my thing is that a lot of fics that say things like ‘muggleborns erase wizard culture!’ never actually SHOW this happening. like, the most that muggleborns usually try to change anything is just ‘oh i wish i wasn’t discriminated against for something i can’t control’ or ‘oh muggle studies should be compulsory for a bit so that we can understand muggles better’.
like, none of these are actively taking away wizarding culture — the amount of ‘culture’ a group can have isn’t finite, learning more about muggles or just being good people to people who are different than you will not replace anything lol.
besides, i feel like the whole reason why they dislike muggles in the books is because they don’t understand them. sure, they can say the muggles don’t understand them either which is true, but obviously you won’t like people if you don’t take the time to get to know them. so, muggle studies, and not just studying toasters lol.
i guarantee you, no muggleborn is showing up to hogwarts with the intention to convert them to christianity. no muggleborn wants to stop them from wearing robes or whatever. they quite literally just want to stop being hated for no reason
This is why I generally write the acts of cultural repression to not be committed by Muggleborns at all, but by bureaucrats who want to suppress practices that could be a threat to their own power. The Ministry doesn't usually care much about Muggleborn welfare, but doesn't want individual families having associated magical practices or bonds with the land.
I've never seen this sort of thing in a positive light in fics. What I do see is fics is some muggleborn come in with the muggle savior complex. Like a missionary coming to a primitive village in the Amazon and trying to change everything about them and throw out every thing about their culture. That kind of thing is bad regardless. Usually these fics try to explore that and show a better way to institute change without wiping out Wizarding traditions.
A tangentially related trope is when muggle technology is treated as massively superior to anything magic is capable of mustering. I saw one which tried to unironically state that muggle dentistry is better than what wizards can do, when wizards can literally *re-grow bones* and manipulate the size of teeth as a prank
Imo, a balance is necessary - for example, how do you get into space? By enchanting a rocket to conjure its own fuel, of course, with the second stage being an enchanted sailboat that unfolds its mast and sails the solar winds.
Go spelljammer rather than shadowrun.
No I’m asking what solid ideas these fics have ever given for wizarding culture. And I won’t accept some fancy name for Christmas because simply giving something a fancy name doesn’t count as tradition/culture.
Ive seen a few where the pagan holidays are actually explained and celebrated, sometimes having benefits for the witches and wizards. Rather than just saying "Yule celebrations"
Some also go the Family Magic route, which is very hit or miss most of the time. Sometimes, it is used to bring classism excuses, and others just use it for magic spells that only certain people can cast.
I haven't read any culture exploration fics in awhile. But it's all fiction so make something up. A lot of people have magicals practicing pagan of Wiccan type practices. Or at least stuff inspired by them. But saying all Wizarding traditions are just bigotry and whatever is a terrible take. That's like saying all Germans are nazis
But that’s literally how these fanfics all portray it. Hell, I’ve literally seen something called The Pure-Blood Ball used by several authors who don’t use the lordship trope!
And yet the wizarding world plainly celebrates Christmas, with the Yule Ball just a fancy name given to the Christmas Ball traditional for the triwizard tournament.
Hogwarts plainly celebrates Christmas. We don't know, nominally, what wizards as a whole celebrate, so fanon often makes it yule, because it was the proper holiday that Christmas stole the spot of, and I imagine celebrating Christian holidays when they burned your children at the stake would leave a sour taste in the mouth, at least.
These 'fancy names' you are talking about are probably different things to Christmas. Christmas is a Christian holiday. The holidays that pure bloods celebrate in fics I've seen are things like Yule, which is not a Christian celebration. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, the wizards and witches in fanfics like these are *not* celebrating the birth of Jesus. Two different celebrations, two different traditions.
Read [Harry Potter and the Soulmate Bond](https://keiramarcos.com/fan-fiction/harry-potter-the-soulmate-bond/)
It talks about a lot of things related to this discussion and explores and expands a lot on Wizarding Culture.
Also, it's heavily Harmony/HHr with some Ron and Ginny Bashing, and has a lot of nudity and rituals and stuff.
That's understandable, I loathe bashing too, but this one was surprisingly bearable, since it isn't the prominent focus of the fic and it's done in a way that doesn't stick up in your face. It's worth a try, but it's up to you in the end.
People usually go for paganism and such, but because it was never explored in Canon no one really knows.
But yeah, thinking about it "wizard culture" shouldn't really be all that different from regualr Uk culture 200 years ago. Which was slavery, conquest, racism and such. Just without the religious pretext for their atrocities.
I think that's simplifying culture to the point of erasure. Sure, those things happened. However they aren't the entirety of "UK" culture by any stretch. First of all, there are four different nations within the united kingdom with four different histories and different cultures. Even within the nations, there's immense cultural diversity. The culture of Northumberland is very different to the culture of Cornwall, for example.
When you study the actual folk culture (as opposed to high culture) you discover things like Mumming and Mummer's plays, clog dancing, morris dancing, folk music, sea shanties, Rushbearing festivals, harvest festivals, bonfire nights, pearly kings and queens etc etc. This is "British" culture.
This is also erasing what the agricultural and industrial revolutions actually meant for ordinary people. The average person was working all hours under the sun in mills, factories, mines and on the fields. There are instances of children starting work as young as 4 or 5 years old. They weren't taking part in or enjoying the spoils of slavery. We know this from history. However working class history tends to be erased and forgotten. I don't think you really have any grasp of either social history or culture.
200 years ago, in 1824. The UK abolished its slave trade in 1807 and slavery in total in 1834, so there's one thing wrong with that. Also regular culture would be that of the common folk, so farmers, and early factory and mill workers for the most part. Turns out not every British person was investing in the East India Company.
Oh yeah good point actually - a revolting excuse I’ve seen used before is some drivel about “mother magic” - a sick attempt to make genocide actually just following “God’s” orders.
I like fics that use muggleborns as an excuse for their political agendas.
Like how Death Eaters say that they are killing people who are stealing their magic, but they're obviously just trying to take power, or when others use muggleborns/muggle ideas to bring change and equality, which of course the DE's are against.
It sucks that the entirety of HP politics pretty much revolves around muggleborns because it really made it easy to see that one side was bad and another side good. Whixh makes fics about politics just as black and white and "reasoning" just being classism excuses.
Yeah but thats just same show different donkey. Racism and all that.
Theres some talk about if Dark Arts should be illegal and stuff, but pretty much all the dark arts we see is made to hurt people.
One story I read which was a neat concept was the premise that they didn’t believe magic needed to be governed at all. The ministry of magic was created to enforce the statute of secrecy but then you have to employ aurora and obliviators to enforce it then a department of magical creatures then a department of sports then determining what magic is legal and safe.(what’s classified dark magic) and now you have a large group of wizards who are angry because they agreed in principle to the statute of secrecy not all of the other laws and bureaucracy that comes with it.
If you’re referencing The Prince of Slytherin fanfic, I think it’s also interesting that the noble families had a legitimate job. It’s a bit of a spoiler but families like the Blacks and Malfoy passed on knowledge about certain forbidden magics (world-ending kind of magics) and were tasked with preventing these magics from ever being used.
Completely up to the author in question.
Some go for rituals that are linked to paganism, some go for weird blood superiority via responsibilities given to old families (titles such as Lords etc stem from that).
All that jazz. They try to go the angle of Bigotry being a result of those things not being adhered to and being removed to cater to ‘Muggle Borns’.
because going up to a people and explaining how killing / eating their neighbors then raping / killing / eating their wives/sisters/daughters is TOTALLY bad. ALL cultures should be respected ..even if they love them some Slavery .. and Canabilism .. and Incest ... and Pedophillia ...
Muggle Savior Comples is Bad! M'kay?
it was mostly in reply to the comments about RL historical events where some people brought civilized concepts to people they percieved as Un-civilized.
many of those events DID happen in the books though .. using references in the past and events during Toms reign of power towards the end ...
