5 Ways People Are Taking Harry Potter Waaay Too Seriously
Readers everywhere have fallen in love with the tale of a magical boy who escapes a decade of child abuse only to wind up in a facility with a worse child-safety record than the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, humanity's ability to simply enjoy the Harry Potter books and get on with their lives ended the very second two computers were connected together.
These days, the rule of fandom is anything worth doing, is worth overdoing, often to a terrifying degree. Just take a look at...
#5.
The Wizard Rock Festival
In what can only be an attempt by rogue mathematicians to create an actual physical empty set, someone organized the overlap of "Rock Festival Attendees" and "Hardcore Harry Potter Fans" in Brooklyn last September. If you've already guessed that the bands all had names like "The Cedric Diggorys" and "The Remus Lupins," well done on recovering from that attack on your faith in humanity faster than we did.
Tickets actually sold out, with 20 Muggle dollars earning you Wrock festival attendance (if you were wondering, yes, "Wrock" is "rock" about wizardly subjects). Though now that we look at it, it says about 300 fans and 17 bands turned up, a ratio that they could have managed if each band just got their friends and family to fork over the cash.
Behold the face of Wrocking Out:
Wait a second, that's... a lot of girls there. Maybe the young dudes in the audience know something the rest of us don't, like that guy we all laughed at when he made it onto the cheerleading squad.
This raises many, many questions, such as, do those dudes hit on the girls by claiming they got there by accident? "Yeah, it's OK I guess, but I only bought a ticket because I thought 'wrock' was wrestling where the dudes get to bash each other with rocks."
Or is the opposite? Is this the one place on Earth where some 16-year-old dude actually increases his chances by openly recognizing the banner of Gryffindor on the wall? Will he win the heart of that girl on the left by telling her she looks like Cho Chang?
#4.
The Intercollegiate Quidditch Association
As we mentioned yesterday, Quidditch is an incredible sport based entirely around magic and making the actions of everyone except a single primary character utterly irrelevant. This makes it the best movie game ever, but the most impossibly bad candidate for a real sport since synchronized shitting.
And if we told you a bunch of schools had organized a Quidditch league, you'd say, "Aww, that's so cute." Which is why we put "Intercollegiate" in the title; this isn't elementary schools, or perhaps kindergartens for the specially-differently-abled. Real actual universities like Princeton, McGill and Boston University have full-fledged Quidditch teams. Possibly as a "if we have to cut budgets we know where to start" measure.
Oh, there's video:
There's an easy way to tell if you're playing a real sport or just failing to realize you're four-years-old: Are you carrying a piece of equipment that doesn't do anything? In a real sport you carry a stick if you intend to hit an object (baseball), other people (kendo) or both (ice hockey). In Quidditch, you waddle along like an arts-degree penguin clutching the kind of broomstick that makes witches say, "Don't worry, it happens to every wizard."
Though we will say that once jetpack technology becomes common and inexpensive, this will be the most awesome fucking sport in the world.
#3.
The Politician Who Must Not Be Named
A Russian man legally changed his name to "Harry Potter" in an attempt to win an election for governor and, while frighteningly insane, is by far not the worst thing a 32-year-old could be doing by pretending to be Harry Potter.
We're not experts on Russian government procedure (and if the last 50 years are anything to go by, neither are they) but we're fairly sure that 12-year-olds don't get to vote. And magical interference in elections is punished by the ghosts of the KGB. Oh, and you're not allowed to use a changed name in a Russian election anyway. Kind of an afterthought at this point, since if the voters were going to elect the guy, really they kind of deserved what they got.
What's even more outrageous is that we're thinking this guy wasn't a Harry Potter fan at all. If so, he would have known those Soviet Durmstrang wizards from Goblet of Fire would kick the shit out of the snotty Hogwarts rejects any day of the magical week. If you're going to go with a fake wizard name on a Russian ballot, you need to put "Viktor Krum" on that shit.
I'm one of the biggest Harry Potter nerds you could meet, and even I think this stuff is ridiculous. Including five and four. The "wrock" isn't even good. And the quidditch is crazy. There's a quidditch world cup every year and I think kids look ridiculous holding up broom sticks. I think they ruin the idea of the books being magic. And they give people the idea that everyone who loves Harry Potter is that crazy.
ReplyI'm a potterhead, but this stuff (except the first) is not typical of us, just want to speak on behalf of the potterdom here, most of us are just nerd on computers with drawn on lightning scars/dark marks, occasionally dressing up as a character for halloween.
ReplySynchronized shitting
Replygreatest sport ever
would totally watch it
no i totally don't have a fetish why do you ask?
Because your other tab is a poop fettish site
Actually, it's always okay to watch hand-drawn underage porn.
ReplyThe reason?
IT'S HAND-DRAWN. ie, NOT REAL. This is akin to arresting JK Rowling for killing Dobby.
