fuchsimeon:beccabummie:all-four-cheekbones:oldfuckingsport:iminmypants:mlletimelord:castielcampbell:

fuchsimeon:beccabummie:all-four-cheekbones:oldfuckingsport:iminmypants:mlletimelord:castielcampbell:death-limes:muffinass:and in that moment, the entire movie theater burst into tearsi think this was the moment that made most of us despise umbridge more than voldemortmost of us?! don’t you mean ALL of us?? I don’t think even Voldemort liked this bitch!No one likes Umbridge.I heard, one time, a dementor kissed her and IT diedVoldemort committed genocide, but Umbridge dared to be female while she abused her power. The point isn’t that Umbridge was worse than Voldemort; it’s that everyone hates her more. And I think it has nothing to do with her being a woman and everything with being the sort of cruel most of us have actually experienced.I mean, look at Voldemort. He’s basically Wizard Hitler, which is, obviously, an incredibly terrible thing to be. But most people—especially the younger people in Harry Potter’s target audience—have not had their parents murdered by a xenophobic cult leader. Nor have they fought for their lives against giant snakes, been kidnapped for dark rituals, or watched numerous friends die in front of them. Voldemort’s crimes are numerous, but they’re distant and fantastical, like hearing about a serial killer on the news.But they have had that one teacher who inflicts extra punishments just because they don’t like you. They’ve complained to parents and authorities only to be ignored. They’ve sat through pointless classes and been silenced when they criticize. Umbridge is that teacher we all hated because she made our lives miserable and we were powerless to stop her. And as we grow out of school, there are still people in positions of power who act like her. The manager who denies your schedule requests and penalizes you for invented infractions. That customer who complains to corporate because their scam didn’t work, and the corporate decision to listen to their story. Cops performing illegal searches because they know you don’t have any proof.Yes, torturing and killing numerous people is worse than terrorizing a handful of schoolchildren, but Voldemort is the bad guy in a fairy tale. Umbridge is personal.*drops the mic*Voldemort is the villain we never hope to face.Umbridge is the villain we face every day.Hell yes, lemme tell you a thing about Umbridge.When the Order of the Phoenix came out, I was 13 years old. Technically in the midst of puberty, but it hadn’t come in and slapped me in the face yet, if you know what I’m saying. And I was in a pretty good position at school. So (I’m ashamed to admit it) the book actually turned me off of Harry Potter for a while. I couldn’t relate, thinking Harry was just a hormonal whinebag. Why didn’t he just sit down and stop yelling at everyone? Then I went to high school.If you ever talk to anyone who knows me well, they will tell you two things about my school history: I am abysmal at math but somehow I always do well on standardized tests. My entrance scores were good enough to automatically put me in all honors classes whether I wanted to be in them or not.My freshman year math teacher was the living embodiment of Dolores Umbridge. They even freaking looked alike. This woman had it in for me from day one. Not even entertaining the thought that I was in the wrong class, she chalked up my every failure to stubbornness and laziness. Sure, by then I was in fact a sarcastic bag of hormones myself, but this was the one class I never goofed off in, because I knew I’d fail if I did. It didn’t matter, I failed anyway. I’d go in for extra help and get sent to the corner alone to do problems I didn’t understand while she actually explained things to other students and I would leave humiliated and no closer to understanding than when I’d come. When I asked a question in class she would pretend that the material was obvious to everyone and treat me as if I’d asked her how to add two plus two. It was like she thought I was deliberately pretending to be completely lost in order to piss her off. The final straw came when I uncharacteristically did well on an assignment and she responded by accusing me of cheating in front of the whole class. My parents knew, of course, and they actually arranged a meeting with her to ask if I could be moved out of honors. She said certainly not, Sarah isn’t in over her head, no, she just has to apply herself. I think it was at that point I first pointed out the Umbridge connection to them. I specifically remember quoting that she was like “poisoned honey” and my parents said it was a perfect match, but that it was probably too far into the year anyway and I should just try to keep under the radar and weather it out. I somehow squeaked by with a C- despite failing nearly every test.The OOP movie didn’t come out until two years later, and by then this teacher had retired, I’d petitioned to move into the next level down with an understanding teacher and was back to getting A’s. My dad had become a Harry Potter fan by then and we went to see the movie together. And when the “I will not tell lies” scene came on he just turned to me, wide eyed, and said, “Oh my god. That’s your math teacher. It’s her." That was when I read the book again, and having caught up with Harry in age, I finally understood, and it was the most traumatic re-reading of a book I’ve ever experienced. Harry’s experiences with Voldemort were fantastical, but his experiences with Umbridge were real. And I still look back on that book and wish that I’d had the balls that Harry had to stand up to my teacher and call her out on her bullshit, for making my life a living hell.And it’s true, this is something that literally everyone’s experienced. We hate Umbridge because we all have a real-life proxy to hate, and we project our hatred of these very real people into our hatred of this fictional character. We see Umbridge and relive the trauma, replaying every insult, ever dismissal, every sneer in our heads, and suddenly it’s not about Harry any more, it’s about us.   -- source link

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