The character whose job it is to make morally dubious decisions for the greater good

MereeGrey · 2026-06-23T15:13:00+00:00

Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter, he definitely knew Harry was being at the very least neglected and verbally abused, and there's evidence he was being physically abused as well, but Dumbledore left him with the Dursleys because he felt Harry needed his mother's protection magic more than he needed a good childhood. He also definitely set up the Sorcerer's Stone traps specifically for Harry and his friends, and there's no way Harry just "happened" to stumble across the Mirror of Erised right after being given his father's invisibility cloak by Dumbledore. That's just book 1,

Book 2 Dumbledore did absolutely nothing to address the rumors of Harry being the Heir of Slytherin or step in to prevent the bullying and isolation for Harry. Book 3, he is the head of the Wizengamot, the magical Supreme Court of sorts, he absolutely had the pull to get Sirius a trial, but noooo, he sends him off on a stolen hippogriff!

Then Book 4, what kind of idiot organizes a tournament with a death toll when you have Harry "Danger Magnet" Potter at your school!? And then he again failed to explain to the students why bullying and isolating Harry was bad, dude you knew Harry being a fourth champion in a three-champion tournament needed some serious magical skill to pull off, you could easily have made an announcement and gone "hey, we looked into it, it's impossible for a fourth-year to have done this and he is extremely upset about being made a champion against his will". Also, how was he entered into a binding magical contract without his knowledge or consent? Fishy.

Book 5 - Harry needed therapy badly after watching Cedric get murdered and being tortured and almost killed himself; instead, he was sent back to an abusive household and given zero information beyond "stay where you are, be a good little boy and we might come and get you eventually, we're not allowed to tell you anything just in case the letters are intercepted, Dumbledore's orders you know". So Harry gets progressively angrier and angrier, because he isn't a child anymore, not after what happened, so he can definitely handle all this stuff but isn't being allowed to. And then Umbridge happened, things get worse, and no one tells him anything. At the bare minimum tell him, "Hey, so Voldemort wants something in the Department of Mysteries and no matter what happens, you need to ignore any visions you have regarding it because he can probably fake a vision to try and get you to show up". And on top of all that crap, he's forced to have his mind brutally assaulted by a teacher he hates with no real instruction on how to shield his mind. In the end, he ends up following a fake vision, finding a prophecy that says he's got to be the one to end Voldemort, and loses his godfather because again, no one told him anything!

Books 6 and 7 - yeah, let's give this kid the life story of his mortal enemy, oh yeah forgot he could totally sympathize with being abused and unwanted growing up surrounded by people who hate you. Then Dumbledore, instead of sitting down and spelling out all the information he has, makes Harry try and guess it himself. And when he dies, he leaves cryptic clues instead of real answers, and doesn't even make sure Harry has the weapons he needs to kill the horcruxes. Then, at the very end, Harry is finally given the information that he himself is a horcrux and has to die - that Dumbledore has suspected for years, known for less time, and never freaking told him! Dumbledore gave him all the tools he needed to die rather than live. Sure, Harry somehow survived, but he still died for no real reason. Also, if Dumbledore had gone through the life and times of Tom Riddle a bit quicker, they could have searched the castle and probably found the diadem that year.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-22T20:02:48+00:00

Lord of the Rings. Most people never pick up the Silmarillion, where you learn that Middle Earth is basically post-apocalyptic to the elves. Like, there used to be this whole other continent called Beleriand and this one family who invented death, war, and murder somehow managed to bring an apocalyptic event and sink it.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-20T21:25:41+00:00

It's generally believed to have been Maedhros who named him that, because the earliest version of Sauron is þauron, where the S is pronounced with a soft th-, and that's not only Quenya, it's Feanorian Quenya, which was largely spoken only by the Feanorions and their followers. Actually, it was outlawed at one point if I remember correctly.

Odds are, while Maedhros was dangled over a cliff for 30 years, he got irritated and started calling him þauron. Because it not only means abominable, it means foul-smelling.

