NECROMANCY!?
I'm a member of the College of Winterhold, In good stead.
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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is this not just affirming the premise of the sixth book? that's the whole reason why Potter found the Prince's spells so fascinating. school subjects are not meant to entertain. they are meant to teach.
also, as book five attests--as well as does the subject of history of magic--some syllabi and some subjects were way more boring than others.
my main gripe would be that nobody taught english or any other form of formal communication at hogwarts. i dunno how they all just didn't end up speaking like Hagrid.
I like the universes where being taught can also be fun. It has the funny side effect of making the pupil want to learn even more!
Fuck the universes that keep entertainment and learning separate.
Eh, it's a good shower thought.
But I have to disagree overall. Both of them showed interest in various subjects; Harry more than Ron.
But, I think you're right that the magic system is boring. It's memorizing fiddly combinations of words and movements.
Rowling didn't really set out to write a magic series. She was writing a boarding school series with a magical background, so she never did any proper world building. What little there is came well after the movies exploded, and is largely cobbled together.
While not as well written, it has much closer ties to things like the Chronicle of Narnia than something like Sanderson's stuff. The magic is fluff, technobabble, not what the series is actually about.
If there had been sections set in muggle schools, Harry and Ron would have been roughly the same. Harry likely would have been interested in some subjects, but distracted by the real story, while Ron would have been kind of drifting along, getting by grade wise without being interested. Ron might have been semi into soccer, but have been whining about it not being as good as quiddich.
I would also argue that if Sanderson, or a similarly world building capable author, had taken on the story, there still would have been a gradation in the trio's academic focus. You take three kid characters and have them being exactly the same about something like that, it won't work; you'd end up having to completely hand wave it with references to them being great students because it's more boring to have them all be the same level of interest in any given thing.
Even among real world scholarly sorts, the levels of interest in a given subject aren't going to be exactly the same, and a lot of those kids tend to start their friendships because of the "nerd" factor. The HP trio became friends partially by accident, but stayed friends as they grew together and shared experiences, so the dynamics just aren't the same.
Even the last three books, where it seems like there's discovery of an underlying system to the magic, the deathly hallows are a mcguffin, not a genuine world building tool.
So, I get where you're coming from, and agree that she did a pretty crappy job of making a coherent magic system. But it didn't really need one, it just needed silly phrases for kids to geek out over, and that she did very well
Damn, you must take some pretty long showers!
In Sanderson's super school book, there are 10 kids and only one of them is uninterested in piloting spacefighters. But he is interested in engineering, so he's still able to be a big nerd about the book's subject matter. Everyone else is either a great pilot who likes piloting, or fucking dies in a tragic scheme emphasising the brutality and pointlessness of war.
Sanderson doesn't write characters who just drift along without an interest in anything, because Sanderson writes books about topics that he makes interesting.
Rowling is only able to create characters who think Divination or History of Magic are boring, because she makes them boring. Sometimes on purpose!
Rowling is a fucking idiot.
I think magic went through a dark age in the HP universe, where all the words that were imbued with power were done so aeons ago, and then that knowledge of how they came to be was lost, with only a few handful having been rediscovered in the modern era.
Exceptions like "Point me" might just be english analogs of existing spells, rather than new inventions.
What's boring about the magic system in Harry Potter? Can you give specific examples?
- No limits on how often you can cast spells
- No explanation of how magic actually works
- No explanation of how magic objects are created
- No explanation of how spells are invented
- No explanation of how different species' magic differs
- All the spell names are silly words in English and poorly understood Latin
- Never explained why incantations or gestures are needed
- Never explained what makes spells other than Patronus hard or easy
- Never explained what makes a wizard powerful other than "they learned a lot of spells"
- Few/no limitations on spells, or limitations aren't explained
- No contextually dependent spells
- It's impossible to predict what will happen in the books based on understanding the magic system
- There are just. no. rules.
Brandon Sanderson is the best magic system writer in the world, and these are his "laws of magic" for creating an interesting magic system:
The First Law
Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.
