Uh, Rowling Why Does Slytherin Still Exist?

the world hasn't split into good people and death eaters we've all got both light and dark inside of us are you sure about that ah the four hogwarts houses a cornerstone of harry potter iconography a lucrative engine that powers a lot of the brand's merchandise these symbols and colors are tattooed onto my cerebral cortex forever they are a smart simple piece of world building functioning as a question a jumping off point to inspire children to imagine themselves attend in a wizard school doing you know wizard things like not receiving a well-rounded education the hogwarts houses are if memes are to be believed gryffindor smart yellow and last but not least evil despite my love for harry potter i've always been more interested in the characters and i adore the general setting but i have a lot of issues with the world building that stem from problems in the books some of it's kind of funny and mostly harmless like rowling's really bad at math and it creates a lot of embarrassing mistakes other times it's infuriating like the house elves that love being slaves until you beat them too much and the biggest subplot involving freeing them is more about how hermione did activism wrong by ignoring the people she was advocating for you know you gotta listen to people when you're advocating for them so you know just accept that the hogwarts kitchen is filled with sentient creatures that keep insisting they love being slaves that video will be like therapy i get paid for today we're diving into something much more gray elusive slithery we're talking about the handling of slytherin house did rolling botch it is hogwarts or the story itself biased against slytherin is it unrealistic can you intelligently explain why all the bad guys seem to share a dorm as children or is it just indicative of jk rowling's inability to see evil in the brave the intelligent and the well-meaning and are fans drowning in their head cannons all of it argued by a slytherin oh yes pottermore certified i was a snake the whole time so if i start arguing slytherin might need big reforms or a big thanos snap well it's nothing personal kid i got skin in the game too not really that's a lie i got a comfy hot topic sweatshirt in the game so let's start with an easy question is slytherin really the evil house chapter one yes they really are the evil house and not our dark academia fantasy i know it sucks i hate it too a lot of slytherins are morally complicated people who fell off the path of good but forget those melodramatic attention hogs for a minute just who's the average everyday slytherin student well some harry potter fans try so hard to rehabilitate slytherin house they will make memes and lengthy posts about how slytherin traits could hypothetically produce a good person they paint this picture of an ambitious cunning sarcastic friend who tells you like it is but because of the fraternity trait is delightfully biased in your favor and wants to undermine your enemies with ceptifuge so that you can reign together and sip black coffee in your dark academia hallways and then run through spiraling dark green hedge mazes anyone who got into harry potter from seeing these posts would be disappointed by the books even if you've never been exposed to filthy fandom propaganda i think most people on a gut level react to this situation with a healthy spoonful of skepticism they go no what even is this a den of evil children it must be more complicated than that and if it isn't it should be in any fandom especially such an old one people get bored and they just start playing with the universe as if it was a toy even with no new material they can hype themselves up by making their own fun using their creativity so people dedicate entire blogs to for example pansy parkinson except to them pansy is the idea of a slytherin girl fueled mostly by the premise that rich ambitious girls with jet black bobs look cool and you want to kiss them fans find great pleasure in pulling something complete out of tiny details that differentiate them from each other so a character like pansy is an original character wearing the skin of a minor character this is how the fandom's concept of slytherin evolves and is actually more complex and morally grey than the canon reality of slytherin the canon has very few grey characters and almost no good ones and you can contrast that against the fact that there are almost no antagonists from other houses there are technically three but really there's two the average slytherin student harry attended hogwarts with from gregory goyal to theodore not in the movies is a blurry blob of bullies cheaters and bad attitudes this is so true that when goyle's actor josh herdman got his arm herded during the third movie they just swapped him out with another slytherin boy when krabs actor jaime whalett got arrested for growing marijuana the movies were like okay well if you're gonna blaze it then we're gonna blaze it too and then blaze became the guy standing opposite de goyle in malfoy's squad in fact goyle got to take crab's place in the fiery grave because it just doesn't matter which one of them dies the cliff notes is just draco got to see his friend who didn't pull out of evil at the last second perish so just kill the spare i i mean the one that got the most screen time the bad guy cannon fodder basically i've seen people try to argue well the books are told from harry's perspective and he's biased and that's true but harry is not such an unreliable narrator as to make up dialogue for