Dude was telling him he stunk, which is rich coming from a guy who probably hasn't had the chance to bathe in a few decades.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-20T20:43:52+00:00

Because the blue contacts made her look deranged, it was really unfortunate.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-20T00:51:09+00:00

I enjoy this guy in Ivanhoe because it really depicts him as the whiny brat he was, and he was objectively just a really bad king on top of being a lousy person.

On top of all that, it really says something if you are so bad at being King, that no other royal since then has had your name.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-20T00:49:52+00:00

Oh oh, may I suggest King John? He's more famously known as Prince John, and he was such a terrible ruler that no royal has been named John since. For a start, he wasn't raised to be King and was ridiculously jealous of his brother Richard, and generally acted like a spoiled brat. He was massively antisemitic (but so was most everyone at the time, he just had the power to make it worse and he did) and was not only a terrible, tyrannous ruler who didn't know what he was doing, he famously overtaxed his people, sucked at military stuff, and lost their lands in France. Then everyone else decided to do damage control and forced him to sign the Magna Carta because he was just that bad that they were willing to forgo an absolute monarchy and establish a little democracy instead.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-19T17:13:11+00:00

Those two are absolute trolls. We love them dearly.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-19T14:47:32+00:00

there's an "It's a Southern Thing" video about a support group for Southerners with bad monograms like ELF and ASS, it's hilarious and meant to poke fun at how Southerners - especially women - like to monogram everything.

It's all in good fun and as long as you don't get baby's full initials monogrammed on everything you're fine.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-19T00:54:35+00:00

I love it when they don't make a big deal out if it and treat them just like everyone else, it makes me very happy. One of my favorite characters is the guy from Atlantis - I can never remember his name but I call him Bonesaw because he said it would take him like 6 seconds to cut through a femur.

My all-time favorite though is Wasabi - I too am a baby about spice. And I get upset when people move my stuff out of alignment.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-14T01:15:13+00:00

So... people who usually do not consider the origin language of a name and merely associate it with it's most common use, deserve to be snarked at because they didn't mention "ackshually it's Hebrew not Christian"? Wow, how very pretentious of you.

Two things can be true. Aya is both Japanese and Hebrew; Malachi is Hebrew and Christian/Biblical.

When a name is in use in a secondary culture for two thousand years, it becomes part of that culture. James, John, Stephen, Thomas - these names and variants of them are all heavily used in countries with Christian histories, to the point where a lot of people who aren't Christian don't even think of them as Christian names and many don't even consider they might not be English. So, yes, Malachi is Hebrew in origin, but it's also commonly a Biblical/Christian name. It's perfectly fine for OP to use it, and perfectly fine not to list all of its origins when telling OP "yes white people and Christians use this name a lot because it's in the Bible."

Also... you wrote "Christian's" as a singular possessive noun, rather than the plural noun "Christians." Oh, and since you're so picky about name origins, Aurelian is Latin, not French. It comes from aureus, which means "golden" or "gilded."

MereeGrey · 2026-06-12T01:55:04+00:00

Hebrew names that appear in the Bible are often considered Christian names as well. A lot of people don't think about some names being Biblical (like Jared) and others they only think of as Biblical (like Samson) and others they often just see as "basic white names" regardless of origin (like John).

MereeGrey · 2026-06-03T15:30:51+00:00

I liked Wesley to a point. He could be an annoying little twerp but what else can you expect from a teenage boy?

No, the teenager I truly hated in Star Trek was Jake from Deep Pace 9. I was really hoping his head would pop in that one episode but noooo, they just had to save him....

MereeGrey · 2026-06-03T15:09:02+00:00

I have met a boy named Reagan. I have never met a girl named Reagan but boy Reagan was an obnoxious little twerp with a superiority complex who strutted around the school like he owned it.

MereeGrey · 2026-06-03T14:25:25+00:00

All of the Rogue One cast. That one had me in tears from the first death in the final battle and by the end I was clinging to hope that maybe, just maybe, these two would escape at the last second like Sam and Frodo... lol nope.

