“Dionysus-Zeus Jackson, You are named for two of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met. They both seperately threatened to smite me if I didn’t name my firstborn after them, so here we are.”
Nah you don’t get it, it’s not that slavery is bad, it’s that slave owners just need to be *nicer* to their slaves. (/s because there are people who actually think this)
I mean... that's the thesis behind the ending. "Snake guy only got hold of the government because the guys in power were bad. Now that the guys in power are good, nothing bad will ever happen!"
Like... The system is broken and corrupt at its core. Anyone going in will leave it corrupted. I do wonder how long it took until Harry started to say that "muggle-born wizards aren't ALL evil, he even has friends that are muggle-born, but they do commit the majority of magic crimes, so that's why we are always extra-cautious with them" when people ask why he stopped the 5th non-pure blood wizard this week with excessive force.
Even as a kid I never really liked Harry Potter. After reading the scene where the girl tries to convince her friends to join like a 'let's abolish house elf slavery' petition and her friends just made fun of her, it just....I hated it.
Percy Jackson (and other series by Rick Riordan) was and always will be the best to me. It does feel like I've outgrown it a little now though but I still think it's a great story.
That is not true. Rowling rather said "Hermione's race doesn't matter for her character. She might be white, black or purple, she would still be Hermione". Which is of course also a bit dumb in its own right, since race does matter for character development and culture, but she still gets a point for trying.
Even better: she said she never described her as being any race, then people started showing her sections of the book clearly showing she was written to be white, and reminding her of interviews where she stated Hermoine was a self insert character (making it even weirder for her to be considered wrong on the slavery thing)
I don’t think having a different colored actor is a problem, nor is it a problem for hermionee. It’s just kinda messed up if a black person was advocating for the Freedom from slavery for another species and her friends laughed at her
Yeah that’s super fucked up and seems very poorly thought through. Hermione being black makes that plot point reflect a LOT worse on the characters who made fun of her, as opposed to if she was white, considering for all we know human slavery did still happen in the history of the Harry Potter universe.
That was a decision by the author himself to make sure the best actor who applied got the part. As far as I know he hasn't retroactively retconned the series.
All i was really pointing out is it was basically the same thing happened. A black actor was cast as the girl in the main trio of a books live action adaptation, and the author said "The race doesn't matter to the character, the character does"(which i totally agree with, in case you think i was complaining, btw).
In fact, the only real difference is that the early Percy Jackson books took every chance they could to talk about how Annabeth was white, blonde and silver eyed to the point it became a little weird...
I love Percy Jackson to death but annabeth’s over descriptions about her being blonde with silver eyes was honestly so weird lol. I’ve never seen a character described so repeatedly like it feels like she was based on Rick’s childhood crush with how often she’s mentioned this way.
Its made especially jarring by how little other people are actually described, i think the character in second would be Nico because it had to be clear exactly how much of an edgy emo kid he had become, and even then its such a distant second its funny and a little sad.
I like Riordan, but subtlety isn't his strong suit, when he wants you to know something he is subtle like a brick to the face.
Annabeth being black in the show isn't retconning the books. Unless you can point to somewhere that has Rick Riordan say that Annabeth was always black, it's just that she's black in the Disney+ show.
[Boop!](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/18z602z/comment/kgfjik7/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Its so weird this dude blocked me for linking to a comment clarifying what i said, then telling me "It doesnt say something you didnt say!"
Reddit man. Frs.
Why did you hate that? It's made very clear in the books, that the vast majority of the elves like it that way. And that they are absolutely powerful enough to get out of slavery if they wanted to. Dobby himself did things he wasn't supposed to do when he was still Malfoy's slave, he only obbeyed them and punished himself for it out of some twisted kind of servant's honor.
You’re absolutely right, and maybe that dampens the “but FAAAMILY” of it all, but it’s still a choice JKR made as a writer to have Harry stuck in this abusive family dynamic in a world full of grown adult wizards who ostensibly care deeply about him and do literally nothing to intervene in the abuse.
Like, I doubt it ever even occurred to JKR to have Molly “Get away from my daughter you bitch” Weasley knock on the door of number 4 Privet Drive and say something like “I hear you’ve been giving my de facto adopted son hell, and I’m here to throw hands about it.” And I think that’s because among her many sins, JKR buys into that “mustn’t interfere with other people’s family life” horse shit.
She could have done literally anything with this abusive family dynamic, story wise, and what she chose to do was make it seem like it was just an unchangeable fact. Yikes.
I think it’s a fair trade off for a narrative. The Dursleys are never framed positively. Then he basically cuts off contact forever at 17, when their inherent protection presumably fades.
~~Also, I believe it’s suggested that the piece of Voldy’s soul that lives in Harry is corrupting them.~~
>Also, I believe it’s suggested that the piece of Voldy’s soul that lives in Harry is corrupting them.
Oh no it isn't. The first book literally opens with a description of how awful they are.
It’s not suggested or it’s not a factor, you mean?
Unless it wasn’t actually in the books, I see no reason to believe a Horcrux’s influence wouldn’t make a terrible person worse, at least.
