Subject: Eliezer Yudkowsky answers all this.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-02-17 11:13:00 UTC
If you haven't read it already, read "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". It contains Yudkowsky's approach to magic and for my money it's a pretty good explanation. =]
I guess this is me, popping by. Not for any real date-related reason, mind. My 4th PPC anniversary has come and gone, and I haven't got a birthday or anything for a few more months.
I suppose this is a conversational/plea for help post of sorts, I guess? I don't know. I've been awfully quiet for a long time- I'm not overly active on the board, and while I was a regular in the IRC, I've managed to sort of drift away from even there. I was pretty active on Tumblr, but recently that stopped.
I'm not sure how to approach this, except through wordvomit borne of panic. I've had a rough past few years and that coupled with my anxiety about message boards and the like, means I've sort of isolated myself. I look at the board and I see how many new names and faces there are and I always talk myself out of posting because I haven't got anything to offer to the community.
I guess then what I'm trying to say is, how are you guys? Is everything okay? It looks pretty active and there are a few fun things floating (I like the idea of the Board Medieval AU a few threads down), but I might be really terrified a little of actually reaching out (and this may or may not be the dozenth draft I've made of this trying to reword things). My fandoms are few these days - Harry Potter, Pacific Rim, Elementary - but I'm willing to share and learn about anything, fandom or otherwise.
I like writing, but I haven't written in ages. I like reading but I have a hard time staying still these days- I haven't finished a reading a book in literally years. I've managed to, through enough bad nights, destroy all of my social media accounts, and with my work hours I don't exactly have anywhere else to talk to people even in real life, and I'm starting to perhaps slightly freak out a little.
I know I'm not in a good place right now mentally/emotionally, and I guess this is a sort of throwing of the rope to see if anyone is still around who wouldn't mind talking to a hermit? I'm in the pacific northwest, so my timezone isn't too awfully terrible for most I think. I'm not sure.
May this find you all well and stuff. Feel free to ignore.
-Bryn. (Formerly Bronwyn.)
I'm glad to see you here.
Always nice to see a familiar face! Or name, I suppose. Cluster of text. Whatever.
On a more serious note, it definitely sounds like you're in a bit of a rough place mentally. I've been there, or at least thereabouts. I'm more than willing to listen if you ever need someone to talk to.
Welcome back to the Board, Bryn! How're you doing? I don't think I've met you yet, seeing as I joined the Board last year.
Nice to meet you, and I hope your problems work out.
Well, we've seen each other quite a bit in the chat, so I'm just gonna say hi again.
Oh, and since you're back and all, have some Boulez: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJevBESCSH4
Don't be shy; you should know that we don't bite. And if you want to know more about us, then take a closer look at the AU; it's a surprisingly good look at how our community has grown.
(And thanks to yours truly, there are quite a few discussions about PPC history--and yet another about PGs from your good friend Outhra).
I beta-read your Antiochos and Roxana story, back in my first month on the Board! Wow! Welcome back!
Here! (wheels over the table full of welcome-back pastries) I haven't had to use this in a while, but I swear, they're all fresh! I replaced them just earlier today, after the minis ate all of the other ones. Take anything you like!
Many thanks- and thanks again for beta-ing my story. I worked on it some more this last NaNo, and I'm quite pleased. How've you been?
*nums pastry*
*quietly removes mini fur from teeth, continues eating*
The Board has continued to be great in your absence, and I'm planning on submitting my Permission Request soon. I've only had, oh, three, four delays since I started trying to write everything down. I really need to get back to my beta; I told him I'd have a first draft in a week back in late January. I have never been good with scheduling.
Oh no! None of my minis had fur! Where did that come from? Unless some rogue minis running around the Board's vaunted halls replaced one of the pastry plates with a fur-contaminated one! That is no sort of thing to come back to!
Just... Don't eat anything else off of that plate. I will be having some stern words with my supplier about their cooling-ledge security. Here, have a brownie instead. I know these are clean.
I'm sorry I haven't seen you in a while. I kind of drifted away from the chat as well, due to being overly neurotic about the electric bill. (I moved out and am paying my own bills now! Yay/Wha!) I'm still working at the zoo, but I'm now only a fifteen minute drive away, which cuts down on gas and frees up more time after work. Where are you working now?
I've kind of fallen out of fandom myself, unless you count the PPC as a fandom. I play Pokémon a little, but most of my free time is making backup copies of old PPC spin-offs and working on the mini pages on the wiki. My writing is taking a backseat, too. (I did just watch Sherlock seasons one and two. I was amazed at how much I, a Doyle-purist, found myself enjoying it.)
You don't need to work yourself up about talking here. This message board is as casual as they come, and all you need to "offer" the community is your conversation and company. There are still plenty of familiar faces around (like me!) (and also the new faces are good guys too), so there's no need to hang back.
I'm also on Skype still; any time you feel like talking, please throw me a message. I'm at the zoo a lot, but I always get back home eventually!
Nice to see you again. Please accept my gifts of a potato cannon, a basket of potatoes and an Official Fan fiction University of Doctor Who sweatshirt.
Your time zone isn't too bad, I'm in Central.
I'm not much into the most recent things, but my brother and I have started to watch Three's run on netflix.
Many thanks, Kittythekatty!
You should definitely watch The Time Warrior. It's not on Netflix, but those are links to a version of the serial I found online, which is to the best of my knowledge not damaged. There are Sontarans attacking the Middle Ages, which is awesome for reasons that should not need to be elaborated upon, and also has the first appearance of Sarah Jane Smith, which makes it a good watch both for Doctor Who historical reasons and because Sarah Jane is also pretty great just in general.
