As a nine year old I thought the Death Eaters were meant to be like the Nazis, but I guess Rowling is so dumb she didn't make the connection until after she wrote them?
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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Don’t the “good guys” in Harry Potter sort you into a life-defining group based on apparently innate qualities they determine by measuring your head?
most of the "good guys" have house elves, a species bred to be slaves. (but its no problem see they like being slaves)
im surprised it took us this long to notice the writer's, uh, tendencies..
most people only saw the movies where the screenwriters were smart enough to tone down some of this shit.
Still didn't tone down the goblins.
They also added a star of David to the floor of the bank the goblins control
...does the sorting hat literally just measure your skull?
Hmmm yes... stong brow ridge, aggressive... pronounced occipital protuberance... recessed frontal bone, not the brightest are we? But focused, shallow orbital plate... you have the phrenology of... a GRYFFINDOR!
a skull-measuring device that can speak and read your thoughts to make it fun for kids
I think the idea is that it needs to be on your head in order to determine certain intangible things about you. The houses don't make much sense though and one of them is just "you're a fascist" so
Well, just to try and be a bit fair (Rowling and HP both suck a lot, we can dunk on them entirely fairly) the sorting is explicitly quite arbitrary. Harry was told by the sorting hat that he'd be well suited to the nazi bad guy house, but he said he didn't like that idea so it stuck him in the good guy main character house instead. And it's not really life-defining as far as I remember, once you're out of school you can identify with it or ignore it as much as you want, it doesn't really follow you in any way on its own
Ironically Harry is so inert and cares so little about anything besides sports and defending the status quo that the hat was probably right in saying he'd make a good fascist. His only thoughts about endemic slavery are "I wish my nerd friend would stop being so annoying about all the slaves" and in book 2 he is preoccupied, not with the possibility that his ability to talk to snakes is an indicator that he's made bad decisions/might be doing something wrong, but that people are being rude to him because he appears to be a fascist.
it's like the political version of easily figuring out the author's thinly veiled fetish.
shoutout to mr tarantino
so gryffindor is actually the lib house 🤯
Hufflepuff is the people's house
Except that all the members in the Hitler youth house ended up joining the wizard SS
No shame in the nazi game apparently
It's still weird that there's a house where pretty much everyone who joins it turns evil, yet the school doesn't ban them? Seriously, Snape is the only Slytherin who is arguably good but even he only did the right thing for incel reasons.
Yeah the one founded by an open wizard supremacist who created a snake monster to kill children he considered to be impure. The one named after him hundreds of years after his death.
Snape feels like this stand-in for authority Rowling does not like/ does not want the reader to like, or a cheap plot device to trick readers into accepting Harry's lack of development. Two things that come to mind:
Philospher's Stone: After Harry stopped Voldemort from getting the stone he is asking Dumbledore in the infirmary what happened after losing consciousness. Harry asks about the red herrings and Snape's demeanor that suggest Snape was the true culprit. Instead of something reasonable like "Snape protected you because he is a teacher, it's his job and there's a huge difference between being nasty to discourage bad behaviour and wanting to harm you" Dumbledore says that Snape resents Harry's father and that he helped Harry because he owes something to his father or something like that. Harry thus walks away without having to reexamine his own behaviour.
Prisoner of Azkaban: When Harry sneaked out when he was not allowed to Snape catches Harry and starts interrogating him. The scene felt like we were supposed to see Snape as obstructive and not Harry as being irresponsible for sneaking out to places where he should not be when there is a (alleged) killer that wants him dead on the lose.
Note that these were all in the first few books, way before the incel stuff got introduced.
I remember reading the first book as a kid and being vaguely upset at the idea I could be segregated from my friends because of personality traits and shit
Its an elite invite-only boarding school, so you're unlikely to know anybody when you arrive. But also, it tends to clump people together by family cough bloodline cough and common interests, so the theory is you'll make friends more quickly when you're coughWEAZEcough segregated into like-minded groups gaspGAGchoke fuck me its really bad the more I think about it, isn't it?
A bit more seriously, its not crazy unusual for schools and unis to organize people into fraternities and clubs and houses and other social units early on in your college career. Then you tend to just end up with these people as your friends by virtue of proximity. By applying a certain degree of blind randomness, or by sorting via interest and passion rather than letting people congeal based on their own historical biases, you get a better mix of students than you would if everyone just clumped by who they knew or thought they'd like.
The system doesn't have to be modern phrenology.
if hexbear had houses, what would they be?
owl, rat, oposssum, hog
I'd want to join House Owl, based purely on the mascot.
Im an opossum for sure
very respectable choice, i think i'd be pretty torn between rat and opossum. maybe i take rat but hang out with opossums most of the time anyway
Meanwhile I'm just here wondering how many lice infestations the Sorting Hat has facilitated over the centuries
Christ, it hurts that you're just now making me realize this.
From what I vaguely remember about the movie, it doesn’t really measure their head but more just reads their mind. Ostensibly it’s basically a personality test, but I think Harry pretty much told it what house to put him in.
Yeah, it initially wanted to put him in the evil wizard house, but he repeatedly thought 'not there', so it acquiesced and stuck him in Gryffindor instead
The sorting hat actually asks you what you want too, Harry was the one who chose between Gryffindor or the snek fuckers
Also, the lore of Harry Potter is completely held together by duct tape