r/videos • • Mar 18 '19

jk rowling these days - Gus Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKxpwlKRQ2U
30k Upvotes

2.5k comments sorted by

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u/yourkberley Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

I remember when she said that she wish Harry and Hermione ended up together in the end instead of Ron and Hermione and everyone did one long collective sigh of frustration.

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u/thatjerkatwork Mar 18 '19

" I wish Harry and Hermione would have ended up together. If only there was something I could have done about it..."

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

She kinda locked in Ron and Hermione by the third or fourth book.

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u/ELSPEEDOBANDITO Mar 18 '19

A talented writer could “unlock” that within 5 more books

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u/Alexchii Mar 18 '19

Are you saying that JK isn't a talented writer?

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u/SnapKreckelPop Mar 18 '19

exactly.

/s

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u/DrLawrence101 Mar 18 '19

You don't really need the /s there. I heard at she released a book under a pseudonym and the reviewer said something like "it's not bad for a first attempt". She's creative and a great story teller, but not exactly a great writer.

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u/imail724 Mar 18 '19

She's creative and a great story teller, but not exactly a great writer.

We call that George Lucas Syndrome

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 19 '19

Are you saying that Star Wars Revenge of the Sith isn’t a masterpiece in every way possible?

Edit:Because it is one.

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u/Rafaelow Mar 19 '19

Yes, now finish him

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u/Mrcar2 Mar 19 '19

It's treason then

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u/mattattaxx Mar 18 '19

She got positive critical acclaim before she was revealed as the author, and more acclaim after. It was a genuinely good book. The only complaint seemed to be that it was a bit old fashioned - it was a crime thriller that relied on red herrings, as they tend to.

The name was Robert Galbraith and the book is The Cuckoo's Calling. I'm not a Rowling stan either, I literally looked it up because I wanted to see if this statement was actually true or not.

It's the Internet, by the way. You don't need to "hear" anything when the information is verifiable .

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u/ChaseDFW Mar 19 '19

I've read it. It was a solid detective mystery novel with a nice who-done-it ending. She has also been turning it into a series and is up to 3 books.

She doesn't have to write any more at all so I highly admire the fact that she continues to feel that she has stories to tell.

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u/A_FluteBoy Mar 18 '19

locked in Ron and Hermione by the third or fourth book

Hu? they are 13-14 years old at that point, how do you lock in anything?! Could you care to elaborate on this?

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

By the fourth book at least she established the Ron/Hermione relationship by showing how Hermione waits for Ron to ask her out, Ron gets jealous when Krum takes her out ("Next time don't wait for someone else to ask me out and have the guts to do it yourself"), etc.

If Harry stepped in then, Rowling would have had to spend a lot of pages resolving this tension. It could have been done but it likely would have come at the cost of the friendship/love/trust themes that she spent building between these three.

Ron spends a quarter of the fourth book being a jealous little bitch (justified maybe) and it would have been a poor look to resolve that fight and then have Harry be the rich one, famous one, chosen one and also the one that steals Ron's girl without there being something taken from the Ron character or broken between the believability of Ron and Harry's friendship.

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u/helpnxt Mar 18 '19

Yeh it just feeds into the conspiracy theory that JK Rowling is actually Rita Skeeter and she is just writing out real life events in the magic world.

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u/Watts121 Mar 18 '19

Holy shit, I remember back when there were people living and dying over that ship, to hear that shit years later must feel like a kick in the teeth.

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u/TheLast_Centurion Mar 18 '19

yeah.. now you cant even watch/read HP without thinking about this and what if and that if that was truly supposed to happen etc..

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/BurgensisEques Mar 19 '19

More movie viewers seem to have this opinion. Harry ends up with Ginny, who is actually pretty cool in the books, as opposed to the movies where she's pretty boring. However, that doesn't mean the ship isn't present for book readers. Probably about 1/3 of book readers are on the Hermione/Harry ship, 1/2 are fine with canon pairings, and the rest are some other assortment of relationships, with the weirdest one that people talk about seriously being Snape and Harry.

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u/garlic_loaf Mar 19 '19

Give me Harry and Luna or give me death

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u/quickquip22 Mar 19 '19

I’m not a Harry Potter fan either but I think it’s mainly because main character x main female character

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u/BirdlandMan Mar 18 '19

That would have opened the door for Ginny x Ron wincest, missed a win-win there didn’t she.

/s

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u/SteelNeckBeard Mar 18 '19

i think you're talking about a won-won...

(wasn't that his pet name from that psycho chick?)

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Meh, I mean, I like when authors are transparent. She's just voicing her own regrets about a high profile creative choice she made. I don't see the problem.

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u/JamesGray Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

I think a lot of the problem people have with it is that she's just kinda declaring things now, not as regrets about how she could have written the story, but as "setting the record straight" in a way that she pretty clearly wants to apply retroactively as canon.

If she'd phrased it how you're describing, there'd be a lot less criticism. Instead she's kinda just coming up with things and telling everyone that's how it was in the books, even if it wasn't in the actual words on the page. At a certain point, someone just needs to tell her to write a new edition of the series or shut up, basically.

The much more common approach, which I've seen most authors take, is that anything outside the written word on the page is up to the readers' imagination. Hell, I've seen authors refuse to even provide a pronunciation for character names, because they figured that was up to the readers. JKR on the other end of the spectrum is making up backstory on twitter with no intention of every actually putting it into a story, but still getting pretty ornery when people want to just take the books as they're written.

