Ep. 3: Stand By Me

In chapter 3, Harry learns about Death Eaters, and the hosts rescue jokes from a burning podcast.

CONTENT WARNING: discussion of real life violence and sexual violence from 40:15-51:46. Continuing discussion of graphic fictional violence from 51:46 onward.

Citations and further reading:

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 3: https://hpmor.com/chapter/3
• “The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle – Part XII,” Avocado/white_serpent. Fandom Wank, 6 August 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20130702155034/http://www.journalfen.net/community/bad_penny/10481.html
• STRANGE ÆONS. https://www.youtube.com/@STRANGEONS/search?query=harry%20potter 
• .”Kitty Genovese.” History.com, 27 February 2025. https://www.history.com/articles/kitty-genovese
• “37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police; Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector,” Martin Gansberg. The New York Times, 27 March 1964. https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/27/archives/37-who-saw-murder-didnt-call-the-police-apathy-at-stabbing-of.html
• “Winston Moseley, Who Killed Kitty Genovese, Dies in Prison at 81,” Robert D. McFadden. The New York Times, 4 April 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20180909012517/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/nyregion/winston-moseley-81-killer-of-kitty-genovese-dies-in-prison.html
• “A Call for Help,” Nicholas Lemann. The New Yorker, 2 March 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20250607020600/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/10/a-call-for-help?currentPage=all
• Influence, Robert B. Cialdini. HarperCollins, 2007. https://dn710600.ca.archive.org/0/items/ThePsychologyOfPersuasion/The%20Psychology%20of%20Persuasion.pdf
• “Feeling Rational,” Eliezer Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 25 April 2007. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SqF8cHjJv43mvJJzx/feeling-rational
• “Twelve Virtues of Rationality,” Eliezer Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 1 January 2006. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7ZqGiPHTpiDMwqMN2/twelve-virtues-of-rationality 

Transcript

Intro

Anthea 0:00

Hey, Anthea here coming in at the top to give you a little bit of a content warning. We discuss real life violence, including sexual violence, in the context of the Kitty Genevieve's case and the bystander effect, starting at about minute 40, going through to about minute 51. I'll put some precise timestamps in the show notes so that you can choose how you want to engage with that section. After that, we also have an extended riff about fictional flaying that kind of goes through to the end of the episode. So if those topics are going to be upsetting for you, please proceed with caution. Take care of yourselves. Yeah. Okay, you're great. Thanks for listening. Let's get on with the show. Welcome once again to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and the Limits of Rationality. That's the name of the podcast. I'm your host, Anthea. Uh, this is a podcast where I trap my friends and loved ones on mic with me and read to them a very long Harry Potter fan fiction in an attempt to understand cognitive bias and formal logic and a lot of other stuff that comes up unexpectedly. Uh I'm joined today by my dear friends, once again, Elisa. Hello. And Jake.

Jake 1:28

Hello.

Anthea 1:29

Thanks for being here, guys. How are you doing this morning? Morning? Afternoon?

Jake 1:33

I think we're all various degrees of ill.

Anthea 1:35

Yeah, we sure are.

Elisa 1:37

So today we're we're husky and ready to rumble. Yes.

Jake 1:42

Yeah, I'm unclear if I'm sick or not, but I'm definitely, definitely getting raspy.

Anthea 1:46

Yeah, yeah. All right, cool. Well, we're gonna I'm glad that we're doing this in an audio format only. Yeah. Perfect. Ideal. Um, so normally this would be the point where I would ask you guys, uh, what's your experience with with this fanfic or rationality, but we did that in the first episode. Uh so we're kind of kind of just jump right in.

Jake 2:09

Yeah, most of my experience is this podcast.

Anthea 2:11

Fantastic. Great. Uh and that will only continue, it seems like.

unknown 2:15

Indeed.

Jake 2:16

Um, intentionally I feel like it's best if I get exposed to this as little as possible.

Anthea 2:20

You're our control group.

Elisa 2:21

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been my goal too, is like just stay away from spoilers.

Anthea 2:28

Excellent. Um, so uh the story so far, you guys were here for chapter one. You actually were here for the last episode of chapter two, uh, that I fucked up royally in recording. Um uh but do you guys remember sort of what where we are at this point? Or you want a little summary?

Jake 2:46

Child was tedious, wife was live.

Anthea 2:48

Live, yes, with TH, yeah.

Jake 2:50

Um Professor was cat.

Anthea 2:53

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's pretty much.

Elisa 2:55

Pretty much sums it up. Cool. Yeah. Good to go. Yeah. Uh I do have one comment that I would like to make from the lost episode that didn't make it uh because it is lost. Yeah. I just think that we should take into account mathematically that maybe there's a new secret variable for E equals M C squared or whatever else you want to call it. And it's magic. We can't call it magic because there's already an M and M C squared, but we call it, I don't know, T for thaumaturgy. It's not like C is in the word for light.

Jake 3:23

Yeah, we could do we could do M sub two. That sounds extra fancy.

Elisa 3:26

Yes, yes. I like it. M sub two, and that's the magic variable. And if there's nothing magical going on, it's just one. Sure.

Anthea 3:34

Or zero? No, if it's zero, zero. Zero would make everything zero. Yeah, yeah.

Elisa 3:38

I don't think one fucks anything up, but I'm not a mathematician, so don't quote me on that.

Jake 3:42

The thing from the last episode I want to bring is that joke I made about little women, but it's not funny without context.

Anthea 3:48

And I don't remember it, unfortunately.

Jake 3:51

I would explain it, but it's not gonna be funny once it's a context. Yeah, do it. Even my fellow co-hosts.

Anthea 3:56

I like this is a real mystery.

Elisa 3:58

I like it. I love it. I love it. And I like that we're sort of both like, all right, we can bring one thing from the burning podcast. What are you gonna take with you, kids?

Anthea 4:08

Well, for those of you who for some reason haven't listened to the first two episodes, which I would really recommend. This is not this is gonna be a tough one to tough podcast to jump in in the middle on. In our first two chapters, we met Harry James Potter Evans Varys. He's a 10-year-old with a sleep disorder and a chip on his shoulder about how his parents don't take him seriously. After receiving an acceptance letter to Hogwarts, his aunt slash adoptive mother Petunia revealed that her sister, Harry's biological mother, Lily, was a witch. Professor McGonagall showed up, uh, she proved to Harry and his skeptical adoptive father that magic is real, first by levitating Harry's dad and then turning into a cat. Uh, this made Harry freak out for a few minutes about conservation of energy, before accepting the fact that everything he knows about physics is wrong and that he will be attending a school for wizardry in the fall. Um, as we get into you're getting you guys are getting this cold. As we get into chapter three, I do want to give a quick content warning that I'll be discussing real-world violence at a certain point in this episode. Um, and I will put a timestamp in the show notes so you can engage with that at your discretion. Uh, and we'll probably have to pause and, you know, dump audio before that, so you guys will also have a chance to say, actually, I'm gonna tap out. You can do this as a monologue.

Jake 5:19

I'll just I'll just sit here silently. I'll be exposed to it, but I won't engage.

Anthea 5:22

Okay. Seems fair. Nice.

Elisa 5:24

Silent protest.

Chapter 3 close reading

Anthea 5:27

Alright. Chapter 3. Comparing reality to its alternatives. Author's note. If J.K. Rowling asks you about this story, you know nothing.

Elisa 5:40

Except what? If J.K. Rowling asks me anything, I don't if J.K. Rowling asks me anything, no, I'm doing less. Like, I don't I don't want Don't worry, I already have it squared away.

Jake 5:51

The weird job I work, there's a non-zero chance J.K. Rowling will ask me something at some point.

Anthea 5:56

Yeah, and maybe about copyright infringement.

Jake 5:58

Yes, honestly. I mean her lawyers would, but you know.

Anthea 6:02

Yeah, yeah. Well, don't know anything about this fanfiction. I it's there's something so charming uh and nostalgic to me about these like, um the aut don't tell the author. LOL, little author's notes. Uh the epigraph is, but then the question is, who?

Jake 6:21

Because an owl.

Anthea 6:22

No. It's actually this is the epigraphs are all like little cold opens, right? Like uh, and this one actually gets uh explained very, very quickly.

Elisa 6:31

The epigraphs are Easter eggs. You guys. They're clues, and I'm gonna put them together. I believe in you.

Jake 6:40

I think this is your brain trying to draw meaning out of nonsense as a self-defense mechanism.

Anthea 6:46

It's really and it like the thing is it's really not even the most Yeah, I don't know. It's not the most interesting or consequential line in the chapter, so I don't know why he picked it. Hmm. It's there. Good lord, said the barman, peering at Harry. Is this can this be? Harry leaned toward the plot let me try let me take that one again to get a clean take on that. Have fun on your boat.

Jake 7:11

Yeah, let's do callbacks that weren't in the episode.

Anthea 7:14

You did one for little women!

Jake 7:16

That wasn't an episode.

Anthea 7:19

Whew. Good lord, said the barman, peering at Harry. Is this can this be I'm man, I am It's 'cause I set the mic up like a professional and now I don't know what I'm doing.

Elisa 7:33

That's okay. Do it again.

Anthea 7:34

Good lord, said the barman, peering at Harry. Is this can this be? Harry leaned towards the bar of the leaky cauldron as best he could, though it came up to somewhere around the tips of his eyebrows. A question like that deserved his very best.

Jake 7:48

Wait, are we at Wizard School now? Did I miss a transition?

Anthea 7:51

Yeah, we're we're in We're at in the Wizarding World. We're in the wizarding world.

Jake 7:55

Oh yeah, yeah.

Anthea 7:55

But you did not miss a transition. The last chapter ended with Mom, Dad, and now and I I feel like most chapters will end that way. I have not cut anything out of the opening of this. Um at the end of the last chapter, McGonagall was like, uh I'm not gonna take you to buy any of your stuff until right before school because I think you'll destroy your town.

Jake 8:18

Right.

Anthea 8:19

Uh if if I leave you unsupervised with a wand and magic books, or even without a wand.

Jake 8:24

So And so her saying that the delay was kind of pointless because we're just here right away anyway. We just needed to establish how cool and strong Harry was.

