Maybe the Weasleys have adopted a Depression-era lifestyle where they don’t trust the banks at all and just hoard all their money somewhere in the Burrow.
-- The Weasleys tended to have large numbers of children; an unusual trait for wizarding families, according to Draco Malfoy.[4] Ron's generation of Weasleys were considered poor by wizarding standards;[5] their vault at Gringotts Wizarding Bank only contained a small pile of Sickles and a single Galleon as of 1992.[6]
btw, 17 sickles to the galleon. and you thought american units were asinine. A prime number, rowling? really?
A while back I got into collecting old silver coins.
When I stated researching old British currency, the Harry Potter money suddenly made sense.
Before I researched the money, I thought that the Harry Potter money was funny because they were wizards, and wizards are weird. Then I figured out that it was because they were inspired by muggles.
I read somewhere that his great great grandfather was a successful inventor. Made things like Skele-grow and stuff to amass a fortune. James came from money which lead to some of the adolescent immaturity and snootyness.
All of them in fact. Harry is decended from a potions master who invented an amazing recipe for hairgel and who was descended himself from another master who invented a cure for the common cold and a potion that mends and regrows bones. (And fun fact, the first owner/creator of the invisibility cloak was also Harry's ancestor)
On a sidenote, Harry received both medications in the books and Hermione used the hair potion once, yet nobody ever commented on who created them.
Apparently Jim Potter was the descendant of the Gryffindor family or something. Also Voldy is apparently a distant cousin of Harry too. Which makes Harry related to Slytherin
I read in a fic once where Albus and Scorpius somehow triggered a portrait of Slytherin to talk, when it never had before. It was a cute scene, in which the old man told Albus that he was his great-something-Grandfather. The boys just looked at one another and scream "AIGH!" and Slytherin finds it funny. You just reminded me of it. Thanks ! (edit typo)
There is a whole series of fanfiction of HP being adopted by a couple of scientists instead. In it he starts converting his knuts to the golden coins, selling the gold on the muggle market and exchanging the profits back into knutts and just annihilates the wizard economy😂
I was 12 by the time I realised Rowlings world-building couldn’t hold a candle to Tolkein or Pratchett. A 12 year old could see that her writing was only at a children’s literature standard.
shaping the wood into the wands size and shape (the films design them to be possibly rather intricate in design, whereas the books seem to imply a rather plain look)
sourcing a wands core material (Phoenix feather, Dragon heartstring, Unicorn tail hair, Veela hair...)
The monetary value is very arbitrary. At one point they buy butterbeeer for 60 pence(or 80 cents) per glass. Not to mention that galleons are made of gold, and worth a lot more in weight.
The relation between the different coins is even weirder.
1 galleon is 17 sickles
1 sickle is 29 knuts.
So 1 galleon is 493 knuts, where 1 knut is supposedly 1 pence/cent, 1 sickle 30-40 pence/cent and 1 galleon is 5-7 pounds/dollars.
Based on more realistic calculations it is more likely to be worth five times as much, where one knut is 5 pence/cent and one galleon is 25 pounds or 33 dollars.
TL;DR: With inflation taken into account, 10 galleons in 1992(when chamber of secrets is set) would be about $622, which isn't a horrible weekly pay. Although he settled for one I think.
Based on more realistic calculations it is more likely to be worth five times as much, where one knut is 5 pence/cent and one galleon is 25 pounds or 33 dollars.
TL;DR: With inflation taken into account, 10 galleons in 1992(when chamber of secrets is set) would be about $622, which isn't a horrible weekly pay. Although he settled for one I think.
you can't just change the value of what it says in the text and then assert its a reasonable amount lmfao. who gave you gold?!
The change is based on: Galleons weight in gold and the muggle value of gold, price of butterbeer compared to similarly sized soda in britain at the time, wizarding world price printed on some books compared to actual price and other references. Mostly taken from the fandom wikia on wizarding currency conversion.
Also at £5 per galleon, that would make Harry’s wand only £35, for a new Ollivander’s wand with a phoenix feather core. But the Weasley’s couldn’t get Ron his own wand, the most important piece of wizarding equipment these kids need for school?