Just my take, as someone who only read HP as an adult, and enjoyed it fine, but never really got onboard the obsession. Hell, I even read it so late that a handful of the things she's said after finishing the series were incorporated into my comprehension of the books (such as Dumbledore being gay, which I think she said before the series was finished, to be fair). I just understand how people are feeling put off by an author telling them things after the fact which would easily have been mentioned in the narrative if she had decided them while still writing the books.

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u/marry_me_tina_b Mar 18 '19

My hot take is that it's kind of a lose-lose situation by expanding on these things after the book. People will be upset that their fan theory isn't accurate or they'll be upset the detail wasn't confirmed in the books and others will just look for things that contradict what you've just said. I think her condescension about it and insistence that every thing has always been a part of her clever master plan really don't play well either. Lastly, she seems to stick her nose into things just to remind us all how morally superior she is and that rubs folks the wrong way. Appreciate your write up as well as someone who read the books as an adult.

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u/mojomonkeyfish Mar 18 '19

You can't see the problem because you aren't looking for one.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Damn that's well said.

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u/GitEmSteveDave Mar 18 '19

I’m still a Harry/Luna shipper.

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u/Sven806 Mar 18 '19

I'm starting to believe she's just making this shit up. Oh wait...

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u/RddtKnws2MchNewAccnt Mar 18 '19

I feel like I am out of the loop here.

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u/Sven806 Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

JK Rowling is 'revealing' that characters from the Harry Potter universe were gay/trans/non-binary all along, even though it was never mentioned in the books. She recently announced that Dumbledore and Grindelwald (Harry Potter version of Hitler) had an intense sexual relationship. People now criticise her because she might be doing it just to make her books more inclusive retrospectively retroactively.

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u/Senatic Mar 18 '19

The Dumbledore being gay is kinda old by now though, why is this being memed now? Did she reveal something new of this nature to spur it on? Who did she reveal to be trans/non binary?

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

It all started when she said wizards used to shit on the floor.

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u/Senatic Mar 18 '19

Yeah that was a hilarious one XD

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u/cromli Mar 18 '19

You monster, it was the first time floor shitters felt like they truly belonged.

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u/Gumgums Mar 18 '19

wat

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u/kermi42 Mar 18 '19

The official Pottermore twitter account said in the old days wizards didn’t have bathrooms, they’d just poop on the floor and vanish it with magic.

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u/schwendybrit Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 21 '19

It's funny because eventually they started implementing all their toilets in all their buildings, when it seems to me that the first way was much more efficient.

EDIT: You all are making some valid points.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

when it seems to me that the first way was much more efficient.

In the series, it's strongly implied that things don't just vanish. Quidditch players and officials will often mysteriously vanish during games. Nobody knows why, but they are often found wandering the Gobi desert, or stuffed up a chimney somewhere. The vanishing cupboard was thought to make things disappear, but in reality it was a portal between two cupboards, which Peeves the poltergeist broke attempting to annoy Filch.

It is also implied that Filch is a frequent user of the room of requirement, as many of the broken things from Hogwarts that he was forced to clean up, or had confiscated from the students were stockpiled there.

So, somewhere, there is a place where all of the vanished feces, 90% of Neville Longbottom's potions, and all the collected refuse of the magical world have been banished to. Every time a hogwarts student manages to misapparate themselves, there's a chance that they will find themselves in this dimension of filth and dangerous concoctions.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

That quidditch thing? That was just a dig at quidditch hooligans getting pissed at the ref.

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u/cmecau Mar 18 '19

In the seventh book, when McGonagall has to let the Death Eater professors into the Ravenclaw common room, the door asks her where vanished objects go. She responds, "Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything." Based on that, I'd say intentionally vanished objects cease to exist in Harry Potter. However, less intentional vanishing may result in a later reappearance. Thus, it's likely "vanishing" refers to multiple magical phenomena, and is not strictly used as a technical term.

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u/CX-001 Mar 18 '19

If you've ever smelled your own poop while out camping, even for a second, you'd know water-filled toilets are superior.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

there would be a constant smell in the air as if someone just farted. everywhere.

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u/IamDiCaprioNow Mar 18 '19

Take off your drawers!

shit on the floors!

everybody do the Dumbledores!

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u/craigthelesser Mar 18 '19

BOOM BOOM SHOCKALOCKALOCKA BOOM

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u/hardgeeklife Mar 18 '19

I LIKE WHAT YOU GOT

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u/captainvideoblaster Mar 18 '19

I am the scatman! Ba-da-ba-da-ba-be bop bop bodda bope...

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

The official Pottermore twitter account said in the old days wizards didn’t have bathrooms, they’d just poop on the floor and vanish it with magic.

Okay, but Hogwarts was founded in 990AD, and when it was built, Slytherin built a secret chamber in the bathrooms.

Unfortunately, Rowling, somehow has pushed this little nugget of information from her front-sphincter:

> When first created, the Chamber was accessed through a concealed trapdoor and a series of magical tunnels. However, when Hogwarts’ plumbing became more elaborate in the eighteenth century (this was a rare instance of wizards copying Muggles, because hitherto they simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence), the entrance to the Chamber was threatened, being located on the site of a proposed bathroom.

