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mycrazyworlduniverse:
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Sep. 28th, 2018
Monsterblog Guide: HP Spell Creation
Sep. 28th, 2018 12:12 pmvia https://ift.tt/2xZDlL5
themonsterblogofmonsters:
Previously - Monsterblog Guide: Limitations & Balance
So, many of us write fanfic. Many of us want to build the world as we do so - to fill in plot holes, explain divergences. Heck, thats what this whole blog was based around - the idea of expanding and filling in the world by making more creatures and diseases, places and phenomena.
Spells remain a problem for many.
1. Existing sources.
We’re lucky, in the HP fandom to have an excellent wiki and a highly creative fandom. The wikia has a list of spells, and individual pages for most spells, which can provide not only the spell’s purpose, but its name, incantation, wand movements and even spell colour. Though its now an archive, @spell-checkers-official has a good listing of spells both canon and not and I myself am planning on setting up a blog for spells if/when I can find the time around everything else.
Further, many fanfic authors are very willing to share out ideas if asked politely, which means if you see a nifty spell you’d like to borrow you can often ask and do so with ease, or use it as a basis for a spell of your own creation.
But then of course we hit the difficulty: how do you make a spell?
2. Word & Syllable Limits
Its important to remember that spells have to be spoken. When you learn a spell you have to do so aloud, non-verbal magic is both advanced and requires you to know the spell already. Which means that these spells are going to be used day-to-day. That these spells must be quick and efficient enough to say and to cast that using magic to get the task done makes more sense than just getting up and doing it yourself and doesn’t risk you being interrupted halfway through.
So: word limits.
In canon the longest spells we see are two words long. Syllables vary, but limits are hit with Piertotum Locomotor, Petrificus Totalus, Wingardium Leviosa, Avada Kedavra, and Finite Incantatem. While its not impossible that a spell might have three words to it, perhaps if a spell-modifier such as Locomotor is being attached to another spell, or using Accio to summon something like “Augusta’s Handbag”, but we don’t see a single three-word incantation in canon, and three words is where casting a spell to do something is so slow that you risk interruption or just redundancy.
The vast majority of spells in canon are just one word. Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Duro, Serpensortia, Muffliato,Accio, Episkey… I could go on. If you can find a single word that serves your purpose then you’re good. Try to limit syllables to no more than five - that’s what Expelliarmus has. If you have two words then your average syllables per word should go down as well. Both halves of Piertotum Locomotor are only four syllables, making it eight in total, likewise Wingardium Leviosa. Avada Kedavra is just six in total.
Unless you’re working on a a decidedly non-standard piece of spellwork, remember: efficiency is important.
And on that note:
3. Non-Standard Spells
Now, we don’t get much by way of examples of this in canon but we do get some. We have, for example, Voldemort’s ritual to return himself to his body, which requires extended portions of speech matched to ritual actions and we also have the knowledge that certain things in the magical world are genuinely enchanted, which suggests that they were spelled with something more than a charm.
If working with a ritual you’ll want to work with some degree of symbolism, most likely - that’s what Voldemort’s ritual shows and its the only example we’ve got. It also seems that such spellwork, especially such which is being done for some considerable gain, requires something be sacrificed or otherwise lost or given up. Again, symbolism is useful here - bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy, remember?
Now, for enchantments, we as a fandom basically have free rein. I personally imagine that enchantments are lengthy spell-chants, or extremely long incantations that require precision, focus, memory and drive to cast with the accuracy required to make them work. Enchantments, then, are highly useful, but time-consuming and take effort to cast. As with rituals, I personally like to take to some degree of symbolism, but its not needed.
I’ve also seen some fanfics which have enchantments as being raised in Runes - everyone ignoring, for the moment, the fact that in canon Runes are just… Runes. An ancient language. In these cases, the Runes are used to anchor the spellwork, and make it last longer than it would if the object were just charmed. I personally don’t agree with this interpretation, but I’m not the final authority and you can all ignore me if you want. I’ve seen it used very well, and I’ll be making a rec to an example of this in the future.
