A Very Potter Sequel

[littledarkvoice]

First of my unlocked entries in a long time, because it's an openish letter with some discussion added to it, and I figured that open letters may as well be... open.

Dear Team StarKid,

Thank you for producing and putting together A Very Potter Musical. It's given me many a laugh as I remember my more active days reading the Harry Potter books,

Comments

[littledarkvoice]

Indeed. I mean, it's implied and it happens offstage, but. Never actually funny.

Which is a shame, because generally Team Starkid has me in stitches (see here where Voldemort and Quirrel do a screwball odd couple comedy routine and top the whole thing off with a musical number). And any other time they've almost gone too far, they've always saved it with a subversion, or made it so over-the-top it parodies itself.

For instance--in the first Potter musical, you had a posse of girls enter, singing about Cho Chang in a flurry of Asian cliches, to music so stereotypical it could have come out of a 1940s cartoon. There's an Asian girl up front, who you're probably assuming is Cho at that point. My brain immediately starts to go BAD NEWS BEARS at that point, but then, immediately, the following happens:

Ginny: *goes up to Asian girl, hands folded, speaking careful English* "Konnichiwa, Cho Chang. I am Ginny Weasley. It is nice to meet you."
Asian Girl: *snaps in Ginny's face* "Bitch, I ain't Cho Chang."
Ron: "That's Lavender Brown! RACIST sister!"

At which point a very tall, very white, and very Southern girl comes forward and goes, "I'm Cho Chang, y'all."

--which is fucking brilliant when you consider that there was a portion of Potter fandom actually boggling that Cho Chang was a character of Asian descent, and vehemently denied it when it was confirmed.

With this one part of the sequel, I kept waiting for the subversion of the joke, but it never really came.