Three was my first Doctor, the Three-Sarah Jane pairing was absolutely wonderful.
And welcome back, Bryn, have some fudge!
Hello and very much welcome!
Here, have a Generic Gift for your rewelcome. *tosses*
(I'm in the same timezome as you!)
-Aila
Oh man! I've always wanted one of these! Thanks!
I think I've seen you around here before - I lit out of here last year because of school.
It seems to be going pretty well around here... if you want to talk about Harry Potter, I've got a big-ish question prompted by something I saw on Tumblr: at what point does a character pass out of the realm of being forgivable, not factoring in backstory, death, or future actions?
Basically, I've seen people complaining that Umbridge is treated worse than Snape by the fandom because she's female (and not played by Allan Rickman,) but I think that's sort of grasping at straws. Snape is a bastard on many levels, we can all agree, but for me I think Umbridge passes out of the realm of forgivability because of the things that she does: for example, in third year Snape attempts to defend Harry, Ron and Hermione from Sirius, who he thinks is a murderer. Sure, he probably wanted heaps upon heaps of revenge, and Harry has to live because of Dumbledore's plan, but he makes sure that Ron and Hermione are mostly okay because they're his responsibility. Umbridge, on the other hand, is willing to abandon the three to the centaurs to save her own skin, and fosters a culture of lies, betrayal, and torture. So, while I can see Snape having been fairer to the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff double potions section than he was to the Slytherin and Griffindor section in Harry's year, I can't see Umbridge as being fair or acceptable in any capacity.
That's not to say that Snape should have been allowed to keep teaching - he terrorized Neville, for a start, and his treatment of Hermione was horrendous, especially given that he was once more or less exactly in her shoes - but I don't think it's fair to say that the fanbase hates Umbridge because she's a woman. The fanbase hates Umbridge more because she is having "I shall not tell lies" carved into your hand with a pen, and the very real fear of authority cracking down on your world and turning it into a seething pit of fear and lies. Snape's the asshole teacher who grades based on whether or not he likes you and whose picture you will spit on in your yearbook.
Hmm. It's certainly a thing to chew on- but I think it does sort of have some elements of sexism meshed in. Not necessarily in that people hate Umbridge more than they hate Snape, due to the fact that she's a woman, but because of her position and how her character gets 'punished' and how Snape gets punished.
Snape terrorizes his students and is a quite prejudiced character, but people hate Umbridge because she's a character that we have all encountered in our lives.
She's an agent of the meddling government who intrudes and is flat out aggressive towards those who don't fall into the boxes she sets for people. But it's interesting because I think Alan Rickman does have some part in why people like Snape.
It's kind of odd, and I never really got into that kind of thing, but it's sort of a fangirl effect? He's tall, dark, and british. (Handsome is, of course, subjective). In the books he's described as oily and hawkish and all around abrasive. And anyone who has only read the books, will probably agree that he's generally unpleasant and a necessary* evil. Everyone encounters that one teacher that despises you and your guts and will purposefully (for whatever reason or bias) try to fail you in any way they can.
But in the movies, Snape is given this odd angle- because the movies weren't released in parallel with the books, fans of the books weren't going in blind. So they gave him a little more leeway, and cut out the bits where he was truly horrid because going in, we already /knew/ he was horrid and could fill in the blanks. They were arguably reasonable cuts, because translating the book word-for-word would lead to many hours long sagas and that wouldn't bode well for many. (Though I am quite upset about the bits that were cut. Peeves was one of my favourite elements of the books.)
So you've got a watered down Snape, made up of the following elements.
~ Not very much screentime, and thus his cruelty is limited to maybe a few lines per movie. But, for good reason- He's not the lead! Harry and his friends are the focus of these films!
~ Played by Alan Rickman, who is not exactly awful to look at, and who is quite good at what he does. And since he was acting with knowledge of the character's then unreleased history, he added the sympathetic edge to the character that may have made him more appealing.
Whereas Umbridge was relatively untouched in the cutting room, because she was in two of the books. And she was a main antagonist, so her actions got more spotlight. In addition, her appearance in the movies were more accurate to the books.
She was basically designed to invoke that feeling of frustration when figures of authority step in and make your life hell- both as a teacher and as a student.
While Book!Snape was also designed along these lines, Movie!Snape... not so much.
But while maybe there isn't as much sexism in this as it is hokey screenwriting, there are some elements that are fundamentally different in how Umbridge and Snape are treated.
For example, the centaur scene, which highly implies some very very questionable things- I won't spell them out, but look up the mythology of Centaurs and their typical role in ancient myth.
This 'punishment' for Umbridge, was laid down by Hermione. And later it's played for laughs in the hospital when Ron torments Umbridge by clicking his tongue like hooves. Yes, Umbridge is a rampant racist, and she's dreadful to non-humans, and to non-pureblood wizards, it's important to remember that SNAPE WAS TOO.
Snape's racism is played down considerably in the movies, and I think that that's used to sort of mentally Woobify him on the part of fangirls, because without looking at all of his actions in context (Hate crimes, calling close friends by racial slurs, harassing and mentally and verbally abusing students, attacking the child of your percieved 'true love' years after her death simply for having the gall of looking like his parents, unhealthy relationships and power dynamics), you can forget that Snape is actually a pretty awful person.