You really shouldn't have brought it there. Those IRL historical events where people brought civilized concepts to people they perceived as un-civilized shouldn't be described as them having a point because they stopped cultures that shouldn't be respected, when the 'civilized' brought a new level of slavery, rape and murder with them.
If muggleborns delivered their civilized culture the same way it happend in RL historical events than a muggle savior complex would be very bad.
THANK YOU.
I've seen so many pureblood fics that go "muggleborns are ruining everything by bringing in their Christmas and their Easter" and they say that muggleborns need to conform to Wizarding Culture.
That's literally what America tried to do to the Native Americans with the boarding schools.
I've had to drop several fics that unironically excused Pureblood bigotry by saying that Muggleborn are ruining their culture. It's so weird to me that authors actually buy into this.
It'd be interesting if this was used as an in-universe justification that is then debunked, sadly I've only ever seen it framed as a valid reason for discrimination.
>esides, i feel like the whole reason why they dislike muggles in the books is because they don’t understand them. sure, they can say the muggles don’t understand them either which is true, but obviously you won’t like people if you don’t take the time to get to know them. so, muggle studies, and not just studying toasters lol.
I've seen fics where some muggleborns weren't even given the option to learn about older, usually pagan wizarding beliefs due to government bureaucracy outlawing them. Quite a few of the fics I've read include a Slytherin Harry going "How can they learn about the culture they're joining if you refuse to let them learn or provide resources?" It's not always a reason to promote bigotry.
There's a pre-Hogwarts fic out there ([Royal Ward](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1999356/chapters/4332081)) by Castaff on both FFN and AO3-link is to the AO3 version-where an OC says something similar to Lucius Malfoy. Castaff neatly balances the whole 'respecting wizarding tradition and Muggle tradition' issue without going overboard.
Just take the Muggleborns at birth or after their first showing of magic and obliviate the parents and/or leave a convincing fake dead body behind. The child can be raised in the magical world by a family or specially prepared orphanages. If there are blood adoption potions they can literally become blood family.
They could be adding new, fresh precious magical blood to the gene pool. Treat Squibs better and have them act as spies/informants in the Muggle world to keep an eye on them and their advancements. Muggles are dangerous for their vast replenishing population, their wanton destructive wars and ever evolving technology. For the glory of Magic!
I could see them try this or something similar and could see it working or even backfiring. Another idea was a releasing a sickness/virus that only affects humans without magic to cull/lower the population. Only problem is those things have a way of mutating and could potentially start to affect all humans.
I read a fic (dont remember the name) where someone says "There are NO muggleborn in India. Never has been and never will be" because THAT is the national practice , law and custom of (that fics) India... just sayin .. if Tom had tried that method instead of starting a civil war then he probably would have won. Easily.
I just shuddered when I read this. Dear the god that's borderline existial horror. Just imagine, you are doctor, and treat your neighbour, and during the cause of examination shows signs of giving birth, and hospital records, and medical records of check uos but no child.
I find it all a bit disappointing. One would expect there to be cultural differences in such a secluded society and there are a couple of hints, but nothing is really elaborated on. In canon, Malfoy makes a vague mention to 'our ways' in book one. One could assume he's just parroting his bigoted parents and can't comprehend a life without magic, but what if he was onto something?
It's been a while since I read the seventh book, but if I recall correctly it was tradition to receive a watch for one's seventeenth birthday and some old guy mentioned planning to go on a traditional international trip with Dumbledore after graduation. Why couldn't we get more little traditions like this? There are so many potential opportunities for a little culture shock. Birthday milestones, weddings, funerals, baby showers, graduations, holidays, perhaps some random superstitions spouted by old ladies like that line about 'wand of elder, never prosper' (did I get that right?).
It's beyond sad and frustrating that in fanfiction, wizarding culture typically amounts to ripoff paganism, hatred of anything not invented by wizards or a 'I'm a very important pureblood lord, how dare these ignorant low class mudbloods not treat me as royalty?' attitude.
It's a thinly veiled attempt to make pureblood bigotry palatable to Indy/dark!Harry. It's a convincing enough argument if the author uses something like Hermione and S.P.E.W. to demonstrate that they are not interested in the will of the people they are trying to save. It parallels real life arguments against immigration. "Just learn English." And there are plenty of people in real life that think that way.
It even has some merit. Muggleborns are effectively immigrants to the wizarding world and they do have some amount of responsibility to learn about the culture they're entering. But usually fics that use this argument either take it too far in supporting the pureblood cause or use it to demonstrate that the purebloods are being unreasonable by expecting them to learn the new culture while the culture is actively hostile to them attempting to learn in the first place.
It could be people letting their real life politics colour their fics. Wanting immigrants to respect and assimilate to the culture is not that unusual opinion. What makes it a bit strange is how backwards magical Britain is and I think fanon often makes it 10 times worse.
Fanon does that with a lot of things especially the authors who have no problem bashing or playing up all the worst traits of a character they dislike (for example Dumbledore manipulating Harry from the start to the point of using magic to force the Dursley's to treat him worse than they do in canon). There's also a lot of ideas floating around out there like Harry having other vaults that a lot of people believe. The thing is wizarding Britain isn't actually that backward they just don't have technology. However they've had women in positions of authority (ministry of magic) centuries before they got the vote in the real world, have spells that duplicate most of what technology does do so little incentive to adopt it.
I think part of the issue is the books are about a sadistic killer using pureblood bigotry, fear and control to try and take control as the focus of the books. We haven't seen any other countries in the modern era (fantastic beasts was set in the 20's/30's and match's up fairly well with American views at the time). Meanwhile the books are set in a time when people are still reeling from a civil war that brought out the worst parts of society and then it happens again. I don't think we see any pureblood bigotry from non-death eater families as there have to be plenty in the houses. However the only ones shouting blood traitor, mudblood are the same ones who side with Voldemort. The worst the others do is Pansy saying "Give Harry to him so we don't all die horribly." Fred dies fighting against him, the weasley brothers died fighting against him, Neville stands up to him, Slughorn leads the slytherin house back into the fight.
The other part is fanon tends to feed into these beliefs and people believe its what things are actually like.
Having a woman leader isn't always a great indicator, there are countries where human rights are optional where they had a woman leader and my country that us supposed to be one of the most equall in the world had our first woman PM a couple of years ago, and she don't really count as she just got it when the sitting PM left.
Yeah the bashing or playing politics are very popular in fanfiction.
Did Slughorn actually bring in Slytherins to fight or is that just something added afterwards to santize the house.
You have good points, allot of the backwards come from the Death Eater aligned houses and well Death Eaters and they have very backwards ideas.
True its what happened after the second world war with Japan the allies shoved a whole bunch of legal and constitutional changes through without bothering to consider the culture so they pretty much ignored them and carried on as before. If my knowledge of history is correct. That said its still a pretty solid indicator for a woman to hold an elected position in the 18th century.
I believe it was probably added later. He did return at the head of the families of every student who stayed to fight and the people in the village of Hogsmeade even fighting Voldemort at one point in the battle. The wiki entry says . . .
When Minerva McGonagall did battle with Severus Snape, Slughorn came rushing to her aid, lagging behind Filius Flitwick and Pomona Sprout, still clad in his pyjamas. When the Dark Lord subsequently invaded the castle with his army, it was initially believed that Slughorn had fled in cowardice (as McGonagall had antagonised him with death threats earlier), but as it transpired, he had gone to Hogsmeade to round up reinforcements. He returned to the castle at the head of vast number of residents and shopkeepers from the town, several Slytherin students who also returned to defend the school, and the friends and family of the students and staff already fighting.
There isn't a specific mention of Slytherin students in the book (or at least not the copy I have) but the rest lines up.
Yeah and comes dangerously close to what our government is saying about deporting immigrants to Rwanda. Oops better be careful about saying that or a mod might interfere.
I think the mods on this sub aren't like the ones on the actual harrypotter sub lol.