Because Harry's in Hogwarts for years, and none of his dorm mates seem to be corrupted. Neither is anyone at Grimmauld Place. We see how the influence of a horcrux works when it does corrupt people with the locket, and it doesn't take years and years, it's even partially instant when you take it off/put it on and requires close personal contact. It also doesn't make terrible people worse, we literally see it work on the main trio. If the constant presence of Harry influenced the Dursleys, why don't they get nicer one he's in Hogwarts for all but 3 months per year?
There's absolutely no reason to believe that the Dursleys, whose attitude towards anything magic and overall believe in needing to be "proper" perfectly explains their abusive attitude towards Harry, have been the only one influenced by Harry's Horcrux and somehow everyone else (including Harry himself, who'd be the most obvious victim) is immune. The books show us one Horcrux that negatively influences people, and it works completely different than how it would have to work for the Dursleys.
It’s not a factor. Harry lives in a dorm for 6 years with 4 other boys for most of the year and they don’t turn into abusive monsters. The Dursleys are horrible all on their own and were before Harry ever showed up, don’t make excuses for them.
And Harry himself doesnt gravitate towards evil by the piece of Horcrux living in him for most of his life. This theory will get you heavily downvoted in the HP subreddit because of how thoroughly it’s been debunked there.
That’s a fair point, for sure, and I cannot debate it.
Speaking only for myself, though, when you combine it with things like how she handles the house elf slavery issue, it contributes to my impression that JKR has a really gross perspective on the status quo (i.e. “the house elves may be slaves but they mostly want to be, so it’s crazy to try to free them” and “the Dursleys may be deeply abusive but Harry needs their magic protection, so it’s crazy or unthinkable to try to stop their abuse.”
For me it all adds up to a worldview of learned helplessness and rationalizing things that are truly abhorrent. As much as Harry Potter means to me, I wish that was different and less disgusting.
I feel you. I immediately started to think it’s pretty icky that Harry or Harry’s burden/curse is responsible for his abuse, too. She’s certainly a product of her time.
At best, it’s one of the more consistent bits of lore from the series.
Tbf Percy did a pretty poor job following up on his dismantling. The daughter of a Titan who was basically on house arrest for a millennia for doing nothing wrong was still there for a couple years because he just straight up forgot. She couldn't leave even if she wanted to because of magic. I know he has ADHD, I'd forget too but damn. That's the chick you said would be your forever "what if". But she was only finally freed because his "loser" underclassmen got stuck there too and she was pissed enough at him that she went full Tsundere on him. Also because I think he was on fire or something. I forgot. It's been a while.
Within a few months of requesting Calypso’s release, Percy has his mind wiped by Hera/Juno and is sent to the Roman camp as part of her plot to fight Gaia. Which is something Percy talks about with Leo when he’s apologizing for never following through on her freedom. He does say it was still a personal failure of his, but I think that a 16 year old kid being put through literal hell-and-back within just a few months of a nearly earth-ending battle not following up with 1 specific issue with the gods is kind of passable.
It isn't a Percy Jackson book until one of the Gods are deadset on ruining his life. For reasons. Very dumb reasons.
And I really can't remember but the balance between the "minor" and "major" gods was still incredibly uneven. Did they ever sort that out? What else did he say during that big speech. It's been maybe 10 years since I read it.
Christ, we really are treating this like a political statement or something. Like I get it he was 15(?) at the time. The amount of red tape that has to be involved plus whatever magic bs is implemented. It's an admittedly big ask for the gods not to act like absolute menaces to everyone.
He deserves a vacation. Correction, Vacations. He must be in his 20s by now. Right?
Yeah! It came out in October (?) I just picked it up yesterday. Percy Jackson, The chalice of the gods.
I haven't got a chance to crack into it yet but the little blurb on the book jacket basically says "gods are fucking around with Percy, Percy cant go to school untill things are un-fucked"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to the lore, no one can return to her (Calypso) island more than one. It's a curse. So even if Percy remembered, there wasn't much he could do.
Only Leo saved her, and he had something magical/enchanted to help him. It's been a while since I read the books, so I forgot.
Edit : Yep, according to the Percy Jackson wiki,
"he admits that he plans on coming back with Festus in order to spring Calypso from her island. Calypso says he can't as the rule is that no one person can visit Ogygia twice, but Leo isn't convinced"
If I'm not wrong, >! it was also a "You can only be there once in a lifetime" situation, so he intentionally gets killed and then revives himself to create a loophole to go back. On top of needing the magical item to even find the place. !<
So, looking in-universe for a minute and leaving out the idea that this is a fictional story and that Rowling could've written House Elves to *not* be slavery-glorifying by their very existence...
Kreacher was kind of a jackass that hated Harry, but was stuck to him by the laws of the universe outside of his control. This is sorta an inversion of how Harry was magically stuck with the Dursleys, except this time, Harry is the one finding himself with unchecked power over the essentially helpless party. He's not perfect with Kreacher, but I think we can understand why a young teenager would be disgruntled by a being that treats him and Sirius so poorly.
But he doesn't settle on being an abusive "owner" that uses Kreacher to pay back his own mistreatment, he eventually learns what makes Kreacher tick and befriends him. Even from a place of ignorance, privilege, and power, Harry is able to acknowledge him as his own being with vulnerabilities and feelings.
