I've been thinking about this for a long time and wanted to get DLP's opinion on the subject.

I feel like, for the most part, the power and grandeur of magic has been ignored in both canon and most fanon. Magic ends up being depicted as just a marginally useful tool and is extremely underutilized. It basically ends up being used for curses that all disfigure humans in horrible ways and charms that prank people. This is without getting into the horribly flawed theories of magic some idiots come up with. For example, I once read a fic where the author thought all magic was best explained as manipulation of air molecules (curses are just jets of colored air, right?). I don't even want to get started on the bullshit people come with regarding how muggles could easily wipe out wizards.

Even if you take into account stagnation in the wizarding world, I still find it hard to believe that it could have stagnated as much as is popularly depicted. Someone must have been able to develop magnification charms capable of looking at cells and even atoms (as well as galaxies lightyears further away). And to wizards for whom flight is trivial, what is stopping them from actually venturing into the depths of the ocean or out into space? If anything, magic should have made wizards masters of science.

Basically, any actually grand acts of magic only happen when there's a really lame story that has a Super!Harry who is the heir of Merlin, the Founders, Morgana Le Fay, Chuck Norris' dick, and Jesus, while also being a 1489034823904 on the 1 to 10 scale of magical strength. Even then, this grand magic is mainly limited to killing or incapacitating large groups of people.

With the capability of magic as depicted in canon, I think that wizards should be able to do much cooler stuff. Maybe this cool stuff exists in canon and is unmentioned...but I don't care about that. Fucking mention it, then!

Perhaps one cause of this is that we've all read so many fics that we've become inured to how amazing magic actually is. Let this serve as a wake-up call, then, although the people who should most read this will never come across it.

There are exceptions, of course. Fics such as Taure's "Lords of Magic" are like a breath of fresh air...things like the city of Sanctum are awesome and what I would like to see more of. Taliath's "In Light of Silver Memories" is also a good example of a fic that exhibits magic's true potential. Let me end with one of my all-time favorite passages from fanfiction:

 

Agreed.

Though, there are some fics which do have this aforesaid grand feeling - like this.

EDIT - >_> You mentioned it yourself.

 

The reason why magic in HP lacks grandeur is because JKR made vast majority of wizards incompetent. Despite that we are told that magic progresses constantly, that new discoveries are made, the only thing we actually see is that each generation of wizards is worse than its predecessor.

The reason for this is simple: JKR wanted Harry to be an ordinary boy. This is what destroyed the series. She had to scale everything down and make Voldemort grossly incompetent for Harry to have any chance of victory. Harry didn't win by being smart or powerful, he won because the Dark Lord was an utter moron.

She also lacked any talent in writing romance, but that's another story...

 

Agreed - intentionally or not, most magic in canon is not grand or majestic. The idea of it is amazing to Harry, who of course had no experience with it, but even he came to be less and less astonished as time went on.

I don't actually consider this too much of a flaw, though. The simple fact is that for wizards who have spent their entire lives around magic, it's just status quo. I like that about canon - this idea that it's nothing more than a boring tool for them. Sure, there's hints of grandeur and progress here and there, but just as with real societies, the vast majority of people don't give a damn. It's a touch of realism in an otherwise fantastical story.

Consider how people look at technology, engineering, and art in the real world. It takes a complex array of delicate components, all working in symphony, to make a television or computer work. The amount of engineering that goes into a high performance automobile is staggering - ditto with a large building. But most people only care that these things continue functioning; they don't think about the accumulated knowledge required to build them.

And yet there are some people who do appreciate all those things. And in HP canon, there are a few people who can appreciate and utilize the more grand aspects of magic - albeit not too many. It just wasn't in the scope of the story to learn much about them, because for JKR, the Potter universe's magic was secondary to its character stories.

I do like reading the more epic stuff in fanfiction...but fanon is fanon and canon is canon.

 

As I see it, magic is such a powerful tool that it makes the users become comfortable and lazy. Magic was never intended for humans (as it was for ex. unicorns) but we got it by mistake long ago. The human need to never be satisfied, always strive to be better was crushed by magic since these people really believed that they now were the ultimate being.