Anthea 8:39

Am I could I be? Maybe. You never know if I'm not. Then the question is, who? Bless my soul, whispered the old barman. Harry Potter. What an honor. Hey, did he did he say all that stuff? Or was he just thinking it? No, he said that. What a little snot. My next note my next note is Is it bad I want to smack this ten-year-old? Harry blinked, then rallied. Well, yes, you're quite perceptive. Most people don't realize that so quickly.

Jake 9:10

Typically I have to tell them what my name is before they know it.

Elisa 9:13

Yeah. So yeah. Why is he being a loser about this? Tesno one told him that his parents died, uh fun fun funny you should ask. Oh my god.

Anthea 9:25

This display of brattery is followed by another old timer recognizing him, an old woman who tells him tearfully My grandson was an aura, she whispered to him. Died in 79. Thank you, Harry Potter. Thank heavens for you.

Jake 9:38

No, I I didn't kill him, you don't have to thank me.

Anthea 9:41

You're welcome, Harry said automatically, and then he turned his head and shot Professor McGonagall a frightened, pleading look. So McGonagall immediately like like so he's already been like like ambushed by two people who are like, Bless my soul, it's Harry Potter. Uh and McGonagall puts a stop to what is clearly about to become a stampede of people coming over to shake his hand because Harry is having a normal ten-year-old reaction for once, which is, I don't know what's going on.

Jake 10:05

Yeah, and then she was like, Oh right, I was wildly irresponsible and did not inform you about this.

Elisa 10:09

I did not give you a heads up. Yeah. And Arabella also didn't. Come on, Arabella. You had you had a speaking line in this story.

Anthea 10:19

So she ushers Harry outside. They left the bar without any trouble. Professor, Harry said, once they were in the courtyard. He had meant to ask what was going on, but oddly found himself asking an entirely different question instead. Who was that pale man by the corner? The man with the twitching eye. Perhaps she hadn't expected that question either. That was Professor Quirinus Querle. He'll be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year at Hogwarts. I had the strangest feeling that I knew him, Harry rubbed his forehead. And that I shouldn't ought to shake his hand. Like meeting someone who had been a friend once before something went drastically wrong. That wasn't really it at all, but Harry couldn't find words. And what was all of that? Just a note, nowhere in the narration is it established that this person was in the corner. It is established in this line of dialogue.

Jake 11:10

Yeah, well, I feel like she should just convey it's like, this you know, we're gonna be at a university. This is just like a master's student. You need to get used to people being pale and twitchy in the corner.

Elisa 11:19

I am getting the sense that Yatkowski likes to establish things that have already happened with dialogue. Yes. It's a strange choice. It's an it's so interesting. It's very, it feels very either cinematic or radio play-esque because if it were if it were cinematic, um, you could have a shot that established a person.

unknown 11:43

Sure.

Elisa 11:44

Or you could have a shot that established something happening. For instance, oh, Harry's dad levitates. Um, or in a radio play. It's the only way to get information about that type of thing happening um is by somebody saying, Who was that man? Um that we all saw, and I wouldn't even have to remark on it, except that you guys don't have access to any visuals on this. Right.

Jake 12:03

Yeah, like you could argue it's for efficiency of language, but it seems like that's never been a concern at any point so far. So it would be weird if it was now.

Elisa 12:10

Yeah. No, I I kind of I kind of think that it's something it's something that's coming from the like 22 episode TV series kind of vibe that he has going potentially.

Anthea 12:25

I wonder if part of it is also something that happens to a lot of like younger or or less experienced fiction authors. Yadkowski, this is this is coming out in 2011. Yadkowski is uh is like I think he's uh I think he was born in like the early 80s, so he's a little older than us. Oh my god, he's only a little older than us. Yeah, yeah. I think he's around Regina's age, around my sister's age.

Elisa 12:53

He seems like he's been 53 since the 70s.

Jake 12:57

I mean, I was getting vibes of, you know, it's a good thing.

Anthea 13:00

It's because he reads so much Asimov. Yeah, yeah. And I so I wonder if it's uh so like he's been writing for a long time, but he's been writing these like like thought experiments and and you know, personal essays and and whatnot. So Hey, future Anthea here, jumping in real quick to say that as I've been continuing my research, uh I discovered that Yudkowski actually wrote a lot of short fiction before he started publishing HP Moore. So it's inaccurate for me to be uh uh characterizing him as having only written like rationalist philosophy or the sequences or anything like that before starting HP Moore. He had been writing fiction before this. I wonder if this is sort of a young fiction author's uh attempt at show-not tell, which I think a lot of people internalize as a rule when writing fiction and don't understand that like showing can also include like you do have to just tell things sometimes. Oh my god, show-don't tell means never describe anything. I have you not seen this. Especially in like fanfiction.

Elisa 14:08

No, that's such a good point.

Anthea 14:09

Like, and in fanfiction, I think people are especially prone to it because we know that the people reading it have a have a pre-existing understanding of the world. So we don't have to show as many things we think. But then you get this kind of weird moment where he's like, Oh, hey, do you remember that thing that just happened? And we're like, no, that wasn't that you didn't put that on the page.

Jake 14:33

Yeah, and like and use sparingly, it could be like, oh, what's this, you know, you're caught off guard the way other people are caught off guard. Or you're showing this person's extra perceptive. But when you do it repeatedly or even typically, then it it kind of loses the impact. It just makes it makes you confused as a reader trying to keep up, but like, oh, did we did we miss something here?

Anthea 14:53

Yeah, yeah. So Harry asks, what was all of that? Professor McGonagall was giving him an odd glance. Mr. Potter, do you know how much have you been told about how your parents died? Harry returned to steady look. My parents are alive and well, and they always refuse to talk about how my genetic parents died, from which I infer that it wasn't good.

Jake 15:17

McGonagall said, You know what I fucking mean, kid.

Elisa 15:20

Um, I do think that that's cute that he goes to bat for his parents. Adopted families are families. Adopted families are families. And wait, that's sorry. Yes, yes, go ahead. But I will also say that's a good point. This isn't just on McGonagall and Arabella Faye. No! This is on his parents! It's absolutely on Petunia and Michael. Oh my god, Petunia and Michael, what the fuck? They were too busy being like, what about my feelings? What about my logic to be like Harry and Parents died in a tragedy.

Anthea 15:49

An admirable loyalty, said Professor McGonagall. Her voice went low, though it hurts a little to hear you say it like that. Lily and James were friends of mine. Harry looked away, suddenly ashamed. I'm sorry, he said in a small voice, but I have a mum and dad, and I know that I just make myself unhappy by comparing that reality to something perfect that I built up in my imagination. That is amazingly wise of you, Professor McGonagall said quietly. But your genetic parents died very well indeed, protecting you.

Elisa 16:21

I saw a face. You know what that sounds like. That sounds like a kid who's not gonna get got by the mirror of Aresed.

Anthea 16:28

Definitely. Yeah, this is a kid with with strong normal attachment style. I but yeah, I agree. I'm like, why did Pictunia and Michael not why did like why did your adoptive parents never talk to you about this? Did you ask? Like, what how how did we get here?

Jake 16:47

But if they talked about it, then we want to have the dramatic reveal right now.

Elisa 16:50

Well, that's true. That's true. Yeah. I just wish he had said something like, Well, my genetic parents died in a baking accident.

unknown 16:57

Yes.

Elisa 16:58

So that they could still be like, it was tragic, you know, whatever.

Anthea 17:02

I that's the th I think that's the thing that gets me is that it feels very strange for to Petunia's not Petunia may be emotional, but she's not dumb. Yeah. Like, and she uh supports her kid and her husband in being smart, and so it's strange to me that she doesn't that neither of them even gave him a like blot like a like a quick cover story of your parents died in a horrible accident, and we don't want to talk about it.

Jake 17:31

Yeah, definitely weird.

Elisa 17:32

It's weird. And I think the other thing that strikes me is that okay, so his parents were killed by an evil wizard. That feels like the kind of thing that Michael and Petunia could have had rip-roaring arguments about.

Anthea 17:47

Show well, that's a good point. Mum Michael presumably does not know how her how his parents died, because if Petunia does, she hasn't told him about magic up to this point.

Jake 17:58

But he has at least been told something. Right. Like, even if it's a lie, or even if he doesn't believe it, or even if his memory's been wizarded or whatever, then he at least thinks something.

Elisa 18:08

Something happened to them. The more you think about it, the weirder it is that it hasn't come up until this point. Because I feel like the point where it makes sense for it to come up, even if it means that like, okay, Petunia and Michael had to like leave the room and then he heard Ray's voices in the next room or something. It really feels like that what magic is actually real and Lily was a witch. If I were Michael, I would be putting that together if I hadn't previously with. And she died mysteriously in a way that Petunia will never speak about. Right.

Anthea 18:37

Now I might come to the wrong conclusion. I might be like, holy fuck, my wife is crazy and she murdered her sister and brother-in-law. That could be. Uh totally.

Jake 18:46

She is very emotional.

Elisa 18:47

She is very emotional.

Jake 18:48

And live.

Elisa 18:49

And live. She's so emotional and live. That's exactly the kind of woman who kills.

Jake 18:53

Yeah, we've we've seen Catwoman.

Elisa 18:56

I've seen the documentary Chicago.

Jake 19:01

Okay, in her defense, he had it coming.

Anthea 19:02

He did have it coming. Yeah, yeah. He ran into my wand ten times. So Harry asks, what did happen? Uh okay, so they died protecting me. What did happen? And McGonagall does not answer the question. God damn it! She casts a disguise charm on him instead and leads him into Diagon Alley. Uh, and Harry, and uh this is our description of Diagon Alley. There were merchants hawking bounce boots made with real flubber, and knives plus three, forks plus two, spoons with a plus four bonus. There were goggles that would turn anything you looked at green, and a lineup of comfy armchairs with ejection seats for emergencies.

Jake 19:44

Wait, did did Magic have stats in the original Harry Potter?

Elisa 19:49

Absolutely, McFuckin' not.

Jake 19:51

Okay.

Elisa 19:52

No, no. Um, and also I mean, I stopped listening after Flubber. Yeah. Because fuck off, man. Flubber was that fucking movie from with wasn't it Robin Williams? Uh yes, yeah. And it was something it was it that was a remake. Okay, yeah. What was the original one? I don't know.

Jake 20:08

It was also Flubber. No, no, it wasn't called. It was like, I don't know, it had a weird 70s name, like the scientist who make it the rubber shoes or whatever.

