Yes, I noticed that two minutes after I'd hit 'Post'. :-(

Still, Harry tried to learn Occlumency in sixth year. ScottPress says he finally achieved it a year later. Why did it take him so long? Rowling's fantasy world gave little explanation.

Well, like I said above, it is applicable; Harry spent a year trying to learn Occlumency, we're told it's hard, he tells us he couldn't do it (a year later, before Dobby) ... so why was it so difficult? Harry's personal enmity for Snape I suppose.

I did a web search and found the quote that I think ScottPress was referencing:

Harry might have learned how to close his mind to Voldemort using not-magic but I submit that this isn't real Occlumency.

Sure, but it's still a skill that doesn't measure up to taking down a balrog or fighting faeries or whatever the protagonists have done in the other fantasy series that JamesGordon (the OP) compared with HP.

Rowling did an adequate job of showing/telling us that Harry was having a hard time of learning how to ride a bicycle. Other works show us how their magical people have a hard time in defeating major league villains, discovering awesome spells or doing other awesome things that are so much more exciting and satisfying and awesome than riding a bicycle. Also, going much further than Rowling in letting us understand just why those awesome feats were awesome. Rowling just didn't bother trying to explain why muttering a couple of words and swishing a stick was so jolly hard. With the other series the authors did go to that trouble. And that's why HP is not the 'best fantasy series ever'.

 

I think the issue here is one of implied depth, and explicit depth.

Implied depth does not require detailed description of mechanisms and reasons, it merely requires that the system is self-consistent. The very self-consistency implies that a set of rules, to which we are not directly privy, governs that consistency.

Explicit depth is, in this context, fairly obvious. Not only is the system self-consistent, but we are told the why and the how of all the important rules of the system, which then allows for easy extrapolation to novel scenarios.

Now explicit depth is what people often think of when things like Sanderson's First Law of Magic is brought up: "An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic." I think this is a big part of why explicit depth is so often lauded. Magic systems which are not clearly understood by the reader result in events which feel like ass-pulls, suddenly a new element of the magic system is 'revealed' which allows for solving of the problem. The easiest way to ensure your reader understands the magic system is by telling them how it works.

But that's what such explicit description necessarily is. It is told information. Oh, you can conceal it in dialogue, but it is a case of telling because that's what it is intended to be. It also imposes difficult limitations. To avoid turning a book into a metaphysics of magic lesson you need to make the rules readily understandable from a relatively brief explanation, which usually means you pull from either reality 'magic as energy manipulation' or ideas which already reside in the public consciousness, like 'sacrificial' magic, which really is still heavily influenced by thermodynamic laws, only rather than being based on energy, it is some other conserved 'thing', often life force or something. Then again, even Sanderson doesn't say that the author's ability to solve conflict with magic is proportional to how extensively explained the magic is. It's about reader understanding. If you can engender a feel for the magic in your readers without submitting them to a lesson in magical mechanics then you can still use your magic to solve problems.

Rowling does this well in a lot of cases, and less well in others.

She is usually very good at setting up magical elements before they are used to solve a problem, which is the most important element. There's some inconsistency across the books, probably as a result of her vision changing over time as the story developed, but within each individual book, she does a generally good job of it. The magical (and non-magical) solutions to the Stone's protections are all well communicated to the reader. Not directly, not explicitly, but well enough that the solutions used feel reasonable. We are acclimated to an approximation of how magic should work, which means we do not expect, for example, that Harry could set up a magic pentagram on the floor of the library, complete with dribbly candles and 2ccs of mouse blood, and summon Death himself to locate Voldemort's Horcruxes.

On the other hand, you have the Patronus issue, where it took Harry months to learn the spell, with one-on-one time with a well regarded teacher in the subject, a feat which is regarded as remarkable, while later books allowed him to teach the same spell to others in a fraction of the time.

Personally, I feel that implicit depth is superior to explicit depth when the aim is to service a story. You want the focus to be on the characters and their journey, not the detailed mechanics of the train they're riding on. On the other hand, explicit depth is seeing a surge in interest because it mirrors game-systems, and often allows the reader to be much more of a participant in the story than merely an observer.