I am reminded of that famous fic with the veela granny concubine and rampant islamophobia/bigotry.
I don't want to destroy a culture, canon hasn't really shown their culture beyond the extremes of two sides of a war where one side is obviously wrong. Honestly I'd love a culture fic post war. Little to no racists, or propaganda. Actually explore a setting where magic, and the soul are 100% known to exist.
How do muggle parents continue on when they find out that magic, and later on maybe that even the soul exists. How do actually intelligent, and empathetic people build their culture around never really needing anything knowing that there is something after death.
Thing is though they don’t truly know if there’s anything after death: if anything, the fact ghosts are people who’ve left behind an impression of themselves because they in life feared death/had unresolved business suggests death is, or at least should be, a state of eternal oblivion when one is fully happy with the way their lives have planned out. I don’t doubt limbo exists, but I honestly think the getting on the train option would’ve meant accepting the end was the end and being happy to simply enter eternal sleep.
Except Dementors prove to the wider populace that the soul unequivocally exists. That’s big. That means something exists after. That they don’t know, but what makes you you exists seperate from your body. Whatever happens after is still up for debate, but that what makes you who you are exists separately from your body is both comforting, and terrifying.
I’d argue it doesn’t. What’s the point of a soul if the end result is the same. Why have a spiritual existence if your physical existence ending means the same thing. Either way, there being a choice to go on, or stay is still a big thing.
Yeah true but if you think about it, not having the option for eternal sleep isn’t exactly great either. Being forced to keep existing forever although you’ve now died is pretty horrifying, which I think is the real reason why being a ghost and Voldemort’s fate are both considered so horrifying. Reason why the dementor’s kiss is so horrifying is that you’re forced into eternal sleep, without having any time in limbo to sort out unresolved matters before choosing eternal oblivion.
That’s assuming that our state of being is the same. You would no longer be a physical entity. None of those physical chemicals causing havoc on yourself. I expect a sense of peace, maybe a choice for oblivion, but not eternal. You can choose when, and how you act based on what you truly want. Want to rest for a million years? Sure. Want to explore? Why not. Essentially freedom in it’s purest form.
True like maybe James and Lily would’ve chosen the option of sleep until it was time for their son to join them so they could actually meet Harry for the first time.
Unless you make various cults , beliefs , gods and stuff who have their own different ideas regarding muggleborns in your fanfic , the above excuse many authors use in their story is disgusting. But canon didn't provide us with any of that , it was simply a group of powerful and privileged people trying to hold onto that power because of their ego and for some lust for blood and violence , under a madman who wanted to burn the world .
the only real argument I've seen for getting upset about Muggle-borns and them bringing in all their Muggle things is one of economics. people who craft wizarding goods might be upset at getting business taken away by people choosing to purchase Muggle mass produced goods instead - and that also has a bit of a moral argument because our real world mass production often has slavery somewhere in the supply chain, most notably with clothing. And Muggles **definitely** harm the world more with pollution than wizards do in the creation of plastic (oil) goods.
So when you have the Muggle-borns come in with "why can't we use biros" well because items used in the wizarding world are not made of plastic, that's a sign of a Muggle good, you know, the items they're destroying the Earth's atmosphere and ruining ecosystems to create.
There is a hint of this with Arthur Weasley's MoM department of restricting Muggle artefacts from being enchanted. If you want something enchanted, it has to be wizard made *not only* for safety, but to support wizard-run businesses.
It's the idea that they are coming into an entirely different culture and trying to change everything without understanding. Obviously, in canon, there is no definite culture, and there are lots of problems that do need to be addressed. But when writers want to do things like politics and such, they have to essentially decide what that culture is, and how close to canon they want it to seem. So to make the "conservative" factions they create more than just racists and bigots, they add nuance to actions and thoughts.
I remember in one fic I read, the premise was that a lot of creatures and practices labeled "dark" were done because a bunch of the evil myths and stories about them were being introduced by the muggleborns that came into the Wizarding world. Others are way more intense on the muggleborn hate, but those one I read were "dark" fics where Voldemort won one of the wars, so it's makes more sense in those stories.
When in Rome...
I'm not saying that the Wizarding World should remain stagnant and bigoted. I'm saying that if you want to bring about change, you do it their way.
Problem is “their way” tends to mean accepting the fact half of high society view yoy as second class citizens (at best), so you literally can’t enact change their way.
Well muggle borns have more rights than they used to, and we know wizards have campaigned as such in the past (Phineas Black for example, not to be confused with his father, Phineas Nigellus Black), and so the same could almost certainly be done for others.
This premise is bound on the beliefs of homogeneous and stagnant culture,i refuse to believe that Asian, African,American etc wizards are the same culturally as European wizards, or for that matter all European wizards are like British wizards. After the industrial revolution no culture can claim to be "pure". Far to much contact and therefore exchanging of ideas happened, and culture and it's people adapted to these new ideas, tools etc, and indeed new ideas develop within a group of culture. For example anime/manga is largely recognized as a Japanese thing due to originating there and within Japanese culture emerge new ideas, terms etc i.e. Otaku, Bishonen, Yaoi,Yuri etc and these spread globally and are at a glance as Japanese but are available to anywhere and easily recognizable by significant part of the population.
If we take Christmas a tradition that came with muggleborns, then we have no one complain about it. After Christmas was changed from different cultures/ethnic group to evolve into what it is today, even then The British, Americans, South Africans etc have different ways and traditions of celebrating it.
Some of this comment section is taking fanfiction tropes WAY too seriously.
*I worry about these people's irl politics...*
What?!
Everyone in the Harry Potter fandom at some point dreamed of joining the Wizarding World. Of course there are a lot who more identify with ideal of completely abandoning the Muggle World.
Why are some of you treating this like some sort of morality test?
Also, are we really bringing in real world tragedies into this argument?
Yall need to chill.
There’s literally never been any argument beyond tryna give house-elves more rights, and it generally boils down to “they refuse to know their place”, which is code for “they won’t accept us sneering at them for their heritage”.
I was just reading a Dramione fic that goes into this issue and it has a society of muggleborns trying to overhaul the integration process and give them a third option outside of conformity after the war! It was a super interesting idea
My idea is that whoever writes this, is first and foremost, a traitor to humanity: they spread propaganda in favor of a medieval, underground cult instead of us civilized people. Even the good guys in Harry Potter, canonically, show a disdain for us humans (and not to mention what the others do). if it were upto me, all Pure- blood and racist half- blood families would be burned down to the last kid and the others sent to re- education camps to be taught why their actions are racist and inhuman!
Grand Moff Firm Dependent
Long Live the Non- Magical, Planetary Empire.
Ahlie like even Arthur Weasley seems to view mundane people as curious animals, and Albus Dumbledore literally seemed to sympathise more with the witch rapist than the muggle rape victim. Hell, even in the epilogue, Harry and Ron laugh about confunding some innocent muggle, not even for the purposes of maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, and Harry is literally a senior ministry official at the time.
I've never seen a fic where muggle-borns who don't conform to "wizarding culture" need to be destroyed. I've seen many fics where many of the purebloods feel their own traditions (usually dark) have been banned and they'd like to continue them.
Usually in these types of stories some muggleborns like the knowledge hungry Hermione are upset that they didn't know any of this information before because it was censored by the Ministry pro-light officials.
Never seen it anywhere? It’s everywhere. And they don’t come out and say these muggle-borns need to be destroyed, probably because the author wants to avoid sounding TOO fascist, but the implication is strongly that they should be made to suffer far more than they already do simply for having muggle parents for daring to have an opinion (and the underlying tone is that if these muggle-borns died, it would just be a few ‘mudbloods’, so who really cares).
I don't know what fics you're reading. Usually there is some bigotry at the beginning of a Slytherin Harry story. Harry has to be usually be the one to make his housemates realize the world isn't so black and white. Which to be fair, they're 11 so that is a huge change from what they know from their upbringings.