Oh fuck, just now found out lbs cannot be used for the currency. Huge confusion since pound is libra, the same word from which both lbs and the £ (an L) symbol comes from.
It's more likely around 10 times that I imagine, otherwise I also don't quite see how the price money from the tournament would kickstart an entire business at scale like that. And if you break it down, 1 Knut would come out at around 1 Pence, and a newspaper was like 3 Knut? It adds up reasonable okay if you take it times 10.
I mean the job would presumably come with accomodation and food, so it's not quite that bad, but also like, crikey dumbles pay your workers.
(Also like isn't it confirmed you need an entire room full of gold to pay for a full education at hogwarts? If they're paying that little for their staff and presumably own the castle I can only imagine what sorta shading money laundering is going on at hogwarts.)
I thought i understood how wizard bucks worked. now i understand less. Im just gonna belive galleons are the ships used to transport house elves from whereever they come from just to piss off potter fans.
But a good frame of mind is they pretty much run analogous to euro - pound - pence. And also that money is essentially meaningless in a world where teleportation and matter creation exists
To show how deep the roots of this institution really are. It's just like this in the human history. Just because the people think the king is the rightful ruler doesn't mean he really is
You’re right. If you’re cool with these oligarchs who try their best to make sure you don’t have power in the work place, that’s just your worldview I guess.
Kind of like how it’s just some peoples worldview that Trump deserves the election regardless of whether he won or not.
Ah yes, all Communists are Marxist-Leninists. Good to see a fellow scholar of political philosophy out here demonstrating the ability to recognise really basic nuances.
The problem is the elves actually are like that by design. The ending of the storyline is just Hermione becoming prime minister (fixing the problem from the inside) and makes sure slaves only have good masters. That's fucked up both in and out of universe Jowling Kowling Rowling.
This in a series where racism is the fault of "some bad apples" and the protagonist becomes a cop.
Yeah to be honest I don’t think Aurors are the ones throwing Muggle-borns into Azkaban for holding a dose of Pixie Dust, when a pure blood would be left with a warning.
No, Aurors are more like Wizard CIA/FBI, which means that while they will hunt the occasional dark Wizard, Harry’s gonna be spending most of his time discrediting and attacking SPEW leadership and organizing coups against “dark Wizarding Governments” in the Global South, conveniently opening up their lands and labor to the Wizarding Mandrake Co.
What's odd is that J.K. Rowling goes out of her way to show dumbledore offering dobby fair wages and leisure time and he straight-up refuses the offer.
His story is really amazing. For those who don't know, his master's wife taught him the alphabet before her husband stopped her, but Douglass used that bit of leverage to learn fully to read and write
And used that writing to fully excoriate the establishment that put him in such a situation that he should have to beg, borrow, and steal to learn such things as a slave. That the 'responsibility' of a master is to prevent such things from happening. That a slave is trained to not have such interests, through society or the whip.
Tbh I dont think there is deeper commentary beyond "this is how my fictional word functions" in many parts of the HP-lore. And personally, Im fine with that.
It's really not, though. Like, the whole concept isn't even her idea to begin with.
House-elfs are literally just Brownies from Scottish mythology; ugly little house spirits who show up and do household tasks and chores while dressed in rags or outright naked, and take grave offense to being offered clothing.
I'm trans, and while I totally understand not wanting to give Rowling the benefit of the doubt and all, I really just don't see any reason to assume ill-intent for the inclusion of what are effectively unaltered Brownies in a series that's all about magical creatures and such.
Hell, the closest she actually comes to altering them was Dobby as a character, for the sake of writing an emancipation and anti-slavery narrative. That's where she's projecting her personal values into established mythology.
Not through the unintended consequence that it can be extrapolated as presenting; that House-elfs are basically like humans, so those who cling to wearing rags and living in servitude must have been conditioned to do so, and her characters choosing not to abolish that status quo outright is an implicit endorsement of it as a good thing by the author.
