#surprise! it's the class system!

[saintsenara]

Hi saintsenara, I’d like to know your thoughts on the Trace etc because you always seem to have a a really lucid and informed perspective of, well, everything

I never liked how the Ministry and Hogwarts are able to automatically and infallibly detect muggleborns. I feel like the ramifications of that aren’t properly dealt with but I also think that it’d be more interesting and plausible if muggleborns had to be looked for.

I also feel like the Trace is dealt with very strangely. When is that integrated? Is it just automatic for muggleborn students or would the school’s representative (ie. Dumbledore for Tom and McGonagall for Hermione ) place it? If they can place these restrictions on children remotely then why couldn’t they for, say, Death Eaters or Sirius Black? It doesn’t make sense to me that there is anything about the Trace that would make it only applicable to underage wizards and witches. If they need to do something to the children to place the Trace then why can’t they do that with all Azkaban inmates as a preventative measure? Is it simply too outrageous to do that to adult wizards? Is the Trace too easily broken? If the Trace is easily breakable then the Order would’ve broken it for Harry in Deathly Hallows, wouldn’t they?

The lack of thought enrages me!

the thing which has to be borne in mind with the trace is that its narrative purpose is primarily as a coming-of-age experience - it's the threshold which wizarding teenagers need to cross to become legal adults.

and not only this, it's primarily an allusion to the real life coming-of-age experience which defines [or, certainly, which defined in the 2000s, gen z are famously more abstemious] british and irish teenage life...

becoming old enough to legally drink.

when i was a teenager, eighteenth birthdays were a big deal precisely because of the opportunities they afforded to get legally boozed. i was in the supermarket at 10am on mine, passport in hand, buying a disgusting bottle of own brand vodka [which i don't think i or any of my friends ever touched] just because i could.

but the word "legally" is important in this context. because, while the legal drinking age in the uk and ireland is eighteen... that doesn't mean that most teenagers wait until then for their first sip. and nobody - adults in positions of authority such as police, teachers, social workers, doctors etc. included - thinks they do.

and that's because the law is actually more ambiguous than it seems. in the uk, it's legal for children as young as five to drink alcohol in a private residence [!]. in england, scotland, and wales [but not northern ireland], sixteen year olds can legally drink some types of alcohol in licensed premises as long as they're eating a meal.

as a result, the legal penalties for underage drinking are basically non-existent [for the drinker, that is; they can be reasonably hefty for anyone caught selling to under 18s]... if there's nothing else in play which might attract the state's attention.

or: i went to a house party at a friend's when i was fifteen, drank a bottle of rose, broke up with my boyfriend, and ended up sobbing in her garden at the top of my lungs about how men are dogs at 2am, and was then sick.

this friend and i were both white, grammar-school-educated, generally-perceived-as-sensible teenage girls, whose families were well-known and well-liked. the neighbours, seeing me having an absolute flop of a night, could say "ah, the folly of youth, we were all young once, the lasses are in high spirits etc. etc."

but without the protection afforded by social acceptability, maybe they'd have interpreted the situation very differently, and called the police or contacted social services about my friend's mam letting us drink there, or so on.

the trace functions in the same way. the actual law on underage magic - that it's totally illegal - is obviously nonsense. we know in canon that children in wizarding households can use magic before they're seventeen, because - as dumbledore says - the ministry is happy to trust their parents to regulate them doing so.

that is, in families which have the standing afforded by conformity to social convention [especially in living separately from muggles], underage magic can be seen as all a bit of a laugh.

but muggleborns are viewed in the eyes of the state as risks, until they reach adulthood and - in all the cases we meet in canon - remove themselves from the world of their birth entirely. the ministry's main aim - the thing it's preoccupied with - is preventing muggles from learning that magic exists. therefore, anyone magical who lives in a muggle household is subject to much more surveillance than those who don't.