Not to mention Snape's punishment for all of these actions (listed above) are... nothing. Basically nothing. Even in the books! Harassing, emotionally and verbally abusing students? A slap on the wrist. Calling Lily a slur? He loses her friendship... and then proceeds to never ever grow up or learn from his actions. He dies! But his death is very much played down, especially in the movies, which had a very obvious fondness for the Snape/Lily ship.
In the end, Harry even names his child "Albus Severus"! (Which, I'm sorry, I still think is a stupid name.)
Snape gets a backstory, and rationalization for his actions:
~ Bullied as a child,
~ Abusive parents,
~ Difficulty socializing,
~ Had an actual attempt on his life as a teenager by the Marauders, and was told to bottle it up and never talk about it by an authority figure he trusted.
But he ALSO (and it's important to remember this is largely glossed over in the movies):
~ Joined a group of racists who were actively campaigning to kill people exactly like his so-called best friend.
~ Has killed people.
~ CALLED HIS BEST FRIEND A SLUR, when being what she was (Muggleborn) placed her life in actual literal imminent danger.
~ Harassed a student to the point where in a world where your parents have been tortured to the point of never recognizing who you are, and Voldemort is Real, and it was an agent of Voldemort who did that /to your parents/, your greatest fear is a teacher.
~ Was willing to sacrifice James and Harry's lives so that he could be 'rewarded' with Lily, /regardless of her feelings/.
Yes, these things are awful, but intent does not, and cannot excuse actions, you know what I mean?
Plus, we know nothing about Umbridge or her motivations. She works for Fudge at the ministry. She's racist. She's fanatical in setting rules, and she can be very short sighted.
I'm not saying that that's bad, and sometimes people are just awful regardless of upbringing, but I mean, look at the differences in how these characters are handled.
So while I don't think it's so much sexism on the fandom's part that Umbridge is detested more, I think it's sexism on the part of the screenwriters on their portrayal of these two very similar characters.
*Necessary as in no matter what you're going to always face these people in your life. Not that they're built into the system, but that sometimes you literally have no recourse but to take it and once you're free, /leave/ and never go back.
Man this was way longer than I meant to make it. Whoops!
-Bryn.
I was mostly going off of fan reactions from when I was still paying attention to the fandom, so up until book six, and really not the movies much at all. Basically, everyone I knew unanimously hated Umbridge, probably because during school, when it comes down to it you can get away from a bad teacher but not a bad administrator.
The thing I think that so many people who read Harry Potter as kids but maybe didn't read a lot of other complex stuff (not that this is against anybody, but I have a sort of different perspective since I finished Lord of the Rings and Sherlock Holmes before book five came out, so I was at least a bit used to the sympathetic characters not always being completely in the right,) is that people want characters to be rewarded as they think they deserve, rather than used to their purpose in the plot. Umbridge's expanded time in the movie was mostly due to the plot, and being the main antagonist for the entirety of a book: Snape's existence at Hogwarts is important, but like Malfoy he's a recurring problem that is usually more of an annoyance to Harry and Co. once a larger plot gets started.
I dunno, I might hate Umbridge more for personal reasons. I've had plenty of stupid, unpleasant, or unfair teachers, just like anybody else, and Umbridge manages to be both the most awful teacher and the most awful administrator you can think of.
Yeah, the Centaurs. To be honest, I'm not sure what to think there, because while JK doesn't shy away from having nonhumans be at least as unpleasant as humans... but I've seen arguments for both the implication and the interpretation that they chased her through the woods and shot arrows at her until she made it back out of the Forbidden Forest. It's not good either way. On the subject of punishments, I'm prepared to argue that the reason Snape never got punished was because he continued to be too useful to the plot up until his death, and other characters who were not continually useful ended up meeting unpleasant fates much more quickly.
I'm not saying he should be excused, I'm just saying that you could genderswap the relevant portions of the cast and have the same narrative, (though with less fangirl appreciation of Snape) so their different treatment is pretty much entirely due to their roles in the plot.
It just comes back to the problem I'm having with the center of this argument (seriously, I've gotta leave Tumblr alone for a while,) is that whether or not a character has a possibility of redeeming themselves has very little bearing on whether or not they do. For example, characters can do pretty awful things off screen, and the viewers will be somewhat more inclined to forgive them. The worst things that Snape ever did were functionally offscreen and, as you said, glossed over... as a contrast, we know literally nothing about James except for a couple tidbits dropped by Remus, Siruis, or Snape, yet the only thing he does "on screen" is the basis for most of the fandom's James hatred and a large chunk of the perception that Snape is misunderstood. Following from that, no matter what evidence there is or isn't that James stopped being a massive jerk, the fandom won't accept any of it if it didn't happen on screen.
Yeah, it's just... I remember why I generally stay away from that fandom, because the same arguments happen over and over. Personally, I think that Snape may have had some chance at partial redemption (helping take down Voldemort goes a little way towards implying that he'd at least come down from a "kill them all" level of racism, which I don't think he was ever a in the first place) but he died before any redemption could have taken place, so we never will know.
Though, I do have to disagree with you on Umbridge's motivations: we know little of her motivations or rationalizations, but when she started torturing her students, I stopped caring about her motivations.
Fundamentally, I think Snape and Umbridge represent two different types of "normal" people caught up in fanaticism: Snape came from a difficult life, so he joined a racist fanatic group that said the status quo was wrong and needed to be overturned, Umbridge came from comparative privilege, so she supported a long-entrenched and usually more subtly racist regime that supported her privilege.
