Being overly-familiar with a series is such a weird burden sometimes because like
you’ll see some theory being passed around that you instantly know is wrong. Like it’s surprising to see people supporting it because the flaws in its logic are so glaringly obvious. Until it hits you that, yeah it’s wrong, but only because you were able to immediately remember the 5 second conversation between two background characters 17 minutes through s2e13 that definitively disproves it. And no casual fan would have any reason to remember that off the top of their head and it’s you who’s the weird human encyclopedia with a shot-for-shot memory the entire damn series.
Like at that point you don’t even know anymore whether to argue your point or just…maybe go outside for a little bit.
fictional character: *goes completely apeshit and loses control of their powers after the person they love is threatened*
me:
fictional character: *can’t bring their powers back down to a safe level
after losing control of them and has to be given a cooldown hug by the
person they love because they’re the only person who can safely approach
them*
I made this a long time ago and was very nervous about posting it to Tumblr. I can’t really think of a good caption~ everything I wanted to say is in the little blurb at the beginning.
i was thinking a bit about the widespread hate for the deathly hallows epilogue (and by extension, cursed child) and i think the main reason why people dislike it so much is that it’s more illustrative of jkr’s extremely regressive views on relationships and family than perhaps anything else in the series. in the epilogue, all the main characters are happily married to their high school sweethearts, there’s no evidence that they suffer from any lingering trauma from the violent conflict that they all lived through, and they have all adopted the trappings of stable, conventional british adulthood. in other words, they’ve become exactly what the first few books presented the wizarding world as an alternative to.
not only that, the epilogue is kind of the cherry on top for the notion (present throughout the books) that your teenage years are the be-all-end-all for friendships and romantic relationships. almost all of the married adults we see in the books met their spouse at hogwarts, then married and had kids right after they left school. ffs, harry’s parents got married when they were still teenagers and popped out a kid at an age when most people’s biggest concern is not tanking their gpa by partying too hard the night before their chem final. the relationship dynamics of harry’s friend group seem to have remained largely static since their teenage years, and like harry’s parents, they all immediately got married and started having children right after high school. apparently the wizarding world still operates according to the 1950s conservative notion that heterosexual marriage, 2.5 kids, and a stable career are the main goals that one should strive for in life. the epilogue presents no evidence of any conflict, no ambiguity, nor any real growth for the main characters, apart from the fact that they are physically older. everything’s tied up with a neat little bow. that’s what i hate about it, and i don’t get why people rage about comparatively trivial stuff like harry naming his son after dumbledore and snape.
