Harry Potter magic question

[danzibr]

Why don’t they have/use a spell to check what flavor jelly bean it is? Pretty sure Dumbledore didn’t want that earwax jelly bean.

[Razade]

Because part of the fun is getting a bad flavor. Also because it's a small bit of world building in a children's book and applying logic and reason from our world to it destroys the magic.

[factotum]

If you want an in-universe explanation, just assume that the manufacturer puts a spell on the beans to make it difficult or impossible to pull a trick like that.

[Kitten Champion]

Besides, there are real-world candies sold with the same mystery flavour gimmick. You'd probably not buy them in the first place if you weren't up for the adventure.

[Delicious Taffy]

Why don't they just use their summoning spell on the bean they want, if we're gonna go that route? All they have to do is say "Accio lime-flavor!", right? Anything else would be less than optimal, so why do they even bother manufacturing a candy with mystery flavors? It should be Bertie Bott's Exactly The Flavor You Want Right Now Beans, if we're being honest.

[Razade]

Why don't they just use their summoning spell on the bean they want, if we're gonna go that route? All they have to do is say "Accio lime-flavor!", right? Anything else would be less than optimal, so why do they even bother manufacturing a candy with mystery flavors? It should be Bertie Bott's Exactly The Flavor You Want Right Now Beans, if we're being honest.

Because part of the fun is getting a bad flavor. Also because it's a small bit of world building in a children's book and applying logic and reason from our world to it destroys the magic.

[Peelee]

I kind of want this thread to get some good legs under it just so I can see how often Razade needs to toss that out.

[Delicious Taffy]

Because part of the fun is getting a bad flavor. Also because it's a small bit of world building in a children's book and applying logic and reason from our world to it destroys the magic.

Yeah, I read it the first time. I was being a smart-ass.

[Razade]

I kind of want this thread to get some good legs under it just so I can see how often Razade needs to toss that out.

Unlike the jelly beans, there's only one flavor in " Razade's Stop over-anaylzing stuff and let peoeple have fun....Beans..."

[druid91]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

[JNAProductions]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

Because the wizards in Harry Potter are kinda dumb.

Edit: I say that, despite liking the series a lot. They just are.

[Murk]

Because the wizards in Harry Potter are kinda dumb.


They aren't just dumb, they are completely crazy. My own unsupported theory is that magic makes you a lunatic. The only way that the majority of the setting can be explained is by saying "because wizards are lunatics".
I'm not sure if it is the magic itself that makes you a lunatic, or the power that comes with it. The fact that wizards live longer, have no physical harm to fear, can solve any mundane problem with ease and do not seem to need any sort of functioning economy could very well make them lunatics as well, in the same way that being an invincible immortal spoiled billionaire would make most people lunatics.

[factotum]

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

How do you know there aren't? If the in-universe version of DFS is actually run by wizards summoning sofas from thin air, why would the books ever need to show or tell us that unless those guys actually got involved in the plot at any point?

[Saintheart]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

If I may offer a weak in-universe possibility: because that sort of venture is likely to expose the wizarding world openly (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Masquerade) to muggles. One can imagine Ikea spending a lot of money and trying to figure out where exactly Albus Dumbledore is hiding his factories, and perhaps eventually concluding to their horror that his factory is basically his office. Ergo, the Ministry probably makes sure that sort of thing is ... stopped. The wizarding world likely doesn't have enough magicians going bad that they can't free up a couple of Aurors to terminate some enterprising witch who decides there's a lot more cash to be made in computers that never fail than in betting on Quidditch matches.

[Brother Oni]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

Because it's a children's book and the whole world falls apart if you over-analyse things.

[Anonymouswizard]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

There probably are wizards selling conjured goods to muggles, although probably passing them off as hand crafted to avoid suspicion for the lack of factories.

Alternatively conjured goods don't last indefinitely and most wizards don't want to go through the hassle of setting up somewhere new every year.

There's also likely a bunch of wizards (likely mostly muggle born with a few half-bloods) serving in muggle hospitals, both serving the magical patients who can't make it to wizard hospitals and curing a select list of diseases with magic. Probably a mixture of nurses and doctors, and only a couple per hospital. The same goes for universities, the Ministry like wants at least a vague idea of what muggles are looking into, if only to make sure it won't expose magic.

[Frozen_Feet]

Because the wizards in Harry Potter are kinda dumb.

Edit: I say that, despite liking the series a lot. They just are.

You don't need to defend yourself. Wizards are called out as lacking logic and common sense in the series, starting with Philosopher's Stone. It's a plot point that the Wizards are, largely, either idiots or crazy as a cuckoo clock.

The few, sane competent ones work all day to keep the rest contained. That's also the answer to "why don't they sell conjured furniture to muggles?" They do, but it's a crime and gets the Ministry's goons breathing down on your neck. Again, established in the first two books.

As for the beans, if you want candies of a particular flavor, you just buy candies of that flavor. The whole point of eating mystery meat candies is not knowing what you will get. Anyone using magic to get around that lacks common sense even worse than the wizards.

[Sapphire Guard]

We only get Harry's perspective, and he doesn't know everything. Not that many teenagers have a detailed knowledge of the banking system, so we don't get to see how it works.

I don't think that it's particularly a problem of wizards. Imagine the population of a small nation has to keep a secret. Including the children, the cranks, the unstable or genocidal people. It's not particular incompetence, it's just people being people, and it's hard work to keep it secret.

Chair summoning is done by two top tier casters, McGonagal and Dumbledore. I don't think everyone can do that so easily.

[Bohandas]

If you want an in-universe explanation, just assume that the manufacturer puts a spell on the beans to make it difficult or impossible to pull a trick like that.

Agreed. We've seen that there's spells like that (like on the marauder's map)

[Traab]

To heck with conjuring, open an antique shop and REPAIR that stuff! Get the most damaged garbage for cheap possible, cast reparo then sell it for a huge markup.

[rooster707]

Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?

[Cikomyr]

Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?

What i was thinking.

I think wizards just dont mix in Muggle society to avoid upsetting that society's economy and societal balance. Wizard society is a parasite that lives on top of Muggle society, and any parasite needs a healthy host to survive long term

[Cazero]

Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?
Why even bother conjuring money when you can conjure the commodities money would buy?

[Anonymouswizard]

To heck with conjuring, open an antique shop and REPAIR that stuff! Get the most damaged garbage for cheap possible, cast reparo then sell it for a huge markup.

That's actually something quite a few wizards likely do. Magic would also help them in tracking down potentially missing parts of collections, so it's a win win.


Why even bother with a business when you can just conjure as much Muggle money as you want?

IIRC the official rules for magic in the Potterverse specify that five things can't be created by magic. I believe that this includes love (lust is okay), but the three I clearly remember are life, food and money (it can summon them, but that's slightly besides the point).

I suspect the problem with creating money is magic not being able to copy the details to the required accuracy, and wizard money likely has a goblin enchantment on it that wizards can't copy. While summoning muggle money from other locations is completely okat by the rules the Ministry almost certainly keeps tabs on those with the intelligence to do so (probably because those willing to interact with muggle society are ministry employees, a lot of pure bloods would never summon or create muggle money).


I suspect the reason they don't is that wizards live in a near post-scarcity world, at least compared to muggles. Although the Weaslys make that problematic.

[5a Violista]

I suspect the reason they don't is that wizards live in a near post-scarcity world, at least compared to muggles. Although the Weaslys make that problematic.

Somewhat related to the post-scarcity and the huge meddling by the Ministry:
If I remember, I'm pretty someone did the math and calculated (based on the available job positions and population numbers of the wizards/witches in Britain, the five basic career paths are essentially small-business-owner, St Mungo's employee, Hogwarts teacher, Quidditch player, and Ministry Employee. And, the sports jobs and Hogwarts jobs have an extraordinarily small number of available positions relative to what people would normally assume. What that means is that the majority of magic-users are employed by the wizarding government or, in some other way, depend wholly on the government. (Pretty much every other job requires living outside the country, in Romania or Egypt and such.)

Well, it explains why the Ministry reaches so deeply into everyone's lives. With most of everyone employed by the Ministry it makes sense that they can easily make rules banning (for example) selling conjured furniture.

(Not to mention, even the resident Muggles EXPERT Mr Weasley knows laughably little about Muggles. If that's not evidence of extreme isolationism, I don't know what is.)

[Frozen_Feet]

Conjuring up modern currency is actually a huge hurdle, because bills have finicky details up to and including individual identification numbers. The goblins likely have magical equivalent. I suspect all wizard currency is handmade by goblins, and every goblin remembers the coins they've made... so even if you create a big fat pile of coins which are of the right material and look correct, the moment your forgeries reach goblin hands, they will quickly realize the coins weren't made by them.

[Anonymouswizard]

(Not to mention, even the resident Muggles EXPERT Mr Weasley knows laughably little about Muggles. If that's not evidence of extreme isolationism, I don't know what is.)

Picking up on this bit specifically, we've got to take the case of muggleborns (and some half-bloods) into account, who probably have more practical knowledge of the Muggle world (being in it for at least six weeks every summer, potentially up to a good third of the year depending on how long Hogwarts holidays are, and having grown up entirely in it until they're eleven). Not the kind of knowledge that people like Mr Weasley would likely be interested in, but enough that they could probably muddle through primarilly living in the muggle world.

The Potterverse Wizarding World is generally not isolated enough that the extreme lack of knowledhe among everybody isn't very realistic, except maybe the very aristocratic pure bloods (such as the Malfoys). Especially as there's implied to be a good number of wizards marrying muggles, enough that a half-blood's parent being a muggle and not a muggleborn isn't shocking.

But yeah, the Potterverse falls apart if you look at it too closely. As do many fantasy settings which use the modern world, although ones where the supernatural is clued in do a lot better, especially as they can manage things like changing records and manipulating people to keep any evidence that is discovered secret. I suspect ummanned photo drones would get past a lot of anti-muggle protections, although they'd still fail to get past anti-electricity charms permenant places with them (like, say, Hogwarts) are going to become very suspicious indeed.

[Traab]

Picking up on this bit specifically, we've got to take the case of muggleborns (and some half-bloods) into account, who probably have more practical knowledge of the Muggle world (being in it for at least six weeks every summer, potentially up to a good third of the year depending on how long Hogwarts holidays are, and having grown up entirely in it until they're eleven). Not the kind of knowledge that people like Mr Weasley would likely be interested in, but enough that they could probably muddle through primarilly living in the muggle world.

The Potterverse Wizarding World is generally not isolated enough that the extreme lack of knowledhe among everybody isn't very realistic, except maybe the very aristocratic pure bloods (such as the Malfoys). Especially as there's implied to be a good number of wizards marrying muggles, enough that a half-blood's parent being a muggle and not a muggleborn isn't shocking.

But yeah, the Potterverse falls apart if you look at it too closely. As do many fantasy settings which use the modern world, although ones where the supernatural is clued in do a lot better, especially as they can manage things like changing records and manipulating people to keep any evidence that is discovered secret. I suspect ummanned photo drones would get past a lot of anti-muggle protections, although they'd still fail to get past anti-electricity charms permenant places with them (like, say, Hogwarts) are going to become very suspicious indeed.

Starting at the end, there arent any anti electricity wards, its just that magic cornholes science and by extent electricity. Its why harrys watch died. We have no way to be sure how effective this interference is. For all we know, in harry potter land, the muggles have a laundry list of places that refuse to be recorded by satellite or have such screwed up imagery as to be useless and have accepted it as a mystery of the planets geography or something, considering there are areas like that all over the world. Or, they talk about making things unplottable, hard to add hogwarts to google earth maps if the magic of the area keeps it from showing up. And while there are numerous problems with the hp universe, few of them couldnt be fixed by a little effort and expansion of the way things work. As an example, we know the british prime minister is aware of magic. By extension its possible that virtually all heads of state have knowledge of the magical world, why its hidden, and work to make sure it stays that way. And considering how easy it is to screw with memories and force people to talk magically, a politician who decides the secret should get out will find himself suddenly awash in career ending scandals with no memory of magic ever existing. Its not perfect, and hardly likely to last forever, but considering the timing of the series its not unbelievable that they havent had much issue until recently as tech advances further and further.

[Foeofthelance]

I suspect the reason they don't is that wizards live in a near post-scarcity world, at least compared to muggles. Although the Weaslys make that problematic.

Not particularly. The Weasley's might considered poor, but that's also by wizarding standards. I can't recall them ever mentioning not having enough, they just can rarely afford better. For example, they seem to have no problem taking in Hermione and Harry almost every summer, they have enough disposable income that Mr. Weasley can acquire muggle goods to experiment on, they own their own home, and there's never a mention of not having enough to eat. Their biggest obstacle is mostly personally crafted goods, such as wands and school books, hence all the hand-me-downs. Considering they have seven kids, that's fairly reasonable. There's no real reason for them to go buy Ron a new copy of the Potions text book, not when he can just use Fred and George's from last year, and especially not for curriculum that seem to very rarely change. The other side of that would be that the only one who seems to consider them "poor" is Draco, and by Draco's standard just about everyone is poor save maybe Harry. By any muggle standards, they'd fit well into the middle class.

[Traab]

Thats true, being able to afford to send seven kids to private school (Or the equivalent since you have to pay tuition) with up to FIVE being in the school at the same time, percy twins ron and ginny, thats some serious coinage there for a single income household, even if dad is a department head for the government. As an example when I went to a catholic school it cost 4 grand a year and thats not even remotely close to the top of the expense list. But for 5 kids? Thats 20 grand a year which is a very large chunk of change from any household not in the 1%

[Brother Oni]

I suspect ummanned photo drones would get past a lot of anti-muggle protections, although they'd still fail to get past anti-electricity charms permenant places with them (like, say, Hogwarts) are going to become very suspicious indeed.

The fact that Hogwarts doesn't show up on google maps is a gaping big plot hole.


Starting at the end, there arent any anti electricity wards, its just that magic cornholes science and by extent electricity.

It can't do, else the whole world falls apart.

Example - there's a major magical site in King's Cross station, so how come a modern major train station still works? There should be a massive technology dead zone around Diagon Alley in the heart of London, one of the most technologically intensive cities in the world, yet there isn't.
The Night Bus should shut down every modern car it drives past, plus the fatalities it causes every time it drives past a hospital's intensive care unit would get wizards more reviled and hated than certain political groups (especially when it drives past the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

Even taking it on Hogwart's grounds, which should shut down all technology, it doesn't stop chemical reactions (otherwise Muggles would die instantly and Hermione's parents are proof that that doesn't happen) and Hagrid's crossbow works just fine, so everything up to firearms should work.

Don't even get me started on the apathy and indolence that wizard society has towards Muggle society, especially during the events of the 20th Century. This is despite them being either heavily born of or married to Muggles (example: not a single German born Jewish wizard did anything except hide during the lead up to and during WW2?).

As I said, don't poke the logic of the Harry Potter world too much, it just falls apart.

[Devonix]

Yeah Potter doesn't hold up yo scrutiny very well. Because at it's core it's still a children's book series.

The Wizards not knowing much about the human world doesn't make sense. Because a lot of their largest instilations. Or important places, crossover directly with heavily populated human areas. As well as them having direct contact with human governments.

[jayem]

The fact that Hogwarts doesn't show up on google maps is a gaping big plot hole.

Google maps wasn't around till the Half-blood prince book (Goblet of Fire film). And in any case the countries full of generic buildings that it wouldn't take too much for an illusion and slippy memory spells to cover most curiousity (particularly for the OS&MOD versions)


Don't even get me started on the apathy and indolence that wizard society has towards Muggle society, especially during the events of the 20th Century. This is despite them being either heavily born of or married to Muggles (example: not a single German born Jewish wizard did anything except hide during the lead up to and during WW2?).
As I said, don't poke the logic of the Harry Potter world too much, it just falls apart.

I think the Dumbledore/Grindelwald stuff is meant to cover that to first order. The Wizards were in a world war of their own against their own facists (whether by coincidence or not). It still doesn't stand much poking though.
Though at that point what the Voldemort struggle corresponds to is a mystery.

[Sapphire Guard]

The fact that Hogwarts doesn't show up on google maps is a gaping big plot hole.
.

In 1997?


This is despite them being either heavily born of or married to Muggles (example: not a single German born Jewish wizard did anything except hide during the lead up to and during WW2?).


A) How do you know that?
B) Like What?
C) Grindelwald's own wizards might have something to say about that.

[warty goblin]

The fact that Hogwarts doesn't show up on google maps is a gaping big plot hole.

Book 4 actually covers this; muggles just see a ruined castle. Beyond that, wizards can specifically make a location impossible to plot on a map.



Example - there's a major magical site in King's Cross station, so how come a modern major train station still works? There should be a massive technology dead zone around Diagon Alley in the heart of London, one of the most technologically intensive cities in the world, yet there isn't.
The Night Bus should shut down every modern car it drives past, plus the fatalities it causes every time it drives past a hospital's intensive care unit would get wizards more reviled and hated than certain political groups (especially when it drives past the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

The standard has never been that any magic causes technology to shut down, it's that sufficient magic causes technology to fail. Since the effects you listed are not observed, this suggests that the threshold for sufficient magic is in fact fairly high. For all we know it may be possible for wizards to keep that from happening as well; but since Hogwarts is very remote and no muggle ever has reason to be there, they don't bother.

Seriously, this isn't a plothole unless you deliberately misconstrue the text to make it one.


Don't even get me started on the apathy and indolence that wizard society has towards Muggle society, especially during the events of the 20th Century. This is despite them being either heavily born of or married to Muggles (example: not a single German born Jewish wizard did anything except hide during the lead up to and during WW2?).

As I said, don't poke the logic of the Harry Potter world too much, it just falls apart.

Ima not get into the real world politics beyond saying that that level of apathy is entirely believable to me, and consistently observable in genuine history. Groups of people tend not to care very much about other groups of people when they don't have to.

[Traab]

The fact that Hogwarts doesn't show up on google maps is a gaping big plot hole.



It can't do, else the whole world falls apart.

Example - there's a major magical site in King's Cross station, so how come a modern major train station still works? There should be a massive technology dead zone around Diagon Alley in the heart of London, one of the most technologically intensive cities in the world, yet there isn't.
The Night Bus should shut down every modern car it drives past, plus the fatalities it causes every time it drives past a hospital's intensive care unit would get wizards more reviled and hated than certain political groups (especially when it drives past the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

Even taking it on Hogwart's grounds, which should shut down all technology, it doesn't stop chemical reactions (otherwise Muggles would die instantly and Hermione's parents are proof that that doesn't happen) and Hagrid's crossbow works just fine, so everything up to firearms should work.

Don't even get me started on the apathy and indolence that wizard society has towards Muggle society, especially during the events of the 20th Century. This is despite them being either heavily born of or married to Muggles (example: not a single German born Jewish wizard did anything except hide during the lead up to and during WW2?).

As I said, don't poke the logic of the Harry Potter world too much, it just falls apart.

As was said, there is a certain amount needed, this isnt dresden magic that shorts out everything around it, and kings cross is basically a hidden doorway and track. Its hardly a major magical nexus or something. And there is a difference between shutting down tech and shutting down mechanics or chemical reactions or whatever. Your computer, your cell phone, your watch, all would shut down in hogwarts. Noone ever said that dropping potassium in water would no longer explode.

As for the knight bus, that thing is 1) not a huge nexus of magic like hogwarts and 2) constantly teleporting all over the dang place while traveling at high g rate producing speeds. So even if it COULD effect tech around it, its not there long enough to do so.

[zimmerwald1915]

The Wizards were in a world war of their own against their own facists (whether by coincidence or not). It still doesn't stand much poking though.
The whole idea of a "global antifascist struggle" never stood up to scrutiny. That the fake teen-lit magical version doesn't either is not terribly surprising.

[Frozen_Feet]

The reason why technology fails in presence of magic is less about magic being inherently inimical to it, and more about two things:

1) wizards very specifically create and utilize spells with the purpose of preventing muggles from finding them out. For example, Hogwarts doesn't make tech fail because of background magic, but because it has loads and loads of spells acting on it with the specific purpose of preventing it from being found out.

2) most wizards neither know enough nor care enough about sophisticated muggle tech, such as electronics, to make their spellcasting play nice with such.

A lot of stuff in the books suggests that combining tech and magic would be perfectly possible, but the Ministry does not like wizards doing that and restricts it where ever possible. Hence why wizarding world lags behind muggles in some respects.

Now, in the long run, muggle technological achievements might make the separation of worlds infeasible. It just hadn't happened during timespan covered by the books. But it's good to remember that Potterverse still has all the same conspiracy theorists, myths, folklore etc. as the real world. In context of Potterverse, a lot of those are cracks in the masquerade. It's not that no-one never notices anything. It's that the Ministry of Magic explicitly works overtime maintaining an Orwellian control state, obviating muggles left and right. A good chuck of entire resource base of the wizarding world is focused on nothing but keeping the muggles clueless.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah Potter doesn't hold up yo scrutiny very well. Because at it's core it's still a children's book series.

The Wizards not knowing much about the human world doesn't make sense. Because a lot of their largest instilations. Or important places, crossover directly with heavily populated human areas. As well as them having direct contact with human governments.

To be fair, the fact that it doesn't hold up isn't a problem. It does however complicate discussion of the setting somewhat, as we have to all agree to ignore the fact that with even 2018 technology it's hard for a semi-isolated world of magic to exist in such a form (this isn't Unknown Armies, where magic staying hidden actually makes sense), or we end up in the current position of arguing over 'magic would never stay hidden' 'yes it would' 'but the things stopping it from being discovered actually cause more problems' 'magic!'

[Frozen_Feet]

Talking about 2018 standards of technology is misleading. The main book series ended in 2007 and the in-universe time span of the events is something like 1990 to 1997.

[AvatarVecna]

Because the wizards in Harry Potter are kinda dumb.

Edit: I say that, despite liking the series a lot. They just are.

As someone who's been deep in the HP fanfic community for over a decade, the only thing I can tell you for sure is that nothing about this series makes any goddamn sense if you think about it for more than 5 minutes. I am convinced that what very little actual thought was put into the canon worldbuilding amounted to "what's an easy way to make a magical version of this regular thing?" Harry Potter is written plot first, characters second, worldbuilding distant third, and I say that as somebody who loves the series.

Probably the best example is Quidditch, a game with no time limit that can't be put off for bad weather but can be put off if one player of one team has an easily-treatable injury, but all of that pales in comparison to the biggest issue: despite obstensibly being a team game, the entire game focuses around the Snitch and the Seekers, and it does this so that even when Harry Potter is taking part in a team sport, we don't really have to care about anything except his personal accomplishments and his relationship with the other Seeker during the game. The rules of the game that aren't largely meaningless fluff do everything to make what looks like a team sport into an individual competition.

[factotum]

In context of Potterverse, a lot of those are cracks in the masquerade. It's not that no-one never notices anything. It's that the Ministry of Magic explicitly works overtime maintaining an Orwellian control state, obviating muggles left and right.

But then you get the situation of Harry's adoptive parents, who know all about the wizarding stuff but think it's dangerous and stupid. Yet they never tell anyone about it? Similarly, *both* of Hermione's parents are Muggles, yet they seem quite happy to send their daughter off to a magical school and keep the whole thing secret.

Which then begs the question: the Muggle school authorities presumably have a record of Hermione's existence, so why aren't they knocking on her parents' door asking why she isn't in school?

[Anonymouswizard]

Talking about 2018 standards of technology is misleading. The main book series ended in 2007 and the in-universe time span of the events is something like 1990 to 1997.

The latest dated official story has to be at least around 2010, half a decade later isn't that unreasonable if we assume that the characters waited until their twenties to have children, and as wizards live longer we can add another handful of years to the potential wait, meaning we could be talking about 2020 technology.

Okay, so the series begins in 1981, skips ten years, and then each book covers roughly one year, setting the end of the pre-epilogue series at 1998. If we assume that Ginny doesn't get pregnant in/before her final year of Hogwarts we can assume that Harry and Ginny's first child is born no earlier than 2000, and therefore goes to HW in 2010. Now I can't remember the exact age distribution of the Pottersprogs, but I remember there were two siblings older than Albus Severus and there were no twins, so he'd be going to HW no earlier than 2011, likely 2012 at the absolute earliest.

If we take Cursed Child as canon then we have to add a couple of years until the main plot happens, so 2014 at the earliest. Assuming that we don't have a case of one child every year then we can easily push that up to 2016. It doesn't take a lot of work to get a story that should have to deal with 2018 technology or better.

Even if we aren't we're still looking at 2010s levels of technology during the epilogue, potentially up to 2020 while remaining reasonable (anybody got a copy of Deathly Hallows to check when the epilogue is set? I don't anymore).

[Gnoman]

Which then begs the question: the Muggle school authorities presumably have a record of Hermione's existence, so why aren't they knocking on her parents' door asking why she isn't in school?

This shouldn't even be a question, because we don't even have to make any significant assumptions. The Ministry of Magic has liaisons with the Muggle government - not only does Fudge have semi-regular meetings with the Prime Minister, but they were able to easily position an Auror in the Prime Minister's staff to serve as a bodyguard without anybody noticing that anything was odd. Compared to that, adding a "this student is enrolled in private school" to the records of a few dozen kids every year is trivial.