Some sexism may have come into play with the fandom's interpretation and the directing, but I'm pretty sure that if Snape's on-screen actions had been Umbridge's, he'd be just as hated. Unless the Alan Rickman thing is influencing people, which is very possible, given how many people think Bellatrix is kind of awesome when SHE TORTURES PEOPLE TO INSANITY and is generally even more of a dangerous psychopath than Voldemort. I'm pretty sure that for her, it wasn't a "violence because of my ideology" thing, it was a "Violence! Yes, I was raised in this ideology, point me towards the victims." Part of the difference in her perception compared to Umbridge is probably the phenomenon of liking the death-eaters because of reasons I've never been able to understand, but part could be because she's portrayed by a popular and attractive actress. So... fan opinions based on the movies may include sexism, but may also have a lot to do with attractiveness.
... Which I don't actually get, but I'm an odd duck. Also, I think my personal middle school experience may have a lot to do with why I hate Umbridge worse than anyone else in HPverse. :D
These are long, aren't they? :D
True, and I guess I can get that. Snape was more important to the plot, but it still bothers me that he was left relatively unscathed for his actions as they happened.
And yes, Tumblr. It's got it's good bits, and it's loud bits. Sometimes those do not overlap XD
I dunno! I mean, don't get me wrong, I adore the Harry Potter books. I learned to read with those books! But it does sorta feel a little hokey at times.
(Things like, why couldn't Harry use the established earlier in that book magical mirror to contact Sirius, instead of storming to the ministry and ending up with Sirius dead? My rationalization is that Harry is not the sharpest tool in the shed and angst clouds judgement... and memory?)
I agree that perhaps the centre of the argument, that the sexism lies with the fandom... does seem flawed, and I agree that I think it's more of a how they were portrayed in addition to casting choices.
It's like why fangirls like/d Edward Cullen, from Twilight. He looks pretty, and you can ignore the fact that he has LITERALLY KILLED PEOPLE and he needs gorram ENDANGERED ANIMAL GOREJUICE to sustain himself instead of just eating a gorram deer or something. But he's pretty, so we can excuse his deeply abusive power dynamic with Bella! PRETTY PEOPLE MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER.
And ugh, don't get me started on Bellatrix fans who are Bellatrix fans because she's 'quirky'. Not because she's a complex character with an interesting history and psychological status and the way she's portrayed as being basically completely removed from her conscience, but because she's played by Helena Bonham Carter. But I also might have a slight aversion to Fandom!Bellatrix due to how much Hermione/Bellatrix fanfic I've seen. Stuff of nightmares, man.
Forced marriages by law... everywhere... so many... hurt/comfort... bad Stockholm syndrome plots... can't... hold... on... much... LONNGGERRRRRR.
Yeah. I mean, it's not satisfying that people like that get off lightly in fiction, but I think the choice to have that happen was the plot, rather than any attempt to excuse him.
My childhood before Harry Potter is basically Nancy Drew. :D Believe me, they've cornered the market on hokey: at eight or nine, once the plots started to become obvious (I'd only read several dozen of the things...) I decided I was good at solving mysteries and was going to become a great detective.
Yeah, Harry's angst-induced stupidity was a major plot breaker for me. I understand it better as an adult - high anxiety and repetetive trauma situations sap your IQ and decisionmaking process like nothing else, and Harry spent that year being tortured by Umbridge, having his brain invaded by Voldemort, learning occulmancy (which can't be great for the psychological health,) and worrying that Voldemort was going to show up any day and kill everyone he loved... all the while existing in a perverse reality full of authority figures who swore that he was crazy for thinking that Voldemort could ever return. Speaking from my later psychology research, it's that doublethink environment that messes with your memory.
See, Cullen always bored me. But I am also the odd variety of human that does not do attraction, so I don't give a Flaming Denethor about his sparkly posterior. I found the fact that they ate endangered predators ludicrous, and spent the entirety of Twilight hunting for the plot. :D (I located the plot in Eragon, which is why I stuck with it, because it was "okay" fantasy that would stand up to a round trip car ride.)
Yeah, Bellatrix actually terrifies me. Molly just getting rid of her for all posterity was one of the crowning moments of book seven for me. Shipping in HP fandom terrifies me as well, but for completely different reasons.
I'm going to need a little context for this, because all I'm seeing here is Edward Cullen dressed in a safari hat, super-speeding around the savannah shooting at cheetahs with a rifle. Incidentally, I would definitely watch a movie that involved vampires hunting down pretty much anything someone would make a National Geographic documentary about while wearing safari hats.
Edward's favourite was mountain lions. And I think the big one, Emmett, his were grizzly bears.
Mountain Lions aren't too terribly endangered, but for pete's sake, Grizzly bears are! And they'd go to wild life preserve parks in washington and go have food. That is, of course, paraphrased, but.
And why did they choose to eat endangered predators? Why?
Because reasons. *nods*
Domestic cats, I mean. Not pumas.
I'm a cat person and it's not exactly a nice thought to me, but cats are probably the perfect Twilightverse vampire prey.
-They can't drink donated blood and they can't eat humans without either killing or turning them.
-Carnivores are the best substitute, for some reason. I have no idea whether the author ever considered why (beyond the testosterone overload), but if you look back at "Dracula" and at Renfield's insanity, it makes sense. He's feeding flies to spiders and spiders to birds, and then he wants a cat. He's trying to collect life. So it would make sense to me that, for a vampire, the blood of a carnivore would have collected more life than any other animal's.
