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Proving that Lord Potter is Canonically Impossible

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Conquistador, May 30, 2018.

  1. Chengar Qordath

    Chengar Qordath The Final Pony ~ Prestige ~

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    Especially since it's usually done less to have an oppressive elitist upper class, and more as an excuse to give Harry or some other character a ton of wish-fulfillment powers.

    Speaking of which, you could probably make some sort of commentary on the messy implications of stories that reveal that Hermoine is actually a secret pureblood/heir to a pureblood house and is actually more pureblooded than Malfoy and co. Given the whole Pureblood/Muggleborn thing is pretty clearly meant to remind us of racism, it'd be sort of like if they revealed a black character was actually white all along. Then again, considering the One Drop Rule makes people who are 7/8th white and 1/8 black still be black that would mean that ... okay, dropping the comparison before I go too far down that rabbit hole.
     
  2. Sorrows

    Sorrows Queen of the Flamingos Moderator

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    Theres a fair few baronets still around, on my first post I was because I misread what Taure wrote. I was speaking of hereditary Barons of which there are very few outside of courtesy titles and Scotland where they are tied to the land. To be honest of all the titles I think hereditary Barons are the most confusing. Its one of the oldest titles and one of the most fucked about with. I think I am wrong on this one though, I think its Scottish Barons that are not technically supposed to be styled Lords.

    Then again all Baronies were transferred from the feudal Barons to 'Baron by Writ' which required each hair to pay the crown a certain tax to retain the title from I think like the 12th century? By the 1660s they were pretty much done with the William the Conqueror style feudal Barons. Since I can't see the Malfoys paying taxes or petitioning the Crown post Statute of Secrecy for an update d title they probably lost the right to it long ago (though if they can prove a writ existed they could claim it under current British law.)



    I'm not entirely convinced that blood status is the main benchmark of elitism amoungst the wizarding families, it is for families like the Blacks and Malfoys and Gaunts, but we know their opinion largely because of their association with Voldemort who's blood war was the focus of the books. There may be just as many none pure families amoungst the upper classes of wizarding Britain.

    The Weasleys never seemed to get any benefit from it. The Sacred 28 was the inaccurate work of one wizard. Also for the to be truly 'pure' without a single muggle or muggleborn on halfblood relative a truly sunning amount on inbreeding would have to be occurring. If there are 10,000 UK wizards today then barring any massive population fluctuations that is a number that has steadily swelled over a thousand odd years. Logically muggleborns and halfbloods would be the fastest growing demographic as technology improved and more muggleborn's were born and survived childhood as the muggle population exploded. At the same time the population of 'purebloods' would shrink as people married non-purebloods rendering their children unsuitable.

    You get something called the 'founders effect' where a movement that survived many generations does not by its nature attract many new followers (think FLDS.) Thus over many generations of intermarriage everyone in the group is closely related several times over and genetic defects start to crop up with more an more regularity. Most groups studies have only been at it for a few hundred years at most. The Wizarding Purebloods have had a thousand years to intermarry an ever shrinking set of 'pure' families. Either they are all lying through there teeth about how pure they are, marrying foreigners or they have a basement full of deformed babies somewhere.

    Plot Bunny: The Malfoy's actually had 13 children, but only one fit to see the light of day. But now the Manor is breached and they are free, and hungry.....

    Ooh Plot Bunny two: It is a truth unacknowledged that pureblood's have large families but few children. The price of purity is paid in malformity. For each pure child has silent siblings, twisted misshapen wretches stunted in mind and magic. They are not fit to be acknowledged by polite society. So a custom was born, not to cast them out but to care for these lower creatures. Instead unnamed and unclothed they are bound to the household as servants...

    House Elves are only found in the British Isles.

    Hermione wished she had never found out why.

    (Dobby is Draco's secret brother.)
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2018
  3. apoc

    apoc The Once and Ginger King DLP Supporter

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    I believe the point was supposed to be that since Remus has to specify that there are no wizarding princes, he is sort of implicitly confirming/allowing for the existence of other nobility.

    Now, the logic pretty clearly doesn’t flow from that cause to the conclusion reached but I believe that’s what’s momo means.
     
  4. Shinysavage

    Shinysavage Madman With A Box ~ Prestige ~

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    @Sorrows, I would read the shit out of either (or both) of those stories.
     
  5. Chengar Qordath

    Chengar Qordath The Final Pony ~ Prestige ~

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    I think it's probably a matter of lying about how pure they are, or at least conveniently forgetting. The wizarding world doesn't seem to make a big deal over blood quantums, all you ever hear mention of is muggleborns and half-bloods. There's no mention of quarter-bloods, eight-bloods, and so on in canon (unless I'm forgetting that).

    That would seem to indicate that if a half-blood and pureblood hook up the resulting kids are considered pureblood, or at least close enough to pureblood that nobody but the most obsessed care about it.
     
  6. vlad

    vlad Banned ~ Prestige ~

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    What chengar said.

    My understanding is:

    muggle + muggle --> muggleborn (Hermione)
    muggle + half/pure --> halfblood (Snape, Lupin, Riddle, Dean(?)
    muggle + muggleborn and muggleborn + muggleborn --> presumably muggleborn, until at some point jumps to pureblood or at least nobody says anything
    half/pure + muggleborn --> halfblood (Harry)
    half/pure + half/pure --> pureblood, again with an increasingly smaller group demanding a more refined scale
    pure + pure --> pureblood

    One suspects it also depends on family name and status as well, though this is me making inferences than relying on evidence. Ron + Hermione's children may be considered honorary purebloods as Weasley's, in a way they might not if it were Ron Granger + Hermione Weasley (Tonks would be a good example of this, is there anything in canon as to what she is considered? Beyond the Blacks of course)
     
  7. Alindrome

    Alindrome A bigger, darker mark DLP Supporter Retired Staff

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    ...Jesus Christ. That makes so much sense.

