a moral there. 8. "I'm just waiting for your underwear to come out of the wash" - an actual quote by Hermione to Ron from Deadly Hallows. She's graduated from doing his homework to doing his laundry by then. 9. It's Sirius who says that thing about "inferiors not equals", not Dumbledore. Ironic, considering how Sirius himself treats Kreacher.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I disagree with your take on Sirius relationship with Kreacher. I don’t think Sirius treats Kreacher badly because he is a house elf and therefore is beneath him. I think he treats Kreacher badly because he dislikes Kreacher the individual. He identified Kreacher with his mother and everything he hated about his bigoted family. The dynamic of power in their relationship does make it much worse and does mean that he gets away with treating Kreacher quite poorly. This whole arch should be about how appalling slavery is and how it makes monsters of any slave owner. Sirius hated Kreacher’s bigotry and behaved like the worst kind of bigot towards Kreacher because he had a power over Kreacher that is immoral for anyone to have over another.
@@AnaPaula-sq7kz oh I absolutely agree with this, his antipathy is towards Kreacher as an individual and as a reminder of the life he ran away from, but that doesnt change the fact that Kreacher is his legal property, as you rightly say. And there is the fact that Sirius does say that quote about Crouch mistreating Winky and then treats Kreacher arguably worse himself (we never see Crouch physically assault Winky at least) and I just feel like the irony of that is worth pointing out. Also, while I don't think Sirius consciously thinks of other people as his lessers and does try to be tolerant when he remembers to, he does sometimes let his upbringing show and just is casually bigoted in ways he himself doesn't even notice. And that is especially the case when he encounters representatives of an oppressed group who are themselves quite nasty people. Like he makes anti muggle comments about the Dursleys for example and while the dursleys suck that doesnt mean that Sirius is right to paint all muggles with the same brush.
I just finished the section on Filch and had a thought - I think JK hates cats. When Mrs Norris is petrified in book 2, Filch is kinda ridiculed for being so upset about it. (Which is especially upsetting when, IIRC, he initially thought she had been killed.) Mrs Norris is treated as an evil snitching character. Crookshanks is also described as an ugly cat and a menace, at least in Prisoner of Azkaban (I don’t remember how he’s described in later books.) Nothing wrong with not liking cats, but it’s weird that JK is almost aggressive about her dislike in her children’s books.
Yeah I remember feeling bad for Filch and despite his cruel streak continued to do so. I thought he was just an archetype that appears in British School Stories and got irritated in the later books when he was never acknowledged as a person (like most of the vilified characters in her books)
I'm at my 2-hour break, we're talking about Dumbledore, and it occurs to me that the other problem with JK Rowling's character development is that her desire to make it known who is good and who is bad is so strong that it loses an opportunity. Think about how different the series would be if it turned out that Dumbledore saw himself as training Harry Potter for one purpose: to die, to fight and die. Literally almost no plot needs to be changed, but this character becomes complicated and tragic, and driven to great evil by his desire to stop Voldemort.
i think this is one reason why harry potter fanfic is so popular. there are so many obvious changes that would make the story and characters more compelling
Am I missing something? The Pensieve scenes at the end of book 7 are all about Dumbledore doing precisely that. If anything, you've highlighted one of the only parts of the series that actually examined right and wrong.
@@Levacque Yes, but those scenes feel very retcon to me. The real problem is that JK Rowling could not have made Hogwarts, a military academy to teach young children how to participate in the wizard battles and civil war, appear to be what it really is, because no child would want to go there, and the entire point of Harry Potter is that every child wants to be Harry Potter. She could have written a better story, but it may not have been a commercial success.
@@DannyDevitowashere I know right!? But let's not get started on the problematic politics and discourse of OSC, or the bizarre neoplatonist direction the entire series went.
Fred and George are a perfect example of why regulations are important. You know, with all their highly dangerous products being marketed towards children.
A really awful aspect of Voldemort is the message he sends about asexual and aromantic people. The books say again and again that part of what makes him evil is that he can't love or desire. Voldemort not being able to understand or feel romantic love is the *literal reason for his defeat* - because he never realised or understood Snape's love for Lily. This kind of portrayal feeds right into the stigma ppl have against aro and ace folks, thinking that because we don't experience certain forms of attraction, we can't have any human feelings. JKR said 'well, anyone evil obviously doesn't experience romance or desire! And because Snape CAN love romantically, he's obviously fundamentally good; bad people can't love!' Aro/ace people, kids especially, can go through hell because people hold these kinds of belief about us. (I know Voldy had a kid in the stage play, but from my understanding that was a case of him trying to further his legacy, and not him having any kind of attraction to Bellatrix. Even if he did... well, it doesn't change the fact that an entire generation of kids was raised on the message 'anyone who lacks love is evil, cold-blooded and unfeeling'. Thanks, Rowling.)
In fairness, the series hugely promotes the importance of familial love and friendly love. The love that saves Harry is the love his mother has for him
I wanted to bring up the kid from the play too, but saw that you beat me to it. Though I wanted to say, that it is possible for someone to be physically attracted to a person and wanting to have sex with them without having romantic feelings for them.
@@starcatcher9405 Oh, for sure! Sorry if I was unclear there - what I was trying to say was that people might think the existence of the kid means Voldemort must experience sexual attraction, but people can and do have sex without experiencing sexual attraction. (And without romantic attraction, like you said!)
Oh, my god. You are right, I never thought about it before. Jesus, I hate Rowling even more now Let us ace and aro spectrum people live in peace! We don't want more stigma and bull shit about how we are broken ones
@@Sky-wn3ff Not only that (I'm not sure if you already know so apologies if you do) but aro and ace actually aren't anonymous, you can be aro, the be ace, or be both. Also, especially as an aroace myself, the notion that some people might think that aro/ace people are incapable of love is upsetting and also speaks to me that a lot of people confuse attraction for love. And because aro/ace people experience little to no attraction, that means they assume we can't love. But that love/attraction thing is a whole other can of worms lol
this video made me look up joanne's childhood/adolescence/young adulthood on wikipedia and my gosh it's like reading a serial killer's backstory. she basically seems to think everyone around her at university was incapable of independent thought.
@@Hiolori from her Wikipedia entry: "Rowling always wanted to be a writer,[73] but chose to study French and the classics at the University of Exeter for practical reasons, influenced by her parents who thought job prospects would be better with evidence of bilingualism.[74] She later stated that Exeter was not initially what she expected **("to be among lots of similar people - thinking radical thoughts")** but that she enjoyed herself after she met more people like her.[53]" It's very "I'm better than all these people because I'm actually a free thinker and they're just sheep" feeling.
Yeah that's what most hard-nosed conservatives think about University. Not really surprising to hear this about her, but definitely illuminating to have it confirmed.
@@user-kw7mr6xt9n the way she is literally just your average conservative and you can feel it in her writing yet many liberals still uphold HP as writing from the left by a confused individual... incredible
There's also the fact that Arthur Weasley is a racist of the worst kind. The kind that goes "Oh, but I have muggle friends" when treating people without magic as if they were funny monkeys there to entertain him.
@@xletragedyx I dunno, I think I rather have to deal with an in your face racist that makes obvious to EVERYONE around that they're racists instead of people like Weasley who claim to like you and respect you, but see you as an animal who only exists to answer his questions, entertain him and be at his beck and call whenever he wants something. And when you say, oh, that's racist, they go "Oh, how dare you, my best friend is X!"
@@luxshine those are the kind that kill their opponents and enslave and torture those they're racist toward... I don't think Arthur is worse than a Deatheater
@@xletragedyx We will have to agree to disagree. Deatheaters? You can see them coming. You can point to them and ostrazice them and make sure they never get a foothold in power ever again. Arthur's kind is the one who claims they will help you and then insist on making laws that make it clear that you will never be able to have a good salary, a good home and will later wonder about how "tehre's so much crime in their neighbour, it must be somehow a race thing"
2:29:19 while listening to bill's lecture on "cultural differences" it made me realize that jk DEFINITELY supports the British Museum and thinks that "undeveloped" countries that want their cultural artifacts returned don't deserve them if the Englishmen that brought them back claimed they paid for them. And there is NO chance she supports reparations
When I was a kid reading these books, Fred and George used to make me extremely uncomfortable. They were just the most cruel, horrid bullies imaginable, but they got away with it, because ... they were Gryffindors, I guess? Honestly, between them and the Marauders, portraying bullies who frequently put other people in severe physical danger as mischievous, rebellious pranksters never sat right with me. And that was BEFORE Fred and George started selling roofies to teenagers.
This is probably going to come across as utterly tragic (and it is I guess) but as someone who read Harry Potter as a fat kid, the way in which fatness was used to evil-code so many of the unpleasant characters did not even cross my mind because by then I had already so completely internalised the narrative that being fat was a moral failing that it just made sense lol
I was a bucktoothed young girl who read these books growing up and felt connected to Hermione and... yeah, I did feel pretty crummy when Hermione 'magicked' her teeth to being 'normal' and 'perfect'. And, I also felt incredibly sad I couldn't do the same. It's interesting to go through this video and remember how many things the movies left out that were in the books and how sometimes, it's a good thing it was left out.
Wouldn’t it have been much more interesting if Hermione had the opportunity to magically reduce her teeth and elected not to? It would be such a nicer thing to include in a children’s book and lead to a deeper discussion
@@misspeaches1144 I agree! It would have shown that Hermione, buck teeth and all, still deserves to be treated with respect like any other person. Instead, by using magic to fix her teeth like that, it gives off the idea that all imperfections NEED to be corrected to fit in. It isn't magic, but I actually did have a dentist suggest a procedure to fix my buck teeth since braces weren't cutting it. The procedure would have required my bottom jaw to be broken and re-aligned, and then for a section of my top jaw to be surgically cut out. The dentist also insisted I could have done it during spring break, and then be recovered in time to go back to school once it was done, but I decided not to do the procedure because it sounded incredibly painful and disfiguring.
@@botOxymoron yikes that sounds rough for sure. It sounds like it would’ve taken longer to recover too. I did have braces but my teeth got a little crooked since they came off and I don’t mind it at all
This highlights one really immoral thing about the wizarding world: they have magic that could treat all sorts of maladies (like broken or even missing limbs) that they don’t share with muggles.
@@melissaflora8450 I thought about this! How many people died in their world that could’ve easily been fixed by magic? I thought about it especially with diseases like cancer etc
“Inferiors” is a Britishism for “employees”. So he was saying “if you want a measure of a man, look at how he treats his employees, not his coworkers.” However, it’s a yucky word that should not have been used especially in that context.
According to Oxford Languages, which ought to know, an inferior in this sense is 'a person lower than another in rank, status, or ability. "her social and intellectual inferiors"' In other words, a person of a lesser rank or importance, not a cute nickname for people who work.
Yeah, I also felt like that one was a reach. I don't love that word either, but saying this is definite proof that Dumbledore considers house elves to be beneath humans is a bit much
@@lnt305 yeah that seemed quite silly, its literally a famous quote about how you treat lesser men - Dumbledore doesn’t mean who *he* thinks is lesser, its obviously about who is the *perceived* lesser. Just like how using the word *slave* throughout this video doesnt imply you think its the natural state of someone, because you didn’t use *enslaved* 🤦🏽♀️
I also just realised something about McGonnigal... In the first book it was perfectly fine for her to buy the rich kid a top of the line racing broom so he could play in a sport, but in the second she doesn't even consider buying the poor kid a new wand, even though his current one is a danger to himself, others, and is actively harming his education. Especially in the films, where we see in her class that he turns a rat into a furry teacup with a tail that still moves, so she KNOWS his wand is broken and being held together by literal sellotape
During the part about Umbridge, I was trying on my clothes and was literally putting a bow in my hair. I’m also wearing heart shaped sun glasses, which might be the most twee accessory. I guess she wouldn’t like me. I’m not sure why she’s so pressed about getting canceled for actually bigotry, but is fine admitting to instantly hating women because they might be bad people, secretly with no evidence. Bad characters in her mind can be redeemed by saying one word “always”, but people she knows in real life can be vilified just for wearing a hair clip. Im gonna guess that JK Rowling is actually the worst character in the whole series, because she’s all of them.
Your accessories sound awesome ^^ I can't wear sunglasses bc I wear regular glasses but I would totally also have heart shaped ones otherwise. I'm actually considering getting cat shaped glasses for my next pair!
Honestly the line “JK Rowling is the worst character in the series because she’s all of them” is such a banger and extremely on point to how the books reflect on her own views and the extremes she goes to.
Joanne just hates women. I think she would think of me as a dolores because i have a lot of pretty, colourful MH dolls and horse figurines and have feminine furniture. I'm very happy to be someone she would hate, I'm a happy, loving person in a mold free home. I like being myself.
@@sacrilegioussasquatch I love love love Monster High dolls, I collect them too!! :D So many cool people with shared interests in this comments section
It's so funny to me that JKR wants to champion as this defender of women's rights now when it's very clear in her books that she views ALL women as vapid, emotional and annoying except when she's One Of The Boys and when she's very quiet and doesn't complain about anything.
As an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid, I absolutely loved HP. I related a lot to Harry's crazy schemes- doing my classwork with severe ADHD felt about as hard as killing a troll. I indulged in fantasies of being as "sassy" as Harry and standing up for myself from my bullies, being as confident and as loved as he was. I was also very overweight and I internalized a lot of the fatphobia without even realizing; It just subconsciously slipped in. It hugely affected me to the point of an eating disorder. Realizing now how awful the books were and how many negative messages they instilled in me, it just makes me sad. I wish I could have relied on something less harmful as a kid. These videos are so important to help people realize possible effects of what they consume- I never realized until now how harmful Hagrid's relationship with the kids is. As a severely parentified kid, I thought it was fine to only talk to teachers and staff at school, so I saw Hagrid as a representation of all my school "friends". I'll try my best to unpack this and add it onto the list of things I have to unlearn.
The only teacher that treats Neville Longbottom like he isn't a complete waste of space is Professor Sprout. Weird how the only class Neville excells in is the one wherein his teacher actually teaches him.
It kind of makes sense. Plants need patience and nurturing, like children/students. I still think Snape was way worse to him than McGonagall
TRUE! I want to believe that in the canon of the universe Neville is the teacher that looks out for the students that fall behind or get bullied and becomes the safe space for those that need a little extra support🥹
That is part of the reason why i really hate the Idea of Kids playing these charakters that are basically a laughing Stock, let alone the Fact that the Actor of Neville was asked to not get Braces cause it fit the charakter.
No child, in the Time of Social Media should be made into a laughing Stock.