other people this argument falls flat for me when a slytherin student opens up their mouth and the only thing they have to say for themselves is lol mudblood or lol blood traitor or and i love this example it baffles me in the sixth book blaise savini unlike draco malfoy gets into the slug club and elbow-rubbing dinner party club presumably because professor slughorn the club runner has no reason to suspect his family are death eater aligned but rowling can't help herself so blaze is a dismissive jerk the entire night he does a rude skepticism cough at slughorn suggesting harry survived the night of his parents death because he may be extraordinary in some way and for some mind-blowing reason he somehow manages to info dump that his famously hot mom has been married seven times and her rich husbands keep dropping dead under mysterious circumstances how did he even do that how did he just announce that he's indifferent to the fact that his mom is a serial killer what could he have possibly said that caused this big of a misunderstanding in harry's mind i don't even think it's a good joke it's just like okay i get it they're all bad haha it's so funny there were opportunities to introduce a good or just neutral minor slytherin student and it just never happens i'll give you a couple examples the first one will be what i'll call a big ask and the second one is like a little ask so and this is a popular like fandom idea hypothetically what if the hogwarts champion in goblet of fire was a slytherin now this choice would be a shame since it's taking away one of hufflepuff's few times to shine but people argue this would be the perfect way to conclude the later half of the series and i agree if cedric diggory or a hypothetical other hogwarts champion was a nice slytherin boy who was killed in front of harry just as he was starting to warm up to him that collapses harry's whole world view of slytherin bad gryffindor good after all the entire conflict is just the kiddie pool version of what's going on with the adults right in the adult wizarding world it doesn't matter if he's team snake if to voldemort he's just another blood traitor then there are decisions that seem much more about realism that require very little effort nothing as big as an important character being in slytherin in the order of the phoenix dumbledore's army didn't make use of any slytherins this was one of the first times harry got to hang out with people outside of his house for an extended project but no slytherins joined in fact they seemed to team up with dolores and filch inexplicably everyone in the house tied to all magical families and ambition doesn't care that their school which they need to make themselves more powerful is turning into some type of muggle school where they don't practice magic in class this is a very clear betrayal of what their house stands for and just their general cultural values and doing something like this creating secret classes in a hidden location that seems very slytherin i think this displays the strange relationship harry potter as a series has with the hogwarts houses they take up so much time and oxygen and shelf space and yet while some significant characters come from other houses really it's only two houses that matter but when you get a little bit closer actually it's just one it makes everything seem a bit more mechanical it breaks the illusion that hogwarts is a big place filled with unique students well they're not all bad that would i i know i've said this before and i think i said it to emerson they are not all bad and and well far from it as we know i would feel bad about avoiding talking about specific slytherin characters who do good things i don't want you to feel like i'm skipping over them because it's inconvenient so let's talk about them a lot a lot a lot let's start out with the most upstanding snakes snakes can't stand or are they always standing just the good normal guys no morally gray cutie pies i have set the bar for unimpeachable goodness at the truly unreasonable standard of was never a blood supremacist or death eater gee willikers let's see who clears it first up we got merlin a wizard who thought wizard kind should be helping muggle kind and he was in slytherin he was probably in the first class ever because he's as old as dirk you know merlin as a collectible in the harry potter video games and not as an actual character in the story hey harry remember me wrong weasley hello harry it's me hagrid the harry potter wiki claims he is mentioned in almost every book and movie but that's because his name is a wizard swear that's a great snake right there it takes a pet like no problem right not afraid at all and then we have andromeda tonks she's nymphadora tonks's mother no movie fans don't leave me okay don't get scared stick with the most popular guys all right draco's mother has two sisters one is bellatrix lestrange and the other is andromeda who is disowned from marrying a muggle-born wizard and she's cool she's an example of how pure blood families socially control each other to keep their pureblood status they commonly use disownment as a threat finally horus slughorn is the closest thing to a normal slytherin in the entire series he was introduced late he's a socialite who loves throwing parties he doesn't like conflict but he has a good heart and he comes through for harry in the books he is casually blood racist in a bigotry of low expectations sort of way towards muggleborns but this dialogue is cut from the half-blood prince movie making slughorn i think the