yep that's how I see it. I choose to headcanon that his mother's side of the family have roots in Northern Africa (like Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, etc.) His dad is preferably Black as well but he doesn't have to be. I've been doing that since I read a fanfic years ago in college that took the whole "His mom is a Black Widow and murders men for money/power/dark magic" and made it into "Yeah she murdered a group of men but for revenge cause a bunch of racist ass European Wizards killed her husband (Blaise's dad) and so she's been doing a magic world version of Kill Bill and getting revenge on every person who had a hand in it. I don't remember the name of the fanfic and when I stopped reading it, it was only like halfway finished.
@@erockbaby3000 this was literally the headcanon i made up for his mother a month ago without seeing any of those fics!! idk if i wanna look for some bc the concept feels so badass or not bc i wanna tackle it with my own original ideas now
I think the most charitable interpretation of blood purity is that it is essentially a class thing, Rowling fails to understand classism in any systemic way, and then racial coding is slapped on top which she understands even less.
@@Princess_Weekes 20:00 I'm okay with writers writing what they know. Clearly, J. K Rowling sucks at writing diverse characters when she's "conscious" she's writing a diverse character.
JKR can't have a systemic view on classism as she's fully on board with free market capitalism and hostile to leftism. While money and class do occasionally come into conflict (Nouveau Riche vs Upper Old Money) they generally go hand in hand and the concept that money inherently gives a person privilege clearly frightens her. So she makes a delineating line that avoids her ever questions whether the system itself is a problem. The upper class are bad because they're full of bad apples. If the upper class change how they treat others, then they can keep their stuff. The ministry is full of bad apples, but it's ok, because its fine when Tony Blair- I mean, Kingsley Shacklebolt takes over and then Hermione succeeds him. She likes the system.
I had no idea Blaise was considered unattractive by the fandom. Back then I was probably too young to know how to use fandom pages and what-not, but still. I was about 12-13 when Blaise was casted and had a crush on him (which I felt guilty about because at the time I didn't like Slytherin lol.) Other potterheads I met also thought he was hot. Like, seeing these fandom reactions now is actually shocking news to me. Not shocking because it happened, racist fandom reactions happen all the time (i.e. The Hunger Games and Star Wars) I'm just shocked this is my first time hearing about Blaise.
@@delsingray5923 i think a lot of it was because people thought Blaise was a white irish girl. In fact in most fanfiction he is a redheaded white chick.
@@pookiesis1465 that's actually very interesting. in my experience of reading purely drarry fics, blaise is always a black guy. is his depiction as a redheaded white chick common in other ships' fics or maybe in fics published in the 2000s?
@Day Just flying through to point out that the Italian ethimology isn't even correct. Though Zabini is indeed an Italian name, Blaise is purely French (and seems to have been used by English people too). The Italian equivalent is "Biagio". Yeah, I know, not very useful but I thought it was funny.
Your breakdown of why it would reveal downright bad / problematic writing and ideas within the text if Hermione was black is how I feel about an Indian Potter. Like I love the depth and nuance some fans are bringing to it but when thought about too hard the implications are mega yikes-just off the top of my head there’s the optics of a mixed Indian boy being abused by his white extended family (who most definitely would be calling him more slurs if he were non-white, let’s be real) and then attending a predominately white boarding school that continually MAKES HIM GO BACK every summer! Also the living in a cupboard and forced to do domestic labor aspect??
But that’s just the thing, in the right hands, these topics could be explored and the implications of Harry’s willingness to die for a world like this becomes that much more weighted (and of course I think this would be even better if the limitations of being a middle grade novel weren’t there).
See the thing is, I think even stereotypes such as these could theoretically be powerful writing if used with enough nuance and awareness. Evidently JK Rowling wouldn't do that and adding that after the fact is... problematic at the very least, but still
It's hard to remember that wizards suffered oppression in the books because every time wizards and muggles interact, wizards are magicking muggles, sometimes causing serious harm (Dudley's pig tail had to be surgically removed), and then being mindwiped, and it's just funny to the wizards. But also, through sheer numbers, technological ingenuity, or whatever, Muggles are so dangerous to wizards that the wizarding community needs to hide from them. A good writer could make something pretty interesting out of all this.
You should read Unlike a Sister, very interesting commentary about muggle mistreatment by the wizarding world and even completely breaking from the Statute of Secrecy. Literally one of the best fics period.
Yes, this is a very early scene in the book and it absolutely sets the moral tone. Hagrid's use of magic on muggles is presented in universe as morally justified because they are 'bad'. That always bothered me even as a kid.
Honestly I don't buy into wizard oppression by the hands of muggles. I just don't. Not when everything else suggest the opposite. And muggles being more "technologically advanced" makes no sense to me. I mean wizards get to live in reality. They are not cut off from the muggle world like the muggles are cut off from magic. They have the means to collaborate alongside muggles with these new technological advancements and then also get to add magic to the mix. Like the world of Harry Potter just makes way more sense when you look at the wizards as the supremacists they are, specifically the European wizarding world. You cannot tell me that they weren't the ones responsible for the Statute of Secrecy and enforced that shit on through colonization. I mean the whole 11 wizard schools makes way more sense under this framework. The reason they keep having problems with fascist extremists in their ranks is because the wizarding world is proto-fascist. Now if magic were real and people who can practice magic are oppressed, they would not have the means to cut muggles off from the natural world. So everyone would know magic is a real thing. People with magic and other magical beings would be forced into hiding, which is hard to do because of the obscurous problem. That would particularly effect muggle born children. So what an oppressed wizarding world, that are trying to hide from the persecution of muggles, would do is have some sort of network to traffic wizards into safe haven communities where they are allowed to learn and practice magic freely and connect with other wizards. These networks and communities are under constant threat that they are found out and destroyed by muggles. And then muggle technology alongside forced collaboration with other wizards would make it harder and harder to hid. We could also tell stories of trying to integrate magical beings with muggles. People will rediscover that magic is just part of the natural world, and killing magical beings will not get rid of magic. Plus between muggle borns and miscegenation you can only keep it up for so long. I should add that this was not a problem for most of human history and cultures. Wizards did have place in society. It's just that muggles discovered christianity and lost their minds. That's when it all goes to shit.
@@birdiewolf3497 Muggles aren't even more technologically advanced, at least not in every field. Wizards have flying cars, teleportation and can regrow bones in a nightspan. They are shitty at comunication, possibly more by choice than anything (and though there's a scene in I don't remember which book in which the Weasley are baffled by a phone allowing them to speak through big distances, wizards are shown doing videoconferences through firefood). You could argue that humans have advanced weaponry, but an avada kedavra to the face works just as well than any gun (if not better, considering you don't need to touch a vital organ) and weapons of mass destruction wouldn't be very useful against a people hiding among common folks. At best, muggles have a numerical advantage, and magic's limitation are so loosely set that even this may not be an issue. Also, wizard fearing muggle oppression is not really convincing when the chapter about the witch hunts in their history books explains that no witch was actually killed during this time period because everyone just hid their wand in their sleeve and teleported right before being burnt alive, to the point some where caught on purpose just because they thought it was hilarious (again, I don't remember which book it is, possibly Goblet of Fire). I remember in the very first book Ron said the reason why the wizards live hidden is because they don't want the muggles to bother them every time they need some magical help, and it sounds funnier until you realise wizards could help for stuffs like medicine, world hunger or natural disasters.
Your take on the historical roots of purebloods distrusting/disliking mud bloods actually blew my mind. It’s actually wild how deeply that throws off the entire point of that viewpoint being wholly evil - and as you said, exposes Rowlings shortsighted understanding of racism - it isn’t analogous to racism, these are people who regularly live to be 150 years old who probably had grandparents who told them about being HUNTED by muggles.
right!! if rowling was a better, smarter and more nuanced writer, there could have been an extremely complex and interesting dissection of the roots of prejudice and the paths that future generations take from their ancestor's trauma. it wouldn't even have to be about race - many regions in the world have long histories of people who are much the same in many ways physically and culturally fighting for centuries and maintaining a hate for hundreds of years. (like, idk, the balkans are an example.) it's so much more interesting to think of a problem as spawning from a unhealed wound rather than just "slytherin bad".
I actually see this differently because it reminds me of Zionism. One group teaching their children that to preserve their own safety they must fear and hate another group is the basis of many ideologies. Even if it has roots in historical trauma I don't think that makes it more acceptable.
@@sierra8077 right, most discrimination is based in trauma. I talked to an 80+ year old white man who was uncomfortable with Black rights rallies because one of his earliest memories was his church being burnt down in a race riot. I talked to him about how oppressed the Black people who burnt down his church were and their trauma and he intellectually agreed, but still said he was uncomfortable with a large group of Black people and that nothing short of specific, intentional therapy would likely get him past it. I dislike hearing about this, but I understand the psychology.
The relationship between muggles and wizards not being at all explored, drives me crazy. The tension between the two worlds could've made for more nuanced characters, world and story.
I actually kind of disagree with this. I think a lot of the allure and charm of the wizarding world is because it was secret, inaccessible and 'untainted'. It can only be distinct by being separate. You see the same thing play out with real life cultures and subcultures. They can only exist as clearly unique entities because there is not much cultural syncretism. Once exposed to other dominant cultures they start to lose some of their unique qualities (this is neither good nor bad). They give up their traditional garb to wear blue jeans, drink at Starbucks and eat at Mcdonalds and watch Hollywood blockbusters. I think the outcome of the Wizarding world and Muggle world interacting on a deeper level would probably have been underwhelming and buffed away a lot of the uniqueness that people liked about the Wizarding world in the first place. I have enjoyed some fanfic about the subject though.
@@mirsolis4992 so as someone who used to be a huge Harry Potter fan until JK Rowling mask fell completely off I do agree with you about the Allure of the Wizarding World however I think the reason why that exists is simply because it is yet another young adult fantasy of wanting to be so special that the world doesn't understand you so you need to be segregated from the world which is a literal preteen and teen fantasy as people go through puberty which is why it shows up and so much young adult literature same thing with house divisions in the exact same way that school start pairing you into social demographics like the theater kid the jocks the rich kids the losers ect. I think this is one of the reasons why the Fantastic Beasts series falls on its face because that type of surface superficial thinking doesn't work when you have to make an expanded world mostly inhabited by adults viewed through an adult eyes were no matter how dumb are horrific it is all the gears have to combined together in order to make societal existence. Basically she tried to take like a cereal box character and try to make a deep water out of it which doesn't make any goddamn sense and why the Wizarding World doesn't work because that's fundamental level it literally can't work unless you turn your brain off to things. The really tragic part is that it could work like the way Star Wars Star Trek Lord of the Rings and other franchises had if they could simply just give the material to other better more contemporary writers and have them come up with new unique stories but Joanne is so incredibly controlling that she will never let that fully happen and this is why all of her material suffers. Like it's not anything amazing and sometimes by accident other problematic elements were highlighted but it's interesting to watch the movie films and see the slight edits that they did such as taking that spew and things like that and it usually improves the entire world building immediately which is why no wonder why Joanne even herself off of defaults to the movies timeline of events instead of the books.
Two more properly replied your original post what's has always driven me crazy about Harry Potter even when I was a hardcore fan back in the 90s as a teenager and was always a giant plot hole that loomed over my head the entire series is what I like to call the Deacon Frost problem. The name comes from the main villain in the first Blade movie where Deacon Frost the main villain of that movie forces his way into the meeting of the inner Council of vampyres and rightly points out the bizarre hypocrisy that the vampires are physically way better than any of the humans and that they control every single societal political and economic level of all human civilization and that since humans are there food why the hell do they bother to even hide? Pointing out that humans are super dominant over cows and humans don't try to hide from the cows they're just they're managing the cows and killing them directly and things like that. And that is a aspect that I always taken my own writing when I write any sort of fantasy element that comes to any thing or being that seems really powerful which is why do they have limits why do they not just take over the world things like that. And that's the thing I've always wanted to be answered in Harry Potter which is why are the Wizards so afraid of mughals it's implied that they are incredibly afraid of mughals and any retribution from them and that in the British Wizarding World the anti-witch stuff of the 1700 caused the huge goddamn problem for them and it's never elaborated on and of course in the Americas it's implied that the Salem Witch Trials had to do with something with this. But it just makes no goddamn sense when you see what a wizard is that even Wizarding children and teenagers have the ability to erase Andre for memories to be able to teleport anywhere they want they can make any materials they literally have a curse that can instantly kill people and you can only Dodge it and can't block it and since Muggles can't see magic they would never literally see with hitting them. Even with some of their hilarious backwards things like still using rolls of parchment they are completely way more advanced than any modern mobile technology so the question is why do wizards fear them to the point where they want to hide from them? This is where you get that train of thought that the only reason why the Wizards would want to hide from them is not because they're afraid of them but they're actually elitist who see themselves as above muddled and does don't want to be bothered with any of their stuff even though a lot of Wizards come from Muggles and that paints are really horrible picture and adds up to Rowling's libertarian values which I don't think was the actual original intent. Like I see this come up in the Harry Potter fan no more and more and more as time goes on and they just need to like create a story maybe near where Hogwarts first began that shows a whole riffic clash between Wizards and muddles and show how the mughals had this unknown up until now unfair advantage against the Wizards that cause all wizards to ship their pants and this is why they keep the worlds separate. Maybe there's a historic material like LED or something that magic cannot affect and they outline all of their soldiers with this and now that they're immune to all of their magic they can now start doing normal psychological and physical abuse towards them like what's been historically done to other minority groups? Like I don't know but to me it's the biggest plot hole in the entire series along with the why didn't the eagles just fly the ring to Mordor and why does the Matrix use people for power sort of plot hole that I wish they would just god damn solve.
I read these books when the 4rth came out and I was already in my teens. Her fixation with stereotypes, especially with evil people as being unattractive and the lack of depth in world building was noticeable. The way she had characters treat Hermione and SPEW, like, come on, that was evident to me as a teenager in a 99% white small town in Alberta. Older readers choose to overlook it. I don't think she was every really a "liberal" as in moderately left, I think she was always at best, a neo-liberal. Rereading those books as an adult, they are very conservative regarding race, class, and poverty and even education. What is Hogwarts, if not the most exclusive British prep school imaginable?
Yeah the 4th book was the turning point in my relationship with the series too. I was finally old enough to critically engage with the work... and also that's the point when Rowling started ignoring her editors, to her detriment.
Even as an 8 year old i saw the SPEW arc as seeming very wrong (I didn’t really recognize the implications though, just a surface level “why is Rowling/Harry acting like Hermionie is wrong?” Honestly her turning to hardline bigotry should’ve been more obvious in retrospect. Id be really interested to see if anyone caught it before 2018 based off the books
I was ~9 when I started the books and movies. I was so used to the trope of "ugly" villains from Disney and other popular children's stories that I didn't really think twice about that. I didn't even pick up on the goblins which is so obvious to me now. When Hermione started SPEW, I read it as "Hermione is right once again, and Harry and everyone else are being dumb about this." It took me a long time to realize the subtler issues. Rowling was great at creating a fun world and immersing kids in it. It meant a lot to me growing up, and it still does. But it is sad finding out that she's as fucked up as some of her villains.
@@Aelffwynnlike yes, I understand it’s a different culture (the wizard of community) but it’s the idea that they made her out as if she was completely irrational to question this system. I think I’d be less upset about it if it wasn’t made out as if she was the only one that thought this way. The half bloods and other muggleborn should’ve at least got it.
@darkwriter_xx94 oh yeah, as an adult I totally get that. But as a kid I was completely clueless that the books weren't on Hermiones side about the house elves. I saw what I wanted to see in those books.
Do these people know that you can be Italian AND black? This may come as a shock but people of all races can be born in Italy, have an Italian last name or have Italian ancestors. Like, I'm German and my last name is Karatas (which is Turkish). Also, I absolutely LOVE your Slytherin themed top!!! Looks so good on you!
@@IGETTHOSEGOOSEBUMPSEVERYTIME that's just your opinion, broski. some people think a citizenship is enough to make someone belong to a specific country. others, like you, think you need to be 100% ethnically italian and have ancestry dating back hundreds of years to be able to call yourself italian. i personally think that if you speak the language, consider yourself italian and adopted the culture, you are italian. especially if you were born there and your parents were born there as well. what it takes to make someone italian or polish or russian or whatever depends on who you ask. also, would you say the same thing about someone who was part italian and part spanish? or any other european etnicity? or is it just about skin color? because europeans are not a monolith and a swede has as much in common with a greek as he has with a korean. and what about people who are ethnically italian but have never been there before and grew up on the other side of the planet? are they italian too, even though they know nothing about the culture? ethnically speaking, yes, but is ethnicity all that matters? if you found a little orphan baby on the street, with no known ancestry, you took it in and it grew up to look somewhat italian, you would absolutely consider them italian. even though they could very well be a light skinned iranian. or would you say that this person belongs nowhere because they can't pull out a 5 generation family tree? idk man... with a mentality like ''europe for the europeans'' and focusing on race so much, you sound a little, dare i say, racist?!? lol (you also sound like you know jack sht about europe and what europeans themselves think of race. hint: we don't care that much. adopting the culture and language is more important to us than your bloodline)
More recently pretty much any HP fanfiction I read heavily features: - Silver trio as Draco, Blaise, and Theo, occasionally featuring Pansy - Pureblood being more of a social class thing similar to having an aristocratic title but with different nuances - Pureblood/magical society being so isolationist that it can be difficult for muggleborn students to adjust to the differences in prejudice (for example some of them will have nonheterosexual relationships as normalized in the magical world and make the contrast with muggle homophobia bewildering) - Magical creatures both being acknowledged as structurally mistreated and being given history for how they wound up in those positions (house-elves needing to be bound to family magic to survive, meaning the problematic aspect is turned to their widespread poor treatment rather than on the fact of their service; goblins being tricked European-colonizer-style into coercive magical contracts and then working to find ways to exert agency through/around those contracts) I tend to view HP "canon" as a completely different universe than "fanon" for the most part. I think it's interesting to see how different creators tackle some of the giant holes in Rowling's worldbuilding and how some creators will (I think usually unintentionally) continue contributing to certain problematic patterns from the original but try to make others either less problematic or more logical/realistic.
The silver trio in the fic i read (Drarry only) is still always Draco, Pansy and Blaise, so that's interesting. It's very common that only Pansy and Draco are close though and that Blaise is more of a sidekick. Theo is usually a minor character or an antagonist. Talking about fic written 2017 and on
Sometimes I wonder if Rowling's absolute dogshit worldbuilding is actually part of the appeal of HP, you know? Like how popular would the fan space even be if people didn't have this instinct of "Okay, there's a ton of cool things in this world and just enough that you want to explore it and know more, but there are SO MANY PROBLEMS so I'm just going to fix some of those problems myself!"
@@perrisavallon5170 oh I heavily subscribe to this theory, as well as having a story that is long enough and full of potential "what if..." moments for the fandom to branch off How interesting the antagonists and the side characters are plays a huge factor as well, and the world building!
@@perrisavallon5170 Huh, the RWBY effect. One can sees the potential for greatness in the setting/story and gets into it but then realizes the flaws and goes "I can fix this". This leads to tons of fanfics.
I really liked this one fic that had elves basically require large sources of magic to sustain themselves on, like giant magical forests or magical serene mountain lakes or Hogwarts Castle. Their special elf magic needs a kind of large magical source, and wizards can act as a source by directly allowing the elf access into their own magic. Households, like the Blacks or Malfoys, are basically a group of wizards that all share their magic with the elf, lightening the amount of magic each wizard would have to give to the elf. Since this is so direct and personal, straight up giving away your own magic, this is why the house elf obedience system is so set in place, because otherwise it would be too risky to take on a house elf, as they could literally drain you dry without helping you. However, due to human deforestation and environmental ruin encroaching on all the big magical environments, more and more elves have been forced to turn to tying themselves to wizards in order to survive. Thus, the elves become desperate to obey and the system becomes ripe for exploitation by wizards, because there’s literally nowhere else to go. It explained why freeing them would do nothing to solve the problem, as the root issue was the lack of resources and the exploitative structure of this current system of sharing magic. Draco takes on an elf in the fic, except he did it against his dad’s orders to protect them from becoming free and losing their source of magic, and so he had to personally power the elf instead of sharing the load with the Malfoy household, and it drained a lot from him. I can’t remember the fic though !! 😢😢
I still remember there was this awkward time period on Twitter after JK announced that Hermoine was always meant to be any race the reader wanted her to be (sure, Joan). And JK would "announce" new representation every other week and it was always so so badly written and never in the original text - but oh you bet she still wanted credit for the representation. Fans who criticized how disingenuous or offensive it all was were called bigots 🙃 the signs were really all there huh?
JK: "Hermione was always written as black, i mean any race you want. Nowhere does it describe her race" Also JK: "Hermione gets a black eye and looks like a panda" "She was so scared her face turned pale" "her face turned red in embarrassment" We like a black Hermione, but just stop lying about it JK.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 i think beyond just descriptions of her appearance, princess makes an incredible point about how if Hermione was black (and growing up in 90's britain yikes) she would have already experienced racism from her schoolmates and her parents would have known even more oblique racism. going to wizard school and finding out there's ANOTHER way for her to be discriminated against would have been even more painful and her reaction would have likely been compounded. instead, this is the first time she's likely ever experiencing prejudice for just being born a certain way and it's just a totally different dynamic. she's not black. she was not written to be black.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 I admit I sometimes head canon Hermione as Jewish because she fits a few of the markers I would identify as Jewish coded. She has the bushy curly hair that a lot of us Jewish girls have, she’s very focused and intelligent which is a common stereotype about Jews, her parents are dentists which is sometimes seen as a Jewish profession, She tries to fight for social justice as many activists are Jewish, And her facing prejudice as a Muggle born feels similar to facing anti-Semitism in a non-Jewish space.
@@neconeconeco Oh yeah, absolutely, there's a million reasons how Hermione is not black, I just mentioned the most obvious surface blatant lie JK did without even starting on the story itself. Black Hermione is a domino that would need a complete rewrite of the series. By a good writer of course.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 agreed, yeah, it's the most obvious and oblique evidence that rowling lied haha. god, i would LOVE a rewrite with a culturally complete black Hermione. i want to know about her black dentist parents. i want to know what food Hermione ate at home and how Hermione felt about getting unseasoned mash potato and boiled chicken at hogwarts. creating a spell that braids your hair while you work on your potions homework. just imagine. sigh.
When you mentioned that in no way there would be only one school for all north American it reminded me that I have to continue to read the "hp fanfic" that was published here in Brazil and there we have 5 schools bc of course we do not only bc of our size but also our history and all, knowing even a bit of that one school is ridiculous
@@rafaela00002 é a série arma escarlate, cujo o livro 1 é A arma escarlate, aí o 2 é A comissão chapeleira e o 3 foi dividido em 2 pts então sao 2 O dono do tempo pt 1 e 2. Eu só li o 1 até agora e ainda faltam lançar o 4 e 5. Pelo q sei é pra ser cada um em uma escola mas como não li o 2 não sei como isso vai funcionar.
@@thais_cdm sim! e ainda gramaticalmente errado, sendo junto e tudo, muita vibe de quando hq usava nome espanhol pra gente ou juntava DaCosta em vez de ser da Costa, coisas assim afff
I'm a late 20s black man in the US and I experienced this same level of "slavery analogues" in DND games I've played in the past. Even now I'm in a long-running campaign where the DM (who's white and queer) has an evil empire which does a lot of racism and enslaving. I play to escape the real world problems not try and face poorly structured fantasy facades. I want to tell them how troubling it is but decided to try reroll a different character from the evil empire and breakdown the flaws in how it's not working well. Wish me luck.
Hi friend, as someone who was introduced to DND back in college with mostly white friends, and who spent so long trying to fit in with them, I think assimilation scars one’s soul and might not always be worth it. It took me a decade to talk to them about race, and I’m not sure I actually made myself clear, but i wish I’d been able to bring it up earlier. (Not telling you what to do! It’s a different situation for sure.) Especially with long-running campaigns, I often find that the group (esp the DM) is using the game to explore stressful real world problems in a lower conflict setting. That can make it harder to bring the topic back to reality, but it can also be a relief because clearly they’re thinking about these ideas (eg the injustice of chattel slavery) already, like bubbles just under the surface. Totally with you on needing escapism, but in retrospect, DND and most mainstream scifi/fantasy are exactly the wrong places to go looking for that. I mean, anything can be reclaimed, but these genres are specifically for sociopolitical commentary, so it really depends who’s telling the stories. In my late 20s I started limiting how much media by/for white cishet patriarchy I was consuming, and for me that was clarifying: for several years, I had ~no faves. I had to rebuilt my value system in order to address the larger systems, and be open with my friends. So, I’m not gonna sit here and act like it’s easy. But, like, screw assimilation!!! I genuinely wish you luck! Be well.
This is really something your DM should have brought up with you before the game started. Communication is key, and you're not going to solve an out-of-game problem with an in-game solution. If you can't trust your DM enough to confide this kind of discomfort, you might want to seek out someone who you can trust instead. No D&D is better than bad D&D.
Did you have a session zero? If it's not too late, see if you can talk to the whole group about this. You have the right to have your escapism. Ofc if it's a homebrew the DM will need time to craft/modify so even if it's not this campaign it can be a feedback for the next.
I dunno if this will make you feel any better but I'm from the Middle East and have the same reaction to the Wizards of the Coast D&D material. There's a lot of lore that was written with an incredible ignorance of slavery, torture, war, racism etc. And while some of it has been pruned out since the game began, a lot is still in there. Because the people who make the game are Western and fundamentally do not see a lot of these types of violence as 'real'. (By which I mean they conceptualise it as something from history or fiction, rather then a lived reality.) I've found DMing and building the world I want within the game system works pretty well. But my advice for playing is set down some ground rules at the beginning. I don't trust Western people to handle torture well, so rather then trying to educate them and explain what I'm OK with vs not I just look around the table, and if it's mostly Western folks say 'No torture, hard line.' You can do the same thing around slavery and racism. I can't promise it'll pan out in the group you play with now, but it can make things a lot less stressful with groups later on. I'm sorry. It should be a lot easier then it is.
@@lkriticos7619 Your comment about how Western people conceptualize torture as something historical or fictional has got me thinking. I'm white and I grew up in a relatively well-off community in Canada so it's not something that has ever been on my radar before. I am really curious to learn more about what exactly it means to see something, specifically the things you mentioned, as fictional or historical rather than a lived reality: i.e. what are the differences in how torture etc. scenes in fiction/D&D are discussed and written. What does it mean, in your perspective, to "handle it well" and what do you find your Western fellow D&D players do that doesn't sit right with you? If you have the time and energy (of course), would you be willing to discuss it (even just a sentence or two) or to point me in the direction of some reading/someone who can? I don't want to pressure you at all. PLEASE feel free to just ignore this if you don't want to engage with me. I understand that this is a very private and heavy topic. But, on the off chance you don't mind, this is a perspective I've never heard before and as a writer, D&D player, and enjoyer of fictional media I would love to learn more about my biases, the ways I perceive the these things, and how to write about these topics in a more sensitive way. I am trying to do some of my own research right now but it's tricky to even know where to start. Whatever you decide, I hope you have a good day:)
I never understood why the "blood purity" stance was never given more nuance considering that the main character was literally abused by his family for having magic. He is a key example of why there are witches and wizards that despise and want full separation from muggles, especially when you think about their history of being persecuted. Maybe this is why I gravitate more towards stories where dark witches and wizards aren't just pure evil and hateful, but rather did horrible things because they felt the end justifies the means.