Harry Melling the Actor of Dudley even told, how he was bullied, cause of his roll, and now that in the Time of Social Media. Wonderfull, thanks Joanne.
@@bloob9147absolutly, it could be so cute, teach Kids how it is ok if a boy prefers Flowers and it is ok to be a Introvert, but the Narative constantly makes fun of him, and how he is just so incompetend, even Hagrid maies fun of him, saying how he is less worth cause he is not so good in magic.
Lupin, too! He does okay during lupin's class because he treats him like a person and doesn't go out of his way to humiliate him
"one of the most dangerous things in the books: that loving, trustworthy adults will sometimes ask them to keep secrets and break rules for them" i about got chills from that
Omg that's a straight up prefatory message!
same.
I finally got to the end and I was not expecting Hagrid to be the winner, but holy cow I had forgotten how much inappropriate stuff he got the kids into.
@@Rayne_Storms dammit, I didn’t know there would be spoilers in the comments section 😭 (it’s not your fault I’m just kinda pissed off at myself)
@@akisatsuki8444 sorry! 😔
Lets not forget that not only was Dumbledore friends with wizard Hitler, he was *gay* for wizard Hitler. JKR really looked at her creepy old man character who spied on prepubescent boys sneaking about the castle and had a close relationship with a bigot during his younger years and was like, yeah, that's the one I'll make the singular gay character in this whole franchise now that its over. jfc
I had that thought as well
Not what the gays mean by saying "fuck hitler" Joanne
@@Poisonouscosmic Also, there is a very homophobic undertone to this - that gay relationships cause suffering whilst heterosexual relationships lead to happiness. Total rubbish but that JK's views in a nutshell!
The first sentence of your comment made me belly laugh. I needed that. You also have a good point
And then she made wizard Hitler motivated by trying to prevent WW2 and the Holocaust. Nope, not kidding, he's the only wizard who actually wants to prevent all that. That whole situation in the prequel movies is just horribad across the board.
In the fourth book we see Cho constantly surrounded by her friends to the point where Harry has to ask her to step away for minute to ask her to the ball. In the fifth book after her boyfriend is horrifically murdered we see her often alone or just with Marietta. Meaning she was the only one who stuck with Cho after her loss, since I guess her other friends also thought she was being a drag? You know, what with her grieving and all? Idk i would also assume a friend like that was trustworthy, and if she ratted us out after being bullied and threatened I'd stick up for her too. I guess James Potter gets room to grow and change but and can be forgiven for bullying as a teenager but another teenager can't be forgiven for caving under pressure after consistently being a good friend? Nice.
"fleur delacour is one of my favourite characters" agreed, and her actress did a really nice job making her endearing despite rowling's attempts to make us bristle at her
She was one of my first crushes as a kid, though I didn’t know it was a crush at the time.
@@miasma1718 I realized I was a trans woman because of her. Oh, cruel irony. She deserves a better creator than Moldymort.
The thing I always wondered (feared really) about the hatred of Fleur is that it is not only because she is super pretty, but because she is super pretty as a result of not being entirely human. She is part Veela and all the hatred might just be resentment and hatred of miscegenation. The whole series has deeply eugenic undertones after all.
Shes not one of my favorites, but she is so mistreated by everyone and i hate that
@@lady8jane some people see a francophobe view from JK in the case of Fleur and her family
I don't really think this has much to do with physical harm, but I've never really liked the way that Luna Lovegood is described. The character herself is delightful, but the fact that even the main characters call her weird and loony all the time and nobody seems to make much of an effort to connect with her on a human level. This is just kind of bothersome, because it implies that people like her, who read things that other people don't read and wear things that other people don't wear and believe in things that most don't, are weird and should have to be taken with a grain of salt by "the normal people". That's an odd message, especially since Luna is a way more interesting character than many of the people who call her weird.
it definitely contributed to my feelings of ostracization as kid, I was described as weird and off-putting and quirky (turns out it was just regular old autism lol) and I related very strongly to Luna, but none of the characters believing her or really wanting to be around her hurt, it added to the feeling that there was something wrong with me and if I could just be normal maybe I'd have more friends.
It was nice though, having a character like myself, someone I saw in myself and could relate to. So, mixed bag I guess
@@skeleletonboi4533it also turned out that Luna was generally right and the other characters should have listened to her, so there was a real opportunity for it to become a positive message about not judging or discounting people just for seeming different if only there was a little more self-reflection depicted on the part of the protags for their earlier behavior toward her.
@@skeleletonboi4533 I think it's something the movies did well with Luna, because she's the same character, but you don't really hear that many people saying that she's weird or anything. Even friends of hers like Ginny and Harry think she's weird and Hermione and Ron essentially discredit her support of Harry completely because she wears unique earrings. She's a great character, but she's treated kind of awkwardly by JK Rowling. I wouldn't really expect any sort of understanding from JK Rowling, though.
I was a goth kid I the nineties. In Ireland. I therefore remember a time when being different in any way was a huge social problem.To me, Luna’s treatment reflects a time before any nerds or weirdos were respected for being cool.
@@granthropologist3622 It does, absolutely.
Harry Potter is a boy who grew up in the muggle world just like Hermione. He’s our POV character. And we’re supposed to NOT be horrified when he’s just… okay with slavery? Despite having been raised in modern muggle society? He’s one of the first people to roll his eyes at S.P.E.W. We’re supposed to like this kid?
He literally inherits a slave at one point and his only complaint is that that particular slave sucks…. Even as a CHILD this bothered me. Dobby is his “black friend” but he’s still a racist.
@@raingilkes3502Harry initially hates Kreacher because he views him as responsible for Sirius' death. He also has no desire to own a house elf. It's not like he was like oh man, I wish I inherited a different one.
@@propogandalf That doesn’t negate the fact that he has no problem with the concept of slavery, or the idea of inheriting a slave, regardless of his personal feelings for him. He’s still pro-slavery and it’s never addressed as a negative trait. At no point is he bothered by the concept of slavery the way he should be. Your argument is weak.
Maybe the Dursleys are okay with slavery? Not that that *justifies* Harry being okay with it, but it might *explain* it.
@@adamdavis1648 It might explain it but considering it’s never brought up as an in universe explanation, it’s just behavior Harry performs/believes in, and we’re not supposed to question it. Which means one can only logically come to the conclusion that the author endorses these behaviors and beliefs. If at any point Harry had stopped and gone WOW MY AUNT AND UNCLE WERE WRONG you might have a point, but he doesn’t.
Rowling writes as if cleaning her kitchen contributes to Petunia being a bad person - which may explain the mould situation
I chuckled
@@lusslfusslfisch Me too 😂
the elf situation actually really confused me as a kid. Like Hermione is right, they should be free, but why everyone is making fun of her? I even thought I was just not smart enough to understand it
Along with Moaning Myrtles traumatizing backstory, this threw me off so much as a child.
I remember thinking "wait, maybe the next book will rectify this and both me and Hermione will be vindicated"
That book never came
She also went about it in a bad way, and didn’t even try to understand or even listen to the house elves.
@@mia_barriaI REMEMBER THIS TOO! I was like, why is everyone so mean to her, she seems really really nice!
Remember when JK pretended that Hermione was supposed to be black the whole time… imagine, the whole world hating on the black girl for abhorring slavery
No same!! I was so baffled!
i think Hermione's hair is worth mentioning along with the incident with her teeth. at the yule ball, she puts her hair in a bun and makes it "sleek and shiny" with a potion and it's implied to be one of the reasons she actually looks nice for once, which really hurt my feelings as a kid because her representation for people with hair like mine was really important to me. don't even get me started on how disappointed i was with Emma Watson's hair in the movies. it really reinforced the idea that curls need to be straightened, or pulled back and hidden to make you beautiful.
Add in the fact that Rowling claims that Hermione could have been black and it gets... yech. Why is she like this.
Yes! I felt so bad after reading the Yule ball stuff. I have buck teeth and frizzy hair. Made me wish so badly that i could shrink my teeth too. Im still on the never ending journey of taming the frizz
@@otakuinredEven tho she clearly isn't
I never could understand this! I love curly hair!
@@twistedspike69 Let me know your secrets if you ever manage it. Mine was nice when I lived in a place that was dry as a bone, but now with humidity it's like it laughs at the concept of gravity.
She got an international sports star interested in her with her horrid hair and personality, yet the (abusive) guy she was meant for only noticed her when she was willing to spend hours worth of effort to change an aspect of herself temporarily to be pretty enough to be worthy. Gimme a break.
Oh, regarding Lupin and the AIDs parallels, don't forget he has a kid with Tonks (which is it's own discussion about her, a woman who can literally turn her body into anything and had spiked, colourful hair, becoming a good little wife and mother when she found a man), and is worried about passing the condition to his children. And in supplementary material, we find out that Harry, Ron and Hermione, despite Harry and Ron apparently "revolutionising the Auror department", and Hermione being the literal Minister of Magic, were unable to make Wolfsbane potions free for everyone with lycanthropy, because of "lack of funding/support", despite there being spells to literally duplicate things, and potions, infinitely. Rowling is a neo-liberal who doesn't believe in any systemic changes, and has applied that mindset to a world of literal magic.
Urgh, really? It just gets worse and worse!
@@sheenaghm3053 Yup, Hermione also tried to advocate for House Elf rights, but failed for the same reasons
@@scarletsabre8383 Jesus, that is the most neoliberal thing I’ve heard in fiction. “Well we WANTED to change things but gosh darnnit people just didn’t care enough!”
@@VoidNull9222 "Guess all those people suffering will just have to pay for their healthcare, despite us living in what should be a post-scarcity society, since we can replicate food, water, money, and potion ingredients endlessly!"
@@scarletsabre8383hermione failed because of the way she went about it, she was trying to force something on the house elves without actually listening to them and trying to understand them.
Ron suggesting Tom Riddle earned a trophy for killing Myrtle and say that'd be "doing everyone a favor," is genuinely one of the most foul and hateful things I've heard coming from a protagonist of any children's book series... I mean, this video illuminated A LOT of hateful and disgusting things implied AND outright stated in this book series. Not to downplay any of the other stuff, but that part really got to me as someone who connected with Myrtle when I watched the films as a kid. I genuinely saw some part of myself in that character but was too young to understand what her character represented or how grim it was that she was bullied in life and death.
And no repercussions to Ron, really.
In a better approach, this could have been a character development... maybe
She was literally bullied and Murdered in a race based hate crime. Forced to be stuck in the room she was Murdered in.
How is she anything but a sympathetic victim
"Connected with Myrtle"
So cringe....
@The80sWolf_ she was literally the victim of a hate crime. And her only real character flaw is being kinda annoying and lacking social cues.
Not all the other things jkr forced upon her as a charater
J. K. Rowling's idea of morality is kinda weird. It's ok to be mean and a bully as long as you're in the good guys team so yeah, Ron gets a pass of course
very interesting that when a traumatized teenage girl is crying she’s weak and dramatic, but when Hagrid, an adult man, is crying because of the consequences of his own actions he deserves sympathy and it’s these childrens’ job to make him feel better
Interesting point 😀
It’s like JKR’s entire ego and self-worth hinges on the fact that she overcame an abusive relationship and so she views women that are currently struggling with trauma as weak so that she can feel strong in comparison. As a full on adult smh
It's because he's Simple and Child-like, you see.
Hagrid 's a halfwit because he's a halfbreed, he can't help being childlike, silly and useless!
(Almost certainly Rowling's thought process.)
Tbf Hagrid did get the short end of the stick so...that's fair really.
Remember when Ursula K. Le Guin called Harry Potter ethically mean-spirited? Yeah.
I love Ursula K Le Guin so much. Her Earthsea series is SO much better than hp 😭😭 I’m reading The Left Hand of Darkness rn, and let me just say. Ursula had better views in the 60s than Just Kidding Rowling does now.
@@_halo_09Have you read _Always Coming Home?_ It's very different, quite the experience, and you might want to ease yourself into it by reading the short story "May's Lion" first; but it's probably the world's best post-apocalyptic novel (although "novel" is too incomplete of a word).
@@aquaticcatfey can confirm both of these.
That doesn't surprise me one bit. It's sad that Le Guin had to see a subgenre that she practically pioneered (youth wizarding academy) in the hands of such a jerk four decades after the fact.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is another good HP alternative. There’s forty books total with several subseries. They’re surprisingly progressive and empathetic overall. The early books can be a bit rough, but later on, they’re full of diverse and strong representation, particularly for women and neurodivergent people. There’s queer representation (albeit limited) in the City Watch series from Feet of Clay onward and Monstrous Regiment. I’m especially impressed by how the City Watch crime series is able to consistently sidestep copaganda. Night Watch, Small Gods, and Monstrous Regiment are my favourites.
"Are you a HP fan? Are you a HP hater?"
Yes
I feel this so deeply
I definitely wouldn't feel so passionate about HP's plot holes, weird world building and problematic choices, if it never had such a big place in my heart.
Accurate. I grew up with the movies and was honestly very glad I waited til adulthood to read the books. Bought a British set used, and for the first time in my life was actually annoyed that I essentially got a signed copy lol
Seller didn't list that. Understandable these days lol
HP was there for me when I was a basically friendless child. It was heartbreaking when I found out about JK Rowling’s views, and when upon rereading the books/rewatching the movies after years I saw all those problematic things that as a kid I simply didn’t notice
@@silviaeaber you and me both.
The sad thing about Petunia is that it would make so much sense if the Dursleys’ hatred of magic was because they blamed it for Lily’s death
YES!!!! HOLY SHIT YES!!!!
that would require an author who knows how to auth.
Fleur is a talented, intelligent, loyal, strong, genuinely kind person. She is very much in love with Bill because of who he is and how he makes her feel. I find it interesting that Rowling has the other women ridicule and belittle her endlessly, especially Molly, when she's exactly the type of person you should want to fall in love with your son and vice versa. What little we see of Bill and Fleur's relationship is healthier by far than, for example Ron and Hermione's, or Remus and Tonks's.
It's almost as if Joanne is... jealous of other women
Agreed. That poor girl really deserved better than what that self-hating misogynist put her through.
The whole "Bill is 24 and Fleur is 17 when they first meet" thing isn't particularly healthy either tbf
@@interestingemail561 I’m choosing to believe that she turned 18 before meeting Bill, but I definitely see your point. Then again, JKR calls Lolita “a tragic love story”, instead of a cautionary tale of how sick pedophiles really are.
@@interestingemail561I honestly did not remember that at all 😢 ffs
But like... For once pretending that that isn't incredibly weird because it's fiction... They are better 😅
My friends and I have a running conversation that Harry Potter is the single most incurious protagonist possible for an Urban Fantasy. The kid has no desire to learn or know more, outside of combat spells. History? Theory? Current Events? those have to be imprinted into his skull via blunt force trauma.