Now, though, we hit the next point: what should be used for the spell?
4. Etymology & Intent
All spells in the Potterverse are powered by intent at the most basic of level. Some spells, such as the Cruciatus and the Patronus Charm, have additional emotive requirements, but by and large, intent is the primary ingredient after magic. Spells, it seems, use incantations to optimise this intent - Accio is literally “I summon”, Expecto Patronum “Expect a protector”. More abstractly, Piertotum Locomotor calls on the ancient Roman definition of the quality of piety, which requires one to be loyal, pius, to one’s family and home - and what is Hogwarts, to so many, if not a home?
It’s also worth noting the languages chosen for each spell. The vast majority are some stripe of Latin, but we do also get two spells in English, Pack and Point Me. We also get two in Greek, both Healing spells - Anapneo and Episkey - and we get a few in old English, such as Scourgify. Latin fills in all else. There is, believe it or not, a rhyme and reason to this: historically Greek was he language of doctors and medics, thanks to Hippocrates, while Latin was for business and English for House and for Home.
Thus day-to-day and household spells have roots in the language of the everyday, while Healing is done in Greek. Latin, as I said, fills in all else, because it was not just business but also belief, it was also the language of the upper classes, who managed warfare and so most duelling spells are Latin as well, using words which share basic meaning with what one wants the spell to do.
When making your own spells you can get some variation. Not everywhere, after all, has that same linguistic breakdown. In Spain, for example, Healing might tend towards Arabic, due to the historic Moorish presence, while in India it may go to Sanskrit or even extant Tamil. In the USA you’d probably expect the divisions of the old country to remain largely the same, though there’d be some regional variation - Dutch settlers, for example, and Spanish. Jewish diaspora and African Americans, Asian Americans and, of course, Native groups.
You’d probably see some spell simplification and some spell archaism - older versions kept for some spells, and simplifications for others. You would likely also get a lot of combined spells, just as there’s a lot of syncretised faith from religion brought from Africa, mixed with Christianisation and native beliefs. When it comes to native magic a question arises: does it remain, still taught and used by native wixes, was it wholly eradicated as was attempted by colonisers, or is it like our world where its a mix - some gone entirely, some with facets lost, some persisting despite everything?
These are all things worth considering.
5. What a Spell Can and Can’t Do.
So is this. There are some things a spell can’t do. Return the dead to life and force love are two such examples. Some spells can be used to alter appearance - some degree of Self-Transfiguration and colour-changing charms - but they will never be as effective as Polyjuice Potion or Metamorphmagi. Likewise, we see no spells in canon which can cause sleep, though we do have Stupefy, which stuns people. Instead, we have potions which can cause sleep and even comas - Dreamless Sleep for the former and Draught of Living Death for the latter.
Likewise, it seems as though spells cannot take purely arbitrary measurements - Tempus, that spell so loved by fandom? Doesn’t exist in canon. Instead much mention is made of Harry’s watch, and he’s gifted one by Molly Weasley later on. Even Dumbledore uses a watch, albeit an odd and likely unusual one. Thus, any spells which are used to measure “magical core strength” (when magical cores aren’t seen at all outside of wands), or to provide some arbitrary measure of health or magical power also do not fit in with canon. While spells can be used to draw up numbers, as we see during the Triwizard Tournament, we do not see any spells which take readings or use numbers to designate results.
For those of you who still want spells to fill this role, however, there are ways around it. I have a spell I created which is used to help Healers diagnose illnesses or health problems, it does so by colour-coding body parts with light to indicate parts in bad health, in need of healing or causing distress. A time-measuring spell could conjure an hourglass, or map the position of the sun in the sky to an interior ceiling. There are ways of doing these things without using just numerical systems and rankings, and I’d encourage people to consider ways to do so.
6. In-Universe Spell Creation
Not everyone just wants to make spells for their characters to throw around. Some of us want to figure out how spells might be made within the Potterverse so we can have our own characters go through the process themselves.
Simply… I don’t know. I have theories and headcanons and ideas, all optimised for different versions of the world, but simply enough, we don’t know how its done.
