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

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

The mega-huge injections of Dumbledore whimsy truly do serve to give us the impression that he was ... 'above' it all, don't they? Intellectually, theoretically, generally in favour of Muggles, but not putting himself out too much to pursue Voldemort. Avoiding positions of direct responsibility, insisting that 16 years be spent in allowing Harry to 'test his strength' for no real reason, making huge mistakes, abrogating any duty of care in protecting his students, and running a one-man war machine as something of a joke with no actual rigour or realistic procedures in place. His flippant attitude here just serves to reinforce his overall detachment from the hardship of those who suffered outside Hogwarts.

Arrgh. As you say, it's a high 'Dumbles Rage-O-Meter' score.

There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles --

Easy for Dumbledore/Rowling to say ... and awfully convenient too. Frankly, if the pureblood movement was as strong as we're supposed to believe, then this isn't really very likely.

And if it is ... then it makes the tensions which underpin the whole series a bit of a joke. Just publish the family trees of the top pureblood families in the Daily Prophet and bang, Voldemort loses most of his death eaters?

(Of course, Dumbledore - who knew all about Riddle's ancestry, albeit only disclosing this after Harry found it out separately - could have simply broadcast the fact that the Dark Lord was a half-blood. But no ... he never, ever, did. Pfah!)

The Guants would have been proof that Dumbledore was wrong, but the last of them died around 1940 I guess.

Is it Ron who says that most/all of the pureblood families have mingled with muggles? I guess that's canon, regardless of what I think as to its likelihood.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point, brad. :)

I'm mostly thinking that Dumbledore didn't do it because he wanted to prolong the war as long as possible to suit his own ends. (You know, kind of like Palpatine. :P) Which could have been cool if Rowling had actually explored it. Problem is, she didn't, so...she pretty much wasted a perfectly good plot. :/

[lissa2.livejournal.com]

Why are you locking your "Tales of Beedle The Bard" recaps? if you don't mind me asking.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Good point. I'll definitely try and make them public. :)

[sunnyskywalker]

It's plausible, I suppose, if you assume it doesn't happen very often. Much easier to hush up that incident back in 1734 and invent a spurious connection between the Muggleborn and some minor magical family if there's no one living to contradict it, and anyway it won't be the topic of conversation very often.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Maybe. :)

[sunnyskywalker]

If McGonagall or pretty much anyone else had written that note about refusing to participate in a cover-up because some people don't want their kids to know the truth about their families/the world, it might be pretty cool. But since when has Dumbledore been about the free exchange of information? He didn't even tell Harry how to destroy Horcruxes after giving him the mission to do exactly that!

And that's the least of it.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

*This*. :)

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

As much as it's nice for Dumbledore to go with the we're not racist bigot like the Malfoys are and we accept everyone into our Order of the Phoenix, it smells like skunk to me.

The fact that they mindwipe muggles and separate themselves purposefully from muggles and do everything they can to keep themselves secret from muggles; and I'll repeat again that includes the good guys mind wipe muggles.

I'd have to say Dumbledore is just as much a jerkass as Malfoy.

If Malfoy thinks of muggles as animals that magical people shouldn't breed with then people like Dumbledore and the 'good guys' tend to think of the muggles like retarded children or...dumb puppies.

They both suck.

[oryx_leucoryx]

OK, so Albus tells us *all* pureblood families have Muggles somewhere they don't mention? So even before Molly's accountant cousin there were Muggles among the Weasleys and Prewetts? And among the Potters? But nobody remembers those relatives or their contribution to the family heritage? So how are the good guys different from the bad guys?

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly, where are their muggle families.

There is a lot of nonsense going on with the magical world. On one had they're keeping themselves secret, but on another they're going out and 'breeding' with the outside population they're hiding from.

Yet they're supposed to be in secret from muggles, yet they're allowing these muggleborn children in.

In a way, it sounds like when a child born to muggle parents is found - they sort of in a way 'kidnap' that child.

Hell, look at Hermione. The Weasley's practically adopt her. Now, most women are a little...funny over who they're son dates. We even see that with one of Molly's sons. Yet with Hermione, it's like oddly accepted and I don't remember Molly making any kind of fuss about Hermione always hanging around or being at her house.

And in a house full of growing boys I find it a little odd that Hermione is basicly pulled into the weasley household.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I find anything wrong with Hermione being friends with Harry/Ron or the Weasley family.