The Second Law
Sanderson’s Second Law can be written very simply. It goes like this: Limitations > Powers
(Or, if you want to write it in clever electrical notation, you could say it this way: Ω > | though that would probably drive a scientist crazy.)
The Third Law
The third law is as follows: Expand what you already have before you add something new.
Rowling never follows these principles. The reader doesn't understand the magic, magic is rarely given sensical limitations we understand, and Rowling always adds new stuff instead of explaining what we already have.
I posit that the answers to all these questions I listed just don't exist. There is no explanation. Hermione does well in school because she rote memorises. Harry and Ron can't engage with the material in their homework because they don't understand it because nobody does.
What Harry Potter's magic system, insofar as it exists, does do well, is vibes. It feels like a wondrous magic system. That's what sold books. Harry likes all the vibes stuff in the books, like the spooky castle, fighting evil, being a strong wizard. He doesn't understand any of the magical theory, because it doesn't exist.
Never explained what makes a wizard powerful other than "they learned a lot of spells"
This obviously relates to the amount of midi-chlorians the wizard have
Do terrestrial wizards have midichlorians the same way space wizards do?
Harry Potter has a soft magic system - a system where pretty much everything can be explained by "a wizard did it", worlds like that are mystical and lawless (see also Lord of the Rings)
it seems you enjoy more hard magic systems like you described above, where the rules are explained, and you can more or less understand why things work the way they do (see also Earthsea by U.K. Le Guin or ATLA)
the hard/soft scale is not perfect, but it gives you a rough gist of what to expect
writers aren't limited to just one either! Percy Jackson has a soft magic system, a lot of "a ~~wizard~~ god did it!", where Kane Chronicles has a strict magic system bound by understandable rules (with only gods and divine interventions going above the rules)
No, I like soft magic systems when they're good. Take Star Wars. It's so soft. It's so soft that when GL introduced midichlorians to try and make it hard, everyone hated it.
The Force is good because it represents a certain philosophy. It's basically the Tao. Everything the Force can do is thematically appropriate and serves to teach us the philosophies of the Jedi, the Sith, and the other force users. The light side is harmony and believing in yourself. The dark side is domination and corruption. All the force powers support these themes and illustrate the force users embodying their philosophical beliefs in the world. Obi-Wan uses mind tricks because he believes in nonviolent misdirection. Palpatine uses lightning because he believes in ultimate power.
Rowling's magic system means... Magic. It's there to convince us that this fantasy world is magic. The Force can break Sanderson's laws because it means something more than just magic. It's philosophically consistent, and that's more important than being internally consistent. Rowling's magic only relates to Rowling's magic, so it needs to be internally consistent to work. And it isn't, so it doesn't.
yeah that's fair. don't get me wrong i wasn't trying to convince you to like Harry Potter's magic system, but you quoted "lack of rules" as a something you disliked about it so i gave a short explanation as to why that specific thing isn't what makes HP's magic feel shallow
I think Star Wars' magic system has rules. They're philosophical rules.
If you're paying attention to The Force Awakens, you notice that Rey is losing to Kylo, up until she gets angry at him. And then her stance changes, and she starts attacking way faster. Rey used the dark side. You only notice that happening if you understand the rules of the Force. And if you do, in the next movie, you're rewarded. Luke is teaching Rey, and she goes straight to the dark. Rey is a natural dark side user, way moreso than Anakin and Luke. If you knew the magic system, you saw that coming. Now, what this subplot culminates in is Rey Palpatine, which is bad writing. But that's not the magic system's fault. The magic system did its job perfectly. It's possible to understand how magic works in Star Wars, and that gives you insight into what will happen next. That's basically a tweak on Sanderson's first law. Episodes 8 and 9 also expand on the whole dyad thingy instead of adding something new, just like Sanderson says. And The Last Jedi introduces a limitation (You can't force project this far, the effort would kill you), and then uses it later in the same movie with Luke. The underlying principles of Sanderson's laws are there. The magic has rules and the rules inform the story.
i wasn't really thinking of star wars, moreso LOTR if anything, the magic there is the textbook definition of "a wizard did it" and yet despite that it's a beloved series and very few call for Gandalf's powers to have an understandable magical system behind them. but that's a gourmet meal of a book & the trilogy movie series, harry potter is junk food, enjoyable as long as you don't think too hard about what the ingredients are
We do, at the very least, know why Gandalf's magic works. The universe was sung into being, and Gandalf is a divine being who can participate in that song. We know where his magic comes from. We know it's divine in origin.
