Harry Potter and the Military Industrial Complex
This is explored at length in the books. The wizard supremacists are an allegory for race supremacists, and it’s pointed out repeatedly that they’re delusional, broadly impotent, and small-minded. The death eaters believe so completely in their godhead and his divine right to rule that they neglect to consider even the most basic countermeasures or alternatives. There’s some “death of Stalin” paranoia but it’s overwhelmingly unforced incompetence.
Voldemort, likewise, blocks out even the potential for his lessers to outdo him. He is utterly infallible and his insecurities as an incest orphan to a fallen house will not allow him to feel any differently. Meanwhile, he’s been repeatedly circumvented and beaten by a group of teenagers, and his brewing plans will lead to the complete genocide of wizardkind upon reaching the world stage. It perfectly encapsulates the way race supremacists view the world and why they fail so frequently. The enemy is both strong and weak.
Darn shame rowling’s turned into what she hates. She wasn’t terrible at writing populism 101.
She just wrote what she actually believes and it ended up being biting satire by accident.
Fun fact: Rowling thinks Lolita is a beautiful and tragic love story
If wizard supremacists are an allegory for white supremacists, are normal wizards normal white people and muggles “people of color”?
That’s one interpretation, absolutely. Or you could say Han Chinese, racist Han Chinese, and Uighurs. Or Israelis, racist israelis, and Gazans. Or white Americans, white American racists, and native Americans. Or white Brits/Irish, straight/gay, seafaring Scandinavians/prey, etc…
In group vs out group, with perceived genetic/social differences.
Wizards would be rounded up and experimented on to try and find out how to make it an injection to make super soldiers. There’s absolutely no way wizards and magical beings wouldn’t end up in test tubes.
Well this was oddly nostalgic for me to read. You immediately reminded of FFVI
I had trouble believing Harry Potter as a kid. The whole house elf thing seemed unrealistic. Then when I grew up, I realised English people really are that racist.
I remember seeing a meme of Harry Potter, but I can’t find it anymore. Basically a conversation between Harry and dumbledore.
Harry says to dumbledore:
We are wizards, we could cure cancer. Fix world hunger and end all wars. Why we don’t do it?
Dumbledore says:
Harry you forgot the most important reason: we are British
Found it - https://existentialcomics.com/comic/391
you don’t enjoy a little decorating decapitated slave heads for some wholesome Christmas joy?
Ok, WHAT?
That’s in the book. Grimmauld Place has the preserved heads of all the Black family elves hanging by the door. During book 7 when Harry and gang are hiding there, they put Santa hats and beards on the heads for Christmas.
These are supposed to be the good guys.
Yeah, there are parts of HP that are deeply fucked up, come to think of it. Thanks!
Shaun has a takedown of the entire series on his channel, and this is one of my favorite parts:
so our heroes decide to decorate their decapitated slave heads with little Christmas hats…
now I’m gonna need to hit pause here, next to the Christmas slave heads, and ask: what is happening right now… why are the Harry Potter books like this
not my absolute favorite quote either. long video but definitely recommend; even Shaun’s extremely dry delivery breaks at a couple points: https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs
Harry Potter and the poorly-constructed magic ruleset.
Harry Potter and the Mysterious Ticking Sound
Harry Potter and the infrared Laser designator spot
It’s a pipe bomb!
Voldemort Voldemort
Oooooh Voldy Voldemort
Voldemort!
Imagine the IRA, except they can fly, go invisible, or simply step into a phone booth or fireplace and vanish, and had an entire other dimension they could disappear into where they could be self sufficient.
Technology means nothing if you don’t even know who you enemy is.
Heck, they can mind control people, wipe their memories, or take a potion and assume their identity. It would be like fighting the Face Dancers from Dune if they were all trained in The Voice.
Honestly, I only really see wizards losing immediately in England, lol. It’s canon that many wizards can use spells silently and/or without a wand, and some even create their own spells; they could likely incapacitate a soldier (or many soldiers, depending on the spell) without raising suspicion by having to aim a wand or gun.
I dunno, Magneto gives the US Army a run for their money in X-Men - I would think a similarly talented or experienced wizard would have comparable powers.
True enough, the capabilities of Magic haven’t been explored enough canonically to disprove that - but if the government learned of Magic, the first thing they’d do is subvert some wizards to their side, who might be able to counteract them - in many ways, it’s a battle of statecraft as it is of actual power.
I don’t disagree, but I also don’t think that that’s enough on its face to determine with any certainty that muggles would “win” whatever conflict arose. An army would definitely have a tactical advantage, but wizards are presumably educated in order to be self-sufficient and many of the creature comforts they’re accustomed to can’t actually be acquired with muggle resources - at least from what we see in England, they have their own political systems, press, and currency.
But they were able to setup the core of their commercial and governance infrastructure in the middle of London, with no particular notice from muggles - not to mention, we know that the government already knows about wizards (MoM liaises with the PM). So there must be a quid pro quo already in place, with the government tolerating and aiding in the existence of a semi-independent polity in their heartlands in return for unspecified benefits, probably defence against foreign wizards.