This also proves that the magical government isn't as clueless about the Muggle worlds as it looks at first glance. Yes, witches and wizards who stay almost entirely within the wizarding world are out of touch, but plenty of the top officials can blend in with ease.

[5a Violista]

The reason why technology fails in presence of magic is less about magic being inherently inimical to it, and more about two things:

1) wizards very specifically create and utilize spells with the purpose of preventing muggles from finding them out. For example, Hogwarts doesn't make tech fail because of background magic, but because it has loads and loads of spells acting on it with the specific purpose of preventing it from being found out.

According to Hogwarts, A History (and Hermione Granger), that example is incorrect even though the point is still true: she specifically tells Harry and Ron why hidden microphones and recording equipment don't work in Hogwarts: "All those substitutes for magic Muggles use - electricity, computers, and radar, and all those things - they all go haywire around Hogwarts, there's too much magic in the air."

Specifically, she says they fail in Hogwarts because of the background magic, not because of specific magic, which contradicts point (1)'s example.

Of course, this also suggests that this is something unique to Hogwarts itself (I think on Pottermore, it was stated that Hogwarts' location was chosen specifically because it had a large connection with magic naturally...but I can't find the source, so maybe I'm misremembering something).

However, they also have other magic around Hogwarts to prevent Muggles from going in it or finding out about it (If I remember correctly, they have: a spell that makes Muggles forget why they're going in that direction, a spell that makes Hogwarts look like a ruined castle with several posted "Danger, do not enter" signs, and several others (I believe it was stated that they had several charms and spells protecting it, but only went into detail on a few).

To be honest, the reason why it doesn't show up on Google Maps is probably because of that "looks like a ruined castle" spell. If they can make it look ruined to every Muggle that approaches it, I'm sure they're also capable of making it look ruined when photographed from satellites.

[rooster707]

The latest dated official story has to be at least around 2010, half a decade later isn't that unreasonable if we assume that the characters waited until their twenties to have children, and as wizards live longer we can add another handful of years to the potential wait, meaning we could be talking about 2020 technology.

Okay, so the series begins in 1981, skips ten years, and then each book covers roughly one year, setting the end of the pre-epilogue series at 1998. If we assume that Ginny doesn't get pregnant in/before her final year of Hogwarts we can assume that Harry and Ginny's first child is born no earlier than 2000, and therefore goes to HW in 2010. Now I can't remember the exact age distribution of the Pottersprogs, but I remember there were two siblings older than Albus Severus and there were no twins, so he'd be going to HW no earlier than 2011, likely 2012 at the absolute earliest.

If we take Cursed Child as canon then we have to add a couple of years until the main plot happens, so 2014 at the earliest. Assuming that we don't have a case of one child every year then we can easily push that up to 2016. It doesn't take a lot of work to get a story that should have to deal with 2018 technology or better.

Even if we aren't we're still looking at 2010s levels of technology during the epilogue, potentially up to 2020 while remaining reasonable (anybody got a copy of Deathly Hallows to check when the epilogue is set? I don't anymore).

Wiki says the Deathly Hallows epilogue/beginning of Cursed Child is 2017.

[Brother Oni]

In 1997?

Earliest air mosaic photos of Scotland was in the 1940s-1950s and satellites started photographing the earth from the 1970s onwards. It just not until Google Earth was made that easy access to it by the public was possible.


C) Grindelwald's own wizards might have something to say about that.

Wiki seems to say that they were active from 1926-1945. Say warty goblin is correct and the wizards don't want to get involved with WW1, there's still the Spanish Influenza Epidemic that caused a death toll of 50-100 million people - given that life threatening illnesses can be easily cured by magic or potions, the wizards simply closed ranks, healed and protected their own then let all their neighbours die?


The standard has never been that any magic causes technology to shut down, it's that sufficient magic causes technology to fail. Since the effects you listed are not observed, this suggests that the threshold for sufficient magic is in fact fairly high. For all we know it may be possible for wizards to keep that from happening as well; but since Hogwarts is very remote and no muggle ever has reason to be there, they don't bother.


As was said, there is a certain amount needed, this isnt dresden magic that shorts out everything around it, and kings cross is basically a hidden doorway and track.

Fair enough I concede the point on the other locations, but Diagon Alley? Unless you're claiming that isn't a major magical nexus.


Ima not get into the real world politics beyond saying that that level of apathy is entirely believable to me, and consistently observable in genuine history. Groups of people tend not to care very much about other groups of people when they don't have to.

Fair enough - wizarding society is borderline sociopathic in nature and is morally reprehensible. Even that would be fine if they kept themselves to themselves, but when their wars and creature rampages spill over to the Muggle world and get covered up, not a single world government starts to take steps?


This also proves that the magical government isn't as clueless about the Muggle worlds as it looks at first glance. Yes, witches and wizards who stay almost entirely within the wizarding world are out of touch, but plenty of the top officials can blend in with ease.

Except that their supposed top expert can't even work out postage stamps, something that any wizard raised in the Muggle World could tell him in about 2 minutes. It smacks very much of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing - you have the Wizard civil servants who get on with things and make sure everything runs smoothly, while the supposed research departments don't even know their arse from their elbow. It's completely illogical... *slaps forehead* which of course makes absolute sense now as wizards are completely illogical.

[Delicious Taffy]

the wizards simply closed ranks, healed and protected their own then let all their neighbours die?

That seems completely in-character for wizards, yeah. The English ones, anyway.

[snowblizz]

It's completely illogical... *slaps forehead* which of course makes absolute sense now as wizards are completely illogical.

I think Brother Oni made a good point earlier you should consider here:


Because it's a children's book and the whole world falls apart if you over-analyse things.

:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Couldn't resist.

[Brother Oni]

Couldn't resist.

Damn, you got me. :smalltongue:

[Sapphire Guard]

Let's assume that there is a 'healicus flucus' spell that is widely available, and that there's a dedicated task force of magical healers. They're not going to make much of a dent in the number of cases, by the time you've finished one hospital, enough patients have coughed that the infection has spread beyond the initial patients, many of whom will not yet show symptoms.


Earliest air mosaic photos of Scotland was in the 1940s-1950s and satellites started photographing the earth from the 1970s onwards. It just not until Google Earth was made that easy access to it by the public was possible.

Still not a plot hole that Google Maps isn't mentioned as a factor in a work set in 1997. All we see in the epilogue is that Platform 9 3/4 is still running, I haven't read Cursed Child, but does something particular happen in it that is implausible with modern tech?

[Gnoman]

Except that their supposed top expert can't even work out postage stamps, something that any wizard raised in the Muggle World could tell him in about 2 minutes. It smacks very much of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing - you have the Wizard civil servants who get on with things and make sure everything runs smoothly, while the supposed research departments don't even know their arse from their elbow. It's completely illogical... *slaps forehead* which of course makes absolute sense now as wizards are completely illogical.

It is suggested a few times that Arthur isn't quite as clueless as he seems. When he's dealing with purely academic work (such as his discussion and correction about the "firelegs" report when he was pretending not to know Shacklebolt; or his experiments with Muggle medicine after Nagini bit him), we don't see any real oddities. When does he get strange? When he's interacting with (or pretending to be) a Muggle. At that point, he gets so excited that he loses his mind.


A good analogy is Tim Taylor from Home Improvement. If you watch the show carefully, Tim does an excellent job with any project he takes seriously (the washing machine he builds for Jill with automatic soap and fabric softener feed is a good example - that was built fairly early on, and is seen in the background (suggesting that they are using it) for the rest of the show's run). If he just gets excited in what he's doing, his projects tend to explode.

[jayem]

Let's assume that there is a 'healicus flucus' spell that is widely available, and that there's a dedicated task force of magical healers. They're not going to make much of a dent in the number of cases, by the time you've finished one hospital, enough patients have coughed that the infection has spread beyond the initial patients, many of whom will not yet show symptoms.

That you'd think would still show up though. Though you could explain why the literally-magically survivors of the hospital would be treated with suspicion and lynched by the angry neighbours (either in reality or in discussion). Or alternatively it would explain why the 1st wave was less virulent.



Still not a plot hole that Google Maps isn't mentioned as a factor in a work set in 1997. All we see in the epilogue is that Platform 9 3/4 is still running, I haven't read Cursed Child, but does something particular happen in it that is implausible with modern tech?

The MOD maps though do have a lower usage (and likely much less local usage).

In addition Doune castle, (which literally had the namebadge in the 1st 10km*10km square I looked at) isn't really resolvable till your looking at km squares at which point their are several 1000. Which I think would require some serious looking.

In fact looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_Scotland there are 64 castles in 6400sq km (Aberdeenshire). A random search isn't going to pick it up (till you get Google Earth levels of random searchers). Even someone going through semi-systematically there's a high chance they'll look at the castle, go "I thought XYZ castle was further west". So it's pretty much down to someone comparing each tile with the OS map, which there proably was a few, deciding it definitely isn't just a farm, and then deciding to take some action. Which even without concealment probably happened, what twice?
So say the slightly confused british lieutenent knocks on the door has a nice chat with Dumbledore, realises he's made a terrible mistake, and then 'accidentally' files the slides in the wrong order. While the more planned KGB team (who are expecting surprises) perhaps require ministry action but should set off some alarm bells with the russian ministry.

[Anonymouswizard]

It is suggested a few times that Arthur isn't quite as clueless as he seems. When he's dealing with purely academic work (such as his discussion and correction about the "firelegs" report when he was pretending not to know Shacklebolt; or his experiments with Muggle medicine after Nagini bit him), we don't see any real oddities. When does he get strange? When he's interacting with (or pretending to be) a Muggle. At that point, he gets so excited that he loses his mind.

Messing up the postage stamps is also fairly easy to understand, their society doesn't use anything similar as they tend to send messages via owl. He understands that a letter needs stamps in order to be posted, and probably understands that buying a stamp is paying for deliver in advance, but it's easy to see that he might not know the exact stamp he wants or thinks more stamps means a faster delivery. Plus there's likely a lot of focusing on areas us muggles don't see important but are vital.

Arthur is one of the two people in the wizarding world who own a flying muggle vehicle, and it's entirely possible that he did it not just because he wanted to, but also as an experiment to see how much you can mix magic and technology.

Also, it is clear that most wizards are pretty clueless, with Arthur as a major exception. This is pretty definitively shown via the need to describe what a gun is (which have been around for nearly a millenia by now, discounting China because I'm not quite sure when they invented them) as 'a kind of metal wand'. Although that's a hilariously bad description in itself, it would likely be more useful to say 'a muggle weapon that kills by imparting high speeds to small pieces of metal' (but that's not as funny, so we let it slide). The ministry has enough information to train an auror how to blend into muggle society for extended periods of time, but it's not widely known (among pure bloods at least).

[Brother Oni]

Let's assume that there is a 'healicus flucus' spell that is widely available, and that there's a dedicated task force of magical healers. They're not going to make much of a dent in the number of cases, by the time you've finished one hospital, enough patients have coughed that the infection has spread beyond the initial patients, many of whom will not yet show symptoms.

Which is why quarantine measures are put into place. Influenza has a relatively short gestation period; a person can only go 1-4 days before showing symptoms, thus the uncontrolled spread is limited (if you're infected, you're not going to get very far before you're too sick to travel - in comparison SARS has ~10 days gestation and Ebola has 21 days). While transmission from an asymptomatic carrier is possible, it's believed not to be significant in the spread of influenza (link (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2646474/)).


Still not a plot hole that Google Maps isn't mentioned as a factor in a work set in 1997. All we see in the epilogue is that Platform 9 3/4 is still running, I haven't read Cursed Child, but does something particular happen in it that is implausible with modern tech?

As jayem mentioned, the original maps were intended for government use via the Ordnance Survey. A ruined castle that's been declared hazardous would still need to be assessed and protected by relevant conservation bodies (eg Historic Scotland (https://www.historicenvironment.scot/)), else the land might be sold to other users. The MoD maintain 2 artillery ranges in Scotland - I don't think wizards would like to test the effectiveness of their protection charms against a MLRS or an AS90 battery.

Either way, you're going to get Muggles wandering close to Hogwarts (either surveyors wanting to look at the castle to preserve it or ATOs looking for mysteriously unexploded shells) and them getting confused about why they want to go there every despite orders and records to the contrary is going eventually send alarm bells elsewhere.


Dammit, I've done it again. I need to get snowblizz to slap me every time I even think about participating in a Harry Potter thread... :smallsigh:

[Keltest]

As jayem mentioned, the original maps were intended for government use via the Ordnance Survey. A ruined castle that's been declared hazardous would still need to be assessed and protected by relevant conservation bodies (eg Historic Scotland (https://www.historicenvironment.scot/)), else the land might be sold to other users. The MoD maintain 2 artillery ranges in Scotland - I don't think wizards would like to test the effectiveness of their protection charms against a MLRS or an AS90 battery.

Either way, you're going to get Muggles wandering close to Hogwarts (either surveyors wanting to look at the castle to preserve it or ATOs looking for mysteriously unexploded shells) and them getting confused about why they want to go there every despite orders and records to the contrary is going eventually send alarm bells elsewhere.


Dammit, I've done it again. I need to get snowblizz to slap me every time I even think about participating in a Harry Potter thread... :smallsigh:

Presumably after the seventh or eighth lost Muggle surveyor, the obliviators or muggle relations officer or whoever will go out to the relevant group and ask them to please stop, we live here and don't want you guys to get hurt breaking in.

[snowblizz]

Dammit, I've done it again. I need to get snowblizz to slap me every time I even think about participating in a Harry Potter thread... :smallsigh:
I'll start ordering trout in bulk.


Presumably after the seventh or eighth lost Muggle surveyor, the obliviators or muggle relations officer or whoever will go out to the relevant group and ask them to please stop, we live here and don't want you guys to get hurt breaking in.
Ouch. Fridge logic. So they'll be sweeping "serial killers on the moor" headlines off the Sun quite often then.

Like it's been said, the more you poke at this the worse it gets.

[Eldan]

Well, it's implied that the British government knows about the wizarding world. At least the PM. I'm assuming that someone is Men-in-Black-ing this. I.e. they obliviate one or two surveyors, and if they try again, a few nice men in suits show up and explain to you that it is very important to the government that no one surveys that very unimportant ruin in that very unimportant bit of Scottish moorland.

On the other hand, with satellite images... wouldn't it take roughly two days until half the world's geographers are all over a phenomenon like that? Then two days later, all the physicists? That's the problem with the internet. It makes it hard to just obliviate things away.

[Lvl45DM!]

Well, it's implied that the British government knows about the wizarding world. At least the PM. I'm assuming that someone is Men-in-Black-ing this. I.e. they obliviate one or two surveyors, and if they try again, a few nice men in suits show up and explain to you that it is very important to the government that no one surveys that very unimportant ruin in that very unimportant bit of Scottish moorland.

On the other hand, with satellite images... wouldn't it take roughly two days until half the world's geographers are all over a phenomenon like that? Then two days later, all the physicists? That's the problem with the internet. It makes it hard to just obliviate things away.

No. Because they are wizards and they cast a spell to make that not happen.

[Eldan]

There's no evidence they have that kind of magic. Not on that scale. I mean, would they even understand what an email is?

[Sapphire Guard]

Which is why quarantine measures are put into place. Influenza has a relatively short gestation period; a person can only go 1-4 days before showing symptoms, thus the uncontrolled spread is limited (if you're infected, you're not going to get very far before you're too sick to travel - in comparison SARS has ~10 days gestation and Ebola has 21 days). While transmission from an asymptomatic carrier is possible, it's believed not to be significant in the spread of influenza (link (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2646474/)).



As jayem mentioned, the original maps were intended for government use via the Ordnance Survey. A ruined castle that's been declared hazardous would still need to be assessed and protected by relevant conservation bodies (eg Historic Scotland (https://www.historicenvironment.scot/)), else the land might be sold to other users. The MoD maintain 2 artillery ranges in Scotland - I don't think wizards would like to test the effectiveness of their protection charms against a MLRS or an AS90 battery.

Either way, you're going to get Muggles wandering close to Hogwarts (either surveyors wanting to look at the castle to preserve it or ATOs looking for mysteriously unexploded shells) and them getting confused about why they want to go there every despite orders and records to the contrary is going eventually send alarm bells elsewhere.


Dammit, I've done it again. I need to get snowblizz to slap me every time I even think about participating in a Harry Potter thread... :smallsigh:

Quarantine? In a WW1 era field hospital that's crammed to the rafters? Good luck with that. If it was that easy, the spanish flu wouldn't have been such a problem in the first place. It's still not fully understood even today.

Further possibility: Magically healing the flu means that the body doesn't have to create antibodies, so there's nothing preventing reinfection.

Alternatively, Hogwarts has someone in historic scotland and similar organisations that files the right paperwork to say 'yes, this is a derelict castle owned by suchandsuch, it's historic enough not to be destroyed but derelict enough that it should be avoided, yada yada yada'. Anyone sent to investigate comes back believing that they did and everything's in order. Not so very difficult.

There are thousands of castles in Scotland, it would take serious dedication to notice an extra one, care enough to investigate, and then get inside without being noticed. It's not likely to happen very much, and is pretty easy to deal with if it does.

All these kind of arguments rely on very specific assumptions.

Why didn't they intervene in War Y? relies on the assumption that one side had wizards, and Side B did not, that they didn't intervene, that Muggle society would know about it if they did.

Why didn't they intervene in catastrophe Z? Did they know about it in advance, could they make a meaningful difference, would such interventions have become public knowledge even if they did?

@Eldan: There's no evidence they can heal the flu either.

[Johel]

If we are spotting holes and potential abuses in the Potterverse, search no further than their money.

Sure, a wizard might be in trouble for forging galleon, sickles and knuts.
But what about melting said coins and then selling the metal to muggles ?

Gold is priced around 35.000-40.000 $US per kg or 35-40 $USD per gram.
A US cent (which is already a tiny little thing of a coin) is about 2.5 grams.
It would be heavier if made of gold but let's assume that a Galleon weight 2.5 gram of pure gold.
The metal in 1 galleon is worth about 85-100 $USD.

A galleon give you 17 sickles , meaning a single sickle is worth about 5-6 $USD.
The sickle is made of silver... and 2.5 grams of silver is worth about 1,2 $USD.
So the metal in 17 sickles is worth about 20 $USD.

A cup of hot chocolate is worth about 2 sickles in the Potterverse.

The plan :

Open a tavern near Hogward.
Start selling hot chocolate to those pesky students.
Exchange those sickles for galleons.
Melt some of the galleons to get the gold.
Sell the gold to muggles.
Have a good time in muggle world.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Johel: for that plan to work, you have to presume neither the goblins nor the Ministry are capable of noticing disappearing currency. They have both the means and the incentive to do so and already explicitly track transactions between wizards and muggles, so why do you think they'd let something like your plan slip past them?

[Eldan]

Goblin uprisings have in the past been a serious threat to magical society. So they must have some considerable magic.

Also, is it ever stated those coins are pure metal?

[Frozen_Feet]

What metal they are doesn't really matter. There is another hole in that plan, all get-rich-schemes similar to it, and it is this:

This kind of melting coinage to sell the raw materials for profit has been a problem for metal-based currencies for centuries. Which is why it, along with various forms of forgery, has been a serious offense towards the state across Europe for, also, centuries.

Logically, some greedy wizard already tried this a long time ago - and the magical governments got a hint of it also a long time ago. Nowadays everyone and their mother knows it's a crime and doesn't want to get punished for it.

EDIT: point being, no exploit is clever or setting-breaking if it is based on something that any government worth its salt would've banned before the Internatioal Statute of Secrecy was even a thing.

[Eldan]

Fair point. There are "exploits" like that in economy. We call them "insider trading". Or "fraud". Or "currency manipulation".

I also like the solution from Natural Twenty: the goblins utterly destroy anyone who tries.

[Foeofthelance]

Well, it's implied that the British government knows about the wizarding world. At least the PM. I'm assuming that someone is Men-in-Black-ing this. I.e. they obliviate one or two surveyors, and if they try again, a few nice men in suits show up and explain to you that it is very important to the government that no one surveys that very unimportant ruin in that very unimportant bit of Scottish moorland.

On the other hand, with satellite images... wouldn't it take roughly two days until half the world's geographers are all over a phenomenon like that? Then two days later, all the physicists? That's the problem with the internet. It makes it hard to just obliviate things away.

Different spells for different things.

Hogwarts is Unplottable, so it won't show up on a map.

Hogwarts has Aversion charms, so Muggles who get too close realize they left the stove on or just wanders off.

Hogwarts has Camouflage charms, so anyone who gets too close sees a falling apart castle surrounded by signs that say, "Deadly! Stay away!"

So assuming the Unplottable charms don't keep it off things like Google Earth, the rest makes it incredibly difficult to find. And all the Muggle government needs to do is declare the land around it a protected nature reserve of some sort.

[Anonymouswizard]

No. Because they are wizards and they cast a spell to make that not happen.

Even in a series about wizards 'a wizard did it' is highly unsatisfying. Mainly because the wizards are never shown to work on such a scale.


On the magical currency melting problem, I just assumed that as it's goblin made its incredibly hard to melt down. Goblin made stuff does seem to be more durable than human made stuff.

[Yuki Akuma]

Do Camouflage charms work on cameras? If they do, then Hogwarts not showing up as anything special on Google Maps is trivially explained.

If they don't... the Unplottable charm would foil the "ordnance survery" mode of Google Maps handily, although the difference between the map and satellite versions might raise eyebrows.

Maybe the wizarding world has deals with various governments to redact magical sites from satellite images before the public gets to see them?

[Eldan]

Conspiracy nuts must be fun in the Potter World. I mean, they start at "The government is redacting satellite photos" and end up with "Wizard Nazis".

[Anonymouswizard]

Conspiracy nuts must be fun in the Potter World. I mean, they start at "The government is redacting satellite photos" and end up with "Wizard Nazis".

Honestly, there's a lot of fun to be had mixing conspiracy fiction and any 'modern world magic' fiction. The two go so well together, especially in settings where magic and mundane societies are a lot more integrated (because you already have secret societies of wizards pursuing an agenda, it's now only one set until Wizard Illuminati'). The simple fact that Vampire: the Masquerade is still popular is proof of this, as the entire Old World of Darkness is based on conspiracies controlling the world (the Camarilla, the Technocracy, the Traditions, the Garou Tribes, even the Fairies might be doing it). While the New World of Darkness did away with a lot of the ancient conspiracies controlling the world you've still got the various Mage factions and the Incictus (who are less concerned with control and more concerned with secrecy.

In fact, the Ministry of Magic in the Potterverse is essentially a conspiracy to keep magic in the hands of witches and wizards, although it's not looking for any actual power over the course of the world (wizarding society mostly being seperate). A bit like the Invictus in Vampire: the Requiem.

[Eldan]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines had a lot of fun with this. There was a radio in your lair, tuned to a late night call-in talk show. THere were several nutters calling in, including one who was absolutely right about most of what he said., including describing some of the game's plot.

[Anonymouswizard]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines had a lot of fun with this. There was a radio in your lair, tuned to a late night call-in talk show. THere were several nutters calling in, including one who was absolutely right about most of what he said., including describing some of the game's plot.

Honestly, I suspect the difference between urban fantasy and conspiracy fiction is essentially 'do supernatural powers exist'. Bloodlines was great at playing with the Camarilla and associated Vampire tropes, including the entire fact that there's an option where you have to hide from everybody due to not looking human (and my favourite clan from the tabletop game, although I don't like the outfits they used for the game models), falthough I never realised you could turn on the radio. The only way around it is to have the supernatural be open, at which point we can argue all day about if urban Fantasy has to take place in 'our' world.

EDIT: I realise that this places one of the classic works of conspiracy fiction, the Illuminatus! trilogy, into the urban fantasy genre. I haven't read more than about a fifth of the series, but it certainly does seem to feature enough magic or magical science to be fantasy or science fiction.

[Sapphire Guard]

Even in a series about wizards 'a wizard did it' is highly unsatisfying. Mainly because the wizards are never shown to work on such a scale.


On the magical currency melting problem, I just assumed that as it's goblin made its incredibly hard to melt down. Goblin made stuff does seem to be more durable than human made stuff.

Well, the thing is, we get Harry's perspective, and there's no real reason for him to get involved in Hogwarts' Anti Air Defences. So we have two options:

A) Assume everyone is an idiot.
B) Assume there's some countermeasure that never came up in the plot because it never became relevant. Magical society hides buildings all the time, even in the middle of London, an isolated castle in scotland seems like it would be much easier.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well, the thing is, we get Harry's perspective, and there's no real reason for him to get involved in Hogwarts' Anti Air Defences. So we have two options:

A) Assume everyone is an idiot.
B) Assume there's some countermeasure that never came up in the plot because it never became relevant. Magical society hides buildings all the time, even in the middle of London, an isolated castle in scotland seems like it would be much easier.

Magical countermeasures should have been brought up in the battle of Hogwarts (the one place where I prefer the films over the books). Maybe not anti-air defences, but it seems silly that Dumbledore didn't tell his Deputy Headmistress the command to seal off the great hall and flood the rest of the castle (which is the scale of magic we're talking about here, and is practically nowhere in the books).

Now we could extrapolate such large scale magic from the existance of hogwarts, but we have no reason to believe that it isn't a bunch of seperate smaller enchantments linked together (one enchantment per moving staircase, as an example) instead of the one big enchantment that would be needed to deal with the entire castle and grounds (which kind of are the killer, likely being several times the size of the castle itself).