It's also worth pointing out that implicit depth also provides a much more fertile ground for fanfiction, as the implied system of rules offers much greater scope for different interpretations.

In many ways I think the magic system Rowling employed is a big part of why I continue to find Harry Potter to be interesting as a setting and world. Had it been more completely described, there would be no fun to be had in exploring the boundary of our understanding. Is it perfect? No, of course not, but it's pretty good.

Personally, I think it is in their moral aspects that Harry Potter is weakest, presenting an impressively heterogeneous world, without really doing much to explore what that might mean. I'm not asking for transparent author moralising over things like the causes of racism, or cognitive bias, but when I compare it to someone like Pratchett, who manages to provoke much more nuanced moral questions while only rarely feeling forced, I have to conclude that Rowling could have done more.

 

JKR explicitly says in narration Harry learned what Dumbledore wanted Harry to learn from Snape, which was occlumency.

Okay, suit yourself.

It's funny you bring up LOTR, whose magic system is of course explicitly explained in detail.

Re: the Elder Wand, quotes from the confrontation between Harry and Voldemort in DH, chapter The Flaw in the Plan. I have a hard copy of the book and I am not gonna waste time transcribing the whole conversation, but here are some relevant parts.

Here you have Harry Potter umabiguously demonstrating that at the time of the last duel with Voldemort, he understood how the Elder Wand's loyalty works and that this was the very thing that allowed him to prevail over Voldemort in that confrontation. It doesn't matter that he didn't know this at Malfoy Manor. It matters that he figured it out in time to use this knowledge to beat Voldemort.

 

I wanted to get at this in my post, but couldn't figure out a way to explain it that would be understandable and ended up deleting my attempts. Makes it real satisfying seeing it explained so well, even if I wasn't the one to do it, so thanks for that.

 

Which is Rowling's biggest failure.

I don't think Rowling was particularly consistent within the single novels, but she definitely wasn't over the entire series.

ScottPress gives us Harry's demonstration that "he understood how the Elder Wand's loyalty works" as a triumph of the series, in that it "allowed him to prevail over Voldemort". But that whole wand mastery thing is something that simply didn't exist prior to the seventh book. The one thing - the only thing? - that we knew about Rowling's system of magic was "the wand chooses the wizard". In book 7 we're suddenly told "oh, unless it doesn't". That is *literally* what she writes.

Think of all the times where Harry was defeated in books 1-6. Like the time Snape totally overpowered him in his flight from Hogwarts at the end of HBP. No repercussions at all to Harry after he was so soundly trounced. Snape disarmed Harry, deprived him of his wand:

Harry is disarmed. In fact, disarmed "as Dumbledore had been". But there was zero repercussions to this - Harry didn't lose any magical power, his wand still worked as normal for him. Then, in book 7, we're told that Draco became master of the Elder wand for having disarmed Dumbledore ... but in book 6 Snape did NOT became master of Harry's wand despite Snape's doing exactly the same thing to Harry, "wandless and defenseless as Dumbledore had been". Because Rowling didn't know she was going to destroy her sole rule of magical mechanics in her desperation to get Harry over the finish line in her final novel.

I'm sure there are lots of other times in the series that characters were disarmed but bounced back up again right as rain.

The Harry Potter series does not have the "self consistency" that you admire, even though its author provides very little substance that "implies" its magical rules in the first place. The one rule that *is* presented is destroyed in the last book.

Which is, as I've outlined above, exactly what happens in HP. Which is one reason why it stands as a poor fantasy series.

I think PoA is the sole book where Rowling did a good job of doing exactly what you describe. The time turner came as a surprise in the climax of the plot but the clues as to its existence had been sprinkled throughout - Ron's surprise at Hermione turning up without notice, her being very tired, I'm sure there were other signs.

But in the other novels they are all 'arse-pulls'. In PS Harry's death-touch is unveiled as a surprise in the climax. In CoS the diary's influence on Ginny is set up nicely but the magical elements used in the climax are more arse-pulls (what can be more of an arse-pull than pulling a surprise sword out of a hat?). In GoF the prior incantatem phoenix cage is an arse-pull. OotP doesn't have Harry saving the day so Rowling didn't have to pull anything out of her arse in that one.