That point is kiiiindaaa adressed by snape, whose muggle father is heavely implied to be abusive and hate magic and thus making snape dislike muggles as a group (and meeting petunia whonis also horrible and later being sorted in slytherin) but very shallowly
@@jayla3282 On top of that it's also adressed by Voldemort (you know, kinda an important character lmao). He hates muggles largely due to the fact that his dad abandoned him when he was a baby. So yeah, very disingenuous criticism, as most Harry Potter "criticisms" tend to be.
Omg, this whole concept you’ve brought up of ‘blood purity’ and Slytherin’s self-preservation actually being a somewhat reasonable response to having been persecuted in the past is such an interesting thing to explore. It also makes a ton of sense for pure-bloods to be the group most concerned about self-preservation because they’re the only ones who are *guaranteed* to be direct descendants of those victims in the past. Also, can I just say, being able to watch a video about a new idea about Harry Potter that doesn’t spend much time on all the disgusting baggage JKR has brought to the series now was so… it just made me feel like a child again. It brought me back to a period in my life when I could genuinely love the series my siblings and I bonded over and not feel vaguely disgusted by it. I’m gonna cry lol
With some changes and better writing, Snape's story could have made an interesting parallel. To give Harry and us an actual character to see this sort of thing happen to.
I'm just remembering Mconagall throwing the Slytherins in the dungeon or whatever for not wanting to protect Harry in the final battle and how even then as a teen, I was very uncomfortable by it. I mean, them not wanting to fight made perfect sense since they were literal children and some of their parents were Deatheaters. Meaning, they'd have to fight them.
@@Heather_Dukeyea the optics are unsettling but technically that’s where their common room is and it’s the furthest place from harm at a time of battle. It prevented the kids from having to fight family or friends and put them somewhere reinforced from danger while providing comfort they were used to. Would have been better to usher them out of the castle through the portrait.
19:00 I work with kids and often have to explain to them "even if you didn't mean to hurt somebody, it's important to apologize and take responsibility for what happened." Cool that some adults haven't gotten there yet.
Blaise was referred to as female? Well I am happy for his transition. Let's face it, if a trans character would be in any house, JK would put them in Slytherin
In the german translation yes. There is a short description in the first book of children being sorted into the Hogwarts houses und it says about Blaise that „she“ is sorted into Slytherin.
I think the Blaise as a girl versus Blaise as a boy debate prior to HBP came about because many fans didn't know that Blaise is a French name for boys (plus the translations didn't help sometimes).
@@irondragonmaiden Names are funny when they have different genders in other languages. Gerard Way named the russian girl Vanya, BUT Vanya is a russian male name lol. (Even funnier when he came out as Viktor) Or how Black Widow is called Romanov (male) instead of Romanova (female). English speakers usually just don't care about doing research.
I almost never comment, but I just wanted to say that your point about Rowling and fandom not understanding the impacts of wizards vs. muggles is something I've been thinking about a lot. I'm Jewish, and it's fascinating to me how well you can draw parallels the author didn't intend. Being very closed off and insular, having obscure cultural norms that are colored by where you live and what group in a bigger community you're part of, being suspicious of people who didn't grow up in the community when they come in, debates about who's 'really' part of the community. There's more, but that's something that's really glaring to me any time I read something having to do with pureblood culture and the like. Because to me, how you survive being around people who'd be hostile if they knew what kind of person you were is so natural that it's very alien to see the way other people who don't seem to have that experience handle it. Obviously, that parallel wasn't intentional at all, but it kind of makes me want to see what a talented fanfic writer could do with the concept of building that out to its natural conclusion. I don't know if I explained very well, but it's something that's seen more and more often in fanfic, and how you talked about it articulated the idea really well, so thank you!
This comment is incredible, and I'd like to add onto it an idea I was just starting to think about due to it on how to explore this particular POV in fanfic...an exploration of Wizarding culture from the lense of two of its most famous families: the Potters and the Blacks, from their beginnings and into the modern age. While both canonically pureblood lineages, they somehow diverged at some point due to the Blacks (+ the other 11 "main" pureblood families) being staunchly pro-blood purity while the Potters (+ Prewetts, Weasleys, etc) became more lax and open to intermixing with Half-bloods and Muggleborns (Cannot help but think on: "Heaven and earth! Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"). Seeing the progression and then path divergence (and destruction?) of both would serve as a perfect way of breaking down how the Wizarding world and it's nuances could make a hell of a lot more sense in real world terms when JKR isn't putting her dumb fucking TERF hands on it. (Because that's kind of the thing, isn't it? That she somehow happens to come up with incredible ideas, characters + rich backstories and interesting worldbuilding blocks, but almost always bungles it up because she lacks the amount of imagination and/or critical thinking skills to fully flesh it all out. Long live fanfic writers!) I'm putting this idea out there as both 1) An interesting way of applying a more realistic sense of why certain magical people think the way they do (Not just to excuse the bigotry, of course) and 2) Because I hope someone actually sees this idea and writes it someday, as I find myself lacking in enough intellect or skill to put it all into words (but hey ho, my mind still runs free!).
The Harry Potter series has so many interesting concepts that never get explored or have any thought put into. The aspect of muggles persecuting wizards is solely there because it gives a reason for why the wizards decided to stay secret. There's no thought put into the implications of that kind of history, even though it would allow for some interesting material.
@@slowdancers I’ve actually been considering writing a HP “fanfic” history retcon! It would basically be an attempt to make a history of the wizarding world from about 500 AD to 2000 AD. I’m more sure how true to the original I’d end up making the end point. It’ll be interesting to see where it takes me. Basically Harry Potter if Rowling was any good at worldbuilding, as opposed to “throw in what I want to talk about the most”-building.
It never dawned on me until you mentioned it, but Theo really did replace Blaise once it was canon that he's Black. I remember when Theo was the extra evil Slytherin who never got the redemption arc, then it all changed. It makes so much more sense now.
I used to be in HP roleplays and whenever I complained about how white they were people would give me stats about the UK’s population or say something about how it just wouldn’t make sense to have Black or other POC characters lmao…being Black in these fandoms was so bizarre bc people would be so openly racist while telling us that we were overthinking it if we brought it up, even in the kindest way. This video (like many of your fandom videos) is major catharsis for me because at the time I felt so alone.
Why do I feel like many of them were American? 🤔 Feeling pretty cheated out of a story about the kid of Windrush generation parents, discovering they have magic powers
Have you actually seen tbe racial count of uk schools. It is actually accurate. Lots of white kids and the few asians, few blacks.... in ome class. Esepcially when comparing state vs public vs private schools. (Public schools in UK are more like american private schools). State schhols are more equivalent to american public. British private are the super elite. Superior. Especially places like eton college
@@LilyUnicorn I don’t consume fantasy for realism and I don’t really feel like going back and forth with someone who missed the entire point of the video. Have a blessed day!
3:40 Thank you, yes. NO WAY IN HELL girlie wrote the whole mudblood thing and thought a black hermonie wouldn't connect it to racism especially assuming she grew up in the rich part of Hampstead
Literally the only person who could touch the noxious mess that is HP in 2022 and bring nuance, depth and a novel perspective. We stan our Black Slytherin Queen 🐍👑
You nailed it. JK was out of her depth with this topic. When the series first came out it was obvious that the Death Eaters were the KKK, but old girl had no idea about structural oppression and that made the plot weak. Her world building and character development were terrible
Ikr I remember being confused by the clearly death eaters are like the KKK and Slytherins are the racist blood elitists and we're supposed to think those things are bad but we're cool with just keeping the evil Hogwarts house and we're cool with enslaving house elves and we're expected to believe that they'd want to be enslaved? It was so confusing
Something can be based on something and not be equivalence to it. I don't think that Harry Potter is an analogy for racism. It's a fictional story about facing of against the dark lord. Entertaining but not all that deep. To say it's in anyway political or philosophical is giving Rowling to much credit.
For better worldbuilding, might I suggest the Percy Jackson books and all of the other works of the author of that series? I won't claim it's high literature( I would check out Malazan and Wheel of Time for that) but for good urban fantasy worldbuilding? It's not perfect, but it is good for what it is and has greater detail in the worldbuilding.
@@jadencrawford2772 I read the first few Percy Jackson, but lost interest when it switched to the Roman part. The Greek series was sufficient for some light reading.
We often talk about how colonization justifies our (Black people) presence in the very few representations we do have in the stories of white protagonists, but another explanation for Blaise is that Blacks existed in Italy long before slavery. Long before chattel slavery the Moors lived throughout Europe. Shakespeare didn't just dream up Othello as an idealistic approach to be more inclusive; Blacks really lived lives in European society! (And the term Moor was not used strictly as a description of Arabic people but often used to describe any African with dark skin.) To the point, the community of Moors was quite prevalent in Italy and parts of Spain. Blaise is probably from an old family descended from wealthy Moors. But that opens up another arguments for some because if you can't fathom Blaise being Black you all all but die of shock if you read that some of the Medici family were Black. I can hear the pearls being clutched.
The thing is, you forget that the Witch society is separated from the Muggle society. They have their own transport, etc. So contacting other witch from other countries would be easier to do and even before muggle discover other countries. So it's wouldn't be far fetch to many black people to be part of european witch society. Example is how in France 1700 era some black people were put in position of power as generals, and mixed kid of noble would still be considered nobles. Just like how Malfoy family tree started in France. To have other people family starting in Africa wouldn't be far fetch if you also consider modern immigration, with 2nd-gen/3rd gen immigrants.
Your relationship with Blaise is SO similar to my relationship with Ginny Weasley (for upcoming context, I'm an out and proud gay man). Reading the books I ALWAYS read her as being a lesbian or bisexual who was interested in Luna Lovegood. I got strong feelings between those two and was like, "you get it girl." So, when Ginny starts dating... some random guy I was like... ok. And when she dated Harry I wanted to commit crimes. The books make Ron x Hermionie work, but by God, Harry x Ginny SUCKS so bad. They have the chemistry of wet cardboard. Plus, Ginny was the only one who actually liked Luna as a person (y'all forget how mean the main trio were to her behind her back - or even to her face).
Big same, and that's also a very popular fandom opinion. Personally, I usually read Ginny as bi, but I've seen a lot of fanfics that build off of the canon series but exclude the epilogue, who explicitly call out the way her relationship with Harry feels weird and forced as evidence of her not being attracted to men. They usually write them breaking up but remaining friends while Ginny runs off to be with Luna.
I feel the same way about Harry and Ginny. It just feels so tacked on and thoughtless. Especially since I read Harry as at least bi, maybe outright gay. I'm reading his own internal thoughts and I'm getting, "Bill is just so...cool, Cedric is incredibly handsome, Blaise Zabini is stunningly beautiful," etc. Not to mention his obsession with and stalking of Draco Malfoy, who has been pulling his pigtails for years. Harry. Bro. I'm a gay dude, and I'm seeing some signs.
@@austinluther5825 This! And it's especially noticeable when you compare it to the way he describes girls. Cho gets the much less descriptive "very pretty" a lot, usually right before or after mentioning how popular and good at Quidditch she is. And for Ginny it's even more ridiculous: we as readers find out that Ginny is attractive because Ron and Hermione talk about how many other boys find her attractive while our POV character happens to be in the room, and it takes OVER A YEAR of that before we get any description of her being attractive from Harry's actual perspective. Basically, Harry notices when boys are attractive, but for girls he's more likely to notice or emphasize when OTHER PEOPLE find them attractive.
@@CatHasOpinions734 If we're being impartial about this, this circles back to Rowling just. Not being a good writer. Because she is a woman and takes great pride in being a woman, she simply cannot write a male character and get into the headspace of thoughts a cis straight male would actually have about his female peers. She will yell from the top of her lungs that Harry is straight and will shove him into a loveless marriage with a woman but fails to execute anything that actually convinces us he's interested or happy with this situation. It's all very "oh don't they just look so nice together?" flowery text without any actual substance. If Rowling was a better writer, maybe Harry could've been convincingly straight, but we don't have that so instead we get to gleefully participate in accidentally gay subtext. Edit: I think this is also why, despite the problems, Ron x Hermione is a much easier pairing to accept -- We never see a Ron POV. We can accept the fact that Ron is hopelessly straight because we have an impartial outsider view, but I imagine if Rowling had tried to actually write his POV we would be getting some very mixed signals there, too.
As I've gotten older, I've noticed I've read the books differently than others have, especially when it comes to things like the goblins (i always viewed them as heroes who found a way to ensure that wizards in their prejudice would never try to kill them all again, because even if legally they're equal, it's clear they still aren't treated as such in society), etc, so I never really saw blood purity, etc as an allegory for race, because it never fit for me, but rather as a general commentary on prejudice. I was disappointed in the films when they had Blaise join in on the fiendfyre scene, because it placed him on the side of the death eaters, and, if I remember the books correctly, he never indicates he actually supports them, more that he's ambivalent. In the books, he came across to me more as someone who was in Slytherin likely because he's ambitious and/or cunning and happens to be pureblood, like I assume was the reason Andromeda Black was in Slytherin. And I was disappointed the movies took that away. I was also disappointed Dean got shafted in the books, because his character fascinated me, especially when they hint that his dad (I think) may have been a wizard. Great video!
To be fair, the actor who portrayed crabbe or Goyle (forgot which one) was arrested for drugs and was kicked off the movie so they had to fill in another Slytherin for that. They probably could’ve picked another Slytherin character than blaise but hindsight.
I agree, that's how I saw the characters too! I guess I see Dean now the same way I see the Mauraders -- I used to wish there was more information on them, but then once I started to dislike JKR I was glad that the fandom could write about them instead
My head cannot Blaise comes from one fanfic where he builds a relationship with Susan Bones. And he doesn't really want to be involved with the whole war, but ultimately thinks Voldemort is crazy. He is so nuanced there and so Slytherin, but still sympathetic.
Blaise was the one to be most disgusted about the thought of any blood impurity or even being interested in blood traitors. So no. He was a prick. Reread the scene of where dracos head is in in the train car with his head on pansys lap. Draco himself didnt make a comment about Ginny being pretty. Pansy did that mostly to get a rise out of the boys, but Blaises response was basically, thats disgusting.
I watched this on Nebula yesterday and came to comment because I really enjoyed this video. The discussion you had about wizards and oppression reminded me of conversations in the X Men fandom about mutants as a minority metaphor. While it works in a lot of ways it doesn’t always map on exactly.
@@eb.3764 Nebula is a streaming platform that was created by a bunch of video essayists as an alternative to UA-cam. Allows them to have more control over their work - don't need to worry about getting demonetized over something stupid.
The whole "fantasy beings being oppressed" thing can be done well, I think, but writers need to tread carefully. When you make the parallels to real-world groups too strong, you very quickly run into some questionable implications.
@@StarlightPrism I think for it to work there should be an element in the worldbuilding that allows the mortal humans to overpower the magical/super people. In the Harry Potter saga is never really explained how muggles could be dangerous to wizards, we only get told that they did and often also that they actually weren't after all. In the X-men on the other hand the invention of the Cure shows how the humans can actually pose a threath to the mutants. That to me is much more compelling and creates a more realistic parallel for the mutants as oppressed.
You missed that there's literally only one wizarding school in the entirety of Africa, which IMO is way more absurd than one in North America. I mean, most of the broader wizarding school lore is absurd, but that one always stuck out to me.
Yes! That one outright made me mad. Like Africa isn’t significantly larger in geographical and population size than Europe and they get one school? That’s when I first became aware of Rowling’s blindspots
The whole continent of Africa having one gd school made me feel like someone had hit my head with a 2x4. Then she had China and India sharing the same school. The two most-populous nations on the planet, but they share a school with a whole mess of other Asian nations. Absolutely ridiculous. Like, *no*.
That's super insightful about Hermione being "so exceptional that the barriers revolving around her m-word status, can't stop her." None of the systems that Rowling claims are these big scary forces oppressing people, really target Hermione. She has that one scene in Chamber of Secrets and that really nasty bit at Malfoy Manor, but it really is just this very shallow "I am disliked by a certain population because of who I am" without really going into how that impacts her on a day to day level. Harry faces more oppression sometimes and he's a "straight" rich white guy with two magical parents. At least in terms of systemic nonsense, Politicians exploiting laws to try to get him expelled from school (and thus society at large), using the press to discredit his claims and gaslight his experiences, arbitrary and ever shifting standards that aren't communicated to him but will make him susceptible to punishment none the less. Hell, why didn't Umbridge target Hermione if being an m-word is such a devicive thing in Hogwarts?
One of the things I found very confusing about the wizarding world is that some wizards who are born into it never interact with the muggle world. They have the world set up so that once you are part of it you never have to interact with the muggle world ever again. It was like at the Quidditch Cup people had to wear muggle clothes and some of the wizards didn't know the difference between men and women clothes. The one old man who was wearing a nightgown because it was the closest to wizard's robes and he didn't understand that only women wore them and only to bed. So some wizards completely isolate themselves to the wizard world. It was one of the reasons that Grindlewald was having such a hard time was because a lot of the wizards didn't want to interact with the muggle world at all even in the face of a world war. They have made themselves so insular that some do not consider themselves part of that world at all.
I’m not into Harry Potter but I’m soooo oddly fascinated by the fandom and dissections of the text. It’s one of the biggest pieces of pop culture ever that shaped whole generations, and the author had come out to be a raving bigot. I think it’s important to revisit these things and examine what was there all along and I think you did such an amazing job with it. I really love an admire everything you do and just keep being awesome Ms. Weeks
FINALLY someone who's talking about the HP world's relationship with race and structural inequality with nuance. I remember being a little brown girl watching Harry Potter and wondering why there were only 2 Desi characters in all of Hogwarts when the school is supposed to serve all of the UK?? Did Rowling actually know how many Desi people lived in the UK at the time? I also appreciate the commentary of Hermione as a white saviour. As much as I love fanon interpretations of Hermione as BIPOC, she is white in canon, and I'm not gonna give JKR flowers for representation when she deserves none. I know that's an unpopular thing to say but you got to the heart of the issue so well. Hermione, and the text in general, saw the oppression of house elves in this unnuanced way. She was benefitting from the unseen labour of the house elves, and I'm sure she has a Gringott's account, so she was also benefitting from the captivity of the dragon the bank used as security. But then she said she was "as hunted as any goblin" who are literally not allowed to carry wands?? White feminism vibes honestly. The text could've said something with Winky, like how freeing house elves is the right thing to do, but when there are no systems in place to actually support these freed elves, many of them go back to servitude. But nah, fuck that. I also agree that the text never investigates the origins of blood purity. My analysis of it is that yeah, witches and wizards were hunted by muggles, but that the narrative was warped along the way. To me, the people who are most likely to be actually killed by muggles would be the wizards closest to the muggle world, so muggle-borns and half-bloods. When I try to imagine purebloods with all their resources and ancient, hidden estates being hunted, I just can't. In my analysis, I think maybe the truth was distorted to fit a anti-muggle narrative, and then touted by purebloods, when maybe they were the lesser victims in the witch hunts. Since then, maybe muggle-borns were seen as "invaders" in the wizarding world. This is mostly based on what Draco says about muggle-borns being different and "not knowing their ways." Idk, I do think muggle-borns get a raw deal, where they are expected to assimilate into a world they only just learned about and that made no moves to integrate them earlier, and then blamed for diluting wizarding tradition with their "muggle-ness." Again, this is all analysis that was never addressed in the text, so this is just me rambling.
Obviously Rowling never put any thought into this stuff, but I always thought that the heightened risk of exposure would be an easy way for anti-muggle bigots to justify their bigotry. Like, muggle-born wizards are going to have loyalties to the muggle world. They're revealing the magical world to their muggle loved ones, and they're going to feel tempted to use their magic more openly in the muggle world. (whether for profit, altruism, or malice) Hell, muggles might even be more likely to disagree with the secrecy mandate and try to actively sabotage it. A cultural preservation angle could potentially be interesting if there was any indication that wizard ways and traditions were in any danger of dying out. Like if young wizards were losing interest in learning certain spells or potions because muggle technology doesn't take any effort to learn to use.
One thing to keep in mind about ethnic structures of magical communities is that they wouldn't necessarily be the same as their muggle counterparts in the same places because muggle-borns are relatively rare and magical communities wouldn't necessarily have the same patterns of migrations as muggles given how they basically form separate communities in most cases.
I think I agree more with this, that wizards just have too many resources to feel like they're a good allegory for minority communities becoming very insular and defensive due to the very real dangers around them. The old wizarding families are mega-rich and were born with metaphorical AK-47's in their fingertips in an age where most people could maybe throw a spear good enough to hurt someone else. It just feels like it's a step too far to imagine them as being persecuted and hunted- maybe that's a failure of my imagination, but it just doesn't match.
@@goranisacson2502 - I think you're totally right. There's no way muggles stand any chance to win a war against witches and wizards until they reach the Cold War level of technology at the very least (and even that only puts them in the threat category, not necessarily giving them an advantage). It's just doesn't make any sense that the wizarding community feels like they're forced into hiding, they could've easily subjugated the muggles either with sheer force or with deception (how hard can it be to use the imperius curse on muggle leadership to get any concessions they want?).
@@And-lj5gb Well technically wizards have to sleep too. Also, could there have been wizards on the side of the muggles, who simply didn't see themselves as wizards e.g. priests and such that viewed wizards/witches as agents of the devil or whatnot.
I'm a total lurker that never comments, but I really appreciated your take on this (40 minutes wasn't enough)! The HP world as developed through fanfiction is more interesting than the original in every way! I haven't read any good Dramione in a while (too much "adulting" and raising kids going on) ... But I would love some new recs if you have any. ;)
HP fanfic writers honestly do a great job fleshing out the characters and by doing so are able to create commentary about the experiences and identities of the characters.
It’s so interesting to hear you talking about zabini in fics bc in my, uhm, drarry days Zabini was heavily there and a charming well-dressed black italian man! But it’s also probably the evolution of the fandom? Or maybe just the echo chamber I was in. Btw excellent work on this and all your videos!
Same, in my part of the fandom (Draco/Ginny) Blaise is always a calmer, comparatively more mature Slytherin boy and you can literally carbon date a fic from whether he has olive skin and Italian features or dark skin and Black features. I recall perhaps two or three really old fics where he's a girl. Theo fills a similar role, but he's always portrayed as more of a tortured soul, like he always has a shitty family life or parents who commit atrocities (likely because his dad's a Death Eater and had him at a very late age), Blaise is more the affable, calculating socialite type because that's how his mother sounds
I wasn't even aware of this character, probably because JK didn't gave him a ridiculously caricatural and borderline racist name like "Mandela Luther King" or "Kingsley Shacklebolt"
What about Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan, and Dean Thomas? they are also canonically black. and I believe that's probably due to Rowling's playwords. cause I remember, Neville's last name (Longbottom) is a joke. If there's a character who needs justice to their name, it would be: *Cho Chang* (Why can't it just be Jessica Chang, Bella Chang, or whatever?!
@@jeant6502 you will almost see the names Bella or anything else you mentioned. Most common ones are names like Angie, stephanie, cathy.....jenny.....a lot of names that end with that ee sound. Basically immigrant asian parents tend to pick names that is easy for them to say or sounds....kinda ok or sounds similar in their og language. But Cho Chang to Chinese and especially Korean probably soundd weird as all get out. In korran.... yeah i would be what the hell. In Chinese.....well theres hundreds of possibilities but not very common in Chinese because most name their daughters something like a flower or obedient (yep). Cho sounds like a name you would give a boy
The irony about Kingsley Shacklebolt is he's a man who is descended from one of the families in the Sacred Twenty-Eight list meaning his ancestors would have arrived in Wizarding Britain long enough ago to have enough documented pureblood lineage in that country to be included in ancestor Knot's racist book by the year 1928.... yet there's not a single word about the geographic or cultural origins of his family, how long they have been in Wizarding Britain, etc. If his family really had been in Wizarding Britain for centuries they would have arrived before or during the slave trade in the Muggle world, and definitely would have known about it.
God, Weekes' fandom-related videos are always SO good. I have thoughts on the roots of pureblood distrust of magic - I think it's worth considering that while wizards and witches are a statistical minority who does not have societal power outside of their in-group, they also have very literal, uh, magical power? I think about this a lot in the context of X-Men and their "mutant metaphor." Societal privilege is, at its heart, power. And that matters a /lot/ in determining real-world power dynamics, because any one human is approximately as dangerous as any other, regardless of their race or religion or nationality. If a human wields more power than another human, it's because they can get other humans to listen to them and do what they say. But that all goes south when you introduce a fictional minority that has magical powers. With that in mind, I don't really think the desire of the Wizarding World to stay hidden is similar to real-life minority groups who have to hide; I think it's closer to the behavior of a wealthy but isolationist nation. It even says in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (the book, I never bothered to watch the movie, I don't need Rowling to ruin my childhood memories of Harry Potter anymore than she already has) that real witches were rarely burned in the witch trials, because they knew spells that could protect them from fire. They are not in danger from the Muggles. The Muggles are in danger from them. They don't hide because they're afraid, but because they don't want to be asked to take on any kind of responsibility for Muggles who are suffering and could be helped with magic.
Interesting point. And you got me thinking, what if the wizarding world was the "wealthy but isolationist nation" for most of their history, but then with 20th century muggle technological developments, they start to see muggles as a genuine threat? Leading to the conflict of the series, with Voldemort being able to play into those fears to gain power. Wizards have powerful magic, but I doubt Howarts can withstand a fucking nuke. And with cameras and news and, more recently, social media, it's harder and harder for the magical world to stay hidden. Exposure feels inevitable, and what will happen then? That said, also worth noting that wizards seem to be a pretty extreme minority. Even if muggles don't have the same firepower, they can overwhelm with sheer numbers.
Maybe Hagrid in book 1 saying that wizards self secluded because they didn’t want muggles pestering them for magic solutions to their problems was the best explanation given the canon 😂
@@Alice-gr1kb Honestly, that does work well enough as an explanation for me. Wizards are a tiny minority and if they were expected to fix all of the muggle problems, well, that's too much workload. They wouldn't have the time or energy to deal with their own shit. Plus it could lead to other issues, like muggles becoming too dependent on wizards and/or trying to force wizards to do shit for them.
@@StarlightPrism On the other hand, wizards not helping Muggles can be super stupid for them. Climate change for an example is actively destorying their nature and world too, so they kind of should care about it.
