He was a jock who grew up to be a cop.
Just inexplicably within a nerd wrapper.
His becoming an Auror made no sense. McGonagall pressured him to think about what he wanted to do in the future in his 4th year to plan out the rest of his education. Auror was his very first idea, and he wasnt really even super into the idea then. It seemed to be mostly out of a sense of admiration for Mad-Eye Moody specifically. And then, despite finding out that Moody was in fact a Death Eater trying to kill him the whole time, somehow that didn’t taint his opinion on the Auror thing at all.
Even though it was just the first thing to pop into his head, he never gives it any sort of critical thought or even comes up with any alternatives. He doesn’t even have an understanding of the greater wizarding world at that point to even know what kind of work exists outside of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. He just shrugs and goes with his first idea anyway. But then he’s not even committed to that idea really. He is not even bummed when his grades would apparently prevent him from taking Advanced Potions, a required class to become an Auror. When he learns that Slugorn had less strict requirements and he can take the class after all, he’s just kind of like, oh okay… “guess I will keep following this path. I have no other ideas.”
I agree with the Carlin Brothers that his career after Hogwarts should have been at Hogwarts. Whatever admiration he had for the fake Moody, the real Moody, or both, his truest admiration was for Dumbledore. And Hogwarts was his first real home. He excelled at Defense Against the Dark Arts from the beginning, and by his 5th year was even already teaching his classmates (including older students) skills that he had. And he was an incredibly effective teacher too, with his students using the skills he taught in the fight at the department of mysteries and the battle of hogwarts. He had more experience by then end of the 7th book fighting Dark Wizards than most Aurors at the ministry would have. That job would have been boring as hell after Voldemort and the Death Eaters were defeated. But he could use his experiences to enrich the next generations of witches and wizards, teach them to protect themselves, and be there to make sure Hogwarts remained the haven that is had been for him. It makes WAY more sense for him to have become the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor (especially since he broke the curse on the job with Voldemort’s defeat). But then count on JK to do some stupid shit.
To be fair, I chose my career in a very similar way.
When I was a kid, people kept bugging me what I will choose as my future career. I didn’t want to keep having the same stupid conversation all the time, so I decided that since I liked playing computer games, might as well become a programmer.
So I did.
Probably not the best way to choose, but certainly a way that happens.
Remember, kids aren’t adults. They work differently. And once you are on a track, sunk cost fallacy and people around you can make it quite hard getting off said track.
Ha. I actually enrolled in the wrong major when I went to college. Meant to do computer graphics, ended up in computer science (don’t ask, I was just an idiot). My academic advisor told me that I would have to wait a semester to change majors, that it didnt really hurt much because most of the first semester classes were humanities that count for both anyway, but to go ahead and give my intro programming classes a try in the meantime, and see what I thought. And I fell in love with it and decided to keep the major. So yea… I guess that was even more dumb than Harry’s situation.
Auror was his very first idea
Not to nitpick, but Auror was Rowling’s first idea, as you suggest in your last sentence there. Rowling’s narrow-minded world view wouldn’t let the hero become a teacher, or a politician, or an activist, or anything else. Her view of the world says cops are the real heroes, so the hero of her story must become a cop.
I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here.
Assuming Harry is virtuous and good and brave and excellent at fighting dark wizards and helping people, wouldn’t that be the perfect person to become a cop?
Those things qualify you for a whole slew of jobs, and Harry has plenty of other interests besides fighting evil wizards. It seems like very shallow, hackneyed writing to have a 14-year-old latch on to becoming a cop in a community that he didn’t even know existed until he was 11*, one which he literally isn’t permitted to participate in until he finishes boarding school.
Only if you assume cops are there to help people. He’d do more good as a Batman/Dexter type.
Again, cart before horse.
You’re asserting that there are no helpful cops, therefore Harry being helpful means he should not be a cop.
In reality, Harry being helpful should be a cop, because he could be in a position to help people.