Living in London I can tell you that the houses here are nowhere near the size of a Scottish Castle. So again, a difference of scale.

(FWIW we're told why muggles don't turn up there, maybe every week the anti-muggle charms repel five people who noticed this strange castle on Google Maps and decided to check it out.)

[Cazero]

Magical countermeasures should have been brought up in the battle of Hogwarts (the one place where I prefer the films over the books).Not the ones relevant to this discussion. Spells that repel muggles and conceal the real nature of the castle from distant observers are pointless against an army of wizards knowing exactly where they're going and why, but would work perfectly against casual wanderers and satellite observation.

[Anonymouswizard]

Not the ones relevant to this discussion. Spells that repel muggles and conceal the real nature of the castle from distant observers are pointless against an army of wizards knowing exactly where they're going and why, but would work perfectly against casual wanderers and satellite observation.

Yes, but it certainly potentially shows this level of magic.


In all seriousness, we're starting to move into hard/soft magic systems territory, with those on the hard magic side (such as myself) trying to extrapolate the limits of magic from the text and those on the soft magic side going 'a wizard did it'.

No there's no problem with either perspective (although a harder magic system can make it so much easier to write a story, as I discovered in an attempt and quickly had to remove Chaos Magic from the setting as it was much too vague to have real limits). But the problem arises when those of us who like hard magic with defined limits push up against the very soft magic of Harry Potter (where, in a clear abuse of RAW, it is possible to summon Neptune into the Earth-Sun Larrange-1 point1). Despite what people like to claim HP is an example of a very soft magic system, while the limits of individual wizards can be clearly defined (but usually aren't unless a requirement comes up) the limits of magic itself are very vague and there's only five definite nos (I can't create a single knut, but I don't know if I can recreate Harbin on my own personal equatorial island [which I made via magic]). If we follow the example spells cast in the story we end up restricted mainly to effects that target one person, if we try to logically extrapolate the world requirements we end up with a lot of magic that works over potential areas of miles.

It's that contradiction that causes the problems. These spells must exist, but they're never shown and very rarely mentioned (the only ones I can remember are the spells to hide buildings and muggle repelling charms). We're not talking about the specific effects (which are shown to exist), rather the sheer scale of magic required is significantly above about 99% of the magic shown in the series, and even that remaining 1% is at roughly the level of hiding the house I'm currently typing this forum post in.

1I trust that I don't have to explain why this is a very bad thing.

[Foeofthelance]

Do Camouflage charms work on cameras? If they do, then Hogwarts not showing up as anything special on Google Maps is trivially explained.

If they don't... the Unplottable charm would foil the "ordnance survery" mode of Google Maps handily, although the difference between the map and satellite versions might raise eyebrows.

Maybe the wizarding world has deals with various governments to redact magical sites from satellite images before the public gets to see them?

I'm going to assume they do, or otherwise Hogwarts would be the least of the Wizarding world's problems. At least Hogwarts is way out in the middle of nowhere, where it wouldn't be easy to spot to begin with. If they didn't, a single Google car driving through London is going to start turning up all sorts of odd properties. But the truth of the matter is that Google maps and Satellite view aren't very complicated pieces of technology. They're really just using computers to put together lots of pictures very quickly, like a massive jigsaw puzzles. And pictures aren't anything new to the wizarding world. We already know they've adopted photography for themselves, so its clear they've had time to adjust their protections to compensate.

[warty goblin]

The wizarding world hiding from muggles is hardly a plot hole, since the plots of the books have basically sod-all to do with actually hiding from muggles. At best it's a sort of third order world building incongruity, and pretty much any work containing the fantastic is going to have these. This is hardly surprising; collaborations of the smartest people on earth over thousands of years haven't even been able to come up with a 100% consistent understanding of reality, let alone reality where occasionally Bob can decide the rules change.


If you want to talk plot holes, talk the actual holes in the plot. Like the fact that the Ministry's ability to detect underage sure does seem to change from book to book. Or how Voldemort's plan in Book 4 involves like about 500 unnecessarily chancy steps; fake-Moody could have called Harry to his office at any point in the year and portkeyed him out with way less trouble.

[AvatarVecna]

@Johel: for that plan to work, you have to presume neither the goblins nor the Ministry are capable of noticing disappearing currency. They have both the means and the incentive to do so and already explicitly track transactions between wizards and muggles, so why do you think they'd let something like your plan slip past them?

I mean honestly, you don't have to even get into the weird money laundering scheme that guy was pulling to point out how the economy of the series is BS, you just need to look at the pricing. My vague recollection is that a galleon was intended to be roughly equivalent to 5 pounds, with a sickle being ~ 0.3 pounds and a Knut being ~0.01 pounds. For some example pricing, a Daily Prophet has been purchased for 1 Knuts, a Canary Cream for 7 Sickles, and a Wand for 7 Galleons. There was also a decent calculation done that indicates Mr Ollivander probably makes somewhere in the neighborhood of 480 wands per year (for both new students and folks that broke their wands), and that's more or less his living wage.

If the Knuts convert to reasonable newspaper prices (maybe 1 pound in 1990, or thereabout?) that would put the price of a wand equivalent to 98.6 pounds, and thus means that Mr Ollivander makes 47328 pounds before taking the cost of wand creation into account - maybe reasonable, depending on how much it costs to make them in the first place...but that also means the Canary Creams are the equivalent of 40.6 pounds. I dunno about you, but I can't really think of an actual sweet that would be so good it's worth 40 dollars, at least not for this size. Well, maybe the 7 Sickle Treats are reasonably priced; if we use the "a galleon is 5 pounds" comparison that seems to be the intended balance point, than 7 Sickles is about 2.05 pounds - a nice price for a prank treat. But that puts the cost of the newspaper at 0.05 pounds, and puts the price of a wand at 35 pounds (and thus, Mr Ollivander makes 16800 pounds before costs, much less reasonable).

Following the pattern, this would be the point where I assume the galleons convert to a fair wand price, but there's a slight problem in that I don't even have anything remotely comparable usage-wise to get a good price estimate. I don't have how much profit Mr Ollivander makes on each wand, I don't have how much wands cost to make, I don't have an idea of the magical minimum wage, I don't even really know how many wands he makes per year on average (just a good estimate). The only thing I've got for sure is the price he sells wands for, so I can't point out how if 7 galleons is a reasonable price for a wand, there's an unreasonable price for newspapers and gag gifts (although I'm fairly certain that a stick letting you alter reality on a whim should probably be expensive). Fortunately, there is something I can compare wand prices to that will make them continue making no goddamn sense, and that's unicorn hair: at one point in the Half-Blood Prince, Slughorn is given a generous helping of unicorn hair by Hagrid, and calls out a rather ridiculous price per hair; when compared with the number of hairs poking out of the hand-me-down wand Ron broke, it gets really weird thinking about the comparative price of wands and unicorn hair. Maybe Ollivander harvests the hair himself, but that's still a great deal of value stuffed into a wand, so the best explanation is that he's drastically underselling them.

[JNAProductions]

Ollivander is sponsored by Hogwarts, and so is able to operate at a loss.

That's my guess, at least.

[Traab]

It may also be based on a sliding scale of some sort. Or maybe he is an eccentric who feels its his duty to craft wands that choose the wizard or whatever. So he basically charges just enough to cover his overhead and this is his hobby. He has to sell at least a few dozen every year to new students, then there are replacing broken wands of which im sure there are several a year. People just wont stop storing their wands in their back pockets! If they dont blow off a buttock, they sit on them and they snap.

As for muggle tech, I admit to liking the story Muggle Summer, Wizard Fall. Basically its set just post dumbledoores funeral, harry, instead of taking the train home, takes a portkey to meet the prince of england, starts working for the government, and lots of this stuff comes up. For instance they find that wards tend to create black domes on infra red cameras, digital cameras can see through magical disguises like glamour type things. Stuff like that. We also get a methodical breakdown of how they have a list of every muggleborn and most halfbloods and from there have managed significant penetration with spying on the magical world. Too bad the story got abandoned, it was really a long fic and lots of fun.

[AvatarVecna]

Ollivander is sponsored by Hogwarts, and so is able to operate at a loss.

That's my guess, at least.

A possibility, but then we start getting into "if he's not selling to make a profit, and the 'profit' wasn't likely very much to begin with anyway, living costs probably aren't the biggest concern in the magical world, so how are the Weasleys still just affording hand-me-down wands? Similarly, if he's already severely undercharging for a reality-manipulation stick both on what it's worth and what it costs to make, why not drive it a bit lower and make it more affordable for people like the Weasleys?

And that's still not touching on the actual value of the coinage itself. Is a coin's worth of gold really so cheap in the wizarding world? Maybe, maybe not; maybe the goblins have access to rich ore veins, or are magically-super-good at smithing precious metals efficiently, and so it's not as hard to get for them? But difficulty in procurement isn't the only reason gold is IRL valuable in old standards, it's because gold is an element so it's hard to fake the weight/volume/density of a coin that should be pure gold. In the wizarding world, the relatively cheap value of gold coins could be explained by wizards being able to conjure up materials at-will, potentially including gold - but that raises a whole new load of questions; of course, if the popular theory that coinage/precious metals is one of the four unnamed of the five exceptions to Gamp's Law Of Elemental Transfiguration (based on the temporary nature of Leprechaun gold and the worthless nature of gold under the effect of the Gemino Curse), but then we're back to "this should be more valuable because it's hard to fake".

[Keltest]

I think there are a few assumptions being made that don't necessarily hold up. For example, remember that the Daily Prophet is owned and operated by the Ministry of Magic, at least to the point where they can basically print their own news. The one knut charge could well be a fraction of what they need to make a profit because theyre subsidized by taxes or something.

[warty goblin]

Or gold isn't that hard to make, the knowledge just isn't common and it's an unusually shiny and heavy fiat currency. It's not any crazier than having currency be based in gold because it's hard to extract or fake, or who owns a large wheel shaped stone that was on a boat that sank 50 years ago, or a number next to your name on a computer ledger in a server somewhere. Point being, any given system of currency looks totally bonkers to somebody who uses a different one. Like most shared delusions, really.

[AvatarVecna]

Or gold isn't that hard to make, the knowledge just isn't common and it's an unusually shiny and heavy fiat currency. It's not any crazier than having currency be based in gold because it's hard to extract or fake, or who owns a large wheel shaped stone that was on a boat that sank 50 years ago, or a number next to your name on a computer ledger in a server somewhere. Point being, any given system of currency looks totally bonkers to somebody who uses a different one. Like most shared delusions, really.

"If something complicated seems nonsensical, we should assume it actually makes sense and they didn't feel the need to explain it" works for real-world stuff because reality doesn't need you to believe in it to continue, but works less well for fictional universes that introduce an economy into our real-world economy that does not possess internal consistency. Eragon doesn't have this problem, Ender's Game doesn't have this problem, Twilight doesn't have this problem, Hunger Games doesn't have this problem, a hundred other popular fantasy series for kids don't have this problem, because they all don't bother setting up new economic systems to then throw their rough price comparisons out the window halfway through the series. Because that's what most authors do when they don't want to have the economics as a more important plot point or a more solid part of the world-building: they handwave it and don't bother with numbers. Because if they bother with the numbers but don't bother with being consistent, it introduces issues into their series over something that barely even matters.

D&D has this problem too, where they have to price things so people know what they can afford, and inevitably there's issues (like two 10-ft poles being more expensive than a 10-ft ladder, so people could break their ladders, sell the poles, and make a profit), and people casting Wall Of Salt for a permanent source of a large amount of a trade good. Can a DM solve this problem in-universe by having it so that there's a bureau of wizards keeping an eye on the economy to make sure that people aren't taking advantage of the economic weaknesses inherent in their world? Sure, but you know another good way for a DM to solve this problem? By changing the pricing numbers so that make more sense.

Real-world England doesn't have to sit down with me and explain why its economy hasn't collapsed, because real-world England isn't a fictional series focused around a secret hidden world within our own that has to somehow make sense as being hidden and not collapsing in on itself. Real-world England doesn't have to bother with keeping my disbelief suspended because it continues working whether I believe it should or not. Works of fiction are selling an idea to you, convincing you that their worlds could work

The fact that it's complicated and boring A book set in real-world England doesn't have to go in-depth to explain how the economic system doesn't collapse, because we know that real-life England's economy hasn't collapsed. A book set in the magic side of real-world England doesn't have to go in-depth on that issue because unless it introduces internal inconsistencies, we don't need an explanation for why those inconsistencies make sense. When an object that requires many hairs to be made costs 7 of a thing, and a single hair costs 10 of that same thing, it is indicative of either a lack of internal consistency, or serious economic issues going on in the background that aren't reflected in other aspects of the economy during the same time period.

The fact that fiat economy is inherently a kinda silly idea doesn't mean that the system doesn't work in real life, but part of the reason it works in real life is because when everybody pretends that objects of a certain group have an objective value, we can then measure the value of everything else in terms of that objectively-valued item.

[deuterio12]

If you want to talk plot holes, talk the actual holes in the plot. Like the fact that the Ministry's ability to detect underage sure does seem to change from book to book. Or how Voldemort's plan in Book 4 involves like about 500 unnecessarily chancy steps; fake-Moody could have called Harry to his office at any point in the year and portkeyed him out with way less trouble.

Could he? Hogwarts has all sorts of anti-teleport wards, in particular inside the castle proper The magic maze in the grounds at the end of the tournament was a great chance to work outside/around those wards.

Agreed on detection magic being inconsistent as hell tough.

[Eldan]

That's a question I've wondered before. Why are muggleborn so loyal to the wizarding world and its secrecy?

[deuterio12]

That's a question I've wondered before. Why are muggleborn so loyal to the wizarding world and its secrecy?

Because the ones that aren't and try to break the secrecy will be quickly hunted down and arrested, while lacking the magic training to even have a fighting chance since they skipped wizardry school.

Plus, we know the wizardry government has direct ties with the higher levels of the muggle government itself, so a muggleborn trying to reveal the truth about magic would have no safe haven.

[Frozen_Feet]

That's a question I've wondered before. Why are muggleborn so loyal to the wizarding world and its secrecy?

Because they are taken in as kids and immediately after the brainwashing to make them loyal starts? :smalltongue:

[Traab]

Could he? Hogwarts has all sorts of anti-teleport wards, in particular inside the castle proper The magic maze in the grounds at the end of the tournament was a great chance to work outside/around those wards.

Agreed on detection magic being inconsistent as hell tough.

Hogsmeade visit. Boom, instantly quietly vanished harry with no sign of what happened. Even if portkeys dont work, stun, transfigure into a new eyepatch for fake moody, and wander to the floo. Way less complicated, in fact, in that case it wouldnt even have to involve moody at all! Just a random disguised schlub at madame rosmertas on a hogwarts day spots harry, waits for him to be alone enough for a snatch and grab to work and bobs your uncle. Way less complicated than "Sneak my most loyal follower under disguise as my worst enemy's good friend and have him stay there all year subtly arranging events so the day of the third task harry wins and is teleported to me for the ceremony."

[Yuki Akuma]

Voldemort wanted to kidnap Harry right out from under Dumbledore's nose, during a national, publicised event, in order to prove that he was better than his old teacher.

[Eldan]

Because the ones that aren't and try to break the secrecy will be quickly hunted down and arrested, while lacking the magic training to even have a fighting chance since they skipped wizardry school.

Plus, we know the wizardry government has direct ties with the higher levels of the muggle government itself, so a muggleborn trying to reveal the truth about magic would have no safe haven.

I don't really mean open rebellion, though. I mean more, like, tehy had friends before they went to Hogwarts. They still have parents, siblings, more distant family. At some point, the sister will ask about where her brother is going off to all year. There will be gossip, and children talking to each other. We're talking ten year olds.

[Sapphire Guard]

Those economic comparisons rely on fixed points that don't really work, though. Why assume that a fifty year old unicorn hair that is nearly worn to nothing is valued the same as freshly harvested hair? Why assume that Ollivander sells every wand at the exact same price, rather than on a scale from high end to low end?

A ten foot pole from a broken ladder is going to be structurally weaker than a purpose built pole, because you took out the bolts holding the ladder together. If everyone's summoning salt, the price of salt goes down. What you're doing there is deconstructing to get the conclusion you want and then stopping.


These spells must exist, but they're never shown and very rarely mentioned (the only ones I can remember are the spells to hide buildings and muggle repelling charms). We're not talking about the specific effects (which are shown to exist), rather the sheer scale of magic required is significantly above about 99% of the magic shown in the series, and even that remaining 1% is at roughly the level of hiding the house I'm currently typing this forum post in.

They hide the equivalent of Westminster and a large hospital complex in the middle of London.

It's a novel, not an RPG sourcebook. We mostly only get Harry's perspective, and it would be bizarre (and boring to read) if he was privy to the complete defence mechanisms of every building he went into. How many random teenagers are told the exact security arrangements around government buildings? We do get told that Dumbledore has to remove unspecified enchantments before he can land on the astronomy tower in HBP.


Magical countermeasures should have been brought up in the battle of Hogwarts

Harry's not fighting, he's searching for the Horcrux. Is it really the best use of McGonagal's time to explain in detail the defense the castle is going to use to someone that's not involved in it instead of just putting it into action?

[Anonymouswizard]

D&D has this problem too, where they have to price things so people know what they can afford, and inevitably there's issues (like two 10-ft poles being more expensive than a 10-ft ladder, so people could break their ladders, sell the poles, and make a profit), and people casting Wall Of Salt for a permanent source of a large amount of a trade good. Can a DM solve this problem in-universe by having it so that there's a bureau of wizards keeping an eye on the economy to make sure that people aren't taking advantage of the economic weaknesses inherent in their world? Sure, but you know another good way for a DM to solve this problem? By changing the pricing numbers so that make more sense.

This is why I've come to like The Dark Eye. Spells that make trade goods effectively don't exist, prices generally make more sense (although things such as 10ft poles aren't as common), and there's no assumption that characters will earn enough money to start carrying around items worth as much as a small kingdom (in fact magic itemss are much less powerful. the most sought after artefacts allow you to see other places and times, but only some of the time and might not be movable).

It does have guilds of mages, who stay in business via charging membership fees (and insane fees to borrow books for some Black Guild academies), and mages themselves are generally able to have a comfortable lifestyle either through being supported by their guild (likely doing research or teaching), selling alchemical items (everything from soap to healing potions), or charging for services (which might be spells, or might be mundane skills). Also only guild mages are allowed to charge for casting magic, which changes the power relationships somewhat (although witches, elves, guildless mages, and other casters can always use loopholes in getting paid for something else).

The low level of magic stops it from causing the mundane price list to seem stupid, and the monopoly on charging for magic the three guilds possess stops magical solutions from taking over everything (also solved by the fact that most spellcasters only recover the AE for a few spells a day).


I don't really mean open rebellion, though. I mean more, like, tehy had friends before they went to Hogwarts. They still have parents, siblings, more distant family. At some point, the sister will ask about where her brother is going off to all year. There will be gossip, and children talking to each other. We're talking ten year olds.

Their immediate family probably knows but keep quiet because they don't want to seem crazy, and their old friends likely think they're making it all up because if you can do magic why don't you turn Dave into a frog? The muggles not related to a witch/wizard who know about magic are those who are good friends with one over 17, and generally only if they can be trusted to shut up.

The ones who know and aren't going to shut up? Well there seems to be less than a hundred wizarding children born a year, so those who know or are related to a witch/wizard are outnumbered by an order of magnitude, it's likely that those children who believe and those adults who speak up are just ignored by everybody who knows that magic isn't real.

[Frozen_Feet]

Re: Wizards and scale:

The Ministry has nation-wide detection spell for underage spellcasters. The Death Eaters, when they took over, could Taboo a word at least for an entire nation and possibly globally. The International Statute of Secrecy mandates several spells which, especially in contect of magical beasts, are implied to be global. And on the indivual level, there are creatures such as the Thestrals and Dementors, which a muggle cannot directly perceive in the manner of a wizard. Ever.

The idea that the things required to hide a castle and its grounds are somehow out of scale for the wizarding world is directly contradictory to what is shown and stated.

[deuterio12]

Hogsmeade visit. Boom, instantly quietly vanished harry with no sign of what happened. Even if portkeys dont work, stun, transfigure into a new eyepatch for fake moody, and wander to the floo. Way less complicated, in fact, in that case it wouldnt even have to involve moody at all! Just a random disguised schlub at madame rosmertas on a hogwarts day spots harry, waits for him to be alone enough for a snatch and grab to work and bobs your uncle. Way less complicated than "Sneak my most loyal follower under disguise as my worst enemy's good friend and have him stay there all year subtly arranging events so the day of the third task harry wins and is teleported to me for the ceremony."

Hogsmeade has plenty of people for witnesses, before taking in account that Harry's always with several of his personal friends. An ambush out of nowhere in a public place has just too many unknown variables.

And the most loyal follower wasn't just working to get Harry, he would've also been collecting valuable information, finding out weak points in Hogwarts and looking for other Voldermort symphatizers. Why rush and risk getting found out when he could take his time to set up a place and time where chances of success would be maximized?

Plus as Yuki Akuma pointed out Voldermort just loves to add that extra dramatic touch.



Their immediate family probably knows but keep quiet because they don't want to seem crazy, and their old friends likely think they're making it all up because if you can do magic why don't you turn Dave into a frog? The muggles not related to a witch/wizard who know about magic are those who are good friends with one over 17, and generally only if they can be trusted to shut up.

The ones who know and aren't going to shut up? Well there seems to be less than a hundred wizarding children born a year, so those who know or are related to a witch/wizard are outnumbered by an order of magnitude, it's likely that those children who believe and those adults who speak up are just ignored by everybody who knows that magic isn't real.

Plus we've seen that wizards are quite adept at rewriting muggle minds, Hermione made her own parents completely forget she ever existed and move out to another country.

[warty goblin]

Could he? Hogwarts has all sorts of anti-teleport wards, in particular inside the castle proper The magic maze in the grounds at the end of the tournament was a great chance to work outside/around those wards.

Agreed on detection magic being inconsistent as hell tough.

The Third Task happened on the (substantially remodeled) quidditch field, which still within the grounds. Its repeatedly confirmed that humans cannot apparate into, or out of, the grounds, barring special circumstances like Dumbledore lifting the spell preventing this in a single room so they can practice. Notably, it's a plot point that Crouch Sr. could not have disapparated because he was found within the grounds, right next to the quidditch pitch.

This rather strongly suggests to me that portkeys are not covered by the usual ban on apparation into or out of Hogwarts, since Crouch Jr.'s plan worked. Dumbledore also sends Harry back to Hogwarts with a portkey at the end of Book 5, though that might be a headmaster/Dumbledore only sort of trick.

Mostly it seems to me that it takes different magic to block different means of magical relocation. House elf apparation remains unaffected by most/all wizard spells that prevent it for instance. Dumbledore has some sort of phoenix based teleportation he uses in Book 5 that is apparently unaffected by the general ban on apparation in Hogwarts. The entire (non-detailed) suite of magical defenses don't stop the passageway created by the vanishing cabinet in Book 6 either. The Flue Network works on yet another principle, and is also, incidentally, another easy way Crouch Jr. could have kidnapped Harry, since Crouch Sr.'s house was undoubtedly connected, and Voldemort + Wormtail were staying there for most of the year.

[Sapphire Guard]

Possibility: The triwizard cup was a portkey already, originally intended to transport the victor outside of the maze, so it was another deliberate exception to the rules.

[Traab]

Wasnt voldemort intending to stay hidden after being reborn? Or was that just after harry managed to escape post revival? I mean, working behind the scenes really did an excellent job of making it super simple to take over in a single move when it was time. Heck, its probably the smartest thing voldemort has ever done.

[warty goblin]

Possibility: The triwizard cup was a portkey already, originally intended to transport the victor outside of the maze, so it was another deliberate exception to the rules.

That would make a lot of sense, since it actually returned Harry to Hogwarts right outside the maze, which there was no reason for Crouch Jr. to make it do.


Wasnt voldemort intending to stay hidden after being reborn? Or was that just after harry managed to escape post revival? I mean, working behind the scenes really did an excellent job of making it super simple to take over in a single move when it was time. Heck, its probably the smartest thing voldemort has ever done.

He was, though having Harry disappear from the end of the Triwizard tournament doesn't seem any less fishy than having him disappear from school on any given Wednesday. If he'd wanted to stay really low profile, he'd have used Bertha Jorkins or Crouch Sr., keep the number of disappearing people to an absolute minimum, albeit at the cost of not overcoming Harry's mother's protection.

[Traab]

That would make a lot of sense, since it actually returned Harry to Hogwarts right outside the maze, which there was no reason for Crouch Jr. to make it do.



He was, though having Harry disappear from the end of the Triwizard tournament doesn't seem any less fishy than having him disappear from school on any given Wednesday. If he'd wanted to stay really low profile, he'd have used Bertha Jorkins or Crouch Sr., keep the number of disappearing people to an absolute minimum, albeit at the cost of not overcoming Harry's mother's protection.