This is why almost everything in the magical world is a bad copy of muggle stuff, no-one really cares enough to actually do the research and come up with something themselves. Muggleborns such as Hermione is very impressed by the wizarding world when they enter and do not really want to change it. They therefore do not even think of researching to improve the world.

This is a fairly plausible explanation, you can compare it to people who receive a lot of money (money not from hard work) and just sit on their butt for the rest of their lives.

 

<---- from Chapter 13 of Renegade Cause.

One of the things that I really, really liked about parts of the Harry Potter series (particularly the earlier parts), was the way they treated magic from Harry's perspective, because in most cases, he feels awed by it. It was a damn shame they never had him strive to utilize it, but that's more of a problem with Harry's characterization than anything else. Goblet of Fire was what sealed the deal for me, because it revealed an epic, magical WORLD, and with events like the Quidditch World Cup early on, it did a wonderful job of encapsulating Harry's marvel at the tournament. If anything, what I've been trying (and not entirely succeeding to do) in my writing is to bring some drive to Harry, to not make him the unmotivated turd he is in HBP and DH, or if not, try to bring back some of the wonder Harry has with regards to magic.

And that, I think is one of the biggest problems I have with the Harry Potter canon - the magic, instead of being treated as something wondrous or special or meaningful in the character's lives, is always shoved aside to the background. That's why we never got to hear the details of magical theory that most fanon writers have been dying to hear. In my ideal story, the magic and the character developments are kept a lot closer together (which makes sense, considering how big of a part magic is of their lives), while in most of canon, the magic and character stories are locked in different cupboards - and one of them is on Mars.

On the other hand, when Rowling does manage to bring them together (the best example, IMO, is Priori Incantatem in GoF, which was also an amazingly epic scene that did wonders for Harry's character), she tends to do so extremely well. I just wish she did this more often (like Butcher does consistently in every single Dresden Files book).

 

Despite the fact that my story has been cited as an example of the kind of uncanon "grand" magic you're looking for, I kinda like the lack of grandeur in HP magic. It's what gives HP magic its charm, and its what makes it different to the bajillion high fantasy magic systems out there. The everyday nature of magic is the cornerstone of HP, for me. The fact that they use magic not just for epic battles, but also to wash up the dishes.

And of course grandeur =/= power. There's no denying that HP magic is powerful in its abilites, even if it isn't applied to its greatest extent by the wizarding world.

To sound like Silens, in Lords of Magic I tried to maintain this cornerstone of HP - the everyday nature of magic; the fact that they use magic for everything. All I've done is applied my view of the HP magic system in a logical way, given two premises:

1. One change to the nature of human transfiguration,
2. Wizards aren't stupid.

 

That's kind of the point, though. I'm don't want every spell to be earth-shattering. I just think that, with magic as it is depicted in canon, it should be able to do much more. I'm not so much interested in super-magic as I am in full exploitation of HP-magic's potential.

I won't deny I want to see some more grandeur, because as it is there's practically none. I'd rather see this grandeur as a result of normal magic logically applied, though, which I'm glad to see you're doing.

 

Yes, the first four books had a lot more sensawunda than the last three. Instead of really exploring the world that would have been possible if we postulated magic, like a hard core science fiction author would have, JKR chose to write a story about a very average guy with a raging messiah complex, and she underutilized and in some cases destroyed the build up she created. The world, the characterization and the enjoyment of fans suffered, but at that point she was selling so many copies sight unseen that nothing could influence her.

From the interview in Newsweek, July 2000:

I believe she had envisioned a fairy tale, and she set it in a fairy tale world because it's for children so everything is supposed to be allegorical. Her strongest quality as an author, the initial world building that created the sensawunda that drew us all into the world of the books, was completely incidental to the story she was really writing.

She knew all along that Harry was not an aristocrat of any kind, that he would never grow up to be smart and knowledgeable and a powerful political figure. She knew he would marry Ginny to become part of a big family, and Harry's wife would be a housewife, because Harry's greatest ambition was to be average. She knew Ron would always be a dumbass, because only a below-average guy can be a sidekick to an average guy. Most important of all, she knew from the start that he would win by standing in front of a killing curse instead of by being smarter, stronger, more cunning than his enemies. so she didn't need for Harry to understand how the magical world works or how magic works, and so we don't know. The books actually look remarkably like something a totalitarian regime (e.g. the Roman Catholic Church) would use to raise the next generation of sheep.