    For the love of god, Sorrows, you need to write this story. :D
     
    Sey
  8. Koalas

    Koalas First Year ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Its always been firmly in my head that if both your parents and all your grandparents are magical you're a pureblood. If one of your parents or grandparents isn't magical you're a halfblood. And if neither of your parents are magical you're a muggleborn.

    I can't remember if that's from the books, Taure fanon or just some half forgotten story but it feels right.

    Edit: derp. Forgot ASP was a halfblood. Scratch out grandparents for greatgrandparents.
     
  9. vlad

    vlad Banned ~ Prestige ~

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    To answer the original point of this thread.

    If Lord Potter isn't possible then explain Dark Lord Potter Dot Net

    checkmate
     
  10. Lindsey

    Lindsey Chief Warlock DLP Supporter

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    My belief was if all your grandparents are purebloods, you are considered a pureblood.

    Harry's children wouldn't be considered a pureblood, because of Lily, but if any of his children had kids with a pureblood, their children would be.

    I always felt there needs to be another term in there, for those who have all magical grandparents, but they aren't 'technically' purebloods.

    However, going back to the original topic, my belief is that many wizards were part of nobility in the ancient days, but started fading after the rise of Christianity and Islam. Very few wizards remained nobility by the time the Statute of Secrecy was passed. My headcanon does have the Ottoman Empire being ran by Wizards (and kidnapping and molding young witches and wizards). It is a reason why they expanded so rapidly, and a huge reason why the Statute of Secrecy was put into place. The pass of that international law started the decline of the Ottomans.
     
  11. Arthellion

    Arthellion Lord of the Banned ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Question, do we know if deformities from inbreeding is even possible in wizards? It seems like magic could fix that...
     
  12. Selethe

    Selethe normalphobe

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    I'm not sure if purebloods largely are inbred anyway. The minimum population size to prevent inbreeding is ~160; we already get 28 families from the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but there are more which aren't included in the list, such as the Potters, Crabbes, Goyles, and some of the surnames on the Black Family Tree JKR drew. I'm guessing a lot of "respectable" families aren't on the list. And it's mentioned these families do have some members of questionable lineage but they just hide it.

    Vlad brings up a good point. I wonder what people with two muggleborn parents are called.
     
  13. Skeletaure

    Skeletaure Magical Core Enthusiast ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    There are two different meanings of "pure-blood".

    There's the technical definition, which JKR has stated to be grandparents.

    Then there's the political definition, i.e. the one used by Death Eaters and those like them, which is not having any Muggle ancestry at all. The latter is more about politics than actual ancestry, because in reality there would be no "pure-bloods" by this definition (except, perhaps, the Gaunts, who took inbreeding to the next level). To qualify as a pure-blood, therefore, you must gain acceptance of the group that uses this extreme definition, i.e. by aligning yourself with them politically and following their practices, which include obliterating any record of any familial connection to Muggles (see: the heavily redacted Black family tree). It's essentially a group delusion.

    The latter is why it's no big deal that Voldemort is actually a half-blood. The whole political faction is premised upon erasing the actual past and making up a fake past for your family.

    It's an important point, often missed in the fandom, that Dumbledore and the Order reject both these definitions, not just the latter one. Dumbledore's philosophy is not equality between "Pure-bloods" and "Muggleborns". His philosophy is to reject the entire classification system. He never refers to purity of blood without use of the phrase "so-called".

    Useful materials:

    1. https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/pure-blood

    2. https://web.archive.org/web/2009021...owling.com:80/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=100

    3. https://web.archive.org/web/2009022...rowling.com:80/textonly/en/faq_view.cfm?id=58

     
    Last edited: May 31, 2018
  14. TheWiseTomato

    TheWiseTomato Prestigious Tomato ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    JKR said in a WoG that the purebloods determined who was pure or not in the same way that the Nazis determined if someone was a Jew or not. I'm pretty sure it came down to having four half or pure blooded grandparents. Having said that, I can't remember where I found that WoG and I don't care enough to go looking.
     
  15. vlad

    vlad Banned ~ Prestige ~

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    "Scientifically," aren't they all effectively a distinct human subspecies or w/e, as muggleborns according to Rowling are actually drscended from squibs.

    If so, the real difference is magicals-muggles, and muggle-born is not just a political distinction but an inaccurate one.

    God, I hate extended verse canon. It is - foregive me for saying so - bad.
     
  16. Arthellion

    Arthellion Lord of the Banned ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Yes and no.

    The extended verse is good in that it accomplishes it’s purpose of alluding to a world hidden beneath our own. It sets the scene for Harry’s adventures.

    But it’ was not meant to be the creation of a world and lore a la Middle Earth.

    Tolkien set out to create a world. Rowling set out to create a story.

    I think they both succeeded.
     
  17. Chengar Qordath

    Chengar Qordath The Final Pony ~ Prestige ~

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    Rowling's a lot better at coming up with fun and creative ideas than she is at maintaining the sort of internal consistency and logic needed for robust worldbuilding.
     
  18. arkkitehti

    arkkitehti High Inquisitor

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    Which is why I find it absurd when people here go on about how some things are "canonically impossible".

    Anything in possible, the only real test is whether it makes for good storytelling or not.
     
  19. TheWiseTomato

    TheWiseTomato Prestigious Tomato ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    The thread title was changed from 'Possible' to 'Impossible' as a piss take.
     
  20. Sataniel

    Sataniel High Inquisitor

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    So most are lying through their teeth, though a bunch of crazies tries to actually execute that.

    EDIT: Ups, haven't noticed the whole second page.
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2018
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