[ SECRET POST #2252 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2252 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Billie Piper - Doctor Who/Secret Diary of a Call Girl]


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03.
[Steam Powered Giraffe]


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04.
[Teen Wolf]


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05.
[Kuroko no Basket]


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06.
[Princess Tutu]


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07.
[Kuroshitsuji]


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08.
[Queer as Folk]


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09.
[The Reward]


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10.
[Spartacus: War of the Damned]


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11.
[The Following]


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12.
[Les dossiers du Professeur Bell]


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13.
[Misfits]


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14.
[Saint's Row The Third]


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15.
[Penn and Teller]


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16.
[Harry Potter]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 093 secrets from Secret Submission Post #322.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[intrigueing]

....except it's supposed to be a bad thing. Kids are supposed to be shown as victims of their society. The House rivalries are supposed to be fucked up. The wizarding world is supposed to be full of terrible shit that pre-teens accept at face value or just don't see. The sparkly magic wonderful world Harry sees at the beginning is supposed to be slowly revealed to be just as full of crap as it is of wonder. The heroes he idolizes at the beginning are supposed to be revealed as deeply flawed over time. The ideas and traditions he takes for granted are supposed to be shown to have all kinds of fucked-up-ness about them. The Harry Potter series is exactly like growing up and realizing that all that stuff you participated in and bought into and thought was so great or harmless or normal when you were a kid? Not so innocent or good after all, once you're old enough to think about it.

You can argue a lot about how well this message was conveyed in the series (I have a whole load of issues with how a lot of things were glossed over in DH), but to imply that the intent wasn't there is laughable.

[gamma_orionis]

I came here to say exactly this. I think the reason that most people seem to miss this intent has to do with the fact that we're seeing the world through Harry's very unreliable eyes, and they take his prejudices and misconceptions for facts... For example: Harry thinks Slytherins are evil and he sees all Slytherins as douchebags? That MUST be the truth!

(I have a whole load of issues with how a lot of things were glossed over in DH)
^This... don't even get me started on how things were handled in the last movie :P

[celestinenox]

Hi there! :D

I actually started a reread project of HP a while back wherein I read the books specifically looking at Slytherins and how they were portrayed through two methods: 1) how other characters spoke about them and 2) how they acted in the narrative itself.

I managed to get through half of PoA before life forced me to stop, but at least that far, I did find that most of the adult characters--except Hagrid, of course--are very neutral about Slytherins. It's the kids who usually promote the idea that Slytherins are bad because reasons. However, when it comes to how the Slytherins act, there's very little to suggest that they aren't all snot-nosed little brats. The way they act would make anyone believe them to be evil-in-training.

I have to wonder if the majority of adults are very careful to try not to influence Harry, and thus choose their words carefully around him. Because their children tend to be less discerning, and those children had to learn those prejudices from somewhere. They weren't born with them.

I really need to finish this project, because I want to really pay attention to how we end up with this "All Slytherins are evil or cowards... or Snape" conclusion we seem to get in DH.

[(Anonymous)]

this sounds like a very interesting project!

when/if you do complete it, would you mind letting us know here? I'd like to read it!

[lunabee34]

I want to agree with you except I think that the epilogue, in which the status quo seems to be preserved, negates that idea. It would have been so easy to have a dwarf on the platform with a wand or mention the new crest on one of the children's robes that stands for a different kind of house or some slight mention of the success of any of the social reforms that the books appear to be leading up to but then don't do anything with. I think fanfic does a great job of exploring these issues, though.

[lunabee34]

And by dwarf, I clearly mean goblin. LOL Been reading LotR lately.

[intrigueing]

I wrote a comment about it below but basically: 1. Societies don't totally change in nineteen years 2. JKR was lazy and didn't bother to show the small changes that could have happened in nineteen years, because she was more interested in squeezing in character development for the next generation of kids.

I think the latter part was a rather standard "sacrifice good storytelling for fanservice" deal.

[lunabee34]

That's what we have fanfic for!

(Although I think some changes could reasonably have been made in 19 years, but that's neither here nor there since we don't get to see any of them.)

[diet_poison]

Yeah it pretty much was.

I'm not really complaining about that, though. It was clearly tacked-on, and it's easy to ignore if you didn't want it.

[grainne_mhaol]

The only way the epilogue works for me is to read it as deeply ironic. It's not just that we don't see progress, what we do see is laced with evidence that la plus ca change. The characters with the same old names. The same familiar tropes. Ron still 'hilariously' confunding a Muggle behind Hermione's back instead of respecting them. The reminder of the house system and the stigma of Slytherin. The scene where Harry reassures Albus privately is sweet, and yet still evidence that things which ought to be matters of public discussion are still relegated to secret whispers.

In the face of all that the last thought of Harry (the same Harry whose last thought in the book proper was to wonder if his house-elf would bring him a sandwich) that 'all is well' sounds completely misguided to me.

Harry's wrong. All the systemic problems are still in place, and the next Dark Lord is imminent tbh.

[(Anonymous)]

"
Harry's wrong. All the systemic problems are still in place, and the next Dark Lord is imminent tbh."

And this time probably from Gryffindor. My headcannon is that it is one of the Weasley kids, just so they get the message that they are part of the problem and not somehow special and above all of that.

