Dutchman Dirk Willems was a religious prisoner who escaped in 1569, but when the guard pursuing him fell through the ice of a river, Willems turned around to save the guard. He was then recaptured and burned at stake.
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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It's fucking insane actually, the fact that they won't even lob killing spells at Voldemort. Bruh
Harry Potter would have been one book long if someone brought a gun
reddit copy pasta
Ok, this has been driving me crazy for seven movies now, and I know you're going to roll your eyes, but hear me out: Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.Here's why:
Think about how quickly the entire WWWIII (Wizarding-World War III) would have ended if all of the good guys had simply armed up with good ol' American hot lead.
Basilisk? Let's see how tough it is when you shoot it with a .470 Nitro Express. Worried about its Medusa-gaze? Wear night vision goggles. The image is light-amplified and re-transmitted to your eyes. You aren't looking at it--you're looking at a picture of it.
Imagine how epic the first movie would be if Harry had put a breeching charge on the bathroom wall, flash-banged the hole, and then went in wearing NVGs and a Kevlar-weave stab-vest, carrying a SPAS-12.
And have you noticed that only Europe seems to a problem with Deatheaters? Maybe it's because Americans have spent the last 200 years shooting deer, playing GTA: Vice City, and keeping an eye out for black helicopters over their compounds. Meanwhile, Brits have been cutting their steaks with spoons. Remember: gun-control means that Voldemort wins. God made wizards and God made muggles, but Samuel Colt made them equal.
Now I know what you're going to say: "But a wizard could just disarm someone with a gun!" Yeah, well they can also disarm someone with a wand (as they do many times throughout the books/movies). But which is faster: saying a spell or pulling a trigger?
Avada Kedavra, meet Avtomat Kalashnikova.
Imagine Harry out in the woods, wearing his invisibility cloak, carrying a .50bmg Barrett, turning Deatheaters into pink mist, scratching a lightning bolt into his rifle stock for each kill. I don't think Madam Pomfrey has any spells that can scrape your brains off of the trees and put you back together after something like that. Voldemort's wand may be 13.5 inches with a Phoenix-feather core, but Harry's would be 0.50 inches with a tungsten core. Let's see Voldy wave his at 3,000 feet per second. Better hope you have some Essence of Dittany for that sucking chest wound.
I can see it now...Voldemort roaring with evil laughter and boasting to Harry that he can't be killed, since he is protected by seven Horcruxes, only to have Harry give a crooked grin, flick his cigarette butt away, and deliver what would easily be the best one-liner in the entire series:
"Well then I guess it's a good thing my 1911 holds 7+1."
And that is why Harry Potter should have carried a 1911.
holy shit this is so unhinged but also excellent lmao
Better than Asimov
If I remember right there's a point in the third book where Harry has to explain what a gun is to the wizards and it's something like "It's like a wand that only casts kill"
They also literally have time travel and could have easily Baby Hitler'd Voldemort but JK Rowling does not violate the timestream or the gender binary
Virgin JK Rowling vs Chad Bakshi
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
pretty sure they literally address this at one point, and the explanation is that the wizards are all such stupid incurious dickheads that not a single one of them really knows what a gun is. basically every technological advancement made after the 18th century is a complete mystery to them.
I think part of Potter lore is that you physically can't cast killing spells unless you're already ontologically evil somehow. Harry tries doing the torture curse a few times and it doesn't work because his soul is too pure or whatever.
It's so liberal. Good team and bad team.
if I recall, he does the imperious curse successfully a few times, so it's not like he can't or is even above using unforgivable curses.
Beyond Harry's unwillingness to use the killing curse in that instance, what's wild to me is that nobody that's not ontologically evil uses the killing curse. Like, the adults are all mad at Harry's stupidity for giving away his position by using a nonlethal spell, but all of those adults are also not using the killing curse. This suggests a hegemonic worldview where it's obvious and sensible that you should want to kill your enemy, but it's only acceptable if you do it in an indirect and roundabout way. It's fine to stun or petrify them so they fall off a broom and die on impact with the ground, but it's beyond the pale to kill them directly with a spell.
Unforgivable Killing curse = not morally okay
🅱️one Removal spell = morally okay
what's not to get
Maybe all the wizard cultures where actually doing useful combat magic was acceptable died out because they all abacadabra'd eachother to extinction during the stone age.
Also he had no problem casting a spell on draco that slashed him open. Killing curse that leaves no mark requires you to be evil, but you can cast sword without knowing what it'll do
Why can't he cast the "make target have a stroke" spell or "have the target's heart and brain switch places" spell?
i'm aware i'm putting way too much thought into a work that does not merit it, but it's interesting that the biggest source of internal conflict for harry is the question of whether he is, fundamentally, like Voldemort. Of course, the series being what it is, the conclusion Rowling reaches is "no, actually all the symbolism and the sorting hat and the scar and literally containing a part of voldemort's soul was just a big misunderstanding. good boys love their mommy and voldemort is a bad boy and always has been."
if you choose to read the whole series as a more-than-incidentally liberal psychodrama, with Harry the scion of the End of History and Voldemort the spectre of 20th century fascism, it's all a bit too revealing.
there are occasional hints that Rowling is making a contrast with wizard society and Voldemort's followers, so I know what you mean. It's an inevitable contrast to make in the first place, there's always going to be a "we're not so different" moment in the kind of genre fiction she was going after. It happens in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings too.
But what's really interesting is that it doesn't go anywhere. Usually the hero overcomes both the villain and their own shortcomings to become something better than either, but that doesn't happen. Very direct contrasts are made too, like Harry being a chosen one, how wizards treat goblins and elves, how wizards are resistant to change. It's shown their bureaucracy isn't above wiping memories or using outright torture by putting people in a prison with monsters made out of depression. Even as a kid that's what I thought the point was, to show wizard society and Voldemort were two sides of a dying system that Harry was born to overcome. I was a kid but I was familiar with Star Wars and that was Luke's general arc.
Except it doesn't go anywhere. Harry sticks to his liberal pacifism and defeats Voldemort on a technicality. Wizard society goes back to exactly how it was with no changes whatsoever, nor is any comment spared on it. Voldemort is considered a strange anomaly rather than the inevitable conclusion of allowing Slytherin to exist. And all of that despite earlier books saying outright that Voldemort and wizards like him had been festering within wizard society for centuries, building up to this moment.
Fuck JK Rowling
Its an UNFORGIVABLE curse you evil tankie!
I can imagine libs lobbing civil discourses at Voldemort and not being able to fathom why it isn't working.