Elisa 20:15

Sure, sure, sure. All I'm saying is that have some whimsy Yatkowski come up with your own fucking weird ingredient. So this yeah, go ahead.

Jake 20:24

So it's actually my brain's still stuck on the little on the last scene a little bit where what happened was Perry asked, How did my parents die? McGonical wordly cat wordlessly cast a spell on him and walked away.

Speaker 20:36

Yes, that's correct.

Jake 20:37

Okay, cool, cool, okay. I got that out of my head.

Anthea 20:42

Then goddamn the body. I mean, I am starting to have some sympathy for him being like nobody takes me seriously.

Elisa 20:48

Back on Team Twerp because, like, I get that he's annoying as shit, but you have to tell him how his parents died. Yeah, yeah, that's so important.

Jake 20:56

Yeah, or at least say, hey, I'm about to change you bodily, heads up.

Elisa 21:01

Like, how about something like it doesn't have to be, again, we're back in show, don't tell, but it doesn't have to be like a hundred percent tell. It could just be like, uh, this is not the place for that conversation, Mr. Potter. Come along, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll cast a spell that'll make it a little easier for you to get around.

Anthea 21:16

I mean, yeah, she says so that this doesn't happen again, not until you're ready. This is one of the I'm trying to I'm trying not to give you the whole thing for Totally. Okay, so she at least says like something.

Elisa 21:26

It's not completely without preamble.

Anthea 21:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my dialogue is better. But like she does not actually, she doesn't really, she doesn't ask for consent beforehand. She doesn't say what she's gonna do. She's just like, I'm gonna hit you in the head with a wand and then we're gonna move on.

Elisa 21:39

The entire wizarding world, to be fair, is not big on consent.

Anthea 21:41

So true. This is very in character for a wizard.

Elisa 21:45

Like the Imperious Curse is one of the unforgivable curses, but there's lots of non-consensual stuff that wizards do to each other on the reg, but it's just like ho ho ho. Yeah, love potions are like illegal thing. Yeah, those aren't unforgivable at all.

Anthea 21:58

They're not unforgivable. I know that. In the later books, there is some like there's like some some funkiness. Like there's like form, I don't know. I don't know. Because there was something about like how Tom Riddle was conceived out of a love potion, and that's why he can't handle love. I don't know.

Elisa 22:15

Oh my fucking god.

Anthea 22:16

It's listen, Gudkowski has problems with the original canon, and so do I.

Speaker 22:25

Yeah. Yep.

Anthea 22:26

Yeah. Um, yeah. So uh in terms so this this bit reminded me so much of something I'm sure you, Jake, have never heard of, uh, which is Cassandra Clare.

Elisa 22:40

Oh my god.

Jake 22:41

I don't think so.

Anthea 22:42

So Cassandra Clare, you may have heard of because she she made the jump from fanfic uh to um uh to mainstream uh YA.

Jake 22:52

To fic.

Anthea 22:53

To fic, yes. Uh as uh under also under the name Cassandra Clare. Um she spells it slightly differently for her like author name. Um uh she wrote the Shadow Hunters books. Um I can't remember what the first one is called. Uh something blood. I don't know. It's a blood book. Yeah, one of those. Yeah. Gotcha.

Elisa 23:18

I'm sorry, I was just busy cataloging every actor who's played Magnus Bain and verifying that they're all hot.

Anthea 23:24

Yeah.

Elisa 23:25

There's only been two.

Anthea 23:26

Yeah, but you know, that's a that's uh that's a good sample size. Um so she uh so she wrote she wrote the Shadow Hunters series, um uh, and uh but before that, she was a big name fan in the Harry Potter fandom. And she used to do this thing uh called uh plagiarism. I mean spot the quote. Um so for those of you who didn't grow up reading Fandom Wink, uh, she wrote a hugely popular Harry Potter fanfic called the Draco trilogy. Um though the thing I always knew her best for was the very secret diaries of the Fellowship of the Ring, which was uh like I think was based on the very secret diary of Adrian Mole, but it was like this like are we are we getting some gay hobbits here?

Jake 24:06

Yes!

Anthea 24:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was this was uh yeah, like uh the running gag was uh Sam will kill him if he tries anything because everybody wanted to fuck Frodo. Which, fair enough.

Jake 24:16

Including Sam, I assume. Oh yeah.

Anthea 24:18

Yes, yes. Um so in in her in the Draco trilogy, she regularly dropped lines from other media like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which could be fine. They were little Easter eggs for people who would get the joke. And in a work that's already derived from someone else's universes, where you may well be quoting liberally from the source material, they I understand the idea that it's okay to quote from other things as well. Um, but there are two important things to note about her quotes. Firstly, she often didn't attribute them, so while everyone reading it knew that Draco Malfoy was not her creation, they might not know that a quip like a title rife with single entendre was originally written by Howard Gordon and Janine Renshaw to writers on Angel, the series, and they might instead attribute that joke to Cassie Clare herself. I didn't know, because I didn't watch Angel. Fair enough. This is not hypothetical on my part. Uh, the fan who exposed Cassandra Clare's extensive plagiarism, Avocado, quote, started doing web searches, and what I found were people posting quotes attributed to Cassandra Clare, which I recognized very clearly from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Red Dwarf, and Black Adder.

Jake 25:26

Oh dang, she got H. Bomberguy.

Anthea 25:28

She got H. Bomber-Yes, yes, James Somerton? Exactly. Yeah, and secondly, um, she did not limit herself to quips and quotes in dialogue. She lifted significant chunks of text from Pamela Dean's book, The Hidden Land, changing character names to Draco or Ginny or whoever, while keeping prose and dialogue word for word identical. She also borrowed heavily sans citation from Roger Zelazny. When this was reported to fanfiction.net, it resulted in her account being deleted, her and her BFF Heidi crashing out across multiple forums, and schisms in the Harry Potter fandom that I'm guessing have not been healed to this day. Certainly I am still grudgewanking about it.

Jake 26:04

Love a good schism.

Anthea 26:05

Oh man, right.

Elisa 26:07

And the Harry Potter fandom loved a good schism. Oh, they did, they did. If only that had stopped her. But on the other hand, now I'm going back to Godfrey Gow and Harry Schum Jr. and I'm like, ooh, was it worth it?

Anthea 26:18

I mean, right, right. Like, she did she did give us that. She did give us Magnus Bain. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty great. Yeah, well. What does this have to do with HP Moore? Nothing.

Jake 26:29

I was wondering. I was like, I'm confident Anthea will weave this back in.

Anthea 26:35

Thank you. Um, it nothing really, except that I find this made with real flubber thing, like, so time-bound. Like, uh, so the Draco trilogy was released over multiple years from 2000 to 2006, just before the final installment of the Harry Potter series in 2007. Uh, and that was back when fandom largely lived on LiveJournal, fanfiction.net, and independent forums and archives. HP Moore began releasing in 2010, right around the time fandom was beginning to migrate off LJ and onto alternative platforms like Dreamwith, Tumblr, and Archive of Our Own. But before Tumblr and AO3 had become the fandom powerhouses for a new generation. I'm positive that fans still put cross-referential jokes like this in their work. I think it is sort of a natural outgrowth of the fan mindset. Um, but it does stick out to me here as it stuck out to you with like, come on, make up a word.

Jake 27:30

It it also made sense why the enchantments went up to plus four, because uh 3.5 rules probably would have been more common at the time where those enhancement bonuses would go up to plus five typically.

Anthea 27:40

There you go. Yeah. He does there's a line I I did not include in my text quotes where uh uh the narration describes walking through this as being like walking through the rulebooks of an advanced Dungeons and Dragons book, and that Harry doesn't play the games, but he likes reading the rulebooks.

Jake 27:58

Yeah, and that makes sense. He has he was a nerd with no friends. Like I have I have I have read source books that I've never played.

Anthea 28:04

Definitely. Yeah, definitely.

Elisa 28:06

I know I know a number of TTRPG people who are like, I just like reading the books. Once when I was in the library as a child, I found a printed book of a lot of cheat codes to various video games, and I just read through all the Castlevania ones.

Anthea 28:19

Yeah, yeah.

Elisa 28:19

What was Castlevania? I had no idea. Have I ever played it to this day? No.

Anthea 28:24

Me neither. I really should. On my long list of classic video games that I've never played. That'd be so much fun.

Jake 28:31

Just play Hollow Knight.

Anthea 28:32

Just play Hollow Knight? Okay. Yeah. Hollow Knight's so hard.

Jake 28:35

Yeah, that's my Yeah, that's that's a good point.

Anthea 28:40

Look, the other point is that Cassandra Clare's plagiarism scandal is one of the historical events of Harry Potter fandom, alongside things like My Immortal, Snape Wives, and Van Fiction's Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness cult. I will probably dig into all of these in future episodes in some way, but if you are Jonesing for something more about those things that I just dropped, in the meantime, uh, YouTuber Strange Eons has covered all of those events and more, and I highly recommend checking out her work. Speaking of books, we weren't. In amongst all the other wares being hawked on Diagon Alley, Harry spots a bookstore and immediately wants to go in. He explains to McGonagall, when you walk past a bookshop you haven't visited before, you have to go in and look around. That's the family rule.

Jake 29:23

But she's like, no, you're too smart, you'll kill everyone if you read a book.

Anthea 29:27

McGonagal describes this as the most ravenclaw thing I have ever heard. Um she steers him towards Gringotts instead.

Jake 29:35

Sorry, I have to interrupt again. So she literally just said that's so Raven.

Anthea 29:39

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. That's gonna happen a lot. So there's another callback for us. Sweet.

Elisa 29:47

Um Yeah, I will say I generally find the McGonagall characterization pretty delightful. I am There's something about that, there's something about that construction I don't love, but I do think it's cute that that's their family role.

Anthea 29:59

Yeah, it's very uh in in further moments where I look at this and I see myself in Junkowski and his self-insert, uh, when when I was growing up, uh my family went on a six-month road trip around the US. Uh, and our our guiding principle every time we came into a new town was to look for a bookstore. Cute.

Jake 30:23

See, what what I've always wanted to do is drive from west to east across Washington, and anytime you see a taco bell at an exit sign, you have to go and eat there and then call it the Trail of Tacos.

Anthea 30:36

Nice. Wonderful. Two very different ways of in of interacting with the America. Yeah.

Jake 30:42

I think it speaks to both of our upbringing.

