this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
756 points (97.8% liked)
Greentext
4637 readers
1860 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As someone who has read an absurd amount of fanfiction, I’m willing to bet that this (adults holding the idiot ball) was done on purpose because if the adults aren’t morons then there’s no plot tension for our protagonists to resolve.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultsAreUseless
I don't know if this is quite the correct trope, but it's close, at least. It's common in any kid/teen story that the adults are complete screw-ups, and it's up to the brave child heroes to do anything about it. I always think of it as the Goonies plot (my first obvious exposure to the trope) but I'm sure it goes back way further than that.
“Why is everyone so dumb?”
Inbreeding. The answer is inbreeding. It makes sense of Hermione being the smartest person at hogwarts.
Hey, not all the adults are incompetent. Some of them, like Dumbledore, are malicious.
I remember first hearing Big D talking about letting Harry die for the cause. Oh, my preteen heart couldn't handle the thought! "Like cattle?? How dare he!" and so on.
It's actually it's own mathematical system encoding data fractally in a way that seems just as "logical" (and operates on similar geometric systems) as string theory today.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/circle-theorems.html