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Notes -
The US Department of Education just posted Malfoid slop:
"There's Magic in Learning"
https://x.com/usedgov/status/2115069815505203483
Or rather, there is Magic in Yearning, Make Romance Great Again, am I right? …
Two weeks ago @KingOfTheBailey had an excellent post about the trend:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3960/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/486219
I want to note three things two weeks later:
Original:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=L5g-17uLO90
AI Anime versions:
Kind of sloppy but neat:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=g6jjXAASi_Q
Better animated, but very Korean:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4mkZ8jEYySo
For example this illustration of Dracina casting a peacock as patronum is striking:
https://x.com/CaboVT/status/2106491934818853274
And was then canonized in this AI Battle of Hogwarts scene:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y6tAajsc9PY
And then discussed how a (male) peacock can sort of make sense as a representation of Harry for Dracina.
Then there was first an illustration of Harry/Dracina fighting Voldemort together with the same wand:
https://x.com/Aurondarklord/status/2106975585507418609
Which sparked this AI scene:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VgfNf79t3oo
I don't care how cheesy or juvenile or klischee it is; narratively it just makes sense: Draco is the rightful owner of the Elder Wand, we have the redemption arc of Slytherin and Voldemort is defeated (again) by the power of love. Could this not be done with a male Draco? Why not a good old fashioned friendship? One argument I read was that women often see rivalry as sexual dominance (e.g. the gay romance in Heated Rivalry) and so Rowling couldn't work out an honorable defeat/submission of Draco to Harry. So a Harrys + Dracos male friendship would actually need a more extensive rewrite than a female tsundere Dracina being in love.
Anyway, now that the US government involved (Hello fellow kids!), doesn't that mean the ship is sailed and the trend run its course into being old and uncool?
Not necessary, I want to officially register my prediction that with the start of the HBO series (December 25, 2026 (Christmas Day)) AI is good enough (or will be good enough in coming years) to replace Draco scenes with reimagined Dracina scenes. There will be alternative Malfoid-episodes which can be torrented.
The Malfoid phenomenon is the consequence of aging Millennials re-interpreting the Slytherin ethos. There's no question that Harry Potter is an anti-fascist series, and as such it takes the concerns that an authoritarian-leaning Wizard might have in that world and associates them with wonton atrocities, physical ugliness, dysfunction, and ultimate defeat and humiliation.
But let's consider the Mudblood Question. Imagine a pure-blood Witch reproduces with a male muggle. I do not know the in-universe specific of magical inheritance, but my understanding is that it is then a roll of the dice if the children will have magic. So maybe some do, and some do not. Or none of them inherit magic. Can you fathom the incredible recklessness that it would take for a woman who has literal magical genes to choose a mate that means her offspring may not inherit magic? Or at best some do and other kids do not, meaning your own children will never relate to each other or even belong in the same world. Even in Rowling's work sibling rivalry caused by disparate inheritance is a persistent cause of familial dysfunction. It's actual despicable, anti-social behavior. It should be shunned by magical society. You can call it "love" but from a different perspective it is an unforgivable neglect of your genetic inheritance and your own children.
Yes HP is ultimately a "love trumps hate" story but minimizes the fact that Slytherin social standards are molded by their love for their own genetic inheritance- their ancestors, their descendants, the protection of their genetic quality that makes them superior to muggles. Slytherin, for whatever faults ham-fisted by Rowling, ultimately represents an incredibly important cultural pressure- is it really only that house that has a problem with Witches and Wizards disinheriting their own children of magic?
Malfoid is introducing the concept of love within the Slytherin ethos, which has always been there intrinsically, only omitted from Rowling's portrayal to maintain the black-and-white dialectic required for a children's story.
There’s a sequence in HPMOR where Harry ‘disproves’ Blood theory to Malfoy through an experiment, thus starting the chain of events that lead to Malloy breaking from his father’s ideology. I was left somewhat baffled reading it due to how this was proven - you either had the magic gene (or the antimagic gene) on a chromosome pair or you didn’t, with squibs having half the alleles. This is enough for the boys to determine that Blood theory is wrong.
But my first thought was… doesn’t this finding just alter the belief system so that muggle-borns like Hermione could be considered real witches? It just so happened that her parents had latent magic genes - the end result of outbreeding heavily with muggle populations would still mean a lot less wizards were being born. Yud doesn’t really give much thought to that. The whole sequence was an unfortunate copout, with Harry’s Science conveniently to coincide with and support the belief system we're already primed for.
This is fun:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzhvRguZOF4_SEI1OTNHWHdHeUU/view?resourcekey=0-hXfTA_XZz4T-qvjPkc1Vtg
If the magic trait depends on two dominant genes, than a Wizard could be AABB (to AaBb), a Squib would be AAbb (to aaBB) and a Muggle is aabb.
At least in the weaker sense in that purebloods mating with muggleborn and muggles increases the risk of descendants being squibs.
Blood theory makes a stronger claim though in that pureblood wizards are superior in magical ability. This is more difficult to prove with Voldemort being super powerful but having a muggle as father or muggleborn Hermione Granger doing quite well. Magical ability could be polygenic in the sense that the magic allele is a switch on/off, but IQ and other mental traits influence its power.
Edit: Speaking of Voldemort: Parseltongue is hereditary and linked to the bloodline of Salazar Slytherin. So there are magic genes beside the active/inactive switch.
That link is hilarious. I wish Yud would have been brave enough to get into the weeds of wizarding genetics in the story.
Blood theory's main claim is probably not true in the story, but what Harry and Draco found should have been more than enough for Draco to pivot into a more scientifically-defensible version of it, and him not doing so feels close to a plot hole with how hard he was searching for a way to hold onto his beliefs. Also, the boys were only really testing the gene that allowed someone to use magic - they could have done a lot more in trying to isolate what influenced the level of magic power someone had.
Even in-story, Harry is pretty manipulative here:
Draco could have pivoted into a more scientifically defensible version, if he had more time and less pressure, and he outright comes up with those pivots later for the 'why is Hermoine a good spellcaster' problem. But Harry's certain that it wouldn't matter, because he'd need an explanation that could be tested, and once you speak a lie, the truth forever becomes your enemies. With Hermoine, she might have been a pureblood adopted or raised unknowingly by muggles, but to someone who's seen how you test a hypothesis, seriously, that explanation only exists so long as it's put to the proof, and can't be an excuse any longer. Once you tell a lie, the truth becomes ever after your enemy.
((This is... naive, to be blunt, and not just in the casual 'some intelligent people can lie to themselves' way. But it was 2008, the Sequences took it in the same sense they took Kahneman.))
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