23 KiB
[D][FF]When Muggle-born deserve it: positive portrayals of pure-blood supremacists in canon, fanon, and AU fanfic (crosspost from /r/HPfanfiction)
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Author: u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer Utopian Smut Peddler*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/3yf54g/discussionwhen_muggleborn_deserve_it_positive/
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Score: 25
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Created: 2015-12-27T18:31:28
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Comments:
u/FishNetwork [+18] (7 hours later)
Gun Safety Courses Spark Controversy
Wasilla Alasksa: A local principal's gun-safety policies have become the center of a community row.
"My policies are simple, common sense," explained Principal Bumble, "We know that all children in this town will, at some point, come into contact with loaded firearms. Any responsible parent should support gun safety classes for all of our community's children."
Bumble's planned curriculum includes lessons on the rules of gun safety, instructions on the proper assembly of firearms, and a course on 'defense against dangerous creatures.'
The principal, with advice from NRA educational specialists, has also introduced students to a number of gun-centric games, such as "Exploding Snap" or "Gunslinger's Checkers" designed to build student's proficiency and comfort with firearms.
Bill Black, local hunting guide, opposed these changes, particularly Bumble's decision to require students to attend classes while armed.
"Yes, I've taught my own son about guns." said Black, "But only with direct supervision. The principal's policies are a completely different matter, bordering on neglectful."
Local security guard Dave Lestrange, echoed Black's sentiments. "I guess I'm ok with my kid carrying a gun. He's heard me talk about safety since before he could walk," said Lestrange, "But I've heard that the school's loaning guns to kids from the lower-48. Those kids come from household's where no one's ever seen a pistol. That's just asking for accidents."
Other local parents, who commented on the condition of anonymity, have said that they've told their children not to sit near children from the lower-48, at least until Bumble's gun safety courses have actually begun.
Bumble strongly condemmned this pratice, and explained that the gun-loan program was a necessary step towards ensuring that all children, even those from households without firearms, could receive a complete and equal education.
"I'm deeply saddened," the Principal said, "that this sort of xenophobia has taken root in our community. To hear these people talk you'd think that an 11-year-old shouldn't be immediately trusted with an instrument of distruction merely because they've never been told how to handle one safely."
u/alexanderwales [+24] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
I will eventually get my Hermione/Draco fic finished, but it's largely about this. Why do people hate muggleborn? Well, why do people hate blacks? I went on some white-supremacists boards and tried to find the most cogent arguments, then just used those, writing in my own counterpoints.
Hermione didn’t look up from the labels, where she was writing in neat little script. “Muggle-born come into wizarding society at the age of ten or eleven, picked up by the Ministry,” said Hermione. “Even with professor McGonagall around to help us, my parents and I were barely able to find all of the items on the list of school supplies, and my parents are rather clever people.” She looked up at him. “And I don’t just mean clever for muggles.”
“Spare me the story of the poor disadvantaged muggle-born,” said Draco with a sneer.
Hermione continued on like she hadn’t heard him. “A muggle-born arrives at school with far less preparation than someone who was born into a magical household, and the teachers and curriculum assume a basic level of knowledge about magical subjects that the muggle-born just don’t have. When muggle-born go home for the summer, there’s no one that they can really talk to about schoolwork, and their parents can’t really help them, which means that for most, they go into the next school year without remembering as much as their pureblood peers. Did your father help you over the summer?”
“No,” said Draco. “He hired me a private tutor.”
“Well, my mother and father wanted to help me, but they couldn’t,” said Hermione. “They had never gone through the same courses in their muggle schools, and the subjects themselves were confusing without that background. I suppose they could have hired me a private tutor as well, if they were fantastically wealthy, or the exchange rate between currencies were more favorable, but we didn’t even know that there were tutors, which just brings me right back to my point, which is that muggle-born students do worse because they come in at a disadvantage that they must work very hard to cancel out. That’s without getting into the issue of the impact of prejudice perpetuated by the blood purists.”
