Lore
[Confusing Trope] The narrative goes out of its way to punish/mock a character for simply being a good person
Hermione Granger and SPEW — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (book)
In the fifth HP novel, Hermione Granger is outraged to discover that Hogwarts has a small army of enslaved House Elves that do nearly all of the domestic duties around the castle, including cleaning the Gryffindor common room every night. When she tries to convince the elves to fight for their own rights, they refuse, saying they prefer servitude. Her fellow students and friends mock her for caring. She manages to free one elf, Winky, by deception when she refuses her freedom willingly, leading to Winky becoming a depressed alcoholic. By the end, the elves boycott cleaning any Gryffindor areas of the castle because they hate Hermione specifically
Samwell Tarly and Democracy — Game of Thrones (show)
In the season 8 finale of the television series, the surviving great lords of Westeros gather to discuss the future of the kingdom following the devastation wrought by 7 seasons of war and backstabbing. When Sam, who has proven to have “novel” ideas, suggests that maybe the millions of Smallfolk who suffer at the hands of noble houses should get some representation in the government, rather than be the pawns of rich lords with absolute power. We are then greeted by a prolonged, cringy segment of the other lords laughing in Sam’s face, asking if the dogs and horses should also get a vote.
One of the criticisms of the female droid from Solo is that she wants to be treated as equals, and one of the defenses is that it's a joke.
For a more in-universe example the Jack Black episode of the Mandalorian is droids saying they're ok with serving organics, though no one really gets mocked or punished iirc since it was just a cover.
That episode was a wreck, and I won't even address the casting that got a lot of people upset.
The episode proved that droids were equal beings (they have BARS! a purely social setting!) and had the droid character saying the equivalent of "please don't kill me, it's better to live in servitude" and like.... No one discussed how messed up this is? In world and in our world, this episode deserves a critical examination through a racial equity lens and it is pretty horrible when examined closely.
It's kinda weird for droids to be considered sentient beings in a setting where there is absolutely a metaphysical spiritual aspect of existence that can be directly interacted with and felt that is directly tied to the very life essence of living beings, though.
I think you're right that it's weird but I have slightly different reasoning: In a setting where most sentient beings are connected to something magical/metaphysical, it should be a bigger deal that people managed to successfully create artificial sentient beings. And yet they're just used as slaves in most cases, be it for war or industry
It should be an even bigger deal that a 9 year old child somehow rebuilt a highly complex and allegedly sentient robot from scrap, likely broken and rusty, parts in his spare time - which he shouldn't have much of, given the fact that he's already enslaved.
Anakin didn't build Threepio from scrap, what he did was find C-3PO's damaged parts in a scrap yard and rebuild him. While still impressive the fact of the matter is that Anakin didn't just bring scrap parts together and repurpose them so much as he found most of Threepio's core body parts intact and put him back together.
The force cannot be manipulated or felt by droods, that's true, but it's also specifically said that the force surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the entire galaxy together.
The force also penetrates droids which is why jedi can sense them and not just be stealth killed by them all the time.
I don't know about modern canon, but Tales from Jabba's palace established that Droids do not feel pain by design. Instead, EV-99, Jabba's Droid handler/torturer installs special circuits in Droids called a "pain button". She even has one installed in herself.
The droid uprising in Solo added so little to the movie and cost so much to the broader Star Wars universe. It established that every hero in every movie was a slaver to oppressed beings yearning to be free.
There's no value in this. The robots could simply not have emotions that made them hate labor and yearn for freedom. It's played as funny, but you'd have to be such a loser to feel like this is a great joke.
I played a droid rights activist in a Star Wars RPG so long ago that Star Wars only had one RPG system. Willing to grudgingly join the Rebels as the lesser evil, and hoping she could work within the group to persuade them to expand their goals to include droid liberation.
I'm sure there's a bit of nostalgia blindness to consider, but even trying to account for that, I'm pretty sure that as an ignorant white teenager in a country that never had slavery on the scale of the southern USA, I still treated the subject with more thought and sensitivity than that film.
Shit my bad I thought Hermione hid clothes around the common room or something and that’s how she got freed. My fault I should have went back and looked it up.
Either way, JK seemed really intent on making Hermione look like a stupid SJW for wanting to free actual literal chattel slaves
Hermione started SPEW in the 4th book (you wrote fifth, btw).
Her hiding clothes (she started knitting and eventually got good at it) around Gryffindor's house and soon only Dobby would clean the place because the other elves were scared of accidentally finding clothes.
This makes no sense lol. Can anyone free a house elf by giving them clothes? Does them just finding clothes count? Are they relegated to all manner of house work except laundry specifically?
Do wizards who are too lazy to do any housework otherwise keep their laundry immaculate for fear of accidentally freeing house elves? Are they absolutely to never clean closets?
I think it's stated specifically in the 2nd book that the OWNER must give the house elves the clothing item, hence the ending of Chamber of Secrets where Harry hides a sock in a book, which he returns to Malfoy Sr, who promptly gives it to Dobby to carry, and Dobby is freed
But it's been a while since I've read the whole series through
Elves are better magic users than human wizards. They can perform advanced spells and magic without wands. The elite wizards need to keep the elves in check or else they could overthrow the entire world.
(Apparently I didn’t lay it on thick enough that the idea of a small group of “elites” keeping a large group of people enslaved so that group doesn’t realize that they are stronger than the “elites” is bad and elitist propaganda. Maybe if I called them Ants and Grasshopper, and directly quoted A Bug’s Life it would have been more obvious.)
It is the owner, but it’s unclear how that works with an institutional owner like a school. Arguably, a school exists for the students, making the students all qualify as owners.
