I’m cringing like Harry Potter is really the shared cultural event to help frame whats going on….
this is so fucking cringe, like grow the fuck up and stop framing everything around a children’s book. how fucking embarrassing. there’s literal nazis in power and you’re out here pulling this shit. have some fucking shame.
hey, no. comparing a scary reality someone’s never faced before to fiction they’re familiar with helps people understand something they’d otherwise not understand. let people learn the way they need to.
children’s books exist to teach people about shit like this. this is part of why fiction exists. stories have been doing this job in your lives since aesop’s fables taught you life lessons through animal metaphors.
just because you already have a full grasp on what’s going on, don’t attack people who are only just starting to understand. you say “grow the fuck up”, but by first recognising there is a problem, people are in fact “growing up”.
People talk a lot about how Harry Potter taught them about friendship and bravery and love overcoming evil etc and of course I think that’s very important but like…
Harry Potter also taught an entire generation of kids that the news media can’t always be trusted to tell the truth, that the government can often be corrupt or incompetent, that the legal system isn’t always right, that the people in power don’t always have your best interests at heart. That bad things sometimes happen to good people, that your heroes aren’t always as perfect as you think they are, that even those with the best intentions can be wrong, that everyone can make mistakes and that often in order to make things right it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
…and I think in a way that’s every bit as important as the more positive messages.
what if the reason nobody can tell fred and george apart is because they really are interchangeable
not in a ~it doesn’t matter~ way but like. molly and arthur used to worry that fred and george might turn out to be squibs because they weren’t doing any accidental magic as children, but they were, THEY TOTALLY WERE, it just wasn’t anything flashy, instead they were just like idly switching bodies all the time
and like sometimes it doesn’t make much of a difference, whatever, wake up in the opposite bed you went to sleep in, but it gets like dangerous and weird if you’re on a broom or in the pond or letting your mum teach you to cook or trying to be mad stealth, so for a long long time everybody presumes they’re clumsy maybe-squibs and that they’re doing their twin lying thing when they try to explain what’s going on, so they learn to handle the issue their ownselves
they just. don’t go anywhere without the other. they start each day deciding which body is going to be which (because at this point they really don’t know which body is technically fred and which is technically george), and they learn to reorient FAST when they switch, and what things set them off, and eventually they learn how to act like nothing’s up even when one of them’s in the air and one’s on the ground or whatever, and then they burn past that til they can finish each other’s sentences — til they can switch midsentence — til they can play beater together — til they can switch in a split second in the middle of a game — til there’s room for other kinds of accidental magic to start showing up
at hogwarts they keep each other awake in history of magic by switching back and forth. in potions they take turns brewing and keeping lookout for the slytherins. in transfiguration and charms they keep their grades up because one of them will always get a spell right on the first try so they switch and make it look like both of them do and then they practice on their own later in private. it keeps the mystery alive.
at first they thought lee was just a lucky guesser but no, lee can always tell one twin from another twin — it’s not exactly telling fred from george, because while they are definitely two distinct personalities neither one of them feels like fred all the time or george all the time — but lee knows who he argued with yesterday or who he lent his notes to or who’s best to ask for help in astronomy and who’s best at runes.
the weasleys are pretty bad at it for the longest time, but then bill comes home from his first year cursebreaking and he can tell, and over a holiday he teaches his trick to charlie so charlie can tell. alicia and katie and angelina can tell. the twins honestly don’t know if oliver can tell or not; so long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to on the quidditch pitch he doesn’t really care about much else. harry can tell. luna can tell. tonks can tell.
the problem is there’s no way for this to end happily
YES THERE IS
THERE IS INDEED A WAY FOR THIS TO END HAPPILY LISTEN UP
so after fred dies, george hates being trapped in one body, feels claustrophobic, misses fred so much he thinks it might drive him insane
but then one day
george blinks and he’s somewhere he wasn’t a second ago, he’s in a place full of white light and he can’t orient himself, can’t ground himself, feels dizzy and sick and overwhelmed but it only lasts for about thirty seconds.
then he’s back in his own body.
and he looks down at his chest, his legs, his arms, there’s an ear missing so it’s definitely still his living body, but there’s something written on his arm, scrawled in messy quill ink.
“i love you. i miss you.”
george flips out, washes off the ink and immediately writes a message in reply— “how’s death going?”
he walks around with that message written on his arm for weeks, always keeping a quill pen somewhere nearby, waiting, waiting, before it finally happens again. the switch. george is alive, so he can’t handle being in the afterlife, he feels dizzy and sick and it’s the worst feeling in the world, but it doesn’t last long, and when he gets back to his living body, there’s a long message from fred waiting on his right thigh, the ink still drying.
this goes on for years, never as often as either twin would like, but it’s enough. fred helps george figure out how to propose to angelina, fred helps plan the wedding. sometimes it’s fred in george’s body when angelina kisses her husband. sometimes she suspects, but she doesn’t mind in the slightest.
it gets easier as george gets older. the times when he switches into fred’s afterlife don’t hurt as much. he almost feels comfortable there, almost feels oriented. he knows he’s getting closer to dying.
then when george is past ninety, lying on his deathbed, he writes a careful message on his palm. “i’m coming soon. where are you?”
they switch, it lasts for almost five minutes this time, and when george gets back into his own body, he sees the instructions fred wrote over his heart.