My personal prevailing idea is that to make a spell you figure out what purpose you want to fulfil, you figure out a suitable incantation and then you test it. Not by casting it, but by plugging the incantation into a series of Arithmantic formulae and seeing if the number that comes out indicates a good prospect or a bad.
Thats the thing about Arithmancy, you see, its maths. It can predict the future (Arith- maths manteia - to divine) but you’ve got to plug in the maths for it first. In Arithmancy all letters have numerical values. As I recall there’s also Isopsephy and the Jewish Gematria, which means you can play with cultural variance in spell creation, development and the end results. My personal headcanon is that, used right, Arithmancy can be used to run statistics on what incantation, intent and wand movement is most likely to get you your desired outcome.
Some things are, of course, impossible. The dead are dead and gone and cannot be brought back, to try to plug any incantation, intent and wand movement into the formulae for raising the dead and the closest you’d ever get to is Mummies, Inferi, Zombies or similar things. But, if your goal is not impossible, plugging your spell-maths through the equations will eventually tell you which incantation and which wand movement will get you what you want.
This is just my theory. Depending on how you build the world you could have other things. If you have a world where Merlin altered the way magic worked and/or bound it into systems (…somehow affecting the whole world on his own even if other spellwork he did just designated Wizengamot seats or something) then you could have it that in order to make a spell you have to, in some way, impress it into the memory of magic, maybe by casting it repeatedly or with a group en masse, or onto the runestones or wardstones to which Merlin’s spells are anchored. Alternatively, maybe a ritual has to be performed to anchor the spell into known magic.
There’s all kinds of fun ways it could be done, and while my favoured headcanon is designed to fit primarily to canon, doing stuff which fits to fanon, or to the alternate worldbuilding of your own fic is just as important to making sure everything holds together well.
(Your picture was not posted)
themonsterblogofmonsters:
Previously - Monsterblog Guide: Limitations & Balance
So, many of us write fanfic. Many of us want to build the world as we do so - to fill in plot holes, explain divergences. Heck, thats what this whole blog was based around - the idea of expanding and filling in the world by making more creatures and diseases, places and phenomena.
Spells remain a problem for many.
1. Existing sources.
We’re lucky, in the HP fandom to have an excellent wiki and a highly creative fandom. The wikia has a list of spells, and individual pages for most spells, which can provide not only the spell’s purpose, but its name, incantation, wand movements and even spell colour. Though its now an archive, @spell-checkers-official has a good listing of spells both canon and not and I myself am planning on setting up a blog for spells if/when I can find the time around everything else.
Further, many fanfic authors are very willing to share out ideas if asked politely, which means if you see a nifty spell you’d like to borrow you can often ask and do so with ease, or use it as a basis for a spell of your own creation.
But then of course we hit the difficulty: how do you make a spell?
2. Word & Syllable Limits
Its important to remember that spells have to be spoken. When you learn a spell you have to do so aloud, non-verbal magic is both advanced and requires you to know the spell already. Which means that these spells are going to be used day-to-day. That these spells must be quick and efficient enough to say and to cast that using magic to get the task done makes more sense than just getting up and doing it yourself and doesn’t risk you being interrupted halfway through.
So: word limits.
In canon the longest spells we see are two words long. Syllables vary, but limits are hit with Piertotum Locomotor, Petrificus Totalus, Wingardium Leviosa, Avada Kedavra, and Finite Incantatem. While its not impossible that a spell might have three words to it, perhaps if a spell-modifier such as Locomotor is being attached to another spell, or using Accio to summon something like “Augusta’s Handbag”, but we don’t see a single three-word incantation in canon, and three words is where casting a spell to do something is so slow that you risk interruption or just redundancy.
The vast majority of spells in canon are just one word. Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Duro, Serpensortia, Muffliato,Accio, Episkey… I could go on. If you can find a single word that serves your purpose then you’re good. Try to limit syllables to no more than five - that’s what Expelliarmus has. If you have two words then your average syllables per word should go down as well. Both halves of Piertotum Locomotor are only four syllables, making it eight in total, likewise Wingardium Leviosa. Avada Kedavra is just six in total.