Dude was a drama queen and realistically it made sense. More powerful enemy, more powerful resurrection. He couldnt even begin to go after dumbles, so go after the kid who got lucky. For extra insurance, use agents not connected to the prophecy. Plus he could have used missing harry in so many ways. A huge strike at dumbledoore emotionally, socially (Omg you lost the BWL?!?!?!" politically, etc etc etc. Then spend the next year lying low while letting your agents tear down dumbles even further and setup for the big takeover and the last sign of hope is destroyed. But doing it at the tri wiz was dumb. Figure out a way to do it at hogsmeade, then dumbledoore cant even blame the tournament for killing him in some mysterious way. Harry is gone, malfoy works on coward harry stories to ruin his rep post mortem, and dumbles gets wrecked in all the ways I mentioned. Noone worth notice is left to oppose him. Oh, and they likely have a several hour head start before he is even noticed missing which means even if they WANTED to track him down, the ritual is long over, harry has spent the last several hours screaming before being killed, and all signs of what took place are erased leaving a mystery if they can even get that far in the investigation.

[Peelee]

Dude was a drama queen and realistically it made sense. More powerful enemy, more powerful resurrection. He couldnt even begin to go after dumbles, so go after the kid who got lucky.

But why? Why not go after the government?

This is an honest question from someone who never bothered to read or watch the last movie, btw. I know that there's the whole, "the boy who lived and defeated him" bit, but that doesn't mean dude has to go after him. Voldy could hit the ministers, throw the wizarding world in chaos, seize control of the government, and then settle his vengeance if he wanted. Why was a high school so important?

[Traab]

But why? Why not go after the government?

This is an honest question from someone who never bothered to read or watch the last movie, btw. I know that there's the whole, "the boy who lived and defeated him" bit, but that doesn't mean dude has to go after him. Voldy could hit the ministers, throw the wizarding world in chaos, seize control of the government, and then settle his vengeance if he wanted. Why was a high school so important?

The government is at least halfway his even before being reborn. Its pureblood run lock stock and barrel, the current minister is outright owned by lucius malfoy, there are death eaters in positions of power all over the place. Voldemort has no reason to openly attack the ministry. As we see in the last book, he took it over without a struggle because he mind controlled the few people who werent already on his side and just like that, it was all over but the bleeding (on the side of the good guys mainly) Also, they were utterly ineffective against him last time so even if they wanted to be, they are no real threat. There were only two people he ever considered threats, albus dumbledoore, who he just couldnt manage to defeat, and harry potter, who destroyed him as an infant and spends the first two books thwarting him in major ways. (Not sure if he was fully aware of what happened in harrys second year) While technically he could have nabbed anyone he declared to be his enemy, he wanted someone symbolically meaningful. An ACTUAL foe. Someone who had thwarted him in the past. He would have loved to take albus but that was way too risky, harry was the soft option, and also politically speaking, the important one. Dumbles may have fought him, but harry "beat" him. By slaughtering harry in front of his followers he would have re-cemented his control and influence over his faction that might have been wavering up till now. It was the best all around option as it gained him big time. Stronger body, one less hero to oppose him, another pillar of the resistance gone, the only other one likely crippled with grief over the loss, his minions believing he is unstoppable again, and the ministry free for the taking whenever he is ready.

[Anonymouswizard]

But why? Why not go after the government?

This is an honest question from someone who never bothered to read or watch the last movie, btw. I know that there's the whole, "the boy who lived and defeated him" bit, but that doesn't mean dude has to go after him. Voldy could hit the ministers, throw the wizarding world in chaos, seize control of the government, and then settle his vengeance if he wanted. Why was a high school so important?

Two reasons.

1) as had been said, it's just Voldemort's way to do something with meaning. Capturing an actual foe would be the most meaningful.

2) it allowed him to get around that pesky 'can't touch him' deal from Philosopher's Stone, and it's implied that Tom knew it would.

He could have gone for Dumbledore, but Dumbledore (and it might have been symbolically more meaningful, conquering the one man he feared and all that) is an incredibly strong wizard who probably could defeat our Dark Lord in a duel, so Harry is the next best bet (although Sirus or other members of the Order of the Pheonix would have worked). But number 2 is the bigger benefit for Voldemort, it removes Harry's insane advantage, which means that Voldemort is safe in the knowledge that when Dumbledore is gone he can probably curb stump Harry.

It's still no excuse for not just having an underling take some of Harry's blood while he's sleep, unless blood spoils in less time than it takes somebody jumping out the window on a broomstick to leave the Hogwarts grounds.

[warty goblin]

But why? Why not go after the government?

This is an honest question from someone who never bothered to read or watch the last movie, btw. I know that there's the whole, "the boy who lived and defeated him" bit, but that doesn't mean dude has to go after him. Voldy could hit the ministers, throw the wizarding world in chaos, seize control of the government, and then settle his vengeance if he wanted. Why was a high school so important?

He does go after the government, as soon as the government's his enemy. Since they spend all of book 5 refusing to acknowledge his return, attacking them right away would cost Voldemort far more than it would gain him, particularly since he's not been back for very long. Book 6 is pretty much open warfare (or as open as warfare between teleporting people with mind control powers gets) between Voldemort and the Ministry, which Voldemort conclusively wins by something like July/August of book 7. It's pretty clear that he then exploits the hell out of the power the ministry gives him for the rest of the year.

So the government is definitely a priority; albeit not priority numero uno. This is probably because magical ability has a very skewed Pareto sort of distribution, so something like 5% of wizards have about 85% of the actual magical power. Dumbledore is, on his own, at least as much of a threat as the lion's share of the ministry at once.



It's still no excuse for not just having an underling take some of Harry's blood while he's sleep, unless blood spoils in less time than it takes somebody jumping out the window on a broomstick to leave the Hogwarts grounds.

The spell is something like "blood of the foe, forceably taken." It's not unreasonable to interpret that as requiring something a bit more, well, forceable, than poking a sleeping person with a needle.

[Frozen_Feet]

Arguing about actions takeb by the villains in Goblet of Fire is sort of dim, when the only reason the villains didn't succeed was an unforeseen effect of sharing wand cores. Junior and Voldy had it in the bag otherwise.

[Anonymouswizard]

The spell is something like "blood of the foe, forceably taken." It's not unreasonable to interpret that as requiring something a bit more, well, forceable, than poking a sleeping person with a needle.

Okay, forget that specific example, nothing says that the blood has to be taken at the time and place of the spell, so BCJ could have probably got three blood taken forcibly some other way (likely via somebody else to avoid blowing his cover). Althouth strangely the best time to do it would probably still be in the maze, likely having not taken his Polyjuice Potion, and possibly with somebody standing in for him as PMEM, nab the blood forcibly with a knife, run to the portkey, and get to the cemetery to revive Voldemort without anybody knowing about it.

At that point I'm willing to accept that Tom's flair for the dramatic got in the way of the most logical solution. If Potter is going to be in the maze with the portkey anyway might as well bring him here and show him how he's failed, then kill him. He surely can't know the Deus ex Machinus charm, and there isn't any possibility of the ghosts of the dead helping him...

[deuterio12]

The Third Task happened on the (substantially remodeled) quidditch field, which still within the grounds. Its repeatedly confirmed that humans cannot apparate into, or out of, the grounds, barring special circumstances like Dumbledore lifting the spell preventing this in a single room so they can practice. Notably, it's a plot point that Crouch Sr. could not have disapparated because he was found within the grounds, right next to the quidditch pitch.

This rather strongly suggests to me that portkeys are not covered by the usual ban on apparation into or out of Hogwarts, since Crouch Jr.'s plan worked.

You will counter your own argument and reinforce my own in the rest of your post.



Dumbledore also sends Harry back to Hogwarts with a portkey at the end of Book 5, though that might be a headmaster/Dumbledore only sort of trick. Mostly it seems to me that it takes different magic to block different means of magical relocation. House elf apparation remains unaffected by most/all wizard spells that prevent it for instance. Dumbledore has some sort of phoenix based teleportation he uses in Book 5 that is apparently unaffected by the general ban on apparation in Hogwarts. The entire (non-detailed) suite of magical defenses don't stop the passageway created by the vanishing cabinet in Book 6 either. The Flue Network works on yet another principle, and is also, incidentally, another easy way Crouch Jr. could have kidnapped Harry, since Crouch Sr.'s house was undoubtedly connected, and Voldemort + Wormtail were staying there for most of the year.

That Voldermort's forces need to use the Vanishing Cabinet to get inside Hogwarts next time is definitive proof that you can't just easily set up portkeys to get in the school.

And the Vanishing Cabinet is a two-of-a-kind wonder which most people didn't even know one was inside Hogwarts. Phoenixes are pretty rare too. And it makes sense Dumbledore would've left secret backdoors for his personal use for emergency times.

Fake Moody didn't have a phoenix (and even if he tried to take the one at school it would've have obeyed) neither knew about the vanishing cabinet or Dumbledore's personal backdoors, so he had to spend months setting up a portkey that could bypass Hogwarth's defense. The magic maze building provided the perfect cover, lots of dangerous magic being used there so nobody would notice Fake Moody slowly setting up a new backdoor.

So yes the teleportation wards can be bypassed, but as I already pointed out, it takes quite a lot of work.

[Gnoman]

There's also the key point that a few people are making. A villain making suboptimal plans is not a plot hole. Especially when you're dealing with a villain like Voldemort that is established very early on as favoring overly complex plans at the expense of effectiveness. This is called out explicitly in the text - he could have used some other wizard, but sought out Harry in order to turn his greatest defeat into his greatest triumph.



Had Voldy used some other wizard, he probably would have succeeded in returning, more quietly than he did in canon. It wouldn't have cemented his strength with his followers the way defeating Harry would have, nor would he have been able to inflict the kind of defeat that he wanted.


Let us assume things had gone as planned. Harry takes the cup, Voldy does the ritual, Harry's body gets sent back to Hogwarts and pops up dead after what should have been a great triumph. Then, as the Wizarding world mourns the loss of one of their most celebrated heroes, probably while eviscerating Dumbledore for his incompetence for letting it happen, whispers of the Dark Lord's return start circulating. Fear begins to grow, and then, finally, he steps forward to announce that not only has he returned, it was his hand that slew their savior, and there is nobody to stop him now. Meanwhile, his defeat of the only person who ever beat him has silenced all doubts among his followers, and they stand entirely behind him.

Which do you think is going to appeal more to someone like Voldemort?

[deuterio12]

Indeed, slaying Harry at a moment of triumph as multiple wizardry schools and Dumbledore himself are watching would certainly give Voldermort an evilgasm like he hadn't for years, and the propaganda effect to restore his reputation would be a pretty nice bonus.

[Douglas]

There's also the key point that a few people are making. A villain making suboptimal plans is not a plot hole. Especially when you're dealing with a villain like Voldemort that is established very early on as favoring overly complex plans at the expense of effectiveness. This is called out explicitly in the text - he could have used some other wizard, but sought out Harry in order to turn his greatest defeat into his greatest triumph.
Even the version of Voldemort in the fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, who has extreme intelligence as one of his defining traits, decided that unfailingly following his version of the Evil Overlord List would be unbearably boring.

[Kitten Champion]

Had Voldy used some other wizard, he probably would have succeeded in returning, more quietly than he did in canon. It wouldn't have cemented his strength with his followers the way defeating Harry would have, nor would he have been able to inflict the kind of defeat that he wanted.

It would also have been, ya'know, boring.

I don't see why "it makes more sense for drama" is treated with scorn. So long as the characters are acting within their established characterizations and there's some kind of point to it, it's perfectly fine for the villain to involve the hero directly in their plans even if we in the audience know the hero will survive because of course they will.

[Anonymouswizard]

It would also have been, ya'know, boring.

I don't see why "it make more sense for drama" is treated with scorn. So long as the characters are acting within their established characterizations and there's some kind of point to it, it's perfectly fine for the villain to involve the hero directly in their plans even if we in the audience know the hero will survive because of course they will.

At this point the argument boils down to two/three points, 'why does it have to be Harry', 'why does Harry have to be present at the spell', and 'is the Final Task the best time for the kidnapping'.

Of those the last one is the only one that can't be explained away with Voldemort's personality (he's certainly the type who'd like to come back and immediately kill his 'greatest foe'), although I'm a bit iffy on the second one fitting. The third one somewhat depends on how watched BCJ is during his stint as Moody, and the fact remains that another Champion could still have got to the Cup first. It's slightly unclear on if Harry is more or less watched during the summer or at school, but at school he is among so many others that it might take a while for his absence to be noted (especially if done Friday night or Saturday morning). There's also issues over how forceful the taking has to be, if it's just 'without permission' then getting the required blood is made considerably easier, and we're left with working out which of the book's villains has the greatest flair for the dramatic (my money is on BCJ).

Of course doing it another way would make for a less satisfying read, but why would nerds let that get in the way of their arguments?

[Delicious Taffy]

If Voldemort were the sort of master tactician people seem to think he should have been, Harry would be nothing but a baby-sized coffin full of dust by the time Book 1 starts. He'd have stabbed the kid instead of using some fool curse, popped over to the Longbottom residence for an encore, and then dabbed all over Europe.

If we're gonna nitpick the flaws of an unstable drama queen's genocide plan, let's at least start at one of the earliest points we've been shown.
Problem: These babies could be a threat if I let them grow up.
Solution: Stab. The. Babies. Mangle the poor tykes beyond repair, if you wanna be really sure. I don't care how magical Mummy's love is, I guarantee it can't stop a hatchet.

But hey, what do I know about writing a good story about a simplistic struggle between Good and Evil? Clearly, Rowling understood that dead parents sell more books than dead babies.

[JNAProductions]

Goddammit, I'm trying to find an SMBC comic about that whole "stab a baby" thing! I know it exists, or at least something similar!

[AvatarVecna]

Hogsmeade visit. Boom, instantly quietly vanished harry with no sign of what happened. Even if portkeys dont work, stun, transfigure into a new eyepatch for fake moody, and wander to the floo. Way less complicated, in fact, in that case it wouldnt even have to involve moody at all! Just a random disguised schlub at madame rosmertas on a hogwarts day spots harry, waits for him to be alone enough for a snatch and grab to work and bobs your uncle. Way less complicated than "Sneak my most loyal follower under disguise as my worst enemy's good friend and have him stay there all year subtly arranging events so the day of the third task harry wins and is teleported to me for the ceremony."

I've also seen a fic that put forth the idea that a ritual involving bringing somebody back to life might be a tad more complicated than just adding three ingredients and horcrux-fetus into a potion - the specific change made was mentioning that the foe whose blood was to be taken had to be tormented/threatened/tested/etc for several months prior to the ritual's conclusion - and similarly, for example, that the servant whose flesh is willingly given has to be absolutely obedient during this timeframe as well. These changes made some semblance of sense and didn't directly contradict anything in-canon, but the fact that a reason for a less convoluted plan wasn't brought up in-canon doesn't mean there wasn't a good one.

It's established early in GoF that Harry's celebrity status as the BWL is known outside of the UK (with the Bulgarian minister getting excited upon introduction), and later with Krum and Fleur not needing who Harry is to be explained to them (even if the latter is dismissive of his more direct magical capabilities). Disappearing an international celebrity who is both a magical anomaly (the only person to ever survive the Killing Curse, also established in early parts of GoF) and is 'responsible' (read: given credit for) the destruction of a powerful Dark Lord with ties to groups on the main continent, would be a major PR nightmare for anybody directly connected to the tournament - both those like Dumbledore and Fudge who should've prevented it, and those like Maxime and Karkaroff who could be used as scapegoats to drive a wedge between Magical Britain and their potential allies - we already know that getting the tournament to happen at all was some kind of diplomatic nightmare behind the scenes that only got worse when Crouch Sr was murdered halfway through the tournament in an attack that also saw Krum stunned (possibly when the Imperius was applied to Krum? Eh, doesn't really make a difference).

Kidnapping the champion, particularly because it's Harry, is Voldemort coming in invisibly while three magical governments are playing a game of chess, and then flipping the board and stealing the prize money. The fact that he gets to be alive again is the goal, but the fact that with a bit of subtlety and patience he could fracture the magical world is a sizable bonus.


But why? Why not go after the government?

This is an honest question from someone who never bothered to read or watch the last movie, btw. I know that there's the whole, "the boy who lived and defeated him" bit, but that doesn't mean dude has to go after him. Voldy could hit the ministers, throw the wizarding world in chaos, seize control of the government, and then settle his vengeance if he wanted. Why was a high school so important?

As for why Harry in particular, that's more to do with Voldemort's psyche than some kind of higher-level PR strategy. The prophecy is the reason Voldemort originally went after Harry (he considered Harry to be the most likely candidate to defeat him, so he tried to off him early). At this point, there is no bad blood between them, no grudge - it's just business for Volde, him dealing with another potential problem. But that thing up there about Harry as an international celebrity famous for stopping Voldemort's rein of terror? The world didn't even think a prophecy was involved until 15 years lter. It reads much more clearly if you read it like this:


"Hey, you remember that group of *******s who were driving around the country shooting people with shotguns, and their badass leader who had a rocket launcher?"

"That person everybody in the world has been living in mortal terror of for nearly a decade?"

"Yep, that's the one. He died!"

"Oh wow, that's great! Who got him, I wanna get that guy a beer?"

"Get this: he finally tracked down these people that had escaped him a few times before, wanting revenge. He kills the husband, he kills the wife, and then he goes to kill the baby...and the baby accidentally shot him with mommies gun."

"Pfft! That's ****ing hilarious!"

"I know right?!" XD

For a person like Voldemort, it's still not about Harry. It's about reputation. It's about proving to the world that getting killed by that baby was a fluke, a random one-in-a-billion coincidence, and he's gonna prove it as soon as he gets rezzed. Except then it happens again: he's fighting that same stupid lucky kid, has him on the ropes, goes in to choke him...and the body he's inhabiting starts burning for no reason. This stupid lucky punk got another one-in-a-billion chance at escaping with his life! And heck, Voldemort doesn't even know about how a semi-athletic 12-year old with a sword managed to kill a 50-ft snake with a no-save-just-die gaze attack, but if he did, it'd just make him angrier. So now, he sets up this giant elaborate plan: he's gonna put the kid through hell for nearly a year, while making sure he survives by the skin of his teeth and wins the tournament, only to get teleported into a graveyard. The kid then gets incapacitated by Wormtail of all people, and once Volde is back on his own feet, he summons all his followers who aren't dead or in prison and gives a speech about how great he is, then turns to his greatest failure: the stupid lucky baby that killed him. Now he's gonna prove it was a fluke. He's gonna hand the kid his wand back, and duel him like a proper gentleman, and the 60 year old magical prodigy is going to prove once and for all that this snot-nosed kid was never powerful or skilled, just lucky.

And the stupid lucky baby escapes again because of another one-in-a-billion chance.

[deuterio12]

If Voldemort were the sort of master tactician people seem to think he should have been, Harry would be nothing but a baby-sized coffin full of dust by the time Book 1 starts. He'd have stabbed the kid instead of using some fool curse, popped over to the Longbottom residence for an encore, and then dabbed all over Europe.

If we're gonna nitpick the flaws of an unstable drama queen's genocide plan, let's at least start at one of the earliest points we've been shown.
Problem: These babies could be a threat if I let them grow up.
Solution: Stab. The. Babies. Mangle the poor tykes beyond repair, if you wanna be really sure. I don't care how magical Mummy's love is, I guarantee it can't stop a hatchet.

But hey, what do I know about writing a good story about a simplistic struggle between Good and Evil? Clearly, Rowling understood that dead parents sell more books than dead babies.

Stabbing is for peasants. Voldermort considers himself the strongest wizard that ever magicked and he'll do his murdering with magic, thank you very much for asking. And it won't get you all dirty. Actually since Harry's love-infused blood can burn Voldermort, gory stabbing plan would've ended with a mutual kill at best.

Plus it was the unstoppable killing curse. 100% kill rate in recorded spell history, which is something that stabbing can't really brag about*. Worked in daddy and mommy just fine and all the other fools before that dared to stand directly in the path of wizard Lord Voldermort. What were the chances of the baby not only resist it but actually reflecting it?

*Just ask yourself, how many stories have "nobody could've survived that!" after somebody is mangled horribly and then it turns out they did survive and come back to haunt you? Again, the killing curse had a flawless killing streak.

[factotum]

Stabbing is for peasants. Voldermort considers himself the strongest wizard that ever magicked and he'll do his murdering with magic, thank you very much for asking.

Plus it was the unstoppable killing curse. 100% kill rate in recorded spell history, which is something that stabbing can't really brag about*. Worked in daddy and mommy just fine and all the other fools before that dared to stand directly in the path of wizard Lord Voldermort. What were the chances of the baby not only resist it but actually reflecting it?


Yes, all this. Voldemort had no reason to believe that the killing curse would fail in this case, so why would he have resorted to stabbing Harry? That isn't a failure of Voldemort's scheming or a lack of intelligence on his behalf, it's because of something happening that had never happened before and which he could not predict.

[Frozen_Feet]

That's hardly the only time Voldemort was screwed over by something obscure that he couldn't have seen coming.

Again: if not for those things, Voldemort would've been 100% successfull. Despite those things, he still was maybe 98% successfull. Nitpicking his plans is largely pointless. Yeah, maybe you can think of a better plan with benefit of hindsight, but Voldy mostly didn't need a better plan - he was already winning.

[Delicious Taffy]

Stabbing is for peasants. [...] Actually since Harry's love-infused blood can burn Voldermort, gory stabbing plan would've ended with a mutual kill at best.
[...]
*Just ask yourself, how many stories have "nobody could've survived that!" after somebody is mangled horribly and then it turns out they did survive and come back to haunt you? Again, the killing curse had a flawless killing streak.
"Oh, Lucius! Would you kindly mince up this tiny baby and feed it to Mr. Greyback for me?" I don't know much about wizard pediatrics, but I'm pretty sure babies need to be in more or less one piece to survive, and generally lack an immunity to stomach acid. Old Man Riddle has access to a werewolf, so unless Harry and Neville can Deadpool their way back from that, it's a win.


Yes, all this. Voldemort had no reason to believe that the killing curse would fail in this case, so why would he have resorted to stabbing Harry? That isn't a failure of Voldemort's scheming or a lack of intelligence on his behalf, it's because of something happening that had never happened before and which he could not predict.

This is basically the gist of what I'm getting at. I just went for it via the route of ghoulish hyperbole. Voldemort is a friggin' queen, of course his plans are ridiculous in the first place. To his credit, he was able to work out a contingency plan for the off chance somebody got lucky enough not to die. It even worked, too!

Basically the only way to avoid these kids growing up to dust him was to kill them in the crib, which he only failed at because he didn't expect an unprecedented protection spell to block his 100% insta-kill magic.

[deuterio12]

That's hardly the only time Voldemort was screwed over by something obscure that he couldn't have seen coming.

Again: if not for those things, Voldemort would've been 100% successfull. Despite those things, he still was maybe 98% successfull. Nitpicking his plans is largely pointless. Yeah, maybe you can think of a better plan with benefit of hindsight, but Voldy mostly didn't need a better plan - he was already winning.

I say the biggest flaw from Voldermort was refusing to admit that Potter was plain immune to the death curse since he insists in dueling him again and again solo after he manages to get a new body.

But again, he was an arrogant prideful jerk. He would rather die again than admit that there were some things his own magic couldn't overcome, so it makes sense in-character.


"Oh, Lucius! Would you kindly mince up this tiny baby and feed it to Mr. Greyback for me?" I don't know much about wizard pediatrics, but I'm pretty sure babies need to be in more or less one piece to survive, and generally lack an immunity to stomach acid. Old Man Riddle has access to a werewolf, so unless Harry and Neville can Deadpool their way back from that, it's a win.

Neither Lucius nor Greyback were there, Voldermort was going solo to prove his superiority. It wasn't just about killing the destined baby, he would deliver the killing blow himself.

Again, Voldermort only loses (again) in the story because he insists on trying to take out Harry himself when he had him at his mercy. Multiple times even.

(Also there's phoenix tears and the philosopher's stone and the dead-ressurecting stone and bone-regrowing potions thus for all we know Harry could've been literally reduced to fine mincemeat and Dumbledore would've still been able to go "we can rebuild him!")

[Frozen_Feet]

I say the biggest flaw from Voldermort was refusing to admit that Potter was plain immune to the death curse since he insists in dueling him again and again solo after he manages to get a new body.

But again, he was an arrogant prideful jerk. He would rather die again than admit that there were some things his own magic couldn't overcome, so it makes sense in-character.


It's also worth noting that Voldemort went out of his way to get around Harry's defenses, only for a new thing to screw him over.

Mother's love repels the curse? Use Harry's blood in the resurrection ritual to become immune to that. Same wand core causing issues? Switch to a new, more powerfull wand (allegedly THE most powerfull wand).

The curse failing because Harry was my unintented Horcrux all along and I actually killed a piece of myself? What the Hell?

Admitting that Potter was immune to the curse might've made sense if it was a single, intractable quality, but it's actually several tractable ones. And every time Voldy got around one, turned out there was one more.

[Sapphire Guard]

BCJ has no backup, Voldemort is weak and can't trust, say, Lucius, not to backstab him before he can resurrect. Wormtail is all he has, and Pettigrew is needed to help set up Baby Voldemort's side of things.

It's not easy to get into Gryffindor tower, and Harry almost always has friends with him in Hogsmeade. Any kidnapping attempt is dicey.

The tournament is useful because it gives Voldemort the chance to get away with the death. In any Harry Potter disappearance/death, even if he's struck by lightning or chokes on pumpkin juice, Lord Voldemort will be suspect no 1.