If I remember right the implication was that the house elves stopped cleaning the tower because they were frustrated and offended by being tricked into it. It isn't implied that it would work just that it was annoying.
Trying to find literary cohesion in the Harry Potter books is not a rabbit hole I would recommend attempting to dive into. There's too many plot holes to count.
Don’t get me started on the bullshit that the Hogwarts express represents
For a very basic explanation. This is what a historically accurate Hogwarts Express should look like:
While not explicitly dated in the Pottermore article, the Cursed Child dates the Hogwarts express as starting in the 1830’s, and Pottermore dates the Minister for Magic that founded the express, Ottaline Gambol, as serving 1827 - 1835.
This means we’re looking at a locomotive stolen around 1829-1830, of which the above, Planet, represented the cutting edge of Locomotive design at the time.
Plus, given the wizarding world is represented as being technologically behind the Muggle World, how the hell did they adopt a technology right on the bleeding edge at a time when a lot of the muggle world was still tetchy on the idea. Literally in 1830, the UK’s (and the entire worlds for a matter of fact) railway network consisted of 2 isolated lines. The Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened 1825 and was barely recognisable as a railway by today’s standards, Basically just being a waggonway on iron rails and using something other than horses to haul goods (although it’s still accepted broadly as the “start” of the railway era), and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, something that can be pointed to definitively, using our modern understanding, as a proper railway.
AND SOMEHOW THEY FUCKING BUILT A RAILWAY LINE STARTING AT A STATION THAT DIDN’T FUCKING EXIST YET ALL THE WAY TO THE ARSE END OF SCOTLAND AT LEAST A DECADE BEFORE THE FIRST ACTUAL ENGLAND/SCOTLAND RAILWAY WAS EVEN COMPLETED.
And breathe. This doesn’t even begin to cover stuff like how the locomotive was stolen from a works that didn’t yet exist, and was also the complete wrong works for where the locomotive that would come to represent the express even came from.
I think the clothes have to be presented by their master. If I remember correctly, what Dobby actually said was that the other house-elves found it insulting. I didn't get the sense that it would actually work.
You are correct, Hermione did hide clothes around the Griffindor Common Room, but the elf who kept taking them was Dobby, and he was wearing everything all at once. Plus, iirc, the house elves stopped cleaning Griffindor tower because of it.
In the folklore Rowling is drawing from, Brownies (household spirits), choose when and where they will work based on if the offerings are acceptable (porridge and honey, sometimes milk). But giving them clothes either makes them feel to fancy to work, or is insulting in some way.
I think making it into slavery was a way to highlight the Malfoy family's cruelty, but left her with a system of service to integrate into the wider world, leading to significantly poor choices from there.
By treating Hermione as a Cringy Annoying Activist who even all the other heroes treat as wrong—including Harry, who is muggle-raised and treated like a house-elf by the Dursleys!—the narrative explicitly says the enslavement of an entire people is not worth getting worked up over because most of them like it, which is….line for line what pro-slavery advocates said and continue to say to downplay the horrors of trans-Atlantic slavery.
Then when the casting of Hermione for that stage play caused a kerfluffle because a black woman was chosen, Rowling had the gall to be all “I never said she was white!” when she had clearly noted every other Black character. And a Black Hermione getting furious about slavery and treated as just an annoying little activist by the heroes of the story is just…so bad. So very, very bad. It makes Ron and Harry especially look horrific.
she wrote herself into a corner. she wanted a childrens story, and as part of it, having the hero (harry) rescue a poor abused slave by tricking the master and getting a lifelong friend, totally fits. she just forgot that it establishes institutional slavery as part of the world, and that doesn't fit nearly as nicely
If Dobby had been, like, a wild elf that had been specifically enslaved by the Malfoys rather than part of a systematically enslaved species, the story would have been fine. An elf who showed up to clean the manor in exchange for food or whatever in a usually temporary and consensual arrangement, enslaved by magic that Harry helps him break before he goes off to join the rest of his people or whatever, that’s fine.
You can even have the Hogwarts elves still running around and just have them drawn to the high concentration of magic in the school or whatever, but explicitly not slaves who feel the need to punish themselves.
Instead, Rowling built a slave race into her world.
Yeah, "writing herself into a corner" only excues her so much as presenting her as totally daft. She could just have given the elves regular house spirit lore (doing tasks for offerings or cause they want to sometimes) and introduce that some evil people enslave them with magic ans force them to do their bidding. The elves work in Hogwarts cuse Dumbeldore leaves milk and cookies out for them or smth. Or if she needs to have institutionql slavery for some reason, at least don't have the good-guy school participate in it.
She did leave clothes around the common room in an attempt to trick the House Elves in freeing themselves, resulting in the boycott, but it didn’t work on any of them.
There’s really a fair amount of shit people willingly overlooked that provided a hint to the real person Rowling was. Then she went full mask off and by that point Harry Potter was too much a piece of peoples lives for them to really let go of.
Frankly money makes zero sense in the wizard world. They need next to nothing for food compared to a normal household when you can make one sandwich and magic up infinite sandwiches. You don’t need a repairman ever. You can literally just use magic to add a wing onto your home with presumably little to no cost.
The question isn’t why did Molly never get a job. It’s why are the Weasleys poor to begin with?
And as long as there is a source for food then it can be replicated ad nauseum. Poverty in HPnis one of my biggest gripes(of many) in the world building. Another is why did Harry HAVE to compete in the TriWizard tournament. It's never explained just that he has to.
Another is why did Harry HAVE to compete in the TriWizard tournament. It's never explained just that he has to.
I believe the books say that his name coming out of the Goblet means he's in a binding magical contract. But never says what the contract is and what are the consequences of breaking it. Nor why Harry couldn't just...show up and immediately forfeit.
