No Child Left Alive

I made you this super cute Adventure Time/Doctor Who shirt. GO BUY IT! 

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“Now, I know you’re a little apprehensive about sending your child to Hogwarts, but let me assure that our mortality rate is well within the guidelines for other reputable wizarding schools in Europe and Asia. Mortality rate… yes. The likelihood that your child will die or otherwise be rendered irreparably cursed, hexed or transfigured while in our care. What IS that rate? Like I said, it’s well within the standard… well, it’s… it’s around 30% NOW I know that seems high, but I promise you it is well within… yes, of course. No, I understand. It’s just with every single one of us, teacher and student, adult and child, carrying the power to kill with but a flick of the wrist and a a couple of odd words one has to expect a certain level of… no, I wouldn’t use that word. Well, because MURDER is a very particular word and I believe what happens here is more akin to… well OF COURSE you would bring HIM up. Yes, he was VERY murdered. Yes, horrifically so. Yes, all of the other students saw it. Well, because it happened right here in the great hall during lunch. I don’t know, I suppose he wanted to make an example of the little… yes, I’ve heard that about American wizarding schools as well. Honestly I don’t see how they could be teaching proper magic if THAT many children survive each year.”

I taught cartooning to my daughter’s 1st grade class this week and I made a cover of one of my favorite Pixies songs as a thank you to my Patreon Patrons. Check those things out, why not?

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15 Comments

  1. Bahahahahahahahaha! You make me happy, Joel. I'm not sure which is funnier. The comic or the text below. My hat is off to you.

  3. I like to suspend disbelief, normally (and not look for plot holes and the like, so I can actually enjoy stories)…but I get stuck on the idea of a "killing curse". Not as a stand-alone idea, mind you, but as a thing in the face of all these other spells that anyone with even a semi-maniacal bent could turn toward murder.

    /Accio/ knife! (while target is between you and knife)

    /Accio/ bowling ball! /Wingardium leviosa/! /Engorgio/! (wait for it…)

    /Lumos maxima/! (into the eyes of oncoming traffic)

    /Diffindo/! (bridge)

    Snape created a spell, /Sectumsempra!/, which apparently rends the recipient to shreds (and, one has to imagine, eventually kills them without some sort of intervention)…somehow, bypasses the idea of "Unforgivable Curse".

    On and on and on. A lot of these things would be far more evil, by most any moral yardstick, than using a spell which apparently causes little to no suffering. /Avada Kedavra/! is like something you might use on your gran-gran as an act of mercy.

    • Well to be fair, the "Killing Curse" and the other unforgivable curses probably got their status from the first reign of terror by Voldemort and his Death Eaters, especially Cruciatus, but the other spells you mention are akin to basically saying that because someone CAN use something to kill someone (baseball bat, golf club, bag of nickels, a brick, etc.) that they are weapons first. The killing curse has only one use: to kill, same with the other two unforgivables. Cruciatus is only for torture, and Imperius for mind control.

      • I'm with you, but my point was more, "Why did we — as mages — bother creating this spell? Spells make it easy to do that thing indirectly (there are three different spells I can think of off the top of my head from this universe that /immobilize/ the target — carry a sword with your non-wand hand, all I'm sayin'), and doing it directly with this particular spell has been branded 'unforgivable'. Now, all these evil mages are still killing with other spells that aren't 'one-way tickets to Azkaban'…"

        • I think the whole REASON for the "Unforgivable Curses," aside from the direct effect, is their use as WMDs/Terror weapons in the Wizarding world. While it's true that many "regular" spells in a wizard's repertoire can easily be used to kill/main enemies (how about Wingardium Leviosa in conjunction with a pile of cinder blocks, or a safe, or hell, even a piano for that EXTRA-cartoony destruction!), the Unforgivables were created SOLELY as weapons of terror, shock, and awe.

        • I think the general idea is that with most any other spells used to kill, there is at least the potential to defend against or hide from it. But with an instantaneous killing curse you're dead before you even know there's a threat, no mater how alert you are.

          I think that's both the reason for it's creation, and it's forbidden-ness.

  4. Hagrid: Right. I'll just go chop his head off then. (sees horrified reaction of potential head chopping) Shouldn't have said that, I should not have said that.

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