The benefit of the maze trick is that they can make it look like some monster in the maze got him, or Krum went on a killing spree. Dumbledore loses a ton of credibility for the unsafe tournament, without giving away that Lord Voldemort has returned. Ideally, BCJ even keeps his cover, and can continue to undermine Hogwarts from within.

[Delicious Taffy]

Neither Lucius nor Greyback were there, Voldermort was going solo to prove his superiority. It wasn't just about killing the destined baby, he would deliver the killing blow himself.

And that's why it's pointless to nitpick the guy. He was smart enough to come up with all these really good plans, so what's it matter if he didn't have enough Future Vision© to know he should bring a werewolf? If Voldemort were perfect, we'd have no plot.


(Also there's phoenix tears and the philosopher's stone and the dead-ressurecting stone and bone-regrowing potions thus for all we know Harry could've been literally reduced to fine mincemeat and Dumbledore would've still been able to go "we can rebuild him!")
You're not Voldemort, so I can nitpick you. Phoenix tears haven't been shown healing anything worse than a basilisk bite (which is only a lethal wound, not death), the Elixir of Life just lets you get really old (as far as we know), the Resurrection Stone only brings people back as long as you're holding it (and may just be a mind trick), and Skele-Grow has only been shown regrowing a couple of arm bones (which is probably much easier than a digested baby).

And not to be a downer, but Dumbledore doesn't strike me as the type to go all-out resurrecting a random baby, especially at that point in the story. He'd probably think it was sad, and maybe give his condolences to the parents, but not much more. He was too far up his own arse.

[deuterio12]

It's also worth noting that Voldemort went out of his way to get around Harry's defenses, only for a new thing to screw him over.

Mother's love repels the curse? Use Harry's blood in the resurrection ritual to become immune to that. Same wand core causing issues? Switch to a new, more powerfull wand (allegedly THE most powerfull wand).

The curse failing because Harry was my unintented Horcrux all along and I actually killed a piece of myself? What the Hell?

Admitting that Potter was immune to the curse might've made sense if it was a single, intractable quality, but it's actually several tractable ones. And every time Voldy got around one, turned out there was one more.

True, but by be the last book would've it killed Voldermort to go the extra mile and, say, chop off Harry's head in the last book after he's finally down just to make sure? When unexpected circumstances keep happenning, you need to start planning several steps ahead.

But nnoooo, Voldermort wants to kill Harry personally with his own magic specifically, nothing else will do. :smalltongue:


And that's why it's pointless to nitpick the guy. He was smart enough to come up with all these really good plans, so what's it matter if he didn't have enough Future Vision© to know he should bring a werewolf? If Voldemort were perfect, we'd have no plot.

Technically he did have future vision. Harry (or Neville) was the one prophecized to take him down. So Voldermort decides to go kill the chosen savior by himself while he's still just a baby and ends up being a self-fulfilling prediction when his magic bounces against himself.

Funny thing is if Voldermort hadn't gone after young Harry/Neville they would've just grown into a normal wizards as Potter's special qualities are basically all directly related to that night Voldermort went to take him out. Voldermort created his own nemesis.




You're not Voldemort, so I can nitpick you. Phoenix tears haven't been shown healing anything worse than a basilisk bite (which is only a lethal wound, not death), the Elixir of Life just lets you get really old (as far as we know), the Resurrection Stone only brings people back as long as you're holding it (and may just be a mind trick), and Skele-Grow has only been shown regrowing a couple of arm bones (which is probably much easier than a digested baby).


"Death's" such a funny word, a lot of cells in our bodies are actually quite durable and can keep working for hours in an individual basis after the brain stops. Phoenix tears can restore one from the brink of death, and technically speaking there would be something still alive in the pile of minced meat as long as not too long has passed.

Plus skele-grow shows magic can regrow body pieces from literally nothing (basically any doctor's wet dream), and we had no cases of people dying of simple violent death while phoenix tears were available. Again, the bird's pretty rare, and it shows Dumbledore's status that he can keep one as a pet.



And not to be a downer, but Dumbledore doesn't strike me as the type to go all-out resurrecting a random baby, especially at that point in the story. He'd probably think it was sad, and maybe give his condolences to the parents, but not much more. He was too far up his own arse.

Dumbledore's crazy and excentric, being unpredictable is half his sthick. :smallbiggrin:

[Keltest]

True, but by be the last book would've it killed Voldermort to go the extra mile and, say, chop off Harry's head in the last book after he's finally down just to make sure? When unexpected circumstances keep happenning, you need to start planning several steps ahead.

But nnoooo, Voldermort wants to kill Harry personally with his own magic specifically, nothing else will do. :smalltongue:

I mean, that's the point, right? Voldemort is an egomaniac driven to commit his crimes due to his own need to prove his superiority. He needs to be better than his father, than the muggles who raised him and who were raised along with him. He needs to be better than Dumbledore and Harry, the only wizards who ever really gave him pause. He couldn't stoop to using a muggle's way of murdering anybody any more than he could diplomatically convince Dumbledore of the correctness of his position, because that would require him to admit that for all his magic he still cant do anything better than the people he hated.

[deuterio12]

I mean, that's the point, right? Voldemort is an egomaniac driven to commit his crimes due to his own need to prove his superiority. He needs to be better than his father, than the muggles who raised him and who were raised along with him. He needs to be better than Dumbledore and Harry, the only wizards who ever really gave him pause. He couldn't stoop to using a muggle's way of murdering anybody any more than he could diplomatically convince Dumbledore of the correctness of his position, because that would require him to admit that for all his magic he still cant do anything better than the people he hated.

Yes, it was my original point too, Voldermort's too prideful and arrogant and wants to show the whole world he's the very best wizard that there ever was.

[Traab]

Honestly, its not like it was a terrible plan, it worked after all. It got harry kidnapped, used for the ritual, and voldy got reborn, my only point was that it was elaborately over complicated for his purpose. Its like he spent the time from book 1 to book 4 coming up with a plan then going, "Ooh ooh! I know! Instead of that I could do THIS!" Until it evolved from "Kidnap harry, be reborn, kill him in front of followers, cake and pie." To that absurd setup

[Keltest]

Honestly, its not like it was a terrible plan, it worked after all. It got harry kidnapped, used for the ritual, and voldy got reborn, my only point was that it was elaborately over complicated for his purpose. Its like he spent the time from book 1 to book 4 coming up with a plan then going, "Ooh ooh! I know! Instead of that I could do THIS!" Until it evolved from "Kidnap harry, be reborn, kill him in front of followers, cake and pie." To that absurd setup

When you consider that Moody was involved with security planning for the event and thus would have known right from its inception that it would end with a hedge maze, it becomes less complicated. Because once you get him into that maze wanting to touch the trophy, it really is that simple plan. Figure that everything else BCJ did over the year was ad-hoc to get Harry into the hedge maze instead of actually a specific plan, and it isn't really that much more complicated.

Because the maze really is the perfect place to kidnap harry. If he calls for help, nobody is allowed to answer but the other champions, who will be lost in the maze. He will be expected to be gone for a considerable length of time. Theres an object they know he plans to touch.

[deuterio12]

When you consider that Moody was involved with security planning for the event and thus would have known right from its inception that it would end with a hedge maze, it becomes less complicated. Because once you get him into that maze wanting to touch the trophy, it really is that simple plan. Figure that everything else BCJ did over the year was ad-hoc to get Harry into the hedge maze instead of actually a specific plan, and it isn't really that much more complicated.

Because the maze really is the perfect place to kidnap harry. If he calls for help, nobody is allowed to answer but the other champions, who will be lost in the maze. He will be expected to be gone for a considerable length of time. Theres an object they know he plans to touch.

Indeed, the tournament allows fake Moody to bring Harry to a place and time of his choosing while making sure there'll be nobody nearby to get in the way besides maybe one or two other students who'll be in no position to call for help fast enough to matter.

Much safer than trying to stalk Harry in places filled with wizards.

And again, doing it at the tournament has the added propaganda warfare effect where Voldermort taints the whole massive event at its moment of triumph.

[keybounce]

The real question is, we know magic can make things out of thin air. And that muggle money can be exchanged for wizard money at fairly reasonable rates.

Why weren't there wizards selling magically conjured furniture and things to muggles en masse?

Because the Goblins are in perpetual war with counterfeiters, and this is considered counterfeiting.

[keybounce]

As someone who's been deep in the HP fanfic community for over a decade, the only thing I can tell you for sure is that nothing about this series makes any goddamn sense if you think about it for more than 5 minutes. ...

Probably the best example is Quidditch, a game with no time limit ... the entire game focuses around the Snitch and the Seekers, and it does this so that even when Harry Potter is taking part in a team sport, we don't really have to care about anything except his personal accomplishments and his relationship with the other Seeker during the game. The rules of the game that aren't largely meaningless fluff do everything to make what looks like a team sport into an individual competition.

First, I am catching up on this thread. Forgive me if someone else has raised this point.

Second: If you want to see HP with world building, read HP:MoR.

Third: Quidditch: Quidditch makes plenty of sense if you stop thinking in terms of "games won", and start thinking in terms of "Points Scored". Think of Cricket before the 2-day game limit went into effect.

Points scored? Lets say that the two best pro teams each have one loss at the end of the season. What effect have the seekers had at that point? Zero. Even if one team has one more snitch catch, that's only 15 goals over a season -- if your season is 15 games, and the games are as high scoring as we seem to have seen, 15 goals over 15 games is very much something that can be made up for by a good offensive team. In fact, the focus on offense is so critical to making up a loss of snitch points that defense is NOT VALUABLE -- so this is a high scoring game, where with enough time the points earned by the offensive team overwhelm the seekers -- suddenly you have a real time limit, unless both teams are trying to delay the game for some reason. And I think in book 6, we even saw an example where the pro teams did something really strange with the snitch to manipulate total point count for the season.

Yes, it does mean that the snitch doesn't make much sense.
No, it does not mean that the snitch invalidates everything else.

Did basketball shots make sense before the 3 point rule? Once people realized that some people could jump and reach high enough that the ball was over the 10 foot line when you were at the top of your jump, suddenly the only thing that matters is who can jump high enough, frequently enough -- the rest of the team, the entire other team, nothing else matters. Did the game of basketball insist "This is tradition, we must keep the rules"? No, they changed the rules to make it a better game. Imagine if Harry Potter wanted to force a change the rules of Quiddich -- oh wait, that's a key plot point in HP:MoR.

[keybounce]

Messing up the postage stamps is also fairly easy to understand ... thinks more stamps means a faster delivery.

Which it is.

You can get priority mail, air mail, express mail, etc. Requires more postage.

Also requires some sort of notice on the envelope, but that might just be an oversight -- there's a lot to learn, and he didn't get it all

[Aeson]

Third: Quidditch: Quidditch makes plenty of sense if you stop thinking in terms of "games won", and start thinking in terms of "Points Scored". Think of Cricket before the 2-day game limit went into effect.
Don't remember which book it's in, but one of the games has Harry waiting for Gryffindor to be at least so many points ahead of the other team before catching the snitch because the points scored affect the team's standing in the House Cup. Might be the thing you're thinking of in Half-Blood Prince; I don't recall any real detail being given about professional games aside from the World Cup game in Goblet of Fire.

[Gnoman]

Second: If you want to see HP with world building, read HP:MoR.


Counterpoint - This fic is absolute garbage and should never be read by anybody. If the abysmal science and contempt for the source material don't turn you off, you can stomach the openly-evil protagonist, and the blatant racism and misogyny get a pass; then you still have to deal with the fact that the author has a fairly poor command of the English language.

[keybounce]

Even the version of Voldemort in the fanfic Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, who has extreme intelligence as one of his defining traits, decided that unfailingly following his version of the Evil Overlord List would be unbearably boring.

He also inverted at least one, "Become an Animal Mage" :-).

You know, like the rules say to never turn into a snake?

[keybounce]

Counterpoint - This fic is absolute garbage and should never be read by anybody. If the abysmal science and contempt for the source material don't turn you off, you can stomach the openly-evil protagonist, and the blatant racism and misogyny get a pass; then you still have to deal with the fact that the author has a fairly poor command of the English language.

Abysmal Science? I thought it was pretty decent.

Racism? Misogyny? I don't recall any of that in MoR. Care to be specific? Or do you mean the "Muggles are inferior to Wizards" view? That's racist, I suppose.

Openly Evil Protagonist? It's an 11 year old "Willing to kill" version of Tom Riddle. What do you expect? That he's willing to kill is presented really early. He has to grow up, and stop being self-centered, and develop a sense of "Willing to protect someone else".

Or, wait, by "Protagonist", you mean the wizard that wants to save the wizarding world from the horror of the Muggles, the one that wants to protect all life on the planet from Muggles that are willing to destroy all life on the planet? Sure, he wants to be the real ruler, advisor to Harry, with Harry as a figurehead on the throne, but hey, both of them are the same Tom Riddle, does it matter which of them has which position?

And bad command of the English Language? I'll grant a few typos or spots that could use a little editing. But overall, I thought it was well done.

[GloatingSwine]

Counterpoint - This fic is absolute garbage and should never be read by anybody. If the abysmal science and contempt for the source material don't turn you off, you can stomach the openly-evil protagonist, and the blatant racism and misogyny get a pass; then you still have to deal with the fact that the author has a fairly poor command of the English language.

Harry Potter and the Dunning of Kruger is popular with a certain kind of internet individual and is also everything that is wrong with fanfiction.

[The Glyphstone]

Counterpoint - This fic is absolute garbage and should never be read by anybody. If the abysmal science and contempt for the source material don't turn you off, you can stomach the openly-evil protagonist, and the blatant racism and misogyny get a pass; then you still have to deal with the fact that the author has a fairly poor command of the English language.

This is what killed MoR for me. I can put up with a lot, but a 'fanfiction' by someone who is clearly not a fan, but instead despises the source material and devotes a significant portion of their effort+word count to 'fixing' everything wrong with the world was too much. Not to mention the author's idea that being raised by an scientist turns someone into an objectivist sociopath.

[Gnoman]

Abysmal Science? I thought it was pretty decent.

Racism? Misogyny? I don't recall any of that in MoR. Care to be specific? Or do you mean the "Muggles are inferior to Wizards" view? That's racist, I suppose.


Here's a good example.


Draco groaned. "Not a guy. A girl. A ten-year-old girl, can you believe it? She went nuts after her mother died and her father, who owns this newspaper, is convinced that she's a seer, so when he doesn't know he asks Luna Lovegood and believes anything she says."

Not really thinking about it, Harry pulled the ring on his next can of Comed-Tea and prepared to drink. "Are you kidding me? That's even worse than Muggle journalism, which I would have thought was physically impossible."

Draco snarled. "She has some sort of perverse obsession about the Malfoys, too, and her father is politically opposed to us so he prints every word. As soon as I'm old enough I'm going to rape her."

Green liquid spurted out of Harry's nostrils, soaking into the scarf still covering that area. Comed-Tea and lungs did not mix, and Harry spent the next few seconds frantically coughing.

Draco looked at him sharply. "Something wrong?"

It was at this point that Harry came to the sudden realisation that (a) the sounds coming from the rest of the train platform had turned into more of a blurred white noise at around the same time Draco had reached inside his robes, and (b) when he had discussed committing murder as a bonding method, there had been exactly one person in the conversation who'd thought they were joking.

Right. Because he seemed like such a normal kid. And he is a normal kid, he is just what you'd expect a baseline male child to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father.
....

And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now as in the darkness-before-dawn prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law, at least when it came to some peasant girl. There were places in Muggle-land where it was still the same way, countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place and time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment

To summarize - suggesting that rape is the proper solution to somebody writing unpleasant stories about you is essentially blown off. It is blown off because the the magical world split off before the Enlightenment, that any society or culture that wasn't completely overwritten by Wise Enlightened Europeans is nothing but a pack of savages, and you can't expect civilized behavior from any such heathens.


This is an edited version. The older version (which can still be found in archives) is not only more explicit about what Malfoy wants to do to Luna, but specifically calls out "Arabs and Orientals" as being such savages.



As far as the science goes? Virtually every scientific reference called out in the story is wrong. Either misnamed (usually to direct attention to the author's completely rewritten version of the concept), badly misinterpreted, or (usually) both.

EDIT:

This is what killed MoR for me. I can put up with a lot, but a 'fanfiction' by someone who is clearly not a fan, but instead despises the source material and devotes a significant portion of their effort+word count to 'fixing' everything wrong with the world was too much. Not to mention the author's idea that being raised by an scientist turns someone into an objectivist sociopath.

You don't even need to extrapolate. The author explicitly states that he stopped reading the real series after book 3 or 4 because it was too "juvenile", and based his entire understanding of the universe on fanficition with an occasional glance at Wikipedia.

[The Glyphstone]

Here's a good example.


You don't even need to extrapolate. The author explicitly states that he stopped reading the real series after book 3 or 4 because it was too "juvenile", and based his entire understanding of the universe on fanficition with an occasional glance at Wikipedia.

Didn't know that. So it's like the Starship Troopers movie, but with active dislike instead of apathy. Also like the Starship Troopers movie, in that it's a terrible distortion of the source material.

[Traab]

Honestly, the best part about harry potter is how it doesnt make any sense past the fridge logic level at best. It allows for an INSANE level of malleability for fanfiction writers as you dont even have to make up a character change, just go with a different interpretation of what happened, like dumbledoore being good, evil, ignorant, or a chessmaster. Just going by the actual canon events its easy to go with any of those setups. Its all in how you choose to ascribe motive behind various actions. It also has so much flexibility in that numerous interesting things are mentioned, yet rarely expanded upon, leaving it up to whoever is writing a story to do whatever they want with it. Like say, arithmancy or runes. We get very little solid information on the subjects so if you want a story where harry is altering reality and creating spells like crazy, you can do that because nothing in the canon materials says you cant. And of course the existence of rituals, magical forms of teleportation, and other such things means crossover creation is a breeze. "Omg my portkey hit a ward and bounced! Now im in another world! Why is that guy made of rubber and eating all of the meat?!"

[danzibr]

Didn't know that. So it's like the Starship Troopers movie, but with active dislike instead of apathy. Also like the Starship Troopers movie, in that it's a terrible distortion of the source material.
Bit off topic, I just recently read the original. I can see where the movie (well, have only seen the first) came from, but hoo boy did they change a ton.

[Anonymouswizard]

This is what killed MoR for me. I can put up with a lot, but a 'fanfiction' by someone who is clearly not a fan, but instead despises the source material and devotes a significant portion of their effort+word count to 'fixing' everything wrong with the world was too much. Not to mention the author's idea that being raised by an scientist turns someone into an objectivist sociopath.

I will say that there is a difference between 'refinement' (offering fixes for plot holes and neatening things out without changes to the plot or characters) and 'fixing' (changing large portions of the plot, story, and/or characterisation to make it 'better'). Large portions of a fic dedicated to the former can be fine, although pretty darn hard, but if it's the latter why are you bothering writing fanfiction instead of an original story?

I mean, I don't like the Harry Potter universe (I'm more forgiving of the plot). It's a very unpopular opinion among my age group, which worships the darn thing, but at best I have apathy towards it and at worst outright hatred. So I don't write HP fanfiction, I mainly write original fiction with some attempts at fanfiction in fictional universes I do like (one of which I decided to just make original fiction because I realised I was using so few canon elements I could just change a few names and be safe).

[Johel]

I actually liked HP and the MoR.

Harry is as much a marie sue here than in the original material, though he at least questions that fact sometimes in MoR, with it being justified by Dumbledore being basically being a senile foul.

I loved how MoR deconstructed and then reconstructed Voldemort into something we can respect.
He isn't just going evil because he can (though that's also a part explored in the plot at the very end...) or because he just wants more power for power's sake.
He is doing it because he is a well-intentioned extremist largely disillusioned that, confronted again and again with people thinking too small for him, became a cynical man.
It does also explain the fact that Harry starts as, yes, a real psychopath because being the soul-clone of a dark wizard would do that to you. This is a part of himself that Harry tries to keep in check and against which he is actively fighting once he starts to understand it makes him emotionally hurt people he cares about.
The reveal of Voldemort as a truly despicable villain only really come at the end. The fact that it’s comical makes it even more horrific. But even then, I smiled when reading because we all have rolled our eyes in similar situation, confounded by the idiocy and pettiness of some people. None of us simply ever had the means and sheer lack of empathy to act upon it.

Not being a native English speaker, I might have missed the part about poor command of the English language.

Racism, I didn't spot either.

The cast is quite varied, much like in the original Harry Potter.
Racism is discussed in MoR, though : because there are so few wizards and they are forced to band together to keep up the mascarade against the hordes of muggle, wizards don't care about white, black, yellow or green. They do care much more about whether you are a wizard or a muggle, though, with muggles seen as inferior.

The passage you quoted just states some truth : yes, there are regions of the world where the attitude of "screw the rules, I got money/power" is still in place and largely accepted. It doesn't make it a good thing and Harry specifically said so many times : there are a lot of things that are very backward or even idiotic about the Wizarding world compared to the values of Muggle Britain.

But he is a 12 years old who just got thrown into a world with another mindset, culture and history. He has the view of the world that a very litterate boy of 12 years old might have, that's it probably "book smart" but with little experience so some biase is normal.
He still realize it's not by going for a frontal assault against that world on Day 1 that he'll get things to change. So he takes it as it is : Draco Malfoy sees it as normal for rich people to get their way before it has always been so in the Wizarding World. It might change over time, the same way it has been and is changing in the real world, slowly, gradually. And it will change all the faster if Harry Potter can get friend with the mighty and the powerful from the ruling class.

That he makes a point about Muggle Britain not being so full of corrupt *******s thanks to the Enlightenment while the places were the Enlightenment hasn't had much impact not having these values ? Not a problem for me : it's his PoV.
It might not be entirely right but it isn't entirely wrong either : not going to discuss real world politics and cultures here but one of the big reasons why such things as free speech exists at all today is because liberalism (among other things) did spread there. It started in Western Europe and had about a century more there than anywhere else to settle in the popular mindset so it is better anchored there. And the further we go from Europe's influence, the weakest these values are.
It ain't racism to face that fact, the same way it ain't racism to say people have different values.

Even if the author did point specifically "arabs and orientals" then so what ?
It's a "take that !" against some their ideas, not against their genetics.
Then maybe he does have a problem with arabs and orientals for their genetics. I don't know.
Still, let's not forget the title of the book and the fact that the author DOES have an agenda :
http://www.hpmor.com/applied-rationality/

Misogyny, I don't really recall either.
Maybe the fact that the girls are all a bit air-brained, especially when they are discussing girly things.
But then I guess it's more a specific jab at adolescent girls than against woman in general.
Some of the girls were clearly meant to be idiots... and others were more rounded characters.
But then again, most of them were 12 years old.

[Foeofthelance]

Didn't know that. So it's like the Starship Troopers movie, but with active dislike instead of apathy. Also like the Starship Troopers movie, in that it's a terrible distortion of the source material.

To be fair to Starships Troopers, if one can, it didn't start out as a movie based on a Heinlein novel, but a movie about soldiers fighting bug aliens that was so like the Heinlein novel in form if not function that it was easier and cheaper for the studio to buy the rights and rename the characters than it would have been to deal with all the legal hassles.

[The Glyphstone]

To be fair to Starships Troopers, if one can, it didn't start out as a movie based on a Heinlein novel, but a movie about soldiers fighting bug aliens that was so like the Heinlein novel in form if not function that it was easier and cheaper for the studio to buy the rights and rename the characters than it would have been to deal with all the legal hassles.

Also true. If I remember right, the original draft was Bug Hunt On Outpost Nine or something similarly super-generic-sounding.

[Sapphire Guard]

MOR has some strengths, I wouldn't say worldbuilding is one of them. It hates the HP world.

[deuterio12]

Abysmal Science? I thought it was pretty decent.


Then you really missed a good chunk of what Science is about, aka experimentation. Good science demands experimentation, trying out things in a controlled way and check the results.

But in MoR the author's self-insert just glances at stuff for a moment then somehow flawlessly finds out how everything works just like that, which is an insult to basically every real scientist out there that worked their asses off doing and re-doing experiments until they had solid results to support their theories.

[Johel]

Then you really missed a good chunk of what Science is about, aka experimentation. Good science demands experimentation, trying out things in a controlled way and check the results.

But in MoR the author's self-insert just glances at stuff for a moment then somehow flawlessly finds out how everything works just like that, which is an insult to basically every real scientist out there that worked their asses off doing and re-doing experiments until they had solid results to support their theories.

Wasn't the very principle of scientific method explained just like that ?
With them making hypothesis to see if magical strength really was linked to bloodline or if it was something else and then finding by elimination that it couldn't be bloodline.

I'll grant you they didn't do much experiments, mainly because those are 12 years old.
But the basic logic and mental process was explained :
Observe something, make a few hypothesis about why it is so, test the hypothesis, see which ones don't add up, then observe in practice those that do add up in theory, go back to square one if none work.
And most importantly, DON'T fudge the result or make excuses to make reality fit your visions of what should be. There was a whole chapter I think where HP and Draco discuss this specifically, pointing the difference between winning a political argument (where you want to be right so as to gain influence) and having a scientific debate (where you are seeking the truth for the sake of knowing).