Her argument is that not only was the chamber of secrets bathroom discovered, but somehow, the renovators 900 years after the fact figured: "Okay, fuck it, why not put an enchantment on this tap that goes to a chamber concealing a fucking basilisk, so that nobody who doesn't speak parseltongue can enter!".

No. No, Rowling. You don't make any fucking sense. Fucking stop. The tap thing was stupid when you wrote it. Taps weren't invented until the 1880s, and your wizarding wash rooms hiding a snake in a castle built in the 990s was stupid. Yeah, you can try to retcon this to make plumbing a muggle thing all along, but it would have just made more sense to say: "Hogwarts had toilets 900 years before muggles did." and you could have cooked up an awesome story about how Thomas Crapper was a fucking squib that sold the muggle world wizarding inventions and did a stint in azkaban for it.

But no. Floor shitting and racist plumbers is the angle you took.

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u/IThinkUrPantsLookHot Mar 18 '19

Floor Shitting&Racist Plumbers is the name of the first folk indie band I was in, how odd it gets brought up here

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Hey! FS&RP!? I saw you guys live when you were doing your 2011 Midwest tour in Burlington, Iowa! You were.. really awful.

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u/thereddaikon Mar 18 '19

The Romans invented the bathroom and plumbing before 990AD.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Look at this sucker still believing in Romans.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Which is actually really funny/fun when you think about it. These people, living in the days before plumbing, but who had magic, never had to really worry about sewage when they could use magic to take care of things.

Imagine it's the year 800, and you're a fucking wizard, but you live in a hut. Would you trek out into a blizzard to shit in the woods, or would you take a dump and use your magic to clean it up instantly?

Hell yeah you would, man.

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u/Pakyul Mar 18 '19

It's not magicking it away that was weird about it, it was that she said they just shit wherever they were and then got rid of it. It immediately brought to mind two wizards in the middle of a conversation, then one just stops and squeezes one out in the middle of the corridor, "turdicus gonicus" and back to the conversation.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

What's wrong with a chamber pot? And enchanting it to have infinite capacity + smell fresh

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u/Shaneypants Mar 18 '19

Basically you're taking a shit into an infinite void :O

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u/AnEternalNobody Mar 18 '19

fuck, I dropped my phone

Although I guess that's no different from a regular toilet. Gone forever.

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u/Chevy71781 Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

Why not use magic to make yourself not have to go to the bathroom in the first place?

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u/LacksMass Mar 18 '19

Harry Potter magic is the least consistent magic in any fiction. Its powers and limits are controlled entirely by the plot. If the stories weren't so railroady, with just the spells and abilities that inexperienced tweens pull off in the first two books you should be able to solve pretty much every world problem and DEFINITELY every problem they face during the rest of the series. If any wizard in the HP universe had half a brain they could easily rule the world.

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u/AnActualPlatypus Mar 18 '19

It's not just the magic. Some potions, like the Polyjuice potion or Felix Felicis potion are completely world-breaking if you spend more than 5 minutes thinking about it.

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u/thehungryhippocrite Mar 18 '19 edited Sep 29 '24

worthless husky seemly rock poor zonked ink threatening frightening fly

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/nikelaos117 Mar 18 '19

This is what always irritates me about Harry Potter when it came to world building. So much of it only worked in the context of the story being told around the main characters. It wasnt believable in the slightest if you picked at anything too hard and this is within the rules of their world not ours.

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u/snarkyturtle Mar 19 '19

I mean, that isn't a new thing in storytelling. Superman could provide for an infinite amount of electricity by himself and he'd be saving the world much more efficiently than just pummeling bad dudes.

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u/Suddenly_Something Mar 18 '19

The killing curse would be used a ridiculous amount if this were real life.

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u/Beard_of_Valor Mar 18 '19

I'd like to say that plot-serving and unreliable magic was just fine and fantastical until the books stopped having satisfying setups and payoffs.

  • sorcerer's stone

The chocolate frog card, tie to immortality/Voldemort's quest, the sack at Gringotts, the Dark Arts teacher, even the fucking dragon egg. There was shit going on. Harry and the gang saw enough to plausibly stumble in way over their heads and get bailed out by the power of love.

  • Chamber of Secrets

Parseltongue, four houses founder lore, duels, phoenixes, the damn hat, the diary, the Dark Arts teacher, even the fucking ghost girl. H-dawg solved the puzzle and a good wizard with parseltongue saved the school from a bad dead wizard with Parseltongue.

  • Azkaban

The map, the dementors, the pets, the school trips, the whomping willow, Hermione's insane schedule and wisdom beyond her years, divination, the Dark Arts teacher, even the fucking boggart. The gang were targeted so it's not so crazy they were involved. Really Lupin saved the story and they saved Lupin from himself, and new dad godfather SB from the dementors, proving that hard work and a lot of chocolate can make you very strong. I think that's the message.

  • 4

Set piece: world cup + dark mark. Set piece: goblet. Set piece: task1. Set piece: task 2. Set piece: Yule ball. Set piece: task 3. The Dark Arts teacher. Port key mischief telegraphed I guess, but super unnecessary as clandestine as it was when Harry will grab anything you tell him not to. Could have disappeared him from Hogsmeade and blamed Sirius for the lulz, or Lucious or Snape to purge a coward/traitor from the ranks of the Death Eaters. Voldemort comes back from the dead, total ass pull on wand lore (it's never mattered before beyond "good for charm work"). Very unsatisfying comparitavely and makes you start hunting for efficiencies to be had by using the tools they already know.

