comicscamp.club is part of the decentralized social network powered by Mastodon.
A friendly home in the Fediverse for creators and lovers of comics and narrative art of all sorts.

Server stats:

27
active users

Learn more

nebulos

harry potter criticism

there's nothing actually going on in harry potter that you couldn't also apply to 99% of fantasy fare---it's not that those criticisms are wrong, they're just not unique. except for the house elf stuff, which was a hilariously obvious instance of "ah shit I just invented an oppressed underclass but I don't want this book series to become about this oppressed underclass ah fuck retcon it so that everything's okay". except (1) hey jkr why don't you wanna write stories about oppressed underclasses, huh? (2) maybe you shoulda thought about the implications of this when you casually created an oppressed underclass and (3) our terf-y friend probably picked the worst way out of it, which was "actually they *enjoy* being oppressed!! let's all laugh at the character who's having the obvious audience reaction to this". Instead, consider if it turns out that house elves are happy to work for, say, a beer at the end of the day, and hermione's like "no you have to be paid in Money, like real People do", and someone sat her down and was like "listen, who are you to say what's most important to people". except, you know, that's a critique of capitalism and neoliberalism so of course terfessa would never write such a thing

Sep 07, 2024, 23:52 · · · 0 · 14

harry potter criticism

@nebulos afaik they're based on brownies anyway so working for milk is like... right there! But no.

harry potter criticism

@len ah, is that so? I'm not surprised! yeah, then you do really gotta wonder why she didn't go for it...

harry potter criticism

@nebulos terfessa xDDD And yeah, much of the appeal of HP is in how bog-standard and comfortable it is, so a critique of HP also does double-duty as a critique of large swathes of fantasy.

harry potter criticism

@nebulos Yes, I wonder about the retcon. Because she obviously thought the saving of Dobby was good, and he even defiantly tells people who ask 'I am a free elf!'

So she liked the idea, but decided to trash it

I take it that she was scared Hogwarts would be implicated - which it was, and couldn't allow Dumbledore to be seen allowing evil (yet he allows dementors into the school or something)

But if she'd worked on the liberation thing, it probably would have been alright

harry potter criticism

@LydiaConwell probably a good metaphor here for how liberation is appealing when it's used as ammo against "the evil", but then becomes inconvenient when you've gotta do an introspection....