Kobold King

Happy Guy Fawkes day, one and all! Let's all wear masks and celebrate anarch--oh wait. Guy Fawkes wanted to install a Catholic theocracy. Nevermind. We anarchists don't get a holiday after all.

Yessss, Voidus. Keep the foreshadowing alive in everyone's minds. All posts are transpiring as I have foreseen...

But I can smell pudding, therefore the Chaldean calendar is to be followed only by sentient talking scallops. I am not a sentient talking scallop at this time of the month, therefore your argument is invalid.

Actually, "Random IV" is pronounced "Random Eggfruit." We don't acknowledge Roman numerals here except on Easter, second Sundays of the month, and when you're on a train.

Make sure to have "Doctor Funkenstein" somewhere on the list too.

The inventor of the autocorrecting pen, who bewitched it as a joke to randomly correct words to his name?

Oops I did it again.

Kobold King casts a Cheering Charm! Did it work?

On that random note. TwiLyght, your pony OC is clearly playing at the Grand Galloping Gala.

Do you think the random is your ally? You merely adopted the random. I was born in it. Raised by it. Moulded by it. I didn't even have a normal conversation until I was a man, and then it was NOTHING BUT JELLO.

...for you.

Sorry, was that last one sad? Take this.

It would be very random...

More HP nonsense and fluff:

Sorry. I wouldn't mind a link to that fiction. I like sobbing my eyes out over characters I used to despise.

I like the sad headcanons, like "Draco Malfoy didn't want to participate in Lupin's boggart class not because he thought it was stupid, but because he knew the boggart would take the shape of his father."

Haven't read the book, which is unusual for me. And don't get me wrong--I like the movie. I make fun of the terrible CGI, often shoddy acting, and tesseract-sized plot holes, but I find watching the movie a legitimately entertaining experience. It's just that I find it most enjoyable when I'm vocally poking fun at it, while my family politely prefers that I keep my trap shut. There are plenty of fanfictions that explore how HP magic could be combined with muggle sciences to useful (and sometimes terrifying effect.) For instance, in one fanfic Voldemort makes the plaque on the Voyager probe into one of his Horcruxes, so part of his soul can be rocketed out of the solar system and out of the reach of would-be Horcrux hunters.

Watched A Wrinkle in Time with the family just now. ME: Hold on a minute. If Mrs. Who and Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Which are so ancient and wise, can't they come up with a better rescue plan than dropping three children on an alien planet and expecting them to retrieve a prisoner from the interior of an intensely guarded facility? Heck, if their dad's been gone for a year already surely there isn't too much of a rush. Couldn't they have maybe spent a few months educating the kids about the planet Camazotz before throwing them there, so, you know, they won't be identified, arrested, and manipulated by the satanic bureaucrat in charge of the planet within an hour of their arrival? Or maybe-- EVERYONE ELSE: Can we just watch the movie without the critic's commentary?

Hmm... Definitely. Books are always better when you understand the horrifying subtext beneath it all.

Now I'm really wondering what Hoid's pony form would look like.

Both came to power after defeating an ancient spirit of entropy. Both ruled for approximately a thousand years. Both use pawns and ancient magic to maintain power against various foes. Both are functionally immortal. Both are constantly seen wearing specific items of jewelry for potentially magical reasons. Both inhabit palaces with an excessive number of spires... I've said it before and I'll say it again: I would totally read that fanfiction.

Gee, I didn't think our Harry Potter geekery was that boring.

--Perhaps the only soul at Hogwarts who realizes that long walks through monster-infested forests really shouldn't be part of standard disciplinary procedure. But yeah. My personal theory is that the wizarding world lags behind muggle society by a century or two, meaning that in the era of the books wizards are still stuck with all the corruption of the late 1700s / early 1800s. Hence the rigid classism, casual racism, nationalist mindset, obsession with boarding schools, accumulation of the wealth within a few distinct families... need I go on? Not even the constant streams of Muggle-borns are enough to update their society in a meaningful way, considering any of them who raise objections to how things are run are told to shut up and accept that they don't know squat about the magical world. Hopefully the rise of Hermione as a noteworthy member of the Ministry of Magic will start changing things for the better--though given the state of the government, she'll probably spend all her time fighting an uphill battle against those who wish to make things even more backwards and primitive, leaving her with little time for modernization. You're missing out. Some of the best fun as a fan is sifting through the setting and focusing on the horrendous implications and quirks of the world. You should hear me compare Princess Celestia to the Lord Ruler sometime.

So, a lot of HP fans complain about S.P.E.W. and its presence in the novels, claiming that Hermione was acting irrationally in her attempts to free the elves. They make the same arguments that Ron and Harry make in the novels, claiming that the elves cherish their situation and that campaigning to have them freed from it is morally wrong. I find myself increasingly frustrated by this. The thing is, Hermione is right. Elves have been enslaved for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, and the way specimens like Kreacher accept actions of utter abuse, even inflicting physical harm upon themselves, is not healthy by any species' standards and couldn't possibly have developed naturally. Whatever elf culture might have existed in the distant past has long since been stamped out, and now all that remains is a self-damaging form of species-wide Stockholm Syndrome. Arguments that house-elves adore their slavery, or worse, that they couldn't live without it, are eerily similar to the arguments of anti-abolitionists of the muggle world, who held that the people of Africa had been designed to serve white people and that trying to free them was acting against God's will. Where Hermione makes her mistake is by trying to force social change via the resources of a fourteen year-old schoolgirl. Her actions would be equivalent to a Southern belle in the pre Civil War days of America trying to chase the family slaves off the farm, paying no heed to the fact that they are uneducated, illiterate, and would be incapable of finding employment or freedom in the outside world. The problem she was trying to tackle was simply too big and too deep-rooted for a single school society to get rid of, and I feel a character as clever as Hermione should have figured out that her approach wasn't going anywhere far sooner. Do not mistake the futility of Hermione's goals with immorality or stupidity, however. The treatment of the elves is a serious problem, and it needs to be addressed as soon as wizardly possible.

See, I doubt John Lumic could even order coffee without shouting bombastic death threats about the future of humanity at the barista. (Death in Heaven spoilers)