Welcome to my channel! I make video essays about things I feel passionate about, these days that's usually television or movies. I hope you find my videos bingeable and relaxing. My last video was about Slytherin house and how JK Rowling handled the world-building in Harry Potter.
I know this is an older video and my comment probably won't be seen, but I've always held the opinion that Rowling grossly mishandled Snape. I'm just a nobody, but if you ask me having Snape and Harry hate each other in the first book was fine, or would have been, if afterward both Harry and Snape had realized their preconceived notions about each other were wrong and tried to get along afterwards. Snape should have realized that Harry was nothing like his father was at his age and actually stood up for people who were being bullied, like his mother would have. And Harry could have realized that, despite neither of them liking each other, Snape had still consistently done the right thing and constantly tried to save his life. Their relationship could have been built into a close, father/son type. That would have made Snape's killing of Dumbledore that much worse for Harry because it was done by someone he loved and trusted and who he thought loved him. And it would have made the revelation about who Snape really was that much more poignant and moving. Then there would really have been some justification for Harry naming one of his sons after Snape. And, I know Dumbledore was Harry's father figure in the books, but he wasn't the only one. There was also Sirius, Lupin, and, to some extent, Mr. Weasley. One more wouldn't have broken the story and the reveal of what Snape was actually doing the whole time would still have been a surprise.
Ravenclaw and Hufflepuf are so irrelevant that I keep forgetting which of the two houses is on the right side of the emblem an which one is on the right
I think it would have been a good idea to have the golden trio in 3 houses and make them a full 4, with the 4th being the subtle and often forgotten final member of their musketeers. This would have given more room for other houses to be shown and allowed for more interesting sub plots. Seeing how each house slowly divides themselves into camps as the dark lord rises or even those that begin to look at Harry being the next dark lord, or the headmaster’s future replacement. Picture how Serious would warn Harry not to trust his snake friend followed by Lupin talking about how their own four man band fell apart due to suspicion of somebody with ties to the house of the cunning.
What would be the alternate of Slytherin existing? Statistically wouldn't there always be ambitious blood-supremacist psychopath wizards? Diluting them into the other houses would not eliminate that. Hogwarts just decided to isolate them into their 'safe space...' as young impressionable teenagers... to reinforce and lock in all of their immature feelings and ideas...
Some things I'd like to talk about: I've heard somewhere that Dolores would have been a good evil Hufflepuff, and as a fellow Hufflepuff, I agree. Imagine: the most hated witch in the fandom is not even from the 'mean' house, but the 'nice' one. It would make our house more 2-dimensional. Yeah, there's that mean/grumpy Hufflepuff guy, but he was a minor character. I also want to add that I think it makes sense that Snape would pick on Harry for what his father did. Snape could have that flaw of being immature by taking revenge of his bully via his son... but the problem is that he doesn't have a reason to bully the other students. He scared Neville so badly that he was his bogart. If Snape bullied Harry and only Harry, I think he can be seen in a better light. Not a good light, obviously, but at least he wouldn't torment the other kids. As you mentioned, it's because he's in Slytherin that he was meaner. And one more thing... 39:36 of course TvTropes would put in information with no sources. Some of their information is just flat-out wrong. I have a love-hate relationship with that site.
The house is fine. The slytherin traits are fine and doesn't make you a bad person, every trait of other houses could also be used for evil. It's just that rowling herself forgot about it and only wrote gryffindors, barely passing background characters, and saturday morning cartoon villains. Dunno about you lads, but a bunch of wizarding boomers following a self proclaimed noseless bootleg snake twat and being so loyal to him for no reason sounds more like trademark hufflepuff loyalty to me, doesn't give a whiff of slytherin, really strange that most(all) of his followers are slytherin. After all, I just don't see someone with Slytherin pride, cunning and ambition being ok with some noseless twat treading all over them. Hmmm what did rowling mean by this. Could it be that she wasn't a good enough writer to stick with house traits she herself wrote. Hmmm really strange indeed. No offense puffs, after all you're my favorite people. Aside of snakey myself, of course.
Imagine Snape's character, now try to imagine if the Potters had a daughter instead of Harry. Superimpose his fixations about Lily, on that story and he ages worse milk, the more you think about him. The man is down bad just looking at Harry's eyes.
"Aww see? He's looking at the cane lovingly and getting offended someone called it the wrong word, he's clearly not abused." ...Is that seriously your reasoning? What?! You showed three clips of Lucius LITERALLY caning Draco but because Draco obviously respects and wants the love of his father, you consider that proof that he isn't abused...? The behavior of looking at something of your abuser's lovingly or getting offended someone said the wrong thing about something of your abuser's are both things that would genuinely happen more commonly than you'd hope. People who love their abusers are unfortunately a bit blind and forgiving. I'm sorry but everything I'm seeing just proves it more. I get that he's most likely not being abused in the books, but it's very clear in the movies. Hell, I know Lucius sees Dobby as lower than him, so I'm not saying Draco gets thrown around the way Dobby does, but that behavior doesn't just come out of nowhere. And again, Draco WAS literally caned three times on screen... Oh, and as for Narcissa, I believe her only crime was continuously teaching Draco to live in fear, out of self-preservation. She taught him that because she obviously loves him and cares but it's such a bad trait for him and is just torturing him, honestly. Becoming a Death Eater because of fear of Voldy was the worst thing he ever did, it was eating away at him. I just really wish he had someone good to look up to, someone to teach him right and wrong. Because of his lack of knowledge of how to be good, no good role models, and a love for his bad role models, I do think that he kinda was "the boy who had no choice". But yeah, otherwise, I enjoyed this video, genuinely.