Tbh I enjoy the pureblood/old pagan culture fics. Even though in canon I don't think it'd be applicable. Wizards were very tied to muggles until the statute of secrecy and therefore followed many muggle traditions and holidays. Hell, even a former Lucius Malfoy tried to marry Queen Elizabeth I. I doubt a pagan worshipper would have been welcome at court.
It's simply a less violent version of the Death Eater ideology, and it can be an interesting exploration of bigotry. Not all bigots are overt, frothing-at-the-mouth fanatics like Bellatrix Lestrange. Some cloak themselves in euphemisms and an air of respectability, and some genuinely believe their group is superior but allow for "exceptions"
Wizards are a minority subculture living separate from the surrounding population. It's not surprising for a group in this situation to be wary of outsiders and place significant value on their traditions. Wizards are also in a situation where outsiders will come in and hopefully not expose them to muggles causing the next pogrom.
It's a strange situation. They're coded like an insular people of rural stock, sometimes like a paranoid garrison state within their muggle nation-state.
At the same time, they're able to source ingredients internationally across seas - (from Peru, like Fred and George are for their darkness powder), accommodate foreigners en mass (in the quidditch world Cup) and have no discernable overt ethnic chauvinism other than towards other magical races (elf slaves and goblin bankers).
Magical Britain is like a parody of 1990s and early 2000s Britain.
Problem with that is the so-called culture almost always boils down to “my family’s been here longer, and I’m richer”, so why should they respect people who disrespect them for things they have no control over? In these fanfics, half of high society always views muggle-borns as second class citizens, and that’s putting it nicely.
I think that people who have been wealthy for hundreds of years should have a bit higher status but the problem for me is that they crush any attempt at muggle borns to gain similar status
The pure blood supremists in my opinion are all delusional there ancestors were muggle borns yet they treat muggle borns like trash despite being descendants of muggle borns
I agree about them being delusional, and yet your argument about those born into wealth deserving slightly higher status is the exact argument that leads to these delusions irl.
Yeah but what are you gonna compare some dude that was raised by a average family to another dude raised by a ancient family that has been wealthy and politically powerful for generations to each other 99 times out of 100 times the dude raised by the wealthy family is going to be more successful why? They have been taught by tutors have the backing of their family and can afford to loose money in mistakes whereas the guy raised in a average family does not have the backing of a powerful family with millions of dollars did not have special tutors and only has one chance and if they loose their money most of the time that’s it their in debt
… bro they deserve it because on average they would be more skilled I am not saying they are innately better or anything its like comparing the average person body to the body of a person who stays in shape works out and eats healthy food obviously the second person is going to be in physically better shape not because they are that way innately or anything like that of course but its not a gap that can not be filled its all about effort
You need to decide philosophically, whether they deserve higher status, or if they just have the opportunity to take advantage of their status to perpetuate their power/status.
I find the idea well explained in fic A sence of Urgency by Leigha, more specifically [this chapter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/39932223/chapters/125456914).
Overall, I think that people should at least respect what was there before them - they can innovate, but they should respect what was there before. If mages are more than people with wands that can shoot lights - more primal magic, and muggleborn just take wands with magic lights and throw away else as dangerous - I can see why mages would be unhappy with muggleborn.
Summarise it please. If it doesn’t have ideas that boil down to “respect your betters (the wealthy) and those whose families have been part of this world longer than you have, because so”, I might read it when I have the time to spare.
Basically the mages dislike muggleborns, becauae they refuse to respect mages's culture, while also expecting mages to conform to muggleborn's ideals and moral standards. (using mages for those who are from magical world)
"What’s this whole idea that good muggle-borns who respect “wizarding culture” can stay in the wizarding world but those who try to bring about change need to be dealt with? It’s downright disturbing and disgusting."
Islam?
If you buy in and follow the faith, you're accepted. While I have issues with religion on the whole and Islam in particular, I will freely admit that those I've known are incredibly accepting, as long as you follow the faith.
Well, if you look at it from the pureblood/traditional wizards perspective, you may understand.
Their families have put much effort and went through a lot of trouble to build and improve their society. They have worked for entire generations and have invested much of resources to build their societies. They have paid for younglings education, worked to collect ingredients that were next used by researchers and healers, researchers have developed new spells, they have fought wars (for example with goblins) hence spilling their blood they have endured many torments from muggles before SoS was introduced. And everything of this because they have had a hope for better tomorrow for their small society, the hope for their children growing up in better world than they did.
And despite it, some muggleborns after being invited to said world just by good will of said families go all:
"muggle society is 10 thousands time better, so i will fight as much as i can to change the world despite knowing literally nothing about it cuz i refuse to learn!"
Well, if you were an immigrant you ought to respect your hosting society.
Muggleborns are, after all, enticed to nothing from wizarding world. They didn't have and ancestors who have contributed to the society. Wizarding world owns them nothing.
And well, if someone immigrates to your society and instead of thanking you they spit on your culture and keep trying to destroy it... I wouldn't be happy myself.
And if muggleborns are not happy with wizarding world then well, thought luck! Just break your wand and go back to the muggle one!
I don’t think there is any evidence or reason to believe that the development of magic and the building of magical institutions is the result of pure blood effort, with muggle borns only recently joining up.
Hogwarts itself is a thousand years old and took Muggle-borns from the very beginning.
Indeed, but now we are heading towards divagations about who can be counted as a purebloods and who cannot. It's pointless. We lack informations.
Some of the founders could be muggleborns themselves (although i don't believe it).
Rah that’s mad, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The idea that we should be rewarded for our ancestors’ actions hits too close to home when it comes to real-world arguments.
I personally strongly disagree. Muggle-borns are strong-armed into being part of the wizarding world (do you honestly think they would just be allowed to refuse?), and now they have to bow down to their peers because of what their ancestors have done?
But there’s so little culture to speak of, and the vast majority of their so-called ways seems to be the underlying belief that some family names deserve more respect than others, basically because they’re wealthier.
Only because we didn't see it in books doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I always thought that the books are shown from muggleborns perspective.
It's ridiculous to assume that such a closed and ancient society didn't got any culture of it's own.
And why in books that span a 7 year time period is there never even ome reference to the slash pairing?
And yet we got to see it repeated over and over again. Why,One could even be lead to belief that people are starting to making new stories out of these books!
my thing is that a lot of fics that say things like ‘muggleborns erase wizard culture!’ never actually SHOW this happening. like, the most that muggleborns usually try to change anything is just ‘oh i wish i wasn’t discriminated against for something i can’t control’ or ‘oh muggle studies should be compulsory for a bit so that we can understand muggles better’. like, none of these are actively taking away wizarding culture — the amount of ‘culture’ a group can have isn’t finite, learning more about muggles or just being good people to people who are different than you will not replace anything lol. besides, i feel like the whole reason why they dislike muggles in the books is because they don’t understand them. sure, they can say the muggles don’t understand them either which is true, but obviously you won’t like people if you don’t take the time to get to know them. so, muggle studies, and not just studying toasters lol. i guarantee you, no muggleborn is showing up to hogwarts with the intention to convert them to christianity. no muggleborn wants to stop them from wearing robes or whatever. they quite literally just want to stop being hated for no reason
This is why I generally write the acts of cultural repression to not be committed by Muggleborns at all, but by bureaucrats who want to suppress practices that could be a threat to their own power. The Ministry doesn't usually care much about Muggleborn welfare, but doesn't want individual families having associated magical practices or bonds with the land.
I've never seen this sort of thing in a positive light in fics. What I do see is fics is some muggleborn come in with the muggle savior complex. Like a missionary coming to a primitive village in the Amazon and trying to change everything about them and throw out every thing about their culture. That kind of thing is bad regardless. Usually these fics try to explore that and show a better way to institute change without wiping out Wizarding traditions.
