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It could be that wizards are just culturally slapdash and slack. Like not just British wizards but almost all wizards. After all if you could just wave a wand and get all your necessities provided for, why work all that hard?
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Dec 28, 2014 15:40
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There's probably something of a pacifist streak in them too, because I can only imagine the deaths and maiming that would happen pretty much everywhere if people were simply allowed (and basically encouraged) to open-carry wherever they went from the age of 11 onward.
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Dec 28, 2014 19:04
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PT6A posted:There's probably something of a pacifist streak in them too, because I can only imagine the deaths and maiming that would happen pretty much everywhere if people were simply allowed (and basically encouraged) to open-carry wherever they went from the age of 11 onward. The list of characters who are hospitalized as a result of underage duelling includes Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, plus Hagrid hexes Dudley for stealing a cake. Pretty much everyone gets in a very violent fight at a rather young age, and wizards overlook it instead of expelling students for trying to permanently maim fellow 12-year-olds. The wizarding world is a violent place, even though people don't casually use the Killing Curse.
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Dec 28, 2014 21:28
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On the bright side though permanent injuries are very rare and almost no magic-induced injury appears incurable, short of death.
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Dec 28, 2014 22:11
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The thing that most stands out to me about the wizarding world is Acid Pops They sell that poo poo in stores and they literally melt your tongue. I mean I assume it's a quick fix but Jesus Christ.
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Dec 28, 2014 22:34
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:On the bright side though permanent injuries are very rare and almost no magic-induced injury appears incurable, short of death. See Lockhart. And all those people who were murdered at the hands of magic. Dudley's pig tail had to be removed via a hospital, and if Muggles didn't have that kind of magic, he would've been screwed. And then there's Marietta Edgecomb and the Pimples of Sneak in book 5, And that's not to mention the Longbottom's Cruciatus-Curse induced insanity. Giving schoolchildren a wand is begging for an apocalyptic event.
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Dec 28, 2014 22:37
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I don't know if you can really make a good one to one comparison with guns/wands though. Guns can't perfectly mend a broken cup or charm your vegetable garden to grow better. They're rather practical too. A lot of the spells (like the killing curse) require a lot of intent behind them to pull off. Just knowing the incantation and wand movements seems like not enough. You've got to really want to get your murder on vs. guns going off accidently.
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Dec 29, 2014 00:15
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Variant_Eris posted:See Lockhart. Lockhart tends to be played off as a comedic character, but considering his modus operandi, I've got to wonder how much damage he did to other people's lives before the events of Chamber Of Secrets.
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Dec 29, 2014 00:22
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LaughMyselfTo posted:Lockhart tends to be played off as a comedic character, but considering his modus operandi, I've got to wonder how much damage he did to other people's lives before the events of Chamber Of Secrets. At least 9, depending on how many people he screwed with apart from the authors.
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Dec 29, 2014 00:38
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Variant_Eris posted:See Lockhart. And all those people who were murdered at the hands of magic. Dudley's pig tail had to be removed via a hospital, and if Muggles didn't have that kind of magic, he would've been screwed. And then there's Marietta Edgecomb and the Pimples of Sneak in book 5, And that's not to mention the Longbottom's Cruciatus-Curse induced insanity. Yeah, basically it seems like magic can cure anything except death and insanity.
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Dec 29, 2014 00:43
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Isn't Mad-Eye missing a leg and an eye? Also, Dumbledore's hand in HBP. And George's ear. And Wormtail's hand. I think at some point it's said that dark magic curses/disfigurements are sometimes incurable. I mean, they do have magic prosthetics for a few of those examples, though. thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Dec 29, 2014 00:50
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ashez2ashes posted:I don't know if you can really make a good one to one comparison with guns/wands though. Guns can't perfectly mend a broken cup or charm your vegetable garden to grow better. They're rather practical too. A lot of the spells (like the killing curse) require a lot of intent behind them to pull off. Just knowing the incantation and wand movements seems like not enough. You've got to really want to get your murder on vs. guns going off accidently. Well, yeah, obviously wands are a lot more useful than guns, but they can be just as dangerous. Mad-Eye warns Harry about carrying his wand in his back pocket, so wands obviously don't have safeties, and as young wizards prove, you can even do magic accidentally without a wand, so I can see how being really pissed off and out-of-control could cause your wand to do something dangerous. Minor duels in school aren't seen as a big deal, but what happens when someone has a bit too much to drink and decides to Sectumsempra that rear end in a top hat who's been pissing him off, etc.? The fact that more people aren't sporting serious or permanent injuries is a testament to the amount of self-control that most wizards have. Perhaps in the wizard community, laziness and apathy is a positive trait for these reasons.