And the climax of the entire series is a huge arse-pull.

There's a reason why practically every HP novel has a big chapter after the climax where Dumbledore sits down and explains everything to Harry. That's because Rowling needed him to explain how it all worked to the readers as well. Because that's what an author has to do when she's written 'arse-pulls'. Shucks, her writing was so bad she had to write Dumbledore *coming back from the dead* to explain things to Harry in the final novel. Talk about your "told information" ...

I'm sure some authors and books are of an insufficient calibre to establish a system of magic that is superior to simply doing so as "told information". But your observation doesn't serve as a proof that this is so for all.

What you're stating *can* be a consequence of deciding to be 'explicit', but I can think of various series stand as counter-examples that prove you wrong. The Dresden Files series and the Young Wizards series are both world-building at a very slow rate, novel upon novel - seventeen books so far in the former, eleven to the latter - and the rules of their magic systems are being told, shown, discovered, uncovered and experienced in a quite complex and satisfactory manner that is very much more than being simply "told information".

You present your system of 'implicit' versus 'explicit' depth as if a novel can be only one or the other. I think that is a simplistic metric for literature and, again, based on a personal observation rather than as a 'proof' that can be shown to hold for all literary works.

A fantasy story may give details on its system of magical mechanics or it may not, but I can't see why that would have any influence on any other aspect of the literature. If I write a story that devotes time to describing how the magic works ... why does that mean that my story is parked under your 'explicit depth' setting and so must suffer lack of characterisation? Why can't I have both? What proof do you have that one is impossible with the other?

Again, I offer the above series as counter examples that disprove your thesis.

A fantasy series can devote time to its magical mechanics or it might not. The magical mechanics might be missing or might be provided. A sufficiently competent author can have his story supply the mechanics without missing out on other elements of literature. If he chooses to leave the mechanics as missing then its on him to (a) flesh out other aspects of the story, like the characterisation, but also (b) be wary of the increased chance of writing 'arse-pulls'.

Which is more easily explained by my little 'model' above. If a series' magical mechanics is *missing* then yes, there is, by definition, a clear gap which can be filled by fan fiction authors.

Like ScottPress says Taure has done in his "huge googledoc on HP magic theory".

In summary, I think the biggest reason why HP cannot be considered "the best fantasy series ever" is because of its many plot inconsistencies and failures. Aside from that, I think Rowling took the easy way out in not providing adequate detail on her magical mechanics (noting that what she *did* provide was fatally inconsistent). Steelbadger was generous in trying to paint this as a completely acceptable sub-genre which provides superior "focus ... on the characters and their journey". No, it was just Joanne "oh, maths!" Rowling skipping that aspect of a fantasy series. It's probably one of the biggest reasons why the HP fandom was as huge as it was, but - added to all the other problems with her novels - is part of why HP is not "the best fantasy series ever".

 

I think you've rather missed the point here.

I present 'implicit' and 'explicit' as two ways of achieving depth, and express a preference for the former. In the interests of not writing a fucking book on the subject, I approached them as distinct methods of achieving the same result. It is interesting, however, that you seem to be as blind to the implicit assumption that both may be used, as you are to all the implicit worldbuilding Rowling employs in her books.

I am sorry, once again I thought the answer was obvious, and implicit.

You have finite words with which to write a story. Brevity, and economy of expression are two of the most highly coveted features in traditionally published books, especially those aimed at children. Words you spend on explaining how shit works are words you now cannot use on deepening your characters. These are published books, not web-serials with infinite wordcount targets. It is once more telling that you have a very all or nothing approach to these things. Additional detail on the topic of a magic system does not make deep characterisation impossible, it merely leaves you less story real-estate to use for other things.

You cannot have a world as realised as Tolkien's, with the characters of Pratchett, the magic systems of Sanderson, and the plot-depth of GRRM in a single book without it becoming a bloated mess. Every author finds their own balance between those things, and Rowling preferred to spend her precious words on character, drama, and mystery over explaining in-depth the workings of her magic system. It is still there, but she leaves it to be implied by character and action because it is not the primary focus of the story she wanted to tell. It is the flavour, not the substance.