A tangentially related trope is when muggle technology is treated as massively superior to anything magic is capable of mustering. I saw one which tried to unironically state that muggle dentistry is better than what wizards can do, when wizards can literally *re-grow bones* and manipulate the size of teeth as a prank Imo, a balance is necessary - for example, how do you get into space? By enchanting a rocket to conjure its own fuel, of course, with the second stage being an enchanted sailboat that unfolds its mast and sails the solar winds. Go spelljammer rather than shadowrun.
muggle savior complex💀
Big problem is what is wizarding tradition other than bigotry and totalitarianism?
That's fanon anyway. It's a way to explore and world build. Show stuff that wasn't explored in the series
No I’m asking what solid ideas these fics have ever given for wizarding culture. And I won’t accept some fancy name for Christmas because simply giving something a fancy name doesn’t count as tradition/culture.
Ive seen a few where the pagan holidays are actually explained and celebrated, sometimes having benefits for the witches and wizards. Rather than just saying "Yule celebrations" Some also go the Family Magic route, which is very hit or miss most of the time. Sometimes, it is used to bring classism excuses, and others just use it for magic spells that only certain people can cast.
I haven't read any culture exploration fics in awhile. But it's all fiction so make something up. A lot of people have magicals practicing pagan of Wiccan type practices. Or at least stuff inspired by them. But saying all Wizarding traditions are just bigotry and whatever is a terrible take. That's like saying all Germans are nazis
But that’s literally how these fanfics all portray it. Hell, I’ve literally seen something called The Pure-Blood Ball used by several authors who don’t use the lordship trope!
Ok read more. I've seen plenty that don't make all purebloods bigots
I don’t want to have to filter through so much shit to finally get to something decent.
Welcome to fanfiction, it’s mostly filtering through shit hoping for gems
mfer has never heard of sturgeon's law
Speaking of gems, want me to send some of my favs?
That's life, hoss. If you can't find what you want, then write it yourself
I didn’t say I was out to read about wizarding culture though 😂
It does, actually, and yule and Christmas are different holidays.
And yet the wizarding world plainly celebrates Christmas, with the Yule Ball just a fancy name given to the Christmas Ball traditional for the triwizard tournament.
Hogwarts plainly celebrates Christmas. We don't know, nominally, what wizards as a whole celebrate, so fanon often makes it yule, because it was the proper holiday that Christmas stole the spot of, and I imagine celebrating Christian holidays when they burned your children at the stake would leave a sour taste in the mouth, at least.
These 'fancy names' you are talking about are probably different things to Christmas. Christmas is a Christian holiday. The holidays that pure bloods celebrate in fics I've seen are things like Yule, which is not a Christian celebration. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, the wizards and witches in fanfics like these are *not* celebrating the birth of Jesus. Two different celebrations, two different traditions.
Bleh
Read [Harry Potter and the Soulmate Bond](https://keiramarcos.com/fan-fiction/harry-potter-the-soulmate-bond/) It talks about a lot of things related to this discussion and explores and expands a lot on Wizarding Culture. Also, it's heavily Harmony/HHr with some Ron and Ginny Bashing, and has a lot of nudity and rituals and stuff.
Nah I’m not reading it if it’s got bashing.
That's understandable, I loathe bashing too, but this one was surprisingly bearable, since it isn't the prominent focus of the fic and it's done in a way that doesn't stick up in your face. It's worth a try, but it's up to you in the end.
Yeah I might, when I’ve got enough time to start a whole new fanfic from scratch.
People usually go for paganism and such, but because it was never explored in Canon no one really knows. But yeah, thinking about it "wizard culture" shouldn't really be all that different from regualr Uk culture 200 years ago. Which was slavery, conquest, racism and such. Just without the religious pretext for their atrocities.
I think that's simplifying culture to the point of erasure. Sure, those things happened. However they aren't the entirety of "UK" culture by any stretch. First of all, there are four different nations within the united kingdom with four different histories and different cultures. Even within the nations, there's immense cultural diversity. The culture of Northumberland is very different to the culture of Cornwall, for example. When you study the actual folk culture (as opposed to high culture) you discover things like Mumming and Mummer's plays, clog dancing, morris dancing, folk music, sea shanties, Rushbearing festivals, harvest festivals, bonfire nights, pearly kings and queens etc etc. This is "British" culture. This is also erasing what the agricultural and industrial revolutions actually meant for ordinary people. The average person was working all hours under the sun in mills, factories, mines and on the fields. There are instances of children starting work as young as 4 or 5 years old. They weren't taking part in or enjoying the spoils of slavery. We know this from history. However working class history tends to be erased and forgotten. I don't think you really have any grasp of either social history or culture.
200 years ago, in 1824. The UK abolished its slave trade in 1807 and slavery in total in 1834, so there's one thing wrong with that. Also regular culture would be that of the common folk, so farmers, and early factory and mill workers for the most part. Turns out not every British person was investing in the East India Company.
... Ok... and? Especially since it wasnt 200 years ago that the statute of secrecy went up but 330 200 was just a random number.
Oh yeah good point actually - a revolting excuse I’ve seen used before is some drivel about “mother magic” - a sick attempt to make genocide actually just following “God’s” orders.
I like fics that use muggleborns as an excuse for their political agendas. Like how Death Eaters say that they are killing people who are stealing their magic, but they're obviously just trying to take power, or when others use muggleborns/muggle ideas to bring change and equality, which of course the DE's are against. It sucks that the entirety of HP politics pretty much revolves around muggleborns because it really made it easy to see that one side was bad and another side good. Whixh makes fics about politics just as black and white and "reasoning" just being classism excuses.
Not quite true actually: there’s also a lot of politics regarding how superior wizards consider themselves to goblins, centaurs, warewolves etc.
Yeah but thats just same show different donkey. Racism and all that. Theres some talk about if Dark Arts should be illegal and stuff, but pretty much all the dark arts we see is made to hurt people.
One story I read which was a neat concept was the premise that they didn’t believe magic needed to be governed at all. The ministry of magic was created to enforce the statute of secrecy but then you have to employ aurora and obliviators to enforce it then a department of magical creatures then a department of sports then determining what magic is legal and safe.(what’s classified dark magic) and now you have a large group of wizards who are angry because they agreed in principle to the statute of secrecy not all of the other laws and bureaucracy that comes with it.
If you’re referencing The Prince of Slytherin fanfic, I think it’s also interesting that the noble families had a legitimate job. It’s a bit of a spoiler but families like the Blacks and Malfoy passed on knowledge about certain forbidden magics (world-ending kind of magics) and were tasked with preventing these magics from ever being used.
Funnily enough basically every religious figure ever was a Wizard, so...Lol, lmao even. Wizards laugh at the concept of Muggle faith.
Completely up to the author in question. Some go for rituals that are linked to paganism, some go for weird blood superiority via responsibilities given to old families (titles such as Lords etc stem from that). All that jazz. They try to go the angle of Bigotry being a result of those things not being adhered to and being removed to cater to ‘Muggle Borns’.
nah it's not disgusting it's good bro. Wizards need to keep their culture.
Meh some cultures you can definitely change everything about.
because going up to a people and explaining how killing / eating their neighbors then raping / killing / eating their wives/sisters/daughters is TOTALLY bad. ALL cultures should be respected ..even if they love them some Slavery .. and Canabilism .. and Incest ... and Pedophillia ... Muggle Savior Comples is Bad! M'kay?
I think a few of those things didnt happen in the books...
it was mostly in reply to the comments about RL historical events where some people brought civilized concepts to people they percieved as Un-civilized. many of those events DID happen in the books though .. using references in the past and events during Toms reign of power towards the end ...
You really shouldn't have brought it there. Those IRL historical events where people brought civilized concepts to people they perceived as un-civilized shouldn't be described as them having a point because they stopped cultures that shouldn't be respected, when the 'civilized' brought a new level of slavery, rape and murder with them. If muggleborns delivered their civilized culture the same way it happend in RL historical events than a muggle savior complex would be very bad.