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Dec 29, 2014 01:38
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Is it only the movie where wizards have wand holsters? That seems like a good idea, but practical and wizards never work out well in Harry Potter.
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Dec 29, 2014 06:45
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ashez2ashes posted:I don't know if you can really make a good one to one comparison with guns/wands though. Guns can't perfectly mend a broken cup or charm your vegetable garden to grow better. They're rather practical too. A lot of the spells (like the killing curse) require a lot of intent behind them to pull off. Just knowing the incantation and wand movements seems like not enough. You've got to really want to get your murder on vs. guns going off accidently. And yet, you've got spells like sectumsempra that work fine even if the wizard casting it has only the vaguest notion of its usage.
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Dec 29, 2014 06:51
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JohnSherman posted:And yet, you've got spells like sectumsempra that work fine even if the wizard casting it has only the vaguest notion of its usage. I generally assume that Harry's natural affinity for dark spells is due to having a chunk of Voldemort in his soul.
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Dec 29, 2014 06:55
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Sectumsempra was a super weird spell that Snape designed himself. Every adult wizard that witnessed it being used was utterly shocked by it, which suggests there normally aren't many spells like that. Permanent injuries for wizards seem limited to diseases and curses. Physical damage is easily fixed, but things like George's ear have a curse backing them up; it's not so much that the wizards can't fix the ear as that the curse blocks the magic from fixing it, and nobody can get rid of the curse. If the other wizard had just used reducto, or a knife, the ear could've been regrown easily. Curses seem to require a lot of intent and hate, they have to be really deliberate (even sectumsempra wasn't an unhealable "real" curse), and in duels wizards just use reducto or whatever, so that damage can be easily healed afterwards.
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Dec 29, 2014 07:40
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That's what Moody points out in his first class, that Neville or Ron could point their wands at him and scream Avada Kedavra as loud as they wanted and it'd maybe give him a nosebleed. Didn't that also get proven by Harry trying to use the Cruciatus Curse on Bellatrix in 5?
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Dec 29, 2014 07:45
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TARDISman posted:That's what Moody points out in his first class, that Neville or Ron could point their wands at him and scream Avada Kedavra as loud as they wanted and it'd maybe give him a nosebleed. Didn't that also get proven by Harry trying to use the Cruciatus Curse on Bellatrix in 5? Incidentally, this is something that bugs me. If there's no countercurse and no protection against Avada Kedavra, what determines if it kills Moody or not? Is every Killing Curse either effective or not, and the effective ones can't be stopped by anything? Or does their power exist on a sliding scale, which means that a weak Avada Kedavra can be stopped by simply being a powerful enough wizard? I suppose I can't expect accuracy from Moody, since he's really Barty Crouch in disguise.
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Dec 29, 2014 09:37
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I think it was more that they wouldn't actually be able to cast it at all, no matter how hard they tried because they were a)not filled with hateful intent and b) 14. Which is to say it's unblockable when it gets cast at all, but a bunch of children couldn't manage that.
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Dec 29, 2014 10:11
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Doesn't stop people from dodging the curse by apparating. The fight in the 5th book between Dumbledore and Voldemort was great, and personally I found it much more entertaining and exciting than the film.
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Dec 29, 2014 14:51
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Chamale posted:Incidentally, this is something that bugs me. If there's no countercurse and no protection against Avada Kedavra, what determines if it kills Moody or not? Is every Killing Curse either effective or not, and the effective ones can't be stopped by anything? Or does their power exist on a sliding scale, which means that a weak Avada Kedavra can be stopped by simply being a powerful enough wizard? I suppose I can't expect accuracy from Moody, since he's really Barty Crouch in disguise. It's probably a case of "If you can't cast it nothing happens." We saw that with other spells where the kids hosed it up and nothing happened. Transfiguration, which is notoriously difficult, seems to be a lot "absolutely nothing happens for a long while, then you gently caress it up, then you get it right." Same with Disapperation. Even Hermione took a while to get that one to do anything but stand in a circle.