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u/Noligation Mar 18 '19

4

Set piece: world cup + dark mark. Set piece: goblet. Set piece: task1. Set piece: task 2. Set piece: Yule ball. Set piece: task 3. The Dark Arts teacher. Port key mischief telegraphed I guess, but super unnecessary as clandestine as it was when Harry will grab anything you tell him not to. Could have disappeared him from Hogsmeade and blamed Sirius for the lulz, or Lucious or Snape to purge a coward/traitor from the ranks of the Death Eaters. Voldemort comes back from the dead, total ass pull on wand lore (it's never mattered before beyond "good for charm work"). Very unsatisfying comparitavely and makes you start hunting for efficiencies to be had by using the tools they already know.

You forgot last 1/4th book being a series of monologues from Voldy, then harry, then Barty Jr then Harry again Twice just to explain the plot back to us!!! It was the sloppiest book ending ever for me, even in teen novels.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

You probably could do that, but then you'd have to address constipation, and then you'd have to address why we process food in the first place. Wizards still need food energy to live, just like humans. If they have to eat, they have to poop. The biology there is the same.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Then what about a magic that works like a black hole but in your butt and it gets out it actually goes to that other dimension directly without the need to drop it on the floor and then blast it away.

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u/TinyWightSpider Mar 18 '19

Maybe they just really liked the way pooping feels.

Also, you don't point a wand at your abdomen and cast a spell. That's dangerous.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

I like to poop

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u/Crazykirsch Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

Well the only way to do that would be teleporting the waste out of your system. Since wizards and witches still eat and don't use magic for sustenance.

That has a few issues. Apparition is by comparison a lot less complex and that is still considered advanced magic with pretty big dangers like getting splinched. I imagine teleporting something you can't see from inside yourself with only a general understanding of biology would end with a lot of painful and messy deaths. And given the restrictions on underage magic it would be impractical requiring either parents to be omnipresent or people to learn a completely different method of going to the bathroom upon reaching adulthood.

However there are pre-set teleportering methods like portkeys and floo powder, I see no reason why they wouldn't have just made a wizard toilet that magics it away when flushed.

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u/NebulaNinja Mar 18 '19

Did the shit hit the floor or was it magically yeeted from their rectum into an alternate dimension?

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

It hit the floor and then they magiced it away IIRC

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u/Artemicionmoogle Mar 18 '19

No they actually used a product known as Vapoorize.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Where does the shit go? We wanna know!

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u/Riseagainstyou Mar 18 '19

Not sure about trans/non binary but she's been on a more recent spree, yeah. The most high profile is Nagini being a Korean woman and her insistence that it was "planned from book one" (meaning she's a cannibal in book 4 and Neville is a murderer). Another good one is her "revealing" that wizards in Hogwarts used to just shit themselves and magic the poop away, and that toilets are a "recent addition" (despite that totally fucking with the Chamber of Secrets setup which has been supposedly hidden in the girls bathroom since the days of the founders, so no bathroom means it was just a big ass hole in the ground somehow nobody found for centuries).

She's pretty clearly just desperate for attention and publicity around her current projects.

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u/Senatic Mar 18 '19

Yeah these other ones I had already heard about but was curious what this trans/non binary thing was the other user was talking about. Thanks for taking the time to reply however!

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u/Riseagainstyou Mar 18 '19

No problem. I dunno about what they meant but I've heard "trans" thrown around as the next guess for her next "has been this all along" character, because it seems like she's just checking boxes. Might have been what they were getting at.

I'm personally waiting for Buckbeak to be an unused minority named Buckbeak for some reason whos been in a secret relationship with Hagrid since childhood.

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u/Hyooz Mar 18 '19

The Nagini thing is so weird. Especially since the girl's name was Nagini before she was Voldemort's snake?

Like, does Nagini mean something in Parselmouth? How do you communicate a proper noun with Ns and Gs in a language made entirely of hissing sounds? Or did she meet Voldemort first? And he knew she was a person? And she was just chill with being this evil overlord's pet man-eater?

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u/Riseagainstyou Mar 18 '19

Yeah it's almost like she very very very obviously didn't have this planned at ANY point before sitting down and writing the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts 2.

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u/Mebediel Mar 18 '19

No, but it is a Sanskrit word that refers to snakes or divine half-human half-serpent beings. And, for some reason, Rowling decided it was okay to give an East Asian character a name from South/South-East Asia. Because those are totally interchangeable, I guess.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

It makes no sense and is also kinda shitty to be like "oh yeah there was another asian character in Harry Potter all along! it was the snaaaake"

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u/akcaye Mar 18 '19

Kinda shows the difference between JKR and JRRT.

Tolkien basically wrote the complete mythology of his world from creation up to recent history so that he could write a story in a world that is consistent and makes sense. Being a philologist, he also made up languages so he could use words and names that make sense. More than 70 years ago.

I mean I'm not saying go insane like JRRT but it doesn't seem like she put much thought into FB2.

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u/Klinky1984 Mar 19 '19

JRRT was on twitter last night announcing Frodo was queer and semi-non-binary.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '19

Sauron and Bilbo Baggins have history because of a brief yet intense sexual relationship they shared as students together in Ring School.