[if the weasley twins do magic in the burrow's garden, who cares? if harry does it in the middle of little whinging, countless muggles might see!]

when it comes to how muggleborns are detected, i actually quite like the extra-canonical information jkr has given about the quill of acceptance and the book of admittance [which is on pottermore]. where i don't agree with it is that i don't think all muggleborns are admitted to hogwarts.

i've said a few times - and, for my askbox girlies, i will write the longer meta on this, i promise - that i think hogwarts applies some form of selection process, which explains why the class-status of the intake [including the muggleborn students we meet in canon] is near-uniform.

as a result, i think that muggleborn students are looked for - they're observed and vetted to make sure they'll fit in at hogwarts - and the interview they have with the deputy head is the final stage in that process.

when they're accepted to hogwarts [or when they actually start at the school, to give hermione the summer of trying spells she mentions in philosopher's stone] i think it's fair to imagine that the trace comes into effect, but that it's only ever going to cause alarm at the ministry if it's broken when students - of any background - are in muggle areas.

which means very little for wizard-raised students - who can do magic at home whenever they want - but restricts the freedom of muggleborn ones.

when it comes to restricting adult magic... we know - because sirius mentions it in prisoner of azkaban - that inmates are deprived of their wands. jkr has retconned how possible magic is without a wand in her post-series writing, but the evidence of canon is that all but the most basic, unsophisticated magic is impossible without one.

losing access to a wand - and, therefore, losing access to magic - is how the state restricts adults' use of magic [which is what happens to hagrid when he acquires his criminal record for manslaughter]. and this is actually a more strictly enforceable and much harsher punishment - it's basically the permanent deprivation of the wizarding world's fundamental marker of liberty - than the trace, which, while it is enshrined in law, basically amounts to nothing more than a fairly loosely-enforced social barrier between childhood and adulthood for 90% of the population.

[bookwyrminspiration]

i cannot emphasize enough how much my entire academic situation is currently hinging on receiving an email from one (1) person

[corvus-frugilegus]

Man it really just hit me that if the Shadow Dragons existed in a modern our world city just how fast the magisterium and mass media would be out there propagandizing and pushing the narrative that the Shadows are dangerous terrorists who want to overthrow the state (and probably speculate that they intend to implement all kinds of terrible reforms that threaten only the powerful should they succeed). The plight of the resistance.

No doubt the Magisterium on the whole and the Venatori ARE pushing a narrative like that across Tevinter. Probably what your Average Antivan or Nevarran knows about the Shadows IS the propaganda. (Dangerous, Looking to impose their own views on the People of Tevinter by force).

Part of the struggle for Resistance Fighters IS how consolidated and interconnected systems of power are and what that means for how people understand them. Even the Shadows Allies like Dorian or Legatus Mercar aren't doing so openly. The Shadows are dangerous to be affiliated with. The heat Rook takes on the Nesus job probably got them branded the lore appropriate equivalent of domestic terrorist. There is undoubtedly a price on Rook's head in Minrathous. The stakes for any Shadow in getting identified are Very High.

I think if we really saw much of Minrathous outside Dock Town the reaction to the Shadow Dragons would be very different. Rook would probably be very on edge about being recognized.

Rook is infact probably very politically inconvenient for the Mercar family, even if the Mercar's agree with them entirely because of how much resisting oppression from within a system of power is a game of optics.

[funnierasafictive]

My irl friends (we’re not out as a system to them) like to joke about me being my source because I look so much like it…. Sometimes they’ll just call me by my actual name and not the body’s name as a joke and I’ll just freeze like “HOW DID YOU KNOW-

Oh that reminds me of how our hair in real life looks very similar to Simon Petrikov’s! It makes cosplaying him easier, haha. =)

[faaun]

critical thinking is taught in literature and/or philosophy classes you're just usamerican

king i think you might be the one lacking reading comprehension skills i'm a philosophy undergrad, i was raised in iran, i live in the UK where we ARE taught to think critically, have never once been to the usa, and i'm talking from my own perspective as an asian person combined w that of all my peers from diff asian countries who all have had the same experience/perspective on this . if you read the tags on that post i say clearly that i'm iranian :)

[doccywhomst]

.