Dexter/Batman don’t do a lot of helping, they just crack skulls of people they perceive as bad. Ironically for your point, much like most IRL cops.
First off, ACAB.
Secondly, in a lot of stories Batman defeats city-wide or even nation- or global-wide threats. Kinda like Harry. And whatever Batman happens to do, because it’s somehow justified, it ends up being good. Because he’s the hero. Like Harry.
But like the earlier dude said Harry hasn’t even got an understanding of the wider world. He would be much better at being a professor, because it also includes studying instead of just enforcing the rules.
Even if you imagine a perfect cop, he wouldn’t be acting like Harry. Harry constantly breaks some rules or laws. Not what cops should be doing. Yeah you need some of the virtues Harry has but Harry is also inpatient and a large risk-taker. Neither of which are particularly good characteristics in cops except in media. A perfect cop would be someone slightly autistic about the rules and literally doesn’t do whatever they feel like, but defers to the rules.
Which Harry most certainly doesn’t.
Imagine if the magical world was (for this analogy) the US. Some who grew up in another country and hasn’t even lived in the US, just went to a mostly American school, wants to be an American cop? Even when they go through a necessary training (and we know the wizarding world isn’t big on credentials or experience) to become a cop, he’d still have very little understanding of the actual law with just some weeks of training, and wouldn’t have grown up hearing about the constitution of the US let alone all the amendments to it.
You’re asserting that there are no helpful cops
I asserted that?
You’re putting the cart before the horse there.
If cops could be helpful to Harry, then why wouldn’t he ride a time horse back in time to meet his grandaddy’s prize-winning steed, a racehorse name you’ve likely not heard of. I hope you’re happy with your assertions
And then, despite finding out that Moody was in fact a Death Eater trying to kill him the whole time
This is not at all what I remember happening
Edit: you mean when Crouch is impersonating him?
Edit 2: oh yeah, he did meet Crouch as Moody first
Fred and George did it best.
They gave the biggest bitch in the history of bitches the middle finger.
Literally exploded out of Hogwarts.
Opened their own store which sold items that only had disturbance in mind.
Returned to Hogwarts only to participate in civil war.
Dont forget that they voluntarily participated in the Battle of the Seven Potters, and George lost an ear in the battle.
And they also established and operated a pirate radio station that undermined the wizard-nazi propaganda by delivering the truth to the masses, and brought levity and unity to those involved in the resistance.
The twins were real ones.
You can’t really have a resistance without support like Fred and George and fighters like Harry.
A resistance with only supporters isn’t a resistance; it’s blogging.
TBF, Harry was on a secret recon mission for the majority of Book 7, which the twins more or less knew about and supported as best they could. They provided intelligence which is absolutely crucial to any resistance effort, and answered the call to fight as soon as they were needed.
True, but if we’re assigning roles via broad strokes as a proportion of their contributions, Fred and George were propagandists/saboteurs/etc. and Harry ‘n’ Co. were direct action.
Doing a quick propaganda as a trigger-puller doesn’t mean you’re now a propagandist, nor does doing a quick gunshot mean you’re now a fighter.
Again, Fred and George were vital elements, but (90%) Support is not more important than Fighting.
Well yeah, sure. But only because they didnt have the information to act on that the trio did. Had they been looped in, they’d have been right there. I’m not saying that they didnt primarily act as support. I’m saying that had they been offered the opportunity to be on the front lines with an actual mission like Harry, Hermione and Ron had, they wouldnt have hesitated. I think that would have been to the detriment of the overall cause in the end though, given the role they did take up was pretty damn useful and about as vital a role as they could have served under the circumstances.
Obviously none of that is to detract from the accomplishments and heroism of the Trio either.
I really don’t know if what you state is accurate because I don’t recall from reading the books or watching the movies, so I can’t really comment on your prediction, and honestly we’re so far off-topic I’m barely interested in developing an opinion on it.
I just generally disagree with “Fred and George were better contributors to the resistance than the Trio,” for reasons stated above.