In the spirit of honesty about problematic ships, my introduction to Blaise in fandom was in Ginny/Draco fics where the secondary couple was between him and Luna. As someone who had little emotional attachment to HP I’d read anything once in terms of pairings. I’ll hear a pairing out if it’s well-written enough. Also, Draco being saddled with a Weasley was always fascinating to me along with how they were going to convince me to believe Ginny and Draco would ever work LOL.
Honestly, it's not my ship, but I do love stories that ship Draco and someone he disrespected because they tend to involve A LOT of Draco eating crow over how bigoted he was, and that never gets old!
@@CatHasOpinions734Well written Draco/Ron is my guilty pleasure (or even better Arthur/Lucius) just because I wanna see how the hell they make it work. I am willing to have my HP OTP never happen (Hermione/Ron) just for this.
I read a really good fic where Draco had a pretty realistic character arc. He and Ginny would sass at each other and it was hilarious. He bought her a broom stick out of spite and she spouted insults at him during quidditch. I don't ship them, but just let them be chaotic besties/siblings please.
Draco/Ginny is my favourite ship and honestly the only reason why I stuck around the HP fandom as long as I did. If you look closely at what little page time Ginny has she's kind of mean and messy and impulsive, so I really liked the idea of her ending up with someone exactly like her but opposite. They also have a bunch of things in common: they both like Quidditch, for example, and they'd both had personally traumatizing experiences with Voldemort that kind of defined their character. And Ginny is a pureblood, which means that Draco's prejudice against her is entirely on account of her family and behavior, so it's more believable for him to get over it enough to get with her than it would be for him to go from "Mudbloods are an inferior race" to loving, say, Hermione. And Hermione and Draco have zero in common in terms of interests or personality, anyway, I never really got that ship except as a way for the nerdy author to self-insert. Also it's fun to see people as set in their beliefs as the Malfoys and the Weasleys have to mutually get over themselves. I just think they have mad Cardan/Jude from The Cruel Prince energy and I love that for them.
Re: Mud-blood Almost a decade ago now I had this interesting conversation with a woman who was going into IT in an Amazon Fulfillment Center (warehouse). She was half-Korean and, I don't know how the conversation got to it, but she said that she really connected with that experience. I thought it was odd at the time, but later I found out that there are Koreans who will call, for lack of better descriptive language, mixed children mud-bloods. And to be clear, it didn't matter who the other parent was. If they weren't Korean the child was considered lesser. I'm not saying that Joanne knew this and was capitalizing on it. No, she doesn't get that credit. It is more that humans are good at being racist in ways that seem absurd and fake.
this video was great! something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little. :| but the dropped section apparently was his dad was a wizard who left his family to “keep them safe” during the first wizarding world. at least then there’d be some closure to his storyline.
He has a step father, who for all intents and purposes was his father, so he didn't grow up without a father. You know, unlike the white Harry and Neville. Besides, that's more of an American stereotype. Also, how do you know that Deans wizard father was black. You are aware that Alfred Enoch is mixed race aren't you. His father is actually William Russell, who played Companion Ian Chesterton on the very first episode of Doctor Who. Anyway, my point is that people who see stereotypes in Deans background are either looking for them, or already predisposed to see them. In other words, you're reaching.
@Day Mercedes Gazda was the one that brought it up, not me. They're also not the first person I've seen arguing that Dean's father leaving when he was young plays in to stereotypes about black people. What other stereotype could they have been talking about? I was just pointing out all the reasons that it's bullshit. Honestly, I'm not even clear what point your trying to make. Are you saying I'm racist for disputing a racist stereotype that someone else brought up. That doesn't make any sense. In general, people that find racism in the Potter series only do so because they deliberately go looking for it. And you seem like the type that starts arguments just for the sake of it. I've no patience for either.
@Day "something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little" How exactly would you interpret that? Plus, like I said, I've come across similar arguments before, not on UA-cam, on Quora and reddit. Now, if you would like to argue that I was misinterpreting what she meant, which is fair, what horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas do you suspect she was talking about. Perhaps instead of putting so much energy into disproving my opinion, you could offer your own.
@Day So, I couldn't help but notice that you didn't actually answer my question. What exactly did Mercedes mean by "something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little." Until you offer me an answer to that, you haven't really explained why you think I'm wrong or gas-lighting or any of the other bullshit claims you made. They specifically mentioned horrible stereotypes regarding Dean, then specifically mentioned his father leaving while he was young. You think I'm so wrong, then just answer the damn question, what exactly did they mean here. I'm beginning to think you're just rather obtuse.
@Day And you say I'm guilty of gas-lighting. Why is it so difficult for you to answer the question? You say you're fully focused on what has been said, yet yo haven't actually addressed the original comment. What did Mercedes mean by "something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little." Everything else you say is immaterial until you answer that question. If you can't, how are you so certain that I'm wrong.
I mean, Harry Potter’s worldbuilding falls apart on every level with any thought. Hogwarts kind of works because of how disconnected it is from the rest of the world, but as soon as you get out of there, wizards existing does not make sense in our world; history would have obviously been different if wizards existed, and there is just no getting around that.
Hell, the size of Hogworts makes no sense. Harry’s year is about 10 kids in Griffendor. Assume that the other houses have a similar level and we are talking about 40 kids. In 7 years we have 280 magical teens in all of the UK. That means wizards and witches are a TINY fraction of the UK population. Or there are more magical schools we never saw.
@@LilyUnicorn as someone who has DM’d D&D before, I relate. Honestly, it’s so much work to get right that if it’s not important to the story, we can just agree to ignore it, right?
I'm American, so this never occurred to me before, but I recently heard the most delightful rant from a couple of British women about how nonsensical it is that the Weasleys, living out in the country, hire multiple muggle taxis to take everyone to Kings Cross. Like, the entire point of major public transportation stations is that you can take public transportation to get there, taking taxis makes no sense and would be HORRIFICALLY expensive for anyone, but it especially makes no sense for the Weasleys!
i remember reading an article saying that kids who read the hp novels were kinder kids like it somehow instilled good values in them and i remember wondering how it could do that when the values where all over the place, like basically its ok when our side says or does something because were the goodguys, (i.e lying to griphook about giving him back the sword or abusing kreature) but what griphook does when he joins his people is seen as betrayal when really what choice was he given from his perspective hes just doing what he has to to get back home. disc world and earth sea understand what it means to strive for a better world far better than harry potter ever did and i wish i'd found them sooner
I think it was good that I wasn't too young and read all at once or so, I waited each book since the 5th, so I grew up actually before all the flawed political stuff kicks in hard... The last hp book came out when I was 11, I understood griphock action (don't know how you spell it, I never read hp in english only in french, at that age I had like one year of English lessons cuz at kindergarden and elementary school it was teachers old or bad in english haha) I was probably more mature when the problematic side shows, I was "damn the minister of magic should have been completly reformed, the wizarding world need a revolution to avoid any future voldemort figure, the malfoys should had all their money taken etc ....) I stopped re reading hp at 16, the last movie aired I was 15, I lose interest in hp growing up, not really asking myself why, just realised it when friends were full hp fans I wasn't into fandom at all, my early internet days were mostly cracking games and music forums I heard that jk said dumbledore was gay but it never came to books or screens so I was just considering her a billionaire moron that doesn't have the ovaries to actually represent Since the uncle that gifted me the four firth books when I was seven was gay, struggling with aids since the 80's and eventually killed himself by refusing eating in a psychiatric hospital ... It wasn't okay for me that she used clout to be seen as a good person but not using her money to actually help, and not acting really in her works too And the racism side was presented to me on intersectional forums I was on in 2014...they were already talking that it was hard to criticize jk because of hardcore white hp fans... I was lucky to have been already a leftist before reading the last books so I wasn't found of the morality of the story, status quo wasn't enough to be a good ending for me... Really young kids it can be dangerous
@@PetitPoneyDuVercors26 I'm so sorry for the loss of your uncle I lost one of my uncles to suicide too and if the whole world could just be a little kinder to and more accepting of people who are different maybe they'd both still be here. I refuse to let people like jk rowling cause more people to feel alienated and alone, to die, just because she's a bigot. Fuck jk rowling. trans rights are human rights, lgbtqia people have a right to exist and on a long enough time line we win, we just have to keep fighting
It is probably more accurate to say that kids who read in general are kinder. And that kids who read Harry Potter generally don't just read Harry Potter but lots of things.
I'm so glad you mentioned Seraphina Pickery. First time I saw that movie I was like, "What does she do when she walks around normy New York? Oh does she never leave magic New York? Hmmmm wonder whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
I don't know if it's because I'm brazilian and very mixed, but for me at the point Blaise was shown black, he was black. The first time I read Hermione's description she was mixed, like me, who also has wild curls (I read the first Harry Potter book when I was 10~11yo). I don't see any reason besides racism or total ignorance that people of any color can be born in any country to explain that. Because as a brazilian for me, it's just normal to assume that Blaise could be the of a italian black family (Italy is REALLY close to Africa and interacted for centuries, did you guys never read Othello????) or he could be the child of a white italian father and a black mom from britain. But my brain never would go "hE CaN't bE iTaLiAn, hE's bLAcK!!1".
Being a millennial POC, I remembered The Day Blaise Turned Black. A notable portion of LJ lost their damn white minds. Rando on LJ: "He can't be Black. He supposed to be Italian. Probably a redhead. He's in Slytherin." Me, drinking a cup of Racist Fangirl Tears: "You know? He can be all of those things. It's okay."
Man I remember reading rants upon rants upon rants and them obsessively going through book material to find something to discredit the idea that Blaise Zabini is black. Like get a life lol. There’s literally no reason to be so upset.
I missed the "Blaise is a redhead" part of the discourse, that's somewhat perplexing. Like, yes he could and can be all of those things, but if your objection to him being black is that that's not how you picture a stereotypical Italian, that objection should also apply to red hair.
@@CatHasOpinions734 I believe it's from the fact that his name is Blaise which sounds like "Blaze" which is a fiery name idk. I don't get fangirl logic and I am one of them.
i was really into the black hermione idea a while back thinking it could have been canon etc. but in book three I found a passage that was literally like "her white face"
I’m book 3 it says that Hermione was looking very brown. I’ve never seen a white person “tan” very brown. But I have seen brown skin people turn ashen face/grey whitish when scared or sick. That could be a figure of speech saying she was scared. Hermione being black does and could fit in canon. Who knows what JK was thinking though.
@@getdownonit8753 You obviously haven't met my Grandpa it is called having olive skin. He goes from pasty in the winter to a nice copper brown in the summer
@@clarehidalgo Half of my family has olive skin. Olive skin does NOT get very brown. I’m mixed raced and my skin barely gets VERY BROWN sometimes. Sorry it’s not possible for a white person of any skin shade to naturally tan VERY BROWN. I’m not debating this unless I see your grandpas skin color in person. Hermione’s a very brown black girl and that’s okay.
@@getdownonit8753 Idk what you're on but I guess it depends on how you define "very brown", white skin can tan brown, it depends how much melanin you have. If I remember Hermione's skin is described as brown after she's visited somewhere hot, I don't think the book would make a point of saying that if she wasn't pale normally especially when joanne always makes a point of mentioning when a character is not white when they're first introduced. Hermione is white af lmao
Holy shit you just sent me spiraling through time to all the Blaire/Draco ships if I came across a fic where they decided Blaise would be male this time around, lmao 💀 .
24:50 Exactly this. When Rowling said, "Hermione could've been black," I couldn't believe she'd written the "S.P.E.W." plot with anything other than a pale-skinned girl in mind. Making Hermione black would've injected intense themes into the story that Rowling clearly wasn't interested in tackling.
I love how unapologetic you are about loving fanfic, smut etc. I find this hard to do in real life The online and fanfic history of hp fandom is so rich, would love to see you tap into this more here
15:48 TELL IT QUEEN!!! Any Name is not 'Just a Name' .Names are not just simplistic addresses for lineage , they are Historical Markers too ! Also, also they are not Exclusive to specific groups like genetic Copyright stamps. There are a lot of good points in this video but that stood out to me
This is so true. I can remember when I introduced Angelus Liberi to my urban fantasy series, Fall of Veils, French Roast Apocolypse, as a black Italian, I had a lot of push back from my beta group. People couldn't get their heads around it. I had to explain his family liniage. It blows me away that folks just don't get Italy is a peninsula, and that folks from all over the mediteranian immigrate there. It befuddles me even more that folk's deny interracial relationships because of their visual estetic of a particular group of people.
True but as someone who actually been off the shores of tunisia, in bahrain, in malta, in spain..... Italy just doesnt have a whole lot of black folks. Yes, they exist but compared to the overwhelming med tan descent amd the white scandinavian, the black italian is just much much fewer
@@LilyUnicorn Ok so I’m italian, a white italian, ( i’m sorry for my english but I don’t really get what you mean by “being off the shores”), I wanted to say that I don’t see how this argument of black italians being a minority in Italy should prevent from writing a black italian character in a fantasy series or in any other literary genre. I don’t think one should go by comparison, like erasing black italians just because they’re not in the same numbers of black french people or black germans, and the same goes for italian people of south east asian origin, chinese origin and east asian origin and from middle east as well. I think italy is a very idealized country in some way, like the country of the good-hearted people or something like that, so I think it’s important to talk about issues of racism in italy. I’m taking the liberty to make some observations not pretending to be the voice of anyone, just describing what I can observe to some extent in the country where I live, in the culture to wich I partcipate, according to my experience. So I dont want to speak for non-white italians and their experience, but, I wish, very briefly to balance a little bit, even if I’m generalizing, this idealized picture of italy, to those who have it of course, and even if it was not brought in the discussion by the comment to which I’m replying, and I wish to do so to back and reinforce the statement that represantion of non-white italians is important. What I have observed is that black and brown italians and chinese italians or black and brown people and chinese people who happen to live in italy or to stay in italy for a short time are marginalized and discriminated against because italy is a racist country (1) historically beacuse italy participated in colonization of africa before and during fascism, and also colonization of albania, (2) in general, in the attitudes of white italian people in thinking that non-white people can’t be italian, like yes you speak the language, you work and live here, maybe you’re even born here, but you’re not italian, which states for the diffused biases against non-white people in all spaces, and (3) in its recent laws against migration and in refusing to give citizenship from the birth to non white people who are born here, who can request the citizenship only after they have come of age, and to make the procedure for the ones who are not born here but have lived in italy since they wer 2 years old a nightmare. So representation of non-white italians is crucial.
I'm literally only four minutes in but I still love a fic i read where Draco learned about muggle racism and was all "That's barbaric! you can't just judge someone based on the color of their skin" and Hermione gave him a LOOK and he went "oh"
@@nicolegoh9748Bit late but I'm assuming Isolation by Bex-chan? It's been many years since I last read it but I distinctly remember that being a thing that happens
I always had this headcanon that Blaise was half Italian half black and due to his mixed heritage he had to fight his way to the top of the social food chain. Enduring subtle and outright racism, while also dealing with biracial fetishism from his peers in his house.
@@getdownonit8753 Because his last name was Italian. I'm Italian and my wife(who introduced Harry Potter to me)who was my girlfriend at the time is black, so I will confess that him being Afro-Italian came from a bit of a biased heart.😂
@@getdownonit8753 No. My wife is black and I'm Italian. My headcanon was my feelings for my girlfriend(now wife) manifesting into my subconscious. We both loved his character because there wasn't a whole lot confirmed about him so we would come up with multiple headcanons for him and many other non-fleshed out characters. She actually had a headcanon that Luna(one of my favorite characters and my wife's crush for many years now) was Autistic, and of course some of her signs of being the spectrum were actual things that showed up in the books and movies, but a good portion of them(my wife later admitted) were based on me. These headcanons were sources of fun storytelling that help exercise our imaginations, but they were also a form of flirting for us. A way of expressing our feeling to each other during a time that we were scared of admitting our true feelings because we knew how those that were in our inner circle at the time were going to react when they found out.
The last part of the video is reminding me of a question....the ability of muggles to hurt wizards and witches confuses me. I thought years ago I read a post-story canonization of the idea that modern human weapons could hurt powerful magic uses. That....doesn't make sense to me. Considering the abilities we see, shouldn't the wizards and witches basically be going all bullet-time on even modern human armies? And in the time of and before Salem......HOWD THE WIZARDING WORLD EVER HAVE ANYTHING TO FEAR? Them withdrawing in disgust watching witch hunters killing muggles? I could see. But being afraid of people they could mind wipe makes me scratch my head.
Yeah, my read from the books was always that the whole "muggles persecuted witches" thing was a bullshit justification used by blood purists since it would be incredibly easy for any actual witch to get out of that situation and basically everyone killed was a muggle. Apparently not though, judging from that fantastic beasts clip. Ugh.
I'm quite positive that one of the early books talked about a witch who purposefully got caught, multiple times, sometimes in disguise, just so they could get on the pyre. Because it posed them no harm and was treated as pretty much an amusement park ride.
I always assumed it was a numbers thing. There are a WAY more muggles than wizards. Also muggles seem to be, perhaps out of necessity, considerably more intelligent than wizards. If it really came down to it they could become an overwhelming force. Its a flimsy explanation but its possible to rationalize. That said, if they do consider muggles a legitimate threat it does make me wonder why they wouldn't involve them in their war against "wizard Hitler". Both because he was a global threat and because muggle genocide was one of his stated goals. The man couldn't figure out how to kill a baby, I think a bomb could at least catch him off guard.
i think it was more a fear for their kids, a wizard child separated from his parents would be completely defenseless. knowing that muggles are a threat to them would create resentment and wariness. doesn't excuse blood purity but the nuance is interesting imo
That's also true. The tragedies in Salem and similar ones were possible because essentially these people were innocent and had no magic abilities. If they could wield "avada kedavra", "imperio", and "crucio" at their captors, far more people would die or get hurt by them. There's always a chance they'd eventually be overpowered by them by sheer numbers, but their bloody trail would've been huge beforehand.
27:34 It's funny you mention that cause I used to have a head cannon that there were 6 U.S magical schools with Ilvermorny An all-girls Salem school (which ironically exists in the original series) An HBCU in New Orleans 2 Indigenous based schools one in the great plains region and one in Southwest And lastly a magic research institute in California
In my headcanon, the US has multiple magic schools, but the only one I've thought about is the Texas magic school. Texas has its own magic school and they all wear cowboy hats and boots and ride horses.
(just started the vid) it's really funny how rowling took a weird tone shift in between books 4 and 5 (when coincidentally 9/11 happened) and she started to really double down on that SPEW nonsense and also say that using torture is good if you use it on the right people. Idk, it's just something I've noticed, I think her political opinions really changed throughout the series
@@lucasgagliardi433 In book five I believe? It's been a while, but the point is that when Harry begins to use the three curses (minus avada kedavra, because he's personally against it) to defeat voldemort because it's ok when the good guys do it. The last book is a big Imperius curse galore. He includes cruciatus because of extreme circumstances but this very much a product of the post 9/11 terrorism panic in my opionion I mean
@@alisdraws Ahhh, that's a little... far fetched ans an interpretation. I mean, saying that someone endorses something like that just because characters from her novel do it is a little simplistic from a literary theory point of view. I remember some interview where she was questioned for letting Harry use Unforgivable courses in the last novel and she answered "I never said he was a saint" which means there's some deliverate character construction and not neccesarily approval of such act. If she had made public statements endorsing such idea about torture (as she has done with her continuos transphobia), then it would be as you say.
@@lucasgagliardi433 Look I had to be as short as possible cause this is a youtube comment section, but I also don't think she's pro-slavery either. The HP books are, this is what I meant. 'I never said he was a saint' is a typical Rowling dodge from when she gets criticism. Her book clearly excuses and endorses those actions because she has (as Shawn pointed out) double standards. Good guys can do shitty things cause they're good. No I don't think it's far fetched because it's part of a larger trend. Also it doesn't go anywhere, there's no examination of Harry's actions, no reflection about 'the horrible things we did in the war' it's just a thing that happens... Harry gets introduced to the curses in one book as the worst thing a wizard can do, hurts cause he knows how bad they were to his life, and then he realizes they're useful to him and uses them on others and the book ends and Rowling can dodge the question as she pleases
@@alisdraws I get what you say about the tendency to overlook terrible actions when it's done by "good guys" as a trend at the time (I think both of us were thinking of "24" series) but I think that with this example we are discussion it is not the case. I see it more as a gap for the reader to fill. It is true that Harry using Unforgivable curses is not ultimately treated with all its consequences (he does not account for it after war was over in what has been published). Yet, I still find in such reasoning about torture and the treatment of other problematic topics this underlying argument: “If it is not explicitly addressed, treated and fully-developed in the text it's a big problem”. Well… yes when it comes to crucial topics in worldbuilding (as is the case of race and its implications in the magical world). But with gaps the reader can fill to find its own answer and reaction I feel we have a different situation. And as readers we know by book 4 the curses the harm they do and how problematic they are. The rest are dots we can connect and it’s not uncommon that literature sometimes relies on that. Yes, I tend to prefer a little more open storytelling, with less explicit addressing of some things so I can connect the dots. That personal preference aside, I think some readers can see the use of torture, find it problematic and ask some questions (or not if you're a right wing reader… as also happens). I remember being a little shocked un book 7 and also thinking "Ok, the protagonist does very shitty stuff, I don’t agree with his actions" but didn’t see it as an endorsement. I connected it with some other reprehensible beahaviour of Harry as character development (“Now I know what he’s capable of”). A similar thing happened to me with the Ministry. Not every aspect of it is explicitly addressed to point out how messed up it is. The fact that the Minister is also a judge is not addressed but given the prior information we have about the institution, instead of seeing it as another clear and blatant error in worldbuilding I saw it one more example of the running thing with the ministry as a biased and problematic institution. Ultimately, I think some of these examples we are discussing, by not having a full development, can be seen as fault and dodging problems or as gaps to make some more connections. And with all the explicit shit JKR has poured about other subjects I can see why these examples can be interpreted in one or other way. Sorry to be so long, I also tried to be short but next time I must remember I’m not making a video essay.
Wonderful! I am a ELA/History teacher at a majority minority title one school and I booked marked parts of your video to use in discussions in the future! The emphasis on civil discourse, the perspective changes that occur due to reader history and knowledge! This was a fabulous literary analysis. Thank you so much for helping us all check our bias at the door and engage with the text and with each other.
I was never even in this fandom, and I remember people throwing fits when he actually showed up beyond odd mentions when they'd been using him as their (usually a white girl) self-insert.
Thank you for this video! I’ve been reading older x-men comics and I feel the same way. I think it’s slightly worse for x-men tho since they’ll literally compare mutant oppression to black oppression (multiple times mind you). This is a issue in the older comics but even newer comics still have this issue here and there. Edit: I’m a big x-men fan btw but I’ll agree the metaphor always was…. Like it could work if they thought about it more
It's a very interesting video essay. I just disagree with one small thing. Based on everything she has said and done I absolutely believe that she intended for Slytherin to be completely evil and hated. I think that any hint of potential for more was unintentional. Just like she set draco up with the perfect potential for a character arc but never executed it and now verbally attacks anyone who noticed the potential. She didn't think into the implications of her world building or the potential of her characters, bc she is a firm believer that nothing should ever change. She built her book to reinforce the need to keep the status quo intentionally. Those are her actual beliefs. Thus all problems are the sole fault of a few individuals, Revolutions are always evil things that must be squashed, and no one ever changes. The only time she intentionally wrote a Slytherin that wasn't meant to be completely evil in the end was Snape and she literally wrote in a line implying that he should have been in Gryffindor.
Maybe i remember this wrong but I remember Blaise in book 6 as a wealthy Black slytherin who didn’t “shuck and dive », and of whose approval Draco seemed desperate for. Blaise struck me as quite inexpressive - which I loved. He was like the polar opposite of Lee Jordan, who irritated me off the bat even when I was young. Like as a Black teen Blaise really struck a chord with me. The only thing I disliked was how Rowling heavily suggested his Black mother used her « wiles » to seduce rich men out of their money. That gave hella mysoginoir (and I didnt even know the word back then but the feeling was the same). For me, In a way I feel like some aspects of the « representational Eton mess », are actually inadvertantly smart. Hermione WOULD be a white saviour. You could totally have Black purebloods who basically assimilate into an elite that tokenises them. They could be deluded or opportunistic (*cough - Kandace*). I think the issue wasn’t so much that the representation wasn’t like « squeaky clean » but just, as you Say, she didn’t write the structural oppression and prejudice with enough awareness and therefore coherence and meaning. (like she did with Snape for example, or even Voldemort himself.) I mean forget issues of social discrimination: why the f do wizards and witches need money and banks??? Answer: aesthetic. The aesthetics of gold coins as a symbol of status. In a way, I don’t entirelt hate the rep in HP, because it’s just a reflection of our times. Outside our « liberal » leftist bubbles (and even within it) many of us have internalised status games. Many more of us harbour discriminatory thoughts; we just hacen’t written books that betray us. This is not a defense of rowling, but let’s also acknowledge, she herself had to keep her feminine name a secret at the time. She came from an era that was definitely not woke on anything. I’m 28, so born in mid 90s. I started writing young. I grew up in predominantly white environnements. My first Black character came to me when I was like 22-23 - and she was mixed. Could I have done better sooner? Maybe but I also get Why I didn’t. I judge Joanne cuz she just refuses to learn at this point. But I’m not sure I can condemn HP. (Books 1-7).
What you said about “we were reading totally different books” really resonated for me. The issue is when people force you to read the books and devalue you for your opinion of not enjoying them. I was getting stressed out and meanwhile… well let’s just say my community lacked awareness of its assimilation pressures and what that might be rooted in. I just want to add that, of course they’d make a Black Slytherin. Of course they would. It’s the same vein of microaggressions as saying Hermione could be whatever race we want. Who does it benefit? 50 years after India’s independence and you think we can’t tell the difference between Hermione Granger and Hermione Patel? Just a few years after the Good Friday Accords and we aren’t supposed to be thinking about who’s Irish-coded? The truth is that the books have a verrrrry nuanced, specific view of race and it is exactly the view held by the Anglo colonizers. Even who counts as fully white is conflated with money and power in the status quo of the book. It’s supposed to be subversive that Hermione and Ron are heroes.
Black people. Yes. Percentage wise though ....not as much as you think. More meditteranean in the south and more white scandinavian in the north. Blacks were a muvh smaller populus in italy than either of those 2 groups.
@@LilyUnicorn Scandinavian Italians? I mean, there's South Tirol, and it's a part of Italy with Austrian majority. But they're Germanic, not Nordic like Scandinavians. Also, Scandinavia is a peninsula, a specific location like Italian Peninsula or Balkans or Crimea in Ukraine. Italy has a few blonds in the north but it doesn't make them Scandinavian, completely different culture and opposite corner of Europe.