We don't know where Harry's magic comes from. Were wizard blessed by a god? Is it a magic gene? Is it fueled by intelligence, or imagination? There are no answers.
Take horcruxes vs the one ring. One is clearly a second rate copy of the other. But the one ring has a clear limitation for Sauron: It holds most of his power, and if it's destroyed, he can be defeated. What limitation do horcruxes have for Voldemort? He has to split his soul into parts. What does that mean practically? Nothing. It's not a limitation, it's just a reason the good guys don't use it. From the council of Elrond, we know the rules of the one ring, and we know how to use them to solve a problem. Sanderson's first law. Its limitation for Sauron is more interesting than its power for Sauron. Its limitation for the Fellowship is more interesting than its power for the Fellowship. Sanderson's second law.
not to compre whole books to whatever JK Rowling is doing on her tweeter this week (probably transphobia but who knows) but would it be any better if she twote one day "all magic in Harry Potter comes from the divine tree, at the beginning the tree blessed few people with its world bending power of imagination, this is how wizardry began, the tree spoke latin btw."
Besides, the story is more or less a POV of Harry's, a pre-teen to young adult boy who is way more excited to play sports than attend his lessons. Which to me is a good enough reason why we end up knowing fuck all about the magic of his world. If the POV was Hermione's, i'd expect there to be an indepth 3-chapter long research project about her work on a "Origins of Magic" essay for her History of Magic class. But because of the characterisation of Harry and also the tension in the story by the end, it makes sense to me why Harry doesn't really care about how things work, but how effective they can be. The question wasn't "wow a horcrux? incredibly rare black magic, i must study it to understand how and why it works to one day maybe be able to undo it", the question was "horcrux huh? and it makes voldie immortal-ish? alright lads, let's find a way to smash it"
and to answer your question - horcruxes of all things are pretty well elaborated on. Voldemort splits his soul and attaches it to objects/people. The price? A part of his soul and another person's life. The purpose? Ability to be recreated from each of those pieces, achieving immortality-ish, as long as he has someone living to do the ritual, and his father's skeleton still has some bones left ig. The limitation seems to be that he looks evil after being reborn? and i think there was some implication that the process is incredibly painful on the spiritual level
i think a better example would be the sorting hat because wtf is that. is that a person turned into a hat? is it an enchanted object? it can talk in your mind, can read your soul to then sort you into a house, a sword can come out of it when it feels you're in need and worthy of it? No explanation, no described limitations, a power to read one's mind in later books is attributed mostly to voldemort & looking at how Harry handles it it's incredibly emotionally exhausting. how can that hat be more powerful than the most powerful evil wizard?
Looking evil isn't a limitation, it's flavour text. It doesn't affect the story, it just gives us vibes. If there's one thing Rowling is good at, it's writing flavour text to convey vibes. But there's no plot in that limitation. Horcruxes break Sanderson's second law, and that's why they're not as interesting as the One Ring. The One Ring puts challenges in front of every character who interacts with it: Sauron, Isildur, Elrond, Bilbo, Gandalf, Frodo, Gollum, Galadriel, even Samwise. It promises all of them something they want, and takes a price from every one, changing the course of the story many times. Samwise is the least affected, but it still takes away something he loves; his best friend.
Horcruxes do four things: they kill Dumbledore, give Harry a quest, make Ron grumpy, and ex machina the deus. Bringing Voldy back and manifesting Riddle don't count because those are retcons, and we're talking about writing processes.