only never blood racist named slytherin character in the movie series wow it doesn't even end there they expanded on slughorn's relationship with lily he expresses the shame he feels how he feels responsible for voldemort's creation just because he gave tom information about horcruxes this is a student asking him about some pretty forbidden sketchy information but watching this scene i can't help but feel that horus was taken advantage of despite the fact that he's desperately trying to run from his mistakes out of shame and the fact that he can come off as kind of a airy socialite i think he's actually a very sweet man so there he is the good slytherin he's good slytherin he's a good boy look at him wow so guess what guys i was wrong in slughorn's first appearance he does the same thing he did in the books and i forgot while i stand by my overview of him no he doesn't belong in this category anymore so that's it he was the best i had he was the only one that was a real character and i was wrong even he couldn't survive the standard i set it's just ridiculous and in case you're curious even dolores umbridge was in slytherin i just moving on some people however fell off the path of good and wandered back onto it what do the death eater defectors say about the moral character of slytherin house regulus black the betrayer of voldemort sacrificed his life to destroy a horcrux a thing voldemort put a slice of his soul into to be immortal regulus inexplicably knew the horcrux existed and where to find it to precious secrets of a very violent and suspicious man but he doesn't appear on screen so the only canon picture i have of him to show you is this picture of a picture his presence in the story is kind of tenuous especially in the movies when you google image search's name you'll be hit with a wall of models people use to represent him he is a flash in the pan plot point more of a mood board than a man regulus reflects this idea of a renegade death eater betrayer distraught and disillusioned trying to find a scrap of redemption to undo some of the harm they've caused to the world but i think truthfully he more so reflects the idea that sad pale-faced pretty boys with dark hair look cool and you want to kiss them i'm about to pull some points i made in my draco video to make this one a standalone but it's good you should watch it unlike some other characters more praised for their redemption arcs draco's actions in deathly hallows are more about small inactions moments where he passively resists and then he and his parents shrink into the shadows because voldemort can no longer ensure their safety or power and the only thing the malfoys truly love is each other there is no concrete evidence that draco harbors a heart of gold there is only evidence that he is much more sensitive than he appears these aspects of himself that he's likely ashamed of combined with harry's gryffindor nature and those key moments where he passively resist voldemort are the reasons why he survived the events of the story unfortunately draco's reform is largely off screen the biggest one is raising his son scorpius to be normal and not a blood supremacist a fact that's not even clear in the book's epilogue it was just assumed and brought up on pottermore the wizarding world there is definitely symbolism that this is not draco's true self but it's not explored in any detail rowling doesn't seem to like draco much less like him enough to weave a redemption arc into the story for him he and his fellow slytherin friends are stand-ins for posh bullies she faced in her childhood narratively he's a foil or he's a mini boss in the early installments of harry potter to give harry something to worry about and compete with he also teaches us about wizard supremacy culture let me teach you about wizard crackers and it's sort of that simple most of the people on voldemort's side are kind of underdeveloped even though it'd be more interesting to many people if they weren't but there is one slytherin rolling seems to like quite a bit snipe snipe severus snipe snipe snipe severus snipe to promote deathly hallows the bookstore borders before they were all closed down had these promotional bookmarks and stickers they gave out that would say things like trust snape and snape is very bad man he's very bad draco was actually held in higher regard by the fandom than snape probably because he was a teenager when all of that went down and he raised his son to not have brain worms snape is more complicated severus snape is sometimes considered to be the most emotionally complex character in the series and he is sometimes considered to be a hot mess with an inadequate redemption arc that breaks its own hand patting itself on the back because how much can you really redeem a character who spends most of his screen time and word count bullying children as time marches on i'm confronted with what i see as a failing unrollings part to make the audience see what she sees i feel more and more alone in my genuine like of snape as a character beyond appreciating alan rickman's acting it seems like every year since the last movie came out snape has been rotting in the public consciousness snape will you accept us rose fine but wear this always i've observed the fandom do this slow penguin waddle from what i consider to be the canon reality of snape or even a candy-coated version of that reality too uh how do i put this delicately snape is literally an in-cell he's got a simp patronus a simptronis if you will it's all because he's obsessed with lily he got friend