“Oh come now Granger,” said Draco. “You can’t possibly be blaming blood purists for muggle-born getting poor marks.” It took an effort not to say mudblood, but there was really no point in using the slur here, and besides that, she didn’t seem to really understand it. Saying mudblood would only make him look like he was too lazy to follow what she was getting at.
“If you had been listening to me, you would have heard that I was doing no such thing,” said Hermione. “The thrust of my point is that I would expect muggle-born to do worse in school, and that’s precisely what a look at the grades will show, on average. Dumbledore does a disservice by trying to hide it from the world, and your father does a disservice by pretending that we should explain with blood purity what can be better explained by looking at how muggle-born deal with school. The same applies to other things as well, like why we tend to have worse jobs within wizarding society or a higher rate of crime; after all, career success, education, and criminality are all correlated. This would be the case even if blood purism were ended tomorrow.”
u/eaglejarl [+6] (22 hours later)
I went on some white-supremacists boards and tried to find the most cogent arguments, then just used those,
Do you ever wonder about how things like this look from the outside? For example, when I was writing Pay Attention, I spent a lot of time researching where to buy heroin in Boston. I've also spent quite a few hours reading up on explosives. If someone subpeoaned my Google history, I'd have some explaining to do.
I should do my research through Tor, but Comcast seems to block it in my area.
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (22 hours later)
Yeah, there's a whole section in Metropolitan Man about fail-deadly bomb-making that I've gotten more than a few comments on. More generally, my history is full of a lot of either contrarian or socially unacceptable websites, because I think they're great sources to mine for characters or viewpoints. There have been a few times that I've thought to myself, "In the past day I've read the Unabomber Manifesto, followed by instructions on bomb-making, followed by a white supremacist website, I wonder whether that tripped any algorithms somewhere". So far so good though.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+3] (a day later)
It baffles me that, in the immediate aftermath of the Boston bombing, the police tried to find potential copycat bombers by visiting the houses of people who googled "pressure cooker bomb". Seriously, what the fuck? The fact that it was a pressure cooker bomb was already in the news at that point, of course people following the news are going to google it to figure out what it is.
u/wowthatsucked [+1] (18 days later)
Are you referring to Michele Catalano?
If so, there was an update to that story where the police said they got a tip from a company that a fired employee had googled "pressure cooker bombs" and "backpacks".
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+1] (18 days later)
Ah, thanks for the information! : ) Must've heard a very filtered version of that story.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Not to pun, but at this point, either everyone on /r/rational is on an FBI watchlist, or the FBI is quite thoroughly confused about all of us.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (4 days later)
I think Reddit in general would probably generate enough outliers to completely overwhelm them, no reason to think we stand out that much... And if it came to that I'd wager there are significantly worse subreddits.
u/whywhisperwhy [+1] (4 days later)
How does one research how to buy heroin, etc.? News reports that mention neighborhoods, police profiles of drug dealers with locations of arrests, ask questions on message boards from a local internet group?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 days later)
Reading the police blotter and checking heat maps of where crimes occur by type of crime.
u/Kishoto [+5] (2 hours later)
I noticed a few (edit: two) grammatical errors, is this a first draft? (Note: I'm not attempting to insult, or be snarky, it's a simple question :) ) Or is Muggle-born usable as a term for both plural and singular?
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
It's first draft, yeah. But I do use muggle-born as both singular and plural, mostly because I find the "borns" construction to be awkward as hell. That's not the canonical spelling though.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+4] (2 hours later)
I think a sensible collective form would be "the muggle-born"? It certainly doesn't look right when I see just "muggle-born" used as a plural.
u/tilkau [+3] (10 hours later)
Sheep (that is, 'muggle-born' is an analogous usage to 'sheep'). Makes sense to me, but I do prefer 'the muggle-born'.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (22 hours later)
- sheep
- fish
- ninja
- deer
- seems like practically anything, if you're British. They're weird like that.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (22 hours later)
Literally all of your examples are types of animals and we're talking about a type of person. Maybe that's why it seems awkward to me.
u/brandalizing [+4] Reserve Pigeon Army (a day later)
Ninja are my new favorite animal.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (a day later)
Regardless of my unfortunately low roll to read closely, I've certainly seen "ninjas" used more than the plural "ninja", in my experience.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (23 hours later)
Ninja are people.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+1] (23 hours later)
Oops, missed that.