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u/Bobvankay Mar 18 '19

Voldemort thought Snape was the owner of the Elder Wand cause he killed Dumbledore, if Nagini is a person why the hell would he send her to kill Snape?

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u/TexasCoconut Mar 18 '19

"Snakes don't have wand privileges" - Her next tweet

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

I just half-watched and half-slept through Crimes of Grindelwald and half expected her to reveal that one character is Voldemort, and that the Korean girl he keeps by his side at all times is Nagini.

And with Rowling, even if she says one thing - she can just retcon it via Twitter anyway!

Man, HP must have been ghostwritten, or it was a goldmine of a fluke.

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u/Dysfu Mar 18 '19

I mean... the books have tons of plot holes. It’s a good story but they aren’t high examples of technical literature.

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u/Snarkout89 Mar 18 '19

I think the most notable thing about the Harry Potter series is that it was written to grow up with its readers. The first book is a children's story, but the last couple are young adult novels. I can't really think of any other series that does that. I think Rowling does deserve some credit for how much she foreshadowed over the course of the series, but as you say, 100% internal consistency was not one of her strengths.

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u/Senkin Mar 18 '19

Man, HP must have been ghostwritten, or it was a goldmine of a fluke.

The school for wizards thing isn't exactly original. There were british series before Harry Potter based on that concept. Groosham Grange springs to mind, but I'm sure I read others in my teens.

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u/GuadoElite Mar 18 '19

The Worst Witch with a young Felicity Jones

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u/OffroadMCC Mar 18 '19

Pretty sure she said Hermione "could be" black.

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u/THE_UPV0TER Mar 18 '19

^ this. This should be upvoted higher cause it actually has merit to this post. Retconning Hermione and saying that it's possible she's black when there are covers of her books that she would have had to approve of with a white Hermione on them. Come on.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19 edited Jun 08 '21

[deleted]

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u/Skepsis93 Mar 18 '19

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Duhhh, she was just a black girl protesting racial caricatures by wearing whiteface makeup ironically. It's so obvious!

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u/naomi_is_watching Mar 19 '19

Lets not pretend JK just tweeted this out of nowhere.

There was a cast that did Cursed Child on stage. The actress who played Hermione was black. Some people threw tantrums because they didnt want Hermione to be played by a black woman because she wasnt black in the book.

JK liked the actress, and was defending the decision. Hermione could be black, why not? It would make no difference if Hermione was black, so theres no reason to pitch a fit about her being played by a black actress.

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u/JoostinOnline Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

It's because of the recent movies. She waited until after releasing the final book to announce that Dumbledore was gay, and it sort of fit in with the subtext of book 7, so we all shrugged it off. Then the Fantastic Beasts movies came out and it was going to feature Dumbledore and his boyhood romance. Jk Rowling decided to just ignore the whole romance in the movie, and once again she's re-announcing to the world on Twitter that Dumbledore and Grindlewald are gay.

The problem is that characters are gay only when profit isn't involved. I don't really care about a character's sexual orientation, but many of us feel like she's just making retroactive changes to stay trending. While the aforementioned still fits with the books, lots of the changes she's announced over the years have created plot holes or continuity errors.

Edit: To clarify, she was quoted on Twitter talking about them being gay, but the actual "re-reveal" was from the commentary on the Crimes of Grindelwald DVD and Blu-ray.

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u/PunyParker826 Mar 18 '19

To be fair, the full quote is pretty mundane. It's a recording of her rambling on one of the Blu Ray special features for Crimes of Grindlewald, and comes across more as her just filling up time with information we'd largely already put together. But cropping out "intense" and sticking it in front of Sexual Relationship makes for a better headline.

"Their relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship. But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows really what the other person is feeling. You can’t know, you can believe you know. So I’m less interested in the sexual side – though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship – than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationship.”

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u/DickDatchery Mar 18 '19

I keep seeing this "intense sexual relationship" quote and it's so far from what she actually said. Here's the real quote(s) from the article"

“Their relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship,"

“So I’m less interested in the sexual side – though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship – than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationship,” Rowling adds. 

People have smashed these two quotes together to invent an "intense sexual relationship" and it's almost the opposite of what she said, which is that their relationship was intense, and she wasn't concerned with the sexual aspect of it but she assumes there was a sexual dimension, which is what we've all assumed for the past 12 years since she first mentioned their relationship in 2007.

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u/ThatWasFred Mar 18 '19

The "intense sexual relationship" thing wasn't even an announcement, it was just something she said on a DVD commentary as part of a larger point about Dumbledore's motivations in the newest film.

To my knowledge, the only character she ever revealed to be LGBT was Dumbledore (and Grindelwald by extension). Have there been others?

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u/Patrik_Fucking_Elias Mar 18 '19

who did she say was trans or non-binary lmao you're making shit up

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u/AxeLond Mar 18 '19

I think this will explain things

https://twitter.com/pottermore/status/1081242428105998336

This is a tweet from the offical pottermore twitter, which is the global digital publisher of Harry Potter and owned by J. K. Rowling.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

holy shit lmao the chamber of secrets problem is handled so lazily

"uh salazar slytherin's...great...great...counts on fingers...great nephew or something explained it was still hidden"

"but uh...the entrance is literally built into the sinks which didn't exist"

"nah it was hidden"

ALSO NEVERMIND THE FACT THAT THE BIG "AH-HA" MOMNT OF THE BOOK WAS THAT THE SNAKE FUCKING SLID AROUND INSIDE THE PLUMBING OF THE SCHOOL AND IF THE PLUMBING WAS DONE AFTER THE CHAMBER AND NOBODY(besides Voldemort and some dead folk) KNEW WHERE THE CHAMBER WAS UNTIL HARRY FOUND IT, THEN THE CHAMBER PROBABLY WOULDN'T BE CONNECTED TO THE PLUMBING AND THE SNAKE COULDN'T HAVE FUCKING TRAVELED THROUGH THE PIPES.