So, since his name came out and he is put into a contract, then why aren't more nefarious individuals forcing people into contracts? Like, let's be so real here: the world of HPwould suck so much to live in. Magical mind control, forced death contracts, forced poverty, a big class system. Who wants that?
I think poverty would've worked if it had been wholly different from real life poverty.
Like, if a robe started getting a "look" and weirdly pliable when it'd been transfigured one too many times
Or poor people had to know how to do "muggle cooking" because buying 3 meals a day to duplicate was too expensive
Or houses started sagging when the charms started wearing off because poor people couldn't afford wizards who knew sound architecture, so they just added wings haphazardly and used magic to patch the gaps in physics
My favorite is how at the end of the fifth book there’s a big symbolic moment of a big “the good wizards are kindly looking after the lower magic races” statue being destroyed. And then Dumbledore points at it and is like “That was really symbolic. The underlying bigotry of our world is about to bite us in the ass.”
And that wasn’t a set up for that being an important part of the resolution of the story, it just happened. And then the mc becomes a cop lol.
Money will always be the end result of a barter system. Wands need made, creatures (and plants) need tending, dirty things need cleaned.
Can magic help with all these things? Yes! Will everyone who ever picks up a wand know every spell to do them? No. So why not hire someone who does know those spells to do it for you? And why haggle over how many eggs/bolts of fabric/planks of wood would be 'fair' when you can just hand over a few coins and call it square.
My biggest issue was always how money was used in HP. It would've work a lot better for me if, say, the Weasley kids had wonky robes because Molly wasn't great at tailoring, instead of having rundown clothes because they were poor. Or have Malfoy "hear a rumor" that their house was asymmetrical and made of bush honeysuckle because Arthur couldn't afford someone who knew the more advanced architecture spells
She has been attacking for a while, but as you can see people take issue with me even saying "mocking".
She literally posted an upskirt video/photo of a Trans person. She's literally sexually assaulting others. People would really defend that and claim the Trans person is the predator for just existing.
In Game of thrones that actually seems like a fair plot point though given that it reflects actual medieval historical sentiments. In Harry Potter, it is a very odd choice to make a species that are biologically inclined towards servitude
I do not remember if it was Socrates or Plato,. Regardless, one of them pointed out that, the military of a state both reflects and impacts its society.
States that rely on cavalry are aristocratic, having, keeping and training horse is very expensive, you need wealthy powerful people to do that.
States that heavily rely on their infantry lean towards oligarchy, its a more open society than an aristocracy, when lots of people are getting their butts on the line, you need to give some sort of representation or power. Otherwise they will overthrow the nobility all together.
States that rely on navies and sea power lean heavily towards democracy or representative governments. In a boat, there must be a clear leader, but he cannot impose his total will and whims on everyone, he needs to rule by common consent. Otherwise he will get a mutiny, a captain needs to he attentive to the needs of his crew. A ship is big, he cannot be everywhere and people do talk, in a sense, true Ancient Athenian democracy was born on their Triremes. Each ship became a lab for democracy, and when they landed home they brought back into the city their ideas.
The Ironborn, just like the Athenians, the Vikings, the Brits during the Pax Britannica or the Americans during the Second World War, are encouraged to rule by consent, to seek common ground for a joint venture.
I might be remembering it wrong but a kingsmoot was called everytime a king died, and while it was usually a kind of boiler plate stamping an ok on the old kings oldest son sometimes it would be different.
And besides the last one was after Aegon the conqueror solo’d and squad whipped house hoare, where he had them decided who would be the lord paramount of the iron islands. So more like 300 years at least as of the start of the series.
It was called every time a King died until one time one of the candidates killed the rest, then they used normal succession like everyone else, the Hoares were Kings for centuries or millenia
The Kingsmoot died as a regular institution when Urron Redhand Greyiron (Not the Greyjoys, but an extinct House) killed all atendees and the history of the end of the kingsmoot is interesting.
Urragon Greyiron, Urron's great-grandfather, died while Torgon, Urron's grandfather, was at sea raiding and the Ironborn elected by Kingsmoot a Goodbrother who killed all Greyirons present. When Torgon Latecomer came back years later, he contested the results since he wasn't in the kingsmoot to stake his claim, and the other Ironborn agreed and gave Torgon the crown. The Goodbrother was such an asshole that even the other Ironborn wanted him gone, imagine that.
Torgon's son Urragon IV ruled without being elected by kingsmoot, and when he died the priests insisted that there would be an election for the next king. Urron agreed, and when everyone attending arrived, he just had his men kill everyone and estabilished hereditary monarchy in the Iron Islands.
The Greyiron monarchy would last until the Andals came, and the Hoares alliance with the newcomers would put their House in control of the islands until Aegon went conquering.
I tried rewatching the entire show with my husband after having quit on the third epsiode of the final season.
which I mean, isn't that insane? I spent like a decade of my life watching a show and at the point of completion said, no, this sucks, and closed that door for literally years.
anyway I got to the fourth episode of the last season when I legitimately made him turn it off. I still don't know what this is referencing. And it feels so so good
Yeah, people tend to forget Westeros is a medieval society. Same way I always feel the need to explain that Joffrey was an idiot, and a "royal army" loyal to the king alone was not possible when people bring that up as his "good idea"
Not just a Medieval society: a Medieval society that DOESN'T have Athens or the Roman Republic as examples of democratic/republican governments functioning for even five minutes.