But, there is this context going on in the background. If I didn't know better I'd almost say Molly and Aurther claimed Hermione so easily because they wanted the potential to bring new blood into their family.

Does that make sense? I know it's kinda weird to think about...but how can the Weasley's be pureblood if they've got muggle in their background? Unless it's that these so called 'good' purebloods are only mingling with muggleborns.

I don't know the whole Weasley - Hermione situation comes across as a bit weird. And we've all made comments about how she practically abandons her parents for the Weasley family.

If I were really thinking bad thoughts about Molly and Aurther I'd almost say they adopted her so easily because they wanted her for one of their sons.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

If the Statute of Secrecy had been imposed earlier than it was, I'd be convinced that the forced assimilation of Muggle-borns inspired the legends of fairies stealing children.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

This is a fairly decent story, but there are just two things that bug me.

1) One of the witches (Amata, I think) and the knight immediately decide to get married right after they all find the fountain, after knowing each other for less than a day. I know that it's a fairytale and that "love at first sight" is a typical fairytale convention, but JKR stated in the introduction that the women in Beedle's stories tend to be more proactive than the passive, damsels in distress of Muggle fairytales. So...why is the woman here hooking up with a guy that she barely knows, just like a lot of women in regular fairytales?

2) Yes, the fountain wasn't magical after all. Which is fine for our heroes, but not so great for people who are terribly ill (like one of the witches was) or have other problems that are not so easily solved. To give one example, courage and perseverance alone don't make cancer go away. Besides, did the magical herbs that one of the witches found just happen to be there or were they magically put there because the place/fountain recognized that one of the witches needed them? If so, then magic was involved. If not, then it was pure luck! What if the herbs weren't there? Then the terminally ill witch would have probably died.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

*This*, just this! :D

Seriously, JKR's Take That at Muggle fairytales just to make her own look good -- and failing at feminism anyway -- was just...epic fail, IMHO. Maybe she thought it was heartwarming?

In all honesty, I'd say the second woman was probably the pluckiest, if only because she was basically the mover and shaker of the group. But considering she's mostly doing it for money...probably doesn't say much. YMMV. :/

(Sorry if I sounded ranty, BTW. :)

[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.

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

It makes a lot of sense to me.
The way Hermione was adsorbed is bothersome. It's like Molly decided she'll do for one of her sons and started training/assimilating her from the start.
I'll always remember how in the Goblet of fire after reading Rita's writing about Hermione's love life Molly gets cold and unfriendly.
It's especially strange when at the beginning of the book Molly dislikes Rita and the things she wrote about Arthur. :(
So why is she trusting Rita about Hermione?
Is it because Hermione is (allegedly) toying with two boys (one of them Harry who is already seen as Molly's son-in-law) or because she is looking at the non-Weasley boys?

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

Isn't it strange that Albus "Champion of Muggles" Dumbledore never mentioned that his mother was muggleborn and that his maternal grandparents are Muggles?
If JKR couldn't have put that anywhere else she could have had DD tell Harry how similar(pureblood father, brilliant muggleborn mother) they are.

And we don't see the accountant cousin mentioned more then once. To show how "noble" the Weasleys are JKR could have the "accountant cousin" at the Bill's weeding.

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

*This*, forever! :D

[ladyhadhafang.livejournal.com]

Maybe the accountant was busy...doing things accountants do? Maybe the Weasleys called and asked if she could show up, but she said, "I'd love to, but I'm pretty swamped."

That, or JKR is insufferably lazy. :P (YMMV)

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

1) One of the witches (Amata, I think) and the knight immediately decide to get married right after they all find the fountain, after knowing each other for less than a day. I know that it's a fairytale and that "love at first sight" is a typical fairytale convention, but JKR stated in the introduction that the women in Beedle's stories tend to be more proactive than the passive, damsels in distress of Muggle fairytales. So...why is the woman here hooking up with a guy that she barely knows, just like a lot of women in regular fairytales?

LOL! Maybe she meant different. But the 'different' when different means the EXACT SAME THING.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

I had almost forgot about Molly acting bitchy over that Rita stuff. Wow, that almost makes it looks like Hermione wasn't following Molly's future dreams of interbreeding one of her sons with a muggleborn =p