Unless you’re working on a a decidedly non-standard piece of spellwork, remember: efficiency is important.
And on that note:
3. Non-Standard Spells
Now, we don’t get much by way of examples of this in canon but we do get some. We have, for example, Voldemort’s ritual to return himself to his body, which requires extended portions of speech matched to ritual actions and we also have the knowledge that certain things in the magical world are genuinely enchanted, which suggests that they were spelled with something more than a charm.
If working with a ritual you’ll want to work with some degree of symbolism, most likely - that’s what Voldemort’s ritual shows and its the only example we’ve got. It also seems that such spellwork, especially such which is being done for some considerable gain, requires something be sacrificed or otherwise lost or given up. Again, symbolism is useful here - bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy, remember?
Now, for enchantments, we as a fandom basically have free rein. I personally imagine that enchantments are lengthy spell-chants, or extremely long incantations that require precision, focus, memory and drive to cast with the accuracy required to make them work. Enchantments, then, are highly useful, but time-consuming and take effort to cast. As with rituals, I personally like to take to some degree of symbolism, but its not needed.
I’ve also seen some fanfics which have enchantments as being raised in Runes - everyone ignoring, for the moment, the fact that in canon Runes are just… Runes. An ancient language. In these cases, the Runes are used to anchor the spellwork, and make it last longer than it would if the object were just charmed. I personally don’t agree with this interpretation, but I’m not the final authority and you can all ignore me if you want. I’ve seen it used very well, and I’ll be making a rec to an example of this in the future.
Now, though, we hit the next point: what should be used for the spell?
4. Etymology & Intent
All spells in the Potterverse are powered by intent at the most basic of level. Some spells, such as the Cruciatus and the Patronus Charm, have additional emotive requirements, but by and large, intent is the primary ingredient after magic. Spells, it seems, use incantations to optimise this intent - Accio is literally “I summon”, Expecto Patronum “Expect a protector”. More abstractly, Piertotum Locomotor calls on the ancient Roman definition of the quality of piety, which requires one to be loyal, pius, to one’s family and home - and what is Hogwarts, to so many, if not a home?
It’s also worth noting the languages chosen for each spell. The vast majority are some stripe of Latin, but we do also get two spells in English, Pack and Point Me. We also get two in Greek, both Healing spells - Anapneo and Episkey - and we get a few in old English, such as Scourgify. Latin fills in all else. There is, believe it or not, a rhyme and reason to this: historically Greek was he language of doctors and medics, thanks to Hippocrates, while Latin was for business and English for House and for Home.
Thus day-to-day and household spells have roots in the language of the everyday, while Healing is done in Greek. Latin, as I said, fills in all else, because it was not just business but also belief, it was also the language of the upper classes, who managed warfare and so most duelling spells are Latin as well, using words which share basic meaning with what one wants the spell to do.
When making your own spells you can get some variation. Not everywhere, after all, has that same linguistic breakdown. In Spain, for example, Healing might tend towards Arabic, due to the historic Moorish presence, while in India it may go to Sanskrit or even extant Tamil. In the USA you’d probably expect the divisions of the old country to remain largely the same, though there’d be some regional variation - Dutch settlers, for example, and Spanish. Jewish diaspora and African Americans, Asian Americans and, of course, Native groups.
You’d probably see some spell simplification and some spell archaism - older versions kept for some spells, and simplifications for others. You would likely also get a lot of combined spells, just as there’s a lot of syncretised faith from religion brought from Africa, mixed with Christianisation and native beliefs. When it comes to native magic a question arises: does it remain, still taught and used by native wixes, was it wholly eradicated as was attempted by colonisers, or is it like our world where its a mix - some gone entirely, some with facets lost, some persisting despite everything?
These are all things worth considering.