The way that the idea of Rowling as "progressive white darling" meant the fandom shut down discussions of racism was something I also saw in the 2000s, and it happened with a lot of discussions of other prejudice too. I remember if you'd talk about some of the troubling gender politics of the books, like how often "goodness" in women is conflated with being wives and mothers, and bad women like Bellatrix Lestrange were defined around being childless, you'd get treated like you were a Bellatrix apologist or like the existence of one or two exceptions like McGonagall means the broader pattern doesn't exist and no one has any right to feel weird about it. Same with the total lack of LGBTQ+ characters or relationships other than her after-the-fact outing of Dumbledore, which also doesn't count in my opinion. It's been nice to see people come around but not so great that it only seems to be because of J.K. Rowling turning out to be a terrible person. If she hadn't become a TERF, would people still be hesitant to admit the faults with the books on issues like race and gender? It's weird to see people just NOW notice the skeeviness of the house elves as happy slaves when I remember being put off by that when I was 10 years old reading Goblet of Fire!
I love your idea of the service that authors should render to progressive ideas that literally change all the time, plus JK only defended that biology made her female, which is just a fact, but I like this cis-female version terrible because I think who is a woman thanks to biology, lol
Girl, you rock that green lipstick. Green and blue are often my favorite colors to wear for lipstick! Also, this video has been incredible to watch and re-examine new aspects of the HPU. Thank you for sharing!
I always thought that it was the casting department that made him black. They realized they didn't have enough POC pure bloods, especially ones in Slytherin and aren't just in the background. Also, Zabini could have been his step dad's/ a previous husband's last name, not his bio dad. Mrs. Zabini came across (in the few mentions there were) as a black widow, too. ETA- I've never seen or heard of the name Blaise as a girl's name.
I am loving all the content recently about how to process being a Harry Potter fan but also discussing all the issues with the series and the author. My favorite version of this is Misfits and Magic by Dimension20. The game is Gmed by a black woman makes all the critiques even better, Aabria Iyengar is amazing and I love her ability to play things straight. The game is played in the magical wizarding world of "Gowpenny Academy of Arcane Arts." and the story fully leans into the fucked up nature of the Hogwarts and Harry Potter as a whole. The fact that when Headmistress Boudicca Philtrum is describing the houses she literally says the words Heroic, Evil, Smart, and Other. The scene that convinced me to watch the show was this clip that was uploaded to youtube: ua-cam.com/video/-9hmkjdASjA/v-deo.html Edit: Oh also the show calls Muggle the M-word and the characters all being non-magical people are like, "We should be able to say this!" ua-cam.com/video/1-s3zcYfFis/v-deo.html Double Edit: Shit I edited it after it got a Heart and now the heart is gone!!!
Great video as always! Funny Trivia: In the (first) German translation of the first Harry Potter book, Blaise Zabini is described as „eine Slytherin“, a girl. I think bc the name probably didnt really exist that much in German-speaking regions and the English language doesnt use gendered articles, they assumed Blaise was a female name.
Incredible video as always. To me the Slytherin thing always made sense in the way that mainstream Americans would recoil at overt Nazis and Klansmen in the mid 2000s while no wanting to rock the boat on Robert E. Lee statues or consider renaming institutions like Yale. But the idea of Slytherin ideology as coming from historical oppression never occurred to me. Always appreciate your videos and the amount of thought and insight you bring to every topic.
Yeah you see in genres like this and you see it all through gaming and anime and cosplay, they feel black should not be in those spaces but they have no problem coming up into black spaces and telling black people is not just for black people it's for everybody.
I just want to point out that Kreacher was put up to the cave job by Regulus and Regulus asked him specifically about what happened and Regulus asked him to take them both to the cave and Regulus was the only person to treat him well (or better than the rest of his family, but that's another point to be made), as well as the fact that Regulus could've forced Kreacher to drink the potion and die, which he didn't do bc it's my boy Reggie, he specifically asked Kreacher not to save him and to go home safely and destroy the horcrux. If Kreacher wanted to kill one of his masters and get revenge, it would not be Regulus. Regulus was always good to him, and if he wanted to get some kind of revenge, it would not be against Regulus, and the fandom in general has agreed that Regulus would've joined SPEW and would've loved Hermione too. Also, random other point: I need more Kingsley Shacklebolt hcs and fanon info bc he's a legend and deserves the world and more.
I was never meaningfully apart of the HP fandom, but I truly can't even imagine being tilted that a character didn't look like you expected when he turned out as handsome as Louis Cordice is. Like, my condolences on your delicious food...?
I've been having these feelings for YEEEEAAARS!!! As a fellow fan of problematic ships I have a very distinctive memory of reading a Dramione fanfiction (where Blaise was a major supporting character (and black)) and there was a very meta scene where they (Hermione, Draco, Blaise) were reading a Daily Prophet knockoff newspaper where the writer of the article described Blaise in all the old fanon ways with the piece de resistance being they even called him Blaise Zambini which I remember also being a thing back in the day. Ah memories lol
They called him that because for some reason he was ZaMbini even in our Hungarian translation. I would guess it took to other countries as well. I never really understood the Italian thing because neither Zabini nor Zambini sounded like anything italian to me as I also was not learning that language at the time, but Blaise on the other hand for some reason sounds very French lol
Yeah, all of these are things I would have loved to see discussed in the peak of Harry Potter, before even touching the books themselves made so many people feel icky. It's too bad that there's this perception of criticism as denouncement, which really hinders meaningful engagement with the text of a popular thing
From a enby gay perspective, I wanted to also bring up that the fact that there is not a single lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans character in the actual text of any of the seven books which is statistically impossible in a school of over 600 students. It was only after pressure from the community that she announced Dumbledore was gay and then capitalized on the reveal to sell her terrible side project. She was trying so hard to be "praised" for being brave and including a gay character, that was never actual shown to have any kind of non platonic relationships in main series. Mind you the announcement was in 2007 after public opinion had already shifted in favor of "accepting" gay people into society. Instead she revealed this (post character death) in a tweet, breaking the first rule of writing, show don't tell. It takes until the third film in the Fantastic Beasts series that is supposed to revolve around Grindelwald for any actual in-universe text to confirm his and Dumbledore's relationship was anything other than a passionate friendship. Next there's the way she offhandedly stated that Lycanthropy was an allegory for HIV/AIDs and then lumped that in with other bloodborne illnesses. She clearly doesn't know the history of ACT UP, Larry Kramer, and the people who had fight the government for years to get them to approve a treatment for those suffering from HIV/AIDs. Meanwhile, thousands died waiting. Alfonso Cuarón the director of the Prisoner of Azkaban is quoted telling David Thewlis to play Lupin as a "gay junkie". Then there's the Queerbaiting... I mean Cursed Child that contains all of the queer subtext in the world, but not a single piece of text that actually spells out that either character has so much as a crush on each other. The director was quoted as saying it wouldn't be appropriate to include, even though both characters are 15 for most of the play which is the same age as the characters in Heartstopper. Oh and don't get me started on the bullshit she published under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. She treats diversity like flavor text, never wanting to fully commit to inclusivity. She refuses to teach herself about the history of those minorities she takes advantage of in order to sell her books and films. She wants so badly to be viewed as progressive without doing any of the work. She prefers to hide in the aesthetic of progressiveness, using her gay friends as shields for why she can't be homophobic. She's a self-righteous wannabe progressive white woman that wouldn't know the struggles of diversity if it hit her in the face. The fact that some in the queer community still choose to support her is beyond me.
Cuarón said that?? I gotta Google that bc I hope tf he didn't omfg Edit: I just looked it up. He did say that and holy shit I'm pissed. And that movie was my favorite!! It seems like even David Thewlis was uncomfortable with that "direction" (and I hope he was bc he is like one of my top 3 characters in the whole saga)...just God that's so gross in every way.
I love this video! You really made me reconsider how I view the universe. And I found "I wonder what would have happened if we'd been allowed to have that discussion back then" was really powerful. It reminded me that discourse is always progressing. It reminded me that we're in a moment of history that'll get some kind of name when people look back at it.
you're right about hitting certain walls. the muggleborn prejudice and the history of killing witches are directly in conflict so many times and like, they're both text. I'm trying to take them to their logical conclusion and it seems to end with an awful "not all muggles therefore not all muggleborns" idea. unserious and uninteresting. just like all of jkr's politics I guess!!
I think word of the day for JKR is that she didn't think about it too much. you can just apply that to any part of her writing when you analyze it for more than two seconds she just doesn't think about the implications in her writing and has a different idea of what she wrote vs what is actually on the page. anyway make up is great and you're really pulling it off🔥🔥🔥
I remember the Blaise racist backlash from a post on Fandom Wank making fun of it. Nice analysis and lookback on HP's issues, which I've become more cognizant about the last many years. The wild thing about Pottermore is that JK could have asked her fans to consult on building wizarding culture in other countries and many from all over the world would have jumped at the opportunity.
Yeah her geopolitical map of wizarding schools is WACK! I think by now she understands that putting russia and Ukraine in the same school is ridiculous since voldemort putin himself compared herself to her, creepily, in one of his 'russia is being canceled' speeches.
Honestly, that was a perfect opportunity for fan-author interaction- like ask fans from other countries to write and consult on their cultures, but noo.
Great video! Gave me a lot to think about! My impression with the whole bigotry storyline of Harry Potter is that Rowling just wrote it in as an easy way to establish who the bad guys are. Throw in a few Nazi parallels and boom, easy villain coding. You don't need to get into why these characters are the bad guys because they're like Nazis, we already know that Nazis are the bad guys. It's not something that she put any thought into, it's just there so we can have some bad guys that the heroes can defeat. Something I speculate with the series as a whole is that Rowling wanted to age the story up with the readers to make it more mature, serious, and complex, but ultimately wasn't willing to commit to the idea. So you have this setting and story where interesting ideas and nuances exist, but they're never really explored, and their implications aren't thought through. The series has a very strong wish-fulfillment angle to it: the story is about a lonely, abused kid who learns that he's actually super special and he gets brought into this cool magical world where he has friends, money, he's good at sports, and gets to go to a school for magic. The setting is fun and whimsical, it's the kind of place you'd like to be in. But if the world is too fundamentally flawed, that wish-fulfillment angle can get lost. And I think Rowling was afraid to lose it. Cause like, the series has a TON of concepts that would make for extremely interesting stories and social commentary if they were actually explored. There are a lot of problems with the werewolves, mostly with the "werewolves are an AIDS metaphor" thing, but that got me thinking, that could have been worked into some decent social commentary. In-universe, there's a potion that allows werewolves to retain self-control and awareness when they transform, but the potion is difficult to make. There could have been an angle where the Ministry of Magic COULD have a program where they make and distribute these potions, but they'd rather not because they want to keep the werewolves down. The werewolves (save for Lupin) all side with Voldemort, that could have been some interesting parallel to how marginalized people can be swayed to side with a "villain" who promises them a new and better status quo. I hope my werewolf tangent didn't get too off-topic, lol. Anyway... Even before Rowling exposed herself as a terf, I always found the framing of HP as a super progressive series to be very strange. I think that's just something that comes out of people who are both big fans of a work and also care a lot about politics, it becomes really important to them to put the two together and interpret why their favorite book actively supports certain views.
What point of view are you talking about? The saga has always been an ode to the acceptance of differences for me and that's how many people initially interpreted it. But magically since Jk made her opinion on transgender people known, we tax her and are the work of all evil. Including by so-called former fans for whom Harry Potter suddenly becomes racist/grossophobic/transphobic and a whole bunch of things that have nothing to do with the story.
@@MrJoueurdusalon problem is none of those people actually read her comments. There was literally no hate in there, just a bug mother f***ing big glare that the entire trans community is completely ignoring. And she pointed it out. I am not an IT. I AM nOT A THING that bleeds. I AM A WOMAN. i made this comment ages before JK went on a long articulate. diatribe about it. I blasted my point however in direct easy to understand for americans and ill-read people. You are devaluing women when you compketely ignore their exiatence, their history and struggles
Nah I agree with this. People complain about what they wish the series had but I think they wouldn't be happy with the outcome. Even at its darkest and most flawed the Wizarding world is still supposed to be an escapist fantasy. Too much realism would spoil what attracted people to it in the first place. The books may have aged with the audience but that doesn't mean 10 year olds aren't reading Deathly Hallows. Even with the release of each book Rowling was ultimately still writing for a primarily child-aged audience.
The problem is if she’d had taken the time to explore every single little thing then the books would have never ended. In writing, there’s a rule that says you always have to keep the story chugging along, and since the main plot was Harry’s Journey to defeating voldemort, the story would be completely different.
Tbh as a fat queer person, I think discussing fatphobia can be useful, but what bothers me about it is that so often, people who focus their discussions around it treat it as just as bad as racism and other prejudices. I think it's rather disrespectful tbh. Maybe that's a necessary clunky stage in discussion but I hope it improves soon
I don't think it's productive to turn it into a competition. Just stick to the problems and the solutions instead of battling which identities have it harder. Plus making it a competitive divides people into neat little groups that don't really exist in isolation because of intersectionality
@@msjkramey it's not a competition but fuck. People have tried to claim there's a fat genocide. They've claimed fatphobia is "just" like segregation. I've heard people talk about doctors trying to eugenics them with weightloss programs. I'm not the one who started the comparisons. I know people beat into permanent disability(2) or death (1) for their skin color or sexuality. I have friends who are refugees due to genocide. I've met a holocaust survivor. Nothing I've experienced as a fat person compares
Even when you tell explicitly your character is black, stupid and racist people are gonna be, well, stupid and racist. Rue from The Hunger Games suffer such a backlash because racist people thought she was white, just because Katniss said Rue remined her of Prim. Because the only way someone can remind of other person has to be their skin tone 🙄🙄🙄
I’m further through the video now and : 1. Sis your makeup throughout the video was on point. It’s fine you don’t like it but it was not bad. 2) like yes like the expansion of the wizarding world and the absurdity of the North American school being in Massachusetts (like lmao way to fuck Canada and Mexico) for America alone showed the world was limited and basic. I loved it as a tween/teen but it is very much a fantasy coming of age book because it had no real questions to explore. Like the whole obscurus thing being an afterthought and barely expounded upon in Fantastic Beast and not understanding the wizards as a minority of some kind in general lol is just further example of how fun the book was but not particularly transformative.
@@Princess_Weekes sis, I don’t doubt she was trying to do like a good thing with it as you say throughout this video but it goes to show what lack of critical thinking (or like any at all it feels like-and I don’t mean it as I think it was thoughtless just like it was her first thought based on something like perhaps Harvard and an attempt to answer the question:so what are the other wizarding schools located? But it just is like if you had a few more thoughts before answering you could’ve made a pretty good thing vs one where it’s like “Chile, I guess”.) she did for the entirety of the series and world building in general. I very much appreciate your video and like I’m in agreement with you-purebloods and slytherin house are allegorical and not at the same time and definitely not meant to be the same as racism except beyond the “M” word which isn’t even a real thing in their world! If the Malfoys weren’t rich and the Weasleys weren’t poor there’d be a pretty good story in there about how it could’ve evolved into their version of “cracker” becoming a SlurTM because there is a legitimate reason for sSalazar to hate Muggles based on the witch trials and the genocide of magical people (it’s honestly giving me Uther Pendragon flashbacks from BBC Merlin), but like the fact that purebloods mostly stayed in power-even ones who strictly avoided half bloods and muggle born witches and wizards-shits all over that. Malfoys can be old money asshats who hate the lower classes because of what they did to maintain their wealth or being old ass nobility from “when it meant something” or they could have also been when exceptionalism goes wrong. Exceptionalism going wrong in so far as they could’ve been a Talented Tenth type family that came up and survived and helped build the thriving wizarding world we see but resent that it has gone beyond the purebloods that built it after ruin and escaping the muggles (I include the house of Black in this lol) to including everyone even those who would destroy what they do have and their separation from Muggles. That would probably require Riddlemort being against the purity thing and giving up the Nazi dressings. But again this just goes back to your main point that it wasn’t considered and the series actively turns you away from considering these things. If I ever wrote fic though this would be an interesting rewrite.
As if the Quebecois wouldn't have started a school just so it could be French only! But irl there would be an Irish school or at least Seamus Finnegan being sent to the Scottish school instead of Beauxbaxtons would have said something about his parents.
@@shadowmaster1313people also forget seemingly that Mexico is in North America??? Like are these classes taught in multiple languages or y'all just taking little Mexican muggle Borns and dropping them in fucking Massachusetts in an all-English environment?? Or like Indigenous kids? Because big yikes that really smacks of the whole residential school nonsense that was perpetrated against Indigenous peoples in North America. Like if the school is founded probably be white colonial wizards in white colonial new England BEFORE the statute of secrecy is drafted, you know good and damn well they were doing all the genociding and hate criming against the native Americans too just like their muggle counterparts.... Or what about if there were Black muggleborns born into slavery in the US? What did the wizarding world even DO about such things? How can you take a muggleborn child born into slavery, teach them magic and then expect them to leave their parents/siblings in the muggle world enslaved????
I did get where founder Slytherin was coming from. Back in those days HP would have never received a letter because of the Dursleys. They would have sent him to the school followed by the whole inquisition to bring it down. It would only take one family member of a muggle born or half blood wizard. Then fear turned into hate as it will and so on. HP world building always fell apart more you thought about it. I’m always grateful to the books because I really didn’t enjoy reading until I was introduced to HP but Rowling has squandered any and all good will I once had towards her.
Absolutely amazing breakdown of such a weird tangled mess. I always felt that JK’s portrayal of American wizards really put her lack of understanding into the starkest relief, but it’s been present from the get go. Loved hearing your takes and I think we can all agree you’re beautiful in every video?? Keep up the great work!!!
I actually like the green lippy. It says 'I'm Slytherin' without a sickly-ness that adds 'And I died several days ago of arsenic poisoning'. Most writers, when trying to decide between two characters that can't both get the spotlight treatment, will consider merging them. OK, this couldn't easily have been done with Neville and Dean without the combined NevilleDean coming across badly as a bumbling comic relief Black character, but it's still pretty telling that of the two of them the blandest one and therefore the most easily dropped to lower tier was Dean rather than Neville. All of Rowling's distinctive larger-than-life characters are White while everybody else is just... there. Assuming the point of Dean was mostly only to add a tiny drop of water to the diversity desert rather than to represent Black British teenage boys specifically (because he doesn't really, he's just... there), then instead she could have 'merged' them by actually keeping Dean as a minor character while also improving representation of the major characters by re-working Neville so that he's also a racial minority, maybe of a race that isn't linked so closely with the bumbling comic relief trope. Neville could have easily been Nadeem, and since Rowling is a stereotype merchant then she could have still had her fun and made him a gormless Northern English stereotype from Bradford or somewhere else with a thriving Asian demographic. I don't trust Rowling to have handled that well, either, but it could have been at least *something* for Asian readers in the era of 'all brown-skinned characters are terrorists'. Your point about Fantastic Beasts being set in the segregation era made me imagine a situation with a non-magical Black person, who's related or married to a witch or wizard, trying to 'pass' as a magic user in order to exist in a society where they have better rights and treatment. Hijinks and also cutting cultural commentary would ensue.
Your entirely right! The two parts so far (i haven't reached the end of your talk) that have resonated most with me is the whole, "JK don't understand systemic prejudice/racism, which informs her writing and world view" and "the whole magical community not relating to the normal one" (this one in a general writing sense, angered me when i finished the books. Like, how the hell do wizards celebrate Christmas and various other holidays, use muggle items both historical and modern, and not have any everyday connections.) Also a pet peeve of mine is the whole lack of sex education inside wizard school/world. like, is there a spell to get rid of unwanted pregnancy? or a condom one you wave before sex? i only bring it up because its a school full of teens (i know "horny teens" is a trope but they are at the age of sexual exploration). I don't know about you guys but at my school kids managed a lot of sex without teachers knowing. (okay that last bit was defo a weird addition but i really feel like JK's stories attempt a lot, without any real thought behind the major or minor story beats or affects of those beats. To back up my weird sex point or outline it, Ron spends an entire book just "snogging" Lavender brown? as if that's all teens do? i get that Ron was really interested Hermione i do, but i just don't believe him or Lavender stopping at a kiss. in terms of the racism/systemic racism alluded to but not brought into the story, i agree, i didn't like that the 'M' word and its societal equivalents were meant to be a veiled lesson on treating everyone with respect. Especially when it was pointed out to me that the house elves don't get freed, and Kreacher is the only one who receives some sort of upwards movement, which is that he gets treated better by his MASTER. JK created a magical world were when the "good guys" win, slaves, inequality and hierarchy still exists in the end. also, after the battle of hogwarts wouldn't it have made sense to stop the sorting process? because it clearly acts as the first channel to divide people.
I just remembered a fanfiction I read a few years ago, where Draco and Blaise dated, before Draco realized that he wasn't into Blaise that way, but they still remain friends. Blaise also comes out as trans male to Draco, who finally understood why some students called Blaise a girl for the previous part of the fic and started correcting them (not sure how, but I laughed every time he did). And they eventually help Harry and co while Umbridge was there. I don't remember much else, because it's been so long, but I really want to read it again now.
Your take on blood purity here is fascinating and nuanced and it's making me desperately wish this was a perspective we had in the series. I'd read your fanfic! I think the separation of the aesthetics of oppression from the historical and systemic realities is pretty relevant, too, as a skill. Thank you for this video. A+ work, super thoughtful.
Great video. Slytherin is a house that comes across as flat in the books. To think of the depth that the casting of a Black actor inadvertently adds to HP’s lore is so interesting to me.
My thoughts exactly! The only way for him to have a more Italian name is Giuseppe xD Also I can hear his accent when he speaks Spanish. It would be really nice to see a Black Italian in media someday.
Oh after googling him again: literally called Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito. Ok if you even just think about having a cappuccino after lunch or pineapple pizza while being in a 100 mile range from him he will arrest you.
Girl!Blaise, holy crap, now there's a flashback. I remember her being paired often with Harry too.... gosh. Anyways. Thank you so much for this in depth analysis, I really appreciated it and enjoyed it a lot. This is the second video I watched from you and I think I'm hooked. Subscribed
For me the phenom of death of the author is so important especially as it relates to wanting to enjoy not only the content of the art itself or the fandom. But it is sooooo important to talk about the very real and negative influence and impact the author and their views or behavior has on people in the fandom weather they support the writer or not. EDIT: you are sooo right! As a first gen West Indian (Caribbean) American myself, black Hermione would have ABSOLUTELY rocked Draco’s sh*t at that mud blood comment and I never felt connected to this idea that mud blood was really hurtful mostly because she didn’t react even when she knew what it meant.
This might be an odd comparison, but one thing that reminded me of the attitude towards Hermione and SPEW was the Han Solo Star Wars movie, with a droid focused on liberating other droids treated as a joke by the characters and the movie itself. Its jarring when franchises about standing up to fascism are also making fun of standing up to fascism.
That was the Han Solo film not Rogue One but besides that 100%. It's one degree removefrom how Posion Ivy is a villain for killing CEO billionaires for destroying the planet.
I’m taking the centrist approach and Headcanoning Blaise as a Black Italian
Truly the golden path.
yep that's how I see it. I choose to headcanon that his mother's side of the family have roots in Northern Africa (like Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, etc.) His dad is preferably Black as well but he doesn't have to be.
I've been doing that since I read a fanfic years ago in college that took the whole "His mom is a Black Widow and murders men for money/power/dark magic" and made it into "Yeah she murdered a group of men but for revenge cause a bunch of racist ass European Wizards killed her husband (Blaise's dad) and so she's been doing a magic world version of Kill Bill and getting revenge on every person who had a hand in it. I don't remember the name of the fanfic and when I stopped reading it, it was only like halfway finished.
I think I HAVE read a few fics where he is that
@@erockbaby3000 this was literally the headcanon i made up for his mother a month ago without seeing any of those fics!! idk if i wanna look for some bc the concept feels so badass or not bc i wanna tackle it with my own original ideas now
I also see Blaise as a Black Brazilian or Black Portuguese from his dad’s side
I think the most charitable interpretation of blood purity is that it is essentially a class thing, Rowling fails to understand classism in any systemic way, and then racial coding is slapped on top which she understands even less.
Agreed. It tends to just be very posh politics but with an added racial language
This makes a lot of sense, blood purity in the pre-colonial classist English sense
@@Princess_Weekes 20:00 I'm okay with writers writing what they know. Clearly, J. K Rowling sucks at writing diverse characters when she's "conscious" she's writing a diverse character.
Agreed. I think Rowling was trying to convey racism but instead she described concepts of nobility vs common blood.
JKR can't have a systemic view on classism as she's fully on board with free market capitalism and hostile to leftism. While money and class do occasionally come into conflict (Nouveau Riche vs Upper Old Money) they generally go hand in hand and the concept that money inherently gives a person privilege clearly frightens her.
So she makes a delineating line that avoids her ever questions whether the system itself is a problem. The upper class are bad because they're full of bad apples. If the upper class change how they treat others, then they can keep their stuff. The ministry is full of bad apples, but it's ok, because its fine when Tony Blair- I mean, Kingsley Shacklebolt takes over and then Hermione succeeds him.
She likes the system.
I had no idea Blaise was considered unattractive by the fandom. Back then I was probably too young to know how to use fandom pages and what-not, but still. I was about 12-13 when Blaise was casted and had a crush on him (which I felt guilty about because at the time I didn't like Slytherin lol.) Other potterheads I met also thought he was hot. Like, seeing these fandom reactions now is actually shocking news to me. Not shocking because it happened, racist fandom reactions happen all the time (i.e. The Hunger Games and Star Wars) I'm just shocked this is my first time hearing about Blaise.
Bro is pretty af, how they think he unattractive ??
@@delsingray5923 i think a lot of it was because people thought Blaise was a white irish girl. In fact in most fanfiction he is a redheaded white chick.
@@pookiesis1465 that's actually very interesting. in my experience of reading purely drarry fics, blaise is always a black guy. is his depiction as a redheaded white chick common in other ships' fics or maybe in fics published in the 2000s?
@Day Just flying through to point out that the Italian ethimology isn't even correct. Though Zabini is indeed an Italian name, Blaise is purely French (and seems to have been used by English people too). The Italian equivalent is "Biagio".
Yeah, I know, not very useful but I thought it was funny.
bro he is fine as hell, they are tripping.
Your breakdown of why it would reveal downright bad / problematic writing and ideas within the text if Hermione was black is how I feel about an Indian Potter. Like I love the depth and nuance some fans are bringing to it but when thought about too hard the implications are mega yikes-just off the top of my head there’s the optics of a mixed Indian boy being abused by his white extended family (who most definitely would be calling him more slurs if he were non-white, let’s be real) and then attending a predominately white boarding school that continually MAKES HIM GO BACK every summer! Also the living in a cupboard and forced to do domestic labor aspect??
But that’s just the thing, in the right hands, these topics could be explored and the implications of Harry’s willingness to die for a world like this becomes that much more weighted (and of course I think this would be even better if the limitations of being a middle grade novel weren’t there).