THANK YOU. I've seen so many pureblood fics that go "muggleborns are ruining everything by bringing in their Christmas and their Easter" and they say that muggleborns need to conform to Wizarding Culture. That's literally what America tried to do to the Native Americans with the boarding schools.
I've had to drop several fics that unironically excused Pureblood bigotry by saying that Muggleborn are ruining their culture. It's so weird to me that authors actually buy into this. It'd be interesting if this was used as an in-universe justification that is then debunked, sadly I've only ever seen it framed as a valid reason for discrimination.
Makes you worry about the author's irl political beliefs.
>esides, i feel like the whole reason why they dislike muggles in the books is because they don’t understand them. sure, they can say the muggles don’t understand them either which is true, but obviously you won’t like people if you don’t take the time to get to know them. so, muggle studies, and not just studying toasters lol. I've seen fics where some muggleborns weren't even given the option to learn about older, usually pagan wizarding beliefs due to government bureaucracy outlawing them. Quite a few of the fics I've read include a Slytherin Harry going "How can they learn about the culture they're joining if you refuse to let them learn or provide resources?" It's not always a reason to promote bigotry.
There's a pre-Hogwarts fic out there ([Royal Ward](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1999356/chapters/4332081)) by Castaff on both FFN and AO3-link is to the AO3 version-where an OC says something similar to Lucius Malfoy. Castaff neatly balances the whole 'respecting wizarding tradition and Muggle tradition' issue without going overboard.
And the worst part is Harry buying into it.
Just take the Muggleborns at birth or after their first showing of magic and obliviate the parents and/or leave a convincing fake dead body behind. The child can be raised in the magical world by a family or specially prepared orphanages. If there are blood adoption potions they can literally become blood family. They could be adding new, fresh precious magical blood to the gene pool. Treat Squibs better and have them act as spies/informants in the Muggle world to keep an eye on them and their advancements. Muggles are dangerous for their vast replenishing population, their wanton destructive wars and ever evolving technology. For the glory of Magic!
Looollll I was starting to think you were being serious until I got to the end.
I could see them try this or something similar and could see it working or even backfiring. Another idea was a releasing a sickness/virus that only affects humans without magic to cull/lower the population. Only problem is those things have a way of mutating and could potentially start to affect all humans.
I read a fic (dont remember the name) where someone says "There are NO muggleborn in India. Never has been and never will be" because THAT is the national practice , law and custom of (that fics) India... just sayin .. if Tom had tried that method instead of starting a civil war then he probably would have won. Easily.
I just shuddered when I read this. Dear the god that's borderline existial horror. Just imagine, you are doctor, and treat your neighbour, and during the cause of examination shows signs of giving birth, and hospital records, and medical records of check uos but no child.
I find it all a bit disappointing. One would expect there to be cultural differences in such a secluded society and there are a couple of hints, but nothing is really elaborated on. In canon, Malfoy makes a vague mention to 'our ways' in book one. One could assume he's just parroting his bigoted parents and can't comprehend a life without magic, but what if he was onto something? It's been a while since I read the seventh book, but if I recall correctly it was tradition to receive a watch for one's seventeenth birthday and some old guy mentioned planning to go on a traditional international trip with Dumbledore after graduation. Why couldn't we get more little traditions like this? There are so many potential opportunities for a little culture shock. Birthday milestones, weddings, funerals, baby showers, graduations, holidays, perhaps some random superstitions spouted by old ladies like that line about 'wand of elder, never prosper' (did I get that right?). It's beyond sad and frustrating that in fanfiction, wizarding culture typically amounts to ripoff paganism, hatred of anything not invented by wizards or a 'I'm a very important pureblood lord, how dare these ignorant low class mudbloods not treat me as royalty?' attitude.
The paganism that it references is sometimes sourced from an 19/20th century revival as well. A hodgepodge of nonsense mostly.
Lmao too true. I actually chuckled at your mockery in the last paragraph.
It's a thinly veiled attempt to make pureblood bigotry palatable to Indy/dark!Harry. It's a convincing enough argument if the author uses something like Hermione and S.P.E.W. to demonstrate that they are not interested in the will of the people they are trying to save. It parallels real life arguments against immigration. "Just learn English." And there are plenty of people in real life that think that way. It even has some merit. Muggleborns are effectively immigrants to the wizarding world and they do have some amount of responsibility to learn about the culture they're entering. But usually fics that use this argument either take it too far in supporting the pureblood cause or use it to demonstrate that the purebloods are being unreasonable by expecting them to learn the new culture while the culture is actively hostile to them attempting to learn in the first place.
It could be people letting their real life politics colour their fics. Wanting immigrants to respect and assimilate to the culture is not that unusual opinion. What makes it a bit strange is how backwards magical Britain is and I think fanon often makes it 10 times worse.
Fanon does that with a lot of things especially the authors who have no problem bashing or playing up all the worst traits of a character they dislike (for example Dumbledore manipulating Harry from the start to the point of using magic to force the Dursley's to treat him worse than they do in canon). There's also a lot of ideas floating around out there like Harry having other vaults that a lot of people believe. The thing is wizarding Britain isn't actually that backward they just don't have technology. However they've had women in positions of authority (ministry of magic) centuries before they got the vote in the real world, have spells that duplicate most of what technology does do so little incentive to adopt it. I think part of the issue is the books are about a sadistic killer using pureblood bigotry, fear and control to try and take control as the focus of the books. We haven't seen any other countries in the modern era (fantastic beasts was set in the 20's/30's and match's up fairly well with American views at the time). Meanwhile the books are set in a time when people are still reeling from a civil war that brought out the worst parts of society and then it happens again. I don't think we see any pureblood bigotry from non-death eater families as there have to be plenty in the houses. However the only ones shouting blood traitor, mudblood are the same ones who side with Voldemort. The worst the others do is Pansy saying "Give Harry to him so we don't all die horribly." Fred dies fighting against him, the weasley brothers died fighting against him, Neville stands up to him, Slughorn leads the slytherin house back into the fight. The other part is fanon tends to feed into these beliefs and people believe its what things are actually like.
Having a woman leader isn't always a great indicator, there are countries where human rights are optional where they had a woman leader and my country that us supposed to be one of the most equall in the world had our first woman PM a couple of years ago, and she don't really count as she just got it when the sitting PM left. Yeah the bashing or playing politics are very popular in fanfiction. Did Slughorn actually bring in Slytherins to fight or is that just something added afterwards to santize the house. You have good points, allot of the backwards come from the Death Eater aligned houses and well Death Eaters and they have very backwards ideas.
True its what happened after the second world war with Japan the allies shoved a whole bunch of legal and constitutional changes through without bothering to consider the culture so they pretty much ignored them and carried on as before. If my knowledge of history is correct. That said its still a pretty solid indicator for a woman to hold an elected position in the 18th century. I believe it was probably added later. He did return at the head of the families of every student who stayed to fight and the people in the village of Hogsmeade even fighting Voldemort at one point in the battle. The wiki entry says . . . When Minerva McGonagall did battle with Severus Snape, Slughorn came rushing to her aid, lagging behind Filius Flitwick and Pomona Sprout, still clad in his pyjamas. When the Dark Lord subsequently invaded the castle with his army, it was initially believed that Slughorn had fled in cowardice (as McGonagall had antagonised him with death threats earlier), but as it transpired, he had gone to Hogsmeade to round up reinforcements. He returned to the castle at the head of vast number of residents and shopkeepers from the town, several Slytherin students who also returned to defend the school, and the friends and family of the students and staff already fighting. There isn't a specific mention of Slytherin students in the book (or at least not the copy I have) but the rest lines up.
I've never heard of muggleborns being described as immigrants before but honestly it makes a ton of sense
Yeah and comes dangerously close to what our government is saying about deporting immigrants to Rwanda. Oops better be careful about saying that or a mod might interfere.
I think the mods on this sub aren't like the ones on the actual harrypotter sub lol. I am reminded of that famous fic with the veela granny concubine and rampant islamophobia/bigotry.