[contraspem--spero]

Listen I'm about anti-natalist as you can possibly get but like if you'd learn pedagogics and it's history and realise how much of it was invented by Men maybe you'd understand a lot about why our education system is the way it is

[transingthoseformers]

So I've been reading this fic for four days, right? And it's roughly 268k?

That's around 67,000 words a day, not even counting how many other much smaller fics I've been reading all of this time.

I must make every literature oriented teacher so proud yet aghast

[punksonic]

i don't think it's appropriate for me to really speak much as to the current shortages of adderall and other medications associated with treating adhd but i feel like i should.

yes these medications are abused, but no one wants to look into why someone who doesn't have adhd would take it. why do you think some supposedly neurotypical college student elbows another who has adderall and asks for some to study for an exam worth half their grade?

the DEA is out of touch with american society to the point it still thinks marijuana is a C1 drug but doesn't want to declassify it to C2 so that the process can be overseen so people don't get their marijuana accidentally laced with something else. you'd sooner prescribe someone a blood thinner than a medication that would actually help them focus, but i guess that's not up to me.

it's ridiculous. maintenance medications shouldn't be held to this degree of scrutiny.

[saintsenara]

Hi I have a class question! Is there a significant difference between The Weasleys and Mundungus when it comes to class? Molly seems to have a negative opinion of him that feels partially class based (along with the whole irresponsible leaving Harry thing).

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

the weasleys' class-background is actually one of my personal favourite examples of a culturally-specific thing in the series which i imagine goes over the head of many non-british and non-irish readers...

they are members of the wizarding upper classes.

this is because - while financial circumstances are relevant when it comes to how class groups are delineated - they're not everything. aspects of class performance such as educational background, social circles, naming conventions, language use and accent, and familiarity with social convention and cultural reference points all play as much of a role in marking out somebody's class than their finances do - and, in britain, i think it's arguable often play more of a role in doing so.

in terms of all of these things, the weasleys [and the prewetts] are meaningfully no different from the blacks and the malfoys, hence ron being the narrative mirror of draco malfoy and arthur being the narrative mirror of lucius, and hence sirius stating in order of the phoenix that he, molly, and arthur are all related.

they represent archetypes found in lots of british children's literature [think the mortmains in i capture the castle or the fossils in ballet shoes] - families which are, in terms of the non-financial aspects of class, part of the elite, but whose financial circumstances don't match up at all to their social ones.

mundungus - in contrast - is straightforwardly working-class. you can tell because of his accent, his crude nickname ["dung"], his lack of "polite" behaviours, the fact that he's impulsive and led by his base appetites, the fact that he's a criminal - but not a sophisticated one, the fact that he exists outside the social ties which bind the rest of the order, the fact that he almost certainly didn't go to hogwarts, and the fact that every aspect of his physical description makes him sound like a dickensian caricature.

molly's dislike of him is therefore enormously connected to social class - not least because she's the weasley [along with percy] who seems to agree with the wizarding class system the most.

[hence why her narrative mirror... is the ultra-conventional narcissa.]

[belltherad]

yes the point of english in US schools is a media literacy class but also the content and quality of education in the US not only varies from school district to school district but from level to level (e.g. AP/IB/honors kids getting more respect and funding and quality education from teachers and schools)

[seronefada]

"Were very sorry sir. The children thought your people were from the government."

A small DP/DC promp

Casper high is on a field trip in Gotham.

Danny is in the team with Tucker, Kwan and Dash as most of the time.

They have a picture hunt around Gotham.

After a while they notice strange people in white following them. White jackets, black ties.

As Amity park kids the of course thought, these were GIW agents they don't know.

Everybody knows Danny is having to much ecto in his system. They sometimes see his eyes change color. No surprise if you think of the Fenton Parents lap safety.

So as the people get closer and one of them grabs Danny's arm. Dash hits him before they can speak.

They got in a big fight.

Penguin gets called cause his Goons are fighting a school class.

Things calm down quick as Oswald came. The Teacher told them to stop.