Two of those things they do are just because they're a macguffin. Literally anything the characters want could have been substituted. Ron grumpy is, again, flavour text. The Deus ex Machina is the one interesting thing they do to change the story.
hm i feel like the distinction comes down to vibes here. if i were to be reductive i could describe the One Ring in a similar way "it corrupts gollum, gives Frodo a quest, makes Boromir crave power and turn on his companions in a moment of weakness, and (from Sauron's POV) hobbits destroying it is a deus ex machina". imo horcruxes as an idea were not that bad but,
to me, the main difference here is how they're used in the story. The One Ring is the driving force from the beginning, it's already well established in the lore of the world, and the only surprise to the universe's scholars is how it suddenly found itself in a hobbit's hands. Where horcruxes appear suddenly in the second to last book (obviously not counting the diary because it's clearly been deemed a horcrux when JKR came up with them and thought the diary fit the vibe well enough). First 4 Harry Potter books are bascially episodic, an overaching plot only emerges by the end of book 4. And LOTR is one cohesive story with a clear goal from the beginning, which allows it to unravel in a satisfying and effective way
It also corrupts Isildur, makes Bilbo grumpy, gives us insight into Galadriel, creates tension between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, gives Gollum multiple personalities, starts an argument at Rivendell, makes Gandalf fuck off for a decade, gives us insight into the strengths of hobbits, weakens Frodo, drives the epilogue, creates the ringwraiths, and contextualises the stagnancy of the elves.
absolutely! the One Ring is much better developed than horcruxes, i was being reductive on purpose there. The Ring is presented as integral to the story from the very beginning and acts like it, serving as a driving force for both the plot and character development for everyone involved. Horcruxes mimic similar characteristics as a literary device but fail to reach the same level of development
anyway this seems like a natural end to the topic, so let me just say thank you for the conversation :) i always appreciate a nice nerd out and analysis of media. hope you have a nice day!
You know what? Rowling did actually follow Sanderson's laws with one specific bit of magic. The time turner. The time turner has a very simple limitation: you cannot change the past. But, you can do things in the past that don't change what you experienced the first time. We understand how the time turner works, and Rowling comes up with a clever way to make it work, which makes sense to us. That's the second and first law! The time turner is well written!
And then she broke the third rule. She didn't expand on it, she added something new in book 4 instead. So people asked "what about the time turner", and in the next book she got mad and destroyed them all so she'd never be asked "what about the time turner" again.
Rowling wrote something really interesting that actually makes sense. And then decided she didn't want it in her story anymore. Because Rowling doesn't actually like writing interesting magic. And that's why Harry and Ron aren't very interested in magic. Rowling was never able to write a scene where a character actually geeks out about how magic works, because she doesn't care how it works. She's not interested.
Sanderson is such a beast, everything he has written that I've read is solid gold!
Nothing memorable enough to mention.
Or they're just lazy? 🤔
Yeah, OP must not spend much time around teenagers
Not any more than your average school kid I'd say. There are many subjects that are or can be interesting that are thought in schools, but can be taught in the most boring way. They enjoyed DADA with Lupin quite much for example.
There are also other subjects not related to practicing magic directly.
Yeah, book 3 is the one where Rowling made an effort to delve into the workings of the magic system. The Patronus is the only spell we actually learn how to cast. (No, levio-sah doesn't count). The time turner has limitations which allow Rowling to tell an interesting story with it.
Rowling made magic interesting for one book, and Harry became interested in magic.
Then she changed her mind.
I'm currently going though the books and from what I can tell, Harry especially takes issues with some teachers. He hates history and doesn't understand divination but he's fine with charms, defense against the dark arts and even potions once Snape no longer teaches it.
It's just that during the lessons she describes, they usually have stuff like Quidditch or Voldemort stuff going on so they don't really pay attention. They also don't like doing homework so they let Hermione do it for them. And they still did pretty well on the OWLs so all in all, I think they were fine with class but by and large, she just doesn't really write about classes that went their regular course.