As a kid, I would've killed for Harry to ask any bloody questions about anything not directly related to him or the plot
he's so weirdly unlikable lol. intellectually curious? no, this child who grew up in our world finds the details of literal magic boring. empathetic? no, he's coldly callous to everyone who isn't part of his dumbledore-based little cult mindset. physically weak but mentally or morally strong? no, he's a famous jock. poor kid who fought his way up? no, he has literal mountains of money. we're supposed to like him because he's an orphan and because the books keep ripping any father figures he finds away from him (and because i guess he just isn't interested in viewing the weasleys that way) but like... hermione essentially orphans herself at the end lmao
@@supernova9361 The job of the "fish out of water" protagonist in an Urban Fantasy is to ask questions. To establish the rules of the setting, the magic system, all that. Percy Jackson, Valkyrie Cain, whoever your mortal protagonist who gets dragged into the supernatural is they are the audience surrogate. What we know about the world is what they know about the world.
I still can't get over Rowling just ignoring most of HP's world building by just describing the history lessons as way too boring to follow.
this is all so criticized for no damn reason. Harry is the protagonist, and the eyes of the story-eyes that are quiet and always absorbing-but he’s only one of THREE leaders. Hermione is the curious one-it’s sort of her duty as a character… she leads in her own way and balances out Harry and Ron. It’s why she rocks. Harry is boring because Harry is a stoic and a savior. Ron is a soft goofball because Ron is the heart and the family. Hermione is the intellectual because Hermione is the problem solver and holds wicked logic. They all need each other to fill out flaws, that is the POINT. I find that people are really quick to project dumb ideas onto things that have ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN instead of just taking the story for what it is. So what? Because someone doesn’t speak it makes them incurious? That’s so silly. I find that the most curious people are also often the most composed. How could the one character in the story who wants to save others the MOST be deemed un-empathetic? Get a grip ❤️
i havent read the books but why is winky the house elf a tiktok tradwife
NAH YOURE SO RIGHT THO
CRYING SCREAMING THROWING UP YOU'RE SO RIGHT
None of these words are in the bible (affectionate)
lol 😂
There's a conversation to be had here about abuse victims coming to need direction from a controlling person to do anything, and after being "let go" they find themselves lost because they've lost that direction.
A thing that really pisses me out about Filtch's characther and treatment is that even if it was unintencional being a squib is the closest we have to disability being adressed in Harry Potter.
I mean the biggest diference between a squib and a muggle is that by being born from a wizard family in the wizard world it is expected that they'll be able to peform magic but they have a rare condicion that stops them from doing something that is socialy expected for them and are excluded and ostracized for it.
Filtch message isn't that untalented people are jealous and bitter, that's Petuania's, no Filtch message is that disabled people are jealous and bitter and society should adress it by pitting them, isn't Dumbledore nice for giving a job to a disabled man while giving him no acomodations and clearly treating him as less, what Rowling is saying is that disabled people just deserve to be mocked and pittiet and accomodating us is insane.
Not only that but Filtch cleaning the magic school by himself without magic also enters in the stupid idea that actually giving acomodations to disabled people is way more ofensive. We need to deserve a place by hard work and be thankfull for it. A thing I internalized hard, I had - and still have but less - a strong need to always be a "high funcional" autistic person, refusing accomodatjons I clearly needed as to not midly inconvenience people and botling all up, laughting at being making a mockery cause the fact they were making fun of me was better than the only other alternative media gave of being pittied (it is not true people can actually just like you). So yeah I absolutly hate how Filtch and all the squibs are treated in this series.
Yeah i wrote something like this when someone said if you remove all the bad stuff from HP you would have a complete different story.
I made some chances about Filch caracter and this is what i came up with in like 20 minutes.
Filch loved his cat because it was the last gift a sibling of him gave before they died (in the story my way he was the black sheep of the family, because he was the only one who couldn't do magic in the family, and his family comes from a long family-tree of witches and wizards). Him and that sibling were close because they were the only person that respected him and tried to understand him.
The job at Hogwards was just a reason to leave his family, because after the death of his sibling he didn't had no one expect his cat. In the story how i would write it he isn't a guy who wants to harm children. He is just a grumpy old guy with a cat. At least that is what Harry sees first, but in book 6 Harry would be walking in the halls and hears a voice of a young witch or wizard thanking Filch. Harry will pop his head in the room because he never would think someone would be thanking Filch.
He will see Filch helping a physically disabled student and learned this way Filch has a softer side and isn't just a grumpy old man with a cat. Harry will then do some self reflecting and realize he was a lot of the time a jerk to Filch for no reason (like when he was 12 and made a mess while Filch just cleaned up the halls, he could have at least used a spell to dry himself of so Filch didn't have to do extra work).
A while then he will go to Filch and will give him a apology for being a little jerk all these years, Filch who is a normal acting adult will accept his apology and tells him he is thankfull that Harry is grown up enough to say sorry, something adult like him struggel with sometimes, he will tell Harry then some of his backstory (like his experience as a disabled person and how people can be so rude to you for no reason except they can do magic and he can't).
Filch has good relationship with the disabled witches and wizards (and i mean that he is a father figure to them) and it's one of his favoriete things of his job (to be abel to help children who in some way are like him).
After Voldermordt dies Filch is no longer a janitor, he is a teacher in the school and he teaches the studenten that you shouldn't treat people bad because they are different from you (like people like him, people who are born from non magic parents, people who are hybrides and the magic creaors) to make sure their that the children who still have parents with pure-blood believes that thinking that way is not okay.
Like we could have this but JK had to be a hatefull person.
RE:The entry on Dudley. I've been fat all my life and I was a huge Harry Potter fan as a kid. I can tell you for sure that seeing the way Dudley was described really laid the foundation for years of internalized fatphobia to build on. I was never bullied for my size, but seeing just how vitriolic fat people are treated in media was enough to give me low self-esteem and body image issues I am still unlearning to this day as an adult. The thing about the Dursleys being described in such a nasty hateful way, I thought that I must be one of the good ones because despite being fat, I wasn't anywhere near the size that Dudley was supposed to be. Another commenter mentioned that JKR uses "fat" to describe the bad fat characters and "plump" to describe the good fat characters, and they're 100% right. It just instilled in me at such a young age that being fat was bad and evil, but you could be plump or chubby and it was fine.
So yeah JKR can get bent.
+
I watched that part and really feel like something clicked for me :O It's like my parents read Harry Potter as a parenting guide
Same here, preach
Same here. Being a fat kid and a Harry Potter fan could be rough sometimes because of how the books, who spent a lot of time preaching love and acceptance, and go 'ew lol' at fat people-but its okay because they're bad people. The only saving grace for me was Mrs. Weasley being 'plump' and nice.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through that. JKR sucks. Sending much love your way 💛💛
It does not surprise me that Joanne is the type to not have any compassion for a woman crying in distress in a bathroom, to the point that she wrote an entire character making fun of them. She's so demented.
Twice. Her minor also spent a long time crying in the bathroom in Philosopher’s Stone…
@@asmrtpop2676three times because of Cho
Jk Rowling: Trans people can't use the bathroom that aligns with their gender! Think of all the vulnerable cis women in them!
Woman/girl: *is vulnerable in a bathroom *
Jk Rowling: _Disgosting_
The cruelty is staggering.
Draco was crying in the bathroom 😝
Funny thing about the time turner... Hermione could, and presumably should, have been able to use it to get as much sleep as she wanted. She should have been the best rested student in her year, because she could just turn time back a few hours and have a nap at any time.
@@FuelDropforthewin FUCK YOU ARE SO RIGHT
Easily my least favourite part of the Time Turner mess.
Well, not exactly, because then there would have been two napping Hermiones in her bed a lot of the time, right? Other people waking up and noticing that is probably not a risk her character would ever take. And finding another location for those naps would have involved wandering through the school at night, so a lot of rule breaking.. again, not in character for her.
@@Anna-zk5zj hermoine breaks the rules all the time, when she thinks it’s warranted. If McGonagal had given her an ok, or some 24/7 magical hall pass, i think she would’ve been down
@@Anna-zk5zj These are things McGonnagal should have arranged for though. 60 Hermiones from different times could have easily napped together in the room of requirement (although of course Rowling doesn't come up with any ideas until the picosecond she needs them in a story, so the RoR deffo wasn't something she was thinking of
One of the big things that stood out to me rereading hp as an adult is that: Ron is a TERRIBLE influence on Harry. When something iffy happens, Hermione is always the one who says "Harry that sounds bad, you should talk to an adult," and Ron always says "Don't do that Harry, they'll just think you're crazy or take away your fun" like when Harry starts hearing voices from the snake in chamber of secrets, or gets the Firebolt. Ron really sucks and Hermione deserved better friends
Ron's entire purpose is basically to make the other two look better, when he isn't informing them on magical culture neither grew up in. Why the character has a fandom is beyond me.
He had potential to be a better friend and I hope the fandom realizes his canon character isn’t all that great.
honestly ron has always struck me as having just the worst middle child syndrome everrrr
A thing that makes the Winky case even worse is that even if Rowling tries to say that theres no paralelism between black slaves and elfs, she actively uses anti liberation propaganda. One, in particular, was the belief that liberated slaves become alcoholics because they lack a purpose in life beyond serving their masters... Sounds familiar
Dobby, more like Drapetomobby
The Umbridge thing is SO revealing. Like, "oh no you said all that out loud Joanne!" revealing. I feel like if she met that woman now she'd just be like "well that's a man".
The immensely-telling irony is that Joanne became a different version of the thing she claimed to hate, i.e., a person who uses their own morality and goodness as a shield and an invisibility cloak.
@@dinosaysrawr True, but on the other hand, if you go back and read closely there's always been an intense distrust of tall or large women and girls, or women who do femininity in not exactly the 'correct' second-wavey way, in her writing.
@@michaeltonus3888 .yes! This very channel has a video underscoring how none of Joanne's female characters emerge unscathed, and woe be unto you if you happen to be fat, ugly, too masculine, or too feminine!
@@dinosaysrawryou know you’ve found a non-evil female character when they’re “not like the other girls”, but not TOO much
@@michaeltonus3888do you mean Joanne’s writing specifically, or just in general?
Fun thing about Hagrid referring to the centaurs as “mules”; mules are half-donkey half-horse hybrids. Hagrid is literally calling these people half-breeds while he is dealing with being persecuted for his half-giant status by umbridge. Why this specific word choice, J.K?
Mules are also usually infertile. So there is that too. :(
Because she believes everyone is like her
Rowling doesn't or at least didn't actually understand racism, in its many awful intricacies. I'll hazard to guess I don't myself, but there's more to racism than just negative stereotypes. If that's all racism really was, if "facts" were all it took to set people straight, it wouldn't be such a widespread thing, not as we know it anyway. More often the real driving force behind racism is the belief that "other" races are of lesser value, regardless of an individual's intent, merit or circumstance.
So with Hagrid, the racism is simply that he is assumed to be more violent and malicious than he really is simply because he is half giant. To be racist against the centaurs in Rowling's world would be to assume something about them that simply isn't true. To call them mules by contrast isn't insulting, but descriptive in Potter world. You know, written by someone who doesn't actually get that belittling slurs are psychological tools racists use to reduce the value of the groups they address.
Now she may have actually caught onto this later, as 'Crimes of Grindlewald' has the character give a speech about how he doesn't hate the non magic, while calling them literally every slur we know of for them and then some, but simply expressing that the non magic is of "different value", the way a "beast of burden" is of different value. THEN he gives people an excuse to want to attack them, after establishing their value is that of cattle. If it was just muggles use nuclear weapons and must be destroyed because of that, that sentiment would diminish once muggles stop using nuclear weapons. Similarly, if it was just about half giants being violent sadists, that would diminish once prominent half giants proved they weren't violent sadists. That one speech in the movie was a much deeper and more disturbing insight into racism and why it persists than anything written in the Harry Potter books.
Mules are also stubborn so that's another way to look at it.
Hmmm
McGonagall buys a broom for a student that is well known for having a massive fortune in his vault.
Yet can't be bothered helping Ron, a student from a famuily that's notoriously poor get a replacement wand after his breaks.
The favoritism is real
Like it's probably the actors that help making the caracters more likebel. I get why Ron became so pissed at Harry and said it's unfair that Harry has all this money, how wouldn't you be.
It's also kinda messed up that you have to buy your own equipment for the school sports team? A sport where more expensive equipment can provide a _significant_ advantage, as we see in later books?
Quidditch is quite literally pay to win.
also insane Harry never even considers buying Ron a wand, despite being very aware of both of their financial situations
The final kicker in the "divination is a feminine field and gets looked down on" subplot is that a male character, Firenze the Native American-stand in centaur, comes along and is seen as the bigger expert who dismisses Trelawny's work as fussing over the small and irrelevant things when the bigger things actually matter. Totally not imitating red pill rhetoric about men being inherently better better and more productive than women or anything.
also a big ol’ noble savage archetype! the magical indian has superior mystical powers because of course he does! also he’s literally half animal!
Well that’s a reach
Now that I think about it....
Why are there no female centaurs ever in HP?🤔
@@DieVorleserin-ok8zr Because Rowling is lazy and isn't good at female characters. Part of me thinks that it was to avoid the question of whether centaurs have mammaries on their human half and whether they cover them, especially since the centaurs of HP don't wear clothes and have no interest in human customs, but I don't believe that Rowling would think that deeply into a lore she seems to resent exploring.
Side note, centaurs not having mammaries on their human half at all seems like a concept that's very underused. Of course, that would never happen in HP; Rowling would hate the idea of a female centaur looking indistinguishable from a male like that.
haven't finished video yet but wanted to add on Voldemort and the implication children born from SA are incapable of love/being loved (because to my memory he was conceived when his father was under the effect of a love potion) is just so gross to me too
Yes. Effed up.
I came here to comment this too. It's really sick from Rowling
I go over that when talking about his mom, who is number 26 on the list.
Jesus Christ that's horrible. What a sick thing to imply in a book written for children. People born of rape (who know) already struggle with it. Joanne has serious issues.
This is just a stupid generalization. Just because a person who has a traumatic past becomes a villain doesn't mean that anyone who ever faces those traumas will definitely be evil. This is such a stupid and immature mindset. If these kinds of things make you people think the author is sick then you shouldn't even touch asoif as its beauty would be lost on you.
