#surprise! it's the class system!

[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.]

[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.

[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 :)

[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. =)

[princessithaca]

*inhales* i must not pay attention to whatever shit that youtube therapy guy is now saying about jess on his channel. paying attention to an adult man who calls himself 'jono' is the mind killer.

[inniave]

it's so wack to see therapy, an incredibly policed & harmful system, be elevated to peak self-improvement/actualization

[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

[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]

wait how bougie was Tom Riddle Sr.? How nice would his Manor have been? Was he like an actually Lord with a title and stuff?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

in half-blood prince, dumbledore refers to tom riddle sr. as "the squire's son" - which allows us to state with certainty that he was a minor aristocrat.

however, the word minor is important here.

there are - historically - two levels of aristocracy in britain. the first are the peers of the realm - which refers to families which hold one or more of the titles of duke, marquess, earl, or viscount. these are the elite of the elite - these gradations of nobility were created in the middle ages as a way of distinguishing those who held the titles from other noblemen, usually because of a close relationship [often one of blood or marriage or both] to the king.

the titles are hereditary by male primogeniture, and the holders - while this is no longer the case - used to have political power [such as the right to sit in the house of lords], simply by virtue of their birth.

[this is why they're called "peers" - it refers to them historically being close in status to royalty, and therefore expected to serve as royal advisors.]

there is another class of peer - a baronet - whose title is similarly hereditary, but whose position doesn't come historically with the right to sit in the lords or advise the king by virtue of birth. [baronets may - of course - have been members of parliament, or royal advisors selected at the king's discretion, but this would be separate from their title. a duke, in contrast, could historically expect to request a meeting with the king simply because he was a duke.]

while some families have historically been ennobled at the king's discretion, access to any of these titles is pretty much restricted to the small group of families who've held them for centuries.

but below the peers of the realm, there is a second, more minor class of aristocracy, the landed gentry - of which a village squire is a textbook example.

historically, what is meant by "landed" is an ability to live off of the rental income of one's country holdings, which would be leased to tenant farmers. that is, they are landlords in the original sense of the term - lords of the land. this is what tom sr. tells us his family does in half-blood prince:

“It’s not ours,” said a young man’s voice. “Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt, and his children. The son’s quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village - ”

what is also meant by "landed" is that the family in question is of the upper-classes, but that they are still "commoners" - which in this context doesn't imply a value judgement, but which is a socio-legal term which simply indicates that they don't hold an aristocratic title such as duke, earl etc.

[and gentry families certainly aren't common in terms of financial standing... the most famous member of this class in literature? fitzwilliam darcy, whose ten thousand a year is something like thirteen million quid in today's money...]

gentry families might be very old - they might have received their lands from the king in the middle ages as a reward for knightly service, and it's interesting to imagine generations of gaunts and riddles brought up alongside each other in little hangleton - or they might be comparatively newer - tom sr.'s great-grandfather [feasibly born c.1810] could have been a self-made victorian industrialist who bought the lands from the original holder and established himself as gentry.

by 1900, it was becoming much harder for the gentry to live on rental income alone, and many would also have had jobs. these would have been elite, and very frequently were in politics, the civil service, the military, or the law. tom sr's father - whom the films call thomas, so let's go with that - might, for example, have served as a high-ranking officer in the army [including during the first world war], be the local magistrate, or be the local member of parliament.

in terms of titles, thomas riddle would almost undoubtedly be sir thomas - and this is how it would be correct to address him. but this title would be a courtesy, and it wouldn't be hereditary unless the riddles were also baronets [which it's entirely plausible that they were].

which is to say, tom sr. would not have a title while his father was alive - although he would have the right to be referred to formally in writing as mr thomas riddle esq. [esquire]. the correct form of verbal address for anyone other than friends and family would be to call him mr riddle, although the riddles' servants would probably refer to him as mister tom.

tom jr. would not have a title while his father or grandfather was alive. if the riddles were baronets, he would technically inherit the title after he kills the rest of the male line... but given that tom sr. never acknowledged him and his existence was presumably unknown to the riddles' lawyers this wouldn't be something which happened in reality. the estate's executors clearly took control of the riddles' property, the land was portioned off and sold, and the house became a standalone property for sale.

the riddle house - which is a name used informally for it in little hangleton, it would have a different "proper" name - is described in canon in ways which show that it's a typical manor house, which means it would look something like this:

these houses are obviously very impressive, but they're tiny in size in comparison to the magnificent stately homes - places like blenheim palace, chatsworth, burghley house, holkham hall - lived in by the titled aristocracy. the riddles would entertain - for example - by giving house parties, dinner parties, hunting parties, etc., but they wouldn't have a ballroom or a dining hall capable of seating hundreds.

