World Building And The Potterverse

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 167211

> Ken:
> 
> But if you are setting your story
> on planet Earth your weeks need to have seven days, your months the 
> appropriate number of days, you months have to start on the days of 
the
> week that the calandar for that year specifies, full moons should 
occur 
> every 29.53 days, Mars can only be "bright tonight" at two year 
intervals,
> and Orion isn't visible in June, to name but a few. 

zgirnius:
I think this is too high a standard to hold an author to. When you 
pick up a mystery, a spy novel, a romance, a western, or 'literature' 
(assuming you read any of the above, naturally...)--do you run a 
mental calendar and make sure that weekends are indeed a multiple of 
seven days apart? That the author does not describe scenes as 'bathed 
in the silver light of the full moon' on days, say, 35 days apart? I 
think these sorts of details can be taken for granted precisely 
because we are told the Potterverse is our world, even if the nominal 
genre of this series is 'fantasy'.

> Ken:
> Above all you should 
> not write time travel into your story unless you *have* taken a 
course in
> tensor calculus!

zgirnius:
As one who has done that and more, I wonder. What did she get wrong?

> Ken:
> I am an admitted connoisseur of world building and it seems
> best to me to pay proper attention to the art without neglecting the
> rest. The Potterverse comes *so close* to being a truly wonderful 
> created world that its faults are particularly maddening to me. 

zgirnius:
I suppose I can see that... since I myself find the worldbuilding 
pretty good, but would not call myself a connoisseur.

--zgirnius, noting with amusement that what *she* finds most 
intriguing is the other characters of the Potterverse, not its 
logistics.