Another thing about Ron's "Fraternising with the enemy" line:
He just tried to get a date with Fleur. Which would be exactly the same thing, if he hadn't failed.
The hypocracy is real.
Ron says it out of jealousy.
Ron says a lot of cruel things out of jealousy, anger, indifference or because it's ingrained culturally. And he never gets pushback; it's always Hermione being all emotional and silly and Harry being indifferent.
I just got to that part and that's exactly what I was thinking lmao
I thought it was intentional to point out that Ron *is* being a jealous hypocrite, but i realize alot of things that I thought were meant to be called put never actually are in the books....
I was under the impression that Fleur was part Veela which meant she was basically part Siren, which forced Ron into being infatuated with her even if he wasn’t before.
So characters are not meant to have flaws anymore?wtf is your comment?
The reason JKR writes so many adult characters that never seemed to progress past their high school selves (Sirius, Lupin, Snape) is because SHE is the same way. Still a bully.
@@isadorav3949 entertaining ourselves from a much harder life that Molding has right now. None of us non millionaires can do what she's doing, can we?
And if you call us losers from writting comments, what do you call Moldy here cciberbullying women on her Twitter account for her thousands of followers to see? Such a caring woman, am I right?
@@isadorav3949 "What are you doing besides writing youtube comments?" Says the person all over this comment section defending JKR. You know you can just not click on these videos, or read these comments, right?
@@Spamhardthat’s because almost all of the comments are massive reaches from people who have never actually read the books or didn’t understand anything about them...
@@isadorav3949Advocating for women? Really? By participating in a massive harassment campaign against a woman participating in the Olympics because she didn't present "feminine" enough for her and her transphobia rotten brain couldn't help itself? Spectacular advocacy - literally hurting and damaging the very group she claims to speak and advocate for. Try again.
It continues to strike me how cruel these books are. At her heart JKR is a cruel person who enjoys being nasty to people. Of course she doubles down when earnest fans try to call her in on her blinkered views: on some level she seems to revel in it.
Quick! How would JKR describe you?
Me: Julie was a plain, chubby spinstress, with fat fingers, no chin, and a mannish nose. She taught magical psychology - a silly subject for silly girls with silly feelings. Whenever a child got seriously hurt or punished on school grounds, Julie would complain at staff meetings - making her a proper nag.
Unrelated but ur username is AMAZING
I'm transmasc without any HRT or top surgery, so I don't want even start thinking how JKR would describe me 💔
But I enjoyed your description! I think you're a great person :)
Alright, let’s see how I can make or translate this into something more objective…
Julie, is an average looking, 5’7 human woman who’s not fat, but chubby, has a small chin, and prominent nose.
She teaches magical psychology, which also involves alternatives in psychological treatments that may or may not include magic spells.
She reports at school meetings about serious incidents where children get hurt.
What a fun game! Here's mine:
"She was a thin woman with big buckteeth, a strong jawline and sharp cheekbones. Her hair was dirty blonde and boyishly short, which made her facial features look even more masculine. She wore black all over: black jeans, a denim jacket with all sorts of embroidery patches sewn on the back and and a t-shirt that had a 70's rock band's logo on it and looked like she had picked it from her father's closet. Harry thought she would have looked quite cool actually had the embroidery patches on her jacket not included various political movement signs. Her overall aura gave a strong impression of a woman who never had been nor ever was going to find a man to live with."
I really think due to being a slim tomboy on the other hand JKR would label me as a cool not-like-other-girls, on the other she def would put me in the same box with Luna and/or Hermione with SPEW: a haha funny weird bullied woke sjw who will never get a man.
The best plot twist? I'm non-binary.
I like you already.
Knew it was gonna be a wild ride when the big bad Voldemort was bottom of the terrible character list 😂
Not gonna lie though, I always loved Hagrid as a kid and it’s kind of heartbreaking to come to terms with the fact that he was just as disappointing of an adult character as all of the others, at the top of the list no less. Snape? Dumbledore? Been there, knew that. But the realization that Hagrid spent the entire series making the kids take care of his shit and getting drunk cut deep. I think Rowling was trying to make him a sympathetic gentle giant character, and it worked when I was young, but as an adult I can’t imagine knowingly letting literal children take the fall for my incompetencies and put themselves in danger
The gentle giant/oaf is also a characterization often intwined with ableism, so it’s kind of the worst of both worlds too lol
I mean...it's not like the fact that even happens is portrayed as a good thing so...I don't see what bad messages it sends kids really.
@@Jdudec367 Actually it is more that you refuse to see it as usual my obsessed little bro.
@@poppie267 No I see it as what it is as usual, I'm not obsessed eiher.
EDIT response to the comment below this one: I don't refuse to see the truth though I see it instead, and no I'm not your obsessed little stalker friend.
@@Jdudec367 You can always see the truth instead of keep refusing to see the truth my obsessed little stalker friend.
I can't believe I'm about to agree with JK Rowling on something but manicured lawns are actually terrible for local biodiversity and water usage
This is true. I also think there’s valid criticism of the middle class/suburbia, but I see it as a part of the wider criticism of capitalism, which Rowling wouldn’t ever do. Plus, it’s perhaps too complex and propagandistic for a children’s book anyway.
What bothers me too is the idea that conformity is bad and boring when the muggles do it, and Harry being different from them is an interesting and good thing from the book’s point of view. The Dursleys want Harry to be “normal,” and appearances being important is a bad thing. But then in the magic world, we still get judgment over physical appearances and “weird” characters (like Luna). It’s jarring to contrast that, which is fine bc it’s the magic world, and the criticism of the Dursleys
@@hydrogen3266In Joanne's world, you have to be exceptional, but you can't be weird
@@hydrogen3266 thank you and OP for pointing this out! i was just about to comment on this same thing, but you summarize it in a much more elegant and effective way than i could, which i very much appreciate as a suburbia resident and suburbia critic myself
It's broken clockposting on Joanne's part, but lawns are absolutely an ecological disaster.
Fun fact: lawnmowers kill more people in the US than foreign terrorism annually
This is super random and such a small, throwaway line, but I want to talk about the line in the 4th book you mentioned: Ron tells Hermione that he'd "rather go alone than with -- with Eloise Midgen," and Hermione retorts, "her acne's loads better lately -- and she's really nice!"
When I was a kid, I thought acne was so cool. My parents told me that they had acne when they were teenagers, and that I would probably have acne too, and I was SO EXCITED, because I thought of it as a mark of growing up. I legitimately could not wait to start getting pimples. I remember one time when I was eight or nine, I got hives because of an allergic reaction, and I thought it was acne, and I was absolutely overflowing with happiness because I thought I was becoming a teenager.
But I remember reading this line as a nine- or ten-year-old, and I remember being bewildered by it. Eloise Midgen became prettier when her acne went away? Eloise Midgen was unattractive-- like a "troll," in Ron's own words-- because of her acne?
I don't want to go overboard and claim that this line was the sole cause of my hatred of my acne problems that did, in fact, arise when I hit puberty, but I think it was the first time I was told that pimples are unattractive.
And yeah, I hated my acne when I actually started getting it (around age 13 or so). I thought it made me absolutely hideous, to the point that I LOVED wearing masks out in public when covid started, because they hid my face. Funny how just a few years of hearing that acne makes someone ugly was able to completely change my opinion on this thing that I thought was so fascinating and exciting before.
(Sorry for the long comment but once I started writing I realized how much I had to say about this lol)
(Edited for spelling and grammar)
I also gladidly wore masks during covid and well into 2023, i didnt want to let go of my shielding mask, my self esteem issues were (still are but better) sooooo bad :(
(If It can help, thousands and thousands of people look for "details" and "imperfections" in people, so that just gives you a cool character design that stands out
Hmm, I think you might have come to dislike it, or at least feel neutrally about it anyways. The experience of having it isn't very pleasant, and it is technically an infection. However, it is interesting to wonder how you would have felt about it in the absence of our social environment. You seemed to have a very body positive outlook that I am honestly envious of even as an adult. Hope you kept it in some other areas.
I had severe acne for many years and I thought that line was discouraging and it did not help my already low self-esteem. I also felt for the poor girl trying to curse the pimples away.
As someone currently rereading the books as an adult with critical thinking skills, it's really insane just how unlikable most the characters are all the time. McGonagall in particular, their actors do a lot of heavy lifting in the movies !
At least she tried to keep Harry away from the Dursleys and give him a more loving family
And was the only one to suggest stitching up Harry’s scar as a baby
Rip Maggie Smith
@@tahraethestoryteller6079yeah I actually disagree with OP here since mcgonagal did surprisingly good on the series. she did have one drawback when she unfairly punished neville for Sirius break in. Neglecting that he only kept password list because Sir Cadogan constantly changed it.
i did not say that Neville did not deserve point taken / light detention, I just disagree with extreme measure she taken to make sure that he alone cannot know the password.
@@dodixaber8968It just reminds me of typical ableism displayed in the school and workplace. They don’t mind the way you accommodate yourself until somethin absolutely insane happens then they decide you broke a rule.
Mcgongall is one of the more mature...I don't see how she is unlikeable really.
It's the enunciation of "Top 30 Worst Characters" getting more unhinged every time for me 😂
I was expecting all the vowels to virtually disappear & simply become "TH TP THRT WRST CHRCTRS N HRR PTTR SSSSSSSSS" because they were in a register beyond human perception. 😂🤣
I think this video is a great argument against the whole ‘why can’t we all just act like someone nice wrote Harry Potter’ thing or the people taking the black mould joke seriously. JK Rowling’s biological essentialism and judgemental tendencies aren’t new phenomena, she’s been putting them in her work at every given opportunity. Pretending her transphobia is separate from the misogyny, racism, fatphobia, and antisemitism in her books is super disingenuous, because even the smallest bit of analysis of her character work shows the sheer hatred she holds towards anyone who doesn’t fit her standard for normalcy
She used to act like a liberal icon who’s on the side of anyone who doesn’t belong, but the open disgust, hatred, and fascist sympathies we’re seeing now has always been just slightly below the surface for her
Well put
Ahh, her "standard for normalcy" is exactly what we should examine! I've noticed it especially badly with the way she depicts women - if they are even SLIGHTLY different from her in appearance or lifestyle, they are to be hated.
@@Levacque literally, like she claims to be a feminist but she holds so much contempt towards young girls in particular. If a girl enjoys femininity in her works, she’s vapid and annoying or just plain evil, and masculine girls are ugly and also evil. To be a good person, girls have to be feminine enough that they could become conventionally pretty if they tried, but not so feminine that they actually care about their appearance. They constantly have to be pitted against each other, and they can never be friends with other girls unless they’re related because other girls are awful
It’s not surprising how much she hates trans women, because she doesn’t seem to believe you can have a positive relationship with womanhood. She seems to think only her experience with womanhood is valid, so trans women who absolutely love being women have to be faking to get off, and androgynous/masculine women who are comfortable in being women have to be lying. She seems so deeply insecure that I’d almost feel sorry for her if it hadn’t turned her into such a vicious bigot
"Wrong skin color? Straight to jail."
"Thinking people can be better? Also jail."
"Women existing? Surprisingly, also jail."
@@Levacque It makes total sense that she reacted to Imane Khelif the way she did
Also, anyone else mad that Peter Pettigrew is described like an old man when realistically he's a man in his mid 30s? The thinning hairline and the white hair are... a choice.
I think Rowling tried to make sense of Peter aging so rapidly bc he aged in rat years, since he was in rat form for so long. It doesn't make any sense, once you consider that by that logic Rita Skeeter should've died already, but still: Rowling had an old rat, so she needed an old man to go along with it. Plus, old age can add to his ugliness and she certainly appreciated that
Some people do grey and bald earlier than others. I started going bald at thirteen. VERY slowly, but it still started. I knew a guy who was fully bald at 17, and he didn't start balding at 13 like I did, it just rapidly started falling away. I've seen guys in their seventies with still all their brown hair and women in the fifties all grey.
A choice to be sure, but in this case somewhat plausible.
I was also gonna say as previous commenters mentioned that balding sing just for old men. My husband was balding in his early 20’s and has been shaving his head for the last 6 years.
Guys I'm aware that people have receding hairlines, balding or graying in a vast spectrum of ages, but that's not the point. I am fairly certain JK didn't give Peter those traits to represent a person with those traits, she gave them to him because they are ""ugly"" (BIG quotations). She just used, as always, very basic and trite writing shorthand to make an evil character ugly, so that there's no doubt they are bad. It's plausible, in a real world, but plausibility is not something she had in mind, I don't think.
Im only 25 and my hair is thinning and greying. Cant wait to look like an old rat in my 30s /j
I think with Ginny there was a huge missed opportunity to say that this emotionlessness and bullying personality that she seemed to develop was exactly BECAUSE of feeding her soul into Tom Riddle's book. Long term consequences? What are those??? Instead we have internalized misogyny. Man, imagine the things joanne could do if she didn't suck as a person.
She could have had a great character arc of overcoming her personal trauma from the experience, but JKR being JKR…..
Yeah, this was a point I'd honestly never considered, that Ginny toughened herself up because of being victimized by Riddle and deciding to never be vulnerable again. As opposed to JKR's explanation of "being around boys makes you a better person tee hee". I think JKR herself forgot about Ginny being possessed tbh
Ginny could have been such an interesting character and her experiences in CoS could have been used to build a bond between her and Harry who could have realized at some point that she's putting on a brave front but she's still dealing with the fallout from her first year. Instead, Harry forgot that she had been possessed by Voldie? God, the women in JKR's romances always get the short end of the stick.
RIGHT like a competent author (or at least one who doesn't hate women this much) could have turned Ginny's arc into a really interesting commentary on how even after the abuse is over, grooming can leave scars on a person and impact their ability to connect with others and their sense of self. Instead Harry and Ron are just like "wow it's a good thing Ginny got groomed and possessed so now she doesn't have that annoying ass personality anymore"
Also, the part about her pouring her heart to Tom Riddle could have been great as a cautionary tale about how abusers might seem kind at first, and how trusting strangers is dangerous (especially with the development of social media afterwards, and with forums at the time). But no, she *had* to make it misogynistic.
Hi, person who grew up as a fat kid reading HP here. Since you asked:
The sad thing of it is, fatphobia is so deeply internalized by certain parts of my family that I laughed right along with all the Dudley jokes despite them very much being the kinds of things that I heard about myself from school bullies. It was just another thing in my life that reinforced all that self-hatred I would then have to spend many, many years unlearning.
I remember finding Dudley really uncomfortable to read about, but then just assuming I was wrong for feeling that way because everyone else around me thought it was acceptable. And kinda learning to think it was funny I guess?