I'd like to add that the entire "was Draco abused by his parents?" section is bad. You don't need to do rocket science to know that teaching you child hatred fucks with their brain and happiness. It's abuse. And it's definitely bad parenting. And it makes CERTAIN that their emotional needs are even less met than if they weren't filled with hate. Hatred literally gets in the way of happiness, obviously. But that's why it's abuse. Not to mention it leads to the abuse of other kids that Draco will interact with. Draco is a bully. Bullies are known for being the least happy people around. They suffer, so they make others suffer to feel better. Draco is suffering. He's just cowardly and doesn't like to show it. Think of this: Because of Draco's parents' influential opinions and personalities (he's their child, of course it'd rub off on him), he tried to be "himself" (basically still mirroring his parents because he was 11) to make friends with Harry, but couldn't because he's a jerk and hasn't been taught otherwise. He ends up getting emotionally wounded by Harry rejecting him and now he bullies Harry to feel better than him. This is all his parents fault (and honestly Hogwarts' fault) as NO ONE is teaching him anything good (and is surrounded by only Slytherin, A.K.A. bad influences). His mother literally teaches him to live in fear! Because of that, he sees Harry as a threat and is bullying him because he's in panic mode and is jealous, still seemingly mad and petty that Harry isn't friends with him and that Harry has a better reputation than him. Harry bested him and made him feel less worthy, it hit his ego. Draco's ego is everything to him, again BECAUSE of his family's values, so he has a permanent emotional wound that started with his parents but Draco sees as Harry's fault, therefore making Harry a "threat", and making Draco feel the need to constantly best Harry by bullying him... I'm saying Draco's parents created a bully. Whether lovingly or not, this is ruining his life and getting in the way of being the best version of himself and achieving happiness. Therefore, this is emotional abuse. It's just that it is more like a domino effect. Honestly Draco being so obsessed with hating on Harry and being so wounded by Harry's rejection makes me think that he still lowkey wishes they could be friends but knows it will never happen. Purposely trying to be around someone so much does imply you want their attention. It almost feels like every time Draco seeks out Harry to bully him, he's silently screaming "Why can't we be friends?!" And also "This is all your fault. You think you're too good for me? I'll prove you wrong." Like he's trying to prove to everyone and himself that he's worthy and equal to Harry. To have such an inferiority complex at such a young age, that doesn't sound like abuse? And again, he's dealing with all of this so badly because he was taught to!
I am not a Potterhead, so please excuse me, if my question is stupid: *Is it ever explained, WHY they even have student houses based on CHARACTER TRAITS in Hogwarts?* - I mean: From an educational perspective it is (obviously!) much better to MIX the dutiful (Gryffindor), the ego-driven (Slytherin), the nerdy (Ravenclaw) and the nature-loving (Hufflepuff) students, because in a hodgepodge they can benefit from their complementary differences.
Former potterhead here: it's just what the founders wanted their houses to represent iirc??? Which is dumb asf lile you're creating a school not forming the fuxking avengers???
If the house were really so cunning and ambitious why didn’t Voldemort face constant challenges to power, sabotage, and assassination attempts from his own supporters? It seems like there would be a lot of people wanting to overthrow him
It could have been interesting for JK to explore the school’s responsibility for hate groups stemming from not uprooting the problem in childhood and not taking an active role in the moral development of the literal children in their charge. Like Hogwarts is expensive to attend. There’s a thing there about rich families pulling their influence at school to ensure that their children are taught the “status quo” and are all allowed to live together with minimal exposure to children of other backgrounds and beliefs. Evocative of people in US schools that protest when their kids are taught that gay people exist. Wealthy families influencing a private school’s agenda is FASCINATING to explore and complexly political.
I'm so sad I just found this channel and then I look at the other videos and this is the last one. I'm gonna watch like all of them bc I really like her style but still it sucks.
