- Location
- Europe
Not a particularly well-founded one.
Medics, artisans and other types of Muggle specialists have been quite able to charge prices worth their bother for their services.
Build a More Sensible Wizarding World
- Thread starter Jack Stargazer
- Start date
- Books Worldbuilding
Medics, artisans and other types of Muggle specialists have been quite able to charge prices worth their bother for their services.
Muggle services may not be particularly valuable to wizards though, so you just get an endless stream of beggars asking for charity.
- Location
- Europe
Kings of France and England had the power to cure scrofula. They practiced it quite a lot, on beggars, but had the ability to not bother when they did not like it.
Or why would a dragonrider (World of Ice and Fire, controllable ones, not Harry Potter too fierce to be practical) want to rule? Rhaena demonstrated that she did not absolutely need to, when she stayed out of human contact for months after Aerea fled, and reemerged on Greenstone not conspicuously worse for the experience. Yet the dragonriders did like to be rich and have castles on ground and non-dragonrider servants - all of them did at most of life, and most of them did for whole life.
As an army of mixed arms, knights and archers, who would you fear more? A Song of Ice and Fire dragonrider with dragonfire, or a Harry Potter broomstick rider with a wand?
A Harry Potter wizard that can herd Dementors is a threat no army can face. On a strategic level, a teleporting shapeshifting mind-reading mind-controlling invisible wizard can win the war without even needing to fight a battle.
Magical construction may well mean that you don't need muggles to build your castle. Not that you need a castle, as you can have magical fortifications rather than physical ones. You might want a mansion for bragging rights, but it's unclear what you'd need to do that.
- Location
- Europe
Casting spells is work, taking time, skills and chance of mishaps. Nobody has invented aself-spelling wand.
Only a stupid wizard would insist on secrecy. A smart one would hire muggles to do stuff that can be done either by muggle or magical means, and use magic just for the parts that are impossible or too hard by muggle means.
A physical fortification where only the weak spots are reinforced by magic would be far cheaper than a wholly magical one.
StorymasterQ
Chief of Weaponized Tropes First Division
- Location
- Denpasar, Bali
Additionally, it would be far better than a wholly mundane one.
The best of both worlds, you can say. Like the Borg. Wait...
Anyway, how would you guys reconcile the fact that magic and electricity interferes with each other? Theories on why? Proposals on how to avoid it?
- Location
- Arkansas
Canon has only a single throwaway line about magic and electricity interfering, which doesn't make a particularly sweeping statement:
Hermione in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Chapter 28 said:
Magic and electricity interfering helps explain why the magical community doesn't use more muggle objects, but there are other possible explanations.
StorymasterQ
Chief of Weaponized Tropes First Division
- Location
- Denpasar, Bali
So we only have the wizards' perspective that electricity go haywire because of magic, but no one knows why precisely. And considering the state of the Scientific Method in the wizarding world, it's not going to be reconciled in the timeframe of 'soon'.
So why do you think electricity and magic interfere with each other? Is magic a field? It's magnets isn't it.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Given that Diagon Alley is literally in the middle of London, and it uses a huge amount of magic, I'm inclined to think that it isn't actually true, and is just BS Hogwarts teachers have started saying within the past two decades of the books, to get students to stop asking if they can use calculators in arithmancy.
- Location
- Canada
So, I am trying to read this. I love the writing and the world building but holy shit, everyone is unlikeable.
I really don't like many of the characters. Grimm is either a great actor and a horrible person or just a psychopath, Alex makes Harry Potter look restrained, intelligent, and unimpulsive. She's the worst combination of arrogant and incompetent, only saved by the main character halo in so many situations.
Alex's friends are goodish people, and probably the most sympathetic characters.
I like the darker theme and the uniquely American spin, but we'll see if I can stomach the protagonist long enough to see the rest.
Argidoll
And hast thou slain the Jabberwocky?