I said the word literally and turned out to be wrong! My greatest weakness!
u/Kishoto [+1] (6 hours later)
That makes a lot more sense. I can't help but use the Canon spelling myself
u/notmy2ndopinion [+3] Concent of Saunt Edhar (10 hours later)
I like your approach. I've been wondering how to write orcs in my D&D world since they are the "mudbloods/disadvantaged minority" so I'm interested to see how you address it.
u/Rhamni [+5] Aspiring author (a day later)
But do also note that orcs (most subtypes of them in D&D at least) are actually on average less inherently intelligent than humans. And less charismatic. And less wise. And also stronger. While I'd love to read a good story dealing with the subject, I think you would have to choose between treating their mental stats as equal to humans or end up with the conclusion that there should be permanent institutional policies in place to address the fact that this group of people is on average genetically stupid, ugly and unwise.
u/Aabcehmu112358 [+3] Utter Fallacy (a day later)
If you're going to go with mechanics, then it would be interesting to not go with half-measures. Orcs might have low 'int', 'wis', and 'cha', but do these mechanical deficiencies translate to lacking intelligence, wisdom, or charisma as we understand them in the real world? I'd wager there's only a partial correlation, and that the gaps in the games mechanics leave enough room for the question of whether orcs need 'help' to not be clear.
u/Rhamni [+3] Aspiring author (a day later)
Fair point. IQ has its uses, but is clearly limited and has a history (mostly left behind) of being demonstrably culturally unfair. I wouldn't object to the D&D stats being treated as similarly 'biased'. Though it would be interesting to see what orcs could have mentally to make up for the decreased skill points & will save.
u/bloopenstein [+3] (2 days later)
Improved geometry/spatial analysis/world physics skills would be one way. Gotta know how to hit things the best, and how to throw something at a moving target. And smashing. Smash.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+3] Concent of Saunt Edhar (a day later)
Point taken. The "Orcs are born dumber, stronger, and more weak-willied" is akin to the phrenology argument used by US Southern slave-owners' to justify their point of view.
With each new edition, D&D is also changing with the times, changing the thief class into the rogue, using both male and female pronouns, moving away from binary sex/gender labels... and 'racial disadvantages.' There are only minor racial bonuses, no negatives. In fifth edition, players can make their characters be any sort of class they want them to be, as long as they are willing to have their character work a little harder.
Getting a chance and working hard to prove one's worth are key arguments favoring the disenfranchised.
(And to keep this on topic, squibs are also at a disadvantage and could be akin to the disabled. They just need a few custom devices to give them the independence they need in society.)
u/Jiro_T [+2] (2 days later)
The "Orcs are born dumber, stronger, and more weak-willied" is akin to the phrenology argument used by US Southern slave-owners' to justify their point of view.
No, it pattern-matches to that argument, but its truth value need not be the same as the truth value of that argument. It's like telling a socialist that his arguments sound similar to the arguments used by Communists to kill millions of people.
This is especially the case when talking about a fictional world. Whether someone has lower IQ in the real world is something you have to find out, and the process of finding out is subject to bias. In a fictional world, it's whatever you say it is.
u/Subrosian_Smithy [+3] Nudist Beach (a day later)
I think you would have to choose between treating their mental stats as equal to humans or end up with the conclusion that there should be permanent institutional policies in place to address the fact that this group of people is on average genetically stupid, ugly and unwise.
What? It's entirely possible that the ruling class wouldn't take a utilitarian tack to race relations.
u/whywhisperwhy [+2] (4 days later)
There's a Forgotten Realms (D&D) series of novels written by a famous author, R.A. Salvatore that has completely killed orcs for me because of this- the Hunter's Blade trilogy. Spoilers!