Elisa 30:44

I think so. Um and I will say on a writing level, um, I what I what I like about that is that it's specific without being intrusive. Which the the the Oh the book store is the family rule. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jake 30:57

Yeah, no, that has actually some good flavor paste non-tediously.

Elisa 31:01

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's not like collapsing on the weight of its own cleverness.

Chapter 3 close reading pt 2

Anthea 31:07

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it feels very real. It it's you know consistent with everything we've learned about them. Yeah, and and I can I can imagine it being delivered like a 10-year-old, like, oh, you don't I'm sorry, I saw a bookstore and I got excited, but uh, that's the rule. I have to go in. You're not in my family, but that's the rule. Yeah, I love it. I guess he might be 11 at this point because it's right before school term and his birthday is end of July. That's right. He's probably 11. Anyway, this changes everything. This changes everything. Uh so McGonagal steers him towards Gringotts bank instead with the promise of getting some spending money for books. Okay. I also should note that McGonagal is um at this point consistently referring to Lillian James as his genetic parents, uh because that's how he refers to them.

Jake 32:00

That's hard.

Anthea 32:00

I think I think that is respectful. Sure. You know, like, okay, this kid has expressed a preference. I I bring this up partly because um, like, as soon as he gets to Hogwarts, uh everybody just calls him Harry Potter or Mr. Potter instead of uh Potter Evans Varys, which is his legal name, and I find it disrespectful that they call him Harry Potter because he his he and his family have clearly made an effort to have this hyphenated thing going on.

Jake 32:36

Do you think that's like meant to be like shown as these people are showing disrespect, or do you think it's just inconsistency on the right?

Anthea 32:43

I genuinely don't know. I I think it's just I think it's probably that Potter Evans Varus is so long that he didn't want to type it out every time.

Jake 32:52

But I also think like you could just control F that.

Elisa 32:54

Yeah, right. Yeah, copy paste it. Right. I think it's I mean, to me, okay. This may not be if it's intentional, I think it's really interesting.

Anthea 33:02

Yeah.

Elisa 33:03

That's what I was gonna say. I don't trust that it's intentional. But if it were intentional, it's a super interesting choice because it just I mean, the idea of Harry Potter having the weight of being Harry Potter is something that's never fully explored because J.K. Rowling is not a good enough writer at doing interiority. Yeah. Um, but it's hinted at. She like wants that to be a thing. Um, and so the idea of like, well, he has a he actually grew up under a different name. He didn't even grow up as Harry Potter. Um, I I like the idea, or at least, you know, half grown up, whatever. Um, I think it's interesting to show, like, well, the wizarding world sees him as this. Yeah, exactly.

Anthea 33:42

And like when, you know, when the barman calls him Harry Potter, I'm like, yeah, obviously they don't know his legal name. They know him as Harry Potter, right?

Elisa 33:50

Like I was waiting for someone to say he looked just like James, which I don't know if it comes up in the narration, but otherwise I'm like, oh, I guess the lightning scar would have done it.

Anthea 33:58

Yeah, yeah.

Elisa 33:58

That's what I'm I was like, how the fuck does it recognize this guy? Okay, all right, fair enough. I forgot Harry Potter had a lightning scar.

Jake 34:06

And it's also less punchy if you hear a snape say, like, Mr. Potter Evans Varys.

Elisa 34:13

That would rule. Harry Varys is a very silly also name to say. Yeah. So um, there was one more thing I had. I just want to uh pour one out for Hagrid. I'm sorry that he got demoted.

Anthea 34:24

Um I genuinely did not notice until I was preparing this morning. I was like, my god, one minute. This whole thing happened with Hagrid. Yeah, Hagrid.

Jake 34:32

Hagrid erasure.

Anthea 34:33

Hagrid is too much of a fucking dum-dum. I think I think that's genuinely what's happening here.

Elisa 34:39

Yeah, I believe that to my core. Is that Yukaski was like, I fucking hate this guy. Hagrid got demoted for being a fucking dumdum who doesn't know shit about animal safety. Yep.

Jake 34:48

Go play with your bird, moron.

Anthea 34:51

Have fun on your boat. Uh, don't get me wrong, it's a great distraction, Harry said, as his head kept swiveling. Probably the best distraction anyone has ever tried on me, but don't think I've forgotten about our pending discussion. Professor McGonagall sighed. Your parents, or your mother, at any rate, may have been very wise not to tell you. So you wish that I could continue in blissful ignorance? There is a certain flaw in that plan, Professor McGonagall. I suppose it would be rather pointless, the witch said tightly, when anyone on the street could tell you the story very well. And she told him of he who must not be named, the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Voldemort? Harry whispered. It should have been funny, but it wasn't. The name burned with a cold feeling, ruthlessness, diamond clarity, a hammer of pure titanium descending upon an anvil of yielding flesh. A chill swept over Harry even as he pronounced the word, and he resolved then and there to use safer terms like you know who. This is bananas to me because Harry's supposed to be a rationalist, and there's no reason to there's no rational reason to not say the name Voldemort that he knows of.

Jake 36:02

Yeah, that whole passage was all over the place.

Anthea 36:04

It's a lot.

Elisa 36:05

There's a lot going on there in that paragraph. Ooh, ooh, ooh, I want to dig in. I want to dig in with my little taster spoon. Okay, so here's what I got from this. This is what I think. This is what I think. Okay. I think Harry Potter is supposed to be. Wow. Whoa.

Jake 36:22

Say how's the sound form on that one?

Elisa 36:23

I know, right? It's gonna be nuts. Yeah. Try that again. So what I think. I think Harry Potter is supposed to be the pure marriage of empathy and rationality. Um, and so Yudkowski has given him this quasi-psychic intuition. Interesting. That's what I think is happening here. Like this, that, that level of that feels like um what my friends at Pursuit Seattle would call discernment. Sure. Uh asterisk. I infiltrated a cult last year. But that's a podcast for another day. That's a podcast for another day. Um, but it sounds like, wait, to me, it sounds like that's why I say quasi-psychic, is like he has this level of intuition about just this word that is so accurate to who we as readers know Voldemort to be based on just the name. But then you have no reason, and in fact, I believe canonically he just says Voldemort Voldemort, and people are like, shut like in canon, because he doesn't have the social context for the name being bad.

Jake 37:28

But also, I feel like if you hear that, it's like, oh, that name sounds evil as hell. Like that sounds like a fake name that a bad writer made up.

Elisa 37:35

It definitely sounds evil. Yeah. But but I think I so anyway, that's just I just think it's really interesting. Um, and then we get the titanium hammer to the anvil of yielding flesh, which Yeah, I mean that that's kind of hot, frankly. Tag yourself in that metaphor. I'm flesh anvil. That's not true. I'm the hammer.

Jake 37:53

I think I'm a bit of a switch in this regard.

Anthea 37:55

Sure. Yeah, yeah. I no, I feel like I'm tipping my hand because I know things, but it's like, aren't they magically connected?

Jake 38:07

They are, yes.

Anthea 38:09

Okay, yes, Jake knows so I can tip my hand on it.

Jake 38:11

Yes, no, like I I've seen the movies. Like, I remember it's like, you know, it's like we there is a contrivance that binds us together.

Anthea 38:17

Yeah, so it is important to remember that the uh that this was written after all seven books had come out. And so, like, it's being written with the knowledge of the whole canon and theoretically being read with the knowledge of the whole canon, or could be read with the knowledge of the whole canon.

Elisa 38:37

So another possible interpretation of the quasi-psychic intuition is that it's actually a very much psychic intuition. Yeah. And Yokkowski is saying or being like stupid JKR. If she knew what she was doing, she would have written it like this from the get-go. Very possible.

Anthea 38:49

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think also and like, you know, his the thing earlier where he is like, I felt like I shouldn't, I I shouldn't go shake Quirl's hand.

Elisa 38:58

Yes.

Anthea 38:58

Like, there's a lot of stuff when Quirl gets introduced where like you like we're very clearly and deliberately playing with the fact that Yudkowski knows, and Yudkowski knows the audience knows what is going on with Quirl.

Jake 39:14

Yeah, and that passage, like it again, having read practically no fanfiction, but I understand like this is something that happens, is like the pacing in that passage is like we already know all this stuff. We could just say like ten things at once here. It's like, yeah, parents said his name's Voldemort, you're connected. Yeah, okay, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Anthea 39:29

Yeah. Though there's a lot more of this this passage. Oh boy. There's a lot more to this story. Yeah. Um, I gotta keep an eye on this uh recording because I don't want to go over or you know, have to stop in the middle of something. But um, okay. The Dark Lord had raged upon Wizardy Britain like a wilding wolf, tearing and rending at the fabric of their everyday lives. Other countries had wrung their hands but hesitated to intervene, whether out of apathetic selfishness or simple fear. For whichever was first among them to oppose the Dark Lord, their peace would be the next target of his terror. The bystander effect, thought Harry, thinking of Latinay and Darley's experiment, which had shown that you were more likely to get help if you had an epileptic fit in front of one person than in front of three. Diffusion of responsibility, everyone hoping that someone else would go first. So I think this is a slightly off application of the bystander effect, and this is where we're gonna talk about real-life violence. The most famous example of the bystander effect is the murder of Kitty Genevieves. According to the March 27th, 1964 New York Times article that described the case, quote, for more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out, and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault. One witness called after the woman was dead. Kitty Genevieves was 28 and was living in Kew Gardens with her girlfriend on the night of March 13th, 1964, when Winston Mosley approached her with a knife, stabbed her, left, returned, raped her, stabbed her, and left. Mosley was a serial rapist who, when he was arrested six days later, confessed to murdering two other women and gave no motive for killing Genevieve. Holy fucking shit. Yeah, it's terrible. Um I didn't know anything about Mosley before writing this. Um, but I did know about Kitty Genevieve's because I grew up, like I think a lot of us did, hearing the story from the New York Times article. That more than 30 people watched this woman be murdered while she called for help.

Elisa 41:31

I heard the story from Boondock Saints.

Anthea 41:33

Oh my god, is it mentioned in there?

Elisa 41:36

Yeah, it's that's the I've only seen it once. That's the inciting incident is that a preacher's talking about the Kitty Genevieve story.

Anthea 41:42

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Elisa 41:43

And that's when they decide to be Catholic vigilantes.