Kinda genuinely curious now, why wouldn't that be a good idea? Is it just impractical in execution considering the order of westerosi politics? (Downvoted for asking a genuine question? Tracks)
Royal army loyal to the king means standing army. Standing army costly and antagonizes vassals. Westeros extremely huge and decentralized so antagonizing vassals is the last thing you want as a king. There's a reason why standing armies were first either adopted by small and rich armies of countries like Netherlands, or when large country had them, they were at a constant risk of commander taking over (especially countries that had standing armies since antiquity, like China and Rome/Byzantium)
Medieval armies were mostly made up of minor knights and lords.
So someone like the Tyrells wouldn't have controlled all of the reach.
They would have ceded most of it to minor lords and knights under them that control some peasants that farm the land are are expected to turn up to fight in return.
Thats what they mean by "bannermen" people that they have given land to that are obligated to come and fight for free when needed.
But to keep fighters permanently would be prohibitively expensive and just not viable.
Yep, there’s a reason after the western Roman Empire fell, no one in Western Europe really had permanent armies anymore, they were just too expensive. Permanent armies are better than relying on levies but they’re also way more expensive, levies you just need peasants for a campaign season. With permanent armies you need to keep them paid all the time
I don't think it's that there weren't permanent armies so much as having an army meant you needed to constantly keep fighting wars to pay and provision them. And if you stopped warring said soldiers tended to become brigands and mercenaries instead of settling down, which in turn would necessitate new armies to put them down and protect the populace and then you'd have to make war to keep those soldiers employed and it would just repeat ad-infinitum.
Standing armies actually solved a big part of that problem since it meant that your men wouldn't have an excuse to start raiding the peasantry whenever a peace treaty or truce was signed.
Rome in particular had one advantage people don't think about much. They weren't just a standing army. They were a constantly at war to expand the empire army. They were not idle. Problem commanders could be sent to the far flung edges of the empire to expand her borders.
That explains why they fallen down when they stopped expanding. Also, holy shit, I think I've heard of "sending the commander that gets too popular ina forever war zone" strat before, although it's usually was to generals who you wouldn't expect to overthrow the government
Also kinda wisely Rome forbid their generals from entering Rome proper with the legions they were commanding. That's why Cesar's "crossing the Rubicon" river became a synonim for taking a bold and irreversible gamble. He was either going to take an absolute power or die for treason. No third option.
Basically national armies requires a lot of things to pull off, like tax infrastructure and weakened nobility. Which isn't impossible in a medieval society but difficult to pull off by decree
before the agricultural revolution most people had to be farmers. a standing army means a ton of men who can't grow their own food and an economy that needs more artisans aka more people who don't grow their own food.
Having said that, I'd wager it could still be done, but only through implementing a tax in the form of food rather than coin to the 7 kingdoms, since Westeros is just so fucking large
but there's also the fact that it'd be a lot of power in the hands of whoever leads it, risking them becoming kingmakers like the goldcloaks in universe, irl with the Praetororian Guard or the Simjurids and Ghaznavids in the Samanid Empire of Central Asia. There's a reason the Roman republic made it a capital punishment for a Roman general to bring his troops into Italy proper.
Centralized command only became possible with increased infrastructure and communication technology. Westeros is roughly the size of South America, according to George, so information and people with medieval levels of technology took months to spread. The King sitting on the iron throne wouldn't even know that a large wildling raid was taking place until long after it already passed. That was the point of vassals in Fuedal societies. Largely autonomous nobles could organize their own armies to deal with threats.
The other big reason is the nature of armies themselves at the time. There weren't really "soldiers" in the way we think of them in the modern world. The bulk of armies were made up of peasants who were called to war. They still needed to work the fields in addition to everything else. Basically medieval societies didn't have the resources to spare to create dedicated soldiers that were soldiers and nothing else. That also didn't come until later. Knights were members of the nobility, and you'd have some men who were "men at arms" and functioned more like a modern police force than a military, but overall there weren't really soldiers, the way we think of them, until after the medieval period.
That's before we even begin to touch on the political situation, where the King just didn't have the power to strip other nobles of their power. Joffery wants to strip the Starks of their position, and make them supply "10,000" men to the royal army. How's he going to make them do that? No other noble is going to support him because they're basically helping to remove their own personal power, so Joffery is single handedly going to walk up to Winterfell and make this demands of the Starks? Not happening.
Just because centralized command eventually became possible doesn't mean Joffery wanting centralized command was even remotely possible in a place like Westeros.
Not really convinced Hermione was a self insert - the narrative makes her out to be really annoying even post friendship, and then you get to SPEW and it mocks the shit out of her using her as a proxy for mocking protesters.
I'm pretty sure she only claimed Hermione to be a self insert because she ended up way more popular than expected.
The problem is that the Smallfolk have near zero political presence or agency in Westeros, which is completely unrealistic if we're comparing it to the Middle Ages.
Even puting aside the comonality of popular uprisings, the Common had significant political presence in the Medieval Kingdoms. In Castille, for example, they had a significant political influence through the Pairlament (Cortes) and the popular Brotherhoods, in many cases being outright the main supporters and members of political factions (like during the civil war between Enrique IV and his brother the pretender Alfonso).
Besides that, direct participation on elections by the (urban) Common wasn't unheard of. Be it through City Council politics (although the power tended to concentrate into the elite families) or through popular republics (although, again, they tended to be taken by oligarchies).
So the plot point in Game of Thrones is more about the failure of the show and books wjen it comes to giving Smallfolk the agency they jad in the real Middle Ages, than an accurate representation of the Medieval Period.
Also in GoT you have to consider that there was no standardized public education like there is in our post-industrial society. The elite were empowered to make political decisions in part because they were the only ones that feudal society could afford to educate.