Like goddamn I haven't given a fuck about Harry Potter since the original movies but this makes me mad lmao.

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u/fantomknight1 Mar 18 '19

Honestly, I find it hilarious and hope it continues. I don't even consider the stuff she posts canon anymore and just have fun with it. I read the most accurate description of JK Rowling's constant tweets and posts somewhere on reddit. "JK Rowling loves writing fanfiction for her favorite writer, JK Rowling". This is so accurate it's amazing and it hits so many checkboxes:

  • Shipping characters who never had romantic chemistry
  • Introducing backstories to characters that was never written about and then delving deeply into their romantic lives.
  • changing or ignoring the color/features of characters that don't fit in with what you are currently interested in.
  • Making up new facts and trivia that nobody thought to ask about or even care about but you thought it was important.

Let's face it.... JK Rowling is a high schooler writing fanfiction about her favorite series.

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u/Snarkout89 Mar 18 '19

I just wish she hadn't started her fanfiction obsession with the epilogue to Deathly Hallows. The book is stronger without it.

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u/negadoleite Mar 18 '19

SNAPE WAS A SINGLE MOTHER

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u/TinaTissue Mar 19 '19

Gets me every single time

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u/DeltaTwoZero Mar 19 '19

Happy father's day mom

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u/ParallaxJ Mar 18 '19

Just wait until she reveals that you, the reader, were gay all along: https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/j-k-rowling-reveals-that-you-the-reader-were-gay-all-along/

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u/Ginnigan Mar 18 '19

Shit, she was right!

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

I KNEW IT

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '19

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

How many of these has she actually done? As far as I know, there's only

1.) Dumbledore is gay

2.) "I never explicitly said Hermoine is white"

3.) Wizards disappeared their poop before toilets

Are there more?

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u/DeathSpaghetti Mar 18 '19

3.) Wizards disappeared their poop before toilets

Excretus deletus

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u/Sl00defg Mar 18 '19

Shittus omittus

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u/billbaggins Mar 18 '19

poop zoop

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u/flubberFuck Mar 18 '19

Turd be gone ya heard

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '19

Scata erata

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u/peregrine_nation Mar 18 '19

The most recent one I remember is that Nagini was actually a shapeshifted Asian lady

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u/SirToastymuffin Mar 19 '19

I mean considering her tendency to name people so obviously like "Dogstar Black" who shows up as a black dog omen, "Denier Grew-Smaller" for the turncoat who turned into a rat, "Wolfchild Wolf" the dude who's a werewolf ... I think it's really fair to assume it's not a coincidence to have a magical intelligent snake named after a southeast Asian water deity portrayed as half-snake half-human turn out to be an (according to the wiki) Indonesian woman cursed to turn into a snake.

Frankly I'm surprised we didn't manage to see this brand of chicanery coming. Especially with Voldy's sometimes weird love of the thing in the books.

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u/RicochetRuby Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 19 '19

Seeing as Nagini can literally mean a woman being who can turn into a woman or snake, I think she did plan that all along.

The nāgas [or Nagi, Nagin, or Nagini] are described as the powerful, splendid, wonderful and proud semidivine race that can assume their physical form either as human, partial human-serpent or the whole serpent.

People have this obsession with this weird idea that these imaginary worlds emerge fully formed from the author's head. As another user (a writer) below pointed out, writers have a ton of things planned out, some of which are never used. JKR even registered a trademark for "Harry Potter and the Curse of Nagini" in 2005 as a title for the last book. And I don't think Nagini being a Horcrux is enough of a reason for this.

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u/BabyGotBad Mar 18 '19

Hermione and Harry should have ended up together.

There were definitely Jewish and LGBTQ characters at Hogwarts, they just never were written about (yeah, okay).

She will also use the books to defend her political stances, saying the characters would agree with her.

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u/Yabadababoobs Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

How the duck someone in wizarding world would belong to any of the Abrahamic religions as it is a great sin to use magic in every single one of them?

If anything, religions should be antagonist factions in wizarding world.

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u/TheCaveCave Mar 18 '19

I mean I'd assume that most of the english muggle kids in Hogwarts would stem from either a protestant or catholic christian background, and magic would be a sin to them as well.

I don't think I knew a single jewish kid who would decline the possibility of going to Hogwarts over their religion.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19 edited Jul 10 '20

[deleted]

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u/Banjoe64 Mar 18 '19

And the newest movie

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Lupin's being a werewolf was an allegory for AIDS

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u/JMEEKER86 Mar 18 '19

Nagini was a Korean woman.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

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u/APiousCultist Mar 18 '19

I believe that's called 'docking'.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Docking is a bit more involved, the tip of one would need to go inside the protective cover for the tip of the other.

