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i have to say though i do prefer fanon that plays around within the violently bleak liberalism of hp canon rather than an imagined revolutionized or even moderately reformed wizarding society

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no bc why does NOBODY talk abt dementors 😭😭 ur telling me criminals are getting permanently robbed of their souls and everyone is fine and dandy with that??!?! insanity. i feel like both the books and the fandom dont spend enough time dissecting how horrific and inhumane that is regardless of whatever crime ppl committed it’s so crazy to me

no yeah the carceral state as depicted in harry potter is bewildering and also probably the most scathing indictment of the centrist worldview that jkr represents tbqh!! like the concept of “justice” as written in hp is so consummately liberal (Ontological Good = defense of the status quo)

very very brainrotted marauders fans will sometimes try to make the argument that jkr showing wizard society’s ills is the same as criticism. but i’ve always disagreed with this and if anything it shows the callousness & entitlement of liberal ideology, i.e the belief that “things will always be bad for someone, but this system is the best we’ve got!” - this belief is what allows jkr to feel comfortable writing a society with deep & violent inequality BUT have the entire trajectory of her plot be about defending such society from violent insurgents, while never addressing or reforming the violence inherent to the system. it drives me bonkers because this is a fictional world where she easily could have done that lol

i think that jkr’s brand of liberalism is just such an indefensibly bloodthirsty ideology 🫥 and that her politics beliefs inform every inch of the text & its plot structure. and that’s also why it pisses me off sooo bad when fans are like “X Character is a Death Eater = Bad Guy. You’re Not Allowed To Stan Them Or Ur Bad, Ethically 😡” <- obvious reasons aside it’s like… okay but you’re implicitly aligning yourself uncritically with the ethical worldview outlined by jkr which is itself horrifically flawed!!!!! and azkaban/the unquestioned yet exaggeratedly inhumane treatment of “criminals” as an underclass in harry potter is the most easily spotted example of these flaws

i talked about it more here in the context of my les mis reread but it will never not be funny to me that jkr is seemingly writing according to the exact same cartoonishly evil view of carceral “justice”/ morality that victor hugo was doing an exaggerated critique of in the 19th century. like she is literally javert.

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October 1954, Gaza. UN Photo

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Sharon Olds, “The Chute”

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wizards don't have the death penalty they just put criminals in prison on a remote island guarded by creatures who are allies to nothing but suffering and misery

something something fucking lord voldemort saying this somehow making him the only character who sees the punitive state for what it is

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something something fucking lord voldemort saying this somehow making him the only character who sees the punitive state for what it is

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once again the idea that in the wizarding world it's known + taken for granted that the human soul and afterlife not only both Exist, but that there's also an animal creature who quite literally feeds on your metaphysical soul and extinguishes it from existence, and that this creature is just like employed by the british government. is probably one of the craziest hanging question marks in harry potter canon and im never not thinking about it.

but i feel that we're missing some great places to take this fanon-wise. like the explanation that the dementors are this big ~mystery~ because of a dark magic taboo and that nobody is asking any sort of insightful questions about their whole deal just strikes me as so inadequate. what i'm saying is that evan rosier 200% had a flayed-open dementor corpse strapped down to a gurney somewhere in his house and he's probably getting to the bottom of it (his hands are mucking through their digestive tract).

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JAN TOOROP (Dutch, 1858–1928) Expulsion from Paradise, 1893

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bbxx.3_3

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If they could make a girl out of wax, she would be like all the girls.

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isekaing into asoiaf universe to teach jaime lannister that according immortal science of marxism leninism killing king aerys was a radical revolutionary act shaking the foundations of feudal system

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they killed him because he was a sado-top

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The idea that children love fairy tales because fairy tales treat them seriously and do not shy away from the violence and danger the world has in store strikes me as very correct, but the fact it is generally expressed as "it is dangerous to go alone in the woods because there are wolves there"... gives me pause.

To begin with, this is just one fairy tale narrative (little red riding hood), which is thus elevated to the rank of "quintessential fairy tale" (debatable at best); secondly, this is a (deliberate?) misrepresentation of the tale's *actual* danger, which is the wolf specifically *as it lowers the child's defenses by impersonating her grandma after eating her*. It's not about the child being attacked by a wild wolf in the forest, it's about the horror of using familiar and comforting surroundings within the family sphere as a decoy (the plan is quite an elaborate one, too). And finally, this ties into my main remark, which is that in many fairy tales (a majority? I don't know), the danger children (or more generally fairy tale protagonists) face is less related to a foreign monster than the family itself: snow white, obviously, but also hansel and gretel - abandoned in the forest by their parents, twice!; rumpelstiltskin: the heroine was sold to the king by her lying, greedy father, and risks being executed by her master for most of the tale; donkey skin (self-explanatory); bluebeard (similar forced marriage situation); cinderella (and all the cruel step-mother stories in general...) - also self-explanatory...

Fairy tales tend to admit freely that families and parents can be actively harmful to children, whose perspectives the narrative centers; which is a (well-known) fact that makes everyone uncomfortable Always. So I think it's disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst to act as though the violence comes from the wolves outside and not the family inside.

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“fairycore pandora” “cottagecore pandora” …. and what about early 2010s diy emo pandora?????

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BBC Merlin except they all come back in 2012

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theguy