Magneto is uniquely capable of stoping most weapons. I don’t think that is a good comparison.
Magnetism’s just magic anyway. Who can explain that shit?
Easy. Just imagine a ball of uniform charge distribution that’s spinning, and add relativity. Except it’s not a ball, isn’t spinning, and doesn’t really have a defined location or speed so good luck with the relativity bit.
Me, but it’s a secret.
The greatest problem you would have fighting the Wizarding World is there is no easy way to tell who your enemy is. You’d be fighting an insurgency that can just vanish into thin air, with some pretty potent abilities.
That’s one of many many plot holes in Harry Potter.
There’s really no depth to the world building beyond, “What if British public schools taught magic?”
It doesn’t make sense in any context beyond that because the author never considered it from any context beyond that. Whenever you run into some crazy crap in HP and wonder, “Why TF would anyone do it that way?” The answer is almost always, "Because that’s how they do it in British public schools.
It’s also a bit odd that the spell so dangerous it was the absolute peak of the Dark Arts was a spell that just killed one person, and not even reliably. Where are the spells to call down meteors and cause earthquakes?
Finding plot holes in Harry Potter is like shooting fish in a barrel. There’s no challenge to it.
Rowling took “a wizard did it” as far as it can go.
It being based off of public schools is a bit odd given that Hogwarts is a boarding school.
That’s just the name.
In the UK, “public school” just means that admissions are generally open to the public. They’re still very expensive, are often boarding schools, and tend to have a lot of castles on their campuses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
Huh I was not aware of that. Very different from how that term is used in the US.
Yeah. It confused me at first too.
It’s not too bad when they use some word that we never use at all. I had no trouble figuring out what a “bellend” is.
It’s more of an issue when they use a word differently.
Me: “Yo blondie, that’s not how you’re supposed to wear condoms.”
Nigel Covington III: “You git, I most certainly do wear rubbers on my feet.”I thought “rubber” meant “eraser.”
“Fanny” is my favorite. Both referring to anatomy, but one is on the back and everyone has one while the other is on the front and only one sex has one.
I almost forgot “pants”.
The reason Hermione is sworn to secrecy about the wizarding world is that they know if muggles found out there was a deep state, the revolution would be swift.
It comes down to how powerful static wards are, and how much technology just gets corrupted by magic. The real power of the wizards is memory and time manipulation. Close range is definitely in favor of wizards, you can’t surprise them unless they are intentionally careless. They can always go back a few hours and ambush you back. Chaos would ensue if they deleted every memory before 5 of a handful of leaders.
The tech killing thing is poorly defined, but hogwarts seems to disable electronic devices within a radius. If it’s similar to an emp, it may have countermeasures, but it’s hard to say they also work on magic. Operating within the radius of somewhere like that would be difficult.
There’s also the animagus issue. Every dog, cat, bird, or bug is a potential spy or assassin that is practically undetectable.
The big question is can spells stop a large bomb/nuke. Even if they couldn’t, it would be possible for wizards to escape the blast zone pretty easily, unless they couldn’t detect the attack.
I think the big weakness would be sniper fire that may be fast enough to prevent reactions at the borders of wards.
Ah yes, the good old solution of every contemporary fantasy world.
“modern technology just doesn’t work”
I mean, depending on the book, you have already accepted a number of ridiculous premises by real-world standards. It’s surprising to me that “and by the way, it interferes with or can be used to disable various kinds of technology” is where you would decide to roll your eyes.
Because it’s a cop out. You’re not putting any thought into how your systems would interact with modern tech. Even if you really need a modern setting with no technology, at least be imaginative with why that happens and maybe let that reason affect your setting in some other ways as well. It’s the difference between a world that feels real, messy and casual, and some hypothetical scenario you made to tell your story.
Harry potter isn’t the worst world for sure. Like Rowling does a pretty good job in explaining how wizards stay invisible from regular society, with the ministry of magic, their memory erasing and multiple incidents that all make it feel very real. But for technology we get little beyond Arthur weasly having a interest in collecting electric plugs or something.
There’s also no good logic or intuition about what technology does or doesn’t work. An electric kettle won’t work but a whole ass car will? It prevents any conflict that has technology involved from having stakes because you don’t have limits or an idea of what’s dangerous/important
There’s also no good logic or intuition about what technology does or doesn’t work. An electric kettle won’t work but a whole ass car will?
Sometimes the answer could be “hey, we don’t know everything there is to know about our magic. Sure would be nice to know why some kinds of tech are more affected than others, but our level of understanding isn’t there yet.”
Because it’s a cop out. You’re not putting any thought into how your systems would interact with modern tech. Even if you really need a modern setting with no technology, at least be imaginative with why that happens and maybe let that reason affect your setting in some other ways as well.