zoned by harry's mom in wizard high school how is that a redemption arc okay listen with that kind of mindset you can make any story sound stupid snape is notably divorced from most slytherin redemption squad conversations even though he's the head of slytherin house and is a very slytherin slytherin but let's start here maybe this is a flaw in the writing or something to keep in mind when reading or writing a story the last thing a character does before they die is not necessarily what redeems them but i think people feel emotionally that that is the case in their guts the part of the flashback that shows the beginning of snape becoming a spy is not even technically presenting a reveal at all harry learns that snape was a spy in what goblet of fire what about snape severus snape of the council that's very much aware of giving evidence on this matter several snape was indeed a death eater and prior to lord voldemort's downfall turned spy for us at great personal risk today's no more a death therefore learning that snape truly was always on harry's side gets overshadowed by the more emotional surprising personal tragedy of his unrequited love for lily evans potter snape's feelings for lily are context into his behavior elaborating on what we learned about him in the order of the phoenix when it was made known that harry's father and his friends were bullies harry's dad hexed people for fun and they were obsessed with ganging up on snape if you think snape loving lily doesn't redeem him you're not wrong but i'm not sure if it was meant to the redemption arc is he's been a spy for nearly 17 years in a world where people can read your mind if you're not careful part of being a spy was killing the only person who knew him on a personal level the only person that actually saw him for what he was there is clear development that happens between 21 year old snape begging dumbledore to hide the potters or at least lily and the 37ish year old snape horrified that dumbledore has known the whole time that harry was gonna have to die for the war to end quite frankly i find this information delivered in a way that's confusing in the movie especially for all of the people that are probably just gonna see the movie once or twice i mean twice alan rickman although he made snape so iconic is 20 years older than the character he's playing and since snape and dumbledore basically look the same it almost looks like they're wearing the same outfits i don't think you feel the weight of how much time has passed and how much snape has changed not from mean man too nice man but his moral fiber he's put in the work and i actually think it's the epilogue that's the final nail in the coffin for people that feel salty about snape when harry named his son albus severus potter people felt snape was disproportionately rewarded for his bad behavior if you're not impressed with snape this is a story where a character built around a decade-spanning redemption arc did not redeem himself because he couldn't stop being awful to children and to rub salt in the wound he is honored after his death in favor of others which is a recipe for resentment if harry needed a middle name for his son there are many characters in the story that served as a paternal figure to him snape is not even breaking the top 5 and there are other dead men on that list for me personally i think it does imply an interesting emotional maturity harry has after the war but here's something that honestly does bother me i can look at snape and because he's a fictional character i can go oh what a fascinating broken man yes i loved the time i spent reading about severus snape but i don't think people treat people in their life like that children grow to see the complexity and motivations of their authority figures but they usually don't honor teachers that bully them i've heard of that behavior before but that kind of attachment seems more common in trying to sort your feelings out about an abusive or kind of lackluster parent so it always kind of felt to me like rowling worked backwards from the premise oh wouldn't it be cool if harry named his son after that teacher that he hated and like that's true it would be wild if you told someone after reading the first few books that harry was gonna name his son after snape but i don't think he got where it needed to be after snape dies and deathly hallows harry doesn't have much internal dialogue about how he's processing the meaning of snape's death to him the descriptions are very matter-of-fact about it and it's not like rowling's incapable of writing emotionally deep deaths let me read something to you this is one of my favorite passages in the whole series this is when harry goes to see dumbledore's dead body and half blood prince then he gazed down at the wise old face and tried to absorb the enormous and incomprehensible truth that never again would dumbledore speak to him never again could he help i always really loved this i like how it speaks to loss and i like how the first thing harry has to process is how death has robbed dumbledore of his ability to speak to him both you know those moments where dumbledore says silly whimsical things but also his ability to protect and give wisdom so going into deathly hallows you can feel it you feel that safety net is just gone the only person voldemort was afraid of is dead so it's this beautiful summarization of harry's relationship to dumbledore snape's death scene on the other hand it's written well but it's playing this effective emotional sleight of hand where for a