“you’ll wake up in king’s cross station. take the second train and get off at the third stop. i’ll be waiting.”
THIS IS THE BEST GODDAMN HARRY POTTER HEADCANON I HAVE EVER READ I AM C R Y I N G
Oh my god. I don’t know what to do with all these feels
I also love that they just came out of an exam where Hermione was all “I quite enjoyed that” and Ron was very much “I did not have a fucking clue” but Harry’s all “My scar hurts, it means something, Voldemort is nEAR”
Okay, I think I can explain this as someone who spent a good 5 years resisting jumping on the Harry Potter bandwagon. This has nothing to do with toxic masculinity or masculinity at all. As a cis female who was a freshman in high school when the first book came out, I have had his exact reaction to Harry Potter myself.
There are, I think, a couple of things at play here, all related to age. Dean was 20 when the first book came out in the US, well out of the age range of the books’ original intended audience.
At this time, they were still living under their father’s rule, but Dean was technically an adult and probably trying to do everything he could to live up to his dad’s Marine expectations to prove himself to be a capable adult able to handle himself on solo hunts and not still a kid who needed protection. The fact that Sam is surprised that their dad let Dean go on a hunt by himself in the pilot means that John hadn’t been doing that when Sam left for Stanford. Reading a kids book about a magical school would NOT have fit into that ‘I’m an adult and ready to do adult things, like go on hunts by myself’ narrative Dean was undoubtedly trying to spin for his dad. Especially not the first few books that were definitely still very much meant for middle schoolers. He might have tried to sneak them in under John’s nose and hide that he was reading them, if not for Sam.
Sam was 16 when the books came out, still well within the acceptable age range. And he obviously read them, probably because his classmates were, but also because he was and ever is a giant nerd. And at this point he was well past trying to impress John, so he wouldn’t have cared about what John thought of his reading kid’s books. If he did read them while still in high school–and it’s likely that he did–then he would have been annoying about talking about it, as every new Harry Potter fan is to anyone who hasn’t read the series. Not because the series is inherently annoying, but because when you read Harry Potter you CAN’T. STOP. TALKING. ABOUT. IT. Sam probably talked Dean’s ear off about it to the point of Dean wanting to rip his hair out, both because he just didn’t want to hear about the same subject constantly and because he probably secretly wanted to read them and didn’t think he could. This scenario is easily enough to create a prejudice against the books. It’s how I developed one myself as a high schooler.
Once the opinion that the thing is annoying because he has to hear about it all the time from everyone under the age of 20 he comes across developed, it would be easy for Dean to continue having this attitude into his thirties. Especially if no one tried to force him to get passed the prejudice. I wouldn’t put it past him to continue not reading Harry Potter even now just to annoy Sam.
And the fact that Sam knows how nerdy Dean is and how into pop culture he normally is and still gives him that hesitant look when he explains something from Harry Potter makes me think more than anything else that this is how Dean’s distaste for the books happened. Sam (and every other kid Dean talked to during that time period) talked about it incessantly as a teenager to the point of driving Dean crazy. Dean decided to never read the books to spite them. That decision prevails today because no one has put in the leg work of getting him past his prejudice.
I would personally probably still hate the series myself if I hadn’t worked at a book store that held midnight release parties and had fellow staff members campaign to get me to read them.
Anonymous said: I’m pretty certain Dean has quoted Harry Potter at least once or twice before tho???????????????? I know he at least knew what he was talking about when he spoke to Charlie about it that one time (I’ve been out of spn for a while I need to catch up but I’m still at least almost sure he knows Harry Potter??)
well he called sam “dumbledork”, but he was more kinda baffled at sam’s use of pop culture as a pep talk (which is strange since i’m sure he ought to understand how characters can be role models *cough* braveheart speech, rent speech *cough* (sidenote: all robbie thompson episodes))
Anonymous said: maybe dean intensely dislikes harry potter bc he always thought dumbledore was an ASS but sam idolized the “"leader of the light”“ & he just. couldn’t. take it.
well, heck… in 12x05 it was more that dean had no clue what a horcrux was (therefore has not read the books), and despairs that sam knows about harry potter, as opposed to dean vocally despairing of the thing itself.
after thinking about it for a while, I have come to the conclusion that it’s an audience-vessel thing. not everyone who watches the show is going to know harry potter inside out (what a shame), or what a horcrux is, so there needs to be someone who can ask questions and explain the concept to the audience. dean asks with his eyes, sam answers.