-Size doesn't matter. If it did, vampires would go for men over women (men have more blood) and adults over children (ditto). But they don't. Apparently, vampires can sustain themselves on very little blood, which makes sense if you consider, along with the above, that it's the *life* in the blood that matters, not the blood itself. (Which is also why donated blood won't work; there's no metaphysical connection allowing the vampire to drain the life of another.)
So why cats? Well, cats are unique. Cats are obligate carnivores--that is, they eat meat and only meat. A dog will eat meat and bread and anything it can get. Same with a pig, or a 'possum, or a rat. They eat meat, but they also eat other stuff. So the life of a cat is one that has been sustained almost entirely on the lives of other animals. (We are assuming the cat is allowed to hunt rather than fed cat food, naturally.) Cats are deadly hunters who eat only meat; the best mousers can bring in ten mice a day just for fun. With the high metabolism of the warm-blooded, cats require comparatively more calories to live, meaning they have to eat more than a reptile or a fish would--making them a better choice than carnivorous fish or snakes.
Why cats rather than pumas? Because there are more cats out there, and because they breed faster. A cat becomes fertile at five months and can be expected to have an average of four kittens every four months thereafter during the warm kitten season. Cats are smaller and less territorial than mountain lions, meaning they can live in groups, need smaller territories, and can survive on fast-breeding mice and rats in an agricultural setting. A vampire which kept a barn full of cats could expect to have regular meals of high-quality blood from a sustainable population.
Why don't Twilightverse vampires eat cats? Because the author doesn't want them to do something so strange and horrifying as killing our loved house-pets and valued working animals. But wouldn't the story be better if they did?
If you're a vampire, you have to deal with the reality that you have to kill directly to survive--you can't just eat plants, and you can't eat meat that's neatly processed and packaged beforehand. You have to kill with your own two hands. Psychologically, you are very different from the typical human, especially the typical modern human. But if you are being sensible, and you want to survive without killing people (even if you are amoral, killing people is dangerous and unsustainable), you will have to go for eating small, fast-reproducing predators like domestic cats. Interacting with humans gets more awkward because your life is truly different from theirs. You are an alien, inhuman creature, a predator, a parasite--not just a sparkly pretty boy for a mary-sue to fall in love with.
Mind if I borrow them for a story? They're quite good. I've been chewing on a fic of my own for a bit from this fandom, and I've been thinking of ways around said problems. I'll of course give credit and reference. :D
Which frankly, leads to an unsustainable food source. You either eat the whole human and kill them, meaning you can't really store things for the long term, because no left overs, and dead people blood is icky.
Donated blood that's taken through medical blood donation is 'dead' blood too, and tastes super icky to real vamps. (But in book four, Pregnant!Bella eats bagged blood to replace her own blood that the hellspawn baby is eating?? Really doesn't make sense, but shhhhhh.)
Plus blood from wounds not from bites, or from menstruation is 'dead blood' and isn't tasty either. So picky, I know. But it's Stephanie Meyer's reason for why Edward doesn't go overboard on Bella's period- it's not appealing to him. Somehow.
If you want to get technical, menstrual blood isn't really blood. There's a small amount of real blood, but most of it is uterine lining and cervical mucus.
Had Edward attempted to "dine" on Bella's period, it would have been like handing a human a chunk of tofu carved and dyed to look like a steak -- it might resemble the real thing, but it clearly isn't.
...but I know nothing about Twilight except for the fact that it's a very poor model for what a relationship should be.
Anyways. How do you demonstrate a character is STRONG like Equius, exotic, kinda freaky, and totally badass?
Have him tear a man-eating animal apart with his bare hands.
Smells like testosterone poisoning.
Sorry, that should read books.
I'm not going to change it.
Anyway, the in-universe explanation is that carnivore blood is the closest thing to human blood that vampires can go for while still remaining "vegetarian". Of course, SeaTurtle's Doylist explanation is probably more valid, especially considering Stephenie Meyer's extremely Mormon and there's clear parallels between vampires and Nephites, one of the tribes of Judah (moved to the US because Mormons) that stayed loyal and retained their white skin, while other disloyal tribes like the Lamanites were cursed by God and had their skins become darker. The Lamanites are heavily implied to be Native Americans. QED.
I think too much about this series. It cannot possibly be healthy.
((TEAM TYLER'S VAN!))
Okay, so I've been following the sporkings on Das-Sporking, and leaving the potential aspects borrowed from mormonism waaaay aside for someone who is more qualified than me...
The in-universe explanation does not actually make sense within the universe. Humans are omnivores, and pretty much obligate omnivores at that. (Humans can exist on a vegetarian diet if equivalent proteins found in plants are consumed, but cannot exist on a completely carnivorous diet.) Large carnivores should not be the "closest" match to human blood: bear might be somewhat similar, as they're partially omnivorous, but the most common omnivores and semi-omnivores in North America are, in roughly descending order of average size:
- pigs
- Badgers
- raccoons
- possums
- weasels, otters, ferrets
- Minks, martens, and sables
- rats and assorted related rodents
Now, if one were inclined to give SMeyer credit, you could argue that larger wildlife, such as grizzly bears, with a bodymass of two to four times that of a human, would be efficient hunting, as it would provide blood equivalent to multiple humans and keep a vampire satisfied for longer. This is canonically WRONG, since it is demonstrated time and time again that vampires do not have a set amount of blood that they are required to consume to be "full," nor do they seemingly have an ability to binge and digest like a reptile. Vampires can drink ten or fifteen people without getting full. They do not stop until they run out of convenient victims. Their appetite is literally bottomless, yet it is clear given how long the main characters can go without hunting that only a small amount of blood is sufficent: the vampires just want another human juice box.
