I think fantastic beasts really highlights a flaw in jkrs writing. Mainly, how the rules for her world really only work if you consider white people, and totally fall apart when you consider the same world from anyone else’s point of view.
The idea that in america you can have 0 contact with no-majs is fine, if 1. Everyone is white and/or 2. Magic is entirely hereditary. But neither or those ia true.
The movie takes place, what 60 years after slavery was abolished? What happened when a wizard was born a slave? Were they left to form an obsurial? (No, they say there hadnt been one for centuries in america) were they whisked away to the magical world and expected to leave their relatives to rot in slavery?
The movie takes place 30 years after the wounded knee massacre. What about magical children born in native communities? Are they invited to ilvermony? Do they let their communities be butchered?
What will happen in less than 20 years when japanese internment camps begin? Will witches and wizards of Japanese heritage just pack up and go to the camps too? Will they go into hiding and leave their potentially nonmagical families?
Jk seems content to act as though the Wizarding world has no racsim and instead uses magic vs nomaj tensions as an allegory. But that doesnt work when you have muggle born wizards who would be affected by racism in the nonmagical world.
And i dont think jk has ever even considered this. And it shows.
I’ve been thinking about that for a while too – I’ve seen posts floating around tumblr for at least the past year calling for a focus on things like, for example, the effects of slavery and imperialism on the wizarding world, talking about black wizards being loaded onto slave ships with their wands broken, etc. etc., and my immediate thought was “in all likelihood, none of that happened. Why would the wizards use human beings as slaves when house elves exist?”. ….And then I got to thinking “wait. The Harry Potter universe shouldn’t resemble our world AT ALL if that’s the case, should it? Even if the wizarding world is so cut off and callous that the magical community of every country that was ever colonized or invaded or whatever just did not give a shit about the human rights abuses their non-magical bretheren were being subjected to….did they ALL have their own version of the statute of secrecy? Were none of these cultures ever aware of the people living among them who could stop all the crap they were facing? Really? Were there no rogue magic-users secretly fighting back or protecting their muggle friends? EVER?”
Yeah, like, the statue of secrecy is an international agreement, but you arent going to convince me that whole societies of wizards, watching their homelands and muggle friends and family be enslaved, colonized, and obliterated just sat back and did nothing about it.
Like, MAYBE if all wizards were purebloods. Maybe. But we know muggleborns are not uncommon. Their cultures, family, and friends being massacred and they did nothing? How does that make sense at all?
You can’t even use the excuse of ‘they wouldn’t get involved in muggle affairs’ if you WANTED to either. Because Newts older brother is a war hero. And Newt worked with Ukrainian Iron Bellys on the eastern front. And if wizards helped in WWI why the heck would they sit back and be silent on all the other things mentioned here.
Remember yourself reading all things Tolkien for the first time? Surely, all the distant “magical” lands, Elves and dragons took your breath away (or failed to do so). But there always were these parts where you could not restrain yourself from laughing out loud because of the very way the words you were reading sound.
Those names!
In case English is not your mother tongue, chances are that you’ve had a feeling (once, at the very least) Tolkien was purposedly trolling you and all of your fellow Finnish/German/Italian/(choose for yourself) speakers. In case English is your native language, you’ve probably had this feeling as well.
Here goes a list being compiled with the help of people mentioned at the end of the post. If you wish to contribute, please don’t hesitate and send me a note (or two, for the sake of double-checking); I’ll update this very post.
If you bother going back to Hobbit for a minute DALE can get transcribed as DAL out of necessity, which is kinda oldie for “distance” or “far away” in Polish.
The City of Far Away under The Lonely Mountain kinda makes it feel even more like you are reading something for five-year-olds.
Gonna add some more on the Finnish-sounding words, because why not. I highly doubt some of these are the supposed inspiration, but I still find them rather amusing.