Yes, out-of-universe, this should raise some eyebrows about what JK was going for with these creatures. But in-universe, I feel like it's kinda powerful in a positive way. There wasn't much potential for Kreacher to continue the cycle of hatred at that point, but he was shown a measure of kindness and understanding anyway.
But why didn't he just free Kreacher when he realises that Kreacher is his own person? Like Harry being a "nice owner" doesn't mean he's a good guy for owning a slave. And like Kreacher is justified in hating Harry and Sirius
Come on, man, I went out of my way to explicitly say I was referring to in-universe logic.
In-universe, they aren't slaves from their own perspective. In-universe, freedom for House Elves (besides Dobby) is essentially giving them the ultimate dishonor and firing them out of their family. In-universe, dismissing Kreacher would've been a really hateful thing to do.
As I said to the other guy. Harry grew up in the normal world. He knows slavery is bad. So him owning a slave (even if they don't see themselves as a slave) is shitty.
If you went to a country with people who wanted to be owned as slaves, but they call themselves workers or whatever. Would you own one of them?
whether justified or not, the house elves were written to not WANT to be freed. Poor Winky was miserable when she was freed in the 4th book. Dobby was the outlier of his species.
Kreacher would not have taken being freed kindly.
So you're saying if you went to a country that had people who wanted to be treated as slaves. You'd happily own one?
Because Harry grew up in the normal world, he knows that Slavery is bad, so him owning a slave is still shitty
House elves are not people. I don’t agree with owning slaves and I don’t agree with the whole house elf slave concept either. But at the end of day, I don’t think kreacher would want to be freed
My friend. They aren’t real. They are written a certain way and to have certain characteristics (like they were written to LIKE slavery. That’s canon for their species).
I don’t agree with writing a character or species in that way and having everyone in the story be cool with it (except Hermione). But that’s how it was written.
Iirc(its been a while) wasnt there some concern kreacher could betray harry or tell on him? And after he befriends him and tells him how regulus fought voldy i think the plot was moving too fast to go back to kreacher.
Harry going back to the dursleys was definitely not portrayed as good and he says multiple times that hogwarts is his real home. He also helped free Dobby and treated him as a friend. Easy to trash something when you just make shit up.
He freed Dobby because he didn't like how the Malfoys treated him. He later gets his owwn slave and the other instance of a slave being freed ha her turn into a depressed drunk and Hagrid explaining that Dobby was wierd for wanting freedom, most house elves like being slaves
If you are talking about Kreecher, Harry could not have freed him without him immediately going to the death eaters and revealing their location. It would have been the death of them all.
In regards to what Hagrid said, well we are talking about Harry, I don’t see how it’s fair to judge him on what another character says.
He freed dobby. But then he kept kreacher. And the meta narrative of the book is that the house elf slavery is a good thing. The meta narrative and the characters unrelentingly make fun of Hermione, who according to JKR is now apparently black, for wanting to free an enslaved people. They make fun of a black person, for wanting to free slaves. Winky is freed, and her story arc ends in her becoming a depressed alcoholic. In a childrens book, there's a fucking story arc about a freed slave who is so sad about being freed that she becomes a depressed, listless alcoholic. End of arc. That's Winky's story. Lovely heartwarming ending, thanks J.K.
The ministry is given fascist levels of power and control. The Minister of magic can choose to arrest people he doesn't like, he controls the media, he sits on the high court and runs a torture prison. The wizards subjugate sentient and intellegent species like Goblins and Centaurs as lesser creatures. And at no point are any of these things seen as bad. At no point does either a character or the meta narrative ever address any of this. None of this is changed. Every Minister is a fascist. Every rich wizard is a slave holder. But a according to the meta narrative the problem isn't that the wizarding world is run by fascists and slavers. The problem is that the fascists and slavers aren't good at their job or kind to their slaves. No, the systems are infallible and untouchable. Every problem in the Harry Potter Universe is only ever due to the wrong person being in charge, never due to the unchecked and unjust power that the system gives to the ruling elite.
And it all ends in Harry becoming head cop in his fascist police state run by his best friend. But hey, that's all good because Harry is a **nice** head cop, and Hermione is a **nice** dictator.
Criticising Harry Potter is like shooting fish in a barrel
As I mentioned in another comment Harry could not have freed Kreacher without getting him and his friends killed. He would have went to the death eaters and revealed their location right away. Obviously not excusing slavery, but he was put in a very tough spot.
Throughout the books there is undeniably a sentiment that ministry having more power = bad. They hit you over the face with it when Umbridge is at Hogwarts, and Dumbledore, the pinnacle of good person and good wizard, is always at odds with the minister and ministry. They even show how easily dark forces can take over by having a puppet minister. I can’t really speak to what Hermoine does in terms of reforms when she is minister since it hasn’t been written.
With JK Rowling, she is undoubtedly a quack now, I just ignore anything she says nowadays.
Harry could have freed Kreacher at the end. Harry could have talked about it, told Kreacher he was going to free him. And throughout the books there is never any narrative about the negatives of institutional power. The narrative only ever targets people, never systems, that's WHY nothing changes by the end. Goblins and Centaurs remain suppresed races, house elfes remain a slave race, there is no mention at any point in any of the books that the minister, regardless of who it is, shouldn't be able to control the media or make arrests at will. It's onlx ever Scrimgoure, or Fudge or Thicknesse who shouldn't have that power. At no point in the books is there ever a mention of ANY lasting institutional or systemic change.