long time i didn't question where are harry's thoughts in this scene he has no thoughts snape dead head empty so this is the ultimate slytherin this is the slytherin rowling will fight you about on twitter before she'd fight you about trans people this is the slytherin who makes the greatest sacrifice for the forces of good in the story and his resume of good deeds is not impressing everyone and it's because rowling can't help herself it wasn't enough for him to just be a strict intimidating teacher he has to be cruel he has to turn a blind eye to slytherin bullying he has to mock hermione's teeth when they're elongated by a curse he has to threaten to kill neville's pet if he doesn't get a potion right so it doesn't matter if snape saves harry's life multiple times because any adult would have done that i mean i guess it goes back to fundamental lessons right if you intend a character to be sympathetic or intend to redeem them you have to throw in some save the cat moments you have to be mindful of the character's perception there's a careful balancing act happening here snape sometimes has moments where he's scary and getting in the way of harry doing stuff but upon re-reads he has a genuine reason to think harry's up to something congratulations your performance in the black lake was inspiring gillyweed am i correct gillyweed may be innocuous but boomslang skin lacewing flies you and your little friends are brewing polyjuice potion and believe me i'm going to find out why that's moody but then who's holly juice potion now we know who's been seeding from your store service or harry's actually breaking rules and of course snape's going gonna give him a hard time he's a teacher i would have loved to see harry reflect more on looking guilty or how his relationship with his teacher is falling apart because of misunderstandings i think the reason snape rots every year for a lot of people is as you grow up you're able to put yourself in snape's perspective more because you're an adult now so you have more of an appreciation for how immature he is and how little his fixation on harry is justified by the narrative i want you to imagine that when you re-read you could see that snape started out curious about what kind of person this kid was he's intimidating and cold but he's not really doing anything evil besides giving out a lot of homework and any adult could recognize it's actually harry being judgmental because he's thin greasy haired all clad in black he's described as looking like a giant bat imagine if snape had logical reasons to think harry was an egomaniac who behind the scenes was bullying children and then he wrote him off and zeroed in on him then on top of that harry keeps getting in trouble the next book he steals that car and exposes the wizarding world etc etc if the inciting incident to this toxicity made sense harry would have his first encounter with being hated by an adult for reasons within his control instead of what happens in the story which is i don't know snape just kind of ignores all evidence that harry is not pampered and the writing almost appeals to this persecution complex where harry is jesus on the cross and snape is heckling him and we're supposed to just throw up our hands and go well he's traumatized by harry's father snape picks on harry the first day for not paying attention when in reality he's writing everything snape says down if snape just peers at his notebook he'll see it this is a common mistake children make when taking notes then he asks a child raised by muggles questions about magical ingredients he can't possibly know to embarrass him this isn't just about being mean this character is not supposed to be stupid his intelligence is a central trait he's not supposed to be the dursleys but at school this wasn't handled properly and at the end of the day the way the narrative tries to make him an honorary gryffindor because he's brave does come off as really weird like most people will just say oh my god who the hell cares and slytherin fans are just gonna be like why he's one of the only slytherin characters that fits slytherin very stan slytherin stands the most slytherin slytherin of them all and guess what kids being sorted into slytherin is directly responsible for ruining his life slytherin house clearly overwhelmingly lacks nuance as almost all the unmoral characters come from there the few instances of hogwarts attending non-slytherin evil is a sniveling coward who is the antithesis of a gryffindor and exemplifies the slytherin trait of self-preservation and one singular ravenclaw who might have ravenclaw motivations it's not really explained snape comes off like a very obvious servant of voldemort in the first book so it seems professor quirrell mostly existed for the twist it's kind of funny that this complexity never shows up in the book again rowling refuses at every moment big and small to just allow slytherin students to be normal for like five seconds the most morally ambiguous slytherin characters have redemption arcs that much of the fandom is unsatisfied with you can make a solid argument that they're not even meant to be completely redeemed just you know humanized and observed as complex actors in their story good slytherins are almost non-existent until you get to the cursed child stage play they are largely hypothetical fandom creations that tells me this isn't just a place anyone can end up chapter 2 no slytherin makes sense world building wise even if they are one-dimensional and it feels like a missed opportunity once in a while lc