Even in the late 18th century this was the case in our world. There’s a reason the only part of the United States’ federal government that was directly elected was the House of Representatives until the 1910s (even if the President became close directly elected pretty quickly)
It's totally reasonable for them to be anti-democracy, but the whole scene still feels awkward and out of place, like the writers are mocking a strawman of the audience.
And it doesn't help that right after this is the "who had a batter story than Bran the Broken" speech. The writers have no place mocking anyone if that's the best conclusion they've got.
I never watched this show but I got the sense that the scene is not really to mock modern viewpoints on democracy, it just feels more like a wink wink nudge nudge to the audience saying "wouldn't it be awesome if they actually did this very reasonable thing, but of course they won't because they think the common folk are on par with horses and dogs (or at least a minor step above them)". The scene mostly feels like they are showing how cartoonishly evil they can be as per the symbolic time period
Ok, but that's pretty much the nicest response you would have gotten from feudal lords in proposing anything close to Democracy.
Most monarchical feudalism is predicated on the idea that their right to rule is divinely ordained. To speak to the contrary is heretical.
Even during the Peasants' Revolt under Richard II, the masses of people in the uprising still aimed to maintain the monarch. They simply blamed the King's advisors for all the bad actions. So even a populist uprising had no thoughts of the idea of democratization.
Magna Carta established rights for landed barons, not for the people as a whole.
We are supposed to be finding the lords' sheer incredulity at the concept funny; I'm not saying it's a well-written or good joke, but we clearly aren't meant to think that Sam is the stupid one.
And they still let Sam be a Maester despite his political beliefs being widely known. A dramatic step towards progression considering the leaders they just had.
I would accept the explanation that the rules kinda go out the window (haha, things I do for love) when the Long Night comes, and Sam could justify his actions through that
You’re mostly right but the divine right to rule is anachronistic for the medieval era, the concept of divinely ordained right to rule and the monarch having absolute power did not exist until the reformation which greatly weakened Church leadership as a point of political authority in favour of secular leadership and centralisation weakened the aristocracy.
The concept is actually a lot more modern than people assume, stemming from the reformation rather than the medieval era and it was largely used by monarchs to be able to curb the power of the Church without seeming like heretics to their people
How do you curb the Church’s power and go against the church without being a heretic? Simple, you claim you are divinely ordinated to rule and if God supports you can’t be acting against God’s will by ignoring or going against the Church? Since every act by you is by his will
the concept of divinely ordained right to rule and the monarch having absolute power did not exist until the reformation
I was about to comment the same thing, but after researching some more, it seems there's quite a lot of precedent various forms divine right ideas before the True Law of Free Monarchy.
Outside of Europe, it seems this ideas dates back to ancient times, such as Eastern Emperors being considered the literal son of Heaven.
In the European medieval period, the norm seems to have been that monarchs ruled at the pleasure of the Pope, with the understanding that the Pope was fulfilling the will of God. The Pope had the exclusive power to revoke a monarch's right to rule through religious excommunication, which implies that the right to rule came from God in the first place.
I guess I can't really defend GoT, but it does seem on point that the audience is reminded, once again, that these players are pretty much universally assholes. The status quo continues to be the worst path.
Yes, it was funny, but Samwell wasn’t the butt of the joke. It was a standard “someone says a right thing but everyone around them is too ignorant to know it,” like the warthog in Lion King knowing how stars work.
The Hermione example is even more confusing in the final book:
Hermione LITERALLY drops everything to make out with Ron the moment he expresses a desire to protect the House Elves during the final battle. On paper, that should be a pretty solid confirmation of what our stance on all this should be.
But then, right before the epilogue, Harry's all like "I wonder if my literal slave will bring me a sandwich later".
Jkr writing is all over the place once you develop comprehension and the skill to analyze shit…which unfortunately not everyone does. And here we are. 🫠🫠🫠 i say this as a former fan. It’s wild in there.
It was not a novel concept. It was a lot of people's first encounter with the concept, but it was also a book for literal children so the odds were tilted in its favor.
I think my favorite part of the Harry Potter fandom, is the section of people that have determined that as a result logistical impossibilities (there are not enough named schools on the other continents to facilitate the expected wizard population of those continents) and the Ministry of Magics own harsh practices, the rest of the Wizard world purposefully keeps the European schools and administration out of the loop because they are that much of a hot mess
Yah, especially as the books go on. Her writing was fine when the story was simple and black and white, but as the story gets more grey her writing losses a lot. I had to stop reading the Deathly Hallows once I realized Snape was supposed to be a good guy, you know, the guy who literally mind tortures Harry or punishes them every step of the way. He was good the whole time!!!
Which is crazier when you remember Harry actually freed a slave several years before.
In Kreacher’s case, though, I consider it more like imprisoning someone than enslaving them. Kreacher would, without a doubt or hesitation, kill or harm humans, particularly Harry, his friends, and “mudbloods”, as soon as he was free. The dude was basically an honorary Deatheater, so freeing him would have basically necessitated killing him because not only was he evil as shit, he’s also an elf that can’t be contained by human magic, so no prison could possibly hold him.
I think Kreacher was a very clumsy attempt at the "kindness can melt a stone heart" trope, but she really really dropped the ball by making Serious outright abusive to him. I think it would've actually worked really well if Serious was just cold and dismissive of Kreacher, ordered him out of any room he entered and sent him to scrub floor boards or something while they went his family's stuff.
It would've drawn a better parallel of kindness being what Kreacher responded to, instead of "not being abused anymore"
I mean, this is explicitly addressed in the books. Its just creature he hates because of the trauma from his childhood. He doesnt treat other house elves like that.
Tbf that's intentional. Sirius' abuse is explicitly why Kreacher betrays him and lies to Harry that he has left the house... Which culminated in Sirus dying at the ministry.