 

Making magic grander and more majestic would transform Harry Potter into High Fantasy, which wouldn't work with the story Rowling wanted to tell. Inevitably, you have to deal with the fact that if wizards can actually p0wn Muggle armies, then there's no logical reason why they stay hidden, and then you're writing a story about what happens when the wizarding world comes out of hiding. And if magic is powerful enough for wizards to face down modern armies, with bullets and bombs and nuclear warheads, then it becomes even more implausible that they went into hiding when the Muggle population was much smaller and didn't even have guns.

One answer is that only a rare few individuals, like Dumbledore and Voldemort, have that kind of earth-shaking ability, but that's not terribly satisfying, since it puts all the really powerful magic in the hands of a few prodigies. Then for most of the wizarding world, it's still just a day-to-day tool that's convenient, but not really able to reshape the world. Also, it runs against the egalitarian theme of the books (not that Rowling was terribly consistent there, either). I got the impression from the books that both Dumbledore and Voldemort were great wizards because they were geniuses* and spent their lives studying magic, not because they were just born more powerful than everyone else.

Making magic more omnipresent, if not necessarily more powerful, would also preserve more of the sense of wonder in the earlier books, and would be logical, given magic-using humans. But it's actually quite difficult to write (I don't think Rowling would actually be up to it), because you really have to envision an entirely new society. You're no longer talking about ordinary people who happen to have magic wands; you're practically talking about a new race. (Most superhero stories fall flat in the same way; if you have a whole bunch of people with superpowers, they are not going to live their lives as ordinary people who happen to have powers. Their lives, and the world around them, will be completely transformed.)

* Obviously, Voldemort's "genius" was pretty limited, since he still fell victim to every Stupid Evil Overlord cliche.

 

Not all of them. But only because Harry is far to stupid to take advantage of most of those cliches.

 

If you recall from Ootp one of the OWL's examiners speaks to Umbridge about finding Dumbledore, the examiner replies something like " I doubt you'll find him, I was his NEWT's examiner, he did things with a wand I didn't know were possible".

This clearly shows that there is somehow a difference in skill with magic between wizards, there are therefore several possibilities to account for these differences:-

1. Power Core theory( one is just born with more magic)
2. Study of Magic( one just specializes in magic to such a degree that they become extremely proficient with it)
3. Affinity for magic( Perhaps some people can just sense magic and therefore understand it's various manifestations better and use this to their advantage.)

4. Use of magic (Maybe it's the intelligent application of a limited amount of magic

I think this is in fact the wrong question to ask, a better question to ask would be : What is magic? Decribe magic.

This is hardly touched upon in the books, and it is for this reason that certain genre's of hp fanfiction even exist, because magic is so vaugely defined.

I prescribre to the version of magic that is present ind Second Chance at Life series, but that's irrelevant.

 

For you people that you become powerful through study, look at Voldemort. He did advanced, controlled magic at the age of 8.

Also, I do not think magic is "magic". There is science behind it. I think of magic as I think of electricity. Electricity was magic 300 years ago, now we know that is not true but I think the same stands for magic.

Just to clarify, I do know that magic doesn't really exist.

 

I don't think that's plausible. Why would you have poor people in the magical world then?

This is one of the biggest problems if you think it through. JKR just copied the normal world and added magic and that gives it a certain charm. That's what made it so successful. But this is one of the things that doesn't make sense if you just convert it.

You have to be either grossly incompetent at magic or a complete retard to be poor if you can do magic.

 

No he didn't. He made people hurt by hoping it would happen, and that's about all that was specified.

Anyways, I agree that the lack of majesty and grandeur is what makes magic so charming. If it were all elegant and epic, we might as well call wizards elves.