See the thing is, I think even stereotypes such as these could theoretically be powerful writing if used with enough nuance and awareness. Evidently JK Rowling wouldn't do that and adding that after the fact is... problematic at the very least, but still
I’m not part of this side of the fandom, but why would his family not be Indian too?
@@thrawncaedusl717 Well, he'd only be indian on the Potter side of course
I could never ignore it. I’m too woke. That’s a terrible idea, omg why would ppl do that to an Indian boy?😭
It's hard to remember that wizards suffered oppression in the books because every time wizards and muggles interact, wizards are magicking muggles, sometimes causing serious harm (Dudley's pig tail had to be surgically removed), and then being mindwiped, and it's just funny to the wizards.
But also, through sheer numbers, technological ingenuity, or whatever, Muggles are so dangerous to wizards that the wizarding community needs to hide from them. A good writer could make something pretty interesting out of all this.
You should read Unlike a Sister, very interesting commentary about muggle mistreatment by the wizarding world and even completely breaking from the Statute of Secrecy. Literally one of the best fics period.
Yes, this is a very early scene in the book and it absolutely sets the moral tone. Hagrid's use of magic on muggles is presented in universe as morally justified because they are 'bad'. That always bothered me even as a kid.
Honestly I don't buy into wizard oppression by the hands of muggles. I just don't. Not when everything else suggest the opposite. And muggles being more "technologically advanced" makes no sense to me. I mean wizards get to live in reality. They are not cut off from the muggle world like the muggles are cut off from magic. They have the means to collaborate alongside muggles with these new technological advancements and then also get to add magic to the mix. Like the world of Harry Potter just makes way more sense when you look at the wizards as the supremacists they are, specifically the European wizarding world. You cannot tell me that they weren't the ones responsible for the Statute of Secrecy and enforced that shit on through colonization. I mean the whole 11 wizard schools makes way more sense under this framework. The reason they keep having problems with fascist extremists in their ranks is because the wizarding world is proto-fascist.
Now if magic were real and people who can practice magic are oppressed, they would not have the means to cut muggles off from the natural world. So everyone would know magic is a real thing. People with magic and other magical beings would be forced into hiding, which is hard to do because of the obscurous problem. That would particularly effect muggle born children. So what an oppressed wizarding world, that are trying to hide from the persecution of muggles, would do is have some sort of network to traffic wizards into safe haven communities where they are allowed to learn and practice magic freely and connect with other wizards. These networks and communities are under constant threat that they are found out and destroyed by muggles. And then muggle technology alongside forced collaboration with other wizards would make it harder and harder to hid. We could also tell stories of trying to integrate magical beings with muggles. People will rediscover that magic is just part of the natural world, and killing magical beings will not get rid of magic. Plus between muggle borns and miscegenation you can only keep it up for so long. I should add that this was not a problem for most of human history and cultures. Wizards did have place in society. It's just that muggles discovered christianity and lost their minds. That's when it all goes to shit.
@@sorasgirl i've just marked this, interested to check it out. thanks for bringing it to attention
@@birdiewolf3497 Muggles aren't even more technologically advanced, at least not in every field. Wizards have flying cars, teleportation and can regrow bones in a nightspan. They are shitty at comunication, possibly more by choice than anything (and though there's a scene in I don't remember which book in which the Weasley are baffled by a phone allowing them to speak through big distances, wizards are shown doing videoconferences through firefood). You could argue that humans have advanced weaponry, but an avada kedavra to the face works just as well than any gun (if not better, considering you don't need to touch a vital organ) and weapons of mass destruction wouldn't be very useful against a people hiding among common folks. At best, muggles have a numerical advantage, and magic's limitation are so loosely set that even this may not be an issue.
Also, wizard fearing muggle oppression is not really convincing when the chapter about the witch hunts in their history books explains that no witch was actually killed during this time period because everyone just hid their wand in their sleeve and teleported right before being burnt alive, to the point some where caught on purpose just because they thought it was hilarious (again, I don't remember which book it is, possibly Goblet of Fire).
I remember in the very first book Ron said the reason why the wizards live hidden is because they don't want the muggles to bother them every time they need some magical help, and it sounds funnier until you realise wizards could help for stuffs like medicine, world hunger or natural disasters.
Your take on the historical roots of purebloods distrusting/disliking mud bloods actually blew my mind. It’s actually wild how deeply that throws off the entire point of that viewpoint being wholly evil - and as you said, exposes Rowlings shortsighted understanding of racism - it isn’t analogous to racism, these are people who regularly live to be 150 years old who probably had grandparents who told them about being HUNTED by muggles.
right!! if rowling was a better, smarter and more nuanced writer, there could have been an extremely complex and interesting dissection of the roots of prejudice and the paths that future generations take from their ancestor's trauma. it wouldn't even have to be about race - many regions in the world have long histories of people who are much the same in many ways physically and culturally fighting for centuries and maintaining a hate for hundreds of years. (like, idk, the balkans are an example.) it's so much more interesting to think of a problem as spawning from a unhealed wound rather than just "slytherin bad".
@@neconeconeco Why don't you do it? Be the change you want to be.
Yes, that blew my mind too!
I actually see this differently because it reminds me of Zionism. One group teaching their children that to preserve their own safety they must fear and hate another group is the basis of many ideologies. Even if it has roots in historical trauma I don't think that makes it more acceptable.
@@sierra8077 right, most discrimination is based in trauma. I talked to an 80+ year old white man who was uncomfortable with Black rights rallies because one of his earliest memories was his church being burnt down in a race riot. I talked to him about how oppressed the Black people who burnt down his church were and their trauma and he intellectually agreed, but still said he was uncomfortable with a large group of Black people and that nothing short of specific, intentional therapy would likely get him past it. I dislike hearing about this, but I understand the psychology.
The relationship between muggles and wizards not being at all explored, drives me crazy. The tension between the two worlds could've made for more nuanced characters, world and story.
Wdym not explored at all, we got Fantastics Beasts!!!!
:|||||
@@drawingsticks5333 *vomits*
I actually kind of disagree with this. I think a lot of the allure and charm of the wizarding world is because it was secret, inaccessible and 'untainted'. It can only be distinct by being separate. You see the same thing play out with real life cultures and subcultures. They can only exist as clearly unique entities because there is not much cultural syncretism. Once exposed to other dominant cultures they start to lose some of their unique qualities (this is neither good nor bad). They give up their traditional garb to wear blue jeans, drink at Starbucks and eat at Mcdonalds and watch Hollywood blockbusters. I think the outcome of the Wizarding world and Muggle world interacting on a deeper level would probably have been underwhelming and buffed away a lot of the uniqueness that people liked about the Wizarding world in the first place. I have enjoyed some fanfic about the subject though.
@@mirsolis4992 so as someone who used to be a huge Harry Potter fan until JK Rowling mask fell completely off I do agree with you about the Allure of the Wizarding World however I think the reason why that exists is simply because it is yet another young adult fantasy of wanting to be so special that the world doesn't understand you so you need to be segregated from the world which is a literal preteen and teen fantasy as people go through puberty which is why it shows up and so much young adult literature same thing with house divisions in the exact same way that school start pairing you into social demographics like the theater kid the jocks the rich kids the losers ect. I think this is one of the reasons why the Fantastic Beasts series falls on its face because that type of surface superficial thinking doesn't work when you have to make an expanded world mostly inhabited by adults viewed through an adult eyes were no matter how dumb are horrific it is all the gears have to combined together in order to make societal existence. Basically she tried to take like a cereal box character and try to make a deep water out of it which doesn't make any goddamn sense and why the Wizarding World doesn't work because that's fundamental level it literally can't work unless you turn your brain off to things. The really tragic part is that it could work like the way Star Wars Star Trek Lord of the Rings and other franchises had if they could simply just give the material to other better more contemporary writers and have them come up with new unique stories but Joanne is so incredibly controlling that she will never let that fully happen and this is why all of her material suffers. Like it's not anything amazing and sometimes by accident other problematic elements were highlighted but it's interesting to watch the movie films and see the slight edits that they did such as taking that spew and things like that and it usually improves the entire world building immediately which is why no wonder why Joanne even herself off of defaults to the movies timeline of events instead of the books.
Two more properly replied your original post what's has always driven me crazy about Harry Potter even when I was a hardcore fan back in the 90s as a teenager and was always a giant plot hole that loomed over my head the entire series is what I like to call the Deacon Frost problem. The name comes from the main villain in the first Blade movie where Deacon Frost the main villain of that movie forces his way into the meeting of the inner Council of vampyres and rightly points out the bizarre hypocrisy that the vampires are physically way better than any of the humans and that they control every single societal political and economic level of all human civilization and that since humans are there food why the hell do they bother to even hide? Pointing out that humans are super dominant over cows and humans don't try to hide from the cows they're just they're managing the cows and killing them directly and things like that. And that is a aspect that I always taken my own writing when I write any sort of fantasy element that comes to any thing or being that seems really powerful which is why do they have limits why do they not just take over the world things like that. And that's the thing I've always wanted to be answered in Harry Potter which is why are the Wizards so afraid of mughals it's implied that they are incredibly afraid of mughals and any retribution from them and that in the British Wizarding World the anti-witch stuff of the 1700 caused the huge goddamn problem for them and it's never elaborated on and of course in the Americas it's implied that the Salem Witch Trials had to do with something with this. But it just makes no goddamn sense when you see what a wizard is that even Wizarding children and teenagers have the ability to erase Andre for memories to be able to teleport anywhere they want they can make any materials they literally have a curse that can instantly kill people and you can only Dodge it and can't block it and since Muggles can't see magic they would never literally see with hitting them. Even with some of their hilarious backwards things like still using rolls of parchment they are completely way more advanced than any modern mobile technology so the question is why do wizards fear them to the point where they want to hide from them? This is where you get that train of thought that the only reason why the Wizards would want to hide from them is not because they're afraid of them but they're actually elitist who see themselves as above muddled and does don't want to be bothered with any of their stuff even though a lot of Wizards come from Muggles and that paints are really horrible picture and adds up to Rowling's libertarian values which I don't think was the actual original intent. Like I see this come up in the Harry Potter fan no more and more and more as time goes on and they just need to like create a story maybe near where Hogwarts first began that shows a whole riffic clash between Wizards and muddles and show how the mughals had this unknown up until now unfair advantage against the Wizards that cause all wizards to ship their pants and this is why they keep the worlds separate. Maybe there's a historic material like LED or something that magic cannot affect and they outline all of their soldiers with this and now that they're immune to all of their magic they can now start doing normal psychological and physical abuse towards them like what's been historically done to other minority groups? Like I don't know but to me it's the biggest plot hole in the entire series along with the why didn't the eagles just fly the ring to Mordor and why does the Matrix use people for power sort of plot hole that I wish they would just god damn solve.
I read these books when the 4rth came out and I was already in my teens. Her fixation with stereotypes, especially with evil people as being unattractive and the lack of depth in world building was noticeable. The way she had characters treat Hermione and SPEW, like, come on, that was evident to me as a teenager in a 99% white small town in Alberta. Older readers choose to overlook it. I don't think she was every really a "liberal" as in moderately left, I think she was always at best, a neo-liberal. Rereading those books as an adult, they are very conservative regarding race, class, and poverty and even education. What is Hogwarts, if not the most exclusive British prep school imaginable?
Yeah the 4th book was the turning point in my relationship with the series too. I was finally old enough to critically engage with the work... and also that's the point when Rowling started ignoring her editors, to her detriment.
Even as an 8 year old i saw the SPEW arc as seeming very wrong (I didn’t really recognize the implications though, just a surface level “why is Rowling/Harry acting like Hermionie is wrong?” Honestly her turning to hardline bigotry should’ve been more obvious in retrospect. Id be really interested to see if anyone caught it before 2018 based off the books
I was ~9 when I started the books and movies. I was so used to the trope of "ugly" villains from Disney and other popular children's stories that I didn't really think twice about that. I didn't even pick up on the goblins which is so obvious to me now. When Hermione started SPEW, I read it as "Hermione is right once again, and Harry and everyone else are being dumb about this." It took me a long time to realize the subtler issues. Rowling was great at creating a fun world and immersing kids in it. It meant a lot to me growing up, and it still does. But it is sad finding out that she's as fucked up as some of her villains.
@@Aelffwynnlike yes, I understand it’s a different culture (the wizard of community) but it’s the idea that they made her out as if she was completely irrational to question this system. I think I’d be less upset about it if it wasn’t made out as if she was the only one that thought this way. The half bloods and other muggleborn should’ve at least got it.
@darkwriter_xx94 oh yeah, as an adult I totally get that. But as a kid I was completely clueless that the books weren't on Hermiones side about the house elves. I saw what I wanted to see in those books.
Do these people know that you can be Italian AND black? This may come as a shock but people of all races can be born in Italy, have an Italian last name or have Italian ancestors. Like, I'm German and my last name is Karatas (which is Turkish).
Also, I absolutely LOVE your Slytherin themed top!!! Looks so good on you!
You're a turk with german citizenship
@@dannym7026 no, i was born and raised in germany, so were my parents. my dad's father was turkish. that doesn't make me a turk.
@@IGETTHOSEGOOSEBUMPSEVERYTIME that's just your opinion, broski. some people think a citizenship is enough to make someone belong to a specific country. others, like you, think you need to be 100% ethnically italian and have ancestry dating back hundreds of years to be able to call yourself italian. i personally think that if you speak the language, consider yourself italian and adopted the culture, you are italian. especially if you were born there and your parents were born there as well.
what it takes to make someone italian or polish or russian or whatever depends on who you ask.
also, would you say the same thing about someone who was part italian and part spanish? or any other european etnicity? or is it just about skin color? because europeans are not a monolith and a swede has as much in common with a greek as he has with a korean.
and what about people who are ethnically italian but have never been there before and grew up on the other side of the planet? are they italian too, even though they know nothing about the culture? ethnically speaking, yes, but is ethnicity all that matters?
if you found a little orphan baby on the street, with no known ancestry, you took it in and it grew up to look somewhat italian, you would absolutely consider them italian. even though they could very well be a light skinned iranian. or would you say that this person belongs nowhere because they can't pull out a 5 generation family tree?
idk man... with a mentality like ''europe for the europeans'' and focusing on race so much, you sound a little, dare i say, racist?!? lol
(you also sound like you know jack sht about europe and what europeans themselves think of race. hint: we don't care that much. adopting the culture and language is more important to us than your bloodline)
@@LeylaKaratas blablabla we don't care, black Italians are only Italians by citizenship not by blood
@@LeylaKaratas Also stop lying to yourself, you're not a pure German
More recently pretty much any HP fanfiction I read heavily features:
- Silver trio as Draco, Blaise, and Theo, occasionally featuring Pansy
- Pureblood being more of a social class thing similar to having an aristocratic title but with different nuances
- Pureblood/magical society being so isolationist that it can be difficult for muggleborn students to adjust to the differences in prejudice (for example some of them will have nonheterosexual relationships as normalized in the magical world and make the contrast with muggle homophobia bewildering)
- Magical creatures both being acknowledged as structurally mistreated and being given history for how they wound up in those positions (house-elves needing to be bound to family magic to survive, meaning the problematic aspect is turned to their widespread poor treatment rather than on the fact of their service; goblins being tricked European-colonizer-style into coercive magical contracts and then working to find ways to exert agency through/around those contracts)
I tend to view HP "canon" as a completely different universe than "fanon" for the most part. I think it's interesting to see how different creators tackle some of the giant holes in Rowling's worldbuilding and how some creators will (I think usually unintentionally) continue contributing to certain problematic patterns from the original but try to make others either less problematic or more logical/realistic.
The silver trio in the fic i read (Drarry only) is still always Draco, Pansy and Blaise, so that's interesting. It's very common that only Pansy and Draco are close though and that Blaise is more of a sidekick. Theo is usually a minor character or an antagonist. Talking about fic written 2017 and on
Sometimes I wonder if Rowling's absolute dogshit worldbuilding is actually part of the appeal of HP, you know? Like how popular would the fan space even be if people didn't have this instinct of "Okay, there's a ton of cool things in this world and just enough that you want to explore it and know more, but there are SO MANY PROBLEMS so I'm just going to fix some of those problems myself!"
@@perrisavallon5170 oh I heavily subscribe to this theory, as well as having a story that is long enough and full of potential "what if..." moments for the fandom to branch off
How interesting the antagonists and the side characters are plays a huge factor as well, and the world building!
@@perrisavallon5170 Huh, the RWBY effect.
One can sees the potential for greatness in the setting/story and gets into it but then realizes the flaws and goes "I can fix this". This leads to tons of fanfics.
I really liked this one fic that had elves basically require large sources of magic to sustain themselves on, like giant magical forests or magical serene mountain lakes or Hogwarts Castle.
Their special elf magic needs a kind of large magical source, and wizards can act as a source by directly allowing the elf access into their own magic. Households, like the Blacks or Malfoys, are basically a group of wizards that all share their magic with the elf, lightening the amount of magic each wizard would have to give to the elf.
Since this is so direct and personal, straight up giving away your own magic, this is why the house elf obedience system is so set in place, because otherwise it would be too risky to take on a house elf, as they could literally drain you dry without helping you.
However, due to human deforestation and environmental ruin encroaching on all the big magical environments, more and more elves have been forced to turn to tying themselves to wizards in order to survive. Thus, the elves become desperate to obey and the system becomes ripe for exploitation by wizards, because there’s literally nowhere else to go. It explained why freeing them would do nothing to solve the problem, as the root issue was the lack of resources and the exploitative structure of this current system of sharing magic.
Draco takes on an elf in the fic, except he did it against his dad’s orders to protect them from becoming free and losing their source of magic, and so he had to personally power the elf instead of sharing the load with the Malfoy household, and it drained a lot from him. I can’t remember the fic though !! 😢😢
I still remember there was this awkward time period on Twitter after JK announced that Hermoine was always meant to be any race the reader wanted her to be (sure, Joan). And JK would "announce" new representation every other week and it was always so so badly written and never in the original text - but oh you bet she still wanted credit for the representation. Fans who criticized how disingenuous or offensive it all was were called bigots 🙃 the signs were really all there huh?
JK: "Hermione was always written as black, i mean any race you want. Nowhere does it describe her race"
Also JK: "Hermione gets a black eye and looks like a panda" "She was so scared her face turned pale" "her face turned red in embarrassment"
We like a black Hermione, but just stop lying about it JK.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 i think beyond just descriptions of her appearance, princess makes an incredible point about how if Hermione was black (and growing up in 90's britain yikes) she would have already experienced racism from her schoolmates and her parents would have known even more oblique racism. going to wizard school and finding out there's ANOTHER way for her to be discriminated against would have been even more painful and her reaction would have likely been compounded. instead, this is the first time she's likely ever experiencing prejudice for just being born a certain way and it's just a totally different dynamic. she's not black. she was not written to be black.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 I admit I sometimes head canon Hermione as Jewish because she fits a few of the markers I would identify as Jewish coded. She has the bushy curly hair that a lot of us Jewish girls have, she’s very focused and intelligent which is a common stereotype about Jews, her parents are dentists which is sometimes seen as a Jewish profession, She tries to fight for social justice as many activists are Jewish, And her facing prejudice as a Muggle born feels similar to facing anti-Semitism in a non-Jewish space.
@@neconeconeco Oh yeah, absolutely, there's a million reasons how Hermione is not black, I just mentioned the most obvious surface blatant lie JK did without even starting on the story itself.
Black Hermione is a domino that would need a complete rewrite of the series. By a good writer of course.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 agreed, yeah, it's the most obvious and oblique evidence that rowling lied haha. god, i would LOVE a rewrite with a culturally complete black Hermione. i want to know about her black dentist parents. i want to know what food Hermione ate at home and how Hermione felt about getting unseasoned mash potato and boiled chicken at hogwarts. creating a spell that braids your hair while you work on your potions homework. just imagine. sigh.
When you mentioned that in no way there would be only one school for all north American it reminded me that I have to continue to read the "hp fanfic" that was published here in Brazil and there we have 5 schools bc of course we do not only bc of our size but also our history and all, knowing even a bit of that one school is ridiculous
Oi, que fic é essa? 👀
@@rafaela00002 é a série arma escarlate, cujo o livro 1 é A arma escarlate, aí o 2 é A comissão chapeleira e o 3 foi dividido em 2 pts então sao 2 O dono do tempo pt 1 e 2. Eu só li o 1 até agora e ainda faltam lançar o 4 e 5. Pelo q sei é pra ser cada um em uma escola mas como não li o 2 não sei como isso vai funcionar.
@@LinnaAP entendi, obrigada!
Castelobruxo o pior nome 😭
@@thais_cdm sim! e ainda gramaticalmente errado, sendo junto e tudo, muita vibe de quando hq usava nome espanhol pra gente ou juntava DaCosta em vez de ser da Costa, coisas assim afff
I'm a late 20s black man in the US and I experienced this same level of "slavery analogues" in DND games I've played in the past. Even now I'm in a long-running campaign where the DM (who's white and queer) has an evil empire which does a lot of racism and enslaving. I play to escape the real world problems not try and face poorly structured fantasy facades. I want to tell them how troubling it is but decided to try reroll a different character from the evil empire and breakdown the flaws in how it's not working well.
Wish me luck.
Hi friend, as someone who was introduced to DND back in college with mostly white friends, and who spent so long trying to fit in with them, I think assimilation scars one’s soul and might not always be worth it. It took me a decade to talk to them about race, and I’m not sure I actually made myself clear, but i wish I’d been able to bring it up earlier. (Not telling you what to do! It’s a different situation for sure.) Especially with long-running campaigns, I often find that the group (esp the DM) is using the game to explore stressful real world problems in a lower conflict setting. That can make it harder to bring the topic back to reality, but it can also be a relief because clearly they’re thinking about these ideas (eg the injustice of chattel slavery) already, like bubbles just under the surface.
Totally with you on needing escapism, but in retrospect, DND and most mainstream scifi/fantasy are exactly the wrong places to go looking for that. I mean, anything can be reclaimed, but these genres are specifically for sociopolitical commentary, so it really depends who’s telling the stories. In my late 20s I started limiting how much media by/for white cishet patriarchy I was consuming, and for me that was clarifying: for several years, I had ~no faves. I had to rebuilt my value system in order to address the larger systems, and be open with my friends. So, I’m not gonna sit here and act like it’s easy. But, like, screw assimilation!!!
I genuinely wish you luck! Be well.
This is really something your DM should have brought up with you before the game started. Communication is key, and you're not going to solve an out-of-game problem with an in-game solution. If you can't trust your DM enough to confide this kind of discomfort, you might want to seek out someone who you can trust instead. No D&D is better than bad D&D.
Did you have a session zero? If it's not too late, see if you can talk to the whole group about this. You have the right to have your escapism. Ofc if it's a homebrew the DM will need time to craft/modify so even if it's not this campaign it can be a feedback for the next.
I dunno if this will make you feel any better but I'm from the Middle East and have the same reaction to the Wizards of the Coast D&D material. There's a lot of lore that was written with an incredible ignorance of slavery, torture, war, racism etc. And while some of it has been pruned out since the game began, a lot is still in there. Because the people who make the game are Western and fundamentally do not see a lot of these types of violence as 'real'. (By which I mean they conceptualise it as something from history or fiction, rather then a lived reality.)
I've found DMing and building the world I want within the game system works pretty well. But my advice for playing is set down some ground rules at the beginning. I don't trust Western people to handle torture well, so rather then trying to educate them and explain what I'm OK with vs not I just look around the table, and if it's mostly Western folks say 'No torture, hard line.' You can do the same thing around slavery and racism. I can't promise it'll pan out in the group you play with now, but it can make things a lot less stressful with groups later on.
I'm sorry. It should be a lot easier then it is.
@@lkriticos7619 Your comment about how Western people conceptualize torture as something historical or fictional has got me thinking. I'm white and I grew up in a relatively well-off community in Canada so it's not something that has ever been on my radar before. I am really curious to learn more about what exactly it means to see something, specifically the things you mentioned, as fictional or historical rather than a lived reality: i.e. what are the differences in how torture etc. scenes in fiction/D&D are discussed and written. What does it mean, in your perspective, to "handle it well" and what do you find your Western fellow D&D players do that doesn't sit right with you?
If you have the time and energy (of course), would you be willing to discuss it (even just a sentence or two) or to point me in the direction of some reading/someone who can? I don't want to pressure you at all. PLEASE feel free to just ignore this if you don't want to engage with me. I understand that this is a very private and heavy topic. But, on the off chance you don't mind, this is a perspective I've never heard before and as a writer, D&D player, and enjoyer of fictional media I would love to learn more about my biases, the ways I perceive the these things, and how to write about these topics in a more sensitive way. I am trying to do some of my own research right now but it's tricky to even know where to start.
Whatever you decide, I hope you have a good day:)
I never understood why the "blood purity" stance was never given more nuance considering that the main character was literally abused by his family for having magic. He is a key example of why there are witches and wizards that despise and want full separation from muggles, especially when you think about their history of being persecuted. Maybe this is why I gravitate more towards stories where dark witches and wizards aren't just pure evil and hateful, but rather did horrible things because they felt the end justifies the means.
That point is kiiiindaaa adressed by snape, whose muggle father is heavely implied to be abusive and hate magic and thus making snape dislike muggles as a group (and meeting petunia whonis also horrible and later being sorted in slytherin) but very shallowly
@@jayla3282 On top of that it's also adressed by Voldemort (you know, kinda an important character lmao). He hates muggles largely due to the fact that his dad abandoned him when he was a baby. So yeah, very disingenuous criticism, as most Harry Potter "criticisms" tend to be.
@@musichere3287 it is NOT disingenuous
Voldemort is never given that indpeth look
@@SpaceandGoats What I said is addressed by the books.
@@musichere3287they said they thought there should be _more_ nuance, not that they thought there was _none_
Omg, this whole concept you’ve brought up of ‘blood purity’ and Slytherin’s self-preservation actually being a somewhat reasonable response to having been persecuted in the past is such an interesting thing to explore. It also makes a ton of sense for pure-bloods to be the group most concerned about self-preservation because they’re the only ones who are *guaranteed* to be direct descendants of those victims in the past.
Also, can I just say, being able to watch a video about a new idea about Harry Potter that doesn’t spend much time on all the disgusting baggage JKR has brought to the series now was so… it just made me feel like a child again. It brought me back to a period in my life when I could genuinely love the series my siblings and I bonded over and not feel vaguely disgusted by it. I’m gonna cry lol
Omg (hugs)
@@Princess_Weekes it rly does being me back to the old days where I'd just watch lore and theory vids, and simply have fun
With some changes and better writing, Snape's story could have made an interesting parallel. To give Harry and us an actual character to see this sort of thing happen to.
I'm just remembering Mconagall throwing the Slytherins in the dungeon or whatever for not wanting to protect Harry in the final battle and how even then as a teen, I was very uncomfortable by it. I mean, them not wanting to fight made perfect sense since they were literal children and some of their parents were Deatheaters. Meaning, they'd have to fight them.