Ainu( r) – ainut/ainoa in Finnish, meaning ‘the only one’ Annatar – is already listed, but I thought I’d elaborate a little. Anna is a common Finnish girls’ name, and derives from the word antaa, ‘to give’. However, the form ‘anna’ is an imperative, and actually means ‘give me’. Which is rather fitting in this context. Ancalimë / Ancalimon: most certainly not related, but the finnish word for ‘duck’ is ankka, and I always found this rather amusing. Calacirya/Kalacirya: close to the pronunciation of kalakirja, which would technically mean ‘fish book’ or ‘fishing book’. Calavénë/Kalavéntë: kala means fish, vene means boat. In the early drafts, there was very much a boat shape involved. Calma/Calmatéma- : kalma means death Cuiviénen: In the early drafts, the name of the elven haven was Koivië-néni, which sounds suspiciously close to Koivuniemi, a common Finnish place name meaning ‘birch cove’. Dúnedain/Dúnadan: this is honestly just crack theory at this point, but the word is very similar to the old stadi slang term ‘duunata’ (derives from Swedish ‘done’). Duunari is a manual laborer. Halla: ‘frost’ (halla literally means frost), but Tolkien chose it to mean tall/long in quenya. Harma: harmaa is ‘grey’ in Finnish. Helcar: another complete crack theory, but helkkari is an old slang curse that one might use in the same way as ‘bloody’ in ‘bloody cold’ etc. One of the most popular contexts for the word is to exclaim how incredibly cold it is outside, on helkkarin kylmä. Huor: huora, ‘a whore’. I rather doubt this is what Tolkien was inspired by lmao. Maia( r): Maija is another common Finnish name, but also an old slang term for the police. Melkor: another one I’m very doubtful about, but melko means ‘quite’. Náin: literal translations would be either ‘I marry’ or ‘I fuck’. Pick your favorite. Ori: my sweet summer child, your name actually means stallion (or a beefy handsome man, oldish slang term) Saeros: very close to the pronunciation of ‘sick’ and/or ‘twisted’. Timpinen / Tinfang Warble: Timpinen is just a legit Finnish surname. Vala( r): an oath (to swear an oath: vannoa vala), but also meaning ‘to mold/to create’ when in verb form. (to cast iron: valaa rautaa, to create the world, valaa maailma, archaic) Valarauka: see above. Raukka means ‘poor’ or ‘wretched’ in Finnish. Voronwë: voro means ‘thief’
And my favorite, which is the Quenya numbers, as there’s a whole lot of interesting little easter eggs:
Third (ordinal): nelya (neljä = four) Fifth (ordinal): lempëa (lempeä = gentle) Seven (cardinal): otso (otso = old word for ‘bear’, but also similar to Spanish and Italian 8) twenty-three: leminkainen (Lemminkäinen = one of the heroes in Kalevala)
Don’t even get me started on Tolkien’s names and how they sound in Russian.
Ibun (the dwarf) – “fucker”. Not really an insult, just… idk, someone who fucks. Durin.Duren’ means “stupid man”. Gondolin.Gondon is a slang word for a condom. A particulary common word her (lord, master, ruler) literally means “dick”. Ar-Adûnakhôr (a king of Numenor) sounds close to “Ar-I’m-going-to-fuck-off”. Angamando. The same as Mandos. “Mando” means prison in Quenya; and “manda” is… yes, a vulgar word for women’s genitalia. Erebor. This one is not obscene, tho.Perebormeans“too much, overflow”.
I don’t even notice it anymore, but my non-Tolkien friends lose their shit every time I mention somebody with a particulary funny name. Makes serious conversations harder.