5. What a Spell Can and Can’t Do.
So is this. There are some things a spell can’t do. Return the dead to life and force love are two such examples. Some spells can be used to alter appearance - some degree of Self-Transfiguration and colour-changing charms - but they will never be as effective as Polyjuice Potion or Metamorphmagi. Likewise, we see no spells in canon which can cause sleep, though we do have Stupefy, which stuns people. Instead, we have potions which can cause sleep and even comas - Dreamless Sleep for the former and Draught of Living Death for the latter.
Likewise, it seems as though spells cannot take purely arbitrary measurements - Tempus, that spell so loved by fandom? Doesn’t exist in canon. Instead much mention is made of Harry’s watch, and he’s gifted one by Molly Weasley later on. Even Dumbledore uses a watch, albeit an odd and likely unusual one. Thus, any spells which are used to measure “magical core strength” (when magical cores aren’t seen at all outside of wands), or to provide some arbitrary measure of health or magical power also do not fit in with canon. While spells can be used to draw up numbers, as we see during the Triwizard Tournament, we do not see any spells which take readings or use numbers to designate results.
For those of you who still want spells to fill this role, however, there are ways around it. I have a spell I created which is used to help Healers diagnose illnesses or health problems, it does so by colour-coding body parts with light to indicate parts in bad health, in need of healing or causing distress. A time-measuring spell could conjure an hourglass, or map the position of the sun in the sky to an interior ceiling. There are ways of doing these things without using just numerical systems and rankings, and I’d encourage people to consider ways to do so.
6. In-Universe Spell Creation
Not everyone just wants to make spells for their characters to throw around. Some of us want to figure out how spells might be made within the Potterverse so we can have our own characters go through the process themselves.
Simply… I don’t know. I have theories and headcanons and ideas, all optimised for different versions of the world, but simply enough, we don’t know how its done.
My personal prevailing idea is that to make a spell you figure out what purpose you want to fulfil, you figure out a suitable incantation and then you test it. Not by casting it, but by plugging the incantation into a series of Arithmantic formulae and seeing if the number that comes out indicates a good prospect or a bad.
Thats the thing about Arithmancy, you see, its maths. It can predict the future (Arith- maths manteia - to divine) but you’ve got to plug in the maths for it first. In Arithmancy all letters have numerical values. As I recall there’s also Isopsephy and the Jewish Gematria, which means you can play with cultural variance in spell creation, development and the end results. My personal headcanon is that, used right, Arithmancy can be used to run statistics on what incantation, intent and wand movement is most likely to get you your desired outcome.
Some things are, of course, impossible. The dead are dead and gone and cannot be brought back, to try to plug any incantation, intent and wand movement into the formulae for raising the dead and the closest you’d ever get to is Mummies, Inferi, Zombies or similar things. But, if your goal is not impossible, plugging your spell-maths through the equations will eventually tell you which incantation and which wand movement will get you what you want.
This is just my theory. Depending on how you build the world you could have other things. If you have a world where Merlin altered the way magic worked and/or bound it into systems (…somehow affecting the whole world on his own even if other spellwork he did just designated Wizengamot seats or something) then you could have it that in order to make a spell you have to, in some way, impress it into the memory of magic, maybe by casting it repeatedly or with a group en masse, or onto the runestones or wardstones to which Merlin’s spells are anchored. Alternatively, maybe a ritual has to be performed to anchor the spell into known magic.
There’s all kinds of fun ways it could be done, and while my favoured headcanon is designed to fit primarily to canon, doing stuff which fits to fanon, or to the alternate worldbuilding of your own fic is just as important to making sure everything holds together well.
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timaltman:
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timaltman:
me, sitting alone in my kitchen at 11pm, eating cereal and listening to Hozier’s new music: fucking superb, you funky little forest nymph.
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FURTHER Further news
Sep. 28th, 2018 08:02 pmvia https://ift.tt/2R2q2T7
themonsterblogofmonsters:
Following on from This and This, we can now safely know that apparently JKR believes that the Naga myth is from Indonesia.
As many others have already pointed out the term Naga/Nagin/Nagini is from Sanskrit and while it spread to Indonesia during the spread of Hinduism and trade routes and empire building… its Indian in origin, not Indonesian.