@@Heather_Dukeyea the optics are unsettling but technically that’s where their common room is and it’s the furthest place from harm at a time of battle. It prevented the kids from having to fight family or friends and put them somewhere reinforced from danger while providing comfort they were used to. Would have been better to usher them out of the castle through the portrait.
19:00 I work with kids and often have to explain to them "even if you didn't mean to hurt somebody, it's important to apologize and take responsibility for what happened." Cool that some adults haven't gotten there yet.
emotional maturity isnt a requirement for survival, so most people dont get it, especially not before reproducing.
Blaise was referred to as female? Well I am happy for his transition. Let's face it, if a trans character would be in any house, JK would put them in Slytherin
In the german translation yes. There is a short description in the first book of children being sorted into the Hogwarts houses und it says about Blaise that „she“ is sorted into Slytherin.
@@julias8157 ahead of the curve
That hit hard.
I think the Blaise as a girl versus Blaise as a boy debate prior to HBP came about because many fans didn't know that Blaise is a French name for boys (plus the translations didn't help sometimes).
@@irondragonmaiden Names are funny when they have different genders in other languages. Gerard Way named the russian girl Vanya, BUT Vanya is a russian male name lol. (Even funnier when he came out as Viktor) Or how Black Widow is called Romanov (male) instead of Romanova (female). English speakers usually just don't care about doing research.
I almost never comment, but I just wanted to say that your point about Rowling and fandom not understanding the impacts of wizards vs. muggles is something I've been thinking about a lot. I'm Jewish, and it's fascinating to me how well you can draw parallels the author didn't intend. Being very closed off and insular, having obscure cultural norms that are colored by where you live and what group in a bigger community you're part of, being suspicious of people who didn't grow up in the community when they come in, debates about who's 'really' part of the community. There's more, but that's something that's really glaring to me any time I read something having to do with pureblood culture and the like. Because to me, how you survive being around people who'd be hostile if they knew what kind of person you were is so natural that it's very alien to see the way other people who don't seem to have that experience handle it. Obviously, that parallel wasn't intentional at all, but it kind of makes me want to see what a talented fanfic writer could do with the concept of building that out to its natural conclusion. I don't know if I explained very well, but it's something that's seen more and more often in fanfic, and how you talked about it articulated the idea really well, so thank you!
This comment is incredible, and I'd like to add onto it an idea I was just starting to think about due to it on how to explore this particular POV in fanfic...an exploration of Wizarding culture from the lense of two of its most famous families: the Potters and the Blacks, from their beginnings and into the modern age.
While both canonically pureblood lineages, they somehow diverged at some point due to the Blacks (+ the other 11 "main" pureblood families) being staunchly pro-blood purity while the Potters (+ Prewetts, Weasleys, etc) became more lax and open to intermixing with Half-bloods and Muggleborns (Cannot help but think on: "Heaven and earth! Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"). Seeing the progression and then path divergence (and destruction?) of both would serve as a perfect way of breaking down how the Wizarding world and it's nuances could make a hell of a lot more sense in real world terms when JKR isn't putting her dumb fucking TERF hands on it.
(Because that's kind of the thing, isn't it? That she somehow happens to come up with incredible ideas, characters + rich backstories and interesting worldbuilding blocks, but almost always bungles it up because she lacks the amount of imagination and/or critical thinking skills to fully flesh it all out. Long live fanfic writers!)
I'm putting this idea out there as both 1) An interesting way of applying a more realistic sense of why certain magical people think the way they do (Not just to excuse the bigotry, of course) and 2) Because I hope someone actually sees this idea and writes it someday, as I find myself lacking in enough intellect or skill to put it all into words (but hey ho, my mind still runs free!).
The Harry Potter series has so many interesting concepts that never get explored or have any thought put into. The aspect of muggles persecuting wizards is solely there because it gives a reason for why the wizards decided to stay secret. There's no thought put into the implications of that kind of history, even though it would allow for some interesting material.
And that comparison just makes the fact that the wizards are secretly controlling the UK government even more...yikes😰
@@slowdancers I’ve actually been considering writing a HP “fanfic” history retcon! It would basically be an attempt to make a history of the wizarding world from about 500 AD to 2000 AD. I’m more sure how true to the original I’d end up making the end point. It’ll be interesting to see where it takes me. Basically Harry Potter if Rowling was any good at worldbuilding, as opposed to “throw in what I want to talk about the most”-building.
@@Alice-gr1kb omg that sounds like an insanely incredible project!!!! if you ever get started/post it on AO3 do send a link
It never dawned on me until you mentioned it, but Theo really did replace Blaise once it was canon that he's Black. I remember when Theo was the extra evil Slytherin who never got the redemption arc, then it all changed. It makes so much more sense now.
I used to be in HP roleplays and whenever I complained about how white they were people would give me stats about the UK’s population or say something about how it just wouldn’t make sense to have Black or other POC characters lmao…being Black in these fandoms was so bizarre bc people would be so openly racist while telling us that we were overthinking it if we brought it up, even in the kindest way. This video (like many of your fandom videos) is major catharsis for me because at the time I felt so alone.
Why do I feel like many of them were American? 🤔 Feeling pretty cheated out of a story about the kid of Windrush generation parents, discovering they have magic powers
@@e.s.r5809 From my experience it was both Brits and American
Yep. God, it was funny seeing the casual homophobia, racism and transphobia and then being like I CANT BE RACIST I MADE HARRY DESI.
Like girl...
Have you actually seen tbe racial count of uk schools. It is actually accurate. Lots of white kids and the few asians, few blacks.... in ome class. Esepcially when comparing state vs public vs private schools. (Public schools in UK are more like american private schools). State schhols are more equivalent to american public. British private are the super elite. Superior. Especially places like eton college
@@LilyUnicorn I don’t consume fantasy for realism and I don’t really feel like going back and forth with someone who missed the entire point of the video. Have a blessed day!
3:40 Thank you, yes. NO WAY IN HELL girlie wrote the whole mudblood thing and thought a black hermonie wouldn't connect it to racism especially assuming she grew up in the rich part of Hampstead
Literally the only person who could touch the noxious mess that is HP in 2022 and bring nuance, depth and a novel perspective. We stan our Black Slytherin Queen 🐍👑
PLUS she pulled off the green lipstick. 💚🐍
Hear hear
@@aislynnmariseriously how the hell. I don’t even wear lipstick and I want to know
You nailed it. JK was out of her depth with this topic. When the series first came out it was obvious that the Death Eaters were the KKK, but old girl had no idea about structural oppression and that made the plot weak. Her world building and character development were terrible
Ikr I remember being confused by the clearly death eaters are like the KKK and Slytherins are the racist blood elitists and we're supposed to think those things are bad but we're cool with just keeping the evil Hogwarts house and we're cool with enslaving house elves and we're expected to believe that they'd want to be enslaved? It was so confusing
Something can be based on something and not be equivalence to it. I don't think that Harry Potter is an analogy for racism. It's a fictional story about facing of against the dark lord. Entertaining but not all that deep. To say it's in anyway political or philosophical is giving Rowling to much credit.
For better worldbuilding, might I suggest the Percy Jackson books and all of the other works of the author of that series? I won't claim it's high literature( I would check out Malazan and Wheel of Time for that) but for good urban fantasy worldbuilding? It's not perfect, but it is good for what it is and has greater detail in the worldbuilding.
@@jadencrawford2772 I read the first few Percy Jackson, but lost interest when it switched to the Roman part. The Greek series was sufficient for some light reading.
dont forget that Hermionie was portrayed as an idiot for wanting to free slaves that sure was something
We often talk about how colonization justifies our (Black people) presence in the very few representations we do have in the stories of white protagonists, but another explanation for Blaise is that Blacks existed in Italy long before slavery. Long before chattel slavery the Moors lived throughout Europe. Shakespeare didn't just dream up Othello as an idealistic approach to be more inclusive; Blacks really lived lives in European society! (And the term Moor was not used strictly as a description of Arabic people but often used to describe any African with dark skin.) To the point, the community of Moors was quite prevalent in Italy and parts of Spain. Blaise is probably from an old family descended from wealthy Moors. But that opens up another arguments for some because if you can't fathom Blaise being Black you all all but die of shock if you read that some of the Medici family were Black. I can hear the pearls being clutched.
only after the middle ages did moro become a stereotyped term for black skin, before it was used in religious and arabic contexts
the Moors were also very present in the west of france (for a time at least: between 719 and 973, if i'm correct)
(oh no not the ✨pearls✨)
The thing is, you forget that the Witch society is separated from the Muggle society. They have their own transport, etc. So contacting other witch from other countries would be easier to do and even before muggle discover other countries.
So it's wouldn't be far fetch to many black people to be part of european witch society.
Example is how in France 1700 era some black people were put in position of power as generals, and mixed kid of noble would still be considered nobles.
Just like how Malfoy family tree started in France.
To have other people family starting in Africa wouldn't be far fetch if you also consider modern immigration, with 2nd-gen/3rd gen immigrants.
Moors weren't subsaharan african and they didn't live troughout Europe. You are lying trough your teeth.
Your relationship with Blaise is SO similar to my relationship with Ginny Weasley (for upcoming context, I'm an out and proud gay man). Reading the books I ALWAYS read her as being a lesbian or bisexual who was interested in Luna Lovegood. I got strong feelings between those two and was like, "you get it girl." So, when Ginny starts dating... some random guy I was like... ok. And when she dated Harry I wanted to commit crimes. The books make Ron x Hermionie work, but by God, Harry x Ginny SUCKS so bad. They have the chemistry of wet cardboard. Plus, Ginny was the only one who actually liked Luna as a person (y'all forget how mean the main trio were to her behind her back - or even to her face).
Ginny def had queer woman potential
Big same, and that's also a very popular fandom opinion. Personally, I usually read Ginny as bi, but I've seen a lot of fanfics that build off of the canon series but exclude the epilogue, who explicitly call out the way her relationship with Harry feels weird and forced as evidence of her not being attracted to men. They usually write them breaking up but remaining friends while Ginny runs off to be with Luna.
I feel the same way about Harry and Ginny. It just feels so tacked on and thoughtless. Especially since I read Harry as at least bi, maybe outright gay. I'm reading his own internal thoughts and I'm getting, "Bill is just so...cool, Cedric is incredibly handsome, Blaise Zabini is stunningly beautiful," etc. Not to mention his obsession with and stalking of Draco Malfoy, who has been pulling his pigtails for years.
Harry. Bro. I'm a gay dude, and I'm seeing some signs.
@@austinluther5825 This! And it's especially noticeable when you compare it to the way he describes girls. Cho gets the much less descriptive "very pretty" a lot, usually right before or after mentioning how popular and good at Quidditch she is. And for Ginny it's even more ridiculous: we as readers find out that Ginny is attractive because Ron and Hermione talk about how many other boys find her attractive while our POV character happens to be in the room, and it takes OVER A YEAR of that before we get any description of her being attractive from Harry's actual perspective.
Basically, Harry notices when boys are attractive, but for girls he's more likely to notice or emphasize when OTHER PEOPLE find them attractive.
@@CatHasOpinions734 If we're being impartial about this, this circles back to Rowling just. Not being a good writer. Because she is a woman and takes great pride in being a woman, she simply cannot write a male character and get into the headspace of thoughts a cis straight male would actually have about his female peers. She will yell from the top of her lungs that Harry is straight and will shove him into a loveless marriage with a woman but fails to execute anything that actually convinces us he's interested or happy with this situation. It's all very "oh don't they just look so nice together?" flowery text without any actual substance. If Rowling was a better writer, maybe Harry could've been convincingly straight, but we don't have that so instead we get to gleefully participate in accidentally gay subtext.
Edit: I think this is also why, despite the problems, Ron x Hermione is a much easier pairing to accept -- We never see a Ron POV. We can accept the fact that Ron is hopelessly straight because we have an impartial outsider view, but I imagine if Rowling had tried to actually write his POV we would be getting some very mixed signals there, too.
As I've gotten older, I've noticed I've read the books differently than others have, especially when it comes to things like the goblins (i always viewed them as heroes who found a way to ensure that wizards in their prejudice would never try to kill them all again, because even if legally they're equal, it's clear they still aren't treated as such in society), etc, so I never really saw blood purity, etc as an allegory for race, because it never fit for me, but rather as a general commentary on prejudice.
I was disappointed in the films when they had Blaise join in on the fiendfyre scene, because it placed him on the side of the death eaters, and, if I remember the books correctly, he never indicates he actually supports them, more that he's ambivalent. In the books, he came across to me more as someone who was in Slytherin likely because he's ambitious and/or cunning and happens to be pureblood, like I assume was the reason Andromeda Black was in Slytherin. And I was disappointed the movies took that away.
I was also disappointed Dean got shafted in the books, because his character fascinated me, especially when they hint that his dad (I think) may have been a wizard.
Great video!
To be fair, the actor who portrayed crabbe or Goyle (forgot which one) was arrested for drugs and was kicked off the movie so they had to fill in another Slytherin for that. They probably could’ve picked another Slytherin character than blaise but hindsight.
I agree, that's how I saw the characters too! I guess I see Dean now the same way I see the Mauraders -- I used to wish there was more information on them, but then once I started to dislike JKR I was glad that the fandom could write about them instead
My head cannot Blaise comes from one fanfic where he builds a relationship with Susan Bones. And he doesn't really want to be involved with the whole war, but ultimately thinks Voldemort is crazy. He is so nuanced there and so Slytherin, but still sympathetic.
Blaise was the one to be most disgusted about the thought of any blood impurity or even being interested in blood traitors. So no. He was a prick. Reread the scene of where dracos head is in in the train car with his head on pansys lap. Draco himself didnt make a comment about Ginny being pretty. Pansy did that mostly to get a rise out of the boys, but Blaises response was basically, thats disgusting.
some fic I read had Dean as the kid Sirius or Regulus Black fathered unknowingly was actually a really cool idea
I watched this on Nebula yesterday and came to comment because I really enjoyed this video. The discussion you had about wizards and oppression reminded me of conversations in the X Men fandom about mutants as a minority metaphor. While it works in a lot of ways it doesn’t always map on exactly.
Yeah, I will always appreciate the X-Men for *trying* and choosing to have radical for the time politics, but it was always messy af.
what's nebula
@@eb.3764 Nebula is a streaming platform that was created by a bunch of video essayists as an alternative to UA-cam. Allows them to have more control over their work - don't need to worry about getting demonetized over something stupid.
The whole "fantasy beings being oppressed" thing can be done well, I think, but writers need to tread carefully. When you make the parallels to real-world groups too strong, you very quickly run into some questionable implications.
@@StarlightPrism I think for it to work there should be an element in the worldbuilding that allows the mortal humans to overpower the magical/super people. In the Harry Potter saga is never really explained how muggles could be dangerous to wizards, we only get told that they did and often also that they actually weren't after all. In the X-men on the other hand the invention of the Cure shows how the humans can actually pose a threath to the mutants. That to me is much more compelling and creates a more realistic parallel for the mutants as oppressed.
You missed that there's literally only one wizarding school in the entirety of Africa, which IMO is way more absurd than one in North America.
I mean, most of the broader wizarding school lore is absurd, but that one always stuck out to me.
Yes! That one outright made me mad. Like Africa isn’t significantly larger in geographical and population size than Europe and they get one school? That’s when I first became aware of Rowling’s blindspots
The whole continent of Africa having one gd school made me feel like someone had hit my head with a 2x4. Then she had China and India sharing the same school. The two most-populous nations on the planet, but they share a school with a whole mess of other Asian nations. Absolutely ridiculous. Like, *no*.
@@kata9553 Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse 😭 wtf
@@kata9553 Oof, I missed that. That's pretty bad too.
They made also one school for entire south America when Brazil itself has continental proportions 💀
That's super insightful about Hermione being "so exceptional that the barriers revolving around her m-word status, can't stop her." None of the systems that Rowling claims are these big scary forces oppressing people, really target Hermione. She has that one scene in Chamber of Secrets and that really nasty bit at Malfoy Manor, but it really is just this very shallow "I am disliked by a certain population because of who I am" without really going into how that impacts her on a day to day level. Harry faces more oppression sometimes and he's a "straight" rich white guy with two magical parents. At least in terms of systemic nonsense, Politicians exploiting laws to try to get him expelled from school (and thus society at large), using the press to discredit his claims and gaslight his experiences, arbitrary and ever shifting standards that aren't communicated to him but will make him susceptible to punishment none the less. Hell, why didn't Umbridge target Hermione if being an m-word is such a devicive thing in Hogwarts?
One of the things I found very confusing about the wizarding world is that some wizards who are born into it never interact with the muggle world. They have the world set up so that once you are part of it you never have to interact with the muggle world ever again. It was like at the Quidditch Cup people had to wear muggle clothes and some of the wizards didn't know the difference between men and women clothes. The one old man who was wearing a nightgown because it was the closest to wizard's robes and he didn't understand that only women wore them and only to bed. So some wizards completely isolate themselves to the wizard world. It was one of the reasons that Grindlewald was having such a hard time was because a lot of the wizards didn't want to interact with the muggle world at all even in the face of a world war. They have made themselves so insular that some do not consider themselves part of that world at all.
I’m not into Harry Potter but I’m soooo oddly fascinated by the fandom and dissections of the text. It’s one of the biggest pieces of pop culture ever that shaped whole generations, and the author had come out to be a raving bigot. I think it’s important to revisit these things and examine what was there all along and I think you did such an amazing job with it. I really love an admire everything you do and just keep being awesome Ms. Weeks
Omg I'm so glad I'm not the only one in that same space of Fandom and pop culture. I completely agree
FINALLY someone who's talking about the HP world's relationship with race and structural inequality with nuance. I remember being a little brown girl watching Harry Potter and wondering why there were only 2 Desi characters in all of Hogwarts when the school is supposed to serve all of the UK?? Did Rowling actually know how many Desi people lived in the UK at the time? I also appreciate the commentary of Hermione as a white saviour. As much as I love fanon interpretations of Hermione as BIPOC, she is white in canon, and I'm not gonna give JKR flowers for representation when she deserves none. I know that's an unpopular thing to say but you got to the heart of the issue so well. Hermione, and the text in general, saw the oppression of house elves in this unnuanced way. She was benefitting from the unseen labour of the house elves, and I'm sure she has a Gringott's account, so she was also benefitting from the captivity of the dragon the bank used as security. But then she said she was "as hunted as any goblin" who are literally not allowed to carry wands?? White feminism vibes honestly. The text could've said something with Winky, like how freeing house elves is the right thing to do, but when there are no systems in place to actually support these freed elves, many of them go back to servitude. But nah, fuck that.
I also agree that the text never investigates the origins of blood purity. My analysis of it is that yeah, witches and wizards were hunted by muggles, but that the narrative was warped along the way. To me, the people who are most likely to be actually killed by muggles would be the wizards closest to the muggle world, so muggle-borns and half-bloods. When I try to imagine purebloods with all their resources and ancient, hidden estates being hunted, I just can't. In my analysis, I think maybe the truth was distorted to fit a anti-muggle narrative, and then touted by purebloods, when maybe they were the lesser victims in the witch hunts. Since then, maybe muggle-borns were seen as "invaders" in the wizarding world. This is mostly based on what Draco says about muggle-borns being different and "not knowing their ways." Idk, I do think muggle-borns get a raw deal, where they are expected to assimilate into a world they only just learned about and that made no moves to integrate them earlier, and then blamed for diluting wizarding tradition with their "muggle-ness." Again, this is all analysis that was never addressed in the text, so this is just me rambling.
Obviously Rowling never put any thought into this stuff, but I always thought that the heightened risk of exposure would be an easy way for anti-muggle bigots to justify their bigotry. Like, muggle-born wizards are going to have loyalties to the muggle world. They're revealing the magical world to their muggle loved ones, and they're going to feel tempted to use their magic more openly in the muggle world. (whether for profit, altruism, or malice) Hell, muggles might even be more likely to disagree with the secrecy mandate and try to actively sabotage it.
A cultural preservation angle could potentially be interesting if there was any indication that wizard ways and traditions were in any danger of dying out. Like if young wizards were losing interest in learning certain spells or potions because muggle technology doesn't take any effort to learn to use.
One thing to keep in mind about ethnic structures of magical communities is that they wouldn't necessarily be the same as their muggle counterparts in the same places because muggle-borns are relatively rare and magical communities wouldn't necessarily have the same patterns of migrations as muggles given how they basically form separate communities in most cases.
I think I agree more with this, that wizards just have too many resources to feel like they're a good allegory for minority communities becoming very insular and defensive due to the very real dangers around them. The old wizarding families are mega-rich and were born with metaphorical AK-47's in their fingertips in an age where most people could maybe throw a spear good enough to hurt someone else. It just feels like it's a step too far to imagine them as being persecuted and hunted- maybe that's a failure of my imagination, but it just doesn't match.
@@goranisacson2502 - I think you're totally right. There's no way muggles stand any chance to win a war against witches and wizards until they reach the Cold War level of technology at the very least (and even that only puts them in the threat category, not necessarily giving them an advantage). It's just doesn't make any sense that the wizarding community feels like they're forced into hiding, they could've easily subjugated the muggles either with sheer force or with deception (how hard can it be to use the imperius curse on muggle leadership to get any concessions they want?).
@@And-lj5gb Well technically wizards have to sleep too. Also, could there have been wizards on the side of the muggles, who simply didn't see themselves as wizards e.g. priests and such that viewed wizards/witches as agents of the devil or whatnot.
I'm a total lurker that never comments, but I really appreciated your take on this (40 minutes wasn't enough)! The HP world as developed through fanfiction is more interesting than the original in every way! I haven't read any good Dramione in a while (too much "adulting" and raising kids going on) ... But I would love some new recs if you have any. ;)
FF Harry Potter is honestly superior.
I have soooooo many recs if you're interested 😂
@@calliope3237 Would love to see some!!
HP fanfic writers honestly do a great job fleshing out the characters and by doing so are able to create commentary about the experiences and identities of the characters.
Exactly! It has been too long since I read the books so all I remember is the world building from fanfictions 😄. Maybe it is better this way...🫤
It’s so interesting to hear you talking about zabini in fics bc in my, uhm, drarry days Zabini was heavily there and a charming well-dressed black italian man! But it’s also probably the evolution of the fandom? Or maybe just the echo chamber I was in. Btw excellent work on this and all your videos!
Same, in my part of the fandom (Draco/Ginny) Blaise is always a calmer, comparatively more mature Slytherin boy and you can literally carbon date a fic from whether he has olive skin and Italian features or dark skin and Black features. I recall perhaps two or three really old fics where he's a girl.
Theo fills a similar role, but he's always portrayed as more of a tortured soul, like he always has a shitty family life or parents who commit atrocities (likely because his dad's a Death Eater and had him at a very late age), Blaise is more the affable, calculating socialite type because that's how his mother sounds
Blaise Zambini is a black Italian that brings flavor to Slytherin and true designer swag.
I wasn't even aware of this character, probably because JK didn't gave him a ridiculously caricatural and borderline racist name like "Mandela Luther King" or "Kingsley Shacklebolt"
The fact I had to Google the first one to see if it was real (thank God it isn't)...
What about Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan, and Dean Thomas? they are also canonically black. and I believe that's probably due to Rowling's playwords. cause I remember, Neville's last name (Longbottom) is a joke.
If there's a character who needs justice to their name, it would be:
*Cho Chang*
(Why can't it just be Jessica Chang, Bella Chang, or whatever?!
@@jeant6502 Bella Chang and Edward Nguyen!
@@jeant6502 you will almost see the names Bella or anything else you mentioned. Most common ones are names like Angie, stephanie, cathy.....jenny.....a lot of names that end with that ee sound. Basically immigrant asian parents tend to pick names that is easy for them to say or sounds....kinda ok or sounds similar in their og language. But Cho Chang to Chinese and especially Korean probably soundd weird as all get out. In korran.... yeah i would be what the hell. In Chinese.....well theres hundreds of possibilities but not very common in Chinese because most name their daughters something like a flower or obedient (yep). Cho sounds like a name you would give a boy
The irony about Kingsley Shacklebolt is he's a man who is descended from one of the families in the Sacred Twenty-Eight list meaning his ancestors would have arrived in Wizarding Britain long enough ago to have enough documented pureblood lineage in that country to be included in ancestor Knot's racist book by the year 1928.... yet there's not a single word about the geographic or cultural origins of his family, how long they have been in Wizarding Britain, etc. If his family really had been in Wizarding Britain for centuries they would have arrived before or during the slave trade in the Muggle world, and definitely would have known about it.
God, Weekes' fandom-related videos are always SO good.
I have thoughts on the roots of pureblood distrust of magic - I think it's worth considering that while wizards and witches are a statistical minority who does not have societal power outside of their in-group, they also have very literal, uh, magical power? I think about this a lot in the context of X-Men and their "mutant metaphor." Societal privilege is, at its heart, power. And that matters a /lot/ in determining real-world power dynamics, because any one human is approximately as dangerous as any other, regardless of their race or religion or nationality. If a human wields more power than another human, it's because they can get other humans to listen to them and do what they say. But that all goes south when you introduce a fictional minority that has magical powers.
With that in mind, I don't really think the desire of the Wizarding World to stay hidden is similar to real-life minority groups who have to hide; I think it's closer to the behavior of a wealthy but isolationist nation. It even says in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (the book, I never bothered to watch the movie, I don't need Rowling to ruin my childhood memories of Harry Potter anymore than she already has) that real witches were rarely burned in the witch trials, because they knew spells that could protect them from fire. They are not in danger from the Muggles. The Muggles are in danger from them. They don't hide because they're afraid, but because they don't want to be asked to take on any kind of responsibility for Muggles who are suffering and could be helped with magic.
Interesting point. And you got me thinking, what if the wizarding world was the "wealthy but isolationist nation" for most of their history, but then with 20th century muggle technological developments, they start to see muggles as a genuine threat? Leading to the conflict of the series, with Voldemort being able to play into those fears to gain power. Wizards have powerful magic, but I doubt Howarts can withstand a fucking nuke. And with cameras and news and, more recently, social media, it's harder and harder for the magical world to stay hidden. Exposure feels inevitable, and what will happen then?
That said, also worth noting that wizards seem to be a pretty extreme minority. Even if muggles don't have the same firepower, they can overwhelm with sheer numbers.
Maybe Hagrid in book 1 saying that wizards self secluded because they didn’t want muggles pestering them for magic solutions to their problems was the best explanation given the canon 😂
@@Alice-gr1kb Honestly, that does work well enough as an explanation for me. Wizards are a tiny minority and if they were expected to fix all of the muggle problems, well, that's too much workload. They wouldn't have the time or energy to deal with their own shit. Plus it could lead to other issues, like muggles becoming too dependent on wizards and/or trying to force wizards to do shit for them.
@@StarlightPrism On the other hand, wizards not helping Muggles can be super stupid for them. Climate change for an example is actively destorying their nature and world too, so they kind of should care about it.