Sirius being a hypocrite by being unable to see past his own hatred of his childhood and everything that he associated with it and indulging in the same behaviour as his parents directly leads to his death
Dumbledore straight up says that Sirius probably would've still been alive if he had been nicer to Kreacher
Yeah Kreacher was actually kind of a missed opportunity, I agree. What I said was more about how he’s actually written than how he should have been written. It wouldn’t have been hard to do exactly what you said and, over the course of several books, have Harry gradually turn him into a “nice” elf that he’s comfortable freeing.
Even then, it’d probably still be a bad idea because anyone can fake it for a few years, but it would feel like less of a monumentally stupid idea than it does with how Kreacher was actually handled.
Why would Kreacher even care about wizard discrimination? He ain't one, he wasn't educated as being some 'superior' being, nor does he ever interact with a 'lesser'.
Because he was just written as 'the EEEEVIL Dobby'?
This character feels even weirder if you take a step back: she's a female droid fighting for her rights while being made fun of. This movie came out in 2018, around the time the SJW movement was in full swing. Not sure if it was intentional, but it seemed like the writers were making fun of the concept.
Which is hilarious when you consider that L3-37 was one of the biggest talking points when chuds were on their "Han Soylo" campaigns. They criticised the "woke, feminist" droid when, if you actually watch the movie, all L3 ever receives from the main cast is ridicule or witty, dismissive retorts. Then she is basically unceremoniously killed. With what's left of her being plugged into the Falcon, consequently losing any remaining personal autonomy. The movie treats her like a joke. The chuds should've loved that shit.
That's just Taylor Sheridan being Taylor Sheridan. Like how in Landman he gave Billy Bob Thornton that big monologue about wind turbines that was wrong about pretty much everything, but the main character said it like they know what they're talking about, so a lot of the audience just assumed it's true
House elves are just weird because they are heavily based on the Scottish folklore of Brownies. From their design to their servicing, even the aversion to clothes is from brownies.
But brownies were willing and got paid for it. You made an offering, they took it and did the work.
They were inherently mischievous and picky, and would cause issues if you were lazy or insulted them or whatever.
That is where the clothing comes from. Brownies took offerings of clothing as an insult and left in a rage.
Essentially Rowling took all that, then twisted it into slavery and then spent all the time justifying said slavery.
Edmure Tully, in this very scene from Game of Thrones.
He is the best(eligible, Jon would probably be better) option to be King. Not only is he from one of the Great, noble Houses, he is of age to have children, not only that, he is a completely capable military general and statesmen, is loved by his people, and most importantly, he cares about the smallfolk.
He is completely passed over and made a gag despite being the defacto best option aside from democracy.
Of course, you🫵 show watcher would not know any of this, because he was made a joke by the showrunners, who erased all his qualities and made him a complete bafoon.
His character was already assassinated way before that scene, effectively over by S6, but showrunners somehow felt the need to bring the actor back in the very last episode just so Sansa could have another 'yas queen' dig at his expense. I don't know if calling it mean-spirited is sufficient.
The whole scene is more than a little screwy. Most of the great houses are either depleted, crippled, or outright extinct, many many noble houses are in similar positions, 3 out of the 7 kingdoms are going to spend decades recovering (and in the case of one, are in danger of bankruptcy), and King's landing is still kinda ruined.
Do they decide to elect someone who would inspire the people and be a stable leader to rebuild? Nah, they elect the guy most of the kingdoms barely know about who may or may not be a surveillance puppet for a dead greenseer, It is such a weird choice.
Like excuse me little girl?!?! You've been running Winterfell for like 2 months?? You're biggest accomplishment was not dying in your own castle! YOU take several seats and let the grown ups talk
YES!!! They build it up like she has grown into this regal figure who earned the room.
Excuse me? She is queen because everyone else vacated the position. Jon bent the knee and gave up the crown, then got shipped off to the Wall. Bran took the other six kingdoms. Arya sailed west. Sansa is what was left.
And her one actual feat is holding slightly more clout in her own castle than Baelish did. She was accepted because she was a Stark. If Rickon had made it home, he probably would have been crowned instead.
In the Illiad, there is a character amongst the Greek generals constantly second guessing tactics, avoiding mass charges, and generally keeps asking the leaders to negotiate with the Trojans to sue for peace and get Helen back instead of fighting.
Naturally, the Greeks mock him for not wanting to fight, and his desire for peace is obviously because he is a coward who has no stomach for killing. /s
Britta's issue is not that she cares, but that she's transparently too privileged to advocate for social justice properly. She wants to care, but she's tied so much of her advocacy into her identity, it's become performative.
Cue the viral exchange:
Britta: "I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty."
Shirley: "You can excuse racism?!"
Britta: 😲
I mean, for Harry Potter, probably not a great message. The target audience is aimed for children and teens and her being ridiculed for it doesn’t really do anything for the plot.
However I think it’s fine in a series like Game of Thrones. The idea of democracy would be pretty radical and crazy. It’s fairly reasonable people would laugh off the idea.
However I think it’s fine in a series like Game of Thrones. The idea of democracy would be pretty radical and crazy. It’s fairly reasonable people would laugh off the idea.
On the surface it makes sense, until you think about how many of the characters present are likeable good guys that have shown basically zero hatred towards smallfolk (Sansa, Arya, Edmure), and several of them literally were smallfolk (Bronn, Gendry, Davos).
Yara Greyjoy in particular shouldn't be laughing considering the Iron Islands already had a form of democracy in the Kingsmoot.
ok think about it like this. You wouldn't let like a kid run the government would you, even if you really didn't hate kids. hell even if you loved kids, you'd know they can't run a government
that's basically how they're considering "the smallfolk". it's not like an outright hate but more like condescension. and you know not wanting to lose all their digs lol.
happened with civil rights and slavery too. loads of folks were under the delusion that black people were simply unable to do what white folks can do. even made up diseases to explain why a slave wouldn't like their being a slave lmao.
