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.
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
I suppose this chatter applies to my Harry Potter headcanon in general, originally born out of the Barty & Regulus writing that @amorremanet and I wrote some decade or so ago (back in the BL days!!), but over time, it has sort of branched off into Headcanons Inspired By rather than borrowing her Barty characterization exactly. This particular discussion pulls specifically from the Renascentia series that @djemso and I are currently writing, in which Barty/Regulus is not a blatant ship, per se, but very much an Unresolved Thing That Never Was. Because Regulus is a POV character in Renascentia, whereas Barty isn’t (though he WILL have some POV in upcoming backstory), the examples pulled sometimes differ on whether they stem from canon versus the fic-verse, but in the fix, Regulus has a serious case of Unreliable Narration when it comes to his bff, so I want to thoroughly touch on both. Each section is titled in association with one or the other, but honestly, they both get discussed pretty thoroughly in each other’s sections.
Of note: Not all of this information is explicitly written in the series, at least not yet, but it’s not so much a matter of “spoilers” so much as “this is the characterization I have formed in my mind, and the details are being gradually peppered in over time.” And I tried to write out all of my thoughts, but doing so always runs the risk of forgetting things, so who knows, may add more in the future.
Regulus Black and the Persistently Rose-Colored Glasses
Barty Crouch Jr. and the Tendency Toward Obsession
Regulus Black and the Case of Misunderstood Sexualities
I don’t even want to think about what
might have happened if Regulus had told Barty anything about his
„traitorous“ plans – I’m sure Barty would’ve tried to dissuade
him first, especially given this meta, but even if he had
thought that Regulus only wanted to leave and not that he literally wanted
to destroy part of Voldemort’s soul, he still would’ve resented Reg
for making him choose. The #1 instance where Reg’s secretiveness was
definitely a Good Thing.
I’m kinda conflicted about him anyway: I
mean, the Barty we see in canon was definitely not okay after Azkaban
& the Imperius, so it takes some speculation to figure out
what he was like before. (And there’s still a scope of possible
headcanons that fit easily with canon and the details are a matter of
personal preference, just like with Regulus, but now I’m getting
off-topic. I really enjoy both speculating and reading other
people’s though ;)) Anyway, it is understandable that he did everything
Voldemort wanted in GoF, but as you said, he clearly did horrible
things before that, and there’s no indication that he ever had any
doubts like Reg did – though it’s certainly possible, which is part
of why I can’t determine how I feel about him (my headcanons about
him are as unstable as his mental health). But I do feel sorry for
him because of the Dementor’s Kiss; obviously I don’t think anyone deserves
that and he didn’t get any kind of trial for that either.
Crouch Sr as a Hufflepuff makes
Hufflepuffs seem 10% scarier. Also it’s ironic that for all his
dedication to justice, he was the one to commit a serious injustice
by not giving Sirius a trial (ugh I can’t believe I just wrote the most overused
pun in hp fandom but now I’m leaving it there).
Regulus definitely came across as demi-
or asexual. Especially the nervousness about having to marry
eventually, lol. Too bad he couldn’t just adopt someone and continue
the family line that way or something. Also, he probably needs to understand that
caring about someone doesn’t mean trying to defend them/not being
able to admit they did something wrong, and making himself miserable
if he can’t do that. I mean, the fact
that it seems like he never stopped caring about anyone important to
him is one of the things I like about your Regulus, but. So.
Unhealthy. (The Rose-Tinted Glasses have been broken and taped together a hundred times, and he is still trying to look through them and feels upset and guilty when that doesn’t work.)
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