@@hyathumibis5187 That would be an interesting angle for the series to explore. Or at least address.
In the spirit of honesty about problematic ships, my introduction to Blaise in fandom was in Ginny/Draco fics where the secondary couple was between him and Luna. As someone who had little emotional attachment to HP I’d read anything once in terms of pairings. I’ll hear a pairing out if it’s well-written enough. Also, Draco being saddled with a Weasley was always fascinating to me along with how they were going to convince me to believe Ginny and Draco would ever work LOL.
Same here! Unless it’s obviously problematic, I’ll give any pairing a chance. 😂
Honestly, it's not my ship, but I do love stories that ship Draco and someone he disrespected because they tend to involve A LOT of Draco eating crow over how bigoted he was, and that never gets old!
@@CatHasOpinions734Well written Draco/Ron is my guilty pleasure (or even better Arthur/Lucius) just because I wanna see how the hell they make it work. I am willing to have my HP OTP never happen (Hermione/Ron) just for this.
I read a really good fic where Draco had a pretty realistic character arc. He and Ginny would sass at each other and it was hilarious. He bought her a broom stick out of spite and she spouted insults at him during quidditch. I don't ship them, but just let them be chaotic besties/siblings please.
Draco/Ginny is my favourite ship and honestly the only reason why I stuck around the HP fandom as long as I did.
If you look closely at what little page time Ginny has she's kind of mean and messy and impulsive, so I really liked the idea of her ending up with someone exactly like her but opposite.
They also have a bunch of things in common: they both like Quidditch, for example, and they'd both had personally traumatizing experiences with Voldemort that kind of defined their character.
And Ginny is a pureblood, which means that Draco's prejudice against her is entirely on account of her family and behavior, so it's more believable for him to get over it enough to get with her than it would be for him to go from "Mudbloods are an inferior race" to loving, say, Hermione. And Hermione and Draco have zero in common in terms of interests or personality, anyway, I never really got that ship except as a way for the nerdy author to self-insert.
Also it's fun to see people as set in their beliefs as the Malfoys and the Weasleys have to mutually get over themselves.
I just think they have mad Cardan/Jude from The Cruel Prince energy and I love that for them.
Re: Mud-blood
Almost a decade ago now I had this interesting conversation with a woman who was going into IT in an Amazon Fulfillment Center (warehouse). She was half-Korean and, I don't know how the conversation got to it, but she said that she really connected with that experience. I thought it was odd at the time, but later I found out that there are Koreans who will call, for lack of better descriptive language, mixed children mud-bloods. And to be clear, it didn't matter who the other parent was. If they weren't Korean the child was considered lesser.
I'm not saying that Joanne knew this and was capitalizing on it. No, she doesn't get that credit. It is more that humans are good at being racist in ways that seem absurd and fake.
My surname is an extremely Irish one and I'm not Irish in the slightest. I'm mixed Polynesian. Excellent point about the names.
this video was great! something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little. :| but the dropped section apparently was his dad was a wizard who left his family to “keep them safe” during the first wizarding world. at least then there’d be some closure to his storyline.
He has a step father, who for all intents and purposes was his father, so he didn't grow up without a father. You know, unlike the white Harry and Neville. Besides, that's more of an American stereotype. Also, how do you know that Deans wizard father was black. You are aware that Alfred Enoch is mixed race aren't you. His father is actually William Russell, who played Companion Ian Chesterton on the very first episode of Doctor Who. Anyway, my point is that people who see stereotypes in Deans background are either looking for them, or already predisposed to see them. In other words, you're reaching.
@Day Mercedes Gazda was the one that brought it up, not me. They're also not the first person I've seen arguing that Dean's father leaving when he was young plays in to stereotypes about black people. What other stereotype could they have been talking about? I was just pointing out all the reasons that it's bullshit. Honestly, I'm not even clear what point your trying to make. Are you saying I'm racist for disputing a racist stereotype that someone else brought up. That doesn't make any sense. In general, people that find racism in the Potter series only do so because they deliberately go looking for it. And you seem like the type that starts arguments just for the sake of it. I've no patience for either.
@Day "something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little" How exactly would you interpret that? Plus, like I said, I've come across similar arguments before, not on UA-cam, on Quora and reddit. Now, if you would like to argue that I was misinterpreting what she meant, which is fair, what horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas do you suspect she was talking about. Perhaps instead of putting so much energy into disproving my opinion, you could offer your own.
@Day So, I couldn't help but notice that you didn't actually answer my question. What exactly did Mercedes mean by "something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little." Until you offer me an answer to that, you haven't really explained why you think I'm wrong or gas-lighting or any of the other bullshit claims you made. They specifically mentioned horrible stereotypes regarding Dean, then specifically mentioned his father leaving while he was young. You think I'm so wrong, then just answer the damn question, what exactly did they mean here. I'm beginning to think you're just rather obtuse.
@Day And you say I'm guilty of gas-lighting. Why is it so difficult for you to answer the question? You say you're fully focused on what has been said, yet yo haven't actually addressed the original comment. What did Mercedes mean by "something i’m surprised you didn’t bring up when talking about jk’s horrible stereotypes regarding Dean Thomas is his home life. His mom was a muggle making him think he was muggle-born his whole life. But his father left when he was little." Everything else you say is immaterial until you answer that question. If you can't, how are you so certain that I'm wrong.
I mean, Harry Potter’s worldbuilding falls apart on every level with any thought. Hogwarts kind of works because of how disconnected it is from the rest of the world, but as soon as you get out of there, wizards existing does not make sense in our world; history would have obviously been different if wizards existed, and there is just no getting around that.
Hell, the size of Hogworts makes no sense. Harry’s year is about 10 kids in Griffendor. Assume that the other houses have a similar level and we are talking about 40 kids. In 7 years we have 280 magical teens in all of the UK. That means wizards and witches are a TINY fraction of the UK population. Or there are more magical schools we never saw.
@@griffenspellblade3563 JK admitted yo being absolutely terrible at maths which is why she never deals with it
@@LilyUnicorn as someone who has DM’d D&D before, I relate. Honestly, it’s so much work to get right that if it’s not important to the story, we can just agree to ignore it, right?
I'm American, so this never occurred to me before, but I recently heard the most delightful rant from a couple of British women about how nonsensical it is that the Weasleys, living out in the country, hire multiple muggle taxis to take everyone to Kings Cross. Like, the entire point of major public transportation stations is that you can take public transportation to get there, taking taxis makes no sense and would be HORRIFICALLY expensive for anyone, but it especially makes no sense for the Weasleys!
But the same could be said about any fiction that has a secret society of people with powers like Marvel and DC.
i remember reading an article saying that kids who read the hp novels were kinder kids like it somehow instilled good values in them and i remember wondering how it could do that when the values where all over the place, like basically its ok when our side says or does something because were the goodguys, (i.e lying to griphook about giving him back the sword or abusing kreature) but what griphook does when he joins his people is seen as betrayal when really what choice was he given from his perspective hes just doing what he has to to get back home. disc world and earth sea understand what it means to strive for a better world far better than harry potter ever did and i wish i'd found them sooner
I think it was good that I wasn't too young and read all at once or so, I waited each book since the 5th, so I grew up actually before all the flawed political stuff kicks in hard...
The last hp book came out when I was 11, I understood griphock action (don't know how you spell it, I never read hp in english only in french, at that age I had like one year of English lessons cuz at kindergarden and elementary school it was teachers old or bad in english haha)
I was probably more mature when the problematic side shows, I was "damn the minister of magic should have been completly reformed, the wizarding world need a revolution to avoid any future voldemort figure, the malfoys should had all their money taken etc ....)
I stopped re reading hp at 16, the last movie aired I was 15, I lose interest in hp growing up, not really asking myself why, just realised it when friends were full hp fans I wasn't into fandom at all, my early internet days were mostly cracking games and music forums
I heard that jk said dumbledore was gay but it never came to books or screens so I was just considering her a billionaire moron that doesn't have the ovaries to actually represent
Since the uncle that gifted me the four firth books when I was seven was gay, struggling with aids since the 80's and eventually killed himself by refusing eating in a psychiatric hospital ... It wasn't okay for me that she used clout to be seen as a good person but not using her money to actually help, and not acting really in her works too
And the racism side was presented to me on intersectional forums I was on in 2014...they were already talking that it was hard to criticize jk because of hardcore white hp fans...
I was lucky to have been already a leftist before reading the last books so I wasn't found of the morality of the story, status quo wasn't enough to be a good ending for me...
Really young kids it can be dangerous
@@PetitPoneyDuVercors26 I'm so sorry for the loss of your uncle I lost one of my uncles to suicide too and if the whole world could just be a little kinder to and more accepting of people who are different maybe they'd both still be here. I refuse to let people like jk rowling cause more people to feel alienated and alone, to die, just because she's a bigot. Fuck jk rowling. trans rights are human rights, lgbtqia people have a right to exist and on a long enough time line we win, we just have to keep fighting
It is probably more accurate to say that kids who read in general are kinder. And that kids who read Harry Potter generally don't just read Harry Potter but lots of things.
Sometimes kids can pick up the stated message "be nice" instead of the written 'actions' of the characters "to the good guys"
I'm so glad you mentioned Seraphina Pickery. First time I saw that movie I was like, "What does she do when she walks around normy New York? Oh does she never leave magic New York? Hmmmm wonder whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
Right? I’m like does she go anywhere else? Why is congress here?
I don't know if it's because I'm brazilian and very mixed, but for me at the point Blaise was shown black, he was black. The first time I read Hermione's description she was mixed, like me, who also has wild curls (I read the first Harry Potter book when I was 10~11yo).
I don't see any reason besides racism or total ignorance that people of any color can be born in any country to explain that. Because as a brazilian for me, it's just normal to assume that Blaise could be the of a italian black family (Italy is REALLY close to Africa and interacted for centuries, did you guys never read Othello????) or he could be the child of a white italian father and a black mom from britain. But my brain never would go "hE CaN't bE iTaLiAn, hE's bLAcK!!1".
Estrangeiros tem uma visão totalmente binária racialmente, é bizarro.
Being a millennial POC, I remembered The Day Blaise Turned Black. A notable portion of LJ lost their damn white minds.
Rando on LJ: "He can't be Black. He supposed to be Italian. Probably a redhead. He's in Slytherin."
Me, drinking a cup of Racist Fangirl Tears: "You know? He can be all of those things. It's okay."
It's wild how many people don't know that black people can have red hair or be born anywhere in the world💀
@@mewmew6158 it's less that they don't know and more they don't want to know
Man I remember reading rants upon rants upon rants and them obsessively going through book material to find something to discredit the idea that Blaise Zabini is black. Like get a life lol. There’s literally no reason to be so upset.
I missed the "Blaise is a redhead" part of the discourse, that's somewhat perplexing. Like, yes he could and can be all of those things, but if your objection to him being black is that that's not how you picture a stereotypical Italian, that objection should also apply to red hair.
@@CatHasOpinions734 I believe it's from the fact that his name is Blaise which sounds like "Blaze" which is a fiery name idk. I don't get fangirl logic and I am one of them.
i was really into the black hermione idea a while back thinking it could have been canon etc. but in book three I found a passage that was literally like "her white face"
I’m book 3 it says that Hermione was looking very brown. I’ve never seen a white person “tan” very brown. But I have seen brown skin people turn ashen face/grey whitish when scared or sick. That could be a figure of speech saying she was scared. Hermione being black does and could fit in canon. Who knows what JK was thinking though.
@@getdownonit8753 You obviously haven't met my Grandpa it is called having olive skin. He goes from pasty in the winter to a nice copper brown in the summer
@@clarehidalgo Half of my family has olive skin. Olive skin does NOT get very brown. I’m mixed raced and my skin barely gets VERY BROWN sometimes. Sorry it’s not possible for a white person of any skin shade to naturally tan VERY BROWN. I’m not debating this unless I see your grandpas skin color in person. Hermione’s a very brown black girl and that’s okay.
I’ve always headcanoned Hermoine as mixed race, black/white. Needing magic to tame her hair? Come on.
@@getdownonit8753 Idk what you're on but I guess it depends on how you define "very brown", white skin can tan brown, it depends how much melanin you have. If I remember Hermione's skin is described as brown after she's visited somewhere hot, I don't think the book would make a point of saying that if she wasn't pale normally especially when joanne always makes a point of mentioning when a character is not white when they're first introduced. Hermione is white af lmao
Does anyone else remember "Blaire", Blaise's twin sister never mentioned in the books but who fandom invented wayyyyyy back in the day? 😂
Omg lol OG fandom right here
Holy shit you just sent me spiraling through time to all the Blaire/Draco ships if I came across a fic where they decided Blaise would be male this time around, lmao 💀 .
24:50 Exactly this. When Rowling said, "Hermione could've been black," I couldn't believe she'd written the "S.P.E.W." plot with anything other than a pale-skinned girl in mind. Making Hermione black would've injected intense themes into the story that Rowling clearly wasn't interested in tackling.
I love how unapologetic you are about loving fanfic, smut etc. I find this hard to do in real life
The online and fanfic history of hp fandom is so rich, would love to see you tap into this more here
15:48 TELL IT QUEEN!!! Any Name is not 'Just a Name' .Names are not just simplistic addresses for lineage , they are Historical Markers too ! Also, also they are not Exclusive to specific groups like genetic Copyright stamps. There are a lot of good points in this video but that stood out to me
The Line "I wish she was a redhead so we could steal her twice", amazing, 10000/10
This is so true. I can remember when I introduced Angelus Liberi to my urban fantasy series, Fall of Veils, French Roast Apocolypse, as a black Italian, I had a lot of push back from my beta group. People couldn't get their heads around it. I had to explain his family liniage. It blows me away that folks just don't get Italy is a peninsula, and that folks from all over the mediteranian immigrate there. It befuddles me even more that folk's deny interracial relationships because of their visual estetic of a particular group of people.
True but as someone who actually been off the shores of tunisia, in bahrain, in malta, in spain..... Italy just doesnt have a whole lot of black folks. Yes, they exist but compared to the overwhelming med tan descent amd the white scandinavian, the black italian is just much much fewer
@@LilyUnicorn
Ok so I’m italian, a white italian, ( i’m sorry for my english but I don’t really get what you mean by “being off the shores”),
I wanted to say that I don’t see how this argument of black italians being a minority in Italy should prevent from writing a black italian character in a fantasy series or in any other literary genre.
I don’t think one should go by comparison, like erasing black italians just because they’re not in the same numbers of black french people or black germans, and the same goes for italian people of south east asian origin, chinese origin and east asian origin and from middle east as well.
I think italy is a very idealized country in some way, like the country of the good-hearted people or something like that, so I think it’s important to talk about issues of racism in italy. I’m taking the liberty to make some observations not pretending to be the voice of anyone, just describing what I can observe to some extent in the country where I live, in the culture to wich I partcipate, according to my experience.
So I dont want to speak for non-white italians and their experience, but, I wish, very briefly to balance a little bit, even if I’m generalizing, this idealized picture of italy, to those who have it of course, and even if it was not brought in the discussion by the comment to which I’m replying, and I wish to do so to back and reinforce the statement that represantion of non-white italians is important.
What I have observed is that black and brown italians and chinese italians or black and brown people and chinese people who happen to live in italy or to stay in italy for a short time are marginalized and discriminated against because italy is a racist country (1) historically beacuse italy participated in colonization of africa before and during fascism, and also colonization of albania, (2) in general, in the attitudes of white italian people in thinking that non-white people can’t be italian, like yes you speak the language, you work and live here, maybe you’re even born here, but you’re not italian, which states for the diffused biases against non-white people in all spaces, and (3) in its recent laws against migration and in refusing to give citizenship from the birth to non white people who are born here, who can request the citizenship only after they have come of age, and to make the procedure for the ones who are not born here but have lived in italy since they wer 2 years old a nightmare.
So representation of non-white italians is crucial.
@@acidsab9649 2 is similar to non first gen white americans attitude to asian americans.
I'm literally only four minutes in but I still love a fic i read where Draco learned about muggle racism and was all "That's barbaric! you can't just judge someone based on the color of their skin" and Hermione gave him a LOOK and he went "oh"
Drop the link 👀👀
@@nicolegoh9748Bit late but I'm assuming Isolation by Bex-chan? It's been many years since I last read it but I distinctly remember that being a thing that happens
I always had this headcanon that Blaise was half Italian half black and due to his mixed heritage he had to fight his way to the top of the social food chain. Enduring subtle and outright racism, while also dealing with biracial fetishism from his peers in his house.
I’m curious to know why you imagined him as biracial?
@@getdownonit8753 Because his last name was Italian. I'm Italian and my wife(who introduced Harry Potter to me)who was my girlfriend at the time is black, so I will confess that him being Afro-Italian came from a bit of a biased heart.😂
@@masontalarico7090 So you found out he was black but prefer for him to atleast be half white because you’re white? 🫤
@@getdownonit8753 No. My wife is black and I'm Italian. My headcanon was my feelings for my girlfriend(now wife) manifesting into my subconscious. We both loved his character because there wasn't a whole lot confirmed about him so we would come up with multiple headcanons for him and many other non-fleshed out characters. She actually had a headcanon that Luna(one of my favorite characters and my wife's crush for many years now) was Autistic, and of course some of her signs of being the spectrum were actual things that showed up in the books and movies, but a good portion of them(my wife later admitted) were based on me. These headcanons were sources of fun storytelling that help exercise our imaginations, but they were also a form of flirting for us. A way of expressing our feeling to each other during a time that we were scared of admitting our true feelings because we knew how those that were in our inner circle at the time were going to react when they found out.
@@masontalarico7090 gotcha. If you guys have a kid name them Blaise.
The last part of the video is reminding me of a question....the ability of muggles to hurt wizards and witches confuses me. I thought years ago I read a post-story canonization of the idea that modern human weapons could hurt powerful magic uses. That....doesn't make sense to me. Considering the abilities we see, shouldn't the wizards and witches basically be going all bullet-time on even modern human armies? And in the time of and before Salem......HOWD THE WIZARDING WORLD EVER HAVE ANYTHING TO FEAR? Them withdrawing in disgust watching witch hunters killing muggles? I could see. But being afraid of people they could mind wipe makes me scratch my head.
Yeah, my read from the books was always that the whole "muggles persecuted witches" thing was a bullshit justification used by blood purists since it would be incredibly easy for any actual witch to get out of that situation and basically everyone killed was a muggle. Apparently not though, judging from that fantastic beasts clip. Ugh.
I'm quite positive that one of the early books talked about a witch who purposefully got caught, multiple times, sometimes in disguise, just so they could get on the pyre. Because it posed them no harm and was treated as pretty much an amusement park ride.
I always assumed it was a numbers thing. There are a WAY more muggles than wizards. Also muggles seem to be, perhaps out of necessity, considerably more intelligent than wizards. If it really came down to it they could become an overwhelming force. Its a flimsy explanation but its possible to rationalize.
That said, if they do consider muggles a legitimate threat it does make me wonder why they wouldn't involve them in their war against "wizard Hitler". Both because he was a global threat and because muggle genocide was one of his stated goals. The man couldn't figure out how to kill a baby, I think a bomb could at least catch him off guard.
i think it was more a fear for their kids, a wizard child separated from his parents would be completely defenseless. knowing that muggles are a threat to them would create resentment and wariness. doesn't excuse blood purity but the nuance is interesting imo
That's also true. The tragedies in Salem and similar ones were possible because essentially these people were innocent and had no magic abilities. If they could wield "avada kedavra", "imperio", and "crucio" at their captors, far more people would die or get hurt by them. There's always a chance they'd eventually be overpowered by them by sheer numbers, but their bloody trail would've been huge beforehand.
27:34 It's funny you mention that cause I used to have a head cannon that there were 6 U.S magical schools with
Ilvermorny
An all-girls Salem school (which ironically exists in the original series)
An HBCU in New Orleans
2 Indigenous based schools one in the great plains region and one in Southwest
And lastly a magic research institute in California
In my headcanon, the US has multiple magic schools, but the only one I've thought about is the Texas magic school. Texas has its own magic school and they all wear cowboy hats and boots and ride horses.
@@StarlightPrism magical horses
@@StarlightPrism It would be called the Republic of Texas Magic School even to this day.
I was just wondering where the historically black wizard schools are glad someone head cannoned it
A wizard school set in new Orleans would be awesome. Hell it could deal in necromancy
"We'll claim Kreacher but he can't keep saying the n-word" hahahaha I died. Very entertaining and well thought out. Loved this!
(just started the vid) it's really funny how rowling took a weird tone shift in between books 4 and 5 (when coincidentally 9/11 happened) and she started to really double down on that SPEW nonsense and also say that using torture is good if you use it on the right people. Idk, it's just something I've noticed, I think her political opinions really changed throughout the series
Where did she say that about torture?
@@lucasgagliardi433 In book five I believe? It's been a while, but the point is that when Harry begins to use the three curses (minus avada kedavra, because he's personally against it) to defeat voldemort because it's ok when the good guys do it. The last book is a big Imperius curse galore. He includes cruciatus because of extreme circumstances but this very much a product of the post 9/11 terrorism panic in my opionion I mean
@@alisdraws Ahhh, that's a little... far fetched ans an interpretation. I mean, saying that someone endorses something like that just because characters from her novel do it is a little simplistic from a literary theory point of view. I remember some interview where she was questioned for letting Harry use Unforgivable courses in the last novel and she answered "I never said he was a saint" which means there's some deliverate character construction and not neccesarily approval of such act. If she had made public statements endorsing such idea about torture (as she has done with her continuos transphobia), then it would be as you say.
@@lucasgagliardi433 Look I had to be as short as possible cause this is a youtube comment section, but I also don't think she's pro-slavery either. The HP books are, this is what I meant.
'I never said he was a saint' is a typical Rowling dodge from when she gets criticism. Her book clearly excuses and endorses those actions because she has (as Shawn pointed out) double standards.
Good guys can do shitty things cause they're good. No I don't think it's far fetched because it's part of a larger trend.
Also it doesn't go anywhere, there's no examination of Harry's actions, no reflection about 'the horrible things we did in the war' it's just a thing that happens... Harry gets introduced to the curses in one book as the worst thing a wizard can do, hurts cause he knows how bad they were to his life, and then he realizes they're useful to him and uses them on others and the book ends and Rowling can dodge the question as she pleases
@@alisdraws I get what you say about the tendency to overlook terrible actions when it's done by "good guys" as a trend at the time (I think both of us were thinking of "24" series) but I think that with this example we are discussion it is not the case.
I see it more as a gap for the reader to fill. It is true that Harry using Unforgivable curses is not ultimately treated with all its consequences (he does not account for it after war was over in what has been published). Yet, I still find in such reasoning about torture and the treatment of other problematic topics this underlying argument: “If it is not explicitly addressed, treated and fully-developed in the text it's a big problem”. Well… yes when it comes to crucial topics in worldbuilding (as is the case of race and its implications in the magical world). But with gaps the reader can fill to find its own answer and reaction I feel we have a different situation. And as readers we know by book 4 the curses the harm they do and how problematic they are. The rest are dots we can connect and it’s not uncommon that literature sometimes relies on that.
Yes, I tend to prefer a little more open storytelling, with less explicit addressing of some things so I can connect the dots. That personal preference aside, I think some readers can see the use of torture, find it problematic and ask some questions (or not if you're a right wing reader… as also happens). I remember being a little shocked un book 7 and also thinking "Ok, the protagonist does very shitty stuff, I don’t agree with his actions" but didn’t see it as an endorsement. I connected it with some other reprehensible beahaviour of Harry as character development (“Now I know what he’s capable of”). A similar thing happened to me with the Ministry. Not every aspect of it is explicitly addressed to point out how messed up it is. The fact that the Minister is also a judge is not addressed but given the prior information we have about the institution, instead of seeing it as another clear and blatant error in worldbuilding I saw it one more example of the running thing with the ministry as a biased and problematic institution.
Ultimately, I think some of these examples we are discussing, by not having a full development, can be seen as fault and dodging problems or as gaps to make some more connections. And with all the explicit shit JKR has poured about other subjects I can see why these examples can be interpreted in one or other way. Sorry to be so long, I also tried to be short but next time I must remember I’m not making a video essay.
Wonderful! I am a ELA/History teacher at a majority minority title one school and I booked marked parts of your video to use in discussions in the future! The emphasis on civil discourse, the perspective changes that occur due to reader history and knowledge! This was a fabulous literary analysis. Thank you so much for helping us all check our bias at the door and engage with the text and with each other.
I was never even in this fandom, and I remember people throwing fits when he actually showed up beyond odd mentions when they'd been using him as their (usually a white girl) self-insert.
Thank you for this video! I’ve been reading older x-men comics and I feel the same way. I think it’s slightly worse for x-men tho since they’ll literally compare mutant oppression to black oppression (multiple times mind you). This is a issue in the older comics but even newer comics still have this issue here and there.
Edit: I’m a big x-men fan btw but I’ll agree the metaphor always was…. Like it could work if they thought about it more
Oh man, the way Kitty would be using the N-word to prove her point.
@@Princess_Weekes She really thought she ate with that omg 😭
Then still call Storm her mom like?!?!??
It's a very interesting video essay. I just disagree with one small thing. Based on everything she has said and done I absolutely believe that she intended for Slytherin to be completely evil and hated. I think that any hint of potential for more was unintentional. Just like she set draco up with the perfect potential for a character arc but never executed it and now verbally attacks anyone who noticed the potential. She didn't think into the implications of her world building or the potential of her characters, bc she is a firm believer that nothing should ever change. She built her book to reinforce the need to keep the status quo intentionally. Those are her actual beliefs. Thus all problems are the sole fault of a few individuals, Revolutions are always evil things that must be squashed, and no one ever changes. The only time she intentionally wrote a Slytherin that wasn't meant to be completely evil in the end was Snape and she literally wrote in a line implying that he should have been in Gryffindor.
Maybe i remember this wrong but I remember Blaise in book 6 as a wealthy Black slytherin who didn’t “shuck and dive », and of whose approval Draco seemed desperate for. Blaise struck me as quite inexpressive - which I loved. He was like the polar opposite of Lee Jordan, who irritated me off the bat even when I was young. Like as a Black teen Blaise really struck a chord with me. The only thing I disliked was how Rowling heavily suggested his Black mother used her « wiles » to seduce rich men out of their money. That gave hella mysoginoir (and I didnt even know the word back then but the feeling was the same).
For me, In a way I feel like some aspects of the « representational Eton mess », are actually inadvertantly smart. Hermione WOULD be a white saviour. You could totally have Black purebloods who basically assimilate into an elite that tokenises them. They could be deluded or opportunistic (*cough - Kandace*).
I think the issue wasn’t so much that the representation wasn’t like « squeaky clean » but just, as you Say, she didn’t write the structural oppression and prejudice with enough awareness and therefore coherence and meaning. (like she did with Snape for example, or even Voldemort himself.)