If J.K. even thought it out, she would see that the route she wrote made it seem like wizards began as simple-minded people with simple goals (like the rest of the world was about a thousand years ago). How their technology and abilities were effected was just a result of that lifestyle, taken to an extreme.

 

I can think of a couple reasons to go into hiding: convenience for one. Another could be that it's easier to control and stop wizards who would take advantage of Muggles if you maintain a strict divide. Finally, going into hiding means that you avoid having to deal with conflict. Most societies disapprove of genocide. Even given wizards' ability to defeat Muggles (and lets not get into a debate about that here), you still have to provide them with a motive to do so. And there is no such reason, except irrational hatred of Muggles, or jingoism.

Er... they pretty much are.

Yeah, because magic didn't advance at all from the dawn of man to the modern day. It's not like they have a government department focused on research, or a thriving academic community (enough to fuel several research journals, despite the low population), new inventions regularly mentioned, and wizards breaking previously-thought rules of magic with shocking regularity. And that's just Britain.

Er... intended by whom?

This is an interesting analogy, actually, because you know what electricity is? Pretty much... electricity. The electro-magnetic force is considered one of the 4 fundamental forces of the universe. I don't see why people have this desire to explain magic in terms of the non-magical. It makes about as much sense as the desire to explain the physical in terms of the non-physical (e.g. religion). Physical things have physical explanations. Magical things should have magical explanations.

Can you investigate magic? Sure, otherwise there wouldn't be a DoM. Does magic reduce down to physics? That's an entirely different statement, and quite unsupported, given the massive and fundamental differences between physics and magic.

 

I don't think he's saying it follows IRL physics. What I think he's saying- and what I'd say in his place, is that JKR's magic is clearly a system, with its own rules, interactions, and effects. It has some sort of internal logic that it adheres to, and at least in that sense, 'science' could be applied to it. The scientific methodology doesn't suddenly become invalid because the material being looked at doesn't follow anything according to normal physics, and especially not when the subject matter has a clear and definable internal consistency.

If magic were truly great and unknowable and really 'magic', you wouldn't have magic schools in the sense that are presented- where they teach magic. Because with no internal consistence or internal logic, and a complete disregard for any limitations at all... well it'd be sort of like X-men mutants, ramped up to the nth degree. You would have schools only in the sense that they would serve as a regulatory method to try and... teach the people who have magic in order that they don't become horrible amoral fucktards who can and will destroy all life on earth and recreate every human as a rabbit, simply because there are no limits and no way for anyone to stop them.


A lot of the arguments I've seen for the majesty of magic make things very black and white- magic isn't science, it doesn't have any limits, it follows no internal consistence, rah rah rah isn't magic ever so powerful and wonderful and grand.

But as you've said, Grandeur|=Power, and a lot of people forget that in their drive to make magic the bestest thing ever.


And both as a reader and an author, I despise that sort of system. Whenever someone brings up the science/magic fallacy with regards to JKR or other systems of magic, I hate it. Yes, magic should be wonderful and grand, but break all those frontiers, shatter all those barriers, and you don't have anything left to tell your story with.



Way back when, we didn't know what electricity was. We didn't have a concept of 'this is electricity, and it follows physics, and rah rah rah'

All we knew was that it was a tremendously powerful and everpresent force. Much later, we discovered the tenants of how it functions, after applying scientific methodology to it. We came up with theories on how it interacted with the rest of the universe, and speculated on that nature.

Now you have magic. We don't know what magic is, save that it is a force of tremendous power, and seemingly everpresent. And we can apply scientific methodology- research, analysis, study, speculation to it. We can form hypothesis, and perform experiments with it. And in canon, at least, magic has various rules and laws that are just waiting to be discovered and written down.

But just because the situation with electricity and magic are similar, does that mean I'm saying that magic is electricity?

*incredilous face goes here*

Does that mean I think magic can be quantified entirely by IRL physics as we know them without any study or research. Just a "Oh, they apparate by making a wormhole," and I automatically know exactly how that works?



Not on your bloody life I'm not. It's magic. It might have an internal consistency and its own rules, but by its very nature it subverts a lot of things people think they know about the universe.