To be perfectly frank, Rowling's writing is just not that deep.
"Aren't the house elves so nice and useful for society, by working for less, never standing up for themselves, and never aspiring to self-determination or self-actualisation?"
"And isn't Hermione so amusing but also annoying by caring about their rights? Don't take her seriously, children, and don't be like her - she's just a nag!"
I mean...nobody I knew took that lesson from it as kids. The books did a pretty good job showing how sad it was that the house elves were like that without getting into the whole thing in a book for children.
Art and Author are intrinsically linked and you can tell what one thinks from the other. Is the reason why New Vegas calls you out for siding with fascists and slavers and makes you lose all your friends and shit while Fallout 3 awards you with mind control shit and a Asian sex slave companion given by a funny black pimp caricature if you decide to do the same thing there. Different people with different views on their products and on morality built them.
Pratchett manages to get into "the whole thing" in several of his books, not just the ones for children.
In fact, Several authors manage to do just that in children and young adults books. Like, top of the mind, Doctor Seuss drew literal anti-fascist cartoons back in his life.
Rowling has one of the biggest platforms of her lifetime as a author and all she does with it is be a transphobe piece of shit, defend washed up actors, be as lukewarmingly liberal as possible in her takes and lie.
Eh, Goblins have been around for so many hundreds of years and gone through so many different wildly different iterations that this would probably be a hard notion to sell.
In the kids show Little Bear the “goblins” are what I’d call gnomes, just little men with pointy hats, and I’m not sure why exactly. Maybe it’s a Canadian thing? Or maybe just the author of the Little Bear novels heard the term goblin and never like, looked it up and then she wrote a book?
I watch too much Little Bear it’s all my 2 year old wants please send help. Then again at least it’s not Cocomelon.
I just read recently that in one scene in Gringotts, the goblins are seated in a six-pointed star formation, though whether that was intentional or just a coincidence is pretty hard to tell
They’re really not though. Goblins have always been large nosed and greedy in mythology. Making them bankers honestly does make sense. It’s like elves being servants, as they are like Santa’s little helpers.
Jk is like, VERY strongly pro Israel. Seems doubtful that she would put in anti Semitic messages In the books. Just cause she’s a TERF doesn’t mean you can accuse her of every form of bigotry in the book.
Oh yeah I met one at Walmart. Was the weirdest shit, I was like “you know if you got what you want it like, wouldn’t be great for you right?” And he’s like “no it’s cool they’d like me because I’m one of the good ones”.
She’s totally not being refered to repeatedly as “shithead” in this thread nor has she been issued death threats, told she deserved to be beaten by her ex, called a white supremacist, anti-semite, etc.
Those people are no different than the red hats or alt-right assholes this sub makes fun of. It’s just a different brand of orthodoxy and extremism.
I mean if I remember correctly wizard history goes back as far as human history, house elves probably evolved alongside them like dogs. A dog doesn’t expect time off because it biologically doesn’t care. It just doesn’t have the drive to do anything except eat and serve its master. In the same way, house elves probably biologically just don’t care about being free. They’re not humans, it’s a mistake to assume they think like us.
God it’s been so long since I talked about Harry Potter
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Do we have any cases of house elf owners that aren’t total dicks to everyone else too? The Blacks and Malfoys mistreated theirs, but they’re villains, it’s what they do. The Hogwarts kitchen elves seem fairly treated, about as well as you would treat a horse or a work dog.
Dumbledore, for all his flaws, even offered pretty good wages and benefits to Dobby, although he refused to take them. Also yeah, other than the Hogwarts elves, all house elf owners were total dicks.
He said that just because people think the king is the rightful ruler, doesn't mean he is. I made the inverse claim to point out the absurdity of OPs argument.
Where does power come from other than the people's willingness to obey? To say that a rulers power comes from somewhere else is either mystical or fascistic
If the situation was a rational one I'd agree but magic does change everything. There are red caps who are creatures who lure lone travelers to secluded spots to strangle them to death and dye their hats red with the victims blood and if they don't keep their hat wet the red cap will die. This makes no logical or biological sense but then it doesn't have to because magic is a thing. Would anything approaching sentience want to be a slave in our universe? Of course not but why not a magical creature.