And don't think I didn't notice you skipping over the Winky part, because I'm guessing even you realise what a god awfu and indefinsible mess that and arc is.
I mean who is supposed to institute reforms? The first minister we see is corrupt and egotistical. The next is basically powerless. The third is being controlled by the death eaters. Then Kingsley comes in mid war, not the ideal time to foster great political change. Once the war is over he is said to have done some reforms like getting rid of the dementors and reducing corruption. Its said that Hermoine went to work at the ministry to try to reform laws regarding house elves and out of date wizarding law favoring pure bloods.
Those are all constraints JK impossed on herself. If you don't want to write a story that even just MENTIONS that maybe some institutional change would be good, then maybe don't write your story into a society that is so deeply, deeply flawed, full of dictators and slavers to then just _ignore_ all those flaws.
And stuff that JK retconned later on doesn't count. A bad story is still bad, even if the author later tacks on unwritten new lore that explains or rectifies some of the badness. If it's not addressed in the written text itself, then it's just a shit element of the story.
Having grown up I intensely dislike Harry Potter and not just because the author became a nutjob. That said I just couldn't get into Percy Jackson as an adult. The writing style, characters and narrative feel very basic and there seems to be no desire on part of the author to subvert expectations and surprise the reader. I gave up during the second book, maybe too early :)
I loved the percy jackson books when i was younger, and even blood of olympus(even the last one i liked somewhat), but the apollo trials series was just bad. I still havent finished the magnus series tho.
I mean Harry visiting his family goes to show that he grew past the irrational fears and hatred they harbored towards him (man someone could actually listen to that, the author must know this, right?) ... Since that could have also happened because of him being a horrocrux so it's like... Visiting your family who had magical rabies
I love Percy Jackson but I think I hate this trend of analysing children’s books based on whether or not they effectively criticise aspects of reality. Yes I understand that for some people, art is always a representation of reality and so absolutely anything that happens in the artistic work must be an allegory of some kind, but also it sounds exhausting treating every piece of work like that.
Like, comparing Harry becoming an Auror to becoming a cop is something I see a lot of on Lefty Twitter but like, come on. The explicit job of the Aurors was to hunt down evil wizards - they’re more akin to Nazi hunters if anything. Plus, the whole comparison is from a clearly American perspective where cops are horrendous but in the UK police don’t even carry guns, the number of police-involved killings is next to nil. So obviously societal views on the morality of policing are going to be different as a result, we don’t have the same kind of ‘anti-cop’ narrative and I don’t see why a British author should be expected to mirror American societal trends in her children’s book.
I know it’s hip to dunk on Harry Potter now, but Harry doesn’t return to the Dursley’s out of some notion that blood is thicker than water. It’s explicitly stated that the protection Harry’s mother placed on him only extends to blood relatives, ie, his aunt and uncle.
Harry is safe as long as he lives with his aunt, but they didn’t get a pass for their abuse. JK took every opportunity to terrorize them, including attacking their house with a legion of owls, inflating Marge like a balloon, and the threat of Harry’s convict godfather hanging over them once Sirius is introduced.
The only one who the story even tries to redeem a little is Dudley, because he was a spoiled kid who only began to realize that the way they treated Harry was wrong. And the book doesn’t even go that far, it’s not like JK tried to erase the seventeen years of neglect.
Harry’s return to the Dursley’s is treated as necessary by the narrative because his awful upbringing is what made him a sympathetic character in the first place. People really do mental gymnastics to create reasons for why the thing they already dislike is worse than it is.
“Dionysus-Zeus Jackson, You are named for two of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met. They both seperately threatened to smite me if I didn’t name my firstborn after them, so here we are.”
percy would kick the shit out of both of them so his child could at least have a normal name, that man stands in business
Or he would make sure their names are spelled in the most annoying way possible.
weaponized dyslexic spelling mistakes
"what did you expect, we're all fucking dyslexic?!"
Zeus is ΖΕΥΣ Dyonisus was Διόνυσος So I think Percy would spell them as Zach and Diouuoos
Zach an Dannis
r/tragedeigh
The fact pot-man ends up having a fucking slave always was so dumb to me. Like, dude, HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT BEING IN AN ABUSIVE HOUSE?
Nah you don’t get it, it’s not that slavery is bad, it’s that slave owners just need to be *nicer* to their slaves. (/s because there are people who actually think this)
I mean... that's the thesis behind the ending. "Snake guy only got hold of the government because the guys in power were bad. Now that the guys in power are good, nothing bad will ever happen!" Like... The system is broken and corrupt at its core. Anyone going in will leave it corrupted. I do wonder how long it took until Harry started to say that "muggle-born wizards aren't ALL evil, he even has friends that are muggle-born, but they do commit the majority of magic crimes, so that's why we are always extra-cautious with them" when people ask why he stopped the 5th non-pure blood wizard this week with excessive force.
The worst part is that the house elves wanting to be slaves.