[Eldan]

He's not just a twelve year old. (Ten year old, in the first book, I think?) He's a ten year old who understands differential equations, calculus, quantum physics and develops entirely new fields of physics in his head. From looking at things. I don't think he ever writes down a single equation.

[deuterio12]

He's not just a twelve year old. (Ten year old, in the first book, I think?) He's a ten year old who understands differential equations, calculus, quantum physics and develops entirely new fields of physics in his head. From looking at things. I don't think he ever writes down a single equation.

Exactly. Plus I wouldn't even say the author's self-insert really looks, a lot of the time he just glances for a few seconds and somehow comes up with a perfect understanding of the subject just from that.

[Eldan]

My favourite example was that when Professor McGonnagall told him that partial transfiguration (transforming only half of an object) was impossible. So he thought really hard for about five minutes about Teh Quantumz and did it anyway. Then explained why no other wizard except him could do it.

[hamishspence]

Partial transfiguration happens all the time in Harry Potter. It's usually due to the wizard not having mastered the particular Transfiguration spell sufficiently to do it perfectly.

Krum partially transfiguring himself into a shark in book 4, springs to mind. He ends up being shark from the waist up, human from the waist down.

[Eldan]

Oh, I know. But in the story, McGonnagall said it was impossible.

[hamishspence]

A good example of:

"changing what's already been established, to make the protagonist appear smarter and the protagonist's teachers appear dumber"

then.

[Mith]

I enjoyed the first few chapters of MoR before the real bloody character assassination spree started. Such as Harry messing with Draco in the robe shop. That was fun. It quickly stopped being fun because the author doesn't see value in fantastical stories. He would benefit reading the author's foreward, for the lack of a better term, for Journey to the West. That one makes me smile. It's a 300 year old essay that captures the joy of fantasy writing in the face of more "serious" works.

[Fyraltari]

That's funny, every time somebody mentions that fic on the Playground people get quite divided on wether it's the worst thing ever or great. Makes one want to check it out to see what the fuss is about.







Draco groaned. "Not a guy. A girl. A ten-year-old girl, can you believe it? She went nuts after her mother died and her father, who owns this newspaper, is convinced that she's a seer, so when he doesn't know he asks Luna Lovegood and believes anything she says."

Not really thinking about it, Harry pulled the ring on his next can of Comed-Tea and prepared to drink. "Are you kidding me? That's even worse than Muggle journalism, which I would have thought was physically impossible."

Draco snarled. "She has some sort of perverse obsession about the Malfoys, too, and her father is politically opposed to us so he prints every word. As soon as I'm old enough I'm going to rape her."

Green liquid spurted out of Harry's nostrils, soaking into the scarf still covering that area. Comed-Tea and lungs did not mix, and Harry spent the next few seconds frantically coughing.

Draco looked at him sharply. "Something wrong?"

It was at this point that Harry came to the sudden realisation that (a) the sounds coming from the rest of the train platform had turned into more of a blurred white noise at around the same time Draco had reached inside his robes, and (b) when he had discussed committing murder as a bonding method, there had been exactly one person in the conversation who'd thought they were joking.

Right. Because he seemed like such a normal kid. And he is a normal kid, he is just what you'd expect a baseline male child to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father.
....

And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now as in the darkness-before-dawn prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law, at least when it came to some peasant girl. There were places in Muggle-land where it was still the same way, countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place and time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment


...

On second thought, let's not.

[pendell]

I read MOR and enjoyed it. As far as the protaganist being dark, and knowing things a twelve year old boy shouldn't know, the author wrote an explanation for it in the later chapters. I don't know whether that was a retcon to explain the earlier chapters, or he'd planned it that way from the beginning, but the lampshade is there.


It's because Harry isn't operating on a twelve year old's understanding; he's operating on Tom Riddle's. When Voldemort AVd the child and made Harry into a Horcrux, Voldemort impressed himself on the child, gifting him with both memories and knowledge. So the child has Tom Riddle's icy brilliance and personality, except that he's raised by a loving family with a background in science, as opposed to an orphanage. He's a "good" Voldemort -- or as good as Voldemort gets.

Recognizing this and overcoming it -- turning away from the Dark Side which he now recognizes as leftovers from Tom Riddle -- is a primary theme of the later chapters.

He also learns that he is wrong about a lot of things.



Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Douglas]

Here's a good example.



To summarize - suggesting that rape is the proper solution to somebody writing unpleasant stories about you is essentially blown off. It is blown off because the the magical world split off before the Enlightenment, that any society or culture that wasn't completely overwritten by Wise Enlightened Europeans is nothing but a pack of savages, and you can't expect civilized behavior from any such heathens.


This is an edited version. The older version (which can still be found in archives) is not only more explicit about what Malfoy wants to do to Luna, but specifically calls out "Arabs and Orientals" as being such savages.
The takeaway I got from that is simply that Draco's attitude is a product of nurture, not nature, and that Harry thinks changing his attitude may therefore be possible and is worthwhile to attempt. Harry does not make any direct argument against it immediately because he knows very well that he doesn't have the level of connection and respect required to get Draco to actually listen to that kind of thing yet. What Harry does immediately do as a direct counter is state his own, not at all harmful, claim on the hypothetical victim, giving Draco a reason to back off that fits his current worldview.


I read MOR and enjoyed it. As far as the protaganist being dark, and knowing things a twelve year old boy shouldn't know, the author wrote an explanation for it in the later chapters. I don't know whether that was a retcon to explain the earlier chapters, or he'd planned it that way from the beginning, but the lampshade is there.


It's because Harry isn't operating on a twelve year old's understanding; he's operating on Tom Riddle's. When Voldemort AVd the child and made Harry into a Horcrux, Voldemort impressed himself on the child, gifting him with both memories and knowledge. So the child has Tom Riddle's icy brilliance and personality, except that he's raised by a loving family with a background in science, as opposed to an orphanage. He's a "good" Voldemort -- or as good as Voldemort gets.

Recognizing this and overcoming it -- turning away from the Dark Side which he now recognizes as leftovers from Tom Riddle -- is a primary theme of the later chapters.

He also learns that he is wrong about a lot of things.



Respectfully,

Brian P.
I'm nearly certain that was planned from the beginning. There are too many details that just make sense when they're finally revealed. There's even a bit of very specific foreshadowing of some details of the climactic confrontation at the start of chapter 1, and I'm pretty sure that was already there when I started reading it, long before the end.

[keybounce]

Here's a good example.


...
Draco snarled. "She has some sort of perverse obsession about the Malfoys, too, and her father is politically opposed to us so he prints every word. As soon as I'm old enough I'm going to rape her."

...
Right. Because he seemed like such a normal kid. And he is a normal kid, he is just what you'd expect a baseline male child to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father.
....

And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now as in the darkness-before-dawn prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law, at least when it came to some peasant girl. There were places in Muggle-land where it was still the same way, countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place and time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment


To summarize - suggesting that rape is the proper solution to somebody writing unpleasant stories about you is essentially blown off. It is blown off because the the magical world split off before the Enlightenment, that any society or culture that wasn't completely overwritten by Wise Enlightened Europeans is nothing but a pack of savages, and you can't expect civilized behavior from any such heathens.

First, you and I have very different readings of the story here.

To me, the author of this story (LessWrong) has done a very good job of character writing. The parts where Hermione Granger is the main character are very different than the parts where Dumbledore is the main character, or where the story is being told from Draco's point of view, or Lord Malfoy's.

The first part of the section you quoted is showing the viewpoint of Draco Malfoy. The 2nd part is showing the viewpoint of a highly conceited, self-grandizing, arrogant 11-year-old. Who has a sense of being better than everyone else.

Nothing in there is presented as the viewpoint of the author. This is characterization for the characters.


As far as the science goes? Virtually every scientific reference called out in the story is wrong. Either misnamed (usually to direct attention to the author's completely rewritten version of the concept), badly misinterpreted, or (usually) both.

You don't even need to extrapolate. The author explicitly states that he stopped reading the real series after book 3 or 4 because it was too "juvenile", and based his entire understanding of the universe on fanficition with an occasional glance at Wikipedia.

I was not aware that he stopped reading the story after book 3. I was aware that he had skipped (I think it was) book 5, as he said that he'd made the mistake of thinking that Snape and Lily had been dating until he made the mistake of mentioning the word "Mudblood". It's not that hard of a mistake to make, and given that this is an alternate universe, it's actually somewhat reasonable.

And yes, James in the original source material does seem to be as shallow and mean as portrayed by this author.

But the science that is presented seems pretty straightforward and accurate. Simplified, yes; HP:MoR is not supposed to be a science text.

If your concern is that the science was simplified, perhaps oversimplified, then I think you expected too much. The genetics, in particular, is pointed out as being extremely simplified (and in fact, slightly wrong) because it is the understanding of an 11-year-old that is being presented.

[Gnoman]

If your concern is that the science was simplified, perhaps oversimplified, then I think you expected too much. The genetics, in particular, is pointed out as being extremely simplified (and in fact, slightly wrong) because it is the understanding of an 11-year-old that is being presented.



It isn't oversimplified in the "Humans evolved from monkeys" sense. It is dead wrong in the "We gave Solid Snake all the dominant genes and Liquid all the recessive genes. That makes Solid Snake much better than Liquid."

[keybounce]

This is what killed MoR for me. I can put up with a lot, but a 'fanfiction' by someone who is clearly not a fan, but instead despises the source material and devotes a significant portion of their effort+word count to 'fixing' everything wrong with the world was too much. Not to mention the author's idea that being raised by an scientist turns someone into an objectivist sociopath.

I read this story as an attempt to say, "what would realistic world building look like, plus what if we made one change to the early history to tell an alternate history/alternate universe".

Magic, as presented in the originals, basically has no upper limit on what it can do. Or rather, as some of the examples were pointed out in MoR, no real limit on its fineness. Someone who understands modern physics, and has the ability to manipulate things by magic, could make enough antimatter to cause a massive explosion, or accelerate a baseball to relativistic speeds, or just about anything from What-If.

The Interdiction of Merlin is absolutely brand-new in this alternate universe, but is absolutely necessary to have some type of limitation around which to tell a story; it also turns Slitherin's Monster from "just another boss to defeat" to a key plot point -- being able to pass major magic to someone generations into the future bypassing the limits on transfer of magical knowledge.

And no, being raised by a scientist does not turn you into an objectivist sociopath. Being a clone of Voldemort makes you a sociopath, and being raised by a scientist makes you objectivist.

This Harry is a jerk. This Harry is a complete jerk until after the troll attack; at that point he scares the Seer, and Voldemort.

And frankly, I do like the idea of trying to put realistic world building into fanfic. What would a "My Little Pony" fanfic look like if it tried to do serious world building for the Equestria Girls world, or even the economy (bits) of the pony world? That's pretty much we see here. Voldemort's original plan to take over the wizarding world didn't make much sense; the plan here (spoiler: it was never intended to be successful) makes far more sense.

[keybounce]

It isn't oversimplified in the "Humans evolved from monkeys" sense. It is dead wrong in the "We gave Solid Snake all the dominant genes and Liquid all the recessive genes. That makes Solid Snake much better than Liquid."

What?

The genetics, as presented here, basically say that you have some type of genetic marker that is looked for by whatever machine/construct/"plot device" was made by some ultra advanced civilization of the past, and little more than that.

I'm not aware of any point in the story where it is said that dominant genes are better than recessive ones. Biologically, a recessive gene is simply a gene whose protein only does its function when there is nothing to interfere with it; a dominant gene is one whose protein still works even if there are similar but different proteins around.

I really do not understand the example that you are trying to quote.

[Keltest]

What?

The genetics, as presented here, basically say that you have some type of genetic marker that is looked for by whatever machine/construct/"plot device" was made by some ultra advanced civilization of the past, and little more than that.

I'm not aware of any point in the story where it is said that dominant genes are better than recessive ones. Biologically, a recessive gene is simply a gene whose protein only does its function when there is nothing to interfere with it; a dominant gene is one whose protein still works even if there are similar but different proteins around.

I really do not understand the example that you are trying to quote.

Theyre saying the science is completely and utterly wrong by comparing it to another bit of completely and utterly wrong science. In the chosen example, you cannot split dominant and recessive genes, because a single person does not have a set of each that compete for control. A gene is either one or the other, and splitting them would not result in a viable life form. Removing somebody's recessive genes wouldn't make their eyes change color, it would mean they have no genes controlling that aspect of their being at all.

[Gnoman]

The second reference is a reference to Metal Gear Solid, in which one of the primary villains is a clone of the primary protagonist character (technically, they're both clones of somebody else). The villain was told that he got all the recessive genes from the original, while the protagonist got all the dominant ones, making him inferior to the protagonist in every way. As everyone who took high school biology knows, GENETICS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY, and it is one of the most famous "you fail science forever" examples in modern media.


This is the level of wrong that this fic averages at. The science is that bad.

[deuterio12]

Yeah, the thing is that the original Harry Potter isn't going out to try to make a new physics system, it's a story about friendship and love and growing up and life and death, with magic being mostly a plot device.

But MoR tries to be serious with the magic business, throwing science terms all around, and just fails at being any more coherent if you bother to actually find out what all the words the author's using mean.

[Foeofthelance]

The takeaway I got from that is simply that Draco's attitude is a product of nurture, not nature, and that Harry thinks changing his attitude may therefore be possible and is worthwhile to attempt. Harry does not make any direct argument against it immediately because he knows very well that he doesn't have the level of connection and respect required to get Draco to actually listen to that kind of thing yet. What Harry does immediately do as a direct counter is state his own, not at all harmful, claim on the hypothetical victim, giving Draco a reason to back off that fits his current worldview.


That in and of itself would be another gross misrepresentation of the world, though. In order for it to be a product of nurture, that would imply that Malfoy grew up in a household where his father regularly discusses the proposition of attacking people that way. Except the Malfoy's of the original Harry Potter are showing to never get so hands on. The entire reason they stayed out of Azkaban in the first place because Lucius isn't stupid; he works through cut outs and subterfuge. If he really wanted to deal with the Quibbler (and that's assuming he didn't deem it beneath his dignity to even approach such a rag) he'd be more likely to try and buy it out or buy the land the Lovegoods live/work on and kick them out or some such. The only time Lucius is seen doing anything remotely on his own is when he tries to kill Harry at the end of the Chamber movie, and even then only because the actor supposedly didn't know any other spells to cast at that point.

[Kitten Champion]

The only time Lucius is seen doing anything remotely on his own is when he tries to kill Harry at the end of the Chamber movie, and even then only because the actor supposedly didn't know any other spells to cast at that point.

What? Why would the actor's knowledge come into it?

[hamishspence]

I recall a theory that he was going to kill Dobby, not Harry, and Dobby simply mistook his intentions.

After all, the "punishable with life in Azkaban" rule for Unforgivables, only specifically applies to using them against humans.

It's not clear what the rules are for using them against non-human Beings.

[Foeofthelance]

What? Why would the actor's knowledge come into it?

They didn't actually tell him what spell to cast, just to "cast a spell". The only one he knew was Avada Kedavra, so that was what he went with.

[Sapphire Guard]

That seems like poor direction.

I'm not sure MOR counted as realistic worldbuilding. On an individual character level, things were well built, but the general worldbuilding was usually regarded with contempt.

I had worldbuilding issues with Harry being given a Time Turner on Day 1, for instance. In canon, they were not handed out like sweets, Hermione got one after being unconscious for six months the previous year after being attacked by a serial killer, which she was instrumental in catching. She's also extremely rule abiding, while anyone talking to Methods Harry, even for five minutes, will understand that he'll treat the thing like a toy.

[warty goblin]

So I've just about finished up re-listening to the entire series except the first book, and I have to say, it's not really all that plot-holish. There's the sort of second order world building inconsistencies that are rife in basically any hidden world modern fantasy, but if you aren't willing to ignore that sort of thing, read a different genre. If you're willing to accept that werewolves exist and somehow nobody really notices, it works fine. Better in some ways than some other hidden magic urban fantasies I've read, both since the wizards have a lot more lattitude for covering stuff up, and because for about 99% of the series, the muggle world is completely irrelevant so the niggling sense that somebody should have worked this out by now is a lot less prevalent.

The Trace really does seem to change functionality on regular though. But who cares; my view is that magic is either a plot devise, or magic is a plot devise written by Brandon Sanderson, in which case you need to sit through a really dull description of him yammering on about it before anything can actually happen while the vague sense that this is just him showing off accumulates in the back of my mind*. Between the two, I'll take the first.


*I mind this a lot less in genuinely hard sci-fi, where the yammering about magic is replaced with actual science. That said, Neal Stephenson still needs an editor.

[Kitten Champion]

They didn't actually tell him what spell to cast, just to "cast a spell". The only one he knew was Avada Kedavra, so that was what he went with.

Presumably they have access to this kind of lore information, or could ask at least.

Maybe they just assumed Jason Isaacs would say some vaguely Latin gibberish that they could use? There aren't that many canon Potterverse spells written down in the text, so I suppose it's possible that a lot of the actors were just told to say "something" if only to suggest that magic was occurring for cinematic purposes.

Though he may have been replaced by mirror-verse Lucius, so there's that.

[Douglas]

That seems like poor direction.

I'm not sure MOR counted as realistic worldbuilding. On an individual character level, things were well built, but the general worldbuilding was usually regarded with contempt.

I had worldbuilding issues with Harry being given a Time Turner on Day 1, for instance. In canon, they were not handed out like sweets, Hermione got one after being unconscious for six months the previous year after being attacked by a serial killer, which she was instrumental in catching. She's also extremely rule abiding, while anyone talking to Methods Harry, even for five minutes, will understand that he'll treat the thing like a toy.
He was given that Time Turner by someone who was under Dumbledore's authority, and Dumbledore had been acting on the basis of a huge number of prophecies since before Harry was born. Dumbledore gave Harry a potion to permanently lengthen his day/night cycle when he was a child because of those prophecies, it stands to reason that he would have made sure Harry got the Time Turner too for the same reason.

[keybounce]

I'm afraid I'm going to be killing some more cat-girls.

As someone just pointed out, Harry being given a time turner at the beginning of the story is 100% consistent with the ending of the story, and the prophecy based time loop.

On the genetics issue, Harry is proposing a fairly standard Mendelian genetic style pattern. The author points out in author's notes at the start of the very next chapter that as an 11-year-old Harry has left off several other options.

As for Malfoy, it is very likely that Draco grew up seeing how his father manipulates people without doing hands on actions. And as he points out, the courts are a joke. Since they rely on truth serum, and that can be blocked by being obliviated, nothing can be proved against them.

Also, didn't Lucius basically control the Quibbler in book 7 of the original?

[Eldan]

Thing is, as soon as you bring in Imperius, Obliviate and truth serum, your justice system is never going to work anyway. It's impossible, unless there's also some kind of super-powerful justice spell or something.

[Anonymouswizard]

There's the sort of second order world building inconsistencies that are rife in basically any hidden world modern fantasy, but if you aren't willing to ignore that sort of thing, read a different genre. If you're willing to accept that werewolves exist and somehow nobody really notices, it works fine. Better in some ways than some other hidden magic urban fantasies I've read, both since the wizards have a lot more lattitude for covering stuff up, and because for about 99% of the series, the muggle world is completely irrelevant so the niggling sense that somebody should have worked this out by now is a lot less prevalent.

I think the problem comes in where the world is separate, kind of, sorta, not really. While it didn't work in The Dresden Files once the series started to have everything and everything, I found something like Rivers of London where the supernatural happens to be stealthy, on the edge of operating openly, and fairly low powered to work well.

Although I laughed when the latest RoL book visited my hometown. It was presented as being full of push people, when I remember it as the middle class ghetto of the Home Counties.

The main problem with it in HP is that the how is never really explained. We sort of get half the information.


But who cares; my view is that magic is either a plot devise, or magic is a plot devise written by Brandon Sanderson, in which case you need to sit through a really dull description of him yammering on about it before anything can actually happen while the vague sense that this is just him showing off accumulates in the back of my mind*. Between the two, I'll take the first.

You see, the theory behind Sanderson-style magic is that the reader knows the powers and more importantly limits of the magic, and so it becomes a tool that characters use instead of being 'a wizard did it'. Now Sanderson can go overboard with his explanations, but the core is us that if magic can do anything then having it since the problem doesn't make it seem like the character did anything.

This is part of why Avatar is so good. It quickly establishes the limits of it's magic system, mostly visually instead of through dialogue, then plays with where those limits are. Although I don't think healing should have been a water ability thematically, it makes sense from a story point of view (it's hard to do The Waterbending Master otherwise) and is established in time for it to not come off as plot contrivance when it's required.

[Eldan]

Bah. The best masquerade ever is in China Miéville's Kraken. Because it's so totally bat**** no one believes it. Egyptian golems, living tattoos, Cthulhu cultists (they know it's just a book by Lovecraft, don't remind them) and Anarchist Nazis.

[Brother Oni]

This is part of why Avatar is so good. It quickly establishes the limits of it's magic system, mostly visually instead of through dialogue, then plays with where those limits are. Although I don't think healing should have been a water ability thematically, it makes sense from a story point of view (it's hard to do The Waterbending Master otherwise) and is established in time for it to not come off as plot contrivance when it's required.

Due to odd blend of Eastern and Western philosophies in Avatar:TLA and the constraints imposed by the medium, water is the only element where it fits.

Despite the Chinese characters used throughout, the series philosophy follows the Japanese Five Element (Godai) philosophy more (not to mention the Wu Xing Five elements only broadly correlate to their Japanese/Greek namesakes), making healing most associated with fire.

Given the western influence of opposition between fire and water and the series' focus on fire being destruction, water is thematically the obvious element for healing.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Partial transfiguration happens all the time in Harry Potter. It's usually due to the wizard not having mastered the particular Transfiguration spell sufficiently to do it perfectly.

Krum partially transfiguring himself into a shark in book 4, springs to mind. He ends up being shark from the waist up, human from the waist down.
Nitpick: only a shark's head. He still had access to his arms.

(Otherwise, I agree that MoR fails to "critizise" HP or parody or whatever the author thought they were doing, because they literally added so much non-canonical rules to the magic that it failed to match the HP system at all. But I've had this discussion before, and I'm in no hurry to repeat it)


Also, didn't Lucius basically control the Quibbler in book 7 of the original?

No, he didn't. Voldemort had his death eaters kidnap Luna (daughter of the Quibbler's publisher) and while, yes, they took her to the Malfoy manor where Voldemort had set up HQ, at that time Malfoy was wandless and therefore pretty much a non-entity power-wise in the death eater organization.

The whole thing didn't even work: the first "under new management" Quibbler edition never left the presses due to the building being partially demolished, and Luna was rescued soon thereafter.

Grey Wolf

[keybounce]

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for an example of what is supposed to be Bad Science in HP:MoR.

Do we need a separate thread for it?

[SaintRidley]

I want to jump back to the money system for a moment to make a note:


If we are spotting holes and potential abuses in the Potterverse, search no further than their money.

Sure, a wizard might be in trouble for forging galleon, sickles and knuts.
But what about melting said coins and then selling the metal to muggles ?

Gold is priced around 35.000-40.000 $US per kg or 35-40 $USD per gram.
A US cent (which is already a tiny little thing of a coin) is about 2.5 grams.
It would be heavier if made of gold but let's assume that a Galleon weight 2.5 gram of pure gold.
The metal in 1 galleon is worth about 85-100 $USD.

A galleon give you 17 sickles , meaning a single sickle is worth about 5-6 $USD.
The sickle is made of silver... and 2.5 grams of silver is worth about 1,2 $USD.
So the metal in 17 sickles is worth about 20 $USD.

A cup of hot chocolate is worth about 2 sickles in the Potterverse.

The plan :

Open a tavern near Hogward.
Start selling hot chocolate to those pesky students.
Exchange those sickles for galleons.
Melt some of the galleons to get the gold.
Sell the gold to muggles.
Have a good time in muggle world.


Worth noting that legally mandating a relationship between the price of gold and the price of silver such that there is a specific ratio of value has been a thing in the past (for the US, you have the Mint Act of 1792 fixing a 15:1 ratio where gold was valued at $19.39/oz and silver $1.29/oz, the Coinage Act of 1834 adjusting that to a 16:1 ratio by adjusting gold to $20.65/oz and leaving silver alone). And prices fluctuate. Gold and silver at this moment are $38.64 (gold/gram) to $0.46 (silver/gram), an 84:1 ratio. Comparatively, in 1995 (picked because it's simply in the series timeline), Gold averaged out around $387 per ounce while silver was roughly $5.20 per ounce, a 74:1 ratio (and the ratio was smaller in the 80s as gold was worth less and silver worth more).

Your math also assumes the coins are the same mass, that goblin magic (since they seem to run the economy) isn't in play, and that possibly the coins don't resize magically to adjust to the global economy (this one might be a bit of a stretch).

Suffice to say the ratios between coins, if we grant them the same mass, seem to adhere closely enough to standard 18th century value ratios between the metals and are probably a reflection of Ministry control of the Wizarding economy to maintain their parody of pre-decimal British currency.

[The Glyphstone]

It's also probably safe to assume that nothing forbids abusing the muggle exchange rate because 99% of wizards don't see anything of value in the Muggle world they can't get in the wizarding world. Aside from the assorted Ministry specialists who interact directly with Muggles and have understanding of it, most wizards don't even have a solid comprehension of non-magical society, let alone their money.

