#fk you umbridge
and in that moment, the entire movie theater burst into tears
i think this was the moment that made most of us despise umbridge more than voldemort
most 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 died
Voldemort 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.
Also, hey guys?
Umbridgeis a torturer. She tortures people on-page. Her “punishment” for disagreeing with her is to carve words on the back of your hand, forcing you to use your own blood to write your lines. That? Is torture. That? Is abuse. That? Is violence..
She’s not just “mean”. She’s not just “unfair”. She is evil and she’s abusive, and she empowers the evil and abusive and then she tells the victims that it’s all their fault for disobeying her as she tries to gaslight them.
SHE TRIED TO MURDER A TEENAGE BOY, using Dementors as her weapons.
As demonstrated in the seventh book, the only thing stopping her from being Voldemort is she’s a coward who has to work within the rules. She will later happily oversee the abuse and torment of hundreds of witches and wizards and will be so happy to do so that her Patronus is a glowing little happy-cat so strong that she can’t even feel a room full of Dementors right next to her.
I don’t actually hate Umbridge worse than Voldemort, and her moment throwing out Trelawney was far from the moment I “started” hating her, because I hated her just fine long before that. But I have a contempt and a disgust for Umbridge that outweighs my contempt and disgust for Voldemort simply because of how she fits into society and how she uses it for her own ends, and how she justifies her actions. Voldemort at least comes right out and says that power-for-power’s-sake is the only real thing in the universe. When he kills you, it’s because he has the power to do so and wants to, and that’s all there is to it - he’ll even crow about that.
Umbridge? Umbridge tortures you and then tells you it’s your fault she’s doing it. She does this on. the damn. page.
So no, guys. Let’s not minimize Dolores Umbridge to the manager who denies your schedule requests. She’s of the same kind of evil, but a rather greater scale.
I will always reblog this because the commentary is so thoughtful and flawless.
DAT COMMENTARY ON WHY I HATED UMBRIDGE.
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