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Harry Potter Thread!...
Harry Potter Thread!
Being one of the many CBers obsessed with the Harry Potter books, I've made a Harry Potter thread! I want to try to keep spoilers above the fourth book minimum to none, if that's possible. This is for fan art, favorite parts, character obsessing, everything Harry Potter, and warning: will contain spoilers for anything below the 4th book! My favorite character from the first 4 books is Hermione (sorry if I spelled her name wrong)! My favorite part is probably the whole Basilisk part. So anyways, have fun on this thread!
submitted by Red Starlight, age Infinity, Room of Requirement
(June 6, 2021 - 11:56 am)
(June 6, 2021 - 11:56 am)
That makes so much sense! And for Ariana- she totally could have been! for Harry Potter-that makes sense too! I mean, we know he isn't one, but it's fun to talk about, so-he couldn't have done spells anyways, really. He didn't have a wand. ok I just looked it up, and you can't be an obscurus if you don't know about your magic. So the whole Ariana thing is most likely right! It makes so much sense!
(June 16, 2021 - 8:42 am)
Whoa, that's brilliant! That totally makes sense, with everything that happened to her. I kinda forget though, how does an Obscurus form exactly?
(June 18, 2021 - 6:03 pm)
An obscurus forms when someone suppresses their magic so that it becomes... kind of a plague inside of them. Don't worry- when I saw the theory Ariana might be an obscurus I looked up what an obscurus was cause I kinda forgot as well!
(June 23, 2021 - 8:38 pm)
I love Harry Potter! I probably need to reread them soon, cause I probably will start frogetting. When I first read the book series my favorite character was Hermione and my house was gryfindor. I have a bit of gryfindor, but I realized I was more of a Hufflepuff. Sorry if I spelled grifindor wrong. My favorite characeter now is Ginny Weasly because I am sporty too and like her. I would probably want to be a chaser if I played Quittich.
(June 16, 2021 - 1:09 pm)
Ginny is my favorite too! She is hilarious and very sassy and overall a great character.
(June 18, 2021 - 6:04 pm)
Okay, so, this is just going to be a pretty big rant and yeah, a lot of you guys are probably going to disagree with it, but here we go. First off: I used to be obsessed with Harry Potter; I've read all of the books and watched the movies as well. It's a good series, it has a really cool world and some great characters, and Hogwarts is such a wonderfully imaginative setting! I don't dislike it at all. But. As I got older, I started to spot little details that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. The biggest thing would proabably be the lack of diversity in the series in general. I think there is 1 (?) Black student, the Parvati twins who are Indian, and Cho Chang who is Chinese, but other than that, everyone is white, and it doesn't help that none of the non-white characters did much at all for the plot.
I'm just taking a quick second to talk about Cho Chang here- as an Asian girl, I should have been happy that there was an Asian girl involved in the plot. But it was kind of obvious that JK Rowling didn't put much thought into Cho's character at all. First of all, she's in Ravenclaw, the 'smart house', which would be totally cool if it didn't reinforce a whole lot of Asian stereotypes. There's not even anything particularly Ravenclaw-y about Cho, but since she's Asian she was put into Ravenclaw. Also, her name is super annoying to me- 'Cho' and 'Chang' are both surnames from both Japanese and Korean cultures, which makes no sense because she's supposed to be Chinese, so right off the bat she has no culture and/or background. I think she had the potential to be a good character, but instead of going down that route Cho was mostly used as a pretty girl that cried over boys a lot. I never questioned this character when I was younger, and it really does irritate me that unhelpful stereotypes could have been inflicted on me when I was so young.
Needless to say, there is also no lgbtq+ representation in the series; there are no established lgbtq relationships or genderqueer characters.
And yeah, I get that this came out a while ago, but people of color and lgbtq people existed back then.
Another thing was that there were just so many plot holes that I never understood. In the third book, Dumbledore gave a time-turner to a thirteen year old girl just so that she could get to all her classes on time, which is a sketchy decision on it's own. And then he just lets Harry, Ron, and Hermione go back in time- not to stop Voldemort or make sure he had never turned evil, not to stop bad events from happening- but to save Buckbeak. Don't get me wrong, Buckbeak didn't deserve to die, but should he really have been the primary focus right then?
I also really disliked JK Rowling's decision to have Snape become a 'good guy' at the end of the series, especially when Harry names his son after Snape in the Cursed Child. I totally get that Snape had a really hard life and that he was bullied, but, like, that does nothing to excuse the fact that he still bullied children during his time teaching them. Like, remember that time he threatened to have Neville kill his own pet just because he could? Or that time he called a muggle born a mudblood? Or that time when Neville Longbottom, someone whose parents were literally tortured, is more scared of Snape than anything else in the world? Or the fact that if Harry hadn't been the chosen one than Snape would still be a death eather because the only reason he crossed over to the good side was because Harry was Lily's son? Or the part where Snape makes fun of the way that Hermione's teeth look? I know that Snape did some good things, but he still treated Harry & Co. horribly because of a crush he had on his childhood best friend who was married and had a family.