[they would probably also own a property - probably a flat or small house - in london.]

they would have servants, but not colossal numbers - they would undoubtedly have a butler but not footmen, and the upstairs maids would report to the butler since they probably wouldn't have a housekeeper. they canonically have a cook, who probably had one or two kitchen maids assisting, and they canonically have a gardener - frank bryce - who probably doesn't have any assistants. they may, depending on the size of the estate, have a gamekeeper. sir thomas undoubtedly had a secretary and a chauffeur, and his wife might have a lady's maid. tom sr. would have had a nanny and then been educated until at least the age of eight by a governess, but would then have attended a prep school [either day or boarding] until the age of thirteen, and then gone to a boarding school, from which he likely went on [on the basis of social class rather than talent] to oxford or cambridge.

the family would have enormous social influence locally. most people - and also businesses - in little hangleton would be their tenants, and they would also probably have a say over the appointment of the local clergyman [an important figure in the community in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries], since the parish church is likely to have been something called a "living" - the thing which turns up again and again in jane austen - which means that the church and its parsonage technically belongs to the landowner, but is granted to the vicar as a freehold while he's in post.

gossip about the riddles' doings would also be the main source of local interest - the servants were dining out for months on tom sr.'s elopement and return.

so they're something resembling celebrities - but they're local celebrities. nobody in london - and even nobody in cities we can imagine are nearer to little hangleton, such as liverpool - would particularly know or care who they were. tom sr. might have made it into the london gossip columns if he was part of a particularly scandalous "set" [a group of friends] who socialised in the capital, but these mentions would have been fleeting - and the press would have been much more concerned by the doings of members of his set who were genuinely titled or who were legitimately famous.

[this is the reason why mrs cole doesn't recognise the name. if merope had said her son was to be named cecil beaton after his father, she may well have been prompted to hunt him down...]

so tom sr. is elite - but he's elite in a way which is extremely culturally-specific, and which is [just like the portrayal of aristocracy in the wizarding world - the blacks, for example, are far less aristocratic than the riddles in terms of canonical vibe] often exaggerated into the sort of pseudo-royal grand aristocracy which the british period-drama-industrial-complex makes such a big deal of.

and tom jr.'s character is affected by this in a series of extremely interesting ways.

by which i mean that, in terms of blood, he's probably the most aristocratic character in the series - the absence of grand aristocracy in the wizarding world would mean that [were he raised by his father] he would come from a social background which was equivalent [even as it was divided from them by virtue of being muggle] to any of his fellow slytherins, and would help him easily blend into their society because the manners, genre of socio-cultural reference points [he would recognise, for example, that quidditch heavily resembles both rugby and polo], accent and way of speaking etc. that he would possess would be broadly indistinguishable from those of his pureblood peers.

[this is why justin finch-fletchley and draco malfoy speak in essentially the same way.]

but he would then be given the enormous boost in cachet - one which would genuinely elevate him above the rest of his cohort - of his maternal line.

and we see in canon that this does bestow some privilege on him among his peers while he's in school:

Tom Riddle merely smiled as the others laughed again. Harry noticed that he was by no means the eldest of the group of boys, but that they all seemed to look to him as their leader. “I don’t know that politics would suit me, sir,” he said when the laughter had died away. “I don’t have the right kind of background, for one thing.” A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other. Harry was sure they were enjoying a private joke, undoubtedly about what they knew, or suspected, regarding their gang leader’s famous ancestor.

where he's let down socially is that people like slughorn - to whom he can't reveal his slytherin ancestry and hope to maintain cover for his wrongdoing - don't think he's come from anywhere particularly special. this is because he has a muggle father - absolutely - but it's even more that he has a muggle father who, since he left him to be raised in an orphanage, was presumably working-class.

what the young voldemort lacks is any socio-cultural familiarity with the muggle class performance which the class performance of the wizarding world parallels. abraxas malfoy boasting about how important his father is would be something a tom jr. raised by the riddles could match - "oh yes, my father gives to all sorts of causes too. in fact, he was invited to buckingham palace because of it." - establishing himself as an equal in terms of class and social influence even if he isn't an equal in blood.

what actually happens in canon is that the orphaned tom - with his uncouth manners and his working-class accent - has no hope of gaining any sort of social equality with his posh peers.

so he becomes determined to outrank - and humiliate and control - them.

[starjasmines]

the exam tomorrow is apparently super easy it's basically just writing the same code as we've done for every assignment thus far with some different values. SADLY my revision is not going to get me through every week of assignments since they all take yknow like. a couple hours to do. i'll review the answer files and try to maybe annotate them but yea i think it's going to be ugly for me......

[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