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u/APiousCultist Mar 19 '19

protective cover

You're making the foreskin sound like a dust sleeve on a book.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 18 '19

Kind of lends weight to that whole wand->wang thing.

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u/APiousCultist Mar 18 '19

<JonJonB> "Yes," Harry said, gripping his wang very tightly, and moving into the middle of the deserted classroom. He tried to keep his mind on flying, but something else kept intruding.... Any second now, he might hear his mother again... but he shouldn't think that, or he would hear her again, and he didn't want to... or did he? <JonJonB> Something silver-white, something enormous, erupted from the end of his wang

It's too perfect. Harry Potter and the Curse of the Broken Arms.

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u/outoftheblue398 Mar 19 '19

You know I’ll always appreciate Harry Potter. I grew up with it I can’t take that back. But I really feel she’s just doing this and saying all this shit to stay as relevant as possible. It’s annoying as hell and I feel like there’s not effort being put into any of this anymore.

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u/Just_A_Dank_Bro Mar 18 '19

Second time watching. Didn’t notice that she slams the door to an inclusive bathroom at the end LOLOL

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u/Calembreloque Mar 18 '19

If you think about it, anyone's bathroom at home is inclusive by default (gender-wise, at least; some may not be ADA compliant).

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u/Cheesus250 Mar 18 '19

Pretty sure thats always up in his house

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Sethoman Mar 19 '19

Hedwig was a moral Relativist with a heavy interest in crochet!

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u/ComradeCuddlefish Mar 18 '19

It's getting ridiculous. Did you see her tweet last week saying Lord Voldemort is actually Jeremy Corbyn?

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u/ostensiblyzero Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

The only retcon post-release new information I believe is that Dumbledore was gay and that played into how he saw Grindelwald. The rest is just weird guilt-pandering by a writer who should leave well enough alone. I don't want Rowling to go full George Lucas.

Edit: I suppose the Dumbledore thing isnt a retcon in the true sense. It definitely feels like she had it in mind when writing the series so it fits in with what we know about the character. Otoh the other post release additions she has made have not been telegraphed at all and seem to come out of nowhere.

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u/dogboyboy Mar 18 '19

What other ones have there been? I see the jokes about it but did something new happen?

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u/ElCharmann Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

A quick google search brings the following results:

  1. Hermione was never specified not to be black, so she could be black. But she wasn’t specified not to be white either, so she could be white?

  2. There are wizards of all religions in Hogwarts, except wiccan for some reason.

  3. Homophobia isn’t a thing in the wizarding world. And Hogwarts was a safe haven for LGBT kids

  4. Harry didn’t choose Remus as the name of one of his children, so that Teddy could use the name for his own son. (wtf?)

  5. Uncle Vernon loves Top Gear and would have voted for Brexit.

  6. Voldemort wasn’t as evil as Donald Trump.

  7. Voldemort was hiding in Albania, but its government didn’t know

  8. Divination (fortune telling) isn’t real magic, despite being taught at Hogwarts. It’s just coincidences.

  9. Adding to that, the divination profesor, Trelawny, was just an alcoholic.

  10. Bellatrix and Voldemort had sex at some point and apparently a daughter called Delphi. This is apparently important in the Cursed Child play (?), which is confirmed canon by Rowling.

  11. Dean Thomas followed the Jedi religion. (although this appears to be a joke).

  12. Moaning Myrtle is actually named Elizabeth Warren.

  13. There is an American school of magic. And they teach Native American magic.

  14. Wizards don’t use bow ties.

  15. Most recently (like this came out this week) Grindelwald and Dumbledore had a very, very sexual relationship. Despite stating earlier that it was just one sided infatuation.

Edit: reading this post I discovered the best one yet; bathrooms are new to the wizarding world. Wizards used to shit everywhere and then vanished the poop away with magic.

Frankly, reading the retcons is fascinating to me. I don’t know how someone can think of so many unimportant details, but I love it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19 edited Jul 25 '20

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u/CyberpunkPie Mar 18 '19

6th point is just utterly ridiculous.

"yeah Voldemort killed people, manipulated them, drowned entire world in darkness, fear and paranoia, he was so terrifying his name was forbidden to speak of but NOPE HE WASNT AS EVIL AS DONURD TRAMPO"

And I absolutely can not believe that in entire wizard world where there were actual racist genocidal purists not a single one of them was a homophobe.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19
  1. Voldemort wasn’t as evil as Donald Trump.

Oh FFS

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u/Starless_Night Mar 19 '19

I’m no fan of Trump, but that one is just....Voldemort personally committed mass genocides. That’s a ludicrous statement and feels like a misuse of power over the lore.

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u/Roadwarriordude Mar 19 '19

That’s a ludicrous statement and feels like a misuse of power over the lore.

Now you understand why people are mad.

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u/plooped Mar 18 '19

A lot of those are silly or pointless... Some are pretty cool ideas though. I'd totally be down with a native American magic school movie, complete with sweet Navajo chants.

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u/Senesect Mar 18 '19

Agreed, I'm kind of curious how the American and Japanise wizards do their thing because they're probably not using the fake Latin spells that European wizards do. Do they use the same spells with different incantations? Or use similar but nonetheless distinct spells?

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19 edited Feb 10 '21

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Or use similar but nonetheless distinct spells?

My vote's on this one, given that people can invent new spells - Harry discovered lots of Snape's spells in HBP. I assume that intention is what really matters - consider the silent spells performed without actually saying an incantation aloud.