young fans make strange arguments where they point out a way in which fictional world is disturbing and then they act like that's a mistake just as characters can be flawed and have contradictory illogical or dark sides fictional settings and communities can also be flawed and have multiple sides to them it's just a little harder to show this because locations can't usually talk directly to us they are characterized by other things like sights smells and the people that inhabit that space and hogwarts is despite how many children dream of going there kind of an alarming place by sorting students into houses hogwarts assigned stereotypes to all of its students on the first night but slytherin is the only house whose stereotypes are not holy wholesome traits and honestly sometimes it seems like the things that make slytherin look sketchy are superficial and would exist even if the house had no connection to dark wizards the most obvious thing is the house's connection to a very stigmatized animal the serpent but the values the house centers itself around are also phrased oddly take the trait cunning ravenclaw words like smart or shrewd have similar meanings to cunning but far more positive connotations likewise what's the difference between hufflepuff loyalty and slytherin fraternity the word fraternity makes me think of fraternity houses so it makes me think of hierarchy hazing and stuffy social circles with no real intimacy the word loyalty is warm and snuggly it makes me think of a labrador even though everyone knows you can be loyal to a bad person this makes something as simple as the in-group loyalty between slytherin seem dangerous and creepy even though it exists in every house rowling laughs in interviews about how she's got that gryffindor showboating in a store but what's the difference between gryffindor showboatiness and slytherin pridefulness it's basically the color scheme all this is a little stigmatizing and upon observation it seems like slytherin students are the ones most likely to be sticky with each other and have you ever noticed how a lot of characters don't fit their house the most famous one is why is hermione not in ravenclaw something so obvious it's asked by the characters in the story but there are other examples fred and george weasley are cunning pranksters who are ambitious about inventing new pranks and opening up a prank shop fred and george are the only people we see during the story actively working on new ways to use magic they're using it for toys and pranks but that's still what they're doing that sounds very ravenclaw or a shoe-in for slytherin if snakes had shoes oh and consider the crab and the goyle if you will they're in slytherin but their only personality trait is that they're dumb and strong this idea that they're cunning is hysterical but let me tell you what they really are they are unofficial unpaid bodyguards of draco malfoy imagine if you will the bravery the nerve it takes every day just to keep draco's teeth in his mouth it's big gryffindor energy is what i'm trying to say quite frankly it's not only the dream of every skinny coward to have two huge dudes back you up but also it's just like a herculean task but uh why does it work out this way well personality is actually quite plastic especially when you're a kid and people are more versatile than we often give them credit for even within a narrative most harry potter characters who have fleshed out personalities have more than one house you could hypothetically sort them into because the house traits are kind of vague and situational and they blend together they could apply to anyone at different times in their life so why are the sneaky children in the dungeon well uh the magic hat judges your personality and it sees your inner nature you can't just pick whatever answer you want except that's exactly how it works that's literally what harry did harry comforts his son albus in the epilogue by reminding him that if it means so much to you you can just tell the hat not slytherin dude don't give me the house with the mandatory spooky lighting i want to be able to read in my common room the sorting hat does not place you for what you are it places you for your values your values at age 11 that are probably just your family's values unless you're a serious black sheep so let's set the stage for a new problem although there are no rules saying that people from different houses can't be friends with each other they are separated most of the day in a sort of faux geographical divide they have different living spaces where they have their own common rooms and dorms although they don't have strictly assigned seats at the great hall most students sit with their house this is prime socialization time for students because what's left seeing each other in the hallways or talking to people in class if you're allowed oh and days off but by the time one of those comes around you'll probably just want to spend it with your friends and this us versus them it's encouraged the classroom is turned into a game with a housepoint system harry knows who belongs to what house on site without knowing names so that leads fans to speculate that there must be some difference in their uniforms and the movies make these differences more pronounced it's considered so weird to root for someone else's quidditch team that the only person who does it is luna lovegood whose perhaps most distinctive personality trait is that she's weird she's a weirdo have you ever seen luna without her radish earrings that's weird most of the time