Edit: As @magicalmusemun excellently pointed out - please also note that none of the ethnic groups she actually cared to mention are Korean.
Any further news on this front will probably be posted at my sideblog for meta and analysis, @hapennydreams, so follow over there if you specifically want that.
(Your picture was not posted)
themonsterblogofmonsters:
Following on from This and This, we can now safely know that apparently JKR believes that the Naga myth is from Indonesia.
As many others have already pointed out the term Naga/Nagin/Nagini is from Sanskrit and while it spread to Indonesia during the spread of Hinduism and trade routes and empire building… its Indian in origin, not Indonesian.
Edit: As @magicalmusemun excellently pointed out - please also note that none of the ethnic groups she actually cared to mention are Korean.
Any further news on this front will probably be posted at my sideblog for meta and analysis, @hapennydreams, so follow over there if you specifically want that.
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themonsterblogofmonsters:
sweetlialia replied to your photo “So. This is a thing. I’m sure some of you already know about this -…”
What the thing with illness and disability ? Could you tell ? Your “article” was really well done and interesting! It makes me want to deepen my research on it :)
@sweetlialia Of course! I’m glad you liked the Nagini post, and I’m happy to explain that.
The “Illness & Disability thing” is a piece of JKR’s writing from Pottermore which basically said that magic can fic non-magically caused injuries and the like, but not magical ones. This is why Peter gets a new hand while Moody has his wooden leg. It also said that its very easy for magic to “cure” non-magical diseases and injuries - Pepperup Potion, for example, can cure the common cold, broken bones can be healed with a spell or, if too badly broken, fixed with Skele-Gro. To quote:
I decided that, broadly speaking, wizards would have the power to correct or override ‘mundane’ nature, but not ‘magical’ nature. Therefore, a wizard could catch anything a Muggle might catch, but he could cure all of it; he would also comfortably survive a scorpion sting that might kill a Muggle, whereas he might die if bitten by a Venomous Tentacula. Similarly, bones broken in non-magical accidents such as falls or fist fights can be mended by magic, but the consequences of curses or backfiring magic could be serious, permanent or life-threatening.
- https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/illness-and-disability
The overall takeaway however, is two things.
Firstly that if you have, say, a chronic illness, either magic can “fix” you, or you are automatically non-magical and would never exist in the magical world.
Secondly that those in the magical world, whether they like it or not, get “cured” of anything “wrong” with them rather than being given tools to make their lives easier or the world around them more accessible. There’s an excellent ficlet on that possibility, and the horror of it, over Here on the now-an-archive blog @livesandliesofwizards.
All of this doesn’t make much sense when you then consider things like Harry’s glasses, James’ and Dumbledore’s, and Skeeter’s and McGonagall’s - none of which were “fixed” by magic, despite so far as we’re aware all being non-magical in origin.
The takeaway is, JKR doesn’t see disabled people in the magical world, unless their disability comes from magical causes - Moody’s lost leg, for example, Lockhart’s lost memory and the like. She doesn’t see people with chronic health conditions in the magical world, nor those with mental illnesses - they’d all be cured. She doesn’t see those with congenital health issues existing…. which is, as I showed above with Harry and his glasses, clearly not entirely true: there are disabilities which the magical world cannot “fix”. (There’s a reason I created a number of chronic magical illnesses for this blog and I’m working on some mental ones, and thats because I hate this piece of JKR’s writing.)
Perhaps obviously, the Illness & Disability piece is a massive slap in the face to disabled people. It’s also, generally quite … well, as has been said in the reblog thread of this post of mine, it really serves to show JKR’s values and how she sees the world… which is very much that of a cis white able-bodied woman.
….that said, as someone pointed out (I’m so sorry I can’t remember who it was pointed it out) the whole “blood curse only affecting women” is very much a… “menstruation is a punishment given to cis women for eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” kind of Christian misogyny, which makes me doubt to some extent that she even considers women in her perspective, despite being one.
In short, JKR’s writing has historically been quite dodgy.