Yeah, well, the Supreme Court didn't agree with that interpretation. Of course, their reasoning was that realistic drawings of minors was no different than the bits and pixels that make up the usual digital child porn. I can't I can fault their logic there.
It's still sexualizing the underage, and I don't fault LiveJournal for pulling that stuff. That's all I'll say.
(Also, how the hell is pulling content akin to arresting someone?)
Actually it is illegal to watch watch hand-drawn child porn. Wrote a paper on it.
ReplyLegality is only part of it - LJ doesn't have to host anything it deems "offensive". Free speech does not apply.
Of course, all discussional directives will change when it is accepted that books, from Alice In Wonderland to the Harry Potter series, written for children, are not directed to childen, but rather, to adults! The thought-lines, world views, and situations are much too coherent for children to recognize. When will everyone begin to recognize themseves in these pages?
ReplyI dunno, wrock is pretty nice sometimes.
ReplyIt is very nice, but avoid 'The Moaning Myrtles' they're massive pervs.
I'm not sure it's in-depth enough to warrant a lecture, but J.K. Rowling was definitely drawing parallels to the Holocaust - obviously all the race purity stuff, and the big bad guy before Voldemort was defeated in 1945 for Pete's sake. I don't think it's minimizing the importance of the Holocaust either. Allegories are particularly important for kids (and these are children's books), because it helps them work through really hard ideas in a safer, more simple space. Obviously they need to learn the actual history too, but fiction and history serve two different functions. Hell, when you're discussing a subject that's as hard to think and talk about as genocide, a little distance through fiction can be useful for adults too. I don't know what was discussed at the lecture, but I don't think it's an insignificant subject.
ReplyHarry Potter is interesting because it's so popular that it brings all the weirdness of the internet to the light of day. I grew up in the bowels of the internet (cyborg latchkey child here), and there's nothing more awkward/hilarious than listening to an acquaintance try to explain how she was dragged to a Harry Potter conference, and did you know that people like to write about Harry Potter characters having sex? Like, GAY sex?
I don't see anything wrong with 5 and 4. 3 is iffy but could be seen as kind of cool. 2 is pretty iffy. 1 is right on the fence between "nerdgasmically awesome" and iffy.
ReplyRule 34: Nothing is sacred.
ReplyActually, the rule is more specific - there is porn for everything.
theres nothing wrong with Wrock tbh :/ If you're going to go down this hard on a fandom, why not go down on them all because essentially there is just as much subculture dealing with Star Trek, Star Wars, Supernatural and everything in between.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesHow does Supernatural have its own subculture?
There is actually an episode of Supernatural where they talk about the Supernatural subculture.
My understanding is Supernatural's is pretty big. I don't really know if it's comparable to Star Trek, Star Wars, and Harry Potter (those three + Lord of the Rings and Twilight are astronomically large) but it's bigger than the average tv show's.
A show calling itself popular is nowhere near the same as being popular.
Way to go, Luke... Scoring yet another "Irlande, nul points" for the home team. This was barely legible.
ReplyI might have gone to the Wizard Rock festival... twice. :(
ReplyI'm jealous. I would LOVE to go! No joke!
Jelousy! I live in England, land of Harry Potter, containing absolutely none of the potterdom.
About number two, yep, trying to ban drawings is most certainly okay and not a step on the road to oppression or anything. It's not like censoring artwork is one of the first things that happens in most totalitarian states. I expected better from Cracked than to say "We don't like it, it's wrong." Oh, wait, I just checked. It's Luke again. Not really surprised this dumbass is acting like a dumbass.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesI'm an artist,(as in I make and sometimes sell art) and honestly there is no defense for kiddy porn.And yes drawings of kids f*****g is kiddy porn. I've seen "art" that's supposed to be making a statement against it but honestly it's sick. There's nothing wrong with drawing kids and there's nothing wrong with drawing sex, but mixing the two? I'll defend almost anything but if you can't see what's wrong with that s**t, you need to die. Now.
No. That s**t doesn't fly. People hate pedophiles so much because they are hurting and emotionally and mentally scarring real children, the people in our world who should be most protected from evil.
Drawing kiddy porn doesn't hurt anybody. And if you're going to say that it "encourages" pedophiles or "mainstreams" pedophilia or something like that, I have about a million drawings, paintings, sculptures, movies and TV shows glorifying murder that I think you should see.
If I was in prison I would most certainly be one of the many guys sharpening a toothbrush to permanently deal with the child molester in the mess hall. Artwork of kiddy porn makes me f*****g sick, and it is NOT something we should be legislating against.
And I'm open to having a discussion about it. I would like someone to convince me it IS wrong, in all honesty, because it disgusts me. But I've thought carefully about it and I don't think you can. I encourage you to try, though. Maybe you'll bring up something I haven't considered.
Sure but when I was in my early teens I might have drawn some porn with the characters right around my age. But that's probably the only scenario where the "artist" shouldn't die then, eh?