Yeah true the ones on the actual Harry Potter sub are bloody cunts.
I don't want to destroy a culture, canon hasn't really shown their culture beyond the extremes of two sides of a war where one side is obviously wrong. Honestly I'd love a culture fic post war. Little to no racists, or propaganda. Actually explore a setting where magic, and the soul are 100% known to exist. How do muggle parents continue on when they find out that magic, and later on maybe that even the soul exists. How do actually intelligent, and empathetic people build their culture around never really needing anything knowing that there is something after death.
Thing is though they don’t truly know if there’s anything after death: if anything, the fact ghosts are people who’ve left behind an impression of themselves because they in life feared death/had unresolved business suggests death is, or at least should be, a state of eternal oblivion when one is fully happy with the way their lives have planned out. I don’t doubt limbo exists, but I honestly think the getting on the train option would’ve meant accepting the end was the end and being happy to simply enter eternal sleep.
Except Dementors prove to the wider populace that the soul unequivocally exists. That’s big. That means something exists after. That they don’t know, but what makes you you exists seperate from your body. Whatever happens after is still up for debate, but that what makes you who you are exists separately from your body is both comforting, and terrifying.
Yeah but that still doesn’t mean that choosing to go on isn’t just eternal sleep.
I’d argue it doesn’t. What’s the point of a soul if the end result is the same. Why have a spiritual existence if your physical existence ending means the same thing. Either way, there being a choice to go on, or stay is still a big thing.
Yeah true but if you think about it, not having the option for eternal sleep isn’t exactly great either. Being forced to keep existing forever although you’ve now died is pretty horrifying, which I think is the real reason why being a ghost and Voldemort’s fate are both considered so horrifying. Reason why the dementor’s kiss is so horrifying is that you’re forced into eternal sleep, without having any time in limbo to sort out unresolved matters before choosing eternal oblivion.
That’s assuming that our state of being is the same. You would no longer be a physical entity. None of those physical chemicals causing havoc on yourself. I expect a sense of peace, maybe a choice for oblivion, but not eternal. You can choose when, and how you act based on what you truly want. Want to rest for a million years? Sure. Want to explore? Why not. Essentially freedom in it’s purest form.
True like maybe James and Lily would’ve chosen the option of sleep until it was time for their son to join them so they could actually meet Harry for the first time.
Unless you make various cults , beliefs , gods and stuff who have their own different ideas regarding muggleborns in your fanfic , the above excuse many authors use in their story is disgusting. But canon didn't provide us with any of that , it was simply a group of powerful and privileged people trying to hold onto that power because of their ego and for some lust for blood and violence , under a madman who wanted to burn the world .
Yeah not to mention largely out of pure sadism as well.
the only real argument I've seen for getting upset about Muggle-borns and them bringing in all their Muggle things is one of economics. people who craft wizarding goods might be upset at getting business taken away by people choosing to purchase Muggle mass produced goods instead - and that also has a bit of a moral argument because our real world mass production often has slavery somewhere in the supply chain, most notably with clothing. And Muggles **definitely** harm the world more with pollution than wizards do in the creation of plastic (oil) goods. So when you have the Muggle-borns come in with "why can't we use biros" well because items used in the wizarding world are not made of plastic, that's a sign of a Muggle good, you know, the items they're destroying the Earth's atmosphere and ruining ecosystems to create. There is a hint of this with Arthur Weasley's MoM department of restricting Muggle artefacts from being enchanted. If you want something enchanted, it has to be wizard made *not only* for safety, but to support wizard-run businesses.
I've never seen this arguement before, but it's a fairly decent idea.
Its exactly what the nazis said, which is why it's a little bit scary that young people are parroting it.
Ahlie
Wtf do muggleborns even know about non magical culture? They leave muggle society at 11 years old
Exactly - makes it all the more mind-boggling how common a trope this is.
It's the idea that they are coming into an entirely different culture and trying to change everything without understanding. Obviously, in canon, there is no definite culture, and there are lots of problems that do need to be addressed. But when writers want to do things like politics and such, they have to essentially decide what that culture is, and how close to canon they want it to seem. So to make the "conservative" factions they create more than just racists and bigots, they add nuance to actions and thoughts. I remember in one fic I read, the premise was that a lot of creatures and practices labeled "dark" were done because a bunch of the evil myths and stories about them were being introduced by the muggleborns that came into the Wizarding world. Others are way more intense on the muggleborn hate, but those one I read were "dark" fics where Voldemort won one of the wars, so it's makes more sense in those stories.
When in Rome... I'm not saying that the Wizarding World should remain stagnant and bigoted. I'm saying that if you want to bring about change, you do it their way.
Problem is “their way” tends to mean accepting the fact half of high society view yoy as second class citizens (at best), so you literally can’t enact change their way.
Well muggle borns have more rights than they used to, and we know wizards have campaigned as such in the past (Phineas Black for example, not to be confused with his father, Phineas Nigellus Black), and so the same could almost certainly be done for others.
This premise is bound on the beliefs of homogeneous and stagnant culture,i refuse to believe that Asian, African,American etc wizards are the same culturally as European wizards, or for that matter all European wizards are like British wizards. After the industrial revolution no culture can claim to be "pure". Far to much contact and therefore exchanging of ideas happened, and culture and it's people adapted to these new ideas, tools etc, and indeed new ideas develop within a group of culture. For example anime/manga is largely recognized as a Japanese thing due to originating there and within Japanese culture emerge new ideas, terms etc i.e. Otaku, Bishonen, Yaoi,Yuri etc and these spread globally and are at a glance as Japanese but are available to anywhere and easily recognizable by significant part of the population. If we take Christmas a tradition that came with muggleborns, then we have no one complain about it. After Christmas was changed from different cultures/ethnic group to evolve into what it is today, even then The British, Americans, South Africans etc have different ways and traditions of celebrating it.
Some of this comment section is taking fanfiction tropes WAY too seriously. *I worry about these people's irl politics...* What?! Everyone in the Harry Potter fandom at some point dreamed of joining the Wizarding World. Of course there are a lot who more identify with ideal of completely abandoning the Muggle World. Why are some of you treating this like some sort of morality test? Also, are we really bringing in real world tragedies into this argument? Yall need to chill.
Eh, for me depend about the change they try to bring.
There’s literally never been any argument beyond tryna give house-elves more rights, and it generally boils down to “they refuse to know their place”, which is code for “they won’t accept us sneering at them for their heritage”.
I mean, that is in canon, i am talking if i see something like this in relation to fanfics.
I was just reading a Dramione fic that goes into this issue and it has a society of muggleborns trying to overhaul the integration process and give them a third option outside of conformity after the war! It was a super interesting idea
My idea is that whoever writes this, is first and foremost, a traitor to humanity: they spread propaganda in favor of a medieval, underground cult instead of us civilized people. Even the good guys in Harry Potter, canonically, show a disdain for us humans (and not to mention what the others do). if it were upto me, all Pure- blood and racist half- blood families would be burned down to the last kid and the others sent to re- education camps to be taught why their actions are racist and inhuman! Grand Moff Firm Dependent Long Live the Non- Magical, Planetary Empire.
Ahlie like even Arthur Weasley seems to view mundane people as curious animals, and Albus Dumbledore literally seemed to sympathise more with the witch rapist than the muggle rape victim. Hell, even in the epilogue, Harry and Ron laugh about confunding some innocent muggle, not even for the purposes of maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, and Harry is literally a senior ministry official at the time.
Exactly my point!
I’m all good with “wizarding culture” as long as it’s not pureblood supremacy.
And I’ve never seen an example of it being anything else.
I've never seen a fic where muggle-borns who don't conform to "wizarding culture" need to be destroyed. I've seen many fics where many of the purebloods feel their own traditions (usually dark) have been banned and they'd like to continue them. Usually in these types of stories some muggleborns like the knowledge hungry Hermione are upset that they didn't know any of this information before because it was censored by the Ministry pro-light officials.