Anthea 41:46

Sure, yeah. Uh yeah, one of the people who helped spread the story was actually Harlan Ellison, so that's fun. Um I also knew that in I knew that in recent years the story had been debunked in some way, but I wasn't sure how. Right, I don't remember how. So I went digging. In 2016, when Mosley died in prison at 81 years old, uh Robert D. McFadden wrote for the New York Times, quote, while there was no question that the attack occurred and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Miss Genevieve's died on the way to a hospital. This being said, it would be a mistake for us to say, oh well, there weren't actually 38 witnesses who didn't want to get involved, therefore the Bisnerder effect isn't real. It is. Um, Bib Latinay and John Darley, the psychologist that Harry slash Yadkowski are citing here, staged multiple experiments to test the hypothesis that the more witnesses there are to an emergency, the less likely any individual is to step in and help. In Influence, Robert Cialdini calls the phenomenon at work social proof. Quote, very often an emergency is not obviously an emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart attack victim or a drunk sleeping one off? Are the sharp sounds from the street gunshots or truck backfires? I think this is an experience that we in Capitol Hill are familiar with.

Jake 43:26

Oh yeah, no, I just never assume it's a gunshot.

Anthea 43:28

I already know it's never I'm always like that's firework. Is the commotion next door an assault requiring the police or an especially loud marital spat where intervention would be inappropriate and unwelcome? That is a line that I think is very of the fact that this book was written in 1981.

Jake 43:43

Yeah, no, I was gonna say it's like I feel like even if it is a particularly loud marital spat, like that's still something to be worried about.

Elisa 43:50

Yeah, if everything's fine, they should learn to keep it down. And if things aren't fine, then a mandatory reporter should get involved, probably.

Jake 43:57

Yeah, it's a perfectly proper and typical domestic beating. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Anthea 44:01

Nothing. Regardless. In times of such uncertainty, the natural tendency is to look around at the actions of others for clues. We can learn from the way the other witnesses are reacting whether the event is or is not an emergency. What is easy to forget, though, is that everybody else observing the event is likely to be looking for social evidence too. And because we all prefer to appear poised and unflustered among others, we are likely to search for that evidence placidly, with brief camouflaged glances at those around us. Therefore, everyone is likely to see everyone else looking unruffled and failing to act. As a result, and by the principle of social proof, the event will be roundly interpreted as a non-emergency. So, and the the way that they tested this was, as mentioned, they had someone stage an epileptic fit and then recorded to be observed either by a single individual or by a group of people. And then they recorded the number of times the victim received help. In their first experiment, a New York college student who appeared to be having an epileptic seizure received help 85% of the time when there was a single bystander present, but only 31% of the time with five bystanders present. With almost all the single bystanders helping, it becomes difficult to argue that ours is the cold society, which is what the New York Times was arguing. The New York Times in 64 was like, oh, New York is so cold and apathetic and nobody cares about anybody. And the truth is, it's there's something else going on. Because people do care about each other, but we have trouble being the first one to move. And that's why I think this is kind of a poor application.

Jake 45:43

Yeah, it has practically nothing to do with the situation that's being described.

Anthea 45:46

Right. Because this is a case where the bystanders, the people around Wizarding Britain, are looking at the case and they're like, well, that's an emergency.

Jake 45:56

Yeah. Well, and they were also like receiving this information, presumably in somewhat detached form through news outlets.

Anthea 46:02

Well, maybe.

Jake 46:02

Like this isn't like standing around and watching, like this wasn't just a bunch of people, like, you know, five people in a crowd saw Voldemort murder someone and this happened 2,000 times, and that's how everyone found out.

Speaker 46:13

Right, right.

Jake 46:14

You're not in a situation where you're watching different social cues. At least not everyone is all the time. Like this is how we get normal information and react to it normally.

Elisa 46:22

Sure, sure. Yeah. This seems to say that that, especially in a social setting. I mean, this is fun. It's just one of those human glitches. But fun. Jake, this is the one that you and I are immune to. Right, yes. Yeah, because we had this conversation about the super eye patch wolf social horror. The social horror video where they have this same experiment. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's social proof, but it's about like there's smoke in a room and nobody leaves. Yeah.

Jake 46:48

No, for sure. No. So that's a choice. It's like, hey, there's smoke. I'm leaving, I'm leaving the door open. You guys should leave too. Peace.

Elisa 46:53

Yeah. This looks like, in the case specifically of like the epileptic stuff, I can see there being I can see there being a number of things going on here, but the human glitch of it all is that people with imperfect information in a large group are looking around socially to try and get information since they aren't going to be able to get better at diagnosing epilepsy just by looking at this person. Sure. Or, you know, they they don't what the incomplete information that they have is whether or not it's an emergency. Right. And therefore they're looking around to try and see if it's an emergency. Right. Whereas Voldemort has killed a bunch of people. Right. At that point, then you have the knowledge. Yeah. So to your point, the bystander effect, I don't think, is the right. It's not exactly what's happening.

Jake 47:34

It's mostly about reacting in the moment.

Elisa 47:36

Yeah, the bystander effect. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that imperfect information is really important.

Anthea 47:42

Here we're talking about like state actors.

Jake 47:45

Yeah, and like a prolonged campaign of violence.

Anthea 47:48

Yeah, being like, well, we do want to do something, uh like someone should do something about this, but if I move without backup, then maybe I maybe I and my populace will be the next ones who are destroyed by this remarkably powerful terrorist. Yeah.

Elisa 48:06

It sounds okay. I would also say one other thing about the way that I I one other thing that I think happens in these bystander situations too is just this is just sort of a sort of a fun uh public policy thing. Yeah. Um is that I think when the next step is unclear, that's also when people like freeze up. Freeze up. Um so if you don't know what number to call, if you don't know whether you should and I've of course like somebody call 911 is the famous one of like guaranteeing that no one will call 911 because they don't know who's supposed to and they don't want to double call.

Anthea 48:41

Yeah, that's that's exactly what Cialdini recommends. In he's he's like, hey, if you are ever in an emergency, the thing you like the and and you know, okay, we know that this is a thing, right? If you're ever having a medical emergency and you are able to, you need to point at a specific person and say you call 911.

Jake 48:58

Yeah, because then you're turning all the social pressure around into a benefit.

Elisa 49:02

Yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And giving them a specific so like, yeah, yeah, it that's a it's a great way to handle it. Um but uh also I think that this whole the thing that Harry is describing, it almost seems more like a game theory setup than anything else. Right. The application. Yeah, it's like it would benefit everybody if an actor or preferably multiple actors all made moves at the same time. But since nobody wants to be that the tall poppy that gets cut down, nobody moves to the mutual detriment of all actors involved.

Anthea 49:32

Right, yes. Yes, because it is clearly also bad for it to continue. Like it's bad for you and your populace for this to continue and let that guy just keep getting stronger. Like, so yeah, yeah. Um it I did learn stuff, so thanks you to Kowski. I think this is a little bit I it's a little off, but I did learn stuff, so yeah. Well, I'm I'm you I'm giving you partial credit.

Jake 49:54

Yeah, it's definitely an instance of I want to share this cool experiment I heard about, and not this is a relevant thing to mention right now.

Anthea 49:59

It's it is relevant, but like not quite right.

Jake 50:03

Yeah, no, I I disagree that it's relevant. It's like people were standing by, that doesn't mean it's the bystander effect. The words are just similar.

Anthea 50:11

Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, fair enough.

Elisa 50:12

And that well, and there is just because there is ambiguity about who should act and when does not make it the bystander effect. Right. In this particular, in this particular case. Yeah.

Jake 50:21

But I agree with fun facts.

Elisa 50:22

It is fun facts. And I didn't know that about the old lady who cradled her head. Yeah. That's so sweet.

Anthea 50:28

I'm I mean, yeah, it's the one one thing that came out in in later, in more recent years is uh and that was not part of the initial reporting in the 60s is that Kitty Genevieve was gay. Um and that her uh that that at least some of the people in the building that she was living in were also gay. Um and that probably uh one of the one of the few people who did uh definitely see what was happening was um one of her neighbors who like opened the door, saw her being stabbed, closed the door because he was scared. Um and instead of calling on the cops, he called friends to ask for advice about what to do. And one of them was like, Come over here, and he climbed out a window and went to their place. Um and he was he we think that he was gay, and he so he had good reason to not call the cops in 1964 in New York City. Yeah, totally. Like, yeah. Um, so that's a that's also an element of all of this that is complicating.

Elisa 51:35

Totally.

Jake 51:36

I mean, this is Rowling World, so I'm assuming the wizards didn't want to raise a stink if they were trans, because who knows what would happen to them in that case.

Anthea 51:42

Absolutely, yes. Yeah, yeah. Uh okay. That's that's the end of the uh description of real life violence, but I am about to get into some descriptions of fictional violence. Yay! Hooray. The Death Eaters had followed in the Dark Lord's wake and in his vanguard, carrying vultures to pick it. I'm sorry, the vanguards before! You can't follow in a vanguard. So that's why I was I was like, oh, I do have to read this part.

Jake 52:11

I mean, maybe if if Voldemort's a scout, then there could be a vanguard follower. Yes. But that is the the devil does not need this advocate, and it is wrong to advocate as such anyway. Please continue.

Anthea 52:24

Please continue. The Death Eaters were not as terrible as the Dark Lord, but they were terrible and they were many. And the Death Eaters wielded more than wands. There was wealth within those masked ranks.

Jake 52:34

And one of them had a gun.

Anthea 52:37

I'm sorry.

Elisa 52:38

I look at you. Of Death Eater with a gun.

Jake 52:45

Yeah, it's like we all agree, Tim, this is bad taste, but goddamn, he does get results.

Elisa 52:52

Yeah, yeah, muggles are inferior, but they do get like one thing right. And that's Tim's gun.

Jake 52:57

Wait, Tim Gun?

Anthea 52:59

Tim's gun? Make it work, wizards!

Jake 53:01

Yeah.

Anthea 53:03

Uh there was wealth within those masked ranks, and political power, and secrets held in blackmail to paralyze a society trying to protect itself. An old and respected journalist, Yermi Wibble, called for increased taxes and conscription. He shouted that it was absurd for the many to cower in fear of the few. His skin, only his skin, had been found nailed to the newsroom wall the next morning, next to the skins of his wife and two daughters.

Jake 53:27

Not Wibble.