Húrin also sounds a bit too similar to “Huren”, German word for “whores”. And to “urine”.
whenever I feel bad about having a weird name I remind myself that C.S. Lewis’ middle name was Staples
When I was a kid, one of my family members quoted the first line of Dawn Treader—“There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it"—and I said, “Brave words from a man whose name was Clive Staples Lewis,” and my mom lost it.
i will never be over vernon dursley telling people at his wedding that james potter was some kind of amateur magician, implying that he wasn’t even that good
100% believe that if petunia hadn’t cut lily out of her life, james would have just rolled with it and learned muggle magic tricks and performed them at various family functions, like
try to wear the full magician costume to dudleys christening
“you can’t wear that james” “it’s the only way i’m going, lil” “fine but give me your wand” “my real one, or the fake one that shoots out flowers?” “both, and you’d better tidy the handkerchiefs are trailing out of your trouser leg before we leave”
“I’m not a magician, marge, i’m an illusionist.”
petunia walks in on james pretending to saw toddler dudley in half for toddle harry’s amusement
actually incorporating magic into the tricks and freaking the hell out of vernon’s extended family
standing up at christmas and saying that he’d like to perform a magic trick. and vernon and petunia are HORRIFIED and lily just pours more wine but marge says ‘let him do it’ so she can mock him?? and he tries/fails to ‘vanish’ the napkins 3-4 times and it doesn’t work, until the fourth time when it DOES and it freaks the hell out of vernon’s extended family
and that is probably when petunia cuts lily out of her life for Real
guys this is a very important post and i’ve been thinking about it all morning
frodo and sam’s love for each other is literally the only thing keeping middle earth from just spontaneously combusting
No, but like, that’s literally it. Gandalf straight-up says to Elrond this Quest can’t succeed by force or wisdom, but by friendship. If Frodo and Sam hate each other even a little, Middle-Earth is doomed.
And it gets more terrifying when you realize that one of the strongest powers of the Ring is to turn people against each other, and that even if it didn’t, the Ring and the Quest still put Frodo in a psychological state where he can barely keep himself sane, let alone love anyone or anything other than the Ring. In fact, I’m fairly sure the Ring tried to persuade Frodo to kill Sam far more often than the books shows – the Ring tends to encourage murder, from what we see. Instead of listening to the Ring, Frodo somehow manages to keep in the back of his mind that he can trust Sam more than he can trust himself, and I have no idea how Frodo can resist the temptation to think his trust is misplaced.
And sure, one could say, “Oh, but Sam has to understand it, so it’s not all that bad” but you have to remember Sam is a plain, non-Tookish hobbit with no inclination or skills for adventuring around and yet he has to become the entire Fellowship. Name one thing the Fellowship did for Frodo that Sam doesn’t also do. He has to advise, guide and protect him as well as keep his hope alive and remind him of who he is. The amount of pressure he’s under is incredible, and unlike, say, Aragorn, he has no experience to draw from. Plus, Merry and Pippin tend to rely on each other, while Frodo relies on Sam, but Sam himself hardly seems to have anyone to turn to for strength. I’m not saying Frodo doesn’t support him as well as he’s able – actually, Frodo is remarkably consistent about taking care of Sam from Book I to Book VI. But what Frodo is capable to offer (see the paragraph above) is far from being all that Sam needs. And actually, in the last stages of the Quest, Sam is basically living a one-sided relationship under the worst possible conditions, and that his devotion doesn’t even waver despite that just blows my mind.
That the Quest was successful is one of the most incredible and beautiful things that Tolkien wrote. Frodo and Sam walked straight into the Land where no love can exist and managed to become closer to each other than they had been. It’s the biggest fuck you Sauron probably ever got. No, seriously. Frodo and Sam beat a Maia basically by cuddling a lot and talking about food. Like, what the fuck??? I mean, if I told you someone could write a 1000 pages novel in which a pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally, would you believe me?
It’s classic Tolkien: the surprise element (i.e. flawed creatures can be incredibly noble even under unspeakable distress) might overcome even the most carefully thought out plots devised by powerful evil lords. (See also: the entire Silmarillion, pretty much.)
“A pacifist and his gardener beat a minor god via supporting each other emotionally”
I would read 50 books with this premise. I don’t love all 1,000 pages, but this is the heart that keeps me rereading
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