- Location
- Dreamland
I think the whole Masquerade thing has a pretty easy answer: Geas. Some kind of strong magic, be it natural or created and imposed by some magical proto-god, that creates a compulsion amongst magical creatures to avoid the mundane, while at the same time pushing the opposite, creating a separation between the two worlds. It could be a natural aspect of reality, it could be a law laid down by the first magicians. It doesn't really matter, since the end result explains the absurdity of the HP Masquerade, as well as why wizards, magical creatures, and those associated with them, aren't able to properly interact with technology. At minimum there's some kind of dimensional separation and mental effects... would different magical societies have difficulty interacting and contacting one another due to differences in socio-thaumoturgic resonance? The rules of magic probably change based on where and who you are.
Fundamentally I don't see why people need to establish world-spanning super-conspiracy powers to the wizarding world so it can erase any evidence of magic. Like, the Ministry of Magic is a tiny insular thing that exists to manage the (small, isolated) wizarding population. It has no need to be the Technocracy and turning it into the Technocracy drastically changes its actual role and the amount of agency it gets in human affairs. Giving wizards the level of power needed to do mass neuralyzing of people and actively enforce secrecy of a rather overt set of shenanigans, rather than making them insular and isolated because they're not that powerful, just very well hidden, would drastically recontextualize the Ministry and, well, the themes of the setting. I don't think that if you're building a sensible Harry Potter you want to unintentionally invite R2P comparisons and create a level of callousness about the wizarding world when you don't have to.
And moreover, if you're worldbuilding you're still worldbuilding to a purpose. What is the purpose of the wizarding world? To enable teenage adventures, but with magic. You don't need a force of men in black wearing wizard robes that tell you that everything you saw was just swamp gas to enable teenage adventures.
In fact, the wizarding world doesn't need to be particularly powerful. All it needs is to be whimsical and blatantly supernatural. Yes, that means it probably shouldn't be super low-fantasy, but it also means that you don't need the idea that a single dementor herder is an unstoppable force to anyone who isn't a wizard, and trying to emphasize that aspect just leads to the question of "okay, so why don't the wizards rule as obvious god-kings?"
"Well, wizards don't need anything from mugg-"
"So what about food? Labor? Sex? Worship? Fame? Wizards clearly care about all of these things, and muggles can provide those."
"Er-"
And moreover, if you're worldbuilding you're still worldbuilding to a purpose. What is the purpose of the wizarding world? To enable teenage adventures, but with magic. You don't need a force of men in black wearing wizard robes that tell you that everything you saw was just swamp gas to enable teenage adventures.
In fact, the wizarding world doesn't need to be particularly powerful. All it needs is to be whimsical and blatantly supernatural. Yes, that means it probably shouldn't be super low-fantasy, but it also means that you don't need the idea that a single dementor herder is an unstoppable force to anyone who isn't a wizard, and trying to emphasize that aspect just leads to the question of "okay, so why don't the wizards rule as obvious god-kings?"
"Well, wizards don't need anything from mugg-"
"So what about food? Labor? Sex? Worship? Fame? Wizards clearly care about all of these things, and muggles can provide those."
"Er-"
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Some stories that I like that are relevant for this thread:
The Animagus-Verse
Some interesting concepts for the wider Wizarding World, including the casting styles and schools and dark lords of other countries.
To Reach Without
Among other things, has some interesting ideas about pureblood etiquette, about nonhumans such as goblin society or wilderfolk (offspring of animagi and animals, mostly keep to themselves, Not Talked About in Polite Society), and about magical british education (Hogwarts isn't the only magical british school, just by far the most renowned. Students either have connections, pay tuition, or get a scholarship - muggleborn and the children of the ministry workers such as the Weasleys).
The Mary Potter series
Concepts for pureblood society, and for magic religion and celebrations.
The Animagus-Verse
Some interesting concepts for the wider Wizarding World, including the casting styles and schools and dark lords of other countries.
To Reach Without
Among other things, has some interesting ideas about pureblood etiquette, about nonhumans such as goblin society or wilderfolk (offspring of animagi and animals, mostly keep to themselves, Not Talked About in Polite Society), and about magical british education (Hogwarts isn't the only magical british school, just by far the most renowned. Students either have connections, pay tuition, or get a scholarship - muggleborn and the children of the ministry workers such as the Weasleys).
The Mary Potter series
Concepts for pureblood society, and for magic religion and celebrations.