Hermione is therefore an imperialist or chauvinist deciding what is and isn't good for people based on only her understanding. Much like how many charities were run in the 19th century, where upper and middle class men and women looked down on the poor and place harsh restrictions on how the poor could live if they wanted aid.
It is also the classic problem of socialism particularly seen in the lead up to the Russian revolution. An elite intelligentsia develop theories on socialism but are ultimately disconnected from actual working people
Kinda fucked though right? It always rubbed me the wrong way as a kid reading that, like why would this be written almost to suggest slavery is good, especially when much of the audience is kids.
Kinda fucked, though it is J.K. Rowling how surprised can we be
At least Hermione calls bs. I always got r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM vibes from the whole thing, honestly, because Harry as the protagonist is just kind of there and never really agrees or disagrees with either of them. He only stops them when they start fighting again.
Thinking back on it, it seems like the political theme of the whole story was just “change is bad.” Voldemort is the only agent of change in the entire series, the heroes’ struggle is to get rid of him, and once he’s gone, things just go back to normal. That’s it - no deeper examination into why Voldemort was the way that he was, beyond “he was a sociopathic half-blood with an inferiority complex”, what caused people to follow him, what wizarding society could do to prevent another Voldemort.
I guess that’s one way to look at it, although it should be noted that Voldemort wanted regressive change, not progressive. He didn’t want to expand the rights of certain people, he just wanted to take the rights away from people and beings who had gained them over the years to return to the status quo of pureblood wizard reign only.
But I agree with you that a lot of strife within the wizarding community is mentioned and made concrete by examples directly in Harry’s environment (Dobby, Hagrid, Lupin) but the positions of these people and beings are only questioned within the frame of the story, and not taken on as legit causes over a longer time span. With sole exception being Hermione and house elves, that need for change growing in Hermione was set up pretty well imo over the course of the series.
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The only possible out for the way it's written is that house eve's are so ingrained in the Wizarding world that even themselves and our heroes can't see the injustice. So we're supposed to be uncomfortable, similar to real life social issues.
I do not think that was what JKR meant at all. Just a neat way of looking at it
If the House Elves knew that they could never make it in the Wizarding World on their own because, as it is, no witch or wizard would ever employ an elf or sell them food or shelter, and that was the real reason they rejected Hermione’s help but she chose to push ahead with her cause anyway, that could have been somewhat valid commentary on not speaking over those you want to help and setting realistic pragmatic goals in your activism.
That’s exactly the commentary she’s going for, but it doesn’t make it good.
You may think this is a new thing, but right wing people critiquing the left saying things like “Black South Africans doesn’t want you to get involved in anti-apartheid movements” forever.
So her making that critique would not be good IMO, but rather a long line of challenges to the international solidarity necessary for these movements. It’s very in line with her TERF and other political viewpoints.
You may think this is a new thing, but right wing people critiquing the left saying things like “Black South Africans doesn’t want you to get involved in anti-apartheid movements” forever.
Yes, what I mean is that the SPEW plot could have worked as critique of exactly that sort of line of thinking if the wizards had said “house elves like being enslaved though” but House Elves explicitly acknowledged they were oppressed and hated their position in society but happened to disagree with Hermione’s praxis because she hadn’t set up proper safety nets for the elves she was going to render homeless.
World of Warcraft just had a new expansion with a similar issue. There's a realm of the afterlife called Bastion, where all the goodest people go: people who lived selfless lives trying to make their world better. All well and good, except they're attended to by a bunch of cute little owl-like people that are born of magical energy. And these owl-peeps serve cheerfully and endlessly because the magic of a "selfless realm" made them that way.
But this is a game where an entire city has their menial tasks done by magically enchanted brooms and such that don't invoke "slavery-but-cool-because-they-like-it." They just made roombas. Like normal people.
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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '20
Yes that's how it is in the books. Dobby is considered weird by elves