[SaintRidley]

That too, naturally.

[Douglas]

It's also probably safe to assume that nothing forbids abusing the muggle exchange rate because 99% of wizards don't see anything of value in the Muggle world they can't get in the wizarding world. Aside from the assorted Ministry specialists who interact directly with Muggles and have understanding of it, most wizards don't even have a solid comprehension of non-magical society, let alone their money.
Ah, but you don't need to value any Muggle-world stuff to get filthy stinkin' rich from this. Just add these last steps to the plan:

Buy silver from the muggles.
Take that silver to the wizard bank.
Enjoy whatever wizard luxuries you care to spend your 5x multiplied money on, or loop it through the muggle exchange rate again to make it 25x.

[Johel]

Ah, but you don't need to value any Muggle-world stuff to get filthy stinkin' rich from this. Just add these last steps to the plan:

Buy silver from the muggles.
Take that silver to the wizard bank.
Enjoy whatever wizard luxuries you care to spend your 5x multiplied money on, or loop it through the muggle exchange rate again to make it 25x.


I didn't want to go that far because I assumed the goblins might already know about the fiat value of their metalic money... and even maybe encourage it.
Since we know they have anti-forgery spells, they would just look at raw silver and offer to buy it at a very low price, confident that you can't make fake sickles and therefor that all the raw silver in the world wouldn't do you any good to threathen their monopoly.

@SaintRidley :
My point was that at a time T, gold is basically worthless in the wizarding world while it is very expensive in muggle world.
Which means someone with a foot in both world could just use that difference to his advantage.

Regulation sure can mess things around on the long term, sure.
But they don't seem to do much, since we know that, when Harry went to school in September 1991, 1 galleon was worth 17 sickles.
And in Septembre 1991, 1 gram of gold was worth about 83 grams of silver.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2517/gold-prices-vs-silver-prices-historical-chart

We therefor know that 1 galleon = 17 sickles while 1 gram of gold = 4,88 x 17 grams of silver.
So at that time, unless the sickles were 4,88 times bigger than the galleons, there was a disparity in precious metal prices between two worlds which were only one train station away from each other at best.

[Anonymouswizard]

And we return to Harry Potter only really making sense of wizarding society is post scarcity or close to it.

[Aeson]

@SaintRidley :
My point was that at a time T, gold is basically worthless in the wizarding world while it is very expensive in muggle world.
Which means someone with a foot in both world could just use that difference to his advantage.

Regulation sure can mess things around on the long term, sure.
But they don't seem to do much, since we know that, when Harry went to school in September 1991, 1 galleon was worth 17 sickles.
And in Septembre 1991, 1 gram of gold was worth about 83 grams of silver.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2517/gold-prices-vs-silver-prices-historical-chart

We therefor know that 1 galleon = 17 sickles while 1 gram of gold = 4,88 x 17 grams of silver.
So at that time, unless the sickles were 4,88 times bigger than the galleons, there was a disparity in precious metal prices between two worlds which were only one train station away from each other at best.
If something doesn't make sense because of your assumptions, maybe it's time to modify your assumptions rather than to criticize the story for its supposed inconsistency? If the relative abundance and value of gold and silver are the same in the Harry Potter setting as they were at the same point in time in the real world, then it would be more logical to assume that galleons are gold-alloy or gold-clad coins worth seventeen silver-alloy or silver-clad sickles than to assume that galleons are solid pure-gold coins which no seventeen reasonably-sized-but-smaller solid silver coins could match in 'real' value. There is nothing at all in the books, at least that I can recall, which requires that galleons really must be solid high-purity gold coins and sickles really must be solid high-purity silver coins, and it really doesn't change anything if "gold galleons," instead of being literal gold coins, are "gold" in much the same way that a Sacagawea golden dollar is a "gold" coin.

The thing which was important for us as readers to know about galleons, sickles, and knuts are their appearance (galleon - large gold coin; sickle - intermediate-size silver coin; knut - small copper coin) and their values relative to one another - and maybe also relative to something (candy, clothes, a textbook, the Wizarding equivalent of a sports car, etc) that might give us a rough idea of the actual value of the coin. Their actual composition is irrelevant to the story and to the vast majority of readers; for the purpose of describing them to both Harry and to the reader, Hagrid telling Harry that the "big gold ones are galleons" is as accurate if galleons are large wooden coins covered in gold leaf as if they're large 99.9999%-pure solid-gold coins.

[keybounce]

Ah, but you don't need to value any Muggle-world stuff to get filthy stinkin' rich from this. Just add these last steps to the plan:

Buy silver from the muggles.
Take that silver to the wizard bank.
Enjoy whatever wizard luxuries you care to spend your 5x multiplied money on, or loop it through the muggle exchange rate again to make it 25x.


I will point out that this is *exactly* what Rational Harry talks about at one point. "Where would you get a ton of Silver Mr. Potter?".

[warty goblin]

Ah, but you don't need to value any Muggle-world stuff to get filthy stinkin' rich from this. Just add these last steps to the plan:

Buy silver from the muggles.
Take that silver to the wizard bank.
Enjoy whatever wizard luxuries you care to spend your 5x multiplied money on, or loop it through the muggle exchange rate again to make it 25x.


That rather assumes that the goblins are interested in buying your silver, or indeed that uncoined silver is worth all that much. Both of which may not be the case; particularly since it's quite clear that goblins can do things to metal that wizards cannot do themselves or duplicate. Since they also seem to be in charge of all the money, it seems relatively plausible to me at least that coined wizard silver is really not exchangeable with the raw material.

[Frozen_Feet]

The sillier assumption again is that somehow the Ministry won't monitor currency flows and move to stop such exploits.

It's precisely because these kinds of exploits are so obvious, that any government would criminalize them and stomp hard on anyone attempting them.

[Brother Oni]

It's precisely because these kinds of exploits are so obvious, that any government would criminalize them and stomp hard on anyone attempting them.

You'd think that, but current events have shown that basic governmental competence isn't a given..

[SaintRidley]

I didn't want to go that far because I assumed the goblins might already know about the fiat value of their metalic money... and even maybe encourage it.
Since we know they have anti-forgery spells, they would just look at raw silver and offer to buy it at a very low price, confident that you can't make fake sickles and therefor that all the raw silver in the world wouldn't do you any good to threathen their monopoly.

@SaintRidley :
My point was that at a time T, gold is basically worthless in the wizarding world while it is very expensive in muggle world.
Which means someone with a foot in both world could just use that difference to his advantage.

Regulation sure can mess things around on the long term, sure.
But they don't seem to do much, since we know that, when Harry went to school in September 1991, 1 galleon was worth 17 sickles.
And in Septembre 1991, 1 gram of gold was worth about 83 grams of silver.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2517/gold-prices-vs-silver-prices-historical-chart

We therefor know that 1 galleon = 17 sickles while 1 gram of gold = 4,88 x 17 grams of silver.
So at that time, unless the sickles were 4,88 times bigger than the galleons, there was a disparity in precious metal prices between two worlds which were only one train station away from each other at best.

I'm 100% certain the reason a Galleon is equal to 17 sickles is not due to metal values, but due to the same reason a Crown was equal to 5 shillings or a Pound Sterling equal to 240 pence which is likewise equal to 4 crowns. Because that's the defined value between the units. There is not, and never is a point where a Galleon isn't equal to 17 Sickles, regardless of the relative value of silver to gold, is one of the things I'm noting.

Also, to the point brought up a few posts above on composition. Yep. Nobody coins actual circulating coins out of pure gold or silver. They're too soft.

Prior to 1964 the US Mint coined dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollars (when making those) of 90% silver, 10% copper. From 1965-1970 half dollars were 40% silver, 60% copper. During the wartime period from 1942-1945 US Nickels were minted in 35% silver with the balance 56% copper and 9% Manganese. The Royal Mint in the UK debased coinage from sterling (92.5% silver, 7.5% copper) to 50% silver, 50% copper beginning in 1920. Swedish coins to mid-century were 40% silver.

Pretty much any coin, if it has silver content, will be colloquially referred to as silver, regardless of purity. Likewise with gold, and that only even needs the color to be remotely in the ballpark without requiring the actual metal.

[Delicious Taffy]

Goblins can make swords that are capable of absorbing basilisk venom and destroying phylacteries, and create vaults that only certain people can open without being trapped forever or killed by infinite cups, but somehow it's a world-shattering conundrum that they might be capable of preventing forgery?

[Eldan]

I'm 100% certain the reason a Galleon is equal to 17 sickles is not due to metal values, but due to the same reason a Crown was equal to 5 shillings or a Pound Sterling equal to 240 pence which is likewise equal to 4 crowns. Because that's the defined value between the units. There is not, and never is a point where a Galleon isn't equal to 17 Sickles, regardless of the relative value of silver to gold, is one of the things I'm noting.


240 pence to a pound goes back to metal value, though. Charlemagne decreed that 240 pennies should be struck from every pound of silver.

[Delicious Taffy]

240 pence to a pound goes back to metal value, though. Charlemagne decreed that 240 pennies should be struck from every pound of silver.

Yeah, but Charlemagne was a loser who got his lunch money stolen a lot. He wanted more coins per pound so that when the cool kids got done mugging him, he could hopefully buy at least some Pringles and a carton of milk. It's true, any reputable history book will say so.

[snowblizz]

Due to odd blend of Eastern and Western philosophies in Avatar:TLA and the constraints imposed by the medium, water is the only element where it fits.

Despite the Chinese characters used throughout, the series philosophy follows the Japanese Five Element (Godai) philosophy more (not to mention the Wu Xing Five elements only broadly correlate to their Japanese/Greek namesakes), making healing most associated with fire.

Given the western influence of opposition between fire and water and the series' focus on fire being destruction, water is thematically the obvious element for healing.

*SLAP!*

Thought I wasn't watching eh? :smallbiggrin:

I'll fetch a bigger fish next time.




Dammit, I've done it again. I need to get snowblizz to slap me every time I even think about participating in a Harry Potter thread... :smallsigh:

[Grey_Wolf_c]

You'd think that, but current events have shown that basic governmental competence isn't a given..

No government is competent in all things, but literally the primary mandate of the MoM is to keep the masquerade, and they seem to be extremely good at it. I think that any attempts at gaming the currency by involving muggle gold reserves would be well within the purview of the competent side of the MoM. If you are lucky. If you are unlucky, enforcement is the purview of the goblins, and at that point, you'd be better off trying to scam the Italian mafia.

That said, I believe that the answer is "stop assuming that the coinage is pure unadulterated gold and silver" as Aeson nicely explained. My headcanon is that the goblins adulterate coinage for two purposes: one, mix it with other metals to make the coin practical & economical (pure gold coins don't fare well when not treated carefully - they bend, brake and flake when rubbed against other coins; and of course gold needs to be purchased, but the goblins do want to make a profit so like all other coin producers, they adulterate to match the value of the coin), and then they further adulterate it for magical purposes, the equivalent of our anti-counterfeiting methods.

Whatever is left is unlikely to fetch whatever value would make the silly scams suggested above workable.

Grey Wolf

[Brother Oni]

*SLAP!*

Thought I wasn't watching eh? :smallbiggrin:

I'll fetch a bigger fish next time.

That was a response to an Avatar:TLA question, so it doesn't count. My other post definitely counts though, so fair enough. :smalltongue:

[Sapphire Guard]

The basic assumption attached to many of these exploits is 'No one else has thought of this.'


He was given that Time Turner by someone who was under Dumbledore's authority, and Dumbledore had been acting on the basis of a huge number of prophecies since before Harry was born. Dumbledore gave Harry a potion to permanently lengthen his day/night cycle when he was a child because of those prophecies, it stands to reason that he would have made sure Harry got the Time Turner too for the same reason



He was given that potion to lengthen his cycle to give an excuse to give him a Time Turner. Problem is, in canon, they're MUCH stricter about who they hand out Time Turners to because their misuse can lead to catastrophe. It's changing the rules of the HP-verse so the author can sneer on them and allow Harry to get hold of a Time Turner that he would never be given in the canon verse or anything resembling it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The basic assumption attached to many of these exploits is 'No one else has thought of this.'





He was given that potion to lengthen his cycle to give an excuse to give him a Time Turner. Problem is, in canon, they're MUCH stricter about who they hand out Time Turners to because their misuse can lead to catastrophe. It's changing the rules of the HP-verse so the author can sneer on them and allow Harry to get hold of a Time Turner that he would never be given in the canon verse or anything resembling it.



Not having read MoR far enough to get to this bit, my first immediate problem with the whole scenario is that "a potion potion to lengthen his cycle permanently" is not just uncanonical in that no "cycle lengthening" magic exists the books (in fact, I'm having trouble even picturing what that means. That for Harry times passes more slowly? That he doesn't need to sleep?), but far more importantly, no potion ever has permanent effects. No magic does. There is a single counter example, and it is an artifact of mythical fame.

If what little I read about MoR is an indication, I do predict that this uncanonical potion will then be used to make a point about the HP verse, and I confidently predict it will be fatally flawed by its lack of canonical existence, rendering the whole exercise a pointless waste of words.

The one example of such waste I did suffer through is the "transfigure something into poisonous gas" conversation early on with McGonagall - in the real HP, McGonagall might as well have answerd, "no, because of Gamp's second principal exception to elemental transfiguration, as you will learn six years from now". MoR is essentially an excellent example of the Giant's cautionary "if your assumptions cause you to see plot holes in the story, change your assumptions", except the author didn't care about that. He had an axe to grind, and he picked HP as the grinding stone. Pretending that the result in any way examines HPverse is folly.

If you enjoy MoR, good for you, and please do not let me spoil it for you. But it is its own thing - it has nothing to do with the original HP, by decisions and assumptions baked in from page one.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

Not having read MoR far enough to get to this bit, my first immediate problem with the whole scenario is that "a potion potion to lengthen his cycle permanently" is not just uncanonical in that no "cycle lengthening" magic exists the books (in fact, I'm having trouble even picturing what that means. That for Harry times passes more slowly? That he doesn't need to sleep?)

I also wonder this.

[Douglas]

He was given that potion to lengthen his cycle to give an excuse to give him a Time Turner. Problem is, in canon, they're MUCH stricter about who they hand out Time Turners to because their misuse can lead to catastrophe. It's changing the rules of the HP-verse so the author can sneer on them and allow Harry to get hold of a Time Turner that he would never be given in the canon verse or anything resembling it.


It's not changing the rules of the setting, it's having one character in a position of authority deliberately override those rules. Dumbledore knew from hearing every prophecy in the Department of Mysteries that Harry must get a Time Turner for events to work out well, so Dumbledore exerts his influence to make sure it happens.


(in fact, I'm having trouble even picturing what that means. That for Harry times passes more slowly? That he doesn't need to sleep?)
It means that Harry's Circadian rhythm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm) has a 26 hour period instead of the normal 24. If he goes to bed at 8pm one day, he'll be appropriately sleepy for going to bed at 10pm the next day, then midnight, then 2am, etc. This is useful for people who regularly use a Time Turner because the time travel makes them actually live through up to 30 hours in each 24 hour day.


If what little I read about MoR is an indication, I do predict that this uncanonical potion will then be used to make a point about the HP verse, and I confidently predict it will be fatally flawed by its lack of canonical existence, rendering the whole exercise a pointless waste of words.
It is used as the supposed reason for giving Harry a Time Turner (the actual reason isn't revealed until near the end of the story, and Harry is extremely incredulous that they're giving him a time machine to treat his sleep disorder), and is otherwise just a part of the setting as something that people with Time Turners use.

[Peelee]

It means that Harry's Circadian rhythm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm) has a 26 hour period instead of the normal 24. If he goes to bed at 8pm one day, he'll be appropriately sleepy for going to bed at 10pm the next day, then midnight, then 2am, etc. This is useful for people who regularly use a Time Turner because the time travel makes them actually live through up to 30 hours in each 24 hour day.


It is used as the supposed reason for giving Harry a Time Turner (the actual reason isn't revealed until near the end of the story, and Harry is extremely incredulous that they're giving him a time machine to treat his sleep disorder), and is otherwise just a part of the setting as something that people with Time Turners use.


If it was a potion, then it seems needlessly jerkish to give him the potion well before giving him the Time Turner.

[Douglas]

If it was a potion, then it seems needlessly jerkish to give him the potion well before giving him the Time Turner.
It's complicated. Dumbledore listened to every prophecy in the Department of Mysteries, which turned out to be mostly a long litany of ways utter disaster could happen, and found one single path that could satisfy all the prophecies but have a good outcome. This path had many obscure and circuitous things that he couldn't figure out the reasons for, but he set them up anyway because the prophecies said so. One of these was that Harry had to get the potion as a young child. Another was to smash Harry's pet rock when he was something like 6 years old, which Dumbledore did but never had any clue why it mattered.

[Peelee]

It's complicated. Dumbledore listened to every prophecy in the Department of Mysteries, which turned out to be mostly a long litany of ways utter disaster could happen, and found one single path that could satisfy all the prophecies but have a good outcome. This path had many obscure and circuitous things that he couldn't figure out the reasons for, but he set them up anyway because the prophecies said so. One of these was that Harry had to get the potion as a young child. Another was to smash Harry's pet rock when he was something like 6 years old, which Dumbledore did but never had any clue why it mattered.

This seems less "Methods of Rationality" and more "Methods of Random Stuff Is Funny Bark Apple Mousepad lol"

[pendell]

Not having read MoR far enough to get to this bit, my first immediate problem with the whole scenario is that "a potion potion to lengthen his cycle permanently" is not just uncanonical in that no "cycle lengthening" magic exists the books (in fact, I'm having trouble even picturing what that means. That for Harry times passes more slowly? That he doesn't need to sleep?), but far more importantly, no potion ever has permanent effects. No magic does. There is a single counter example, and it is an artifact of mythical fame.


I have two objections to this statement:

1) Cycle lengthening is not explicitly something that happens, no, but I don't recall it being something explicitly impossible , either. Remind me, but in canonical Potterverse the limits are that you can't bring back the dead, and you can't make people fall in real love. Potterverse magic is very freeform "a wizard did it" stuff. If you can imagine it, you can do it.

2) As towards "magic not having permanent effects" , remember that Avara Kedavra does have a permanent effect; I surmise that even though the effect is technically temporary , the resulting physical effects are permanent. For example, if I used a magical flame to light a barbeque to cook a chicken, the flame effect would be temporary but the chicken would still be cooked. Likewise, the affect of AK may be temporary but the physical damage it inflicts is sufficient to ensure the target stays dead.

Thus, a sufficiently clever potion-maker could create something very much like a retrovirus. The effect would fade, but the modified cells would continue to reproduce in the modified form, making the effect permanent.

---

More broadly, part of the reason I like HPMOR is because the experience the "HP" of the story has was the struggles I had as a child -- I had an IQ of 140+ and I routinely dealt with adults who weren't at my speed. Religious restrictions on this board prevent me from discussing my experience in Sunday school with people who were convinced that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time -- an entire roomful of people my age and above who were emphatic about believing this -- but I'm sure you can imagine :smallamused:.

Naturally a kid who experiences this is going to be constantly seeing things that the people around him never thought of; they're restricted by their environment from even thinking along those lines, blinded to the possibilities.

It's easy if you're a child in this position to think of yourself as the brightest person in the world, thinking of things no one else around you does, running rings around the stupid adults. And I'm not even the smartest person. Simon's Rock (https://simons-rock.edu/) graduates people from college as young as 15.

It wasn't until I got into college that I started to run into really clever adults who really were able to challenge me and make me think.

Since I have read MOR in it's entirety, that is the journey of HP in that story: A young prodigy who is used to being the smartest person in the room encountering for the first time really clever people (Potter, Quirrell) who are able to challenge him and push him to his best potential, on the way teaching him respect for other people.

It's a rather painful lesson that the adults aren't nearly as stupid as you think they are , but it's one we all have to learn sometime :smallamused:

So -- I like the story not only because the writer is intelligent and introduced me to ideas I had not hitherto encountered, but because I had gone a journey very similar to the "HP" in the story.

HPMOR is a fanfiction. If you can enjoy and appreciate it as such, I think you'll find the story enjoyable. But it is not a better story than Rowling's original; it is a derivative work of art to be judged on its own merits.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Potterverse magic is very freeform "a wizard did it" stuff. If you can imagine it, you can do it.

No, it is not, and in fact the idea that it is freeform is constantly being shown as not actually the case.


Thus, a sufficiently clever potion-maker could create something very much like a retrovirus. The effect would fade, but the modified cells would continue to reproduce in the modified form, making the effect permanent.
This is the same incorrect extrapolation as "well, if you can turn a hedgehog into a pincushion, therefore you can turn a table into chlorine gas" example I mentioned earlier. HP is a canon. If you make assumptions like "a potion can become a retrovirus" that completely change the magic rules we see in operation in HP, then you are no no longer talking about HP. You have now created your own magic system, and if you want to tell a story where you can indeed create magical retroviri, by all means. But you've left the original source so far behind that any conclusion you draw is meaningless.


HPMOR is a fanfiction. If you can enjoy and appreciate it as such, I think you'll find the story enjoyable. But it is not a better story than Rowling's original;

I disagree with the idea it is fanfiction. It is not set in the same world: I recognize none of the characters, or the locations, or the setting in general. If someone handed me the text with all proper nouns changed, I would say it is a poor attempt to ape any number of fantasy stories, but I would likely not peg it as an HP fanfic.

As to enjoying it, it takes a particularly skilled writer to make an arrogant ******* protagonist work - Kvothe springs to mind, and even then he doesn't work for everyone. MoR was nowhere close to that level of skill.


it is a derivative work of art to be judged on its own merits.
This I agree with.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

2) As towards "magic not having permanent effects" , remember that Avara Kedavra does have a permanent effect; I surmise that even though the effect is technically temporary , the resulting physical effects are permanent.

"Permanent" effect as in "ongoing magical" effect.

[Douglas]

This seems less "Methods of Rationality" and more "Methods of Random Stuff Is Funny Bark Apple Mousepad lol"
It's kind of For Want of a Nail and butterfly effects on a massive scale, with a magic oracle telling which nails need to be lost and which butterflies need to flap their wings for the right large scale outcome to happen, but not the chain of cause and effect that links them.

In any case, this aspect of the story is very much in the background, with only a single scene that focuses on it near the end, and that scene really just explains that it was there.

As for those specific actions:
Giving Harry the potion as a child made conventional schooling impractical for him and forced his adopted parents to hire private tutors and do other such things to give him a good education, which naturally made the lessons themselves more customized for him and gave him a level and pace of learning that matched his (much higher than in canon) intelligence. The ways it impacted his life may also have affected his character and personality in any number of ways.
Smashing his pet rock resulted in him not getting an owl, because he felt that since he had failed at caring for even so non-demanding a pet as a rock, he'd surely fail at caring for an actual living creature. I think he knew this was irrational, but feelings don't usually listen to logic very well so he'd be constantly anxious about it and he didn't think having the owl was worth the anxiety. I don't recall anything specific for why him not having an owl mattered, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some point in the story where having an owl would have given Harry an alternative action to take.

[Peelee]

It's kind of For Want of a Nail and butterfly effects on a massive scale, with a magic oracle telling which nails need to be lost and which butterflies need to flap their wings for the right large scale outcome to happen, but not the chain of cause and effect that links them.

In any case, this aspect of the story is very much in the background, with only a single scene that focuses on it near the end, and that scene really just explains that it was there.

As for those specific actions:
Giving Harry the potion as a child made conventional schooling impractical for him and forced his adopted parents to hire private tutors and do other such things to give him a good education, which naturally made the lessons themselves more customized for him and gave him a level and pace of learning that matched his (much higher than in canon) intelligence. The ways it impacted his life may also have affected his character and personality in any number of ways.
Smashing his pet rock resulted in him not getting an owl, because he felt that since he had failed at caring for even so non-demanding a pet as a rock, he'd surely fail at caring for an actual living creature. I think he knew this was irrational, but feelings don't usually listen to logic very well so he'd be constantly anxious about it and he didn't think having the owl was worth the anxiety. I don't recall anything specific for why him not having an owl mattered, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's some point in the story where having an owl would have given Harry an alternative action to take.

Oh, ok. I figured it was the want-for-a-nail type of thing, but I also assumed that it was never explained and just tossed in there without being addressed later. Thanks!

[Douglas]

Oh, ok. I figured it was the want-for-a-nail type of thing, but I also assumed that it was never explained and just tossed in there without being addressed later. Thanks!
The pet rock thing actually first comes up as Harry explaining to McGonagall why he doesn't want an owl, and then over a hundred chapters later you get the whole "Dumbledore listened to every prophecy" explanation with an incidental mention of "I smashed a rock on your windowsill and I still have no idea why."

[Sapphire Guard]

It's not changing the rules of the setting, it's having one character in a position of authority deliberately override those rules. Dumbledore knew from hearing every prophecy in the Department of Mysteries that Harry must get a Time Turner for events to work out well, so Dumbledore exerts his influence to make sure it happens.

No. For that to work, a Sleep Disorder has to be a valid excuse to give someone a Time Turner. In HP Canon, there's no way that would happen. So it's a work changing the rules of the canon society, then jeering at the society's rules that it has just made up as though they were in the original canon.


