Let's Read Tales of Beedle The Bard Part Two: The Fountain of Fair Fortune

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

*sighs*

I kind of don't want to review this.

I know it's basically my duty, but...seriously, what's the point? I mean...something about this story...

You know, screw it; might as well.

*Insert Lock and Load Montage Here, mostly regarding putting on Kyoshi Warrior Gear*

All right...bring it on, Rowling. I'm ready. >:)



Summary of Story: There's an enchanted fortune that can make all your dreams come true. Three women travel with a knight to the fountain. Second woman uses the fountain to her advantage in healing/marrying off her companions, respectively, and collecting money in the process (because she...kind of needs the money). Turns out that the fountain wasn't magical at all -- it was in the travelers' hearts all along. What a twist. /Shyamalan reference.

(Seriously, moral of Dumbo with the magic feather -- you're doing it wrong. :P)


Dumbledore's Commentary: We get a little more backstory on the Board of Governors banishing Dumbles from Hogwarts -- okay, not quite. Although we do learn why Lucius Malfoy wanted Dumbledore off the post of Headmaster: he was (gasp) pro-Muggle!

Lucius Malfoy's Letter to Dumbledore (my comments in bold):

"Any work of fiction or nonfiction that depicts interbreeding ( don't you love the way how he describes Muggles like animals? Nothing like a great strawman argument to start off your day. /sarcasm mode ) between wizards and Mugges should be banned from the bookshelves at Hogwarts. I do not wish my son to be influenced into sullying the purity of his bloodline by reading stories that promote wizard-Muggle marriage." ( Well, nice to know that Malfoy cares about his son -- weird as it may be. :P )

...

Well, I've heard of worse reasons why books were banned. :P (Seriously Dumbles, what are you, new?)


But wait! There's more! :D

Dumbledore's reply (brace yourselves, guys):

"So-called pureblood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing, or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students' store of knowledge."



...

*Sighs*

Well, Jerkass Has A Point, I guess -- but regarding the "pureblood demonization" thing...yeah, Dumbles, BRB, mopping up the blood that shot out my nose.


And wait! There's more!


"This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favorite Death Eater." (I Swear To God I Am Not Making This Up)


...

I'd like to quote the lovely Nash Bozard on this from "This Is All Your Fault (Yet Again)", because my own commentary's failing me:

"Quite often, I've used the phrase 'making the baby Jesus cry'. But by the tenance of your own faith you have quite literally made the baby Jesus cry! I think he's on his third box of Kleenex right now. This is a level of hypocrisy so massive, we don't have a weight measurement for it. There are no words that can sum up all the f-k loads of awful this is, because *no such word exists*! I'd propose the word 'dickzillion', but I doubt even *that* sums it up. To sum it up, F--K YOU!"


Yeah, I probably overreacted there. Sorry. *Sighs* But considering Dumbledore's own treatment of Muggles...let's say that anecdote about Malfoy fails on so many levels.


Thoughts: Still pretty generic, methinks. It's really Dumbledore's commentary that catapults it into the Axis of Awful. :P


Dumbles Rage-O-Meter: Eleven. Yeah...it pretty much broke the Rage-O-Meter. *Makes note to fix it*

And it's over. Whew. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to play some KOTOR II to cleanse my mind...

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

The fountain's lack of magic for terribly ill people bothered me. I'm fine with a technically pointless quest that builds character, helps you get over a broken heart, whatever. But how many years did some poor person with a fatal illness get to the fountain and still die? Unless there really is magic putting just the right herbs there every time, which as you point out undermines the "it wasn't magic" point.

Also, Muggle fairy tales didn't have only helpless damsels! Often they got disempowered in later retellings. Case in point: one version of Little Red Riding Hood had her grandmother whipping out her sewing kit while they were inside the wolf, cutting their way out with sewing scissors, and then stitching him back up with rocks in his stomach so he would drown when he went for a drink of water. We just know the version in which a random friendly woodcutter rescues the poor helpless women better. (Other versions have them just getting eaten, sometimes with cannibalism and a strip tease, so there's a version for every preference.)

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, the earliest version of "Red Riding Hood" that I know of features Red Riding Hood stripping for the wolf, making an excuse to leave, and cutting off the trail of string that he tells her to tie around herself so that he'll know where she is, so that she actually gets away. Ironically, even though it dates from medieval times, it has the most proactive (and sexually provocative) Red Riding Hood. Not to mention the fact that in that story, it's the washerwomen who kill the wolf by drowning him in the river.

And yes, I know that not all Muggle fairytales have helpless damsels, but it's common for them to feature passive women, which I think is what JKR was getting at.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Never heard of that version of Little Red Riding Hood. That's awesome! :D

Seriously, though, we shouldn't worry about it too much. It's just JKR putting down infinitely better stories just to make hers look good. (IMHO)

[sunnyskywalker]

True. But she's hardly making up for that with the woman in this story, that's for sure.

[sunnyskywalker]

The one falling into marriage, I mean. (Not that the knight is any better, granted.) And the woman in "The Warlock's Hairy Heart" is about as passive as it gets.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

*This*, forever! :D