So yeah, sorry for that big rant, but those are some of my thoughts of Harry Potter! I just want to repeat that focused on the negative aspecs of the series, but I still care about it very much because of all the love that I had for it when I was younger.
(June 17, 2021 - 2:46 pm)
I agree with all the things you are saying. As a lesbian I wish that there was more lgbtqia+ representation, and as an ally of people of color it really sucks that there isn't much representation of POC. Also, J.K Rowling kinda fat-shames people, a detail I would have liked her to leave out of the books. Ya know, all the talk about Dudley being overweight? Never the less it's a pretty good series, but I'm not able to enjoy it as much as I did when I noticed the details you noticed.
(June 17, 2021 - 5:18 pm)
Yeah, it really bothers me how she makes so much fun of Dudley, that is not cool. And I agree, Cho is kind of a lame character. There are literally 3 Asian characters in the entire series (Cho, Padma and Parvati Patil) which is very disappointing. I love the series so much, it's like a comfort blanket to me whenever I'm sad, but it could do with some serious revising in the diversity department. I feel like Lord of the Rings is the same (but more so, there are like 4 female characters and literally EVERYONE in the movies is white), even though I like those books and movies too.
(June 18, 2021 - 6:00 pm)
I agree with you fully. The book has a great plot and all, but the diversity department definatly needs some work. Like, a lot of work. Let's try to make a goal to represent all types of people in our writing and break the diversity barrier on older literature. All people belong in the world, so all people belong in books.
Just a note: You've inspired me to add an LGBTQ+ person into a story I'm writing. Thank you :)
(June 20, 2021 - 2:11 pm)
You raise excellent points here, anonymous CBer. I think that Harry Potter's downfall as a franchise (which in turn directly affects the lack of diversity in the universe of the story) is that as the films became more and more popular the books started to take after the movie, including the total lack of diversity in the early films' casting (which was bad even by 2000s standards and was called out by reviewers when the first film released). A really good example of this taking after the films is illustration. From the first book's original US cover illustration (by Mary GrandPre) to the last book's original US cover illustration, GrandPre's Harry begins to look more and more like Daniel Radcliffe. This is also true for Jim Kay's illustrations for the Illustrated Editions of the books. The films aren't bad films, but when the books kind of adopted the film's aesthetic (for lack of a better term) they really lost the dynamic identity that was written into the text and radiated out of the first few Potter books.
I probably sound so snobby right now :| This isn't precisely about your topic, cber, but I think that your topic and mine are closely linked and that a big part of the books being so lacking in diversity was the films taking over as the big money-makers. Putting aside JKR's recent positions on certain sectors of the LGBT community (not cool, JK) I wonder if she might have written more diversity into the books if the films hadn't taken off or even been made. Once the pressure was on to make a blockbuster film out of each book I think that she really shyed away from doing more interesting things and pushing the envelope a little (Goblet of Fire, the last volume published before the movies started being cranked out, stands out to me as a book with a lot of metaphor concerning the House-elves which is pretty much never touched on again and what do you know, sheared right out of the movie)
*pauses for breath*
(June 21, 2021 - 10:32 am)
I would like to respectfully disagree. The later books are my favorites, and those movies are kind of a disaster, since they didn't make them long enough and it seems like they just randomly jump from scene to scene. I don't think that Harry looks like Daniel Radcliffe in the illustrations and the later books are extremely complex. Plus, the Order of the Phoenix's plot is a lot about the government being ignorant and focusing too much on popularity.
(June 21, 2021 - 12:07 pm)
ah yes, completely agree with you, as well as the replies!! (well, I actually didn't notice a lot of what Bakerloo pointed out, however it's been a while since I read the books or watched the movies). one more thing I'd like to add: the whole concept of house elves is just bad. I mean, sure, you could argue that since they like being enslaved and working their butts off for humans and that's basically what they were born to do, then it's fine. but that's all because JKR made them that way. obviously they didn't need to be a metaphor for actual slavery, but if you look at it that way, it's horrible. I mean, they're kind of dumb, ugly, and not even human. and although the pure blood kids thinking the house elf system is okay makes sense, it's honestly quite concerning that Hermione was the only muggleborn that saw anything at all wrong with it. and like Bakey said, whatever metaphor or point JK tried to make in the 4th book, completely got forgotten.
anyway ya know I still love HP a lot and it's been such a comfort to me over the years, but I lowkey love criticizing books lol ;)
(June 28, 2021 - 7:32 am)
Wanna here something weird?
In the Order of the Pheonix (Which is, by the was, my third favorite, against the Deathly Hallows and the Half-Blood Prince) at Christmas dinner, there are seven Weaslys (Because Arthur and Percy are gone), Harry, Hermione, Lupin, Tonks, Moody, and Sirius. That makes thirteen. And who was the first person to stand up?
Sirius Black
(July 30, 2021 - 12:44 pm)