Truly, Meyerpires are abominations of nature. Excuse me, I've got to go find the Winchesters, just thinking about this mess makes me yearn for these things to get salted and burned...
Trust me, I was in the same boat. Pre-PPC I was, I'm ashamed to admit, a fanperson. And a rather (attempting to be) rabid one. I read twilight and I wrote fic. Twilight's actually what brought me to the PPC. I managed to lie to myself, through most of the series, because hey! If it's printed, it MUST be good, right???
Nnnope.
Because of Sewe- I mean, Book 4 of Twilight, it broke the spell. It was so infuriating and unsatisfying. I got Breaking Dawn for christmas 2009. My first post here was December 27th 2009. Haven't looked back since.
And I recognize the canon reason, but why go after endangered animals?
I know large mammalian carnivores aren't exactly common, and I guess having Edward eat kitties and puppies just wouldn't cut it if they wanted him to be redeemable. XD
It would almost be an improvement if one of the villainous vampires was introduced by saying "I only drink blood from the most adorable of puppies and baby rabbits!" At least over-the-top campiness is a step up from bland blandness or unmitigated reprehensibleness that tries to pass itself off as heroic behavior.
As for the endangered animals, well, I never really understood the justification behind drinking animal blood at all, in part because I never read or watched Twilight but in part because it makes no sense. It would be one thing if the Cullens went Black Ribbon Society and abstained from any blood whatsoever, but why hunt down and drain specific animals? It's going to take more energy to track and restrain a single puma than it would to drain any seven humans, and unless the blood drains kill the humans, which I don't think they do, there's not really a moral justification. Why not have the Cullens distinguished as good guys because, say, they only drain the blood they need to function while the bad guy vampires gorge themselves because it gives them more power, or the good vampires only drain blood from knowing, consenting hosts while the bad guys break into people's rooms at night and drink their fill while sitting on the chest of some stranger? This is not that difficult!
And when I say former, I MEAN former. -_-
Anyway, the vamps couldn't bite and suck a little bit from human volunteers because they have venom that is transferred through biting. Why not just use blood bags? Well, apparently, drinking human blood makes it harder for vamps to not go batcrap crazy and suck someone dry if they smell irresistible. So... yeah.
Also, really disturbing thing I'd like to say: Wardo once had a 'slip up' back in the 1950s (I think) and went on the all-human diet. He says he only killed criminals, so that obviously makes it okay. No mention if these specific criminals were just stealing because they needed to feed their families or if they were stalking a person down an alley to murder them.
But vampires are at the top of the food chain! It's okay for them to eat humans because it's okay for humans to eat cows! I'm not kidding when I say Stephenie Meyer said something along those lines in an interview. That woman scares me.
I'm just glad I got out before it was too late. *rubs left forearm innocently*
Other than a few slightly different antigens, most mammals have very similar blood to that of humans. If human blood will make vampires go on a rampage, then 1) why doesn't most other blood have the same effect and 2) why are humans the preferred food source for so much of the vampire population if drinking other blood will leave them in further control of their senses and less likely to reveal the existence of the vampire world when they animalistically jump on the ruddy-faced guy in town square?
Also, if contact with any creature to drink their blood spreads venom that, from what Bryn's post above said, turns them into vampires, how are the vampires not extinct? If any feeding converts someone into a vampire or a bloodless corpse, you would run out of food within a few months when everyone decides to move away from the radius of disappearing citizens centered on the house on the hill full of creepy pale people. And that's if they don't decide to spread, because if they did, it would be worse than a zombie apocalypse. At least zombies don't need to eat much, and if pressed, could consume one another without giving much of a thought, since they're mindless and hold no value on the continued existence of themselves or others. In the Twilight vampire apocalypse, there would be a constant unsustainable horde of sparkly invincible people swarming out of one location, needing to drain hundreds and later thousands every night to stay... wait, what happens to Twilight vampires when they don't get enough blood? Do they go dormant? Die? Turn back into humans? Probably not the latter.
I thought zombies just kind of wandered around and swarmed meat creatures when they found them. They just don't really acknowledge other zombies. But then again, I'm a fan of the Zombie Survival Guide, so I'm not too familiar with how other zombies work.
Anyway! The Cullens were abnormal, even by vampire standards. Because they are animals instead of people, they could stay in one place for a few years at a time. Pretty much every other vampire coven was nomadic, so they'd wander into a city, nom some hapless victim, and continue on their merry way. No one's going to think much of a missing person in a big city- it happens all the time, so yeah.
Of course, that doesn't explain how the Volturi have managed to hold a base in the same city for over three thousand years. Apparently they go after tourists, because of course nobody would realize tourists in Volterra were always vanishing without a trace. Das-Mervin mentioned something interesting in her Twilight series sporking- maybe the Volturi use Alec's power (cutting off all your senses) to basically temporarily disable the tourists, they give the tourists a little nick, collect some blood in a bowl/bottle, have some other vamp we haven't heard of wipe their memories, and send them off.