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Dec 29, 2014 15:37
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Harry survived Avada Kedavra twice. Though if sacrificing oneself to protect another is the only defense, I guess it doesn't exactly save lives.
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Dec 29, 2014 15:57
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zachol posted:Sectumsempra was a super weird spell that Snape designed himself. Every adult wizard that witnessed it being used was utterly shocked by it, which suggests there normally aren't many spells like that. Sectumsempra can be an unhealable real curse... it's what took George's ear off. So it wasn't unhealable in the hands of Harry, who didn't even know what it did at the time, but in the hands of its inventor, it's a different story.
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Dec 29, 2014 16:12
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Plucky Brit posted:Doesn't stop people from dodging the curse by
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Dec 29, 2014 16:47
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Harry was wanting to hurt Draco pretty badly in the Sectumsempra scene. He was shocked at himself afterwards, but he's not above some darkness of his own.
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Dec 29, 2014 17:22
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thexerox123 posted:Sectumsempra can be an unhealable real curse... it's what took George's ear off. So it wasn't unhealable in the hands of Harry, who didn't even know what it did at the time, but in the hands of its inventor, it's a different story. This would make sense if only Snape knows the countercurse. That is why he was able to heal Draco but George's ear was unsalvageable. A powerful advantage of designing your own horrible dark curses instead of using more well-known ones, presumably. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Dec 29, 2014 21:06
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Jazerus posted:This would make sense if only Snape knows the countercurse. That is why he was able to heal Draco but George's ear was unsalvageable. A powerful advantage of designing your own horrible dark curses instead of using more well-known ones, presumably. I always imagined it as the words themselves don't really matter. It's more of the intent of the wizard, which is why the really competent adult wizards can silent cast. The words can help to focus one's mind on the spell, and due to the rote learning process in wizard school, a lot of adults still use the words out of habit (and most wizards are basically high school graduates who work in a bureaucracy, not professors or professional aurors/werewolf hunters/dragon tamers, or other people with an expert level understanding). This also allows for non-latin languages to have magic spells, too. 
The North Tower fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 03:49
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The North Tower posted:I always imagined it as the words themselves don't really matter. It's more of the intent of the wizard, which is why the really competent adult wizards can silent cast. The words can help to focus one's mind on the spell, and due to the rote learning process in wizard school, a lot of adults still use the words out of habit (and most wizards are basically high school graduates who work in a bureaucracy, not professors or professional aurors/werewolf hunters/dragon tamers, or other people with an expert level understanding). But does it allow for the best spell, "Eat Slugs!"?
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Dec 30, 2014 03:55
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thexerox123 posted:But does it allow for the best spell, "Eat Slugs!"? Absolutely. Since the incantation is "Slugulus Eructo" and Ron only shouts "Eat Slugs!", clearly the intent is more important.
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Dec 30, 2014 03:58
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There is definitely a big gap between what we see of magic being taught and what we see practiced at the higher levels. Sectumsempra really comes out of nowhere and raises some pretty interesting points about magic and Snape. How do you develop a spell to the point where someone can say the word and cast it without knowing what it does. Presumably it is powered from some kind of negative energy/intent like AK but how does *magic* know to duplicate the effect of the original incantation with a new caster. Prior to that it would be easy to assume that incantations are just labels given to a particular magical process. Like Chinese wizards perhaps would be using a different word for Accio and that the incantations are more due to repeated generational instruction. Wandless magic sort of supports this. But then Sectumsempra throws a wrench into that. Presumably it'd mean that creating a spell creates *something* in some magical aether that becomes a spell that other wizards can tap into by repeating that incantation without precise knowledge of that spell. And Snape developed this in school? with the amount of experimentation the Weasley twins did making workable products we can only assume Snape was busy maiming animals or house elves or something to develop Sectumsempra. That's pretty goddamn sinister. tl;dr a wizard did some magic.
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Dec 31, 2014 01:07
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Knowing Wizards you don't have to say the words and just mean it, but it's been tradition so long they won't change. Either that or they just really think the Latin sounds more fancy to them. Who would say Float instead of Wingardium Leviosa?
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Dec 31, 2014 01:29
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To me it'd be much more terrifying if Voldemort just said "Die" as his killing curse.
