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What's something you used to like as a kid that you now, as an adult, realize had some pretty fucked up messaging? (hexbear.net)
submitted 3 years ago* by to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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For me it's Dragon Ball Z, that was a pretty fucked up show tbh.

Like holy shit, all the characters are terrible people except maybe Gohan and Trunks.

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[–] 37 points 3 years ago (6 children)

I think I was 12 or 13 when book 5 came out and it clicked for me that it wasn't setting up for anything, it was just creating obvious commentaries and then hand waving them. Nothing was coming about Potter's wealth and the Weasley's near poverty. "SPEW is a silly acronym" was everything we were getting about the house slaves. I hadn't even made the Semitic connections to goblins and was uncomfortable with the implications of them being exclusively bankers. The bad people were bad because they were bad, and the good people were good because they were good.

At least by that time I'd discovered PTerry, so i already had better stuff to get on reading.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    a lot of that stuff went over my head cause I was pretty young, but the one thing that I couldn't shake was the nagging feeling that hermione was always playing second fiddle to her doofus friends one way or another. even tho she was nice about it by the 4th book I was frustrated for her. she worked so hard and was so brilliant and caring but ??? I guess she's not the golden boy and that's all that matters

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  • [–] 18 points 3 years ago*

    I think Rowling was trying very hard to avoid favoring her "self-insert" character to the detriment of the story, and ended up detrimenting the story by overcorrecting for it. Hermione can't be right, she can't win, she can't be recognized as competent and capable and justified by the other main characters, because then that's just Rowling applauding herself. I think was her mindset, anyway.

    Not that it would have made the story good if Hermione were handled better, because Rowling still just isn't a good writer. But this is one flaw I can empathize with at least. It's a mistake I could see myself making, though I probably wouldn't imply that slavery is good in the process.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Five is when I stopped as a teenager because I just got bored with it? I think at that point they stopped editing JK Rowling because they realized that a shitload of people would buy almost anything Harry Potter-related with her name on it.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago

    Yeah, some friends and I decided to revisit Harry Potter, the movies and the books, and we noticed both Book and Movie 1-3 were much better than the rest. They managed to build a world without filling it with mindless exposition and actually tried to make it feel magical. We also had some specific criticisms of how the movies were made, as well as some of the actors (especially Dumbledore's later actor), but those had little to do with Rowling.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago

    At least by that time I'd discovered PTerry, so i already had better stuff to get on reading.

    It's not usually regarded as his best novel, but "Jingo" is my favourite. It feels particularly relevant this past year.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago

    That's exactly where I was around that time, and when the last book came out it felt so half assed. It was the first time I really felt betrayed by a medium like that.

    She obviously had no plans whatsoever about how to wrap this story up and made up a bunch things that didn't really make sense in the context of the previous books for the last one.

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