In fact, I think your 'rebuttal' to my post rather demonstrates why you so dislike Rowling's method of informing us about her magical system. You seem to have a strong liking for certainty, and absolutes. Even while you say I "present [my] system... as if a novel can be only one or the other" in a way which would suggest a desire for a more nuanced view, you categorically refuse to see nuance if it is not specifically stated. Like I said, I felt that the fact that novels will employ both methods to differing degrees was clear, to suggest otherwise is obviously ridiculous, and yet you assumed the worst, and spent a lot of time 'debunking' a false position.

To put it in other terms, it is like I said 'there are two ways to eat deserts: spoons or forks. Both have their advantages, but I prefer forks because their features work best for the deserts I prefer eating'. You then fired back with 'this reads like you're suggesting all people should use only forks, or only spoons! Ridiculous!' See what I'm saying here? (I think what I'm saying is that I'm hungry).

Anyway, with that out of the way, lets return to the wand lore question. As I understand it, your wand lore argument runs thus:

• Defeating a wizard (often) gains the allegiance of their wand.
• Harry was defeated by Snape.
• Therefore, Snape should have the allegiance of Harry's wand.
• Therefore, Harry's wand should work worse.

Except that there's a niggling gap there. Ollivander states that winning the allegiance of a wand is a common outcome of defeating its wielder, and that it will work better for them as a result. Ollivander does not state that it also works worse for the original user. He does, however, say that 'much depends upon the wand itself.'

Now, I know why you have decided to jump to that last logical step:

No doubt, you would pull out a dictionary, and point at the first definition:

And proclaim that because the allegiance has been exchanged from the wielder to the attacker, that the erstwhile wielder should no longer enjoy the same compatibility with their wand. And you can do that, of course. This then results in the expectation that Harry's control of his wand should be lessened after the duel with Snape, and the decision that the fact that this did not happen is evidence of a plot hole.

I, on the other hand, would point out that the second definition of 'change':

I would then say that 'changing' the wand's allegiance does not need to mean that Harry's connection to it is in any way lessened. Next, I would bring up:

And the implied information that the 'best' results do not require a wizard to be undefeated, only that they grow and learn alongside the wand that chose them.

Finally, I would point to numerous cases in the earlier books, and even in Deathly Hallows itself, which imply that a defeated wizard's wand is no less effective for them. Not only is Harry's wand's effectiveness unchanged after numerous possible defeats, but Bellatrix Lestrange is apparently still using the wand Ollivander sold her, despite certainly being defeated in order to end up in Azkaban. The very details which you regard as holes, I see as strengthening my interpretation because I was not beholden to a fixed meaning for a single word.

Personally, I find that suggestion of inconsistency to be a big part of why I like Rowling's magical world. Where you see a rule which is broken, and a gaping hole in the plot, I see a naturalism to it. Just as children are taught in school that atoms, from the Greek 'Atamos', uncuttable, are like little marbles making up everything, only to later discover inconsistencies with that interpretation, which lead them to protons, neutrons, and electrons in the Bohr model, which is then superseded by valence shell atoms, so too must the reader be willing to revisit their interpretations in light of new information.

Those little incongruities speak to me of a deeper truth which must be sought; of a world which exists not just within the narrative, but one which is merely being described by it.

When I am given truth about the world on a platter it feels fake, because nothing in the world is ever so simple, and magic should certainly never be so pedestrian. Rowling's world feels more real precisely because surface level incongruencies exist.

But, you know, if you'd rather be angry that Rowling's stories are self-contradictory based on a highly specific interpretation of a few spoken words, well, I'm not sure what to say to you. I've had this discussion, or one like it, with many others during my time in the fandom, and I don't think I've ever managed to actually get anyone to change their mind. All I ask is that you try to realise that the way you choose to interpret these things is by your choice (whether conscious or not), and not a fundamental failing of the stories themselves.

Which is all rather besides the point. I still don't think Harry Potter is the best fantasy series ever.

 

k but u rong doe.

 

I'm not going to justify my answer or read the rest of the thread, but no.

 

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