LightLordPotter

You're bloody awful at DLPing. Lurk moark.

 

I give up. You failed to respond to most of my points. Apparently you also don't know that the Harry Potter series is primarily written from the point of view of Harry Potter, so that the only canon evidence you can use is pretty much from a single character and singular events. Anecdotes, all of it.

A waste of time if there ever was one.

 

"LURK MOAR". You sound like you're attacking me personally instead of actually making comments on my argument or what I could have done to improve it. Therefore this is just unnecessary spam.

Sorry you feel that way, but I tried my best to tackle most of the subjects you presented. I mean, Harry is told from a third-person narrative, we don't know much more about what happens in Harry's head than we do about what happens in Hermione's head.

 

LightLordPotter, you got plenty of responses to your "arguments", from myself and others. Discussion becomes pointless when you dismiss canon evidence as anecdotes and repeatedly fail to understand counterarguments.

 

Citation? Preferably within a PM, as I don't think it's fair to derail this thread further than this point.

 

Hold on. You want a citation on your dismissal of canon arguments as anecdotes? Half of the previous page is your citation.

 

Actually, not a single thing wrong with what I said. I suggest you get good at grammaring before you get good at DLPing, as you seem to not understand what an anecdote is when I bring it up. You see the word, then immediately quote what I said instead of analyzing the context of anything you copy and paste.

1.) Yes, citing a singular event in a singular book is an anecdote. We never see Golden Flame in action again, it's never even explained thoroughly unless you count Dumbledore's speculation. It's a lot different when a wand acts on its own, and a Wizard suddenly manages to utilize Magic without words, incantations or anything of the sort. It makes you wonder why they even bother then? Unless, oh wait,

This is not to say that we haven't seen completely feeling-based magic in action (Dumbledore in the cave; Dumbledore, Voldemort, and several Aurors having a Seventh Sense after their magic that allows them to dodge things fired out of their visible sight, etc...), but Harry himself said that it was on a whole 'nother level from the bangs and smoke you'd typically see. In other words, a mechanism completely devoid of a specific incantation in wizardy, is not a spell at all, but someone feeling out their magic and the magic around them.

Just realized something, if Harry is the main source of canon, why did you use Tom Riddle as your anecdote? Unless what you're saying was a complete and utter generalization?

 

Basically there's not enough canon evidence to argue anything solid about how magic works, and I would argue that not even the canon wizards themselves know all of it. Yes, we are told that words, wand movements, intention, wand wood/core combination and perhaps even the phase of the moon are important part of spells, but then we are shown that ultimately you don't really need any of those.

Personally I like to use music as an analogue to magic. Music is a combination of multiple different components: there are many different instruments played in many different ways, each with their own characteristics and harmonics. Same way magic spells are a combination of different parts working together.

On the other hand, music is also ultimately just a single waveform that enters the ear, and you don't necessarily need to assemble the band to listen to it; a speaker can produce that same waveform easily enough. Applying the same to magic, you could say that with enough practice (or prodigious talent) you can "play a recording" of a spell, and ditch the different components.

Taking the same comparison further, you could argue that there are infinite amount of different "spells" just as there are infinite amount of audio waveforms. Some of them aren't useful at all, and some might be such that it is physically impossible for humans to speak the "incantations" or do the "wand movements" you would need to compose the harmonies of the "spell"; that doesn't mean that a skilled enough manipulator of magic couldn't simply cast those spells, just like it's possible to play "impossible" music with a speaker. Such spell might look like it's "not a spell" as it lacks the traditional trappings of one, but ultimately it's magic all the same.

I'm, of course, not claiming that any of that has anything to do with canon.

 

I wasn't planning on responding, but reading this..

I didn't say Harry was the "main source of canon", I said the books are written from Harry's PoV. The only person whose feelings and inner thoughts we have some insight in to in any consistent manner is Harry, and the only events we can consistently see are the ones that are directly experienced by Harry -- sometimes through Voldemort's eyes. Thus, the entire series consists of nothing more than anecdotes by your definition, except for a few often-repeated facts (can't bring back the dead with magic, can't apparate in Hogwarts and so on).

Probably because I was talking about something Voldemort did. You see, if I were to, for example, say something about Einstein, I wouldn't be using myself as an "anecdote", given that I'm not Einstein. This is generally how you discuss the actions of someone else.

Just to be very very clear this time, I'll give you another example: if I wanted to discuss what sort of magic Ron used, I wouldn't do it by explaining to you what Harry did. They're separate people.

Please feel free to send a private message to me if you require more examples of this exceedingly simple concept which apparently everyone but you in this thread has managed to grasp.

It was a simple fact about the series, actually. You are literally the only person in this thread who even saw anything worth arguing in those particular statements.