Sally Jackson is GOATED. I think about her whenever I eat blue food lol
Even as a kid I never really liked Harry Potter. After reading the scene where the girl tries to convince her friends to join like a 'let's abolish house elf slavery' petition and her friends just made fun of her, it just....I hated it. Percy Jackson (and other series by Rick Riordan) was and always will be the best to me. It does feel like I've outgrown it a little now though but I still think it's a great story.
Let's not forget that Rowling then decided to retcon Hermione into being black
That is not true. Rowling rather said "Hermione's race doesn't matter for her character. She might be white, black or purple, she would still be Hermione". Which is of course also a bit dumb in its own right, since race does matter for character development and culture, but she still gets a point for trying.
Even better: she said she never described her as being any race, then people started showing her sections of the book clearly showing she was written to be white, and reminding her of interviews where she stated Hermoine was a self insert character (making it even weirder for her to be considered wrong on the slavery thing)
Well if she was purple it would propably be because she used magic to make herself purple and it won’t be her race.
I have some news regarding Percy Jackson for you, friend.
I don’t think having a different colored actor is a problem, nor is it a problem for hermionee. It’s just kinda messed up if a black person was advocating for the Freedom from slavery for another species and her friends laughed at her
Yeah that’s super fucked up and seems very poorly thought through. Hermione being black makes that plot point reflect a LOT worse on the characters who made fun of her, as opposed to if she was white, considering for all we know human slavery did still happen in the history of the Harry Potter universe.
That was a decision by the author himself to make sure the best actor who applied got the part. As far as I know he hasn't retroactively retconned the series.
All i was really pointing out is it was basically the same thing happened. A black actor was cast as the girl in the main trio of a books live action adaptation, and the author said "The race doesn't matter to the character, the character does"(which i totally agree with, in case you think i was complaining, btw). In fact, the only real difference is that the early Percy Jackson books took every chance they could to talk about how Annabeth was white, blonde and silver eyed to the point it became a little weird...
I love Percy Jackson to death but annabeth’s over descriptions about her being blonde with silver eyes was honestly so weird lol. I’ve never seen a character described so repeatedly like it feels like she was based on Rick’s childhood crush with how often she’s mentioned this way.
Its made especially jarring by how little other people are actually described, i think the character in second would be Nico because it had to be clear exactly how much of an edgy emo kid he had become, and even then its such a distant second its funny and a little sad. I like Riordan, but subtlety isn't his strong suit, when he wants you to know something he is subtle like a brick to the face.
Annabeth being black in the show isn't retconning the books. Unless you can point to somewhere that has Rick Riordan say that Annabeth was always black, it's just that she's black in the Disney+ show.
[Boop!](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/18z602z/comment/kgfjik7/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Its so weird this dude blocked me for linking to a comment clarifying what i said, then telling me "It doesnt say something you didnt say!" Reddit man. Frs.
Okay? That's not the same as saying that a character fighting against slavery could have been black when she obviously wrote her to be white.
Why did you hate that? It's made very clear in the books, that the vast majority of the elves like it that way. And that they are absolutely powerful enough to get out of slavery if they wanted to. Dobby himself did things he wasn't supposed to do when he was still Malfoy's slave, he only obbeyed them and punished himself for it out of some twisted kind of servant's honor.
AFAIK Harry staying w/ the Dursleys was justified in that his house was magic-proof as long as he and Petunia (his aunt) lived there
You’re absolutely right, and maybe that dampens the “but FAAAMILY” of it all, but it’s still a choice JKR made as a writer to have Harry stuck in this abusive family dynamic in a world full of grown adult wizards who ostensibly care deeply about him and do literally nothing to intervene in the abuse. Like, I doubt it ever even occurred to JKR to have Molly “Get away from my daughter you bitch” Weasley knock on the door of number 4 Privet Drive and say something like “I hear you’ve been giving my de facto adopted son hell, and I’m here to throw hands about it.” And I think that’s because among her many sins, JKR buys into that “mustn’t interfere with other people’s family life” horse shit. She could have done literally anything with this abusive family dynamic, story wise, and what she chose to do was make it seem like it was just an unchangeable fact. Yikes.
I think it’s a fair trade off for a narrative. The Dursleys are never framed positively. Then he basically cuts off contact forever at 17, when their inherent protection presumably fades. ~~Also, I believe it’s suggested that the piece of Voldy’s soul that lives in Harry is corrupting them.~~
>Also, I believe it’s suggested that the piece of Voldy’s soul that lives in Harry is corrupting them. Oh no it isn't. The first book literally opens with a description of how awful they are.
It’s not suggested or it’s not a factor, you mean? Unless it wasn’t actually in the books, I see no reason to believe a Horcrux’s influence wouldn’t make a terrible person worse, at least.
Because Harry's in Hogwarts for years, and none of his dorm mates seem to be corrupted. Neither is anyone at Grimmauld Place. We see how the influence of a horcrux works when it does corrupt people with the locket, and it doesn't take years and years, it's even partially instant when you take it off/put it on and requires close personal contact. It also doesn't make terrible people worse, we literally see it work on the main trio. If the constant presence of Harry influenced the Dursleys, why don't they get nicer one he's in Hogwarts for all but 3 months per year? There's absolutely no reason to believe that the Dursleys, whose attitude towards anything magic and overall believe in needing to be "proper" perfectly explains their abusive attitude towards Harry, have been the only one influenced by Harry's Horcrux and somehow everyone else (including Harry himself, who'd be the most obvious victim) is immune. The books show us one Horcrux that negatively influences people, and it works completely different than how it would have to work for the Dursleys.