Anthea 53:29

Everyone wished for something more to be done, and no one dared to take the lead to propose it. Whoever stood out the most became the next example.

Jake 53:35

Wait, it's like the bystander effect.

Anthea 53:38

Is Wibble a real character? I don't think so. I think this is Yudkowski coming up with a good whims. I mean, that's a very good Harry Potter name.

Jake 53:47

It's a bad first name to go with it, though. Your me? It's just it's just mumbling. It's your me removal. Hey, yeah, but my wibble.

Elisa 53:56

It has to be like pugnacious wibble or something, you know, like or prognosticus wibble or something. Right? Like, um uh Yermi's not good. Um, but also Is this part of the story that McGonigal tells?

Anthea 54:10

This is also something that I realized as I was reading it. I'm like, wait a minute, this is a lot of detail to give you this 11-year-old.

Elisa 54:17

Now, to be totally fair, um, I, like many in our generation, grew up on scary stories to tell in the dark, which were horrifying. And one of my favorite stories was about the scarecrow that these two farmhands built. And uh, spoiler alert, it ends in the scarecrow coming to life. The person? Oh. It ends in the scarecrow coming to life and flaying one of the farmhands.

Anthea 54:41

Hot damn.

Elisa 54:41

I know it's so it goes so hard. Um, I learned about that story when I was like, oh, an eight.

Jake 54:48

We gotta teach the children about flencing.

Elisa 54:50

You have to teach the children about flencing. It's very important, apparently. Um, also, it they weren't, it's not like they they were just like cow herds or something like that. Like cow hands, cattle hands, too. Yeah. So they didn't, they were not like tanning any leather. Like flaying and flencing in any way was not part of their work.

Jake 55:08

The scarecrow did not understand the vibe.

Elisa 55:10

The scarecrow had the wrong vibe. It was just terrible. I would like some answers from Alvin Schwartz. Um never gonna get them. I'm never gonna get them. Um, I'll go to his fucking house. Um, and but uh, so that having been said, it's crazy that McGonagall's like, well, I suppose you could hear from anyone on the street, so here's the playing. I would have nightmares. Not even about my parents, just about the playing. Just about some child skins walking around, like being like, Hello, Harry, hell bus, you're bystanding.

Jake 55:44

And presumably there is a spell to make that that skin suit come to life and be whimsical.

Anthea 55:49

My thought was that there's probably a spell that just makes it go, oh, that too. Oh, yeah.

Elisa 55:54

I assumed that there was a spell to why is it that unforgivable curse? Well, but it probably wasn't.

Anthea 56:01

Oh, okay, maybe. But also, I'm sure the Death Eaters are not looking for like a whoop. They're they're gonna they're gonna spend some time on it. They they enjoy their work. Like the globalists.

Elisa 56:11

I that's that's fair. And I guess that goes back to like, you know, Tim with the gun, like being like, oh come on, like put some effort into it. Um okay, that does make sense. I also think that a spell that goes with skin is probably, which for the record, I'm positive it exists in the wizarding world. Yes.

Jake 56:29

And it's also for listeners at home, whenever we make that noise, we're also doing a gesture of like pinching with the hand and then lifting cleanly away. Correct. So that's what's happening. We are all doing that.

Anthea 56:39

Yeah, you guys got that, right? You were you heard the sound and you were making the same gesture just automatically. I know my listeners. Yeah. You're all my friends. So I was about to say.

Elisa 56:48

All I know is not my mom. Because this podcast is too long for her to listen to. Wow. The only long podcast she will listen to is Behind the Bastards. Alright. Um, friend of the show. Yeah, we gotta get Robert Evans on. Um, frequently cited by the show.

Anthea 57:01

Frequently cited friend of the show. Um I don't know him.

unknown 57:04

Ah, yeah.

Elisa 57:05

Um, what was I gonna say? Oh yeah. Um, so it's probably used. The spell, the spell that goes and takes your skin off is probably only used in the wizarding world, like for, you know, skinning chickens and like preparing you know, like really fruit preparation.

Jake 57:21

Well, I mean, I bet if you cast like a really tempered version of it, it'd be great for like exfoliation.

Anthea 57:26

Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah. We all just want to get rid of that top layer of skin.

Jake 57:31

Lufamous Gloviosa?

Anthea 57:33

Yes, yes, very, very, very top layer. Okay. Uh until the name of James and Lily Potter rose to the top of that list. Sorry, let me go backslightly. Let me give you let me give you ten seconds in. Everyone wished for something more to be done, and no one dared to take the lead to propose it. Whoever stood out the most became the next example. Until the names of James and Lily Potter rose to the top of that list. And those two might have died with their wands in their hands and not regretted their choices, for they were heroes, but for that they had an infant child, their son, Harry Potter. I have some quibbles about the change in prose here, but more to the point, I am bothered by the fact that Harry doesn't have any follow-up questions about what Lily and James were actually doing in the resistance to make them heroic.

Jake 58:20

Yeah. And him being like, why do you phrase it that way? That's my name. That's a weird way to tell me the story.

Elisa 58:26

I kind of I do kind of like the fairy taleness of this. Not in a way that I can justify, except to say that, like, I mean, look, I'm a sucker for the whole like euphemistically tell a really difficult story using fairy tale language to distance yourself from it. Um, so that's just something personally that I like. Um and I think seeing McGonagall sort of slip into it now. Again, we it comes after flaying. Maybe that's part of it, is that I can't see McGonagall talking like this.

Anthea 58:58

Yeah.

Elisa 58:59

I think this is all author. I don't know that it's a good choice for specifically McGonagall. It makes more sense that she'd be like, all right, kid, if you want to know the truth, these guys got flayed.

Jake 59:09

And it's another instance where like it does seem like it's it's being told more cinematically of like, if this was the movie, she would have started talking and then it would cut to a scene that is playing out as a montage. Yeah. But as written, this is just McGonagall saying all this shit to Harry.

Anthea 59:25

Right, right. I mean, none of it's in quotes, but yes.

Elisa 59:28

Like, yeah. I think that there is, I think, you know what would be really cute? It would be, you know, who should be telling a story in that way would be um Lupin or Sirius. Telling like the fairy tale of their uh of his parents. That'd be really cute.

Anthea 59:42

Yeah. I can totally see Dumbledore using language like that. Yeah, Dumbledore is a cruelt.

Elisa 59:48

But yeah.

Anthea 59:50

Tears were coming into Harry's eyes. He wiped them away in anger or maybe desperation. I didn't know those people, not really. They aren't my parents now. It would be pointless to feel so sad for them. When Harry was done sobbing into the witch's robes, he looked up and felt a little bit better to see tears in Professor McGonagall's eyes as well. This is a very interesting bit of writing to me. In Feeling Rational, Godkowski takes on the popular idea that rationality is opposed to emotion. End quote. When people think of emotion and rationality as opposed, I suspect that they are really thinking of System 1 and System Two, fast perceptual judgments versus slow deliberative judgments. System two's deliberative judgments aren't always true, and system one's perceptual judgments aren't always false. So it is very important to distinguish that dichotomy from rationality. Both systems can serve the goal of truth or defeat it, depending on how they are used. For my part, I label an emotion as not rational if it rests on mistaken beliefs or rather on mistake-producing epistemic conduct. Quote, within this quote, if the iron approaches your face and you believe it is hot and it is cool, the way with a capital W opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face and you believe it is cool and it is hot, the way opposes your calm. End quote. Conversely, an emotion that is evoked by correct beliefs or truth-conducive thinking is a rational emotion. And this has the advantage of telling of letting us regard calm as an emotional state rather than a privileged default. The quote about the way, opposing this and that and the other thing, is quoting the twelve virtues of rationality, a blog post I will come back to at another time.

Jake 1:01:30

By him, I assume. Yes. Okay.

Elisa 1:01:32

Okay. Yes. Um It's that just the Since I am reading Amanda Montel's Cultish right now. Oh yes. The linguistic choices there are really giving me like yellow flag, kind of like. Um just because it's like you didn't you didn't need to use those specific terms or the way with what sounds like a capital W to convey what you're conveying. Right.

Anthea 1:01:58

Yeah. Now, his point is that emotions can be rational if they derive from an understanding of the world as it is, and irrational if they derive from a false model of reality. Happiness that derives from a true understanding of reality, like success at a task or affection from a loved one, is rational and there's no reason to run from it. On the other hand, anger that derives from a false model of reality, like my friend only responded to my text about dinner with an okay, and I think they're blowing me off, is irrational. This is more or less stating a pretty common idea from emotional regulation work that you might have heard referred to as telling a story about something, or in this household, making up a guy to get mad at. Now, in dilat di in dialectical behavioral therapy, you're encouraged to take information from both your emotional mind and your reasonable mind and synthesize them into your wise mind. And in feeling rational, Riadkowski doesn't exactly advocate for drawing information from your emotions in the way DBT does, but he does acknowledge that as part of System One thoughts, fast perceptual judgments, they can be just as accurate as system two thoughts, slow deliberative judgments. Now, what's interesting to me is that Harry in this moment tries not to feel sad for these people he didn't know who died in a horrible way. In Feeling Rational, Judkowski also writes, quote, In my early days, I was never quite certain whether it was all right to feel things strongly, whether it was allowed, whether it was proper. But I know now that there's nothing wrong with feeling strongly. Ever since I adopted the rule of that which can be destroyed by the truth should be, I've also come to realize that which the truth nourishes should thrive. So with that context, I find this beat both touching and a little disconcerting. Um so Harry is eleven, he's a smart kid, it seems eminently reasonable to me that he could hear about anyone getting horrif that he could hear about, say, three people getting flayed. Uh four, actually. Three. Oh, and his wife, yeah, that's right. Uh four people getting flayed, and then hear about two people that he's related to, even if he didn't ever know them, being murdered, and that he could get emotional about it. He's eleven. That's fine. That's totally normal. Uh the fact but then he tries to talk himself out of that feeling. And the fact that he fails at talking himself out of it does remind me that Yadkowski says in his his author's notes, not everything the protagonist does is a lesson in wisdom. So Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

Elisa 1:04:37

It's it's a really interesting moment for me. I think it is a lesson in wisdom. Because what you're supposed to come to is like the idea that, like, well, of course, this is a situation where everything's been set up given the givens, like, of course you cry.

Jake 1:04:52

Yeah, I mean, I I feel like it's trying to convey like why am I having a parent caliber reaction when I should be having a stranger's caliber reaction.