Could it fit in with the rest of the laws and theorems science has speculated and tested on? By all means. But that doesn't mean it's going to be an easy fit, or that one can just wave their hands like a muggle magician, and make it so.

Magic is so fun because even with the set of rules and logic that it appears to follow, there's a lot we don't know about it. People don't read fanfic for infodumps. They don't read martial arts fics for clinical analysis of how someone punches in exacting mechanical detail. They read it for the awesome parts when someone draws back, steps inside his opponent's block, and slams his fist into his opponent's gut. They read it for the majesty, for the fun and excitement of it. For the mystery.


So too with magic.


But martial arts, typically, does follow some degree of science. Science, on its own, doesn't subtract from the majesty or wonder of magic unless you overanalyze it. Unless you reduce every single instance to cold, clinical analysis. Having magic use [insert technological explanation] doesn't necessarily subtract from my enjoyment of a fic- it's when people take away from the thema of it. Harry Potter flinging enemies into walls with his forcefield tentacle arms, and constant technical dumps on how they work like forcefields, and how thsi and that work utterly ruins my SoD. It's not doing so because the magic follows science or logic, but because it's made it bland, boring, and simple.

And all too often, this sort of fic makes itself about how technical and bland and boring the magic is, rather then what it should be doing- using the magic as a means to advance the story and make it interesting.


When magic is too grand, too powerful, and too ridiculous- as cited in the Op, for example, I find that I lose interest in the story. Because there are too extremes- either magic is incredibly simple, or it's overbearingly wonderful- and both extremes are quite boring when you get down to it. So writing magic is really a delicate balancing game between these two extremes. And in there, somewhere between too simple and too ridiculous- there lies the mystery and wonder that attracted you to magic in the first place.

As an author, it's our jobs to hold onto it.

 

Firstly, correlation =/= causation. Many of the so-called laws of magic we're told in canon have been broken in canon. They would be better described as regularities than laws. Enough to teach from, but not enough to make claims that magic is consistent.

Secondly, you assume that you need to know something deeply before you can teach it. This is not true. Indeed, mathematics is necessarily either incomplete or inconsistent, and yet we teach it and advance it perfectly well.

I feel I should remind you of an important distinction: magic in general is not the same thing as the magic that wizards use, in that wizards' magic is a subset of the set "magic". It is perfectly consistent to say that magic, in and of itself, is omnipotent (and it would appear to be so, in so much as there appears to be no law of physics that it can't casually ignore) and inconsistent, but that "wizardry" is limited and may be consistent (or more so). One might create a fanon explanation for this, such as "wizards impose a structure on magic".

No one said that they are. What I'm disputing is that the situations are similar. Yes, magic is unknown (to us at least) This is nowhere near enough to say that the situations are the same.

When we say "what is electricity?" we mean "what is more fundamental than electricity which explains its behaviour?" or "what does electricity reduce to?".

To ask "what is magic?" is to assume that magic isn't fundamental - that there is something that it reduces to which explains it. You think that not only does it have regularities (which enable schooling, and so on), but you import in, just because there are regularities from which we can inductively reason to "laws", some kind of metaphysical structure behind the magic. You assume that magic is like matter and must have component parts.

I guess this is where we disagree. I agree that you can investigate magic using the scientific method. But I think in this investigation will describe magic using general terms, not explain magic - for magic is its own explanation.

 

Therein lies the problem, though. At the end of the day, the only thing we really have is a series of books with practically limitless potential, yet not enough information given in canon. It could be like electricity, it could be some intangible wizardry dark matter that just makes the world go round without anyone knowing why.

The 'what is magic' argument is never going to end. It'll just jump between 'elephant in the corner,' 'magical core theory,' and 'magic in the blood.'

Magic in fanfiction has always had the uphill struggle of being omnipresent without being trivialized, of having so many people know it yet few would come off as truly powerful. Everyone knows how rare that is without anyone having to shout it out.

 

I should inform you (Taure) that when I specifically specify that I am talking about the system of magic that wizards use, I am talking about the system of magic that wizards use, and not magic as a whole anywhere and everywhere as a broad definition that exists outside HP itself, as you keep implying. Please cease willfully ignoring my specific distinctions.