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Dec 31, 2014 01:46
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I've always kinda looked at magic, and the process of creating new spells, similarly to how Dresden Files does it. The big thing is the intent of your will pushing out on the magical energy in the world, and the reason spells have names and the like in the Harry Potter universe is because it's literally taught in a primary/secondary school setting. Like everyone learns "swish and flick and wingardium leviosa makes things fly", but a teen with aptitude that had never had instruction could make the same thing happen by saying "swooshy swish" if he wanted, as long as he was envisioning it happening. Kinda like how
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Dec 31, 2014 05:37
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jivjov posted:I've always kinda looked at magic, and the process of creating new spells, similarly to how Dresden Files does it. The big thing is the intent of your will pushing out on the magical energy in the world, and the reason spells have names and the like in the Harry Potter universe is because it's literally taught in a primary/secondary school setting. Like everyone learns "swish and flick and wingardium leviosa makes things fly", but a teen with aptitude that had never had instruction could make the same thing happen by saying "swooshy swish" if he wanted, as long as he was envisioning it happening. It's like how Harry makes the glass disappear so Cousin Beefaweefs falls through the glass. Maybe Fred and George have a secret twin language which allows them to gently caress with wizard society by creating their spells? Were there any autistic wizards in the HP universe? Maybe the wizard who runs the Hogwarts express?
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Dec 31, 2014 07:35
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In terms of magical power, Lockhart was kind of autistic in that regard. Crabbe and Goyle also fit the prerequisites quite nicely. In terms of actual autism? Everyone who works for the Ministry. And Dumbledore to some extent. Variant_Eris fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 08:12
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Wasn't there a note next to the Sectumsempra spell that said "good for enemies" or something like that? Maybe Harry just subconsciously added meaning to that, and Snape's meaning is slightly different (able to prevent regeneration).
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Dec 31, 2014 09:06
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jivjov posted:I've always kinda looked at magic, and the process of creating new spells, similarly to how Dresden Files does it. The big thing is the intent of your will pushing out on the magical energy in the world, and the reason spells have names and the like in the Harry Potter universe is because it's literally taught in a primary/secondary school setting. Like everyone learns "swish and flick and wingardium leviosa makes things fly", but a teen with aptitude that had never had instruction could make the same thing happen by saying "swooshy swish" if he wanted, as long as he was envisioning it happening. Yeah exactly. I think it's Dresden where all the wizards sort of make their own incantations up so it makes sense to *them* which is why Dresden just uses lovely latin and other wizards would use ancient greek etc. It's the intent that matters. In Hogwarts they're just rote learning the names because of the standardised curriculum. That's why Sectemsempra becomes a weird anomaly for magical consistency. It seems peculiar knowing the name of the spell but not the purpose would make it work. Obviously narratively Jo was going for a big shock scene and that's why the spell works like that.
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Dec 31, 2014 15:02
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jivjov posted:I've always kinda looked at magic, and the process of creating new spells, similarly to how Dresden Files does it. The big thing is the intent of your will pushing out on the magical energy in the world, and the reason spells have names and the like in the Harry Potter universe is because it's literally taught in a primary/secondary school setting. Like everyone learns "swish and flick and wingardium leviosa makes things fly", but a teen with aptitude that had never had instruction could make the same thing happen by saying "swooshy swish" if he wanted, as long as he was envisioning it happening.
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Dec 31, 2014 15:17
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Paragon8 posted:Yeah exactly. I think it's Dresden where all the wizards sort of make their own incantations up so it makes sense to *them* which is why Dresden just uses lovely latin and other wizards would use ancient greek etc. It's the intent that matters. Well, again, the Voldemort soul piece is convenient there. We already know having Volde's soul in him lets Harry do things he couldn't otherwise. No reason to argue that if Voldemort knew what Sectemsempra does (and it seems like his kinda spell and Snape did legitimately work for him for a while), the soul-piece let Harry do it. Probably not the intended thing but you can use it pretty easily.
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Dec 31, 2014 15:19
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ImpAtom posted:No reason to argue that if Voldemort knew what Sectemsempra does (and it seems like his kinda spell and Snape did legitimately work for him for a while), the soul-piece let Harry do it. "Well Mr. Snape when you applied to become a death eater we were really impressed with the resume itself; dark and brooding childhood and of course all of those poison extracurriculars didn't hurt one bit! But I am seeing down here in the "Notable Evil" column you have something written... Invented Sectemsempra? Would you mind talking a little about that?" Paints an interesting picture of the review process for what must have been pretty tough positions to get during the initial dark reign.
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Dec 31, 2014 22:29
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