Anthea 1:05:03

Right, right. Yeah.

Jake 1:05:04

But it's I think it is also missing the point, like you were saying, that it is not irrational to react to reprehensible events like this, even if it is too strangers.

Anthea 1:05:16

And I and I want to be clear, like I think that Harry Harry's internal monologue is is wrong. And I think that Yadkowski knows that it's wrong, right? Yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah. Um so and that's part of why I I find it yeah. Depiction is not endorsement. It's an it's just an interesting moment in that sense.

Elisa 1:05:37

Yeah, and I think the other thing that is interesting to me about this is like just about everything you've described about emotions, is this could be my own bias, but it does feel like even when Yudkowski's saying, I mean, you can have feelings, feelings are cool, because sometimes feelings are empirically correct.

Jake 1:05:57

Yeah, no, it it does feel like like when I was listening to. It sounds like I was like the thoughts I've seen is like, oh, this is actually kind of like a sort of mature way to look at emotions, and oh no, they missed the mark. They got like 60% of the way there. It's like that's like sometimes you feel things and it's fine to feel these things, but sometimes your feelings are wrong feelings to have.

Anthea 1:06:16

Sometimes your feelings are derived from a false model of reality, so you probably shouldn't feel them.

Jake 1:06:20

Yeah, like it's it's it's an immature understanding of where emotions come from and why they exist.

Anthea 1:06:26

Yeah. Like it's you know which is in DBT, like you, you know, the idea is that your emotions are giving you information. Exactly. Yeah, right. Like like even you know, I was I was talking to a friend of mine recently about about it, and she was describing it as, you know, the feeling like like when your brain thinks that you're being hunted.

Jake 1:06:48

Yep.

Anthea 1:06:49

It's like you're not being hunted, you had a bad day at work.

Jake 1:06:52

Yeah, but your brain is like it would be irresponsible of me not to convey this information to you.

Elisa 1:06:56

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And it's it yeah, so I think it is still like the idea there is still in that uh passage from Yudkowski the idea that emotions should still be subordinate to empirical truth or rationality or what have you. Um, because when they don't align with what you can prove or with what is true, then they need to something needs to happen or something. Something needs to change. Yeah. They should be killed by the truth. But your emotions can't be killed by the truth. The truth helps, I think, a lot of people. Yeah. Um, but but also like, yeah, I I also feel like I can't necessarily name any right now, but I feel like there are plenty of emotions that are neither in accordance with nor necessarily opposed to the world as it is, if that makes any sense. Like, okay, iron scared of iron, iron hot versus iron cold. That's one. But like I mean, I think that there are emotions and emotional states and things like that that just don't have that that immediate connection to like the empirical world.

Jake 1:08:06

Yeah, like you know, when it comes like matters of taste, it's like, oh, is this iron hot? Is it cold? Am I afraid? It could just be like, oh, this sword's cool.

Elisa 1:08:12

Right.

Jake 1:08:12

Like that doesn't really matter, you know, with what's empirical or not.

Elisa 1:08:18

Like it's based on input, but is it is it oriented towards the truth at all? No, and I think we all agree, or at least most of us do, that in matters of preference, like, yeah, there isn't a truth.

Jake 1:08:31

Yeah, and like I I can already hear the rational deconstruction of like, oh well, it's you know, the the fine utilitarianism and construction of the of this thing is why you're blah blah blah blah blah. But like, no, it's you know, you can choose to break down and categorize emotions that way, but it's you know, that is, I feel like typically a self-defense mechanism against not understanding or wanting to experience emotions.

Anthea 1:08:54

Yes. And it takes so much time. Yes. Like this is yes, like this is something Regina and I were talking about in the last episode, about like you just don't have time to like reason everything out from first principles like that. Like, and and you shouldn't, and you don't have to. If you prefer if if you don't like oatmeal because of the texture, you don't have to, you don't have to do any re you don't have to like reason out why that preference is irrational. Well, from an evolutionary perspective, spoiled food would often You don't have to take the time to reason out either why that preference is totally rational and you are justified in having it, nor uh why that preference is irrational and you should do away with it. You can just be like, I don't really like oatmeal unless it's got crunchy bits in it. Like and you can just do that.

Elisa 1:09:47

And have something else for breakfast.

Anthea 1:09:48

Have something else for breakfast. Move on. Uh having cried himself out for the moment, Harry asks what did happen on the night that his parents died. And McGonagall explains that the that Voldemort killed James and then Lily and then attempted to cast the killing curse on Harry, but the curse rebounded and hit him instead, killing him, scarring Harry's forehead, and bringing an end to Voldemort's reign of terror. Hooray.

Elisa 1:10:13

Can I ask a stupid question? Sure. If Harry is the only survivor and he's a baby, how do we know? How did they figure this out?

Anthea 1:10:24

I don't have an answer for you.

Jake 1:10:26

I mean, there's this pale creepy guy in the corner.

Elisa 1:10:31

Don't shake his hand, but he does do a great crime scene investigation.

Anthea 1:10:34

He's got amazing, he was an eyewitness, and he's got amazing uh recall, and we're not asking questions about why he didn't intervene, because the bystander effect, I guess. Um and McGonagall says, returning to the text, that Harry Potter is why people want to see the scar on your forehead and why they want to shake your hand. The storm of weeping that had washed through Harry had used up all his tears. He could not cry again. He was done. And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story. I guess he should have been thinking there aren't any ways. Yeah, exactly. Is he thinking the same thing? And it should have been a part of Harry's art to notice that tiny note, but he was distracted. For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it. Oh my god, okay.

Jake 1:11:28

I think that was supposed to sound profound.

Elisa 1:11:31

I think so.

Jake 1:11:32

That's that's too bad.

Elisa 1:11:33

It's got more of that like fairy tale quality, and which doesn't totally jibe with a lot of the other narration so far, so it's Harry detached himself from Professor McGonagall's side.

Anthea 1:11:46

I'll have to think about this, he said, trying to keep his voice under control. He stared at his shoes.

Jake 1:11:51

Let me know if you want to hear more horrors at any point.

Anthea 1:11:54

The Death Eaters killed a lot of people.

Jake 1:11:57

They were very creative about it.

Anthea 1:12:00

Um you can go ahead and call them my parents if you want. You don't have to say genetic parents or anything. I guess there's no reason I can't have two mothers and two fathers. Hell yeah, Harry. And got there. There was no sound from Professor McGonigal. And they walked together in silence until they came before a great white building with vast bronze doors and carved words above, saying Gringotts Bank. End of chapter three.

Jake 1:12:26

And there were no troubling depictions therein.

Elisa 1:12:28

Well, that's next chapter. All the goblins were super cool, and they didn't look like anything at all specifically. Fine. All different shapes and sizes and facial features.

Conclusion

Anthea 1:12:39

Yeah, okay. Hang on. Okay, and that brings us to the end of chapter three. How are we feeling?

Jake 1:12:47

I was I was getting strong vibes of like this is stuff we all know already. So let's just have this professor trauma dump on a child real quick to get it out of the way.

Elisa 1:12:58

I'm so I know we talked about it a lot and we did make jokes about it, which I'm very sorry if anyone has lost a loved one to flaying um that that we did that.

Jake 1:13:08

I I hope you've come to terms with the absidity absurdity of the trauma. I don't doubt that it was traumatic, but like what are the odds.

Elisa 1:13:16

Holy shit, yeah. Um and now I'm horrified that like, oh my god, what if the one person in the world like there's like actually there was one serial killer he didn't get very far. He actually had he had like one in point 1.25 victims. Fleensing takes a long time. Um I'm making it worse. But uh apart from that, so but like that detail really does stick with me because it's so unusual. It's very graphic. Yes, graphic is a great way to put it. I know that we tried to make it fun with our jus.

Anthea 1:13:44

Yeah, but it is quite uh yeah, quite grotesque.

Elisa 1:13:50

Yeah, that's why I brought up the scarecrow story, because it was the most grotesque thing I'd ever heard at the age of eight.

Anthea 1:13:56

This is not the last time that you're gonna be reading this and something um shockingly adult uh is going to appear in the text.

Elisa 1:14:07

Yeah, yeah. It's just, I mean, I I'm yeah, I think that's I that's all that I can say about it. It's like, huh, read the room, man.

Jake 1:14:18

Yeah, it it it gave an impression of this is something he saw in a horror movie or novel and thought like, whoa, cool, and then put it in.

Elisa 1:14:26

Yeah, I mean, yeah, did he see it in Hellraiser? That's where it happened most famously, I think. Is there any other is there any other uh skinning of people? Martyrs. Oh yeah, martyrs. Yeah. But like, okay, so you have to get hard.

Anthea 1:14:41

You not you gotta really get into French extremism.

Jake 1:14:45

You gotta finish your sentence. You can't just say you have to get hard and then applause.

Elisa 1:14:49

Nope. You're right, good redirect. You have to get hardcore into horror.

Jake 1:14:55

Turge it. You have to turn it into horror.

Anthea 1:15:00

My mom might be listening to this podcast, so sorry, mom. I terrible.

Jake 1:15:04

Hopefully, she's still listening.

Elisa 1:15:07

Um, yeah, so like, so this concept that not only like if you're into if you are an adult and you are into horror fiction or movies, you would still have to go to a pretty extreme corner of it to find this disgust. I just don't, I just don't like it for a children's book.

Anthea 1:15:29

Well, I know that's not a child. Right, right, no, but it is, it's I like this- I'm sorry, but what did we learn from the fleensing? I guess that the Death Eaters are creative and violent. It's I mean, yes, the more I think about that section and the idea that this is information that is being conveyed to Harry on a street corner in Diagon Alley by McGonagall, the weirder it gets.

Jake 1:15:58

Like Yeah, just imagine a passerby seeing a child cry into a woman's robe as she's like, oh yeah, then their skin got ripped off and nailed to the to the church door.

Anthea 1:16:07

Hang on, let me check check something.

Elisa 1:16:09

Uh sh did she know at one point she uh she pulls him into a Oh, I thought I literally thought you were gonna look up did JK Rowling retroactively establish a flayed journalist? Like, like she's talking to people in some fucking coverage. She's like, Dumbledore was gay and these people lost their skins.