I literally didn't even realize how internalized my fatphobia and self hatred was until watching this video. This series was my outlet as a kid, I must've read it at least 20 times. Thanks for breaking this down for me!
@@rinsuu9848 I’m (non)functionally a stick bug but you kind of exactly summed up how I felt about this as a kid. In other media too. ‘I can tell somethings wrong with this but… no one around me seems to have a problem with it? I guess there isn’t anything wrong with it’ even if it took a lot of self convincing
@@rinsuu9848As a fat admirer, I come from a family where extreme fatphobia was like a religion. I resented the abuse but also didn’t know any different back then, and I didn’t know who I was yet either. I had a very strange mix of feelings towards fat characters like Dudley. Empathy and schadenfreude at the same time. It was incredibly toxic.
One thing that's always bothered me about the Petunia/Lily thing is... i don't really understand why squibs can't attend magic school when most subjects... don't really require magic anyways. Literally all of these are available : potions, herbology, arithmancy, history of magic, care of magical creatures, muggle studies, ancient runes studies, astronomy...
Ikr, like the kids at least deserve the basic chance to learn math and history. I think there's a pottermore article saying that squibs can't do potions? But still, squibs can't attend muggle schools - their only chance to receive nonmagical knowledge is at Hogwarts.
Besides, it's seriously insane that "muggle" subjects aren't considered important to Hogwarts students. Things like debate skills, economics, accounting/business, geography, or second language courses (the kids at beauxbatons all know English, why don't Hogwarts students have the chance to learn French?). Literally everyone would benefit from these subjects being available, and squibs would be able to learn them too.
@@V123_4 backpacking off language electives, you'd think that since almost all HP spells are just butchered latin and greek roots smushed together, the kids would be taught at least the basics of both. We certainly do that in grade school english, and in some tiny way it does help you figure out some bigger words by splitting them into smaller pieces. You'd think spells would be the same
This has been annoying me too! Like, sure, you gotta keep the spells secret from the mundane world, but we already have medicinal potions and herbs. Is it really that big of a problem to teach the muggles how to brew up some bone healing juice?
i'm pretty sure muggles cant visit hogwarts since all they'd see is bunch of ruins and rubbles. can't see why they couldn't cast some spell on petunia tho so that she could see what there really is lmao
this bothered me as a kid! i had always hoped that there would have been some kind of redemption(?) or integration efforts for squibs but it never happens. the wizarding world is built upon hierarchy and the status quo can never be shaken
I will NEVER be over the sheer audacity JKR had to do the whole "No one is born good or evil, it's our choices that make us who we are" and then turn around and go "Actually, Tom Riddle was always a lost cause because he was a rape baby". What the actual HELL, Joanne?
I think the point being made was that "choices are more important that abilities", meaning that just because someone is talented doesn't mean their lives hold more value if they use that talent to make people miserable. That Voldemort was one of the top three wizards alive that we know of, a highly exceptional individual who was prodigious even as a child, but his presence in the world was a net negative in ways the largely unremarkable Harry Potter's never could be.
I thought that was a pretty good lesson, not the whole "born evil so you're hopeless" thing but "judge by what he does, not by what he can do". That Voldemort could have easily lived a long, happy, productive life but instead only lived an average lifespan chasing immortality and creating legions of orphans along the way.
It wasn't because he was a rape baby though
Then why did JKR make him a rape baby, and no one else one, if she thought it didnt matter.
@@floraposteschild4184 I mean that still doesn't mean that's why he's evil tho.
@@Jdudec367Not if she said it herself that he was born "without love"
I just realized that Hagrid is the magical world equivalent to someone keeping a chimpanzee as a pet/replacement child and then being surprised when it inevitably grows up and mauls someone’s face off.
I understood the reference
It's shown in the books that half giants aren't just tall but physically more resistant to harm than other wizards. It makes perfect sense that what is simply "a little rowdy" to Hagrid is homicidal terror to everyone else. It wouldn't just be someone keeping a chimpanzee as a pet, but some double tendon quadruple muscle fiber mutant with two hearts who is actually stronger than the chimp and doesn't realize that pretty much no one else is.
I never thought acromantulas would eat MY face," sobs groundskeeper who voted for the Acromantulas Eating People's Faces Party.
They way the movies treated petunias character when saying goodbye to harry i appreciated more.
"I also lost a sister" she says
That moment gave her more depth as you hope humans can have. She was angry, sad, heartbroken, defensive and defeated. I took that moment as she was fighting with the fact that her relationship with lily will never be repaired. And maybe that Harry is the reason that lily is gone like a "youre the reason why my sister is gone so youneed punishment" even tho he was a baby and thats insane blaming a baby but that trauma reaponse being fueled into traumatizing others happens. And making her character nothing but a bitter woman sucks and is boring
@@MylingCyrus this, yeah! I also used to see Petunia's treatment of Harry as a trauma response to Lily dying. It's not exactly rare either. When mothers die during childbirth, it's not extremely rare that the living parent (or other members of the family) might see the baby as the "culprit" of the mother's death, even though, as you said, blaming a baby is irrational. Pain is often irrational after all. And living with Vernon, who also hated everything magical (something she also sees as taking her sister away from her), you could see it as her never being reprimanded for blaming little Harry, only making her worse to cope with that trauma. I feel like, while not justifying her, that would've been more interesting for the character
Although it is kind of interesting that while she treated Harry poorly, she still allowed him to come back to stay in her home every summer.
@@naos8116She “allowed” him into her home to abuse him for 18 years
@@naos8116 Didn't Dumbledore basically force her to agree to keep him? If I recall correctly in one of the later books the Dursley's want him kicked out and then Dumbledore sends a howler saying something to the effect of "remember the agreement" and she instantly shuts up and goes from wanting harry to leave to keeping him locked in his room.
And Fiona Shaw is a great actor too so that helped a lot.
It's wild that the Weasleys are always seen as "the poor family" when the dad has a job with the government and Bill apparently helps literally make the entire economic system possible at all
They have only 2 providing adults (3 if Charlie sends money from Romania) for 8 people (and then Harry). But they don’t have to provide for their children most of the year, only in summer. So they’re considered poor by the pure-blood standards since they don’t have generational wealth, but I guess they’re more middle class with low per-person income.
@@chirkunovanatasha it's very much the vibe of "we were upper middle class but HAD to shop at JC Penney and have hand-me-downs, the horror"
Not just that, Arthur is the HEAD of an entire governmental department, and yet is apparently being paid a pittance
@scarletsabre8383 I think his department isn't well-regarded, though. I assume he gets paid less than other department heads, given how Lucius Malfoy addresses him
@@xletragedyx Even so, you'd think a department head would be paid enough to properly send his kids to school, or be given government-funded/subsidised materials... oh wait, I forgot who's writing this. No social safety nets allowed, just let Ron go to school with a broken wand that will actively hurt himself, others, and his education, because if he can't afford a new one, fuck 'em
also Pettigrew as a grown man was sleeping in the same bed with a kid, letting Ron cuddle him for years??? thats one of the worst things for me that happened in HP.
(also I love your tshirt)
I hate being reminded Ron's rat was also Peter Pettigrew
I never understood why squibs don’t do clerical work. Does Hogwarts have a records room? Accounts that need balancing? There have to be some jobs that wouldn’t be made trivial by magic. As it is, no wonder Filch hates these kids. They have no respect for him and his work and leave him with messes to spend hours on that would take seconds if they cleaned up after themselves. That warrants some dark muttering, in my opinion.
Dark muttering at being reduced to a glorified house elf when there are... 100+ house elves in the _kitchens._
You're so right. It really messes me up that squibs are apparently barred from Hogwarts. Like I understand that they can't do magic or brew potions, but why can't they learn the history of magic? Or idk, math?? (Arithmancy or whatever?) Maybe squibs wouldn't be so useless if there was literally any attempt to formally educate them past the age of 11.
I bet a squib could do some mean research in the library if you let them. Or teach calculus, history, debate skills, or even muggle studies. It's such a missed opportunity, and it says a lot about how Rowling sees people with disabilities that squibs aren't even worth being given a chance to learn in her world.
In fact I still need a good reason why Dumblydoor insist to employ him to begin with? Unlike Trelawney he does not have anything to add and it seemed extra cruel making him do janitorial work manually when Hoggywarts employed hundreds of house elves.
Seems like JK Rowling doesn't see anything wrong with bullying the disabled, as long as you are one of the "good guys"
Like he could be considered disabled in the magic world, Dumbeldoor could have at least talked to the children and say to not be little buttholes to people with no magic, he could have hired Filch for classes on why it's not a bad thing to have no magic and that you shouldn't be a butthole if someone is born with no magic/are born from parents with no magic it at least make less Malfoys.
The treatment of Luna is worth analizing too, specially if we see her as the only (i think?) neurodivergent character.
@@denaoc it’s easy to read hermoine as autistic and fred/george as having ADHD, and hagrid is heavily implied to have some kind of mental delay that makes him childlike, but luna is the most overtly and explicitly neuroatypical child in the series, and the only kid i think we’re *intended* to see as definitely neurodivergent.
Ohhhhhh, THATS why i relate to those characters.... Cool beans :3 (and yeah, she should get a analysis, it would be pretty interesting!)
i totally see neville as neurodivergent too! he doesn't learn well from the typical school system, but when he's taught in a way that suits him, he flourishes (when harry teaches him). he's also really passionate about herbology which could be seen as a special interest
We can include (in some reading) Snape too.
Besides, the chemistry teacher that Rowling had and based Snape one, was very probably an autistic man.
Search about that teacher and how he helped Rowling's mother to have a job while she was ill, just to add more reasons to be angry at Rowling.
I very much do not see Luna as being neurodivergent at all. I don't see any neurodivergent characters in the series.
19:55
I'd also say that in context of hp "fat" kind of... Is a bad word. Because if a fat character is supposed to be unsympathetic they're fat, if they're supposed to be sympathetic (like Molly Weasley) they're "plump" or smth like that. So although normally "fat" is obviously not a bad word, but in context the association is pretty clear.
JK does not describe bodies neutrally, everything has a positive or negative intention.
@@asmrtpop2676 yeah, exactly what i meant. That's probably a part of what Ursula K Le Guin meant saying the books were mean-spirited.
@@szatan9717 Le Guin was an absolute treasure who tried to warn us about Bob; but she also gave her far more benefit of the doubt than was ultimately merited.
Isn't Slughorn fat or?
@@Jdudec367 And that he's gluttonous 😭
It seriously perplexes me that the main bad guys' whole thing is seeing non-magical people as scum, and that's bad, obviously, but then every non-magical character is a pathetic, incapable, evil slug.
You’re so right
It feels... classist?
What i find weirder is "non magical people are scum and should be exterminated"
All of Rowling's descriptions are extremely judgemental, rather than evocative. They tell us how to feel, they don't show us how to feel. It feels like the author hates her characters (that are female).
not to mention the amount of female characters considered “unattractive” (or from an objective standpoint, stereotypically masculine) or described in a negative light vs the amount of male characters held by the same standard
Yup
@@miidnxghts love Jo for that
Oh she definitely doesn't like women - or specifically, she doesn't like any women who have slightly different desires, sensibilities, or appearances from her own.
This. I actually don't mind that the characters are flawed. I think it's good for kids to experience flawed characters and learn how to be better people from the mistakes the characters make and grow from. But that's kinda the thing with Harry Potter. I don't think Rowling intended for any of her main characters to be as flawed as the writing makes them out to be. We're supposed to support Ron, Harry, and Hermoine. Even when they permanently disfigure a child for having realistic fears. There is no learning moment to be had from that incident. Save 'snitches get stitches' which is just not a good concept to be teaching young children.
I'm only just a lil bit in, and the "people can't really change" is so real because there were MULTIPLE instances where it looked like evil characters were going to switch sides and even team up with Harry (notably Draco and Dudley) but they just...didn't...and when I was a kid I never knew why but it's because Jkr really sees people as being born good or bad
Forreal!! Draco was perfectly set up for a TRUE redemption arc... But no. He just manages to survive & then grows up to have a family at a comfortable distance from the others he spent his school years terrorizing. What??
@@ZijnShayatanica after Harry saved Dudley from the dementor and the dursleys were accusing Harry of being at fault, it was so weird that Dudley just...didn't back him up. At all. I think Jkr THINKS people can change...but she BELIEVES that you are either born good or born bad. James is the other example. Born good, so him "changing" from being a bully to a good man is a foregone conclusion that doesn't need explanation.
@@powernade Forreal... Imagine going through such a traumatic experience, your parents don't believe you, a kid who you always thought was trash [largely because your parents indoctrinated you into hating him] still saves your life despite how poorly your treated him... And virtually no payoff.
@@ZijnShayatanica It was a perfect opportunity to show that EVERYONE even the precious golden child is harmed be abusive parents...but that doesn't fit in the black and white worldview. Oh well.
@@powernade At least a lot of us who grew up w/ the IP still managed to learn positive things about character growth, largely by being big enough nerds that we practiced media literacy before we even knew what it was. 😅
All of James Potter's friends fundamentally cannot see Harry as his own person.
Rowling actually confirmed that Marietta's scars would never go away and said it's because she "loathes a traitor" so we're evidently meant to think she deserves to be maimed for life.
I'm sure that if we asked her now something like "hey, it seems like she was actually threatened into it, do we know anything about her mother's job and if she has a father and if he also works? Was there a possibility that if Umbridge got her mother fired she would have ended up homeless or unable to get access to basic necessities?" She'd be like "oh no, her father has a high paying job and there was little risk to their financial stability" or "she's actually rich and her mom only had a job at the ministry to do bad stuff" or something. Maybe even "she wasn't threatened she started talking by herself". It's just hard for me to believe that if she had to actually think about her writing she'd turn to victim blaming
Re: Lupin and the boggart lesson
Also, like, you just found out that a 13 year old child’s biggest fear is another member of staff.
Like, I know “Harry Potter and the School Investigation By Child Protective Services” would be a real genre shift but…
Edit: accidentally said Neville was 12 at first
I remember thinking back to this when jkr kept repeating Snape is morally grey cause... No he isn't??? He's just a shitty person who did some good things, like come the fuck on, Neville's parents were tortured until insanity by members of a terrorist death cult and his greatest fear is a teacher???
@@szatan9717 that's such a good point
@@szatan9717he is morally grey, and it makes sense that Neville’s boggart wasn’t to do with his parents, for one, he wouldn’t have been there and probably was not constantly thinking about it (his parents were aurors, they were being targeted, they wouldn’t keep their child with them knowing that) and Neville was seeing snape very frequently, so obviously something like that would be at the front of his mind, while his parents being tortured wasn’t.
that would lead to changes in the status quo and Rowling can’t have that
@@szatan9717 He kinda is morally grey, he helped and cared too even if he was a jerk at times too.
