Realism (was Re: Weasley Poverty - In Perspective)

[cat_kind]

No: HPFGUIDX 123754


va32h:
(snip) 
> I don't understand why a book series that is based primarily on the 
> notion that there is an alternate world full of people with magical 
> powers is criticized for not having enough cold hard realism.
(snip)  
> 
> Alla:
(snip)  Same on the character 
> development level - even if the characters ARE people with magical 
> powers, they are still people and I want their reactions to be 
> recognisable to me, otherwise I would not be able to identify with 
> characters.
(snip)

catkind:  Good point.  Or if not, I want to be able to understand why
and how their reactions are different.  You can identify with someone
who, say, comes from a different culture, or has very different
beliefs from me, but it's hard until you know what the culture or
beliefs are. You can identify with animal characters in childrens'
books, or alien characters in SF, and at least in the best cases they
really aren't humans in costume. 

So wizards can be fundamentally not human, and react in fundamentally
non-human ways if the author wants, as long as it is consistent and
understandable. For example, I think maybe wizards react very
differently to physical violence than RL humans, because they can mend
physical damage so much easier. Thus I come a bit unstuck when I try
to judge the fighting between Hogwarts students by real life standards. 

I think we also look for this sort of consistency in the world itself.
 We like to be able to reason out the magic:  if you can do this and
this, then it must logically be possible to do that. 

IMO the people-consistency is excellent in the Harry Potter books. The
magic-consistency is less solid, because there is such a huge volume
of cool little tricks, and thus far at least no logical framework
around them. I think if we sit down and start adding up little tricks,
we find wizards ought to be able to do a lot more than they do do in
this world. Anyone with me here?
catkind