I just generally disagree with “Fred and George were better contributors to the resistance than the Trio,”
Oh, that wasn’t my argument at all. Definitely agree.
Yer a tool of the bourgeois oppression, Harry!
I’m a waht!?!!
My favorite part of Harry Potter is when Hermione tries to get everyone to oppose slavery and everyone’s just like why are you being so mouthy?
JK Rowling has views that were regressive for the 1800s. It’s amazing we didn’t see it sooner.
For all her bigotry, I don’t think Rowling is/was pro slavery. In the books that plot point is clearly meant as social critique against the imaginary wizarding society.
But after a while I guess the plot point got boring and it doesn’t make sense for the world to change because of some random school girl’s protest, so the whole thing was dropped.
Kinda like fridays for future. At first the reporting around it was like “Cool, the kids have something they getting political”, then it got boring and then society got hateful against it and then everyone just ignored them and nothing was changed by it.
I didn’t really interpret it that way. I took it as “look how annoying people who complain about social justice are”.
I don’t think she literally supports slavery but it was clearly an allegory for what she views as annoying activist types.
Rowling said on multiple occasions that Hermione is her “idealized self-insert”.
So I don’t think she’d use her own self-insert to say “Look how stupid people like me are”. Doesn’t really make sense.
She also said that she was Black, so I’m not sure how trustworthy she is on the subject
IIRC she said she never specified Hermione’s race, which is technically true. But at one point she did physically describe her to be fair skinned.
It was prevailing thought at the time though too (~2000s), I remember my mates and I looking at activists with some measurable annoyance and disdain. I don’t think her attitude was so far out of whack with the general vibe
She also randomly changes her mind at some point and agrees slavery is ok because the slaves said they don’t mind.
I did not enjoy the books back in the day and was not shocked when JKR was revealed to be a bigot.
I thought that was the most realistic part of the books. How many hundreds of years of people crying out against slavery did it take for chattel slavery to be abolished? Sure, it would also have been realistic for there to have been more people opposing slavery, but as an initial reaction? Society would absolutely shit on her out of inertia.
“oh those british aristocrats and their slaves”
No, see, the slaves like being slaves, we can’t force them to be free.
Let that bigot and her mediocre kids’ books rot.
Well no surprise there, Harry was essentially a jock who only excelled in two things:
- magical self defence
- sports
And he was good enough in magical self defence that he took down the biggest baddest wizard with just the disarming spell. Literally a magical “put yer gun down”.
He could’ve gone into sports but hey, he just finished off the “big bad” shortly after he turned 18, so of course he’d chase that high. Especially when his girlfriend went into sports and they could hardly both play, that would be constant tension.
So yup, he went on to be a cop. And I see a lot of people claiming that ooh, the wizarding world is different, the police aren’t sent after innocent people, their justice system isn’t rigged, there’s no discrimination, yada yada… Hello??? Magical SAPIENT creatures are routinely enslaved, Dumbledore, someone people thought to be above reproach, was constantly accosted by the very same cops, Harry himself was accused and dragged into a kangaroo court over DEFENDING himself, the aurors have proven time after time that most of them are just as ineffective as the typical Murican doughnut-muncher mall cop, and about discrimination… “mudbloods” need a reminder? Or how Filch is treated?
The wizarding world is the last living remnant of the elitism of the British monarchy/nobility, and if you don’t see this, you lack practically all comprehensive reading skills. Put down those rose tinted glasses and read Harry Potter while paying attention to the social narrarive. It will open your eyes.
What pisses me off is that you’re 100 % correct but most of it is unintentional on Rowling’s part. She’s a fascist reactionary and she just, for the most part, enthusiastically described her perfect little ideal society.
Everyone is in their place, the good guys work very hard to maintain the existing social order, and the people at the bottom are there because that is in their very nature and really they just like it that way and attempting to elevate them is futile. Textbook fascism and all of it is presented completely deadpan because this is Rowling’s genuine beliefs.