I personally agree with jo12344 - I don't think drawn depictions of underaged sex should be illegal at all. (For the record I'm only talking about depictions that don't involve actual kids - drawings, computer simulation - since having children make live action porn is repellant because it could hurt the kids making it.) For one thing, "underaged" (whatever that means in your country and state) kids have sex all the time, and I think art would be a lot poorer if it pretended they didn't - think of the literature that would rule out. Hell, in some states it's legal for two 16-year-olds to have sex, but not legal for them to write about it.
I understand that the picture being discussed here would probably fall under the "porn" not "art" label for most people, but I think that is often a very difficult distinction that I don't want the law controlling. Even if something is flat out children's porn, while that does turn my stomach, I think it's HURTING kids that should be illegal, not the fantasy of it. I have plenty of fantasies that would be wrong, or illegal, if it happened in real life. Hell, most (mainstream-ish) porn and romance novels are full of it. In my mind that doesn't mean it should be illegal, even if I find some of it repellant.
That said, it IS illegal in the US, so I totally understand LJ taking that stand on it.
I never understood the whole debate - is it over exploitation of children (to which should be "no" since drawings aren't living beings), or is it a revulsion to children being depicted in such a way?
I'm not fully sure on this one. I guess it depends...drawing a pair of 16 or 17 year olds having sex in an artistic way, sure, why not, it's not like you're exploiting two real teenagers. But 10 year olds or something, that is fucked up. And a small child having sex with an adult is much worse. I don't mind some sicko drawing it for himself, because seeing a sick fantasy depicted on paper or something can make them less likely to try and act it out in real life, but unless you have a special pedo artist club, keep it to yourself.
Of course it's fucked up. "It's fucked up" can NOT BE THE BASIS FOR OUR LAWS.
Murder is against the law, but nobody's going to jail for making Mortal Kombat or Postal 2 or drawing insanely violent and gory scenes of people being killed - and they shouldn't.
People who get off on eating feces and defecating on their partners make me f*****g sick. Doesn't mean they should go to jail for it. Doesn't even mean they shouldn't be allowed to make a site depicting and glorifying that activity for like-minded people. I sure as hell won't be visiting it, but they have a right to make it.
Censoring/banning artwork is really difficult to defend without turning into a moral crusader type almost instantly and implying that YOUR standards should be the basis of what is acceptable.
I'm asking again. Someone come up with an argument why artwork of kiddy porn should be banned other than "it's really disgusting" I know it is. I'm agreeing with you. I just don't think that alone should be cause for banning it.
What?! That concert should have totally had Harry and the Potters!!!
ReplyMy school plays quidditch at sports days (because my school is so awesome and people don't really do actual real sport).
ReplyYou think the mudblood crackdown WASN'T an allegory for the Holocaust? But the joke's on the Livejournal people, the US Supreme Court rules that it doesn't matter that the underage person in the drawing isn't real, it's still illegal. Though if they lost the brooms, Quiddich might be fun...
ReplyDoes that mean that all movies where people are killed on-screen count as snuff films?
O.e
How the hell can you ban "underage porn" when it's a drawing of a person who doesn't exist? The key problem here is that you can't prove how old a fictional person is. The Weasleys started out in the first book underage, but by the last book they were legal adults. How does that work exactly when looking at a drawing of Weasley porn? "Oh, in this drawing, they're 16 years old so this is totally illegal and disgusting." Then, in an absolutely identical drawing: "But in this one, they're 17 years old, so that's fine."
Politician who must not be named and he's Harry Potter? The person who wrote this article clearly doesn't know s**t about Harry Potter.
ReplyOkay, so the guy changing his name to Harry Potter and the pedophilia thing is some really bad aspects of the Harry Potter fanbase. But I don't think the other things are taking it too far. It's just fans of a widely popular novel converging and having fun. There are all sorts of cons and Lumos 2006 was just more specified towards Harry Potter. Wizard Rock is not the first, or last, tribute band genre to be made towards movies, TV shows or books. Also, playing Quidditch would be fun to do once. It's like a childhood dream of mine. As far as geek culture/fan culture goes, the cons and quidditch games is the same as any other big book/movie following.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI have played Quidditch, I was the snitch. It's really fun if you remove yourself from the absurdity of what you're doing.
@irishluff: There is nothing absurd about Quidditch. Quidditch is serious business.
The only thing that worries me about the Quidditch thing is the possibility of being impaled on a broomstick.
I loved the books and have them all, even the offshoots that JK Rowling did for the UK (Harry's Schoolbooks). I loved the movies. I have them all. But when it's all said and done, they are all (sadly, but perhaps for the best, all things considered) works of fiction. Too many people don't know the difference between fact and fantasy. I knew some Dragon Riders from Pern once. I also met a couple of Amazons from Darkover. (At least that's where they seemed to think they were from.) So the phenomena really isn't limited to Harry Potter. Lonely misfits look for places they belong and I guess that fiction offers a safe haven.
ReplyBut Snape and Hermione? Really? That's sort of like shrimp with catshit sauce.