sam is already an established potterhead (along with charlie), so it can’t be him. in the scene in 12x05 where dean and sam talk to christoph and christoph mentions horcruxes, dean’s the only one who doesn’t know what it means. ellie is the only other person there, and she’s clearly a millennial with a quirky personality and an internet connection, and i don’t think it’s even possible for a character like that to not be a potter fan, or at the very least, have watched the movies. which leaves only dean.
this is not the first time dean has not understood a pop culture reference that, truly, he should have understood. like the mention of “yin/yang” at the end of season 11, when chuck was comparing himself and amara. i’m pretty sure that as someone with an incredibly vast knowledge of religious and cultural symbolism such as dean, he would absolutely know what yin/yang is. however, he had to not know, so the audience can find out.
playing down his intelligence has become a part of his personality, because he usually is the audience vessel. he’s the one who asks the questions a lot of us would see as having obvious answers, which is sad, since he’s meant to be smart.
just typing that compels me to then type DEAN IS SMART but alas, i think the writers often forget that. and they forget/erase the concept that he’s a pop culture sponge, and has been collecting useless fandom knowledge from every fandom, including those that emerged generations before he was born. they do this because somehow it’s easier to accept that dean rejects a Thing due to a Reason, and sam just Knows Everything, all of the time.
all this fourth wall stuff aside, i do want to figure out an actual logical character-based reason why dean would not know about harry potter, or actively avoid it, or pretend not to enjoy it. it’s not societally seen as ~feminine~, therefore terrifying to macho manly dean. it may be aimed at children, but the people who were children when it came out are no longer children. besides, dean loves kid stuff (rainbow slinky, cartoons, the suite life of zack and cody, probably some other things - but damn, this guy had his childhood ripped away, he craves kid stuff like it’s gonna fill the void in his soul, i know it IN MY HEART)
there’s no obvious reason dean would reject harry potter??? it’s not as simple as him disliking it -he hasn’t seen/read it. the concept of magic children and an orphan discovering his powers and finding a home and friends can’t possibly turn dean off, since it fits neatly in with everything else he likes and desires in life.
maybe he just never had time to read the whole series. or watch the movies.
tl;dr: okay, yeah, let’s go with that. he wants to save it to read all at once, and watch all at once, but they’ve never stayed in one place long enough, or had enough free time that he can get all the books out from the library and read them all, and he doesn’t want to watch the movies until he’s read the books.
and until he can put his head down and go on a three-week potter marathon, he’s gonna pretend he doesn’t give a shit about it. because that’s easier than admitting he’s looking forward to anything that isn’t killing monsters or banging random strangers or eating pie for every meal.
Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars. He heard Hermione whisper, “Its bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.” It was hard to believe there was a ceiling there at all, and that the Great Hall didn’t simply open on to the heavens.
listen… harry potter is the most savage person in the entire series like this kid decimates people with one comeback can you imagine james potter would have been so proud like
“they stuff people’s heads down the toilet the first day at stonewall. want to come upstairs and practice?” "no, thanks. the poor toilet’s never had anything as horrible as your head down it – it might be sick.” fucking eleven year old harry!! already a lil mini savage!!!!!
“listening to the news! again?“ "well, it changes every day, you see” my boy!!! mouthing off to the dursleys!! who gives a fuck?? not harry potter
“’congratulations, harry! i wonder if you could give me a quick word? how you felt facing that dragon? how do you feel now about the fairness of the scoring?’ ‘yeah, you can have a word,’ said harry savagely. ‘goodbye!’” holy fuck!! when harry potter literally does not give a shit anymore and jk rowling knows it and literally!!! canonically!!! makes him a savage harry is literally savage it says it right there in the goblet of fire
“it’s time you learned some respect!” “it’s time you earned it.” mouthing off to the minister of magic damn harry authority who????? what??? respecting your elders??? harry doesn’t give a shit!!!!
“sure you can manage that broom, potter? got plenty of special features, hasn’t it? shame it doesn’t come with a parachute - in case you get too near a dementor.“
“pity you can’t attach an extra arm to yours, malfoy, then it could catch the snitch for you.” oh shit!!!! legit how many times do u think malfoy literally cried to his dad because harry burned him!!!! where’s the aloe vera!!!!
“yes, sir.“ "there’s no need to call me ‘sir’ professor.” oh fucking shit!!!! did you think i was gonna forget this!!! the holy grail of harry being savage as fuck oh my god!!!! james potter is fucking cheering in heaven!!!! he made a cake to commemorate this moment!!!! three years later lily’s chillin and james comes up and he’s like “holy fuck lil remember that one time harry was like ‘no need to call me sir professor’ and snape like flipped shit!!! that was fucking awesome” and lily is like “shut the fuck up we get it your son is a savage”