Can I just say we need justice for Grubbly-Plank. An incredibly qualified and competent Care of Magical Creatures professor who didn't get the job because Dumbledore hired someone with no education past age 14 (ish, I don't remember for sure) and is not allowed to have a wand and who absolutely is unqualified in every way to teach. And even though she was done dirty like that she still subs whenever it is needed.
For a while I thought Hagrid got like a teaching course or something at least to prepare since he wanted the job so bad. The first lesson was him getting over excited. But, nope, Dumbledore just gives him the job? He's not even doing Hagrid a favor, he's setting him up to fail when students tell their parents they don't feel they are learning much.
Might have been nice if Hagrid decided himself "I know about creatures, but passing on years of working knowledge is not something I'm good at yet. I'll ask Dumbledore if Grubbly-Plank can be professor instead and I'll shadow her as an assistant in lessons." Might have been nice character growth
@@zenebeanI kinda of wish he was accompanied by someone. Like at least make it two years where is he is assistant or in formation or anything. Not just thrust him in an environment like that. He's a half giant in a school full shocked of little prejudiced kids. He don't usually has to take care of 30 kids for 7 hours in rotation for 5 days a weeks for a difficult discipline. He might be very knowledgeable in magical creatures but that's the surface sheen of being a professor.
On Hermione being blamed for the article Rita Skeeter wrote, it's even more gross when you consider she was an adult woman, probably in her forties, writing these stories about three teenagers. It's also hilarious how we were supposed to see Hermione as in the wrong for letting the teachers know about the mysterious Firebolt that Harry received. When it was thought that Sirius was out to kill him. I mean, if they can't win without that potentially cursed broom, maybe the Gryffindors aren't as good at quidditch as they believe themselves to be. And maybe they take quidditch a bit too seriously if winning is more important than a player's safety.
I kind of hate how quidditch is a nepotism game, just pay to win. A good broom is a massive advantage, and gives the rich kids a big advantage. Harry may be good but he also has a shit ton of money, and can afford to be better than everyone else.
I think they should all have to play with the same type of broom with the same stats in a school. Hogwarts is incredibly classist in a lot of ways, and i don't think they ever really handled that in the novels
@@sacrilegioussasquatch Yeah, it's weird how certain teams/players had that advantage. Like, the reason Slytherin and Gryffindor probably won against Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw as often as they did was they each had a rather rich person on their team (Harry and Draco). And it was his professor/head of house who got him his first broom..
@@sacrilegioussasquatch Harry has a ton of money but somehow he gets gifted both his top of the line brooms, one by the school, while Ron gets to use a broken wand. And an adult woman sending a Howler to a 14 year old? What? Even if what Rita had written in the Prophet were true, why is an adult involving herself in teen drama and publicly humiliating a child? And we're supposed to think Molly is this badass motherly angel.
@@Heather_Duke it's pay to win, and it shouldn't be a school sport for it. At least normie sports are fairly equal
@alien-vu7yl why the hell didn't harry help him? Better yet, why the hell is there no set of school wands? Sure they won't be a fit to the student but it'll still help a lot of people.
I did have "buck teeth" as a child, and Hermione "fixing" hers did indeed make me feel awful about myself.
Was the book the first thing that made you feel bad about your teeth ? I don't know about you but when I was a kid, 80% of kids were pieces of shit that would made you feel bad about anything about you, positive or negative. Hermione's went thru the same crap. So yeah, the characters uses "fix".
Hermione having to tame her frizzy, curly, poofy brown hair to "become pretty" really messed me up as a kid. I have big curls that were unmanageable as a kid because I didn't use the right products, and I was ashamed of having curly hair. My mom always straightened my hair whenever Picture Day came around, or whenever we'd go to family events. I related to Hermione as a kid, being a socially awkward nerdy girl with big poofy hair, and I think I internalized her "glow up."
I hope JKR feels all warm and fuzzy at night to know that I've since embraced my curly hair... after I cut it short to look more masculine! I'm one of those "confused autistic girls who's been BRAINWASHED by the trans cult!" that she oh so lovingly wants to protect. Screw you, Rowling. Curly hair is awesome and so is being an autistic trans man!
@@darkvioletcloud Good for you (:
Really says a lot about Maggie Smith's acting chops that she is the reason why McGonagal was my favorite teacher for a while(we all know Lupin's the goat, though). Rest in peace.
Yeah, Lupin was definitely my fave - as someone who was struggling a lot [chronic illness, queer, lotsa trauma], I appreciated that he was still surrounded by people who loved & respected him, even if society was trash.
Also, RIP Maggie Smith. She was amazing. 💐
Small note: but "abstinence" technically only means to abstain from something. We typically only hear it reference to abstaining from sex, but I think it has a broader understanding over there. Not that it was appropriate to be talking about getting drunk (with the friars) in a kid's book either.
Also how are you so right that videos like this feel cathartic? She really broke us.
it does also seem like it was probably a leering pun to some degree, given that rowling loves wordplay when it allows her to be gross
@@Rayne_StormsI think it’s due to realizing how the books deeper messages did have affects that you can look back on and say “yeah that definitely made me internalize x y part of myself.”
Maybe that’s me though, I look back at manga I did that for as well 😂
@@thomasstone3480yeah, that sounds like her. I try to avoid fully interacting with her, but sadly she crawls out of her black mold infested cave to spew trans misogyny.
Opinion of one single British person: we almost exclusively use the word abstinence to refer to abstinence from alcohol, to the extent that this section about the fat lady was hard to understand. Slut shaming … what? When?? I’ve googled it and discovered that in North America it seems to usually refer to abstinence from sex. I would not even have listed ‘sex’ in my top five things one might abstain from. To a British child-audience the whole joke is that adults seem to want to drink a whole bunch of wine before Christmas and then none at all EVER AGAIN immediately afterwards, and this seems fair enough to me.
I want to clarify that I am not hating on your interpretation and I am finding this video a really interesting watch, well done and thank you for the huge effort you have put in, the work really shows.
33:50 I think people remember a lot of these characters as being better written than they actually were because the actors in the movies gave great performances.
Seriously, I’m pretty sure a good chunk of the Snape apologists exist because Alan Rickman was such a talented actor and gave the character a lot more life than what we had on the page.
@@VoidNull9222yeah, the charisma of Alan Rickman saved sooo much of this mess. And I think Molly, Arthur and pretty much everyone was just... Less extreme 😅
This is seriously big with Ron specifically. Never read the books as a kid, only watched the movies. I liked him! Now that I'm reading it as an adult (my wife's copies) I absolutely HATE Ron.
@@kristyns1640 haven't gotten to fully watch the video yet but according to some time stamps I saw he's pretty far up there in the terrible character list, and I'm both dreading and anticipating it 😂😂 I'm sure I can guess why that is, and again a big case of "the charisma of the actor completely saved this character"
It's the film actors for sure, but fanfiction authors did a _lot_ of heavy lifting for those of us who were reading the books as they released. I thought this with the video she did on the female characters in HP, too; there were so many times I thought to myself "But what about that time when-- oh wait, that was fanfic."
You'd think Harry and Hermione would be able to bond over the fact that for BOTH of them, a world of magic is totally new and foreign to them. But no, it's never really acknowledged. When Ron and Harry were fighting in book four, that could have been an opportunity to address that oversight and provide an opportunity to have their relationship grow, but no Hermione is boring and lame for spending her time learning as much about magic as she can. Which I think would be the more normal reaction to suddenly being thrust in a new world...
Crazy to me that even after the ten hour video essay "A Brief Look at Harry Potter", Shaun's 3 hour breakdown of the series, many many hours of other criticisms I've watched, and your other two videos, theres still new discourse to throw in the mix.
Exellent video as always, I enjoyed the character slander, especially those I hadn't considered, such as Fred and George and Hagrid.
With regards to Hagrid, as Shaun pointed out, he's just as bigoted as Vernon Dursley in many ways. He shows up in the first book, is quick to anger when Dumbledore is insulted, and so uses magic (which isn't legal for him to have) to disfigure a child, who didn't even make the insult, to the point it required surgery. And just like Vernon, he wants to keep the magic and non-magical worlds separate, and even tells Harry that people would be wanting magical solutions to all their problems, so they're better off being left alone... when wizards can cure all non-magical diseases, regrow bones in an afternoon, and infinitely duplicate food and liquids. They, and Rowling, are just lazy when it comes to helping regular people.
@@scarletsabre8383 yes, I knew Shaun's arguments when it comes to Hagrid's bigotry, but I never considered that he was putting a crazy emotional burden on a bunch of children that he's weirdly friends with. It was a new perspective for me that I never thought about
@@puffinatheart5565 You could even make the argument that because Hagrid was kicked out of school, and since this is Rowling's neoliberal world, there are no social safety nets, was basically thrown to the streets, he never really grew past his school years socially/emotionally, and feels a connection to the kids and is socially/emotionally stunted to be basically on their level, since he's been working as groundskeeper and only ever interacting with schoolchildren since he was one himself
@@scarletsabre8383 yeahhhh JKR is a neoliberal, she doesn't believe in social safety nets etc. She also is terrible at world building lmaooo
Dumbledore has a habit of picking people up off the street and hiring them at his school. This is probably meant to show his benevolence etc. but it really does just seem like these people have nowhere else to go. Filch should be able to get a job somewhere that doesn't involve him doing stuff he hates, right? Maybe he can do paperwork or something, idk. Hagrid has a love of magical beasts, maybe he could work with Charlie or something. Hagrid isn't stupid when it comes to how magical creatures ought to be treated, just with the social aspect of explaining it. He could work at a magical zoo or do something like Newt did with his magical rehabilitation program, idk. It just shows such a lack of care for the world and a lack of respect for people who are put in bad positions. They just need a benevolent person like Dumbledore to help them. Idk I feel like there's a deeper message here about JKR and how she sees those less fortunate than her
There is a 1.5 hour long video discussing the politics of the Wizarding World in which the creator straight up says it's only a couple steps away from fascism... as the system is completely immoral, species-est, and authoritarian... doesn't take much for the worst of the wizards to seize control... they just need to be a bit more authoritarian than the regular government.
i saw a harry potter critical video by caroline and then i saw 4 and a half hours and oh my god. oh my god caroline you're a Gift
Did not notice it was four hours long until now
There should probably be timestamps on the video, so viewers can skip past the opening where she’s incredibly patronizing and condescending to her audience for several minutes.
Actually I’m… starting to think that attitude is going to last the whole video 💀
I wish it didn’t because her actual points are very good.
Oh my gosh Im 15 minutes in, did not realize the length. Heck yeah!!!
@@Fantallanaa little harsh but I kinda agree. I feel like Li Speaks and Haley Whipjack are creators with similar styles that she could learn a lot from?
@@Fantallana I really like her tone in this. To me it counds condescending, but not to the audience - to Harry Potter and JKR, which I personally just see as really fun sarcasm, in a video that is a very extensive critique of how bad these characters are. So I think it's fun and fitting
Not only that about Voldemort's mother: it also kind of implies a bad message about being a baby who was born from a r*pe. It teaches the lesson that if it happened to one of your parents, you're likeky to turn out to be evil and trash beyong repair or Growth, just like Voldemort. Oh what a heartwarming message for children 😢
The A Nightmare On Elm Street series is also kind of guilty of this, but at least Freddy’s evil for OTHER reasons:
Bullying, abuse, bad parenting, and a deal with literal demons to have an outlet for twisted vengeance.
Edit: Part of the reason why Voldie became that way was because he was conceived as the product of a _love potion._
I just rechecked, and he’s a product of literal female rape, apparently.
The biological essentialism is so bad.
Harry is exactly like his parents even though he grew up in the exact same environment as Dudley.
Every single person with bad biological parents turns out to be bad themselves. On the other hand adoptive parents apparently have no influence on how you turn out to be. Harry would have been the same person, had he been raised in an orphanage, by other foster parents or his biological parents instead of the Dursleys.
It's inconceivable that someone with "good" parents becomes bad because of circumstances or character flaws.
Who you are and will become is predetermined as soon as you're born in this world view. Quite scary honestly. The emphasis this puts on genes gives me the ick.
@@anjad.3656,
He didn't grow up in the exact same environment as Dudley... Was Dudley locked under the stairs and only allowed out to care for his parents?
@@anjad.3656 thats how it usually works though? In real life if you have an abusive household you will internalize the bad behavior. It takes a lot of work to unlearn toxic behavior. Harry wasn't a good person all the time either, he was quite angry in the fourth and fifth book because he didn't know how to deal with his emotions and trauma. Harry isn't always likeable, he is grappling with trauma and an abusive household. As someone else mentioned he didn't grow up the same as dudley, dudley was the golden child and loved, while Harry was ABUSED. And yet Harry could rise above his abusive circumstances. Draco as a foil to Harry couldn't rise above it, until the very end. You just hate JK rowling and try to reach for reasons to bash her books because you don't like her, instead of engaging with the media beyond your narrow minded hatred. A little ironic, isn't it.
That isn't what it implies at all. Voldemort wasn't given a proper support system either which didn't help, he could have grown and changed...he just chose to be evil. That isn't what the message actually is though.
What always stuck out to me about Harry Potter is that in every other bit of children’s media I consumed as a kid, there’d always been one arc, one episode where the main good guys did something that was mean or cruel or lied to their parents and needed to learn a lesson. I don’t know if I can think of any major moment in Harry Potter where our good guys did something fucked up and it was treated as wrong. There are no good or bad actions in Harry Potter, only good and bad people
19:02 this is making me realize that Harry Potter turned out to be a bully, just like his father.
Oh shit
And a cop!
Yeah, when you think about it, Harry turned out to be a Nepo baby who grew up to be a cop and named his son after one of his abusers, who directly caused his parents to be killed
And a slave owner, while having a friend who is against slavery
it kinda makes cursed child make more sense now
i have a feeling if you rewrote the harry potter series without the racism, anti-fat bias, and everything else thats terrible, by the time you were done you'd have a completely different series with a different plot and ending
Now I kind of want to try that...
@@lenabluejay1166please do !! i love reading rewrites of series’ that had good ideas but bad executions. in fact, i’m sure some folks have already done similar rewrites for HP, but don’t let that stop you from taking a crack at it yourself!
Harry Potter starts off as a suburbia comedy and transitions to a mystical mystery. Having deeply flawed characters helps keep things mysterious because you don't know exactly who is messing up and who is deliberately messing with things. Well MAYBE you do, but one has to admit there are many potential candidates.
