Rogues Portal Book Club: August 2017 Wrap-Up! ⋆

And just like that, August is over! Here’s our wrap-up from the Rogues Portal Book Club’s discussion of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. We had an awesome time chatting with you all! It was great to see familiar handles and new ones!

We started off with a poll before the discussion:

POLL: What's your preferred method of magic travel? 📚👓⚡️🐍

— Geek’d Out (@GeekdOutDotCom) August 28, 2017

Looks like most of you might be trying out for the Quidditch team!

Then we went right for the heart of things. The first question was about the dynamic between the Dursleys and Harry.

https://twitter.com/armustdie/status/902216696869654530

We also spent a lot of our chat talking about Dobby the house elf and Draco Malfoy.

https://twitter.com/semisweetrubix/status/902218376428175360

https://twitter.com/semisweetrubix/status/902219800247541764

Then we got into the politics JK Rowling discusses in the Harry Potter series. Chamber of Secrets is the first book to lay out her belief in social justice. But is she effective in that?

No. Sure we see the malfoys with a house elf, but don't the weaslys want one? Is the implication the weaslys would treat a house elf better?

— Gentlemen Worlock (@RobertCoffil) August 28, 2017

https://twitter.com/semisweetrubix/status/902221057968312320

https://twitter.com/theverbalthing/status/902222026592714752

Ron was ready to set it off on Draco at that point. Lol. I was like: Let them fight. Lol. #RPBOOKCLUB

— Gentlemen Worlock (@RobertCoffil) August 28, 2017

https://twitter.com/semisweetrubix/status/902222973955850240

We didn’t just discuss the racial politics of Chamber of Secrets, though! We also discussed how JKR treats female characters in Chamber of Secrets.

https://twitter.com/LauraMuth1/status/902222856641159168

https://twitter.com/theverbalthing/status/902223407500197889

Elizabeth blew our minds during the discussion: was Hermione’s crush on Lockheart actually a lesson on cults of personality instead of a sexist trope?

https://twitter.com/semisweetrubix/status/902225151617409024

Lockheart’s character in Chamber of Secrets was particularly interesting. Taking inspiration from Christoph, we explored the differences between Lockheart and Colin Creevey’s interests in Harry.

https://twitter.com/armustdie/status/902225126057529348

Harry spends a good portion of the book thinking that he’s the heir of Slytherin. We talked about what a Slytherin!Harry would look like and what that would mean for the series.

https://twitter.com/LauraMuth1/status/902247244182675456

Yeah, why would you have a house of evil wizards? Is this some force balancing bullshit? #RPBOOKCLUB

— Gentlemen Worlock (@RobertCoffil) August 28, 2017

Robert brought down the house with this summary of the iconic Aragog scene in Chamber of Secrets.

When the spider dad was like, eat them my children. I Laughed out loud. They went though all of that for to find this giant ass spider. Smh

— Gentlemen Worlock (@RobertCoffil) August 28, 2017

Thank you all so much for joining us for another #RPBookClub session! It’s such a pleasure chatting with all of you about Harry Potter. Don’t forget to check back on Monday for our September welcome letter!

Don’t forget, you can keep the discussion going on our Rogues Portal Book Club Slack, which is available to our Patreon subscribers at the $5 a month tier!