And are you kidding? There's no way those precious Sparklepires would have any negative effects of starving. Their eyes turn black and they get cranky (read: more murderous), and that's pretty much it. Apparently they're weakened by not eating/not eating humans, but to be honest, there is almost no mention of that in the books and it seems like a very minute power difference anyway. *eyeroll*
... And that Ofsted, the schools governing body in the UK, was doing a whole lot of meddling while she was working. Yeah.
However, it might be worth mentioning that while she's back at the Ministry, she's not only suffering from PTSD (as evidenced by Hermione deliberately triggering her at the end of Order of the Phoenix - yeah, she did that) but under the effects of a Horcrux. Remember that she was wearing the locket on a regular basis for an unknown but presumably lengthy period of time, and remember what the very briefest exposure did to the Trio.
None of this excuses what she did, but it does perhaps explain a bit more of it. The later stuff, anyway.
Honestly, though, Umbridge strikes me more as the "good citizen" of a Fascist regime, tolerating oppression and outright murder in accordance with the racist ideals she's been indoctrinated with growing up, so long as her own privilege and security isn't threatened.
Yeah, the OoTP thing... fifth book is when I stopped being as invested in the protagonists themselves, really. Partly for that reason, partly because I was just not having with magical society one bit any more. Obviously, I still wanted the world to bee saved, and stuck it out for two more books, but by the end of OoTP the magic was lost.
(Pun was totally intended, I do not apologize in the slightest.)
Hm. Honestly I would have loved more about the world itself- like, what do wizards do? We don't see much about teaching maths at Hogwarts or non-textbook based literature. Is there Wizarding vocational schools? Do little witches and wizards get sent off to primary? Or is it usually relegated to homeschooling by the parents?
How much are parents expected to teach? Are they expected to teach their kids just the basics? How do you cover wand safety, and privacy. Do some parents sneak their kids into muggle schools? What if they're revealed? Is there is a penalty or department that works with parents to ensure education?
What about jobs? In a world where the financial district is controlled by Goblins, and it seems like most careers are: Shopkeeper, Teacher, Healer, Athlete, Police officer, or Ministry Worker... not a lot of options! How do they handle things like fluctuations in muggle economy (And would they even be affected by it?)? With a population as tiny as theirs, how do they function alongside the muggle world without dipping in or collapsing in on themselves?
Plus, with things like transfiguration and charms, how do you regulate raw materials? How does the wizarding world deal with laws regarding illicit things that aren't spells? Do you cut off access to the potion ingredients? But then, what about people who have access to it without needing to go through the marketplace? And what about non-illicit potions and things that require those ingredients? How do you handle that in a world where the government is obviously more of a bureaucratic figurehead than anything else? WHAT IS FOREIGN POLICY LIKE? HOW DO YOU HANDLE IMMIGRATION?
*ahem*
>.>
<.>
Sorry. I have a lot of feelings about insufficient world building.
You really do have to wonder why wizards can't just conjure themselves new robes. I guess it's simply for plot convenience (?) because otherwise the Weasleys and Lupin wouldn't have shabby robes.
I remember reading an interesting unofficial examination of Harry Potter that mentioned the whole basic math/spelling/general life skills thing. How many essays do those kids write every year? A lot of people in my AP /Composition/ class don't know the difference between 'their', 'they're', and 'there', and we're all about the age of seventh years. How can those little eleven and twelve year-olds know the proper construction of an essay?
Poshiuns Class
Generric Studint
Proffessor Snape
The brewing of a shrinking solushin is verry importent becuse if a shrinking solushin is brewed rong it could be verry bad. In this essay I will tell you how to properly brew a shrinking solushin so it does'nt explode!
Just imagining Snape reading this makes me laugh so hard.
My mother teaches fifth grade (UK equivalent is year six): what students know when they exit her class is theoretically what they know entering Hogwarts. I would imagine that there's some form of spell-checking quill, or spell, but I doubt, given the age and spelling of some of the things that they're quoted within the series as reading, their spelling and grammar is going to improve on it's own.
Snape: I have been complaining to the other heads of houses for several years about the abysmal spelling in their students' homework. Aside from the Ravenclaws, few first years' essays are even moderately legible.
7S: Well, speak of the devil...
Nobody ever learns the basics of non-magical study in the Harry Potter universe! Sure, they get at least basic literacy and such, but we never see anyone learning mathematics, or biology, or basically anything that requires non-mystical knowledge. Which links into another thing I never got and was never explained: Why do most of the wizards live like they're in the seventeenth century? According to Rowling, the series takes place in the 1990s, so it's not as though they'd have access to wireless Internet or anything, but when the people outside have advanced technology and you're still pre-Industrial Revolution, that's going to cause some problems. I mean, I understand that the wizards don't want to associate with the non-magic folk for secrecy's sake and to keep the masses from stealing magical artifacts to try and give themselves superpowers, but Arthur Weasley is the only one in the series who even bothers to wonder about advanced technology and how it works, and he's treated as a crazy. There's no real reason for them to stay so detached that they can't at least adopt some modern trappings, since they would stand out even more if they look like they're lost on the way to the Anachronism Convention every time they step out of the Designated Wizard Population Zones.
If they aren't given the knowledge of how things work and why, wizards will just get curious, because they're people, make silly assumptions, because they don't know any better, and then it's a slippery slope to Arthur Weasley's antics of stealing a car and bringing it to life while simultaneously bestowing the ability to fly upon it. Keeping people with potentially titanic supernatural power in the dark about any advances in knowledge and industry whatsoever is going to lead to catastrophe one day, quite possibly when someone stumbles onto some Muggle movies out of context and tries to magically create some of these "helicopters" and "shotguns" because they look like fun.
