Hewlett Packard and the Warlock's Monolith

You know, nothing really compares to that feeling of watching items get crossed off your to do list. Love me that small rush of dopamine of knowing I've completed something, no matter how insignificant.

Harry Potter! Honestly I could probably just end this post right there because everyone seems to have an opinion about the series and I'm just really late cause my mother was convinced of the "witchcraft" inherent in the books. But had I been allowed to get into it earlier in life, it would probably have had the same impact on me the way Abarat did and that's really saying a lot.

So Harry Potter is so renowned that summarizing like half of the first movie just makes me look a fool. It felt really strange watching it though because while I knew that the kids were separated into houses, it didn't really click just how strong the divide was. Something in the movie cemented to me that being in a house other than Gryffindor really wasn't that great. Kind of like growing up watching movies with kids that don't look like you, it makes you feel like something is inherently wrong with you, even if you can't control it. Gryffindor is depicted where the best of the best belong, the other two houses being sidelined, and Slytherin is where the devil incarnate resides. That's it, you're either everything right with the world, everything wrong with the world, or not as essential as the other two.

Now that I think about it, that message would've subconsciously stuck with me for awhile and I would never understand why the house I related to was seen as evil and untrustworthy. Like when you see a horrible generalization or stereotype that relates to something that's intimate to your very being, and the stereotype is so widely accepted and regarded but it's painfully wrong. And you can try and try to shake off that image but it'll always be there in the back of someone's mind, and the slightest misstep and then you're being generalized. I'm pretty sure I just accidentally made this about race so for that I'm sorry. I just have a lot of feelings about stuff like this, falling under certain categories, stereotypes, being labeled this or that, and none of it probably applies to HP but here we are. I feel like I could sit here all day and talk about my feelings this subject but to save time, let's just say it's reasons like this that make diversity so painfully important to me. Cause art has an impact on the way we perceive others, and there's just, not enough out there.