• Neato
    link
    fedilink
    English
    568 months ago

    The fact that the wizarding world is able to be this aloof about 99% of the population they live amongst is incredible. In a real world that would be due to a tireless cadre of extremely knowledgable and capable wizards working to keep them separate. Unfortunately the fact that some hack like Voldie could make such a mess of things so easily kinda disproves that. Therefore the wizarding world is the luckiest bunch of idiots ever.

    • Mossy Feathers (She/They)
      link
      fedilink
      68 months ago

      You should read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I don’t want to spoil anything but it is so good. Honestly, book stores should stop selling the official Harry Potter books and just stock HPMOR.

      • Neato
        link
        fedilink
        English
        48 months ago

        I actually did forever ago. It was pretty good. Harry is too smart and way too smug for me but I did really like voldie’s plan and how they dealt with him. I wonder if that would work in the actual books. It kinda seems like it from book 2.

        • Mossy Feathers (She/They)
          link
          fedilink
          18 months ago

          To be fair, I think most people would be insufferably smug if they could blow everyone’s minds with some basic physics and creative thinking.

          Muggle: this is a standard Blu-ray optical disc. It is capable of storing up to 100gb of information, which [according to Google] roughly translates into one or more movies (depending on the video quality), 28,000 songs, 30,000 photos, or 67.8 million pages of text.

          Wizard: all of that in this tiny disc!? What is this? Magic?

          Muggle: nah bitch, that’s physics.

          Wizard: gasp physics! What a strange name for muggle-magic.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        28 months ago

        Second the recommendation for HPMOR. It does so much more service to the Wizarding World setting than JK Rowling ever did. It is outright one of my favorite pieces of literature just on its own merits.

    • Queen HawlSera
      link
      fedilink
      English
      58 months ago

      This is why I only liked the earlier Harry Potter books, the setting is clearly just not built to be taken seriously… so Goblet of Fire and onward demanding as such just fails.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        38 months ago

        You hit the nail on the head. It’s sort of like Doctor Who in the sense that it asks of you, “don’t look at any of this stuff too closely, just enjoy the ride.” Unfortunately for Harry Potter the structure of the story eventually required a bit more seriousness and the world can’t provide it very well.

      • Neato
        link
        fedilink
        English
        28 months ago

        Yeah. The series loses a lot when whimsy isn’t the driving theme.

    • @Heavybell
      link
      English
      58 months ago

      Or they see themselves as a superpower that is above needing to learn about others, perhaps?

      (I didn’t read the books so if this is obviously wrong I’m sorry)

      • Queen HawlSera
        link
        fedilink
        English
        48 months ago

        No that’s pretty much it, there’s even a subplot where Muggle Studies is an elective at Hogwarts, but only Hermonie wants to take it… and it’s solely so she can dunk on Wizards not knowing shit about Muggles while getting an Easy A