I mean forget issues of social discrimination: why the f do wizards and witches need money and banks??? Answer: aesthetic. The aesthetics of gold coins as a symbol of status.
In a way, I don’t entirelt hate the rep in HP, because it’s just a reflection of our times. Outside our « liberal » leftist bubbles (and even within it) many of us have internalised status games. Many more of us harbour discriminatory thoughts; we just hacen’t written books that betray us.
This is not a defense of rowling, but let’s also acknowledge, she herself had to keep her feminine name a secret at the time. She came from an era that was definitely not woke on anything.
I’m 28, so born in mid 90s. I started writing young. I grew up in predominantly white environnements. My first Black character came to me when I was like 22-23 - and she was mixed. Could I have done better sooner? Maybe but I also get Why I didn’t.
I judge Joanne cuz she just refuses to learn at this point. But I’m not sure I can condemn HP. (Books 1-7).
What you said about “we were reading totally different books” really resonated for me. The issue is when people force you to read the books and devalue you for your opinion of not enjoying them. I was getting stressed out and meanwhile… well let’s just say my community lacked awareness of its assimilation pressures and what that might be rooted in.
I just want to add that, of course they’d make a Black Slytherin. Of course they would. It’s the same vein of microaggressions as saying Hermione could be whatever race we want. Who does it benefit? 50 years after India’s independence and you think we can’t tell the difference between Hermione Granger and Hermione Patel? Just a few years after the Good Friday Accords and we aren’t supposed to be thinking about who’s Irish-coded? The truth is that the books have a verrrrry nuanced, specific view of race and it is exactly the view held by the Anglo colonizers. Even who counts as fully white is conflated with money and power in the status quo of the book. It’s supposed to be subversive that Hermione and Ron are heroes.
One thing you overlooked that would be worth including around the 16 minute mark: Black people have been in Italy for literally thousands of years.
Facts.
Black people. Yes. Percentage wise though
....not as much as you think. More meditteranean in the south and more white scandinavian in the north. Blacks were a muvh smaller populus in italy than either of those 2 groups.
@@LilyUnicorn And yet not so impossibly small that Blaise couldn't be both black and italian. Which is the whole point here.
@@LilyUnicorn Scandinavian Italians? I mean, there's South Tirol, and it's a part of Italy with Austrian majority. But they're Germanic, not Nordic like Scandinavians. Also, Scandinavia is a peninsula, a specific location like Italian Peninsula or Balkans or Crimea in Ukraine. Italy has a few blonds in the north but it doesn't make them Scandinavian, completely different culture and opposite corner of Europe.
not really most italians had never seen a black person in their entire life before 1945
The way that the idea of Rowling as "progressive white darling" meant the fandom shut down discussions of racism was something I also saw in the 2000s, and it happened with a lot of discussions of other prejudice too. I remember if you'd talk about some of the troubling gender politics of the books, like how often "goodness" in women is conflated with being wives and mothers, and bad women like Bellatrix Lestrange were defined around being childless, you'd get treated like you were a Bellatrix apologist or like the existence of one or two exceptions like McGonagall means the broader pattern doesn't exist and no one has any right to feel weird about it. Same with the total lack of LGBTQ+ characters or relationships other than her after-the-fact outing of Dumbledore, which also doesn't count in my opinion. It's been nice to see people come around but not so great that it only seems to be because of J.K. Rowling turning out to be a terrible person. If she hadn't become a TERF, would people still be hesitant to admit the faults with the books on issues like race and gender? It's weird to see people just NOW notice the skeeviness of the house elves as happy slaves when I remember being put off by that when I was 10 years old reading Goblet of Fire!
I love your idea of the service that authors should render to progressive ideas that literally change all the time, plus JK only defended that biology made her female, which is just a fact, but I like this cis-female version terrible because I think who is a woman thanks to biology, lol
Girl, you rock that green lipstick. Green and blue are often my favorite colors to wear for lipstick! Also, this video has been incredible to watch and re-examine new aspects of the HPU. Thank you for sharing!
I always thought that it was the casting department that made him black. They realized they didn't have enough POC pure bloods, especially ones in Slytherin and aren't just in the background. Also, Zabini could have been his step dad's/ a previous husband's last name, not his bio dad. Mrs. Zabini came across (in the few mentions there were) as a black widow, too.
ETA- I've never seen or heard of the name Blaise as a girl's name.
I am loving all the content recently about how to process being a Harry Potter fan but also discussing all the issues with the series and the author. My favorite version of this is Misfits and Magic by Dimension20. The game is Gmed by a black woman makes all the critiques even better, Aabria Iyengar is amazing and I love her ability to play things straight.
The game is played in the magical wizarding world of "Gowpenny Academy of Arcane Arts." and the story fully leans into the fucked up nature of the Hogwarts and Harry Potter as a whole. The fact that when Headmistress Boudicca Philtrum is describing the houses she literally says the words Heroic, Evil, Smart, and Other.
The scene that convinced me to watch the show was this clip that was uploaded to youtube:
ua-cam.com/video/-9hmkjdASjA/v-deo.html
Edit:
Oh also the show calls Muggle the M-word and the characters all being non-magical people are like, "We should be able to say this!" ua-cam.com/video/1-s3zcYfFis/v-deo.html
Double Edit:
Shit I edited it after it got a Heart and now the heart is gone!!!
I nearly edited my comment to say hooray The Heart Is Back which would have caused it to get displaced again
Misfits and Magic is great!
I was searching for this comment!
Great video as always! Funny Trivia: In the (first) German translation of the first Harry Potter book, Blaise Zabini is described as „eine Slytherin“, a girl. I think bc the name probably didnt really exist that much in German-speaking regions and the English language doesnt use gendered articles, they assumed Blaise was a female name.
They forgot that Blaise Pascal was a man & a prominent scientist
Incredible video as always. To me the Slytherin thing always made sense in the way that mainstream Americans would recoil at overt Nazis and Klansmen in the mid 2000s while no wanting to rock the boat on Robert E. Lee statues or consider renaming institutions like Yale. But the idea of Slytherin ideology as coming from historical oppression never occurred to me. Always appreciate your videos and the amount of thought and insight you bring to every topic.
Yeah you see in genres like this and you see it all through gaming and anime and cosplay, they feel black should not be in those spaces but they have no problem coming up into black spaces and telling black people is not just for black people it's for everybody.
I just want to point out that Kreacher was put up to the cave job by Regulus and Regulus asked him specifically about what happened and Regulus asked him to take them both to the cave and Regulus was the only person to treat him well (or better than the rest of his family, but that's another point to be made), as well as the fact that Regulus could've forced Kreacher to drink the potion and die, which he didn't do bc it's my boy Reggie, he specifically asked Kreacher not to save him and to go home safely and destroy the horcrux. If Kreacher wanted to kill one of his masters and get revenge, it would not be Regulus. Regulus was always good to him, and if he wanted to get some kind of revenge, it would not be against Regulus, and the fandom in general has agreed that Regulus would've joined SPEW and would've loved Hermione too.
Also, random other point: I need more Kingsley Shacklebolt hcs and fanon info bc he's a legend and deserves the world and more.
Kreacher got revenge on Sirius, not Regulus.
regulus was a death eater... he would not have loved hermione. also treating your slave well is not the same as wanting their freedom
I was never meaningfully apart of the HP fandom, but I truly can't even imagine being tilted that a character didn't look like you expected when he turned out as handsome as Louis Cordice is. Like, my condolences on your delicious food...?
I've been having these feelings for YEEEEAAARS!!! As a fellow fan of problematic ships I have a very distinctive memory of reading a Dramione fanfiction (where Blaise was a major supporting character (and black)) and there was a very meta scene where they (Hermione, Draco, Blaise) were reading a Daily Prophet knockoff newspaper where the writer of the article described Blaise in all the old fanon ways with the piece de resistance being they even called him Blaise Zambini which I remember also being a thing back in the day. Ah memories lol
They called him that because for some reason he was ZaMbini even in our Hungarian translation. I would guess it took to other countries as well. I never really understood the Italian thing because neither Zabini nor Zambini sounded like anything italian to me as I also was not learning that language at the time, but Blaise on the other hand for some reason sounds very French lol
@@Nemamka better than russian translation calling Snape, "Snegg". Seriously. Thank God I am Ukrainian and russia is canceled forever.
where's the story??
i really read zambini and though brinjal idk why
Yeah, all of these are things I would have loved to see discussed in the peak of Harry Potter, before even touching the books themselves made so many people feel icky.
It's too bad that there's this perception of criticism as denouncement, which really hinders meaningful engagement with the text of a popular thing
JK Rowling's kiddie pool-deep politics getting put on display. Love to see it.
From a enby gay perspective, I wanted to also bring up that the fact that there is not a single lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans character in the actual text of any of the seven books which is statistically impossible in a school of over 600 students. It was only after pressure from the community that she announced Dumbledore was gay and then capitalized on the reveal to sell her terrible side project. She was trying so hard to be "praised" for being brave and including a gay character, that was never actual shown to have any kind of non platonic relationships in main series. Mind you the announcement was in 2007 after public opinion had already shifted in favor of "accepting" gay people into society. Instead she revealed this (post character death) in a tweet, breaking the first rule of writing, show don't tell. It takes until the third film in the Fantastic Beasts series that is supposed to revolve around Grindelwald for any actual in-universe text to confirm his and Dumbledore's relationship was anything other than a passionate friendship. Next there's the way she offhandedly stated that Lycanthropy was an allegory for HIV/AIDs and then lumped that in with other bloodborne illnesses. She clearly doesn't know the history of ACT UP, Larry Kramer, and the people who had fight the government for years to get them to approve a treatment for those suffering from HIV/AIDs. Meanwhile, thousands died waiting. Alfonso Cuarón the director of the Prisoner of Azkaban is quoted telling David Thewlis to play Lupin as a "gay junkie". Then there's the Queerbaiting... I mean Cursed Child that contains all of the queer subtext in the world, but not a single piece of text that actually spells out that either character has so much as a crush on each other. The director was quoted as saying it wouldn't be appropriate to include, even though both characters are 15 for most of the play which is the same age as the characters in Heartstopper. Oh and don't get me started on the bullshit she published under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. She treats diversity like flavor text, never wanting to fully commit to inclusivity. She refuses to teach herself about the history of those minorities she takes advantage of in order to sell her books and films. She wants so badly to be viewed as progressive without doing any of the work. She prefers to hide in the aesthetic of progressiveness, using her gay friends as shields for why she can't be homophobic. She's a self-righteous wannabe progressive white woman that wouldn't know the struggles of diversity if it hit her in the face. The fact that some in the queer community still choose to support her is beyond me.
Cuarón said that?? I gotta Google that bc I hope tf he didn't omfg
Edit: I just looked it up. He did say that and holy shit I'm pissed. And that movie was my favorite!! It seems like even David Thewlis was uncomfortable with that "direction" (and I hope he was bc he is like one of my top 3 characters in the whole saga)...just God that's so gross in every way.
Not every book has to be full of lgbt. Not every book has to be about you.
@@leonkennedy7638Queer people exist. Get over it.
@@leonkennedy7638 she’s the one who wrote the aids allegory for werewolves.
I love this video! You really made me reconsider how I view the universe. And I found "I wonder what would have happened if we'd been allowed to have that discussion back then" was really powerful. It reminded me that discourse is always progressing. It reminded me that we're in a moment of history that'll get some kind of name when people look back at it.
you're right about hitting certain walls. the muggleborn prejudice and the history of killing witches are directly in conflict so many times and like, they're both text. I'm trying to take them to their logical conclusion and it seems to end with an awful "not all muggles therefore not all muggleborns" idea. unserious and uninteresting. just like all of jkr's politics I guess!!
I think word of the day for JKR is that she didn't think about it too much. you can just apply that to any part of her writing when you analyze it for more than two seconds she just doesn't think about the implications in her writing and has a different idea of what she wrote vs what is actually on the page. anyway make up is great and you're really pulling it off🔥🔥🔥
I remember the Blaise racist backlash from a post on Fandom Wank making fun of it. Nice analysis and lookback on HP's issues, which I've become more cognizant about the last many years.
The wild thing about Pottermore is that JK could have asked her fans to consult on building wizarding culture in other countries and many from all over the world would have jumped at the opportunity.
Yeah her geopolitical map of wizarding schools is WACK! I think by now she understands that putting russia and Ukraine in the same school is ridiculous since voldemort putin himself compared herself to her, creepily, in one of his 'russia is being canceled' speeches.
Honestly, that was a perfect opportunity for fan-author interaction- like ask fans from other countries to write and consult on their cultures, but noo.
Seriously she’s rich enough to hire ten sensitivity readers and cultural consultants but nahhhhh. Castelbruxo 🙄.
Great video! Gave me a lot to think about!
My impression with the whole bigotry storyline of Harry Potter is that Rowling just wrote it in as an easy way to establish who the bad guys are. Throw in a few Nazi parallels and boom, easy villain coding. You don't need to get into why these characters are the bad guys because they're like Nazis, we already know that Nazis are the bad guys. It's not something that she put any thought into, it's just there so we can have some bad guys that the heroes can defeat.
Something I speculate with the series as a whole is that Rowling wanted to age the story up with the readers to make it more mature, serious, and complex, but ultimately wasn't willing to commit to the idea. So you have this setting and story where interesting ideas and nuances exist, but they're never really explored, and their implications aren't thought through. The series has a very strong wish-fulfillment angle to it: the story is about a lonely, abused kid who learns that he's actually super special and he gets brought into this cool magical world where he has friends, money, he's good at sports, and gets to go to a school for magic. The setting is fun and whimsical, it's the kind of place you'd like to be in. But if the world is too fundamentally flawed, that wish-fulfillment angle can get lost. And I think Rowling was afraid to lose it.
Cause like, the series has a TON of concepts that would make for extremely interesting stories and social commentary if they were actually explored. There are a lot of problems with the werewolves, mostly with the "werewolves are an AIDS metaphor" thing, but that got me thinking, that could have been worked into some decent social commentary. In-universe, there's a potion that allows werewolves to retain self-control and awareness when they transform, but the potion is difficult to make. There could have been an angle where the Ministry of Magic COULD have a program where they make and distribute these potions, but they'd rather not because they want to keep the werewolves down. The werewolves (save for Lupin) all side with Voldemort, that could have been some interesting parallel to how marginalized people can be swayed to side with a "villain" who promises them a new and better status quo.
I hope my werewolf tangent didn't get too off-topic, lol. Anyway... Even before Rowling exposed herself as a terf, I always found the framing of HP as a super progressive series to be very strange. I think that's just something that comes out of people who are both big fans of a work and also care a lot about politics, it becomes really important to them to put the two together and interpret why their favorite book actively supports certain views.
What point of view are you talking about?
The saga has always been an ode to the acceptance of differences for me and that's how many people initially interpreted it.
But magically since Jk made her opinion on transgender people known, we tax her and are the work of all evil.
Including by so-called former fans for whom Harry Potter suddenly becomes racist/grossophobic/transphobic and a whole bunch of things that have nothing to do with the story.
@@MrJoueurdusalon problem is none of those people actually read her comments. There was literally no hate in there, just a bug mother f***ing big glare that the entire trans community is completely ignoring. And she pointed it out.
I am not an IT. I AM nOT A THING that bleeds. I AM A WOMAN. i made this comment ages before JK went on a long articulate. diatribe about it. I blasted my point however in direct easy to understand for americans and ill-read people.
You are devaluing women when you compketely ignore their exiatence, their history and struggles
Nah I agree with this. People complain about what they wish the series had but I think they wouldn't be happy with the outcome. Even at its darkest and most flawed the Wizarding world is still supposed to be an escapist fantasy. Too much realism would spoil what attracted people to it in the first place. The books may have aged with the audience but that doesn't mean 10 year olds aren't reading Deathly Hallows. Even with the release of each book Rowling was ultimately still writing for a primarily child-aged audience.
The problem is if she’d had taken the time to explore every single little thing then the books would have never ended. In writing, there’s a rule that says you always have to keep the story chugging along, and since the main plot was Harry’s Journey to defeating voldemort, the story would be completely different.
Tbh as a fat queer person, I think discussing fatphobia can be useful, but what bothers me about it is that so often, people who focus their discussions around it treat it as just as bad as racism and other prejudices. I think it's rather disrespectful tbh. Maybe that's a necessary clunky stage in discussion but I hope it improves soon
I don't think it's productive to turn it into a competition. Just stick to the problems and the solutions instead of battling which identities have it harder. Plus making it a competitive divides people into neat little groups that don't really exist in isolation because of intersectionality
@@msjkramey it's not a competition but fuck. People have tried to claim there's a fat genocide. They've claimed fatphobia is "just" like segregation. I've heard people talk about doctors trying to eugenics them with weightloss programs.
I'm not the one who started the comparisons.
I know people beat into permanent disability(2) or death (1) for their skin color or sexuality. I have friends who are refugees due to genocide.
I've met a holocaust survivor.
Nothing I've experienced as a fat person compares
Oh oh thank you so much Princess Weekes for this take, I have had the same questions too and was waiting for a community to flush this out!!!!
Even when you tell explicitly your character is black, stupid and racist people are gonna be, well, stupid and racist. Rue from The Hunger Games suffer such a backlash because racist people thought she was white, just because Katniss said Rue remined her of Prim. Because the only way someone can remind of other person has to be their skin tone 🙄🙄🙄
I’m further through the video now and : 1. Sis your makeup throughout the video was on point. It’s fine you don’t like it but it was not bad. 2) like yes like the expansion of the wizarding world and the absurdity of the North American school being in Massachusetts (like lmao way to fuck Canada and Mexico) for America alone showed the world was limited and basic. I loved it as a tween/teen but it is very much a fantasy coming of age book because it had no real questions to explore. Like the whole obscurus thing being an afterthought and barely expounded upon in Fantastic Beast and not understanding the wizards as a minority of some kind in general lol is just further example of how fun the book was but not particularly transformative.
@@Princess_Weekes sis, I don’t doubt she was trying to do like a good thing with it as you say throughout this video but it goes to show what lack of critical thinking (or like any at all it feels like-and I don’t mean it as I think it was thoughtless just like it was her first thought based on something like perhaps Harvard and an attempt to answer the question:so what are the other wizarding schools located? But it just is like if you had a few more thoughts before answering you could’ve made a pretty good thing vs one where it’s like “Chile, I guess”.) she did for the entirety of the series and world building in general. I very much appreciate your video and like I’m in agreement with you-purebloods and slytherin house are allegorical and not at the same time and definitely not meant to be the same as racism except beyond the “M” word which isn’t even a real thing in their world! If the Malfoys weren’t rich and the Weasleys weren’t poor there’d be a pretty good story in there about how it could’ve evolved into their version of “cracker” becoming a SlurTM because there is a legitimate reason for sSalazar to hate Muggles based on the witch trials and the genocide of magical people (it’s honestly giving me Uther Pendragon flashbacks from BBC Merlin), but like the fact that purebloods mostly stayed in power-even ones who strictly avoided half bloods and muggle born witches and wizards-shits all over that. Malfoys can be old money asshats who hate the lower classes because of what they did to maintain their wealth or being old ass nobility from “when it meant something” or they could have also been when exceptionalism goes wrong. Exceptionalism going wrong in so far as they could’ve been a Talented Tenth type family that came up and survived and helped build the thriving wizarding world we see but resent that it has gone beyond the purebloods that built it after ruin and escaping the muggles (I include the house of Black in this lol) to including everyone even those who would destroy what they do have and their separation from Muggles. That would probably require Riddlemort being against the purity thing and giving up the Nazi dressings. But again this just goes back to your main point that it wasn’t considered and the series actively turns you away from considering these things. If I ever wrote fic though this would be an interesting rewrite.
As if the Quebecois wouldn't have started a school just so it could be French only!
But irl there would be an Irish school or at least Seamus Finnegan being sent to the Scottish school instead of Beauxbaxtons would have said something about his parents.
@@shadowmaster1313people also forget seemingly that Mexico is in North America??? Like are these classes taught in multiple languages or y'all just taking little Mexican muggle Borns and dropping them in fucking Massachusetts in an all-English environment?? Or like Indigenous kids? Because big yikes that really smacks of the whole residential school nonsense that was perpetrated against Indigenous peoples in North America. Like if the school is founded probably be white colonial wizards in white colonial new England BEFORE the statute of secrecy is drafted, you know good and damn well they were doing all the genociding and hate criming against the native Americans too just like their muggle counterparts.... Or what about if there were Black muggleborns born into slavery in the US? What did the wizarding world even DO about such things? How can you take a muggleborn child born into slavery, teach them magic and then expect them to leave their parents/siblings in the muggle world enslaved????
I did get where founder Slytherin was coming from. Back in those days HP would have never received a letter because of the Dursleys. They would have sent him to the school followed by the whole inquisition to bring it down. It would only take one family member of a muggle born or half blood wizard. Then fear turned into hate as it will and so on. HP world building always fell apart more you thought about it. I’m always grateful to the books because I really didn’t enjoy reading until I was introduced to HP but Rowling has squandered any and all good will I once had towards her.
Absolutely amazing breakdown of such a weird tangled mess. I always felt that JK’s portrayal of American wizards really put her lack of understanding into the starkest relief, but it’s been present from the get go. Loved hearing your takes and I think we can all agree you’re beautiful in every video?? Keep up the great work!!!
I actually like the green lippy. It says 'I'm Slytherin' without a sickly-ness that adds 'And I died several days ago of arsenic poisoning'.
Most writers, when trying to decide between two characters that can't both get the spotlight treatment, will consider merging them. OK, this couldn't easily have been done with Neville and Dean without the combined NevilleDean coming across badly as a bumbling comic relief Black character, but it's still pretty telling that of the two of them the blandest one and therefore the most easily dropped to lower tier was Dean rather than Neville. All of Rowling's distinctive larger-than-life characters are White while everybody else is just... there. Assuming the point of Dean was mostly only to add a tiny drop of water to the diversity desert rather than to represent Black British teenage boys specifically (because he doesn't really, he's just... there), then instead she could have 'merged' them by actually keeping Dean as a minor character while also improving representation of the major characters by re-working Neville so that he's also a racial minority, maybe of a race that isn't linked so closely with the bumbling comic relief trope. Neville could have easily been Nadeem, and since Rowling is a stereotype merchant then she could have still had her fun and made him a gormless Northern English stereotype from Bradford or somewhere else with a thriving Asian demographic. I don't trust Rowling to have handled that well, either, but it could have been at least *something* for Asian readers in the era of 'all brown-skinned characters are terrorists'.
Your point about Fantastic Beasts being set in the segregation era made me imagine a situation with a non-magical Black person, who's related or married to a witch or wizard, trying to 'pass' as a magic user in order to exist in a society where they have better rights and treatment. Hijinks and also cutting cultural commentary would ensue.
Your entirely right! The two parts so far (i haven't reached the end of your talk) that have resonated most with me is the whole, "JK don't understand systemic prejudice/racism, which informs her writing and world view" and "the whole magical community not relating to the normal one" (this one in a general writing sense, angered me when i finished the books. Like, how the hell do wizards celebrate Christmas and various other holidays, use muggle items both historical and modern, and not have any everyday connections.)
Also a pet peeve of mine is the whole lack of sex education inside wizard school/world. like, is there a spell to get rid of unwanted pregnancy? or a condom one you wave before sex? i only bring it up because its a school full of teens (i know "horny teens" is a trope but they are at the age of sexual exploration). I don't know about you guys but at my school kids managed a lot of sex without teachers knowing. (okay that last bit was defo a weird addition but i really feel like JK's stories attempt a lot, without any real thought behind the major or minor story beats or affects of those beats. To back up my weird sex point or outline it, Ron spends an entire book just "snogging" Lavender brown? as if that's all teens do? i get that Ron was really interested Hermione i do, but i just don't believe him or Lavender stopping at a kiss.
in terms of the racism/systemic racism alluded to but not brought into the story, i agree, i didn't like that the 'M' word and its societal equivalents were meant to be a veiled lesson on treating everyone with respect. Especially when it was pointed out to me that the house elves don't get freed, and Kreacher is the only one who receives some sort of upwards movement, which is that he gets treated better by his MASTER.
JK created a magical world were when the "good guys" win, slaves, inequality and hierarchy still exists in the end. also, after the battle of hogwarts wouldn't it have made sense to stop the sorting process? because it clearly acts as the first channel to divide people.
I just remembered a fanfiction I read a few years ago, where Draco and Blaise dated, before Draco realized that he wasn't into Blaise that way, but they still remain friends. Blaise also comes out as trans male to Draco, who finally understood why some students called Blaise a girl for the previous part of the fic and started correcting them (not sure how, but I laughed every time he did). And they eventually help Harry and co while Umbridge was there. I don't remember much else, because it's been so long, but I really want to read it again now.
Your take on blood purity here is fascinating and nuanced and it's making me desperately wish this was a perspective we had in the series. I'd read your fanfic!
I think the separation of the aesthetics of oppression from the historical and systemic realities is pretty relevant, too, as a skill. Thank you for this video. A+ work, super thoughtful.
Great video. Slytherin is a house that comes across as flat in the books. To think of the depth that the casting of a Black actor inadvertently adds to HP’s lore is so interesting to me.
Wait i really liked the look of the content warning at the beginning!
giancarlo esposito: is literally named giancarlo giuseppe
the public: too bad black italians don't exist. anyway
My thoughts exactly! The only way for him to have a more Italian name is Giuseppe xD
Also I can hear his accent when he speaks Spanish. It would be really nice to see a Black Italian in media someday.
Oh after googling him again: literally called Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito.
Ok if you even just think about having a cappuccino after lunch or pineapple pizza while being in a 100 mile range from him he will arrest you.
Girl!Blaise, holy crap, now there's a flashback. I remember her being paired often with Harry too.... gosh. Anyways. Thank you so much for this in depth analysis, I really appreciated it and enjoyed it a lot. This is the second video I watched from you and I think I'm hooked. Subscribed
For me the phenom of death of the author is so important especially as it relates to wanting to enjoy not only the content of the art itself or the fandom. But it is sooooo important to talk about the very real and negative influence and impact the author and their views or behavior has on people in the fandom weather they support the writer or not.
EDIT: you are sooo right! As a first gen West Indian (Caribbean) American myself, black Hermione would have ABSOLUTELY rocked Draco’s sh*t at that mud blood comment and I never felt connected to this idea that mud blood was really hurtful mostly because she didn’t react even when she knew what it meant.
This might be an odd comparison, but one thing that reminded me of the attitude towards Hermione and SPEW was the Han Solo Star Wars movie, with a droid focused on liberating other droids treated as a joke by the characters and the movie itself. Its jarring when franchises about standing up to fascism are also making fun of standing up to fascism.
That was the Han Solo film not Rogue One but besides that 100%. It's one degree removefrom how Posion Ivy is a villain for killing CEO billionaires for destroying the planet.
@@shangc2781 Yesss see you understood me better than I understood myself let me figure out how to edit a comment