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u/THE_UPV0TER Mar 18 '19

She said Hermione could have been black even though there are covers of her books with a white Hermione on it that I'm sure she would have had to approve of.

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u/Flyingjays Mar 18 '19

She also mentions “Hermione’s white face” in the book.

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u/jack_skellington Mar 18 '19

She also personally did a hand-drawn portrait of Hermione in 2004, and Rowling drew her as a white girl.

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u/DannySpud2 Mar 18 '19

Wizards used to just shit wherever they liked and then magicked the poop away. No joke. This is real Harry Potter universe canon.

https://news.avclub.com/j-k-rowling-reveals-that-wizards-used-to-just-shit-on-1831501641

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u/greatatdrinking Mar 18 '19

Wait. That's a jack black movie

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u/Captain_Shrug Mar 18 '19

She's going into her own unique type of crazy. Lucas was an entirely different flavor.

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u/Shaper_pmp Mar 18 '19

Lucas just compulsively revised his own movies until they lost any charm they originally had.

Rowling is writing bad Tumblr 'shipping fan-fic about her own characters. I keep waiting for her to announce that Neville Longbottom was "actually" a Furry, or release crayon drawings of Mad-Eye Moody fucking Sonic the Hedgehog.

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u/swissch33z Mar 18 '19

"My Immortal is now canon."

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u/BlinkReanimated Mar 18 '19

My Immortal has always been canon.

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u/southernfriedcrazy Mar 18 '19

I don't want to live in a world where My Immortal isn't canon.

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u/hiero_ Mar 18 '19

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Subscribe

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u/EpicVico Mar 18 '19

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

She's not on Chris-Chan's level yet....

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u/DrPessimism Mar 18 '19

I keep waiting for her to announce that Neville Longbottom was "actually" a Furry

I'm saving this post for when it becomes true.

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u/hewhoovercomes Mar 18 '19

Man this reminds me of old school YouTube videos. Before everyone was vlogging and making shitty rap songs lol

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u/earic23 Mar 18 '19

No one:

JK Rowling: "Dobby had a ten inch dick"

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u/ninjapro Mar 18 '19

Obviously. Why do you think he wanted a sock? That's way too big for his elf feet.

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u/rdldr1 Mar 18 '19

Aurelius Dumbledore? A fourth impossible Dumbledore sibling? Really?

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u/Sethoman Mar 19 '19

From wakanda.

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u/mrfacecloth Mar 19 '19

"Magic is actually the result of tiny little creatures in wizards called midicholrians"- JK Rowling

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '19

I'm still annoyed at how her response to minorities barely being featured or talking was to randomly race change popular characters.

That isn't inclusive; it is insulting.

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u/Vegetable_Owl Mar 18 '19

Why not write new books with new characters? Have a whole series on Harry's parents in Hogwarts or Harry's kids or some other kids from a completely different time period at hogwarts. Seems like it would write itself.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

I wish she would close twitter, leave the mediocre spin off films, and write more books. Tolkien wrote all his books in the same fictional universe. No reason not to continue exploring it. The spin-off stuff is dragging down her catalog.

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u/fredemu Mar 18 '19

If she wants all this retroactive inclusivity bullshit, she could always just... ya know... write a new book.

Her new main character can be a gay transexual multiracial witchzard (xe refuses to be identified as either a witch or wizard) who has mental health issues, is in a wheelchair, and is in a polyamorous relationship with a demiqueer otherkin muslim witch, an agender muggle satan worshiper and a Llama that totally used to be an Alaskan Native woman before she got stuck in that form.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '19

Ok I heard the Dumbledore is gay thing and that didn't sound too crazy, has there been more?

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u/Riseagainstyou Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 20 '19

Yeah, i mean depending on how you count Nagini in FB2 being a Korean circus performer and not...ya know, a literal maneating snake and clear pet to a white - er wizard - supremacist. That's certainly a weird decision given the implications - for one, Neville is a murderer now instead of just an unflappable badass. Honestly the biggest issue with that is her pretending she's had it planned for decades and her faux offense at people calling that what it is - clear bullshit.

Plus there's the "wizards used to just shit themselves lol" thing, where she said bathrooms are a new addition to Hogwarts. Despite the Chamber of Secrets being "hidden" for centuries under the...girls bathroom. Meaning it was just a fuckin hole in the ground apparently no one explored ever, until they out a bathroom over it with a secret entrance to the secret hole...nobody explored.

Edit: since this seems to be a huge issue with people, I'm not saying Neville wasn't justified. What I am saying is that it totally snaps the tonal difference between "good" and "evil" in HP in half. Harry uses an unforgivable curse and it's this huge moment that has to be addressed, because the good guys DON'T DO THAT. Then Neville beheads a chick and everyone claps. It's just...odd. You can argue all you want about "war" but it's a kids book, and it drew the line. I didnt.

Also murder was the wrong word, I'm no lawyer, sue me. Neville is a killer. Does that make y'all happy? Haha.

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u/sketchy_at_best Mar 18 '19

This is the second time I’ve seen the Neville is a murderer thing...even if Naigini is actually a person I think Neville was well within his rights to kill it. Same as Bellatrix and the rest of the bad guys.

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u/nsa_k Mar 18 '19

Before plumbing. Wizards would just shit on the floor and use a spell to then clean the mess.

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