in the books when two people from a different house are interacting with each other in a positive way it has something to do with dating so the main thing getting you to interact with people from other houses is looking up from your quill and being like all right you know what if i had known all the hot people were gonna be in ravenclaw i would have showed up to the castle with a different mindset i'm just letting that be known it's a very slytherin thing to say isn't it goddammit now when i put all this together it might sound like i'm saying oh poor snake babies the school is biased against them nope i don't think so slytherin is definitely gridlocked in conflict with gryffindor but it's reciprocal the only example of bias i can think of is dumbledore in the first installment dumping a ton of points on gryffindor last minute which causes slytherin to lose the house cup and while harry and his friends definitely earned those points from the outside it looks random as all hell and don't get me wrong this is hilarious i mean unfair but slytherin had won the house cup six years in a row and even once they begin losing they're usually in second place so teachers definitely award slytherin students points for good behavior if you're using house points as proof of bias it's actually hufflepuff or ravenclaw who are having a hard time you know i'll remind you all this hogwarts nonsense has serious consequences in the adult magical world because it means all the little bigots get to fester together in the dungeon where the password on the entrance to the common room in harry second year was literally pure blood they're not socialized with many muggleborns or people who don't share their beliefs and they are the group of students who desperately need that we know zero zero blood racist non-slytherins whom attended hogwarts it never comes up as a motivator for pettigrew quarrel but there's grindelwald but he doesn't even go here i also think it's notable pettigrew the evil gryffindor's primary trait is that he's a cowardly rat he's not the brave gryffindor he's supposed to be all this tells me one evil in harry potter has a very specific look and attitude to assist the story's themes it's parasitic it cowers in the face of death voldemort's a pretty one-dimensional hello i'm evil bad guy so it actually helps harry potter as a story that evil has this very specific aesthetic and mindset it makes it feel like it's everywhere that it infects things it sort of helps voldemort brute force his way into iconicness but as a result where evil comes from in this series is way too specific and can be easily simplified into not loving people enough and fearing death too much harry rarely deals with death anxiety the times he does are memorable but harry potter is more about grief and how it's entwined with love two either slytherins are all brainwashing each other once they're in the dungeon or having the belief that non-magical people or muggle-born people are lesser is a secret factored in value that's heavily weighted compared to other traits and it will get you shoved face-first into salazar's steamy bowl of bigotry soup every time when people get defensive about fans boiling down slytherin into a house of bullies i think they forget something very important it's not just about these traits there is a hidden value on this list draco was raised to have these biases he showed up to the school with them and what the school did was reinforce them by letting him live in a bubble with the young severus snape it's similar but a little different snape had a physically abusive muggle father half blood prince is a little nickname that works on multiple levels prince is his mother's maiden name and she was a witch it's a way for his teenage self to reject his magic hating muggle father's family name as a child he befriended harry's mother lily and he would tell her about how they were special because they had magic and that they would go to hogwarts this wonderful magical place unfortunately for snape he was separated from his friend by the sorting hat growing up he was harassed and attacked often by james potter and his friends this was ruthless bullying that on one occasion crossed the line into very public sexual harassment and this was toned down in the movie book snape was not the loner he looks to be in the movie's quick flashbacks he retreated into the arms of his fellow slytherins lily was infuriated by snape's ability to hang out with voldemort supporters and snape was furious that lily would hang out with his bullies this leads up to snape calling lily a mudblood and ruining their friendship forever now if you were unaware of what slytherin house was like you might say where the hell did that come from when he started school he was only biased against muggles how did his bigotry expand well it came from his friends it came from slytherin's influence over him dumbledore has this line you know i sometimes think we sort too soon we'll get to it don't worry there's an interesting metaphor in here somewhere that slytherin house is a den of snakes that fills children with its venom made funnier by the fact that their dorm is the hogwarts dungeon also known as a prison and while the prison may seem comfortable and aesthetic it's very much a magical blood racism factory and their upbringing puts them there people who take harry potter house personality quizzes don't factor magical blood racism into the equation because why would they and then these real people are given a house and they identify with it and buy key chains