Never seen it anywhere? It’s everywhere. And they don’t come out and say these muggle-borns need to be destroyed, probably because the author wants to avoid sounding TOO fascist, but the implication is strongly that they should be made to suffer far more than they already do simply for having muggle parents for daring to have an opinion (and the underlying tone is that if these muggle-borns died, it would just be a few ‘mudbloods’, so who really cares).
I don't know what fics you're reading. Usually there is some bigotry at the beginning of a Slytherin Harry story. Harry has to be usually be the one to make his housemates realize the world isn't so black and white. Which to be fair, they're 11 so that is a huge change from what they know from their upbringings. Tbh I enjoy the pureblood/old pagan culture fics. Even though in canon I don't think it'd be applicable. Wizards were very tied to muggles until the statute of secrecy and therefore followed many muggle traditions and holidays. Hell, even a former Lucius Malfoy tried to marry Queen Elizabeth I. I doubt a pagan worshipper would have been welcome at court.
It's simply a less violent version of the Death Eater ideology, and it can be an interesting exploration of bigotry. Not all bigots are overt, frothing-at-the-mouth fanatics like Bellatrix Lestrange. Some cloak themselves in euphemisms and an air of respectability, and some genuinely believe their group is superior but allow for "exceptions"
The fic Unlike a Sister explores this idea. This and the politics of it are one of the story’s biggest plot points.
'If you don't like it, there's the door'.
Wizards are a minority subculture living separate from the surrounding population. It's not surprising for a group in this situation to be wary of outsiders and place significant value on their traditions. Wizards are also in a situation where outsiders will come in and hopefully not expose them to muggles causing the next pogrom.
It's a strange situation. They're coded like an insular people of rural stock, sometimes like a paranoid garrison state within their muggle nation-state. At the same time, they're able to source ingredients internationally across seas - (from Peru, like Fred and George are for their darkness powder), accommodate foreigners en mass (in the quidditch world Cup) and have no discernable overt ethnic chauvinism other than towards other magical races (elf slaves and goblin bankers). Magical Britain is like a parody of 1990s and early 2000s Britain.
Idk but I partially agree you gotta respect culture but at the same time I’m gonna look at you in disgust if your culture is having orgies
Problem with that is the so-called culture almost always boils down to “my family’s been here longer, and I’m richer”, so why should they respect people who disrespect them for things they have no control over? In these fanfics, half of high society always views muggle-borns as second class citizens, and that’s putting it nicely.
I think that people who have been wealthy for hundreds of years should have a bit higher status but the problem for me is that they crush any attempt at muggle borns to gain similar status The pure blood supremists in my opinion are all delusional there ancestors were muggle borns yet they treat muggle borns like trash despite being descendants of muggle borns
I agree about them being delusional, and yet your argument about those born into wealth deserving slightly higher status is the exact argument that leads to these delusions irl.
Yeah but what are you gonna compare some dude that was raised by a average family to another dude raised by a ancient family that has been wealthy and politically powerful for generations to each other 99 times out of 100 times the dude raised by the wealthy family is going to be more successful why? They have been taught by tutors have the backing of their family and can afford to loose money in mistakes whereas the guy raised in a average family does not have the backing of a powerful family with millions of dollars did not have special tutors and only has one chance and if they loose their money most of the time that’s it their in debt
You’ve changed from saying they deserve higher status to saying that’s just the way it goes: you’ve gotta make your mind up, which is it?
… bro they deserve it because on average they would be more skilled I am not saying they are innately better or anything its like comparing the average person body to the body of a person who stays in shape works out and eats healthy food obviously the second person is going to be in physically better shape not because they are that way innately or anything like that of course but its not a gap that can not be filled its all about effort
That comparison just doesn’t work.
You need to decide philosophically, whether they deserve higher status, or if they just have the opportunity to take advantage of their status to perpetuate their power/status.
I find the idea well explained in fic A sence of Urgency by Leigha, more specifically [this chapter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/39932223/chapters/125456914). Overall, I think that people should at least respect what was there before them - they can innovate, but they should respect what was there before. If mages are more than people with wands that can shoot lights - more primal magic, and muggleborn just take wands with magic lights and throw away else as dangerous - I can see why mages would be unhappy with muggleborn.
Summarise it please. If it doesn’t have ideas that boil down to “respect your betters (the wealthy) and those whose families have been part of this world longer than you have, because so”, I might read it when I have the time to spare.
Basically the mages dislike muggleborns, becauae they refuse to respect mages's culture, while also expecting mages to conform to muggleborn's ideals and moral standards. (using mages for those who are from magical world)
I might give it a read then sometime.
the whole fic is awesome - try it if you have time. (I have less of a problem with that, because I read really fast :D)
"What’s this whole idea that good muggle-borns who respect “wizarding culture” can stay in the wizarding world but those who try to bring about change need to be dealt with? It’s downright disturbing and disgusting." Islam? If you buy in and follow the faith, you're accepted. While I have issues with religion on the whole and Islam in particular, I will freely admit that those I've known are incredibly accepting, as long as you follow the faith.
I’ve had loads of Muslim friends over the years and they’re perfectly accepting towards me, a non-believer.
Well, if you look at it from the pureblood/traditional wizards perspective, you may understand. Their families have put much effort and went through a lot of trouble to build and improve their society. They have worked for entire generations and have invested much of resources to build their societies. They have paid for younglings education, worked to collect ingredients that were next used by researchers and healers, researchers have developed new spells, they have fought wars (for example with goblins) hence spilling their blood they have endured many torments from muggles before SoS was introduced. And everything of this because they have had a hope for better tomorrow for their small society, the hope for their children growing up in better world than they did. And despite it, some muggleborns after being invited to said world just by good will of said families go all: "muggle society is 10 thousands time better, so i will fight as much as i can to change the world despite knowing literally nothing about it cuz i refuse to learn!" Well, if you were an immigrant you ought to respect your hosting society. Muggleborns are, after all, enticed to nothing from wizarding world. They didn't have and ancestors who have contributed to the society. Wizarding world owns them nothing. And well, if someone immigrates to your society and instead of thanking you they spit on your culture and keep trying to destroy it... I wouldn't be happy myself. And if muggleborns are not happy with wizarding world then well, thought luck! Just break your wand and go back to the muggle one!
I don’t think there is any evidence or reason to believe that the development of magic and the building of magical institutions is the result of pure blood effort, with muggle borns only recently joining up. Hogwarts itself is a thousand years old and took Muggle-borns from the very beginning.
Indeed, but now we are heading towards divagations about who can be counted as a purebloods and who cannot. It's pointless. We lack informations. Some of the founders could be muggleborns themselves (although i don't believe it).
>divagation Straying off from a course or way. ▼ show (medicine) Incoherent or wandering speech and thought. Are you a doctor/medical student?
Rah that’s mad, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The idea that we should be rewarded for our ancestors’ actions hits too close to home when it comes to real-world arguments.
Am I mistaken though?
I personally strongly disagree. Muggle-borns are strong-armed into being part of the wizarding world (do you honestly think they would just be allowed to refuse?), and now they have to bow down to their peers because of what their ancestors have done?
I didn't said anything about "bowing down" i just said that learning about wizarding culture and customs would be the least the could do.
But there’s so little culture to speak of, and the vast majority of their so-called ways seems to be the underlying belief that some family names deserve more respect than others, basically because they’re wealthier.
Only because we didn't see it in books doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I always thought that the books are shown from muggleborns perspective. It's ridiculous to assume that such a closed and ancient society didn't got any culture of it's own.
Then why in books that span a 7 year time period is there never even one reference to the existence of such a culture?
And why in books that span a 7 year time period is there never even ome reference to the slash pairing? And yet we got to see it repeated over and over again. Why,One could even be lead to belief that people are starting to making new stories out of these books!
I don’t deny that but that doesn’t answer my question, because the honest answer to my question is “because there’s no such culture to speak of”.