HPMOR is a fanfiction. If you can enjoy and appreciate it as such, I think you'll find the story enjoyable. But it is not a better story than Rowling's original; it is a derivative work of art to be judged on its own merits.

Normally, this is true. But if a work changes the rules of the original work in order to sneer at those rules as though they were in the original work, it's a valid criticism to point out that it never worked that way to begin with.

[Douglas]

No. For that to work, a Sleep Disorder has to be a valid excuse to give someone a Time Turner. In HP Canon, there's no way that would happen. So it's a work changing the rules of the canon society, then jeering at the society's rules that it has just made up as though they were in the original canon.



Normally, this is true. But if a work changes the rules of the original work in order to sneer at those rules as though they were in the original work, it's a valid criticism to point out that it never worked that way to begin with.


It has to be believable to Harry. That's it. Harry is utterly flabbergasted by it, but he has no better explanation, no easy source to seek one from, and no particular reason to try. Dumbledore knows the real reason. McGonagall may not know anything more than "Dumbledore said so". Of the few other people who ever find out or deduce that Harry has a Time Turner, none of them are ever given a reason for why.

[Keltest]

I think its important to point out that in the actual canon, Dumbledore makes a point of emphasizing that prophecies only have as much meaning as somebody chooses to give them. The entire sequence of events requires a massive deviation from a very explicit position held by a major character, on top of all the other character assassination that goes on.

Im with Grey Wolf here. I can see how one would consider it a decent fanfiction, but its not remotely related to HP aside from the names.

[deuterio12]

Im with Grey Wolf here. I can see how one would consider it a decent fanfiction, but its not remotely related to HP aside from the names.

Pretty much, only borrowing names from a popular work as a cheap way to get attention.

[SaintRidley]

This (https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/) says everything about that piece of writing I could ever care to say.

[The Glyphstone]

This (https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/) says everything about that piece of writing I could ever care to say.

This is fascinating. One smart person uses words I dont understand, another smart person says those words are used wrongly. But pickled snark is the best snark, so thanks for linking this.

[Peelee]

This is fascinating. One smart person uses words I dont understand, another smart person says those words are used wrongly. But pickled snark is the best snark, so thanks for linking this.

Indeed; I haven't even read MOR, but that was pretty fun to read, at the very least.

[Tyndmyr]

Not having read MoR far enough to get to this bit, my first immediate problem with the whole scenario is that "a potion potion to lengthen his cycle permanently" is not just uncanonical in that no "cycle lengthening" magic exists the books (in fact, I'm having trouble even picturing what that means. That for Harry times passes more slowly? That he doesn't need to sleep?), but far more importantly, no potion ever has permanent effects. No magic does. There is a single counter example, and it is an artifact of mythical fame.

If what little I read about MoR is an indication, I do predict that this uncanonical potion will then be used to make a point about the HP verse, and I confidently predict it will be fatally flawed by its lack of canonical existence, rendering the whole exercise a pointless waste of words.

Not the case. It's just a handy setup to bring in the time turner, because MoR is shorter than canon, and if you're doing a fanfic, you want to hit as many of the traditional established plot devices as possible.

With maybe a side order of Dumbledore being a schemer, but hey, that's not much of a change.

MoR *is* derisive towards canon at times, and sure, not all of it is entirely justified, but there's a good deal more to the book than that, and a fair bit of that can be written up to Harry being a bit full of himself. It does impose a few more rules on magic than canon does, but those selfsame rules are not generally the reasons for parody and mockery.

As for magic not having permanent effects in canon HP, we're given endless magical effects and artifacts that are either permanent or longer than a lifespan in terms of how long they last. The specific example is invented, but is not ludicrous given other feats magic performs in canon*HP.

As for the owl thing:

Because otherwise owling people hand grenades is on the table. Presumably Harry pursuing this would have led to an unfortunate outcome


The work isn't perfect, and some characters are wildly different than in canon, but it's a fun take on it all in all.

As to the review though...he definitely misread the courtroom scene. "harry is above the law" is not a reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the events shown there. Not in the slightest.

As for the battle games...battle games basically take the place of quidditch. It's a change, and yeah, the author hates quidditch, but if one thinks it's unreasonable that the characters care about team sports, even ones which don't determine championships, then....I'm confused as to how the reviewer regards real world sports. 'sfine if you don't like them, but it's not a plot hole that people do.

The afterlife thing is similar. The story deals with such things as ghosts, visions, etc in a consistent fashion. It's okay if the reviewer doesn't like that part of the tale, but it's certainly not a plot hole.

Overall, I'd probably give the story a 3.5. Definitely some flaws, but nothing terribly damning.

[warty goblin]

As for the owl thing:

Because otherwise owling people hand grenades is on the table. Presumably Harry pursuing this would have led to an unfortunate outcome


Meh, that's weaksauce when it comes to magical terrorism. House elf bombings are where it's at. Extreme range, instant delivery, and apparently capable of penetrating every form of magical defense. House elf apparates in, drops a present filled with high explosives and ball bearings on a 2 second timer, then apparates out.

[Epinephrine_Syn]

This (https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/) says everything about that piece of writing I could ever care to say.

I'm simply amused by the fact that he refers to "Harry" as "Hariezer", and I'm 'seriously' unsure why.

Also, having also read MoR, he says several things which are just factually untrue, and make me question his perspective on the story (as in, his extreme negative reaction on it causes him to create or balloon up flaws within it).

[Gnoman]

I'm simply amused by the fact that he refers to "Harry" as "Hariezer", and I'm 'seriously' unsure why.

The author of the fic is named Eliezer, and this version of Harry is a blatant author-insert. Thus, "Hariezer".

[Epinephrine_Syn]

The author of the fic is named Eliezer, and this version of Harry is a blatant author-insert. Thus, "Hariezer".

That makes sense. I imagined it was something that made sense when put into the perspective of the blog itself. I do agree that "blatant self-insertion" is a problem with the series, also.

[The Glyphstone]

He even says the portmanteau isnt as funny as he thought at first, but sticks with it on principle.

[Peelee]

He even says the portmanteau isnt as funny as he thought at first, but sticks with it on principle.

It's far less annoyong than the summaries of the text, which read like prime material from the verysmart subreddit. I honestly don't know how y'all were able to read the actual thing.

[pendell]

As for the battle games...battle games basically take the place of quidditch. It's a change, and yeah, the author hates quidditch, but if one thinks it's unreasonable that the characters care about team sports, even ones which don't determine championships, then....I'm confused as to how the reviewer regards real world sports. 'sfine if you don't like them, but it's not a plot hole that people do.


As a matter of taste I greatly preferred MOR's Ender's game parody. Firstly, because I hate quidditch. It's a game cleverly disguised as a team game but the only thing that's really important is the seeker grabbing the snitch. It's a clear setup for Harry in the original story to be an athletic hero, and it would frankly be boring to watch. It's also because I enjoyed the original Ender's game , and finally because of chapter 30 (http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/30). I mean, c'mon, who doesn't love a story where Hariezer's army marches into battle shouting "SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"

Chaos Legion, get it? I guess this Harry has WH40K miniatures back in his room.

I also appreciated the fact that one of the opponents took the time to train their army in the style used by real wizarding armies and who was soundly clobbered because of it .


"So let me guess," Harry said, looking Draco directly in the eyes, "those neat little trios are the formation used by professional magical militaries? Made up of trained soldiers who can easily hit moving targets if their own hands are steady, and who can combine their defensive powers so long as they stay together? Unlike your soldiers?"

The smirk had vanished from Draco's face, which was now hard and grim.

"You know," Harry said lightly, knowing that none of the others would understand the real message passing between them, "it just goes to show that you should always question everything you see your role models doing, and ask why it's being done, and whether it makes sense in context for you to do it too. Don't forget to apply that advice to real life, by the way. And thanks for the slow-moving clustered targets."


Of course, Hariezer gets his comeuppance at the hands of a certain other character later in that same chapter, because he's too busy gloating to follow his own advice.


Harry's mind began calculating, Draco inside the shield, Draco worn out now to some degree, Harry worn out too, Hermione in the woods who-knew-where, Harry and four other Chaotics left...

"You know, General Granger," Harry said out loud, "you really should've waited to attack until after I'd fought General Malfoy. You might've been able to get all the survivors."

From somewhere came a girl's high-pitched laughter.

Harry froze.

That wasn't Hermione.

And that was when the dreadful, eerie, cheerful chant began to rise, coming from all around them.

"Don't be frightened, don't be sad,
We'll only hurt you if you're bad..."

"Granger cheated! " burst out Draco inside the shield. "She woke up her soldiers! Why doesn't Professor Quirrell -"

"Let me guess," Harry said, the sickness already churning in his stomach. He really hated losing. "It was a very easy battle, right? They dropped like flies?"

"Yes," Draco said. "We got them all on the first shot -"

The look of horrified realization spread from Draco to the Chaos Legionnaires.

"No," Harry said, "we didn't."

Camouflaged forms were appearing from among the trees.

"Allies?" Harry said.

"Allies," Draco said.

"Good," said General Granger's voice, and a spiral of green energy blazed out of the woods and shattered Draco's shield to splinters.

General Granger surveyed the battlefield with a definite feeling of satisfaction. She was down to nine Sunshine Soldiers, but that was probably enough to handle the last survivor of the enemy forces, especially when Parvati and Anthony and Ernie were already holding their wands on General Potter, whom she'd ordered taken alive (well, conscious).

It was Bad, she knew, but she'd really really really wanted to gloat.

"There's a trick, isn't there?" said Harry, the strain showing in his voice. "There has to be some trick. You can't just turn into a perfect general. Not on top of everything else. You're not that Slytherin! You don't write creepy poetry! No one's that good at everything! "

General Granger glanced around at her Sunshine Soldiers, and then looked back at Harry. Everyone was probably watching this on the screens outside.

And General Granger said, "I can do anything if I study hard enough."

"Oh now that's just bu-"

"Somnium."

Harry slumped to the ground in mid-sentence.

"SUNSHINE WINS," intoned the huge voice of Professor Quirrell, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.

"Niceness has triumphed!" cried General Granger.

"Hooray! " shouted the Sunshine Soldiers. Even the Gryffindor boys said it, and they said it with pride.

"And what's the moral of today's battle?" said General Granger.

"We can do anything if we study hard enough! "

And the survivors of the Sunshine Regiment marched off toward the victory field, singing their marching song as they went:

Don't be frightened, don't be sad,
We'll only hurt you if you're bad,
And send you to a home that's true,
With new friends to watch over you,
Be sure to tell them you were sent
By Granger's Sunshine Regiment!


You don't like it? You think Eliezer wrote a clumsy self-insert? You think the characterization has little to do with the way Rowling wrote the characters? You think Rowling would be absolutely horrified at the idea of young children doing this sort of thing? You think that even on its best day the story is uneven and has long parts that drag?

Well, you can think that. And you'd be absolutely right.

But for scenes like that ? I love it.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[warty goblin]

It's far less annoyong than the summaries of the text, which read like prime material from the verysmart subreddit. I honestly don't know how y'all were able to read the actual thing.

I find it amusing, but then I find Yudkowski, and the particular strain of Bayesianism he seems to advocate for, rather obnoxious on a professional level. Specifically it's the sort of position I mostly see held by people who pay attention to statistics, but are not accountable to producing useful results with actual data, which is to say a lot of dumbass hot air that actual practicing statisticians got out of their system by like 1995.

[Sapphire Guard]

It has to be believable to Harry. That's it. Harry is utterly flabbergasted by it, but he has no better explanation, no easy source to seek one from, and no particular reason to try. Dumbledore knows the real reason. McGonagall may not know anything more than "Dumbledore said so". Of the few other people who ever find out or deduce that Harry has a Time Turner, none of them are ever given a reason for why.

Not good enough for me. McGonagal is very, very much not a character to do something obviously stupid and dangerous for no reason. TT's have to be applied for to the Ministry, and they're actually very very strict about who they get handed out to.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

As a matter of taste I greatly preferred MOR's Ender's game parody. Firstly, because I hate quidditch. It's a game cleverly disguised as a team game but the only thing that's really important is the seeker grabbing the snitch. It's a clear setup for Harry in the original story to be an athletic hero, and it would frankly be boring to watch.

In my school we played this game "basketball". It's a game cleverly disguised as a team game but the only thing that's really important is the one player that can actually throw balls be given every free throw in the game, which meant his team usually won 5-2, or thereabouts. It's a clear setup for the one guy that was into it to be an athletic hero, and it was frankly boring to watch or participate.

Or possibly, you are making major assumptions about the game, then complaining about it. Maybe change your assumptions.

Grey Wolf

[pendell]

In my school we played this game "basketball". It's a game cleverly disguised as a team game but the only thing that's really important is the one player that can actually throw balls be given every free throw in the game, which meant his team usually won 5-2, or thereabouts. It's a clear setup for the one guy that was into it to be an athletic hero, and it was frankly boring to watch or participate.


We had this game in school as well. In fact, I played it. The way we played it bears no resemblance to the way it was played at your school; most of our scores were made with layups, not free throws. They happened, of course, but they were not by any means the major scoring.

Every major team sport is a combined effort; supporting players provide defense or get the ball to people who do the actual scoring. While there are individual heroes , they are meaningless without the rest of the team to back them up. Everybody talks about Michael Jordan and his phenomenal career. Thing is, I lived in Washington when he left Chicago and came to play for us, and we did NOT become a superpowered scoring machine like the Chicago Bulls. We remained a miserable cellar-dweller of a team.

You see, Michael Jordan himself, arguably the best basketball player ever to tie on the sneakers, isn't enough. You need an entire team of people to enable a great player to be the greatest ever.

That's nothing at all like Quidditch, which presumably is why no analog for it in real world sports. We don't have a single thing which can only be pursued by a single player while the rest of the game goes on around them. Imagine a soccer game where you have one additional player chasing a butterfly all over the field who, if s/he catches it, renders the effort of everyone else on the field moot. There's a reason no one has brought a ground-based version of that game to the real world, and that is because it would be stupefyingly boring both to watch and to play.

If you have a different opinion, you are of course welcome to it. Taste in sports is so subjective I don't see there being any possibility of finding an objective , common view of it. For that matter, I've yet to meet a European who had the slightest interest in American-style football , despite it being a national sport and passion here.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Traab]

Bah, we see in the world cup that its not all about the seeker. Krum catches the snitch but his team is so far behind on points that they lose anyways. But yes, it was most likely written that way to simplify writing sports scenes that involve harry as aside from a few random bludger dodges its basically just the competition between him and the other seeker. Honestly, I think it would be relatively easy to write up strategies that basically remove the seeker from play or otherwise negate his contribution. Anything from targeting the other keeper, targeting the chasers, or taking out the seeker giving your side more time to rack up points. The seeker is most deadly in short games before the chasers can build up points and canonically, these games can and do last days sometimes. I would imagine after the 12th hour of game play, the score is such that even tossing in an extra 150 points isnt that huge of a game changer. Even in regular basketball game, there are plenty of blowouts where an extra 15 baskets getting dropped onto one side wouldnt change the outcome.

[GloatingSwine]

Bah, we see in the world cup that its not all about the seeker. Krum catches the snitch but his team is so far behind on points that they lose anyways. But yes, it was most likely written that way to simplify writing sports scenes that involve harry as aside from a few random bludger dodges its basically just the competition between him and the other seeker.


It’s also intended to mirror the impenetrable rules of English public school sports like the Eton wall game.

An important thing to remember about Wizard society is that it’s supposed to be insular, strange, and baffling to outsiders because it’s a pastiche of British class conflict.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

We don't have a single thing which can only be pursued by a single player while the rest of the game goes on around them.
American football is nothing except players with their own objectives while the game happens around them. The kicker, who sometimes never actually plays. The escorts, whose job doesn't seem to involve the ball game at all. The Quarterback, who have one job, and everyone else's best option is to take them down as brutally and efficiently as possible.

Your conclusions about quidditch are literally the same as if I watched 13 year olds play American football, and decided that the quarterback was the only important player, and concluded the game is boring.


if s/he catches it, renders the effort of everyone else on the field moot.
And you are back to making unsupported assumptions, drawing conclusions from them that create supposed plot-holes, and you not changing your assumptions.

Read my example about how we played basketball, and see if you can spot the issue there. You giving me a different example didn't somehow make my experience change. My experience is still a better example of the mistaken assumptions you are making. Imagine if all you had ever seen of basketball where the game I described, and try again.

Grey Wolf

[Keltest]

American football is nothing except players with their own objectives while the game happens around them. The kicker, who sometimes never actually plays. The escorts, whose job doesn't seem to involve the ball game at all. The Quarterback, who have one job, and everyone else's best option is to take them down as brutally and efficiently as possible.

Your conclusions about quidditch are literally the same as if I watched 13 year olds play American football, and decided that the quarterback was the only important player, and concluded the game is boring.


And you are back to making unsupported assumptions, drawing conclusions from them that create supposed plot-holes, and you not changing your assumptions.

Read my example about how we played basketball, and see if you can spot the issue there. You giving me a different example didn't somehow make my experience change. My experience is still a better example of the mistaken assumptions you are making. Imagine if all you had ever seen of basketball where the game I described, and try again.

Grey Wolf
He has a point though. With the occasional exception of the beaters, none of the other players actually do anything to support the Seeker in doing their job, and likewise the seeker does not help anybody else on the team do theirs. The seeker exists entirely independent of the rest of the game except for having to not physically crash into anything. That isn't the case in Basketball or American Football (or non-American Football), where the rest of the team is either directly performing as much as the "big star" players, or are acting specifically to support and enable them.

[The Glyphstone]

Maybe baseball is closer? It's one person at a time instead of one person the entire game, but nothing the at-bat team does can support or help the batter, and the pitcher is functioning entirely independent of their team until the ball leaves their hand. The only inter-player cooperation is defensive in relaying the ball to base for tag-outs. Everyone has their highly specialized role and zone of responsibility, but beyond that each person is essentially autonomous.

[SaintRidley]

Maybe baseball is closer? It's one person at a time instead of one person the entire game, but nothing the at-bat team does can support or help the batter, and the pitcher is functioning entirely independent of their team until the ball leaves their hand. The only inter-player cooperation is defensive in relaying the ball to base for tag-outs.

Cricket's probably the closest, what with the whole part where games can last several days or more.

[The Glyphstone]

True. It being British in origin, Quidditch is likely intended as a farcical exaggeration of cricket. There's still no good comparison to the isolated function of the Seeker in any real-world sport I can think of, though.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

True. It being British in origin, Quidditch is likely intended as a farcical exaggeration of cricket. There's still no good comparison to the isolated function of the Seeker in any real-world sport I can think of, though.

That's due to the nature of having three types of ball in the game. The beaters too are "doing their own thing" in that they don't participate in the primary objective of moving the red ball to the hoop. But that's why I think more of american football than anything else: there are entire reams of players who are never expected to touch the ball. Their participation is entirely to block or engage other players who likewise don't ever expect to pick up the ball but whose purpose is to sack the quarterback. Why, you could almost describe the quarterback as a second ball in an entire secondary game being played parallel to the "get the ball across the line on one end".

But on the other hand, it is the beaters that tie everything together: because they have to keep their interest in defending and attacking other players, the fact that there are two concurrent games going on makes their participation diffuse. That way, they can't gang up on just the person(s) pursuing one type of ball, because they risk their team getting beat on the other ballgame. We then see the strategical side of the game emerge, one that comes up often in the books: do the Weasley twins concentrate on defending Harry, or the rest of the team? In the regular games, they try to do both. In special occasions, they have to defend Harry (e.g. from the rogue bludger in book 2) and that means the rest of the team, left out to hang, is easy pickings, etc.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

Does the seeker need to be isolated, though? Can they not ignore the snitch, which itself is very hard to find, let alone capture, and play with the object of helping the rest of the team at a one player advantage? How well this would work as a vegetable strategy is up in the air, since it gives the other seeker a significant advantage of being unopposed.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Does the seeker need to be isolated, though? Can they not ignore the snitch, which itself is very hard to find, let alone capture, and play with the object of helping the rest of the team at a one player advantage? How well this would work as a vegetable strategy is up in the air, since it gives the other seeker a significant advantage of being unopposed.

Harry has on more than one occasion chosen to ignore the search for the snitch in order to assist the other team members - cannoning towards a groups of attackers to defend the person carrying the quaffle, for example. So they are allowed to do so. It is roughly equivalent to a football goalkeeper running upfield to participate in, say, a corner kick.

Is "vegetable strategy" a term I don't recognize, or a really weird auto-correct error?

Grey Wolf

[Kantaki]

Does the seeker need to be isolated, though? Can they not ignore the snitch, which itself is very hard to find, let alone capture, and play with the object of helping the rest of the team at a one player advantage? How well this would work as a vegetable strategy is up in the air, since it gives the other seeker a significant advantage of being unopposed.

I would expect an rules patch after the first time someone tries (tried?) this.
I mean there's a explicit rule that forbids wielding a battle-axe, so there's precedent.
So either it has been done and was subsequently forbidden, or it isn't forbidden but no wizard has thought about it.
The latter wouldn't surprise me.
HP-wizards usually compare unfavourably to rocks when it comes to thinky stuff.
There's a reason Snape expected his puzzle to protect the Stone after all.

Also, „vegetable strategy” ...
Now I'm picturing Sayans playing Quidditch.:smallbiggrin:

[warty goblin]

Note also that quidditch is very much structured in terms of seasons or years, and how much you win by matters at least as much as who actually wins. So that opens up a substantial realm of defensive snitch play as well; which, while still isolated from the rest of the game to a high extent, does add quite a bit of strategy.

[Aeson]

I would expect an rules patch after the first time someone tries (tried?) this.
I mean there's a explicit rule that forbids wielding a battle-axe, so there's precedent.
So either it has been done and was subsequently forbidden, or it isn't forbidden but no wizard has thought about it.
The latter wouldn't surprise me.
HP-wizards usually compare unfavourably to rocks when it comes to thinky stuff.
There's a reason Snape expected his puzzle to protect the Stone after all.

Also, „vegetable strategy” ...
Now I'm picturing Sayans playing Quidditch.:smallbiggrin:
One, the Seeker helping out other players on the team is something that Harry is shown to do in several matches at Hogwarts.

Two, the 'standard' hockey team in play is three offense, three defense, one goalie. There is nothing in the rules, however, that says that the team has to be three offense, three defense, and a goalie, and there are occasions when real-world professional hockey teams will pull the goalie and put an extra forward into play. If I recall correctly, a similar thing is done in professional football/soccer games, when the keeper goes forward to lend a hand to the offense. It hasn't resulted in a "rules patch" in the real world, because it is a risky strategy - by pulling your goalie or sending your keeper up the field, you lend your offense a hand but compromise your defense. Sending the Seeker to help the Chasers out is a similarly risky strategy, because it prevents the Seeker from focusing on catching the Snitch, which ends the game.

More than that, though, sending the Seeker to help the Chasers out is probably even more risky a strategy than pulling the goalie in hockey or sending the keeper forward in football/soccer, because any goal in hockey or football/soccer is worth just as much as any other goal and does not deny the other team any points (except inasmuch as there is only one puck/ball in play and the puck/ball cannot simultaneously be at both ends of the rink/field). Catching the Snitch, though, not only scores 150 points for your team but also denies the other team 150 points and additionally prevents any future goals from being scored, because the game ends as soon as (it is recognized that) the Snitch is caught. Catching the Snitch is thus, essentially, a 30-goal swing at the end of the game; pulling your Seeker off Seeker-duty to help your Chasers out would thus be extremely risky unless you're at least 16 goals ahead or more than 14-15 goals behind, and if you're more than 16 goals ahead then your Chasers probably don't need the help anyways and if you wanted to manipulate things to rack up point totals you'd probably be better off leaving your Seeker on Seeker-duty with priority on preventing the other Seeker from catching the Snitch than pulling him or her off Seeker-duty to help the Chasers. I can't really see any good reason for anyone to implement a "rules patch" to prevent the Seeker from assisting other parts of the team. I could see someone implementing a "mercy" rule such that the game ends when one team is more than X goals ahead of the other team regardless of whether or not the Snitch has been caught, both because there is a point beyond which the team which is behind ceases to have a realistic chance of recovering and because it would prevent a dominant team from dragging out games to manipulate season point totals (assuming that that matters, which is suggested to be the case for the Hogwarts Cup matches in some of the later books).

[keybounce]

I was definitely under the impression from the original books that Quiddich made sense if you looked at total points scored over the year rather than individual games won.

If the two tops teams are both at 1 loss, then both teams have had the same amount of seeker points, and the winner is the better team, not the better seeker.

[Fyraltari]

The role of the seeker never bothered me as much as the fact that Quidditch is a game played by moving at dozens of kmh while up in the air on a broomstick while other players throw homing missiles (non-explosive ones but still) at you with baseball bats without (to my memory) any protecting gear!

How are the casualty rates that low?

[Kantaki]

The role of the seeker never bothered me as much as the fact that Quidditch is a game played by moving at dozens of kmh while up in the air on a broomstick while other players throw homing missiles (non-explosive ones but still) at you with baseball bats without (to my memory) any protecting gear!

How are the casualty rates that low?

Wizard are friggin tough and have very good healthcare.

[Fyraltari]

Wizard are friggin tough and have very good healthcare.

The fact that said healthcare is not good enough to bring the dead back to life is kind of a plot point though.