Anthea 1:16:33

That's a thousand percent the kind of shit she would do though, right? Like, because as the series went on, it did get darker, and like by the time she gets to like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find the movies, she's she's like, yeah, we're we're in an adult world now. Uh I've written crime novels with terrible depictions of of men in dresses as sexual predators, uh, that doesn't have anything to do with my real life politics at all. Anyway.

Jake 1:17:01

Yeah, maybe she saw a post that skin was woke. It's like, well, gotta get rid of that skin.

Anthea 1:17:06

No, what I was checking was I know that at some point in this Diagon Alley sequence, uh uh McGonagal pulls Harry into an alleyway and casts like a silence spell so that they can talk in private. But that does not happen here. It has not happened. Okay. She is having this conversation with him on a street corner.

Jake 1:17:28

So instead, what passers-by see is an adult pulling a crying child into an alley and then casting a spell.

Elisa 1:17:34

Eventually, yes.

Jake 1:17:35

That is gonna be that suspicious.

Elisa 1:17:37

Listening World is a small place, and presumably everybody in Diagon Alley knows who McGonagall is, so at least there's that. But she's been around like forever, forever.

Anthea 1:17:44

That's also a thing. I Dumbledore is like several hundred years old or something. No, he's like a he's like over a hundred. He's over a hundred. McGonagall also seems like she is like, you know. I think she's like a spry 80. Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Elisa 1:17:58

Um But that's beside the point. I guess that I should also say about this, um, that I'm fascinated um by changes that Yudkowski makes to the subject matter. Yeah, say more. Um, because it it's sort of the uh, you know, that's what's fun about AUs in general, or parallel PUs, parallel universes. Um uh is that you go, okay, what's the same and what's different? And like, but in this case for Yudkowski, I find myself urgently compelled to figure out why have you made the departures from Canon that you've made? And what do they say about you? McGonagal makes sense. Hagrid's a dum-dum. Sure. Like that topic. Yeah. And like, and Snape can't be trusted. Um, although, hold that thought, because I do have one spoiler for this book. Um, this book, this fanfic. Um, but uh, but like, and and Petunia being lithe, I have theories. And and and her marrying a different guy, I have theories, but I I can't necessarily prove it, but I think it's worth discussing. The flaying detail. That is an innovation of Yatkowski's on the source material. Um, and it's I and it's fascinating. And I'm sure that I'm putting more thought into it than he put into it, but I do think, you know, like yeah, the Harry Potter books got darker later on, but it was like Neville's parents were tortured into insanity, and it's like, okay, that's terrible. They're still alive and stuff, but um, and and you don't see it. Um, they like slowly kill a muggle studies professor, and you see that.

Anthea 1:19:34

Doesn't Bellatrix torture Hermione um at one point. I feel like there's a I feel like there's a scene where where Harry and Ron can hear Hermione screaming in another room or something. Yes, yeah.

Elisa 1:19:47

But you still you still don't see it on screen. And then Hedwig dies. And for the record, Hedwig dying was the part in our my family's full rewatch of all the Harry Potter movies that my mom turned to me and said seriously, that's just cruel. You don't do that to children. Like my my mom was viewing it as like, yeah, a lot of Harry Potter fans grew up with the series, but there's a lot of people who come in. If you're in third grade and you read the first Harry Potter book, and then and then you and all, you know, and you're all seven of them are out, let's say, that means you can just read them all in the same in the same year. And an eight-year-old is not necessarily ready to go from whimsy to oh yeah, oh, either Fred or George died. I'm sorry, I don't remember which one.

Anthea 1:20:29

Neither do I. Man, when I was about that age, I remember um my mom uh reading the book Ronia the Robber's Daughter to me, which is by the same person who wrote uh uh Astrid Lingren, um, Pippi Longstockings. Um, and at the end of that, like the beloved mentor figure dies, and I was wrecked. And I was like, mom, from now on, any book you're gonna read to me, you have to read the ending to see if there's anyone gonna die.

Elisa 1:21:01

That was very rational of you. Thank you. Um no, but and I think like, okay, yes, it is it is a well-worn trope in kids' media, but the Harry Potter books undergo a shift in tone such that there's a discordance between the earlier books and the later books. Very much. And this feels-I mean, maybe that is an attempt of Yatkowski's to like try and set up earlier on like the level of discordance that's gonna come later, but I still think that the example that he chose is really interesting because it's distinctly off-putting. Like, and it to me also shows that like he maybe doesn't have a huge imagination for thinking about like what you have to do with this wibble story is you have to go, like, okay, there's a couple elements. One is you have to go, what is something that could be left behind as a signal to other people, watch out, or this, you know, this will happen to you. Um, and then the second one is like, if we're going for like he's us, you know, he's a supervillain or whatever, like, is there anything like poetically just that could be done with it? Um and unfortunately, I am of two minds on this. Uh part of me thinks, like, okay, let's not do flaying.

Jake 1:22:13

Um well, yeah, if if you the guy was a journalist, it should be the tongue.

Elisa 1:22:17

Well, yeah. Okay, yes. He could have cut out their could have cut out all their tongues um and maybe cut off their hands or something like that. Still run them through a printing press.

Jake 1:22:27

Yeah. Running through a printing press is fun, but then I maybe maybe he did that and that just shooped their body out of their skin.

Elisa 1:22:34

He's like, okay, well, work with what you have. Um, I'm actually a little bit annoyed that they didn't like carve the words like traitor on them or something, like after they played them, like use them as paper. Yeah, yeah. But I think you could also just write words or like, you know, stamp words on dead people to leave the message and have it be word-related and you know, you don't have to so now that's Magnus coded.

Speaker 1:22:59

Yeah.

Elisa 1:23:00

Well, what can I say? Um, I mean, I know, you know, there's also like there's some stuff that's been sort of normalized in fiction, like heads on spikes and things like that. That was my first thought, honestly. Is frankly terrible. Yeah. I say that as someone whose ancestors did that.

Jake 1:23:16

Um we all have an ancestor somewhere back then.

Elisa 1:23:19

We all have an ancestor who stuck a head on a phone. You know, um, but uh uh so but so I do think that that one is one that like you could be kind of fooled into thinking is more age appropriate than it is. Right. No, I agree. But like, gosh, it's just such a mystery to me.

Jake 1:23:36

I mean, I I think it might be as simple as like, you know, thinking like, oh, it'd be funny if a terrible thing happened to someone named Higglebee Wiggleby or whatever the guy's name was. And like the thought process might have gone no further than that. Like, what's the silliest name? What's the worst thing?

Anthea 1:23:50

Hmm. Yermi Wibble. Yermi Wibble, Yarmi Wibble.

Jake 1:23:54

It's already left my brain.

Elisa 1:23:56

I should think also, like, at least say that his daughter's names were Wilma and Wendolin. Like, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jake 1:24:03

At least name the dead children that have flayed in your fact.

Anthea 1:24:06

Give them a whimsical name. And then flay them. And then flay them. I think that what you said though about like like the like is this an attempt to sort of like undissonance the the tone by introducing the darkness earlier. I have some of that feeling as well from the opening of the chapter, when the old woman is like, my grandson died in the war.

unknown 1:24:36

Right.

Anthea 1:24:36

Which is not something that happens at all in the original book when Harry is when when people when a similar scene is happening and people are like, it's Harry Potter. Like, no one is like, oh my god, I lost loved ones, and that's why I'm uh in in the war, and you are the reason that the war ended, and that is, you know, and that create that's why I'm so emotional about it, because like I I experienced violence during this. Like that's not in the original book, because again, JK Rowling is not doesn't really get into that until much later in the series. Not that much. I mean, like, book four is where things start to really like book four is when things get real because Cedric dies. Um but I I think that there is some of that, like Yadkowski is aware that the realities of the world as described are pretty dire, and that in the first couple of books, that is not dealt with.

Jake 1:25:38

But like that kind of makes sense because like children are going to be sheltered from that.

Anthea 1:25:42

Right, because it's from an 11-year-old's perspective. Right.

Jake 1:25:44

And then like they get exposed to more and more of it either through their natural curiosity or they are older and the adults are telling them more stuff.

Speaker 1:25:51

Sure. Yeah.

Jake 1:25:52

But I I think it kind of makes sense, like also if the series, you know, it ends on a dark note, you know, or a darker tone, and then you start writing a fan fiction after that, like in your head it's going to be like, oh, this is a dark series. Absolutely.

Elisa 1:26:06

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I think that's definitely possible.

Anthea 1:26:09

I mean, I don't think it's a bad instinct for the fancy. I think that I think that it's that the ways in which it's being executed sometimes work and sometimes don't. Yes.

Jake 1:26:20

Yeah, there's there's some dissonance. Like you have a a plucky, rational child, but then also, you know, the horrors. Right. And it's it's unclear if that's an intentional dissonance or not. Right.

Anthea 1:26:32

It's it's it's a little yes, it's it's not handled quite gracefully.

Elisa 1:26:37

Well, and one of the big jokes about this, about Harry Potter, and especially the first three or four books, was that like, okay, well, here's all these cool, competent adults that we know, and when the rubber hits the road, it's gonna be a handful of tweens squaring off against the darkness in the annual, you know, bringing back the horrors events. Adults. Yes, adults, just absolute adults. Um I do think, you know, the old woman that works for me. I really like it. And I think it's it it's it strikes the right balance. The flay, as we have discussed. Minolike.

Anthea 1:27:14

Yeah, fair enough. Any other closing thoughts?

Jake 1:27:18

I don't think so.

Anthea 1:27:19

Okay. No, I'm good. Yeah, well, thank you once again for joining me on this adventure. Uh, thank you all for listening. It's been great to have you with us. Join us next time on HP Moralore, where we enter Gringot's bank. I'm not scared at all. We're gonna learn what a rationalist does when presented with boatloads of money.

Jake 1:27:38

I feel no trepidation.

Anthea 1:27:40

Nope. Yep, I'm good. Have fun on your boat.

Elisa 1:27:42

Have fun on your boat.

Jake 1:27:44

Little women.

Anthea 1:27:47

The Harry Potter universe is copyright to J.K. Rowling, and Harry Potter and the methods of rationality and the sequences are copyright Eliezer Readkowski. This podcast may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. For the purposes of commentary, criticism, and transformation, which are protected under the Doctor of Fair Use. This podcast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 international license.

Speaker 1 1:28:11

The music you heard in this episode is The Watchmaker's Secret by Nikolai Haydlass on Hook Sounds.