[(Anonymous)]

...Is there fanfiction like this? Because I wants it. It sounds deliciouses.

[lunabee34]

I pretty much agree with you.

I think one of the main reasons that Harry doesn't end up making the same kinds of choices that Snape or Voldemort did is because he's instantly surrounded in the magical world by people who connect him to a long-standing legacy of righteousness, who extend love to him, and who assure him that he's special and that he has almost a divine mandate to be a warrior for the right. If he'd showed up at Hogwarts somehow and been sorted into Slytherin and not been given that network, he'd be a very different Harry. (I do realize that Harry also has an innate sense of ethics that also seems to differentiate him from, say, Voldemort, but I think that easily have been quashed out of him rather than cultivated).

All that to say, I can easily see the rise of another Dark Lord in the status quo the epilogue seems to imply.

[(Anonymous)]

This, exactly. Remember in one of Snape's memories in DH, Dumbledore himself said that perhaps they Sort too soon.

Also, we really don't see all that many Slytherins. The majority of them are just names, & simply because Harry, Ron, etc. generalize them as all being terrible people does not mean they actually are. Out of all the Slytherins Harry encounters in school, only one is ever confirmed to be a Death Eater, & that's Malfoy. One could argue Crabbe & Goyle as well, I suppose, based on the end of DH.

And to the person who made the comment about McGonagall sending the Slytherins to the dungeons - that's movieverse. In the book she evacuated them from the school along with underage students, which is a big difference. Something the filmmakers got terribly wrong - shocking.

[(Anonymous)]

as someone who didn't care to read all the books or watch all the movies

"And to the person who made the comment about McGonagall sending the Slytherins to the dungeons - that's movieverse. In the book she evacuated them from the school along with underage students, which is a big difference. Something the filmmakers got terribly wrong - shocking."


That makes me feel so much better. I like McGonagall but reading that she locked KIDS up, even dumb kids making mistakes, was a D: D: D:

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I'd also like to point out that the Slytherin common room is in the dungeons, and that's where she was presumably sending them.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a little nervous about this, because my HP memories are fuzzy, but here goes:

How does the epilogue fit into this this? because if the point of series arc was a loss of innocence and a recognition of moral ambiguity, the epilogue seems to reject that. It glosses over any kind of adult growth or change.

[intrigueing]

Well, the way I see it: the epilogue is only nineteen years later. There's evidence of minor personal changes between the characters, but to imply that the entire wizarding world was overhauled in nineteen years would have been silly and unrealistic. Like, since when has that ever happened in the history of ever?

But mostly: JKR apparently wrote the epilogue very early on and I think she got lazy about rewriting it to incorporate and touch on the more important themes, and instead focused on "omg it's the next generation of Hogwarts kids for you fans to write fanfic about, aren't they cute??" at the expense of following up on broader ideas.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, actually, post-civil-war periods like that often do make very major changes very quickly, at least in terms of institutions. Sometimes it takes a lot longer for the changes to make their way through societies, but it seems to me it would have been the perfect moment for someone to say "Why don't we re-Sort every year?" or something.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're reading too much into the books. They were for children remember. Yes, they were fun to read and everyone went crazy over them, but sometimes I feel like people give JKR waaay too much credit for her writing. Just because you can read into something doesn't mean it was intentional.

For example, page 324 of The Order of the Phoenix = are six consecutive descriptions of the way people speak.
"...said Snape maliciously,"
"... said Harry furiously",
" ... he said glumly",
"... said Hermione severely",
"... said Ron indignantly",
" ... said Hermione loftily".

[(Anonymous)]

+1 to this. Just because you think you see something doesn't mean the author meant it.

[sugar_spun]

I'm going to go ahead and point out that you pulled this from a The Guardian article.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but reading the vitriol behind the article, I'm going to assume they were cherry picking. Not to mention I'd be curious to look at some more modern quality literature to compare.

But as I said, I agree. People give the series way too much credit. It's simply ludicrous to say that Rowling was trying to create this really complex reflection of modern society blah blah no it wasn't. It's the same crap people always say when the kid's media they like is popular with adults.

[vicfrankenstein]

I disagree with this entire sentiment for a number of reasons. I'll use John Green as my example because, well. http://youtu.be/MSYw502dJNY?t=2m3s This piece of video plus he writes for preteens but it doesn't make his books any less deep and meaningful.

1. Okay not John Green related, but the series was written to grow up WITH Harry so, I mean, The last few AREN'T for kids.
2. Being for kids doesn't mean it can't have meaning. Again, as I said John Green writes for "kids". But, I mean, Looking For Alaska made me cry a fucload at 24.
3. Whether or not an author intended a book to mean something doesn't mean it's not there. (See: youtube video)

Seriously, whether JKR intended all this meaning or not? Doesn't. Matter. Why should it? It's about what people experience from the book. If you experience nothing and don't care, cool , whatever. But why go around and tell people they "read too much into it" when it means more to them, than it does to you? Because honestly, this isn't reading too much into it. If they scoured all books for every reference of character A looking at character B to prove they're actually deeply in love, that might be. But also, who cares if they do?

[celestinenox]

I've always said that Rowling's writing is mediocre at best (it gets better towards the end in some ways). For me, it's her world building and characterizations that hooked me.

[melusinahp]

THANK YOU.