The fact that some of these characters were supposed to be seen as ideal(Hagrid, father figure, really?) does make me want to reexamine the series, or would if this lady didn't upload a four hour video doing it for me.
I did already 1 minor caracter.
Filch as a disabled person (in his world) who doesn't get the respect he deserves because he is born from a long family of witches and wizards. His cat was a gift from a sibling who only understand and respected him (in his family) but died just before he got a job at Hogwards.
He is pretty much the same (expect for wanting to harm children he is just a grumpy old man. Who you think as a child is just a grump but later as a adult you can see his point). Maybe in like books 6 Harry will find him helping one of the physically disabled students who he has a close bond with (like a father and child bond) that shows Harry Filch has a softer side and isn't just a grumpy old man with a cat. After seeing he may have been a bit of a jerk to Filch when he was younger, giving him a apology for how he acted all these years to him.
Filch the adult forgives him and says he is used to people treating him like this, because of the way he is born and tells him some of his story. Later telling him that a job here is sometimes hard but getting to help children who are in some way like him brings him joy, Harry will learn from this and will treat people like Filch with respect.
I'm unsure how much inspiration it took from Harry Potter (probably not a lot), but I feel The Owl House has a lot of parallels while also just being a better story
The case against Rubeus Hagrid is so much worse than you’re making it out to be. Remember, when Harry first met Draco Malfoy and Draco was really racist, and Hagrid’s way of comforting Harry was to assure him that he wasn’t being racist *to Harry specifically?*
Rowling doesn't think what Merope did to Tom Riddle Sr is rape. Rowling doesn't believe that a cis woman can SA someone. I believe in Britain only a cis man can be legally charged with raping a cis woman, so if that's true Rowling certainly seems to agree.
@@symonewest5449 I don't believe it is only a cis man and a cis woman, for example a cis man can be charged for doing that to another man. However I think in the law the crime has to involve penetration for it to count so no a cis women could not technically be charged (would probably still be investigated tho especially if it involved drugging a person). It's a heavily regressive, harmful law a lot of countries still have that needs to be changed.
@@eyeballjay Why such "regressive" ever came into existence is beyond me. Drugs are as old as human language. And anyone with any sexual curiosity at all will quickly find out the sexual organs can and will act against their conscious wishes.
The last time I checked, English law defines rape as the unwanted penetration of the vagina, mouth or anus by a penis, and the penis can be "constructed", i.e. if the perpetrator is a trans man. If the penetration is done with a foreign object, it's classed as sexual assault, as is rape perpetrated by a woman to a man or woman. According to the letter of the law.
I think the definition needs reform. Calling it sexual assault when the sexes are switched just serves to downplay the seriousness of the crime.
Doubling down on Dumbledore because, even though it's not in the books, Rowling wanted it and how she's getting it: it's very telling, in light of her current queerphobic spiralling, that the only two explicitly queer characters we ever got in the series were retconned into it _after_ the books were finished, and every portrayal of their queerness in subsequent works has been entirely subtextual and implicit.
But even regardless of that, even pretending that it was spelled out in the books loud and clear, what do we end up with? One of the only two canonically gay men in the HP lore is literally Wizard H*tler. The other deliberately chose a life of celibacy and abstinence because the one time he allowed his sexual orientation to factor into his life, he ended up literally tearing his own family apart, and nearly became a menace to society at large.
Wow, Joanne. Thanks for the representation.
As a queer person, even when I was a fan of the books (so before all this came to light), her after-the-fact token gays never sat right with me. We're real people, not points on a "woke checklist" to keep your books relevant. How about writing something about us where our identities are actually part of the story? Or at least mentioned even once in the story?
I want special honor for Tonks!
She can be read as nonbinary person early one. And it's all just to change completely and become perfect wife and mother (and even here you could argue because she give birth like 2 weeks before going to finale battle. Postpartum is definitely perfect time to go to the war. It's so messed up...)
Even before Joanne became a TERF, I remember thinking, "Why are you telling us this now?"
Dumbledore wasn't explicitly gay in the books, but he was implicitly gay in exactly the way that homophobes of that time imagined an openly gay man from the very first appearance in the series. Which was in the first few pages of the first chapter of the first book. He was always gay if you didn't give Rowling the benefit of doubt on her bigotry.
0:00 Intro
2:02 Scoring system
7:50 Voldemort (#30)
11:32 James Potter (#29)
14:13 Cho Chang (#28)
19:32 The Fat Lady (#27)
22:52 Petunia Dursley (#26)
25:44 Merope Gaunt, Voldemort’s mother (#25)
29:08 Lavender Brown (#24)
33:41 Minerva McGonagall (#23)
42:19 Vernon Dursley (#22)
46:13 Draco Malfoy (#21)
51:37 Winky the house elf (#20)
1:05:14 Molly Weasley (#19)
1:16:59 Peter Pettigrew (#18)
1:22:17 Sirius Black (#17)
1:26:34 Argus Filch (#16)
1:30:46 Arthur Weasley (#15)
1:34:50 Dolores Umbridge (#14)
1:41:03 Hermione Granger (#13)
1:52:10 Albus Dumbledore (#12)
2:11:45 Severus Snape (#11)
2:16:57 Remus Lupin (#10)
2:25:52 Bill Weasley (#9)
2:36:02 Ginny Weasley (#8)
2:42:54 Dudley Dursley (#7)
2:52:58 Moaning Myrtle (#6)
3:02:28 Dobby the house elf (#5)
3:12:21 Harry Potter (#4)
3:23:56 Fred and George Weasley (#3)
3:35:34 Ron Weasley (#2)
4:06:58 Rubeus Hagrid (#1)
You’re a legend!
Thank you for this!! :D
You're phenomenal. 💕
12 women/female characters when you include Winky that's rather telling when you think that generally speaking the women get less book time than males and quite a few are rather basic characters
Caroline, please pin this! 🎉
All this time, it never occurred to me how messed up it was that when *Vernon* enraged Hagrid, *Dudley* was the one that got cursed. What the hell?
I was surprised being reminded of that! I had misremembered, I was convinced that Dudley had actually done something. But I guess as children, we take the narration at face value, and the narration tells us that it's funny, and that he deserved it for... what? Generally being mean because he was raised to think that's the way to be? Basically being a child? So we laugh and act like he deserved it.
But being reminded of that as an adult... yeah, that's messed up.
@@lenabluejay1166especially given that Hagrid knows nothing about Dudley! For all Hagrid knew Dudley and Harry considered each other to be brothers.
@@lenabluejay1166I don’t remember if it’s also the case in the book, but in the movie, Hagrid catches Dudley *eating Harry’s birthday cake that HE BROUGHT FOR HIM after the Dursleys refuse to even acknowledge Harry’s birthday at all* after he tells Vernon not to insult Dumbledore in front of him. And that was why he cursed Dudley.
So I can understand why he cursed Dudley in that context, but I do agree that it doesn’t make sense that Vernon also wasn’t cursed or why Dudley was cursed at all in the books if he didn’t do anything in the books.
@@horakhtythecreator6911 I hadn't remembered that in the film, it's a long time since I've read the books but I would guess that the film added that to make Hagrid cursing Dudley more understandable (but still, that's a child, and yes he needs discipline but that's not a proportionate punishment). I could be wrong though, like I said it's a long time since I've read the books, so maybe it's in the book too.
@@lenabluejay1166 oh absolutely agree!
Additionally, I thought it was sad that Percy felt he had to hide the fact that he entered into a relationship with Penelope Clearwater because he just knew he would only be met with teasing and mockery, so he ended up staying alone in his room even more than he was before then.
wow. watched this all the way through going "yep...yep", and then we got to the end and started talking about the trio's relationship with hagrid, and i said "wait, what??!!"
i was a very parentified kid, forced into inappropriate roles of responsibility and overly intimate relationships with familiar adults. because that was normal to me, i sought intimate relationships in school with teachers, not my peers. i replicated that pattern into adulthood and struggle with boundaries in relationships to this day. it's an incredibly difficult thing to unpack when you grew up changing diapers and paying bills and emotionally reassuring parents.
the conclusion that the inappropriate and unbalanced teacher-student relationship is the most dangerous message in harry potter is really hitting me because i didn't see it at all. which might be proof of how insidious it is. reading that as a kid only reinforced to me that it was normal and necessary to take on the burdens of adults. oh my god.
yeah, that one took me by surprise, too, and i wasn’t parentified at all. so if it escaped your notice, and it escaped my notice, im sure lots of kids just absorbed it uncritically like you and i did. very unnerving
Omg that is so right. That's also the one thing I really didn't catch at all until watching this video.
Cannot stand JK Rowking, and Harry Potter is ruined for me. With all that said RIP Dame Maggie Smith. A wonderful actress and a big part of my childhood. 🌹
Cannot believe this is how I learn that Maggie Smith is dead 😭 rip to a legend
wait maggie smith died? noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 😭 rip
@@phoebevaughan5095 this feels so weird i saw a edit of her getting older and celebrating her being a actrice for a very long time (most women during her younger years would stop after a few years, but she stayed acting and became a beloved figure) i just feel like i just heard that my grandma best friend died while i only saw her yesterday still alive.
James Potter’s and Lily Potter’s “love story” reminds me of too many pastors that I knew and worked with. They all loved to tell how they basically stalked and harassed their partners until they gave into dating and eventually marrying them. So romantic and definitely not worrisome at all
Misconception: Apart from James asking Lily to go out with him in SWM we have no indication he constantly harassed her. When Snape, in one of his DH flashbacks, tells Lily that James likes her, she’s surprised and doesn’t believe him, and this takes place in their fifth year. I don’t deny that James’s character was pretty terribly written even for someone who never really appears, but let’s not make him worse than he was
@@evyrys2725To be fair, it’s still a pretty reasonable assumption, considering the woman who wrote him is pretty bigoted just from how she wrote her own damn series 😂
@@evyrys2725 As you said, we don’t have much information to go off of, but i would still argue that his bully behavior and depicted entitlement are traits that are concerning especially when it comes to Lily, who is friends with object of his bullying (Snape). Who’s to say that Lily didn’t feel pressured to be with James because maybe she hoped to help him be a better person thus leaving her friend and others alone?
@soph1377 She stopped being friends with Snape 2 years before she and James got together. It was because Snape called her a mudblood. After that the whole Remus Snape attempted murder happened and after that they stopped bullying him. The war was also starting so they became more mature especially in year 7. Thats when Lily and James got together.
@@evyrys2725 What’s "SWM"?
Now that I think about it, the Norbert situation in the first book is even worse because Ron gets bitten by norbert and actually poisoned and Hagrid has the gall to blame this literal child that he guilt tripped into helping him for being injured by a situation he caused and which Ron ends up being hospitalized over, for which if I remember right Hagrid makes him lie about the cause of his injuries
Me: wow my house sure is quiet and I’m running out of stuff to watch
Caroline: comin in clutch with 4 hours of content
Right? I just finished the 4th season of Evil and this deep dive came at such a good time.
Between the Marietta Edgecombe stuff and how Rowling’s responded to the actors who have distanced themselves from her, it seems that Rowling takes “disloyalty” INCREDIBLY personally, no matter the circumstances behind it.
Honestly can’t say I’m surprised. It’s clear that most people wouldn’t want to be around such a hateful bigot.
"I am a tolerant woman, but the one thing I will not stand for is disloyalty." - Dolores Umbridge. Lmao
@@scaredaddy28she really HAS become umbridge hasnt she 😂
She seems narcissistic, honestly (not diagnosing, just saying she's extremely full of herself)
I love how salty Rowling is that Daniel took a stance against her and basically told her "I might have become famous thanks to your work, but that doesn't mean I owe you blind obedience." She really is the real-life equivalence of Dolores Umbridge😂
As a middle school teacher, the “explaining the rubric again but slower” was both relatable and appreciated.
1. Not only did Dumbledore not try to show Tom Riddle a different path, he also directly demonstrated to this 11yo boy that might makes right by setting fire to the closet that held all his worldly possessions and thus making hive give the stolen things back through fear and intimidation. He did teach a lesson there.
2. When Rowling was asked about Marietta's boils in an interview she said they faded somewhat eventually but some scarring remained permanently and added "I loathe a traitor". Which is... such a normal thing to say about a teenager who told the teacher about a banned club at school because she wanted her mum to keep her job. Also Hermione really permanently disfigured another girl, huh. This has always reminded me of acid attacks tbh.
3. I dont really agree with the "it's inappropriate to use slut for a children's book" take, since the books were more YA by HBP and children aren't that sheltered anyway, but yeah the whole Merope plot is an ugly mess. Also, Rowling has said that the reason Voldemort was incapable of love is because of the way he was conceived, which is just such a wonderful message to send to children who were born of r*pe or even just one night stands or w/e.
4. When Snape says it it's cruel, when McGonagall says it it's funny. When Voldemort uses the torture curse it's evil, when Harry does it it's gallant according to McGonagall. Like this woman really called torture gallant.
5. The fact that Barty Jr, a death eater with azakabn induced lunacy, was able to go around Hogwarts disguised as Moody for a year, turn students into ferrets and teach them about unforgivable curses, which he performed in class, and none of this was seen as out of character behaviour for the real Moody, wizard cop and friend of Dumbledore, really speaks for itself.
6. Some of my "favourite" Molly things that are less well known - she always makes Ron dry sandwiches with the ingredients he hates, for some reason. And always makes him maroon sweaters, which is his least favourite colour. Molly has a cousin who is a squib but according to Ron "we don't talk about him" and she complains about muggles in King's Cross in book one.
7. I disagree with Sirius having tunnel vision about Peter. Yes, he does wish to hunt him down after 12 years in Azkaban when he is not mentally well. But the first thing that Sirius did right after James and Lily died was offer to take care of Harry as his godfather. Only when Dumbledore basically stole Harry out from under him via Hagrid did he give Hagrid his motorbike to transport Harry and went to hunt Peter. Sirius is absolutely far more like his family than he would like to think (that's what makes him so interesting to me) but I dont think we can judge him too harshly for actions taken when he had just freshly escaped from torture prison and was living on the run eating rats. He deserves criticism for all the bullying and how he continued to treat people he saw as beneath him even as an adult. Prime example is Kreacher, his literal slave that he abused. But then that did lead indirectly to his death, so I guess you could argue there's a moral there.
8. "I'm just waiting for your underwear to come out of the wash" - an actual quote by Hermione to Ron from Deadly Hallows. She's graduated from doing his homework to doing his laundry by then.
