20 years ago most people had no direct experience of trans people. Most people were aware of weird but competent people like Walter/Wendy Carlos and were also aware of the kind of people who appeared on the Jerry Springer show. Most people did not know that the Jerry Springer show types were the normal and usual trans people.
20 years ago most people had no direct experience of trans people. Most people were aware of weird but competent people like Walter/Wendy Carlos and were also aware of the kind of people who appeared on the Jerry Springer show. Most people did not know that the Jerry Springer show types were the normal and usual trans people.
'Trans' as we think of it today may not have been common knowledge, but men wearing women's clothing has been a joke for a very long time, especially in British comedy. The two funniest things to the British are class-swapping (rich pretending to be poor or poor pretending to be rich) and men in dresses.
Everyone instinctively knew men in dresses were ridiculous before the transgenderism fad took off and they still do, even if some won't admit it.
The scene in question is from the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, where the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher (Lupin) is actually capable and teaching them spells to protect themselves. In this particular class, the students are being taught about Boggarts: creatures that take on the form of the observer's worst fear but could be banished with strong laughter. The defensive spell (which requires a bit of imagination and force of will), Riddikulus, is designed to make the wizard or witch's fear comical.
Neville's worst fear was Professor Snape, and Lupin was the one who suggested putting Boggart-Snape in his grandmother's clothes, which is how we got this.
That's a weird way to ignore the fact that she's been releasing 700+ pages books pretty much every second year for more than ten years now..
Do you think those, so far, 8, books researched and wrote themselves somehow?
There are several hour long videos of people pointing out plotholes and inconsistencies in the Harry Potter series.
And without fail every single one of them is made by a RDS lunatic, i'll link a few of them and post about what I remember from them.
I get the appeal of making fun of "bad worldbuilding" and "plotholes" and such, its pretty much an universal rule that tearing something down and laughing at it is more fun than praising something.
One of these videos points out, as a real plothole, that Molly Weasley in the first book openly asking where Platform 9 3/4 does not make sense.
It points out that she should know where it is considering she herself went to Hogwarts as a kid and at that point has had several children attending it too which she also brings to this platform every year.
So obviously, she should know and her asking where it was is obviously a plothole right?
And the comments talk about this as well, including some minor RDS-adjacent things.
This guy correctly points out what the passage was meant to convey, Molly just testing whether Ron and Ginny (her two youngest children) knew where the hell they were supposed to go.
And then this guy doubles down with a completely retarded argument that completely ignores the entire context of the passage.
I brought the video from Shaun up before in this thread but that guy basically, for the entire length of the video, reads the whole series and its characters in an uncharitable light to make them out to be terrible people.
Arguments I remember him making include gems such as JKR being fatphobic because Vernon and Dudley are fat while being complete pieces of shit and therefore she says all fat people are pieces of shit...you know, ignoring characters like Hagrid and Molly Weasley, both of which are characterized as good and likable while being fat.
Another argument bizarrely tries to twist Harry giving Fred and George the prize money in the fourth book as selfish somehow.
My favourite of all of these has to be Jimquisitions video though, its just at the start of the video where he starts doing some surface level observational humor about how nothing makes sense.
Like Hogwarts having no electricity and therefore no computers or phones and the like...almost like its a fantasy castle in the magical world the reader likes because its an escape from their own world.
Or how a guy with a gun trumps every magic spell because you can just kill wizards with a gun, which is something JK herself has confirmed.
These videos are just completely uncharitable and not at all about pointing our plotholes and inconsistencies in the Harry Potter series, they're thinly veiled attempts to try and paint the series as poorly written garbage that is not worth anyone's time and should be ignored because JK is a hecking transphobe.
reads the whole series and its characters in an uncharitable light to make them out to be terrible people.
Arguments I remember him making include gems such as JKR being fatphobic because Vernon and Dudley are fat while being complete pieces of shit and therefore she says all fat people are pieces of shit...you know, ignoring characters like Hagrid and Molly Weasley, both of which are characterized as good and likable while being fat.
There is even a specific part in the beginning of the fourth book that draws attention to this: Vernon refers to Molly Weasley as "that dumpy woman", and Harry notes its a bit rich of Vernon to call anyone dumpy. Not just because he's fat, but the text implies Dudley is something of a deadfat,, too. So again, it's almost like JK was making some sort of commentary on not judging others for their appearance.....
Arguments I remember him making include gems such as JKR being fatphobic because Vernon and Dudley are fat while being complete pieces of shit and therefore she says all fat people are pieces of shit...you know, ignoring characters like Hagrid and Molly Weasley, both of which are characterized as good and likable while being fat.
Fat characters being made fun of for being fat is a staple of British children's literature. Bombur in the Hobbit is constantly poked fun at for his weight, but I've never heard anyone complain about Tolkien being fatphobic.
Fat characters being made fun of for being fat is a staple of British children's literature. Bombur in the Hobbit is constantly poked fun at for his weight, but I've never heard anyone complain about Tolkien being fatphobic.
Wait a second, guys. Petunia Dursley is extremely thin, and she's evil and nobody likes her. Also, the Dementors are skeletal monsters that are described as follows:
They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them [...] Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself — soulless and evil.
Of course a troon decides to simplify a scene and get rid of the context.
The scene in question is from the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban, where the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher (Lupin) is actually capable and teaching them spells to protect themselves. In this particular class, the students are being taught about Boggarts: creatures that take on the form of the observer's worst fear but could be banished with strong laughter. The defensive spell (which requires a bit of imagination and force of will), Riddikulus, is designed to make the wizard or witch's fear comical.
Neville's worst fear was Professor Snape, and Lupin was the one who suggested putting Boggart-Snape in his grandmother's clothes, which is how we got this.
Only twenty years ago, putting female clothing on a man made the feeling of threat from that man go away. Now, seeing a man in female clothing heightens his threat.
Given my interest in Greek mythology, I tried to read the first book of his Percy Jackson series. I really tried to get into it, just to see how the Greek myths were being presented to children nowadays, but the only thing I could think was, "He's not even trying to hide the fact that he's desperately clinging to JKR's coattails!"
It would've been an interesting concept, but Percy Jackson feels less like Greek mythology made cool for modern kids and more like an alternate Harry Potter. I don't know how much of that is Riordan or his agents/publisher kicking themselves for having rejected Rowling's manuscript when she was shopping it around, but given what I know of Riordan, I'm going with the former.
This is why I think he was referring to movie Hermione. Steve Kloves wrote Hermione as a Mary Sue who is always right and never veers down the path of absurd SJW stuff. Book Hermione is competent, but hardly perfect.
I get the appeal of making fun of "bad worldbuilding" and "plotholes" and such, its pretty much an universal rule that tearing something down and laughing at it is more fun than praising something.
It is fun, and thankfully, JKR isn't Disney, which can't stand the idea of being ribbed by a bunch of edglords on the Internet joking about their movies. This is how we got Disney's many terrible "fixes" in their remakes, like the Enchantress cursing Beast's servants because they were all enablers, no matter how far removed they were from the royal family itself. Somehow, even the child and the dog are now morally culpable!
It could be that the Enchantress was a bit of a dick herself...
Or Jasmine being a girlboss who deserves to become Sultan because she's studied maps and can see Russia from her house and believes the citizens are the beautiful people who make Agraba beautiful, yet still doesn't know jack about economics and steals an apple within an hour of running away because she doesn't know how money works. I would not vote for her.
They love to infer that JK named the black guy Kingsley Shacklebolt because she believes that niggers belong in chains, but when it comes to characters having depth, she needs to overtly state their motivations or else they have none