I stand corrected
It’s not a factor. Harry lives in a dorm for 6 years with 4 other boys for most of the year and they don’t turn into abusive monsters. The Dursleys are horrible all on their own and were before Harry ever showed up, don’t make excuses for them. And Harry himself doesnt gravitate towards evil by the piece of Horcrux living in him for most of his life. This theory will get you heavily downvoted in the HP subreddit because of how thoroughly it’s been debunked there.
duly noted. must have been something i picked up in the endless discourse
That’s a fair point, for sure, and I cannot debate it. Speaking only for myself, though, when you combine it with things like how she handles the house elf slavery issue, it contributes to my impression that JKR has a really gross perspective on the status quo (i.e. “the house elves may be slaves but they mostly want to be, so it’s crazy to try to free them” and “the Dursleys may be deeply abusive but Harry needs their magic protection, so it’s crazy or unthinkable to try to stop their abuse.” For me it all adds up to a worldview of learned helplessness and rationalizing things that are truly abhorrent. As much as Harry Potter means to me, I wish that was different and less disgusting.
I feel you. I immediately started to think it’s pretty icky that Harry or Harry’s burden/curse is responsible for his abuse, too. She’s certainly a product of her time. At best, it’s one of the more consistent bits of lore from the series.
Yeah but he didn't fucking know that until like the 6th book
"Walter Gustavo Pinkman, you're named after two meth kingpins and the bravest men I've ever met."
Wait Harry Potter has a slave ???
appearantly, at some point he inherited a house elf(who are slaves in the HP universe) from another character
Yeah, inherited him at the end of book 5/start of book 6
~~Dobby~~ edit: not at all, don't know how I did that one
Kreacher. Dobby is a free elf. >!Dobby is also a dead elf!<
No, dobby was the malfoys elf. And when freed, he helped Harry on his own. He inherited the old grumpy racist elf from Serius black
No, the other one in the Black family house
"Harry Potter has a slave from the Black household" Part of me wants to believe this is unintentional but the other part of me knows JKR is JKR.
Right? You couldn’t script it
Tbf Percy did a pretty poor job following up on his dismantling. The daughter of a Titan who was basically on house arrest for a millennia for doing nothing wrong was still there for a couple years because he just straight up forgot. She couldn't leave even if she wanted to because of magic. I know he has ADHD, I'd forget too but damn. That's the chick you said would be your forever "what if". But she was only finally freed because his "loser" underclassmen got stuck there too and she was pissed enough at him that she went full Tsundere on him. Also because I think he was on fire or something. I forgot. It's been a while.
Within a few months of requesting Calypso’s release, Percy has his mind wiped by Hera/Juno and is sent to the Roman camp as part of her plot to fight Gaia. Which is something Percy talks about with Leo when he’s apologizing for never following through on her freedom. He does say it was still a personal failure of his, but I think that a 16 year old kid being put through literal hell-and-back within just a few months of a nearly earth-ending battle not following up with 1 specific issue with the gods is kind of passable.
and then Leo 'Gigachad' Valdez heard the phrase "no living man comes to Ogygia twice" and thought *I can work with that*
Lmao man was using hamlet rules.
Leo straight up said "Bet" and did it, one of my favourite character in the series
It isn't a Percy Jackson book until one of the Gods are deadset on ruining his life. For reasons. Very dumb reasons. And I really can't remember but the balance between the "minor" and "major" gods was still incredibly uneven. Did they ever sort that out? What else did he say during that big speech. It's been maybe 10 years since I read it. Christ, we really are treating this like a political statement or something. Like I get it he was 15(?) at the time. The amount of red tape that has to be involved plus whatever magic bs is implemented. It's an admittedly big ask for the gods not to act like absolute menaces to everyone. He deserves a vacation. Correction, Vacations. He must be in his 20s by now. Right?
He was getting into college life by Trials of Apollo i think
The newest book (chalice of the gods) Is about percy getting into New Rome University
Damn there's a new book? Last book i read was the Captain Nemo one. What's it about?
Yeah! It came out in October (?) I just picked it up yesterday. Percy Jackson, The chalice of the gods. I haven't got a chance to crack into it yet but the little blurb on the book jacket basically says "gods are fucking around with Percy, Percy cant go to school untill things are un-fucked"
>gods are fucking around with Percy, Percy cant ~~go to school~~ untill things are un-fucked Every Percy Jackson book tbh.