Hot take: HP’s popularity is responsible for more societal ills than pretty much any other book in print. Almost no-one engages with it critically even amongst the crowd that outwardly disagrees with Rowling’s more recent political activism. Fuuuuck that license.
Hot take: HP’s popularity is responsible for more societal ills than pretty much any other book in print.
I’d say the bible ranks higher. But as an admitted “hot take,” I can respect that.
I’m not sure that the outcome of Harry Potter is fascist in nature. After Voldemort is defeated there’s no mythic national rebirth, no driving nationalism, no cult of personality at the top, and the society doesn’t treat violence as virtue. What it looks like to me is more of a reactionary neoliberal, paternalist world. Hierarchy is enforced and treated as natural, change is looked at with suspicion, institutions are trusted, and the only problems come about when bad individuals are in charge of those institutions. This is essentially the worldview of 19th century imperialist Britain.
To be clear, though, fascism does exploit these weaknesses in liberal/neoliberal thought to bring itself about and does share some of the superficial look, but I think it flattens the term to label Harry Potter and/or JK Rowling as explicitly fascist. I think at best her work is neoliberal slop and that she has some abhorrent views about gender that people who are fascists would agree with.
The work itself is definitely a fascist pre-cursor. The whole “Wizarding society” thing is the mythical ethnostate from which everyone else must be excluded to avoid violence. That fact is so central to Rowling’s beliefs that it’s barely a theme in the books, just straight up a fundamental fact about the world barely worth commenting on. And even though HP is pretty sanitized wannabe liberal slop, she still manage to slip in some very racist stuff (slavery allegory about slaves being happy, “Cho Chang”, the Irish boy who constantly blows shit up, etc.).
I do believe that Rowling herself is not a very intelligent person (the quality of her writing is proof enough) and has incredible amounts of cognitive dissonance from trying to fit in with the liberals who made her successful, while holding some incredibly backwards view on many social topics. You’re right that she’s not a fascist per se, because she doesn’t have fascism’s consistent belief in self-ideology. At the same time much of her political activism has been so enabling to open fascists that it begs the question: does the label matter? Is the sheep who opens the gate to the wolf not, in its own way, a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Are U.S. Republicans not fascists just because they are more concerned about their own self-interest than any alliance to ideology?
I certainly agree that Harry Potter has fascist precursors within it, but that’s mostly my point: Neoliberalism itself is a fascist precursor in real life, or at least fascism easily exploits neoliberalism’s weaknesses. So to that end I think the labels do matter. For example, in theory it’s easier to right the ship and turn away from fascism or recognize its warning signs in a neoliberal society than in an actually fascist one. I.e. turning away from the path of fascism and towards a more egalitarian society might have been easier in 1990s America than it is now in a 2025 America. In much the same way no one thinks JK Rowling isn’t a huge bigot, no one could have reasonably claimed that 1990s America didn’t have its problems. Neither really fit the definition of fascism, although both lead to fascism.
I think the distinction is important because it hopefully makes it easier for imperfect, neoliberal places like Western Europe, Canada etc. that are having problems with rising right-wing movements to recognize problems before it becomes too late, rather than pointing out their weaknesses and jumping straight to a fascism label.
I don’t think even the shitty people engage with the HP books enough to take lessons on being a facist from it, the worst thing about those books is that it made a shitty human lots of money
No-one is immune from propaganda. And those awful books promote quite a few bad messages. Well firstly they promote criminally bad writing. But besides that, they work very hard to make a lot of oppressive power structures sound cool, whimsical, and aspiring to the uncritical reader. From the police institution to the prison complex to the famously abusive English boarding school system to the literal ethnostate to slavery somehow, and I haven’t gone over the half of it.
It truly feels like every other bit worldbuilding that Rowling put in sounds whimsical on the surface but makes you go “wait, the implications are truly terrible!” when you think about it for more than two seconds. Except she clearly did not think most of it through; she literally just thought “race of jewish caricatures who want nothing out of life besides being bankers” is good and whimsical worldbuilding… And somehow got away with it.
