would be lonely though – Death By Catchphrase

dancinbutterfly:

ashacrone replied to your post “Finally saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and my takeaways…”

What bugs the fuck out of me is the worldbuilding and the lack of rules concerning magic, along with no one, absolutely NO ONE, calling out that they have effectively mind-raped an entire city. I got to see up close and personal what happening to my grandmother when she had dementia- loss of memory is loss of self. And it happened without their permission. I hate, HATE how muggles are treated in this universe.

I’m going to devil’s advocate at you for a second. As a member of a persecuted community that a MUCH LARGER community thinks is DANGEROUS and tries, repeatedly, to murder individuals of, if not outright destroy – I get where the Wizarding World is coming from and I gotta say, I can’t argue with them. Here’s why:

So, the canon states that people seen as magical(whether that suspicion is founded or not) kinda have a history of being treated fucking horribly by non-magical people, it’s mentioned in the Harry Potter series and apparently is a bigger deal in the US because no matter how big the spell – 5 BILLION non-magical people with bombs and guns and mass force really can take on a tens or hundreds of thousands of magical people. As Jew, I’m a member of a group of people that has likewise been hunted and I get it. I for one am tired of being expelled. And imprisoned. And robbed. And tortured. And systematically raped. And having my relics and homes and buildings and businesses and possessions and texts destroyed. And tortured. And murdered.

So. If Jewish people could do what wizards can do, and hide so totally – make our homes and businesses and world completely invisible and inaccessible to gentiles? Holy shit. I would do it in a HEARTBEAT. If I could take away the memory of every gentile that Jews existed? I fucking would. If I could erase us from existence – and only be known to other Jews unless we CHOSE to be known to select members of society who could be trusted to keep us a secret? I fucking would. Because it’s exhausting and it’s terrifying – to know that people think that you are going to destroy their way of life and are therefore a threat (even if you’re really not).

I agree that there should be regulations on what spells can be cast on non-magical people but in terms of the memory thing? Nope. I get it. And it seems like there ARE regulations. They aren’t allowed to wipe people’s whole lives. They aren’t allowed to change people’s identities. Shit like what happened with Neville’s parents are a fucking crime. But taking away a small period of time? Dude if you say you remember specifics of entire years of your life I’m going to call you a liar because the brain doesn’t work that way to begin with. The oblivate spell as used appropriately (and within the norms that I can see – and granted it has been a LONG TIME since I read the books – so I’m just going with what I can remember and FB&WTFT) takes away an incident, a few days, a few hours when an incident occurs that they weren’t given express consent by a wizard to experience (except with Kowalski which was a point that America is WRONG about the way they treat non-magical people who CAN be trusted by making it a blanket policy) and which therefore violates the regulation of secrecy as a safety measure.

While I get where you are coming from in terms of things like Harry casting that spell on Vernon’s sister needing regulation – things like the short-term memory erasure do not bother me. I don’t care about what is basically the same as an MiB neuralizer because the LIVES of entire community of men, women, children both human and creature, is infinitely more valuable than a few hours or days of time from the memory of millions. I approve. I think it’s smart. I think it’s awesome. I want to steal that power and take it as my own. I envy the safety they have with the fire of a thousand suns and honestly, I don’t give a fuck about how it was done. I really really don’t.

If taking away the memory if a few days or hours would save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives in our world? Like making China forget Tibet and Taiwan was there so that they could live independent, free, and un-harassed for example? Or Russia forget about the Ukraine and the Crimea? Or preventing the devastation of any indigenous community by Europeans ever? I think I’d be in favor of it too.