and sweaters the official quiz is like you like the moon you like white cats and vampires wow you're a slytherin a muggle slytherin cue confused salazar noises i have seen harry potter fans pick what familiar they'd bring what wand they would have they typically don't imagine how blood racist they'd be you know not everyone can be home stuck the hogwarts houses are presented to us as four valid choices but they're not in their current form we are presented with a pretty plausible system of indoctrination chilling out at hogwarts in plain sight sanctified in tradition but the characters don't do anything about it story didn't show them becoming more than what they first appeared and rising to the occasion which was the thing i think they set up most for in the fifth year the sorting hat sings out oh know the perils read the signs the warning history shows from our hogwarts is in danger from external deadly foes and we must unite inside her or will crumble from within i have told you i have warned you let the sorting now begin well no apparently hogwarts didn't have to unite they didn't mention anyone remastering slytherin house or the hogwarts houses and they didn't remove slytherin as a house no don't they not slap my sweatshirt i think it's the lack of action that bothers me it's bothered me since i was a kid it feels so unfinished and it's surprising because it's such an obvious loose end it's secondary to voldemort of course but it's the true birthplace of voldemort as a concept and i've held off on telling you possibly the biggest missed opportunity slytherin students not participating in the battle of hogwarts like the other students if properly built up this would be a cool moment especially when you consider how much scarier it would be for many of them as they'd be going up against their own family in battle it would give a sense that yeah maybe harry is biased and slytherin house isn't just draco and his loudest dumbest cruelest friends and here's a laugh and a half there was a reddit post from four years ago of a confused fan asking why in random locations online people talk as if slytherin returned to the battle of hogwarts's reinforcements it all seems to go back to one source episode 131 of a podcast named pottercast where rowling was a guest star wow and how much is it that being sorted into slytherin is you know sorted into good guys and bad guys here well they're not all bad that would i i know i've said this before and i think i said it to emerson they are not all bad and and well far from it as we know at the end they may have they may have a slightly more highly developed sense of self-preservation than other people a part of the final battle that made me smile was slughorn galloping back with slytherins yes but they'd gone off to get reinforcements first you know what i'm saying so that yes they came back they came back to fight so i mean i'm but i'm sure many people would say well that's common sense isn't it isn't that smart to get out get more people and come back with them i have no idea what she's talking about i can't find it i feel like that would be a significant moment for harry if he realized there were slytherins who would fight did she wreck conor's story in a podcast i can't fathom forgetting something like that i sometimes think we sought too soon by sorting the children you're hypothetically judging them for their values but there's something about this sentence i hate especially when you consider how it goes unresolved there shouldn't be a wrong place to put a child some aspects of snape's backstory demonstrate the cruelty of the system and how it became a breeding ground for magical blood racism and dumbledore has dialogue expressing that he's beginning to see the problem but no one fixes it and i don't believe it i don't believe slytherin is actually reformed i don't believe the root of the problem has been sufficiently addressed they put a picture of slughorn in the common room because of his bravery at the battle which implies an ideological shift but it's literally just hanging up a picture if i were headmaster i would get rid of slytherin or rework the sorting system completely at the very least make sure students get resorted every year the existence of houses on their own isn't necessarily harmful to children and house that central tenant is ambition likewise is perfectly fine to me but the hogwarts houses as they stand stupidly help promote the ideological fracturing of the adult wizarding world i can't help but feel like a new voldemort is going to sprout up from slytherin like a dandelion and the wizarding world is once again not going to be prepared for it for me it makes the deaths that occurred during the war and the victory at the battle of hogwarts feel a little pointless and not in the a circle of violence way or in a tragic pulling on your heartstrings way but in a sort of did i leave the stove on kind of way oh i hate to do it to you but statistically it works if you're amused by the thought of fueling my slytherin ambitions then like this video and leave a comment to boost the algorithmic ranking youtube informs me that many of the people who watch my videos aren't subscribed so please do that please subscribe and ring the bell and if you're die hard enough about what i do here you can support me on patreon well see you later

Channel: Quinn Curio

Views: 4,467,986

Keywords: Harry Potter, Snape, Draco Malfoy, Rowling, JK Rowling, Quinn Curio

Id: VeS1pITHufo

Length: 42min 54sec (2574 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021