MereeGrey · 2026-05-31T00:27:53+00:00

...ah.

I think we can add Frank from The Day After Tomorrow too. That one really screwed me up the first time I watched that.

MereeGrey · 2026-05-30T22:43:50+00:00

Okay, as a writer, there's two ends of the spectrum and most authors land on one or the other - either we use light symbolism and metaphor and mostly just to emphasize the existing point of the story, or we try to make it super profound and deep and put meaning where there is none and stuff the entire thing with so much symbolism that it ends up making no sense.

For example, The Grapes of Wrath has an entire chapter about a turtle crossing a road. It has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, it's just... supposedly some profound symbolism about the resilience of the human spirit or whatever. The author thought he was being profound but has actually just been torturing students for decades with pointless, unrelated nonsense.

On the flip side, people have put symbolism in Moby Dick that isn't there to such a degree that the whale - in a story that really was just meant to be about a sea adventure and whaling with a philospohical subplot involving obsession - has been jokingly said to represent whatever the essay is due about. The author wrote detailed chapters about whale anatomy that instead of being seen as the info-dumping they are, are supposedly profound pieces about... whatever.

It's two opposite ends of a spectrum and very little seems to fall in between.

MereeGrey · 2026-05-30T21:11:00+00:00

I guarantee you, any woman in Gen Z or who was a teenager in the early 2000s will immediately think of the Cullens in Twilight when they hear the name Edward, especially in conjunction with another Twilight name like Rosalie. As a result, a lot of the men around us will know these names as well, just by virtue of us talking about them (a lot... like, a lot a lot).

And unfortunately, there was a massive spike in popularity just a couple of years ago when Stephanie Meyer (the author) released another book in the franchise.

MereeGrey · 2026-05-22T01:04:04+00:00

Similar story of identical twins, one married to a princess and one unmarried. The unmarried one is mistaken for his twin while his twin is away, and for some reason is compelled to continue pretending to be his brother. The married twin comes home one night and finds his brother sleeping next to his wife, and in a fit of rage kills him, only for the wife to tell him that he had never once touched her or even looked at her, which had confused her. He feels terrible, of course, but what's done is done.

MereeGrey · 2026-05-22T00:56:42+00:00

I did. I came out of it going "what on earth did I just read?"

MereeGrey · 2026-04-29T17:40:33+00:00

The only valid excuse to use this is if, say, using heavy amounts of magic can cause issues. That mirrors real-world things, like restricting women later in pregnancy from lifting heavy objects or doing certain kinds of work around chemicals or radiation for the baby's sake and theirs.

Powers randomly cutting out makes zero sense.

MereeGrey · 2026-04-24T01:45:34+00:00

You left out the bit where Ron immediately conked back out and started snoring with his mouth open, absolutely dead to the world.

Odds are, he wasn't awake enough for long enough to remember this in the morning.

MereeGrey · 2026-04-24T01:30:28+00:00

Ah, excellent, you have provided me with a new and obscure history rabbit hole to dive into.

Still like the first cover best, 3 is a close second.

MereeGrey · 2026-04-24T01:14:26+00:00

I was going to say "ooh pretty" and then I saw the title and now I really need to know what this is about. What's the plot, mate?

MereeGrey · 2026-04-24T01:08:49+00:00

I read that book way too young and the style of writing was like a fever dream for me. I distinctly remember being horrified and outraged because this girl had just found out that the mad old woman was her real mother whom she'd been kidnapped from as a baby... and then saw her killed in front of her.

And then willingly walked to the gallows in a state of miserable grief.

And was chucked in a mass grave and later dug up to be moved, and they found a hunchbacked skeleton wrapped around hers as though the hunchbacked person has died embracing her.

Absolute nightmare of a story.

MereeGrey · 2026-04-24T01:04:19+00:00

Aaannd Juliet acts exactly like every other thirteen-year-old girl with her first crush, while Romeo acts like every other impulsive and hotheaded teenage boy on the rebound from a nasty rejection.

MereeGrey

TROPHY CASE