9. It's Sirius who says that thing about "inferiors not equals", not Dumbledore. Ironic, considering how Sirius himself treats Kreacher.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I disagree with your take on Sirius relationship with Kreacher. I don’t think Sirius treats Kreacher badly because he is a house elf and therefore is beneath him. I think he treats Kreacher badly because he dislikes Kreacher the individual. He identified Kreacher with his mother and everything he hated about his bigoted family. The dynamic of power in their relationship does make it much worse and does mean that he gets away with treating Kreacher quite poorly. This whole arch should be about how appalling slavery is and how it makes monsters of any slave owner. Sirius hated Kreacher’s bigotry and behaved like the worst kind of bigot towards Kreacher because he had a power over Kreacher that is immoral for anyone to have over another.
@@AnaPaula-sq7kz oh I absolutely agree with this, his antipathy is towards Kreacher as an individual and as a reminder of the life he ran away from, but that doesnt change the fact that Kreacher is his legal property, as you rightly say. And there is the fact that Sirius does say that quote about Crouch mistreating Winky and then treats Kreacher arguably worse himself (we never see Crouch physically assault Winky at least) and I just feel like the irony of that is worth pointing out. Also, while I don't think Sirius consciously thinks of other people as his lessers and does try to be tolerant when he remembers to, he does sometimes let his upbringing show and just is casually bigoted in ways he himself doesn't even notice. And that is especially the case when he encounters representatives of an oppressed group who are themselves quite nasty people. Like he makes anti muggle comments about the Dursleys for example and while the dursleys suck that doesnt mean that Sirius is right to paint all muggles with the same brush.
I just finished the section on Filch and had a thought - I think JK hates cats. When Mrs Norris is petrified in book 2, Filch is kinda ridiculed for being so upset about it. (Which is especially upsetting when, IIRC, he initially thought she had been killed.) Mrs Norris is treated as an evil snitching character. Crookshanks is also described as an ugly cat and a menace, at least in Prisoner of Azkaban (I don’t remember how he’s described in later books.) Nothing wrong with not liking cats, but it’s weird that JK is almost aggressive about her dislike in her children’s books.
Yeah I remember feeling bad for Filch and despite his cruel streak continued to do so. I thought he was just an archetype that appears in British School Stories and got irritated in the later books when he was never acknowledged as a person (like most of the vilified characters in her books)
And she makes Umbridge, an incredibly evil and unlikeable character, love cats.
And it's super ironic because cats have long been associated with witches and magic, yet Joanne seems to hate them
@@meowmachine9147 Yes! I totally forgot about that! So weird
She is on record saying that she doesn’t like cats! It’s true.
I'm at my 2-hour break, we're talking about Dumbledore, and it occurs to me that the other problem with JK Rowling's character development is that her desire to make it known who is good and who is bad is so strong that it loses an opportunity. Think about how different the series would be if it turned out that Dumbledore saw himself as training Harry Potter for one purpose: to die, to fight and die. Literally almost no plot needs to be changed, but this character becomes complicated and tragic, and driven to great evil by his desire to stop Voldemort.
i think this is one reason why harry potter fanfic is so popular. there are so many obvious changes that would make the story and characters more compelling
Am I missing something? The Pensieve scenes at the end of book 7 are all about Dumbledore doing precisely that. If anything, you've highlighted one of the only parts of the series that actually examined right and wrong.
Ender’s Game did it better :p
@@Levacque Yes, but those scenes feel very retcon to me. The real problem is that JK Rowling could not have made Hogwarts, a military academy to teach young children how to participate in the wizard battles and civil war, appear to be what it really is, because no child would want to go there, and the entire point of Harry Potter is that every child wants to be Harry Potter. She could have written a better story, but it may not have been a commercial success.
@@DannyDevitowashere I know right!? But let's not get started on the problematic politics and discourse of OSC, or the bizarre neoplatonist direction the entire series went.
Fred and George are a perfect example of why regulations are important. You know, with all their highly dangerous products being marketed towards children.
i just had a thought. Fred and George are Mr. Beast. Whaaat the fuck.
A really awful aspect of Voldemort is the message he sends about asexual and aromantic people. The books say again and again that part of what makes him evil is that he can't love or desire. Voldemort not being able to understand or feel romantic love is the *literal reason for his defeat* - because he never realised or understood Snape's love for Lily.
This kind of portrayal feeds right into the stigma ppl have against aro and ace folks, thinking that because we don't experience certain forms of attraction, we can't have any human feelings. JKR said 'well, anyone evil obviously doesn't experience romance or desire! And because Snape CAN love romantically, he's obviously fundamentally good; bad people can't love!' Aro/ace people, kids especially, can go through hell because people hold these kinds of belief about us.
(I know Voldy had a kid in the stage play, but from my understanding that was a case of him trying to further his legacy, and not him having any kind of attraction to Bellatrix. Even if he did... well, it doesn't change the fact that an entire generation of kids was raised on the message 'anyone who lacks love is evil, cold-blooded and unfeeling'. Thanks, Rowling.)
In fairness, the series hugely promotes the importance of familial love and friendly love. The love that saves Harry is the love his mother has for him
I wanted to bring up the kid from the play too, but saw that you beat me to it. Though I wanted to say, that it is possible for someone to be physically attracted to a person and wanting to have sex with them without having romantic feelings for them.
@@starcatcher9405 Oh, for sure! Sorry if I was unclear there - what I was trying to say was that people might think the existence of the kid means Voldemort must experience sexual attraction, but people can and do have sex without experiencing sexual attraction. (And without romantic attraction, like you said!)
Oh, my god. You are right, I never thought about it before. Jesus, I hate Rowling even more now
Let us ace and aro spectrum people live in peace! We don't want more stigma and bull shit about how we are broken ones
@@Sky-wn3ff Not only that (I'm not sure if you already know so apologies if you do) but aro and ace actually aren't anonymous, you can be aro, the be ace, or be both.
Also, especially as an aroace myself, the notion that some people might think that aro/ace people are incapable of love is upsetting and also speaks to me that a lot of people confuse attraction for love. And because aro/ace people experience little to no attraction, that means they assume we can't love. But that love/attraction thing is a whole other can of worms lol
this video made me look up joanne's childhood/adolescence/young adulthood on wikipedia and my gosh it's like reading a serial killer's backstory. she basically seems to think everyone around her at university was incapable of independent thought.
Can you share where you found this?
@@Hiolori from her Wikipedia entry:
"Rowling always wanted to be a writer,[73] but chose to study French and the classics at the University of Exeter for practical reasons, influenced by her parents who thought job prospects would be better with evidence of bilingualism.[74] She later stated that Exeter was not initially what she expected **("to be among lots of similar people - thinking radical thoughts")** but that she enjoyed herself after she met more people like her.[53]"
It's very "I'm better than all these people because I'm actually a free thinker and they're just sheep" feeling.
Yeah that's what most hard-nosed conservatives think about University. Not really surprising to hear this about her, but definitely illuminating to have it confirmed.
@@user-kw7mr6xt9n the way she is literally just your average conservative and you can feel it in her writing yet many liberals still uphold HP as writing from the left by a confused individual... incredible
There's also the fact that Arthur Weasley is a racist of the worst kind. The kind that goes "Oh, but I have muggle friends" when treating people without magic as if they were funny monkeys there to entertain him.
I mean... that's not the WORST kind of racist
@@xletragedyx I dunno, I think I rather have to deal with an in your face racist that makes obvious to EVERYONE around that they're racists instead of people like Weasley who claim to like you and respect you, but see you as an animal who only exists to answer his questions, entertain him and be at his beck and call whenever he wants something. And when you say, oh, that's racist, they go "Oh, how dare you, my best friend is X!"
@@luxshine those are the kind that kill their opponents and enslave and torture those they're racist toward... I don't think Arthur is worse than a Deatheater
@@xletragedyx We will have to agree to disagree. Deatheaters? You can see them coming. You can point to them and ostrazice them and make sure they never get a foothold in power ever again. Arthur's kind is the one who claims they will help you and then insist on making laws that make it clear that you will never be able to have a good salary, a good home and will later wonder about how "tehre's so much crime in their neighbour, it must be somehow a race thing"
@@xletragedyx to be fair his wife did want a house elf
2:29:19 while listening to bill's lecture on "cultural differences" it made me realize that jk DEFINITELY supports the British Museum and thinks that "undeveloped" countries that want their cultural artifacts returned don't deserve them if the Englishmen that brought them back claimed they paid for them. And there is NO chance she supports reparations
why would a blood libel n×t-see support reparations 😭
When I was a kid reading these books, Fred and George used to make me extremely uncomfortable. They were just the most cruel, horrid bullies imaginable, but they got away with it, because ... they were Gryffindors, I guess? Honestly, between them and the Marauders, portraying bullies who frequently put other people in severe physical danger as mischievous, rebellious pranksters never sat right with me. And that was BEFORE Fred and George started selling roofies to teenagers.
This is probably going to come across as utterly tragic (and it is I guess) but as someone who read Harry Potter as a fat kid, the way in which fatness was used to evil-code so many of the unpleasant characters did not even cross my mind because by then I had already so completely internalised the narrative that being fat was a moral failing that it just made sense lol
+
I was a bucktoothed young girl who read these books growing up and felt connected to Hermione and... yeah, I did feel pretty crummy when Hermione 'magicked' her teeth to being 'normal' and 'perfect'. And, I also felt incredibly sad I couldn't do the same. It's interesting to go through this video and remember how many things the movies left out that were in the books and how sometimes, it's a good thing it was left out.
Wouldn’t it have been much more interesting if Hermione had the opportunity to magically reduce her teeth and elected not to? It would be such a nicer thing to include in a children’s book and lead to a deeper discussion
@@misspeaches1144 I agree! It would have shown that Hermione, buck teeth and all, still deserves to be treated with respect like any other person. Instead, by using magic to fix her teeth like that, it gives off the idea that all imperfections NEED to be corrected to fit in.
It isn't magic, but I actually did have a dentist suggest a procedure to fix my buck teeth since braces weren't cutting it. The procedure would have required my bottom jaw to be broken and re-aligned, and then for a section of my top jaw to be surgically cut out. The dentist also insisted I could have done it during spring break, and then be recovered in time to go back to school once it was done, but I decided not to do the procedure because it sounded incredibly painful and disfiguring.
@@botOxymoron yikes that sounds rough for sure. It sounds like it would’ve taken longer to recover too. I did have braces but my teeth got a little crooked since they came off and I don’t mind it at all
This highlights one really immoral thing about the wizarding world: they have magic that could treat all sorts of maladies (like broken or even missing limbs) that they don’t share with muggles.
@@melissaflora8450 I thought about this! How many people died in their world that could’ve easily been fixed by magic? I thought about it especially with diseases like cancer etc
“Inferiors” is a Britishism for “employees”. So he was saying “if you want a measure of a man, look at how he treats his employees, not his coworkers.”
However, it’s a yucky word that should not have been used especially in that context.
According to Oxford Languages, which ought to know, an inferior in this sense is 'a person lower than another in rank, status, or ability. "her social and intellectual inferiors"' In other words, a person of a lesser rank or importance, not a cute nickname for people who work.
@@floraposteschild4184 So bascially British classism and class snobbery.
Yeah, I also felt like that one was a reach. I don't love that word either, but saying this is definite proof that Dumbledore considers house elves to be beneath humans is a bit much
@@lnt305 yeah that seemed quite silly, its literally a famous quote about how you treat lesser men - Dumbledore doesn’t mean who *he* thinks is lesser, its obviously about who is the *perceived* lesser.
Just like how using the word *slave* throughout this video doesnt imply you think its the natural state of someone, because you didn’t use *enslaved* 🤦🏽♀️
I also just realised something about McGonnigal... In the first book it was perfectly fine for her to buy the rich kid a top of the line racing broom so he could play in a sport, but in the second she doesn't even consider buying the poor kid a new wand, even though his current one is a danger to himself, others, and is actively harming his education. Especially in the films, where we see in her class that he turns a rat into a furry teacup with a tail that still moves, so she KNOWS his wand is broken and being held together by literal sellotape
During the part about Umbridge, I was trying on my clothes and was literally putting a bow in my hair. I’m also wearing heart shaped sun glasses, which might be the most twee accessory. I guess she wouldn’t like me.
I’m not sure why she’s so pressed about getting canceled for actually bigotry, but is fine admitting to instantly hating women because they might be bad people, secretly with no evidence. Bad characters in her mind can be redeemed by saying one word “always”, but people she knows in real life can be vilified just for wearing a hair clip.
Im gonna guess that JK Rowling is actually the worst character in the whole series, because she’s all of them.
Your accessories sound awesome ^^ I can't wear sunglasses bc I wear regular glasses but I would totally also have heart shaped ones otherwise. I'm actually considering getting cat shaped glasses for my next pair!
Honestly the line “JK Rowling is the worst character in the series because she’s all of them” is such a banger and extremely on point to how the books reflect on her own views and the extremes she goes to.
Joanne just hates women. I think she would think of me as a dolores because i have a lot of pretty, colourful MH dolls and horse figurines and have feminine furniture.
I'm very happy to be someone she would hate, I'm a happy, loving person in a mold free home. I like being myself.
@@sacrilegioussasquatch I love love love Monster High dolls, I collect them too!! :D So many cool people with shared interests in this comments section
@@Kitty-the-Bunny YAY! they're so cute. added bonus is upsetting Joanne with girly fun
"Voldemort teaches mostly good and useful messages for children" is a really beautifully put previously not said sentence.
It's so funny to me that JKR wants to champion as this defender of women's rights now when it's very clear in her books that she views ALL women as vapid, emotional and annoying except when she's One Of The Boys and when she's very quiet and doesn't complain about anything.
She clearly sees herself as an exception among women
As an undiagnosed neurodivergent kid, I absolutely loved HP. I related a lot to Harry's crazy schemes- doing my classwork with severe ADHD felt about as hard as killing a troll. I indulged in fantasies of being as "sassy" as Harry and standing up for myself from my bullies, being as confident and as loved as he was.
I was also very overweight and I internalized a lot of the fatphobia without even realizing; It just subconsciously slipped in. It hugely affected me to the point of an eating disorder.
Realizing now how awful the books were and how many negative messages they instilled in me, it just makes me sad. I wish I could have relied on something less harmful as a kid. These videos are so important to help people realize possible effects of what they consume- I never realized until now how harmful Hagrid's relationship with the kids is. As a severely parentified kid, I thought it was fine to only talk to teachers and staff at school, so I saw Hagrid as a representation of all my school "friends". I'll try my best to unpack this and add it onto the list of things I have to unlearn.