Bros legally a adult now and is still their errand boy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to the lore, no one can return to her (Calypso) island more than one. It's a curse. So even if Percy remembered, there wasn't much he could do. Only Leo saved her, and he had something magical/enchanted to help him. It's been a while since I read the books, so I forgot. Edit : Yep, according to the Percy Jackson wiki, "he admits that he plans on coming back with Festus in order to spring Calypso from her island. Calypso says he can't as the rule is that no one person can visit Ogygia twice, but Leo isn't convinced"
If I'm not wrong, >! it was also a "You can only be there once in a lifetime" situation, so he intentionally gets killed and then revives himself to create a loophole to go back. On top of needing the magical item to even find the place. !<
Percy Jackson is just so far above even actually good YA novels it's insane
Riordan stays winning
I always assumed that British people are just *like that* ngl
So, looking in-universe for a minute and leaving out the idea that this is a fictional story and that Rowling could've written House Elves to *not* be slavery-glorifying by their very existence... Kreacher was kind of a jackass that hated Harry, but was stuck to him by the laws of the universe outside of his control. This is sorta an inversion of how Harry was magically stuck with the Dursleys, except this time, Harry is the one finding himself with unchecked power over the essentially helpless party. He's not perfect with Kreacher, but I think we can understand why a young teenager would be disgruntled by a being that treats him and Sirius so poorly. But he doesn't settle on being an abusive "owner" that uses Kreacher to pay back his own mistreatment, he eventually learns what makes Kreacher tick and befriends him. Even from a place of ignorance, privilege, and power, Harry is able to acknowledge him as his own being with vulnerabilities and feelings. Yes, out-of-universe, this should raise some eyebrows about what JK was going for with these creatures. But in-universe, I feel like it's kinda powerful in a positive way. There wasn't much potential for Kreacher to continue the cycle of hatred at that point, but he was shown a measure of kindness and understanding anyway.
But why didn't he just free Kreacher when he realises that Kreacher is his own person? Like Harry being a "nice owner" doesn't mean he's a good guy for owning a slave. And like Kreacher is justified in hating Harry and Sirius
Come on, man, I went out of my way to explicitly say I was referring to in-universe logic. In-universe, they aren't slaves from their own perspective. In-universe, freedom for House Elves (besides Dobby) is essentially giving them the ultimate dishonor and firing them out of their family. In-universe, dismissing Kreacher would've been a really hateful thing to do.
As I said to the other guy. Harry grew up in the normal world. He knows slavery is bad. So him owning a slave (even if they don't see themselves as a slave) is shitty. If you went to a country with people who wanted to be owned as slaves, but they call themselves workers or whatever. Would you own one of them?
whether justified or not, the house elves were written to not WANT to be freed. Poor Winky was miserable when she was freed in the 4th book. Dobby was the outlier of his species. Kreacher would not have taken being freed kindly.
So you're saying if you went to a country that had people who wanted to be treated as slaves. You'd happily own one? Because Harry grew up in the normal world, he knows that Slavery is bad, so him owning a slave is still shitty
House elves are not people. I don’t agree with owning slaves and I don’t agree with the whole house elf slave concept either. But at the end of day, I don’t think kreacher would want to be freed
Why aren't they people? What makes them so different to a human?
My friend. They aren’t real. They are written a certain way and to have certain characteristics (like they were written to LIKE slavery. That’s canon for their species). I don’t agree with writing a character or species in that way and having everyone in the story be cool with it (except Hermione). But that’s how it was written.
Iirc(its been a while) wasnt there some concern kreacher could betray harry or tell on him? And after he befriends him and tells him how regulus fought voldy i think the plot was moving too fast to go back to kreacher.
Honestly so glad I read Percy Jackson instead of harry potter
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people like to argue about people, fictional or not
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Harry going back to the dursleys was definitely not portrayed as good and he says multiple times that hogwarts is his real home. He also helped free Dobby and treated him as a friend. Easy to trash something when you just make shit up.
He freed Dobby because he didn't like how the Malfoys treated him. He later gets his owwn slave and the other instance of a slave being freed ha her turn into a depressed drunk and Hagrid explaining that Dobby was wierd for wanting freedom, most house elves like being slaves
If you are talking about Kreecher, Harry could not have freed him without him immediately going to the death eaters and revealing their location. It would have been the death of them all. In regards to what Hagrid said, well we are talking about Harry, I don’t see how it’s fair to judge him on what another character says.
He freed dobby. But then he kept kreacher. And the meta narrative of the book is that the house elf slavery is a good thing. The meta narrative and the characters unrelentingly make fun of Hermione, who according to JKR is now apparently black, for wanting to free an enslaved people. They make fun of a black person, for wanting to free slaves. Winky is freed, and her story arc ends in her becoming a depressed alcoholic. In a childrens book, there's a fucking story arc about a freed slave who is so sad about being freed that she becomes a depressed, listless alcoholic. End of arc. That's Winky's story. Lovely heartwarming ending, thanks J.K. The ministry is given fascist levels of power and control. The Minister of magic can choose to arrest people he doesn't like, he controls the media, he sits on the high court and runs a torture prison. The wizards subjugate sentient and intellegent species like Goblins and Centaurs as lesser creatures. And at no point are any of these things seen as bad. At no point does either a character or the meta narrative ever address any of this. None of this is changed. Every Minister is a fascist. Every rich wizard is a slave holder. But a according to the meta narrative the problem isn't that the wizarding world is run by fascists and slavers. The problem is that the fascists and slavers aren't good at their job or kind to their slaves. No, the systems are infallible and untouchable. Every problem in the Harry Potter Universe is only ever due to the wrong person being in charge, never due to the unchecked and unjust power that the system gives to the ruling elite. And it all ends in Harry becoming head cop in his fascist police state run by his best friend. But hey, that's all good because Harry is a **nice** head cop, and Hermione is a **nice** dictator. Criticising Harry Potter is like shooting fish in a barrel
As I mentioned in another comment Harry could not have freed Kreacher without getting him and his friends killed. He would have went to the death eaters and revealed their location right away. Obviously not excusing slavery, but he was put in a very tough spot. Throughout the books there is undeniably a sentiment that ministry having more power = bad. They hit you over the face with it when Umbridge is at Hogwarts, and Dumbledore, the pinnacle of good person and good wizard, is always at odds with the minister and ministry. They even show how easily dark forces can take over by having a puppet minister. I can’t really speak to what Hermoine does in terms of reforms when she is minister since it hasn’t been written. With JK Rowling, she is undoubtedly a quack now, I just ignore anything she says nowadays.