It’s impossible to quantify or prove but these books have had the most cultural impact out of any modern book franchise, and I don’t see how the systemic normalization of so many awful things to uncritical children and teenagers can balance out the joy and whimsy that people got out of them (especially when there is so much better written teen/YA fiction out there).
Shifting the Overton Window in the way that those books did is some insidious type shit that actually does matter quite a bit more than most people realize. New hot take: I think the bigots are correct to get big mad at Queer representation in media because it moves the Overton Window the other way and that actually impacts bigots long-term. In a very real sense a trans actor in a movie is a concrete and real step towards the de-legitimization of bigoted views. And HP is very much doing the opposite of that every time it touches on any kind of social subject.
I always found it real interesting how as soon as the Hitler parallel takes over the government and turns it into a fascist state that all of the magic cops just immediately do what he tells them to. They all line up and go along with it. No I don’t mention that for any particular reason…
tbf there WAS a purge of aurors who supported Dumbledore and those who stayed with the Ministry did bail once Voldy took over.
Even Arthur Weasley, whose job was mostly irrelevant and minor, hightailed it out of there.
Wasn’t his job trying to figure out how muggle stuff worked? With most wizards not even having a high school level comprehension of the basics of technology. Guys job was probably the most important of all given that technology advances exponentially and magic in the setting appears to be almost completely stagnant.
Nope. His job was mostly to mop up after careless wizards and witches that enchanted or cursed Muggle objects to behave… differently than intended.
His fascination with Muggle stuff was a completely personal thing, although most others disliked it. Which to me made little sense, wizards being so stuck up their own arse they completely ignore the Muggle world like they’re not part of it when the literally live around them.
nah, he did the figuring out on his own time, and it was generally discouraged (from the context clues we are given)
His job was dealing with cursed Muggle items.
One concern seemingly nobody is discussing here is:
Is Harry a good person?
If so, and he’s good at the things you state (and especially if he’s only good at the things you state), why should he not be a cop?
There’s no clear cut answer for that because there’s no absolute morality - and this is presented by the many issues raised with the entirety of the wizarding world Rowling built.
Take house elves for example. For us it’s obvious, they’re quasi slaves, and no amount of them saying they want this can alleviate the fact that wizards are enslaving an entire race just to make housework easier. We do see from e.g. the Weasleys that housework is trivial - an enchantment here, a spell there, and dishes clean themselves, clothes stay clean and well shaped (let it be ironing, pressing, etc.), pretty much the only unique, unreplicateable ability elves have is that they can apparate anywhere unrestricted.
And it’s not like many treat them well. Sure, the ones at Hogwarts are not abused, as far as we know. But look at the other examples. The Malfoys with Dobby, the Blacks with Kreacher, even the Crouches with their elves whose name I don’t remember… Just continuous abuse. Verbal, physical, emotional.
And it’s not like Harry or most of his idols are exceptions. The only people we see treat Kreacher well, are the Weasley parents, and Hermione. And by “treat well” I mean not abuse. Harry cusses him out in DH, and even throws shit at him, Ron too has some not exactly nice remarks, and don’t get me started on Sirius, the man who claims to have left behind his family’s “dark and evil” ways, treats Kreacher as if he was responsible for Sirius’ childhood trauma.
Or take the Goblins of Gringotts. Most wizards see them as necessary downside for a working financial system. Most wizards also don’t think they’re people.
Or literally any other sapient creature. Look how Firenze is treated in OoP by the students. He’s “just” a centaur, and even though Dumbledore names him a professor, the students don’t consider him an actual teacher. Harry and a few others are open minded enough, but most think of him as a talking horse (I think this name is actually said in the books).