People are overthinking this and demanding too much from J. K. Rowling. She didn't write Harry Potter with any genius lore in mind, she just wrote fantasy books that happened to be really good. And when the books became popular, fans started demanding more lore, but initially it was really that simple - the good house, the bad one and two unimportant ones
40:40 As a matter of - no she didn't. It seems you missed an important detail here. Read the final scenes of the battle again: After most of the Death Eaters have fallen only two fights remain: Bellatrix Lestrange who is fighting against Luna, Hermione and Ginny - and Voldemort, fighting against McGonaall, Kingsley...and Slughorn. How can he fight against Slughorn (who left Hogwarts prior to the battle with the Slytherin students) if Slughorn didn't return to fight? Yes, there's no mentioning that Slytherin students returned to fight, but Slughorn definetly did so it is at least not impossible that a few Slytherins did as well. As a matter of fact: We know that students sneaked back in to fight after the battle started. When listing the casualties after the battle you'll notice that Colin Creevey is among the dead - he had to leave when the younger students left the school. He obviously returned as well even though it wasn't mentioned. So yes, it is absolutely mentioned that people who left the school at the start of the battle returned. PS: It would be nice to learn more about the other 10 major wizard schools and their structure - as well as the numerous minor schools that do exist as well. From all we know the different schools vary greatly in many aspects (like Durmstrang outright rejecting Muggleborn students to Hogwarts's and Ilvermorny's house systems to Uagadou students almost never using wands). And as much as Voldemort is a central character in the Harry Potter series - he's barely the only dark mage and his activities are almost exclusively focused on Great Britain. Many other dark wizards are not Slytherins because they never attended Hogwarts, they learned magic elsewhere.
Well according to the lore there is only one house that produced almost no dark wizards - and guess what it's not Gryffindor. As a matter of fact Gryffindor is actually the house that produced the second most dark wizards after Slytherin (not to mention that Harry himself used dark magic including an unforgibable curse - Crucio - on several occasions in the book). The house that opposes Dark Wizards the most is in fact Hufflepuff, not Gryffindor.
Too many Hollywood writers only do things by the numbers. If you have three leads, you have a hero, a heroine and a sidekick, period. They can't write three equally strong characters that all shape the narrative. That's why a lot of Ron's best book lines and scenes were given away.
I feel the snape notes point was a little harsh considering it was a plot point tied into their bias towards each other, harry also thought snape was automatically the villain of the first book and also thought Draco was the heir to slytherin in 2, that’s a character trait, he is biased towards slytherin just as snape is biased towards harry, it shows the “villains” can be like the heroes and the heroes can be like the villains.
I don't think it ever said Slughorn came back with other Slytherins. Slughorn did come back to fight. He was one of the last duelers and was fighting Voldemort. I think the thought of other Slytherins coming back comes from Phineas Nigellas saying, "And let it be known that Slytherin House played its part! Let our contribution not be forgotten!" I just assumed he meant Snape and Slughorn. Voldemort says to Lucius when he wants to look for Draco, that if Draco is dead it's his own fault since he didn't come to Voldemort like the other Slytherins. Only the 7th years would have been allowed to stay and fight and none of the Slytherins in Harry's year would have fought alongside Harry
A theory you aren’t considering is that what if all Slytherins secretly want Voldemort back, and that this is the criteria for being selected. When Harry was selected at Hogwarts, when he was saying not slytherin, this could have been a subconscious rejection of the wizarding world. Whereas a Slytherin would be more inclined to reject the Muggle world, and the other houses Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are largely apolitical.
Hey, I know this video is old and I know I've watched it several times before. But I finally looked up when did Snape become a spy and what that entails. Because I fall on the camp that Snape was a bitter and terrible guy that couldn't get over being rejected. He never expressed regret over the harm he done as a death eater nor for being the reason James also died and Harry becoming an orphan. He only regretted that Lilly died. He bullied children for no reason (I know of the headcannon he was keeping up appearances, but that could swing the other way around. He could treat all students with indifference and just favor the slitherings, revealing to them that he was forced to not be racist because of Dumbledore or whatever), he went after Lupin and Sirius in the shrieking shack out of revenge, even after all these years of suffering they endured (which were worse than his)... All he did as redemption was being a spy, like was said in the video, but he wasn't a spy for 16 years. He became an informant after talking to Dumbledore, so sure, he was a spy before Voldemort's fall, but only for a little while. After the war ended, he became an informant, but that's it, which any other death eater could've become out of fear or regret. And only after Voldemort returned that he was at risk of being found out. I'm not diminishing the importance of what he did, but his redemption was being useful for some 4 years and loving a dead woman. Not enough to make him one of the people Harry names his children after Also, naming your children after people is never a good idea when you have at least 20 options but not 20 children
The scene she is referring to was when slug horn comes back with the people in the village not with slither in but with the people in the village also, where are you? Please come back we miss you.
Perhaps if your fun magic school even has the option to sort eleven year old children into the *wizardHitler dormitory* that is indictive of a profoundly thoughtless worldbuilding and not the kind of thing that you can brush under the rug and retcon a decade later in a podcast. Something like that could be (should be) a vital plot point of the series if handled better and if JKR had written that theme with any meaningful intent. It really feels like any poignancy in her writing was an accident, like she stumbled upon a nugget of something profound while panning for gold in mud.
@@angedenpeacelove_411-00 What do you mean? He's a little sh*t drunk with enough ambition to betray and deny his entire family for the sake of his career. Not even Draco Malfoy would go that far.
In my opinion, the best way to rehabilitate Slytherin is to have Ginny end up there. She certainly fulfills the characteristics of Slytherin, and while her brothers are all Gryffindors, Parvati and Padma are in different houses despite being twins, so there's precedent for that.
Im not gonna try and excuse what are objective faults in the writing if slytherin characters but one thing that doesnt seem to get brought up here is that people are often products of their environment, beholden to the specific etiquettes and expectations of their peers.