I’m more than happy to explain and point people in the direction of metas, links and sources on more - the lycanthropy issues, some of the stuff regarding house elves, the goblins, etc. - though if anyone would like more information could asks be addressed to my meta sideblog, @hapennydreams? I’d like to keep my blog on-topic for the most part and three off-topic posts over the past three days is less than ideal for my followers!
(Your picture was not posted)
themonsterblogofmonsters:
sweetlialia replied to your photo “So. This is a thing. I’m sure some of you already know about this -…”
What the thing with illness and disability ? Could you tell ? Your “article” was really well done and interesting! It makes me want to deepen my research on it :)
@sweetlialia Of course! I’m glad you liked the Nagini post, and I’m happy to explain that.
The “Illness & Disability thing” is a piece of JKR’s writing from Pottermore which basically said that magic can fic non-magically caused injuries and the like, but not magical ones. This is why Peter gets a new hand while Moody has his wooden leg. It also said that its very easy for magic to “cure” non-magical diseases and injuries - Pepperup Potion, for example, can cure the common cold, broken bones can be healed with a spell or, if too badly broken, fixed with Skele-Gro. To quote:
I decided that, broadly speaking, wizards would have the power to correct or override ‘mundane’ nature, but not ‘magical’ nature. Therefore, a wizard could catch anything a Muggle might catch, but he could cure all of it; he would also comfortably survive a scorpion sting that might kill a Muggle, whereas he might die if bitten by a Venomous Tentacula. Similarly, bones broken in non-magical accidents such as falls or fist fights can be mended by magic, but the consequences of curses or backfiring magic could be serious, permanent or life-threatening.
- https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/illness-and-disability
The overall takeaway however, is two things.
Firstly that if you have, say, a chronic illness, either magic can “fix” you, or you are automatically non-magical and would never exist in the magical world.
Secondly that those in the magical world, whether they like it or not, get “cured” of anything “wrong” with them rather than being given tools to make their lives easier or the world around them more accessible. There’s an excellent ficlet on that possibility, and the horror of it, over Here on the now-an-archive blog @livesandliesofwizards.
All of this doesn’t make much sense when you then consider things like Harry’s glasses, James’ and Dumbledore’s, and Skeeter’s and McGonagall’s - none of which were “fixed” by magic, despite so far as we’re aware all being non-magical in origin.
The takeaway is, JKR doesn’t see disabled people in the magical world, unless their disability comes from magical causes - Moody’s lost leg, for example, Lockhart’s lost memory and the like. She doesn’t see people with chronic health conditions in the magical world, nor those with mental illnesses - they’d all be cured. She doesn’t see those with congenital health issues existing…. which is, as I showed above with Harry and his glasses, clearly not entirely true: there are disabilities which the magical world cannot “fix”. (There’s a reason I created a number of chronic magical illnesses for this blog and I’m working on some mental ones, and thats because I hate this piece of JKR’s writing.)
Perhaps obviously, the Illness & Disability piece is a massive slap in the face to disabled people. It’s also, generally quite … well, as has been said in the reblog thread of this post of mine, it really serves to show JKR’s values and how she sees the world… which is very much that of a cis white able-bodied woman.
….that said, as someone pointed out (I’m so sorry I can’t remember who it was pointed it out) the whole “blood curse only affecting women” is very much a… “menstruation is a punishment given to cis women for eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” kind of Christian misogyny, which makes me doubt to some extent that she even considers women in her perspective, despite being one.
In short, JKR’s writing has historically been quite dodgy.
I’m more than happy to explain and point people in the direction of metas, links and sources on more - the lycanthropy issues, some of the stuff regarding house elves, the goblins, etc. - though if anyone would like more information could asks be addressed to my meta sideblog, @hapennydreams? I’d like to keep my blog on-topic for the most part and three off-topic posts over the past three days is less than ideal for my followers!
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writing-prompt-s:
A therapist and a patient have an ordinary appointment. Except one of them is a serial killer and the other is trying to expose them. But who is who?
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writing-prompt-s:
A therapist and a patient have an ordinary appointment. Except one of them is a serial killer and the other is trying to expose them. But who is who?
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