So many creatures show not just sentience (aka the understanding of self, which most animals exhibit, alongside basic emotions that aren’t instinctual), but actual sapience - the ability to form coherent, complex thoughts and communicate those in some form - meaning they’re not just intelligent on the level of an animal, but at least as an equal to human intelligence and cognizance. And yet these creatures are treated as second class citizens, if they’re citizens at all and not just considered “wildlife”, making them property.
And while Harry might be “good” in the eye of the reader… He also doesn’t consider most of these creatures as equals. He fought for equality within the wizards, regardless of their birth status, where their magic comes from, or who their families are… but didn’t give a crap about the creatures, he was more than happy to preserve the status quo. He saw only one side of the injustice, fought against it, and won, proclaiming himself to be the good guy. While completely ignoring the more systemic injustices and in fact considering them perfectly okay.
To make a comparison with real world… imagine if the US civil war was fought over not slaves per se, but just the non-black slaves’ (so Asian, American indigenous, arab and Semitic, and what Americans considered “non-white” at the time like Spanish, Italian, Irish, Polish, etc. European immigrants) status, the Norrh saying “yeah slavery is fine up until this skin tone”.
To me this screams morally grey at best, because okay, Harry is directly opposing genocide… but on the other hand doesn’t give a crap about non-human members of the wizarding world, beyond “don’t kill them unnecessarily”. He doesn’t just don’t want to change the system - he doesn’t even see the issue with it!
Honestly the only morally positive person throughout the entire franchise was Newt Scamander from Fabtastic Beasts. Respectful towards all forms of life, no matter how sapient or not they are, always fighting for their betterment, protecting those who can’t defend themselves, and only fighting those who’d attack otherwise dedenceles creature.
New copypasta dropped
I would never read a JKR book ever again, but if I did it would probably if it followed his sports career.
Dirty Harry Potter
“Did I use sectumsempra 6 times, or was it only 5? You’ve got to ask yourself one question… do you feel Felix Felicis’y? Well, do ya, PUNK?”
The crossover we didn’t know we needed
If you’re looking for a pulpy noir in that vein, I suggest The Dresden Files.
Just say ACAB. Numbers as code look like racist dog whistling.
They already have Norse runes and the swastika don’t fucking give them numbers too.
I’ve thought about it and there’s something to it. There’s really no reason to be cryptic or vague about ACAB. Next time, I’ll write it out.
Numbers = racist, got it
Nazis have been appropriating numbers like 88 to dogwhistle to their followers “Hey, I’m making a public apology for my stockholders, but fingers crossed for stringing up all the minorities once we have our guys in the Supreme Court, winkwink nudgenudge.” Don’t play dumb.
I’m aware and fuck them for being nazis indeed
With that said IMHO the left can also use codes and numbers. Too many cops in the area? Did they figure out what ACAB means? 1312. Easy
Everyone does that. It’s not a nazi thing.
It just currently (and historically) behooves nazis to do it as much as possible because it helps them recruit to their counter-culture movement.
fuck that. numbers are cool. we got 69, 420, 1312, 1312a, 8647, 58008, 5318008, e, we got all kinds of cool numbers
You forgot 67
>.>
<.<
67 wasn’t forgotten, it was excluded.
no i didn’t
What’s
1312a?also 1312
Googled it because I didn’t know either, and 1312 is just a numerical coding of ACAB (a=1, b=2,c=3…)
No idea what the ‘a’ is in 1312a googling 1312a just gets me fancy speaker wire…
I made it the fuck up, senator
Bold take in a computer science oriented environment.
Lemmy’s not that computer science oriented any more, much like Reddit.
This community specifically is a comics community, and this comic is about a very mainstream fiction series. Can’t get much more normie than that.
Hating cops and being racist is not mutually exclusive though
You could just take it off them. Dilute the pool of numbers. Now the racists won’t know if they’re talking to a bigoted saddo racist like them or a sick anarchist who is ready to smash the fasch
No, you see, the vast bootlicking contingent in… checks notes… Lemmy will violently persecute the author. The subterfuge is paramount.
full circle