It starts out as, in typical fashion, the orcs overrun a dwarves kingdom. But then their leader decides to form an orcish kingdom with the conquered land (and thus, a true Orc civilization, begin trade, establish diplomatic relations, etc.). It was very novel at the time but it just completely ignores how orcs are portrayed in the rest of the D&D setting. In hindsight I'm a bit surprised he was allowed to it.
u/Yuridice [+2] (3 hours later)
Excited to read it based on this preview.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Holy crap, you need to hurry up and release that so I have something to pass around to all my really left-wing Harry Potter-loving friends! Which is most of them.
u/Jiro_T [+1] (a day later)
The problem with Granger's argument here is that it's unfalsifiable. Suppose that muggle-borns actually were worse at magic for reasons above and beyond background. Hermione could still make the same argument, and Draco wouldn't be able to disprove it.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
It's falsifiable, but they probably don't have the sample size. What they need are pureblood students who were (for whatever reason) raised by muggles. Harry would almost fit, but he's halfblood, not pureblood. There's no good canon answer to how many children really go to Hogwarts, but it's pretty low, so I would expect most students to come from traditional families, especially considering wizarding conservatism (minus some number who were orphaned by the wizarding war). They could also go the other way with muggleborn raised by wizards, but those are probably even more rare.
I suppose if blood purism makes claims about how well halfbloods do you might be able to correct for the inevitable class issues and go from there. But it's really a question of how much data the wizards have available to them.
u/Jiro_T [+2] (2 days later)
"Falsifiable under unrealistic conditions" equates to unfalsifiable in practice.
Anyway, if it is at all falsifiable, Hermione should welcome attempts to do studies that could actually determine the truth of the issue. If you're using the racial discrimination analogy, however, Hermione would not.
u/Xtraordinaire [+2] Team Glimglam (2 days later)
How about 2nd generation muggle-borns?
If Hermione is correct, a wizard with 4 muggle grandparents and 1 or 2 wizard parents would be on par with pureblood wizards, at least academically. If Draco is right, 2nd generation mudbloods will still fail at school just as hard as their parents had despite being exposed to wizardry from birth.
u/IllusoryIntelligence [+5] (an hour later)
The reasoning that would seem most simple to me would be to argue that magic is a finite resource. Though never really discussed outright in canon it does seem that the greatest achievements in terms of raw power are further in the past of the wizarding world (when populations in general were much smaller).
If we assume that there is a limited amount of ambient magic which all wizards draw from then an influx of wizards is to the detriment of those already present. This also fits nicely with the tendency for relatively small families among wizards and the scorn commonly expressed towards the Weaslies for bucking that trend.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+8] Utopian Smut Peddler (8 minutes later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/pedanterrific [+2] (6 hours later)
How one should treat people new to their superpowers is obvious, but what is less obvious is what logical reasons the old guard would have for fearing and hating the new blood. You'd think it would be an easy way to gain power: gather all of them up in one place just after they found out, show them how your side is kind and inviting, and then teach them all about how to...oh. Hmm.
This suggests an interesting possibility: that anti-Muggleborn sentiment began to increase at the beginning of, and because of Dumbledore's tenure as Headmaster. Perhaps when Hogwarts is run by someone not particularly sympathetic to Muggleborns, there's less negative feeling toward them society-wide. It's not so much about 'assimilation' as... call it gratitude.
u/Uncaffeinated [+2] (an hour later)
I came up with one possible explanation for why people would assume muggleborns are incompetent:
The trace is a recent invention, and before that, muggleborns were only occasionally discovered by chance. A lot of the time they would start school at a later age and far behind their peers. Plus with no support system, they'd be under a lot of stress. So it makes sense that they wouldn't amount to much.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (an hour later)
Maybe Muggleborns have had a tendency to be semi-HJPEVs, and this led to their being feared and mistrusted?