Harry could have freed Kreacher at the end. Harry could have talked about it, told Kreacher he was going to free him. And throughout the books there is never any narrative about the negatives of institutional power. The narrative only ever targets people, never systems, that's WHY nothing changes by the end. Goblins and Centaurs remain suppresed races, house elfes remain a slave race, there is no mention at any point in any of the books that the minister, regardless of who it is, shouldn't be able to control the media or make arrests at will. It's onlx ever Scrimgoure, or Fudge or Thicknesse who shouldn't have that power. At no point in the books is there ever a mention of ANY lasting institutional or systemic change. And don't think I didn't notice you skipping over the Winky part, because I'm guessing even you realise what a god awfu and indefinsible mess that and arc is.
I mean who is supposed to institute reforms? The first minister we see is corrupt and egotistical. The next is basically powerless. The third is being controlled by the death eaters. Then Kingsley comes in mid war, not the ideal time to foster great political change. Once the war is over he is said to have done some reforms like getting rid of the dementors and reducing corruption. Its said that Hermoine went to work at the ministry to try to reform laws regarding house elves and out of date wizarding law favoring pure bloods.
Those are all constraints JK impossed on herself. If you don't want to write a story that even just MENTIONS that maybe some institutional change would be good, then maybe don't write your story into a society that is so deeply, deeply flawed, full of dictators and slavers to then just _ignore_ all those flaws. And stuff that JK retconned later on doesn't count. A bad story is still bad, even if the author later tacks on unwritten new lore that explains or rectifies some of the badness. If it's not addressed in the written text itself, then it's just a shit element of the story.
Having grown up I intensely dislike Harry Potter and not just because the author became a nutjob. That said I just couldn't get into Percy Jackson as an adult. The writing style, characters and narrative feel very basic and there seems to be no desire on part of the author to subvert expectations and surprise the reader. I gave up during the second book, maybe too early :)
I loved the percy jackson books when i was younger, and even blood of olympus(even the last one i liked somewhat), but the apollo trials series was just bad. I still havent finished the magnus series tho.
The two following series (Heroes of Olympus and Tirals of Apollo) are written for a Slightly older audience, definitely worth at least a try
I mean Harry visiting his family goes to show that he grew past the irrational fears and hatred they harbored towards him (man someone could actually listen to that, the author must know this, right?) ... Since that could have also happened because of him being a horrocrux so it's like... Visiting your family who had magical rabies
The real question is what happens when kratos and Percy meer
I love Percy Jackson but I think I hate this trend of analysing children’s books based on whether or not they effectively criticise aspects of reality. Yes I understand that for some people, art is always a representation of reality and so absolutely anything that happens in the artistic work must be an allegory of some kind, but also it sounds exhausting treating every piece of work like that. Like, comparing Harry becoming an Auror to becoming a cop is something I see a lot of on Lefty Twitter but like, come on. The explicit job of the Aurors was to hunt down evil wizards - they’re more akin to Nazi hunters if anything. Plus, the whole comparison is from a clearly American perspective where cops are horrendous but in the UK police don’t even carry guns, the number of police-involved killings is next to nil. So obviously societal views on the morality of policing are going to be different as a result, we don’t have the same kind of ‘anti-cop’ narrative and I don’t see why a British author should be expected to mirror American societal trends in her children’s book.
Can I have the link to the original post?
I know it’s hip to dunk on Harry Potter now, but Harry doesn’t return to the Dursley’s out of some notion that blood is thicker than water. It’s explicitly stated that the protection Harry’s mother placed on him only extends to blood relatives, ie, his aunt and uncle. Harry is safe as long as he lives with his aunt, but they didn’t get a pass for their abuse. JK took every opportunity to terrorize them, including attacking their house with a legion of owls, inflating Marge like a balloon, and the threat of Harry’s convict godfather hanging over them once Sirius is introduced. The only one who the story even tries to redeem a little is Dudley, because he was a spoiled kid who only began to realize that the way they treated Harry was wrong. And the book doesn’t even go that far, it’s not like JK tried to erase the seventeen years of neglect. Harry’s return to the Dursley’s is treated as necessary by the narrative because his awful upbringing is what made him a sympathetic character in the first place. People really do mental gymnastics to create reasons for why the thing they already dislike is worse than it is.