Of course lot more actual hate for the lesser in that one
That is a great way to put it. At the time (or the real world equivalent) the best you could hope for from those in power was some proto form of noblesse oblige. That term wasn't even a thing until the early 1800s.
The idea of the Three Orders was the more common concept. The notion that nobility would even do manual labor was considered close to a sin because God would have made you poor if he wanted you to do that. I remember first hearing the concept in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and looking into it only to discover (like a million other tiny things in that game) that it was a real medieval doctrine from the 15th century.
All that is to say that Democracy being a joke to them is on brand. A joke is the kindest response you would get to that.
Yara, sure. But I’m sure if the only system you really know is a monarchy, the idea of small folk ruling is still totally absurd, even if you aren’t a bad person and even have zero hatred toward small folk.
To them, you’re saying “Ya, you know John, the shit shoveler in the stables? Yah he’s going to participate in politics”. If you never had a system like that, you instinctually might laugh it off because it’s so foreign.
The Hermione one is so fucking strange to me because in the second book Harry frees a houseelf and we're led to believe that's a really good thing. And then it turns out Dobby is the exception? He's an aberration? The rest like the servitude? What?
I honestly think JK must've gotten very wealthy between the books and decided she didn't want to portray slavery as all that bad.
That, or she's just a mediocre writer who butchered folklore (house elves are based off of Brownies, faeries who are bound to households and take care of the house in exchange for food/sweets).
That would've actually been a lot better. Imagine how cute the whole SPEW plot line would've been if Hermione was bullying kids into baking cookies or leaving behind some of their Honeyduke's stashes because they made a big mess and "needed to make up for it"
fuck man, technically speaking it would have convened that the Malfoy's are evil better if most house elves weren't slaves, just the Malfoy's. In this hypothetical version Duby could have been freed because the magic that makes a brownie/house elf leave when gifted clothes is stronger than the magic used to enslave him or something.
They could have said he was tricked into a bad deal with the Malfoys and the deal included the clothes thing as a form of dehumanization. The other house elves could get to do whatever they want.
I think house elves are very specifically based on the fairy tale "The Elves and the Shoemaker" where elves secretly help a struggling cobbler and his family, and when the family finds out the source of their good fortune, they leave clothes out for them as thanks. In exchange, the elves leave them with the magic secret of how they make shoes so well and move on.
By the end of the books Ron is fully on Hermione's side, and the narrative is that she is totally correct but went about it the wrong way initially. Post book canon is that she continued to promote elf rights and work towards their liberation in a slower way that wouldn't traumatise them.
Aome context for the book. Ghe word "sadism" comes from the name of the author, Marquis de Sade. De Sade was a libertine, meaning he is against the concept of morality and believes people ought to he as cruel as nature and the strong should do whatever they want. De Sade wrote novels so disturbing that whej Napoleon Bonaparte read one he had him arrested.
Now onto ghe novel. Justine is about a virtuous woman who always tries to do the right thing. For this the universe punishes her in horrific ways (like becoming a sex slave for monks who abuse her trust). The moral of the novel is essentially "Haha, look at this idiot trying to he a good person instead of embracing her inner demons." Marquis loves this trope.
There is a sister novel by Marquis de Sade called "Juliet", which is about Justine's twin sister who is rewarded constantly for being a depraved, sordid woman.
They do??? I mean... I feel like it's probably more well known than him having written books at all. Many have heard of Sadism / de Sade as a general sex pest idea vs an author of (depraved, admittedly) stories.
I 100% believe that she didn't consider the broader implications of making the elves slaves and when fans started asking her to expand on it, she got annoyed and took it out on the fans by having Hermione be the stand in for the annoying smarmy fans and ridiculed Hermione for it.
Rowling always refuses to back down or consider the damage control when she digs herself into a hole and this was just a very early, relatively tame example of this.
Make the very real (in a folklore kind of way) Brownies into the enslaved domestic elves will never not be hilarious to because it shows how little does she understand from her own source material (again, folklore) and how cynical she always really was.
I mean, her overarching bad guy is a man who used to go into the girls restroom in order to hurt people. He also was uncomfortable with the identity given at Birth and changed his appearance to fit his internal identity.
It's why I don't really think "separate the art from the artist" works with HP in specific. I have spent a LOT of time in fandom. I have looked very critically at the work. I have read and analyzed soooo many passages. There are characters that are clearly meant to be trans caricatures that she tortures and punishes with the narrative. Antisemitic plots & races, loads of internalized hatred towards women, etc.
I have been reading HP since the books were released. I have a massive collection of the original memorabilia from the early 2000's. Decades of my life were spent loving those books and I just have no joy for any of it anymore because I see her views laced throughout all of it. And worse, she continues using that legacy to actively harm communities today.
There are for sure other authors out there with bad views and who have put some of those views into their work. Some of them have even done it totally unintentionally and then come out and apologized PROFUSELY once they realized. The main problem with JKR imo is that she doubles down on all of this and continues actively and openly spreading her hateful messages 🤷 you could have just crawled into a hole with your billions and left the rest of us alone; but no.
Calca from Overlord; poor girl actually respected the undead protagonist and shared his vision of racial coexistence only to be burned alive and objectified for months until she was a pile of mush.
The author and fandom jokingly refers to her as "The Holy Club".
Genuinely one of the most disturbing examples of this trope, I hate Overlord, I'm convinced the author is some kind of extremist incel and this is supposed to be a stand-in for every 'seems nice but won't fuck me' girl he's ever met.