But maybe it doesn’t matter to the story. HP isn’t a role playing game (there probably is one now, but at the time it was created). There’s all kinds of things we didn’t and/or don’t fully understand about our real world. If they had defined the “rules” of HP magic in a way that satisfies the concern in your example, I don’t see how it would have impacted the story much. If anything it might have killed some of the fantastical bits of the storytelling. It’s not that sort of magic - I’d call it a “soft-ish” magic system if we’re going to define things that way. Muggle tech is unreliable around it - and Weasley had apparently done some kind of tinkering to kind of get the car to work because he was a geek like that. Works for me.
I get your points, I’m not trying to say you are wrong, I’m just saying the importance of that sort of detail can be kind of subjective. What I enjoy about the HP universe isn’t the slightest bit ruffled by that little bit of ambiguity. In a universe where the author really tried to keep things real feeling, I probably would be bothered, but there is so much more to criticize about HP before you get to muggle tech for someone who wants magical realism that it just seems like a weird stopping point to me.
Maybe you just prefer a hard magic system which is totally valid, but IMO that’s a matter of personal preference, not “correctness” if that makes any sense.
I feel like there are actually multiple counter-examples to this, but they’re all much better realised worlds than Harry Potter
Yes, Rowling was pretty lazy about the edges of world building that weren’t directly related to her story.
More like: they know how modern technology works and have designed spells dedicated to preventing them from functioning.
I cast ICBM
of course muggles would win a war against wizarding folk, that is why they made the international statue of secrecy (also cause jkr is a hack who never wants to bother extrapolating from the consequences of her own worldbuilding)
This is not clear cut. One teleport into a nuke silo + a brainwash spell = big problems
Edit (yes maybe one or two other brainwashes to get the proper codes forwarded)
Who’s to say some governments aren’t keenly aware of the wizarding world and they have their own protections and wizards
Teleport iceberg over person
Nothing beats gravity
But apparition becomes exponentially more difficult when you are bringing more with you. That’s why tandem apparations are licensed differently from regular, and why ron, who knew how to apparate, got splinched when he accidently brought yaxley(?)
That being said, most wizards do not understand the concept of electricity or the finer details of physics. So just post a video giving the wizards assassin’s your current location and wait for them to appear. Except your current location is in a room with an electric floor. Or filled with tear gas. They wouldn’t recognize a gas mask or know what rubber boots do.
Bubblehead charm and shield charm? And teargas wouldn’t much harm the effectiveness of a wizard who can do non-verbal casting. Unless they’re in a closed space with it for a loong time without any protection.
Also, the whole “wizards don’t understand muggle tech” doesn’t make sense seeing how many muggleborns there are. Like honestly, Hermione wouldn’t bring pencils/pens to school? Would pens not work in Hogwarts , as “muggle tech”? Pencils?
And how on Earth is it that non-muggle wizards into muggle shit can’t like, visit a library or purchase an encyclopedia? They clearly interact with the muggle world, and that’s not illegal, nor are muggle objects (unless you enchant them.)
The worst part is how muggle-borns can have siblings who aren’t wizards and how muggle-born kids seem to not be able to keep any of the friends they had before turning 11. That or we’re meant to believe 12-year olds wouldn’t boast about being actually magical to their best friends on their first vacation.
Does that mean it’s harder to apparate if you’re fat?
Nothing beats gravity
Wingardium LevioSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
that’d be an issue, though nukes are pretty indiscriminate, and wizarding folk generally live among muggles, not in one isolated wizard country, which limits their usefulness. they can’t exactly nuke london without destroying diagon alley, and vice versa. plus, you need to know your destination pretty well to apparate, so there’d need to be some more involved infiltration beforehand.
Sure, I’m handwaving a lot, just saying the ability to manipulate minds and teleport to places (even with the kidnapped person) presents an x factor that is hard to overstate.
If wizards were incapable of shielding against fast moving projectiles, they would have more spells dedicated to creating fast moving projectiles against their opponents.
I think part of the subtext of the wizarding world is its parallels to British sensibility. You do things the way they’ve always been done because that’s just the way of it. You don’t come up with new spells, you rely on the tried and true spells that have been around for centuries.
Absolutely every genius or inventor is tarred with the crazy eccentric brush
I’m not much of a harry potter fan but wasn’t that the whole point of being in hiding
They were being killed by muggles left and right, and this was way before the invention of guns, so, yeah, they weren’t winning that war in any case.
That’s a good point
Actually, at some point in the books they talk about this, and somebody comments how Muggles seldom would actually catch a real witch or wizard. And if they did, the witch or wizard would cast a spell to shield themselves from the fire and pretend to be in pain.
There’s a WP. Voldemort succeeds and then gets drunk on his own power and attempts to take over the muggle world (pure blood and all that) and he promptly gets his ass handed to him by the military.
Nah he opens a portal that goes directly to Skid Row, he is instantly stabbed, robed and killed.
“Oi! Nice stick yer wavin’ gov’nah!”
gets stabbed
Expecto AGM-114
WP ?
Writing Prompt