As he was talking to Mr. Lancer the Teacher said:" The children are very sorry. They thought your Henchpeople were part of the Government."

Penguins Goons are also very sorry:" We thought it was a Wayne kid."

Penguin has also some Questions in his head like: why would high school kids get into a fist fight with the Government?

And why did the Teacher think that was a reasonable explanation?

[tornadodyke]

you can tell that my college's engineering building is aged because the bottom floors don't have women's restrooms. there's a women's restroom on the ground floor but not the bottom floors. or if there is a women's restroom it's so well-hidden it may as well not even exist

[so2uv]

i hate sinus infections

[somuchstrdst]

i think i just caught a colleague doing something wrong with a class i assigned him a couple of hours ago just so he could avoid teaching it and i'm shooketh with his audacity but i don't want to rat him out because the class will go back to me but really i'm completely baffled that he did it

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC Danny Is A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

(not in a necessarily bad way and it's by Clockwork's design)

Bats, or Constantine, or the JL, or whoever you want to be close to Danny in this prompt, don't notice it right away. It takes them a while to figure out its not purely coincidence. And even after they do figure it out, they still have their doubts.

The thing is, it doesn't work all the time. It also doesn't seem to have a system or a schedule to it, nor is it any kind of a superpower, as far as they can understand. By God, does Danny have way too many superpowers, but most of them are consistent, and yet this one... is weird. Weirder than anything they've seen before, and they've seen a lot, okay.

It also only works if Danny does it without thinking.

"You know what'd be perfect right now? A cheese sandwich," Danny says over the comms, in the middle of the fight with Dr. Freeze, "A warm, grilled cheese sandwich just out of the toas- Owch, what?" There's a pause. And then, "Guys, you're not gonna believe it, a cheese sandwich just smacked me in the face! I think someone threw it out of the window or something!" Danny sounds bewildered, but excited, and there's a sound of chewing from his comm now. At least he is eating, so that's good.

"I fucking hate robots," he grumbles the other day, punching his way through the Brainiac invasion in Metropolis, with no comm and only for the Supes to overhear, "No, correction, I hate only evil robots. The ones that interrupt my astronomy class. The ones that shoot motherfucking lasers and walk like crabs, and ruin a perfect day, and- I wish- aw, fuck, no, that's bad wording. Don't wish for shit. But if all these robots would just suddenly, miraculously malfunction and stop attacking me and the whole city, that would be, like, real nice of them."

A few minutes later, something goes wrong with the Brainiac's control over the army of robots, and all of them just stop moving and fall down at once. It is deemed as a chance, a lucky shot, a coincidence. Supes keeps quiet over what he heard Danny say.

"Oh, you bitch-ass fruitloop, you know what I want?" Danny yells at Plasmius, as the ghost is laughing like a madman, "I want a fucking brick to fall down right on your head, like, right now! Maybe that can set your brains straight for at least five minutes!" And even before he is finished talking, there's something falling down from the sky and hitting Plasmius's head. It's not a brick, to be exact, it's Miss Martian's shoe, though. She has no idea how it even came undone and fell from her foot. But it did somehow knock Plasmius out cold, so there's that.

It doesn't happen all the time. Red Robin does the math - the improbable accidents only happen in about 26% of the situations, given that Danny says something. It's by no means a reliable power. It also doesn't happen only during the fights: there were numerous times when Danny just said something like 'I wonder if the cafeteria serves garlic bread today' and sure enough, there's garlic bread there. Even if it was not on the menu. Ever.

They try to question Danny himself, but he has no idea. He doesn't even notice the coincidences most of the times - which is not surprising, knowing that they only happen in one out of four situations and Danny is known to have a short attention span. So, after a few unsuccessful investigations and failed attempts at calculating how this even works, they all give up. It has never jinxed anything, as far as they know, so everyone just leaves it be.

Danny is just magically lucky like that.

Meanwhile, Clockwork is having a good laugh about it. Danny's suggestions amuse him, and it's funny to watch the other superheroes having a mental breakdown over it, so he rigs the timeline from time to time. Just a little.