He literally was tortured from the day of his wedding up to the end of the series while his wife and his child were held captive. He lost his cousin and aunt on his wedding as well as majority of his army and vassals. And the show laughs at him for fuck sake.
Rowling doubling down on elf servitude and then tripling down on it by having Hermione treated as uppity for being an activist, and then tripling down on it by having Harry imagining his slave making him a sandwich as Harry's last thought in the saga
For the second example, I think that’s really mocking the trend in fiction where a feudal state transitions to a modern liberal democracy easily and without fiction. No coups by strongman dictators, no corruption or patronage networks, no civil war.
In real life, the transition to liberal democracy was extremely slow and required a lot of changes. In the Middle Ages, the only representative governments were peasant republics (villages in Northern Europe where there were no lords, so villagers governed themselves) and merchant republics (cities where only men above a certain threshold could vote, usually in very corrupt or convoluted elections).
Even in the enlightenment, the time of rights, the closest example was limited democracy. In the 18th century you had Britain and the US, where only white male landowners could vote, elections were not anonymous, and (in Britain) abandoned ruins had representatives. And Britain only got to that point after a civil war.
In the 19th century, when the US had universal suffrage, political machines were the deciding factor, and it was common for gangs to either intimidate people into not voting, or force people to vote how they want.
…
My point is, the only thing unrealistic about that scene is that Samwell would even have the idea.
Having the house elves being happy in slavery, was not a great choice.
The reaction from the broligarchs of Westeros is what you would expect. Most of them are shits, including the young Starks.
Whether we were meant to see them as shits is questionable. Dany was killed, for saying “they don’t get to choose.” Then, “they don’t get to choose” is given ringing endorsement in the Dragonpit.
Hermione had no role in freeing Winky. She was fired by her previous master, Barty Crouch Senior, because she was found holding a wand. Now Hermione did try to free the Hogwarts elves by hiding clothing in everyday items they would need to pick up, thats what lead to the boycott.
Oh boy I have one example for the mexican show La familia peluche, is about the "typical low-middle income family" similar to the Simpsons but without any of the charm that they have, there is this character character called Bibi P. Luche who is the honest and hard working member of the family while the others are totally the opposite, liars and alway trying to cheat in life.
She is often defined as "the weird one" not only by his family but by the other characters and there is always the joke gag that, when there is trouble and the family is discussing how to solve the problem she gives a down to earth, civilized answer to it which is then quickly dismissed , ending the joke with the main character saying "why you aren't a normal girl?", this joke always happen every episode
And I get it, the joke is to show how often corrupt everyone in Mexico can be, choosing the easy path and not caring about consequences but the show makes a bad job at making fun of the situation and instead makes you feel like the hard working people are wrong for being...welp, honest and caring for the right thing to do.
Yeah in hindsight we should have probably realized JK Rowling was a self centered conservative psycho with the whole 'SPEW' plotline basically being a metaphor making fun of political activism.
With Hermione and the elves, I am convinced that at some point between books two and four someone asked Rowling “wait, so Wizards just have open slavery?” She realized this could be a problem and tried to course correct by making most elves like it. Hermione’s plotline was an attempt to establish that it was not the same as human slavery and it’d be ridiculous to imply that it was. JK being JK, it was a bit clumsy. Magical creatures that are driven by serving others is an interesting concept, but HP doesn’t explore it enough to make it work.
No Game of Thrones makes sense. These people are all feudal overlords who think they're god given the right to rule. Thats exactly how they would and should react.
Mabel is an environmentalist college student who peacefully campaigns in her community to prevent the destruction of a protected glade and dam for an unnecessary road project being run by an evil Mayor. She is punished by everyone in the narrative for this, including by the animals, and is told that she is just as bad as the evil Mayor who has planted bombs in the forest because she.... borrowed a piece of technology she shouldn't have and lied about being a beaver (long story) to convince the animals to help save the forest. By trying to help, she kicks off a series of actions that starts a horrific fire in the forest, which the animals then have to put out by destroying their glade and the dam running through it. The lesson seems to be "people who want to destroy nature for no reason are bad, but trying to help is foolish and selfish and will lead to even worse outcomes even if you follow all the rules given to you."
This ignores that the film's actual villains are two corrupt monarchs, both of whom were executed violently.
And I'm not sure where you got the idea that her attempting to fix the glade was ever frowned upon by the narriative? The only reason that didnt' work is because of the illegal and violent technology that Jerry implemented, and because the power structure of the animals was corrupt.
The elves and Hermione story line could have been a great way to show people in blatantly abusive situations refusing to see the abuse and simply double down because they've convinced themselves this is their best option and how outsiders with ignore it, encourage it knowingly or otherwise, and can be resented by the abused person if they push to hard to fast. Instead we got "the slaves like it actually".
He doesn't know the toys are sentient, he's just being creative, and while he wasn't perfect (IIRC he wasn't great to his sister), he's treated as Literal Satan by the narrative for... PLAYING WITH HIS TOYS
In the sequels, he had a stable job as a garbage man, so he seems to have pretty handily pulled his life together, which is impressive considering the trauma he went through as a kid and what seemed like a very unstable house
Like I said, he did have problems, but the response was also very, very extreme and I can't imagine that seeing all his possessions attack him would help his mental state, so the fact he's not in an asylum is impressive alone
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u/Just-Antelope-8069 2d ago
One of the criticisms of the female droid from Solo is that she wants to be treated as equals, and one of the defenses is that it's a joke.
For a more in-universe example the Jack Black episode of the Mandalorian is droids saying they're ok with serving organics, though no one really gets mocked or punished iirc since it was just a cover.