He isn't blinded by the cultural assumption that the wizards are so much better than the muggles, so he actually attempts to figure out how muggle inventions work!
Honestly, the only thing even approaching an excuse is that wizards are just that much of snobs, even the muggle-borns, after going through Hogwarts, that they don't even consider learning muggle methods. Or the ones that do quietly go back to living hidden among muggles and never have contact with the magical world unless they need supplies.
I have a new headcanon: in ordinary circumstances, many muggleborns get their GED, work muggle jobs, get money changed over at Gringotts when they need to shop in Diagon Alley, teach their children to solve algebra problems and de-gnome the garden, read The Prophet and their local newspapers, send the kids to muggle primary schools so that they'll understand and appreciate muggles (don't go thinking that you're *better* than your grandparents, you're just different, and that's not a bad thing,) and the rest of wizarding society just ignores them. But really, these witches and wizards are better adapted than those that scorn them. They can thrive in both worlds.
The ones that understand muggles don't need to be a more powerful witch or wizard than you, they just need to figure out what the right tools for the job were. They keep a weather eye out for ascendant dark lords, or general anti-muggle sentiment - the muggles in the village are their neighbors, and they (mostly) like them, thank you very much, don't let a lorry hit you on your way out.
When the time comes, they send their children to Hogwarts. They tell them that it's a wonderful place, but that they must always remember where they came from. The parents are huge and blatant nerds, and they remind their kids while standing on platform 9 & 3/4 that with great power comes great responsibility. Sure enough, at Hogwarts these kids are the first to welcome the muggle-borns, the ones who know how to fix a torn robe or spellotape your book back togeher. They pass out their comic books, and wizard-born children freak out over how the pictures don't move. They stay up late telling the other children about computers and classic rock and the first man on the moon, and to eleven year-old students who have never traveled far except by flu powder, side-along apparition, or the Hogwarts train, automobiles and airplanes and video games are a magical and alien world.
It's almost magical, in fact. In a much softer, warmer way than shouted spells.
-Aila
Plus, how dangerous is it to teach folks magic, but never have them question the basics of what it is and why it does stuff? If you don't understand the fundamentals of why the thing you're doing is doing it, and it's your job? That's ridiculous! Like, I imagine it's got something to do with assumptions.
Spell A works because you Just Know spell A works, and it always has worked and that's all you need to know.
But what if you're trying to make up a spell? Are the words actually needed, or is it just intent? Where do things come from, and where does the excess matter from like, transfiguration go and/or come from? You turn say, a bookcase into a glass of water, where does the excess bookcase bit go? Do you just get a massive glass of water that's of the same mass as the bookcase? Or does that matter simply evaporate and you've got to breath the excess wood-dust for a bit because it's gone into the air around the glass.
Or what if it just sort of sticks around and you've got to 'shed' the excess magic by doing something else that 'uses' the extra bookcase up. Like a charm or transfigure something small into something large?
If you haven't read it already, read "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". It contains Yudkowsky's approach to magic and for my money it's a pretty good explanation. =]
I really liked the first chapters, got lost somewhere around when
~ SPOILERS BE HERE ~
They go to bust Bellatrix out of Azkaban. (Also, ditched because Bellatrix's brainwashing and, well, Azkaban was sort of a trigger-y thing, personally.) I think I got to the point where they finally leave?
~ AT THIS POINT ALL SPOILERS HAVE BEEN SLAIN ~
I really liked the approach to how the magical world actually has a working economy, and I know that the fic is highly influential to all later "Child Genius Harry" fics, and a lot of popular alternative character interpretation. I have to say, though, at many times it felt to me as if Harry was being transformed a little bit into Ender Wiggin. (It could be the Defense against the Dark Arts battles, though.)
Overall, a highly interesting fic!
The title sounds familiar. It didn't quite take my fancy if I remember correctly, but I might look into it again. The author is quite prolific, though!
Because this world, man! Putting it together to work in some way is just sort of like the world's biggest jigsaw.
I have a lot of headcanons, one of which is that the economy has not modernised, so aside from shopkeeper/teacher/celebrity/creature wrangler/government employee/healer, we've basically only got people who produce goods like potions and new spells and textbooks, so Hogwarts is basically trade school, and OWLS are to narrow down which trade you can be in.
(Also, aside for influential and affluent Slytherin families, I feel that it's pretty impossible for them to actually remain apart from muggles...)
See, this is why when I wrote a magical universe intending to do multiple books with serious plots, I made sure to regulate the magic to within an inch of it's life. I know what my wizard cannot do, when she cannot do it, and what the consequences are for trying anyway. Though, as it's a mystery, I might not need to know much aside from very general foreign policy, but I've got it anyway. :D
Lol, don't be sorry! I love playing with legos worldbuilding!
Welcome back – although you’ve been here before me.
Unfortunately, your timezone is awfully terrible for me, I’m in Germany.
HG, going to sleep now.
Timezones, what cruel things they are. Germany, huh? That's so cool.
Because I love Elementary. Did you know Lucy Liu's directing an episode? And how much do you love Clyde?
That sounds so neat. I can't wait to see what she does with the episode. And Clyde is the best. We haven't seen him in a while, I think, but he's oddly adorable. Ambulance!Clyde is best Clyde. *nods*