[ SECRET POST #3073 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3073 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.


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03.
[Master Chef]


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04.
[The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater]


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05.
[Harry Potter]


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06.


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07.
[Star Wars]


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08.
[Frank]


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09.
[Discworld]


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10.
[Baccano!]


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11.
[Cher Lloyd/Kingsman: The Secret Service]


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12.
[Eurovision]


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13.
[Hannah Rutherford (Yogscast)]










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 032 secrets from Secret Submission Post #439.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it does make as much sense as most. And I don't mean this as a criticism, I love Harry Potter to death and I don't give a shit about worldbuilding, but literally if you think about any single aspect of the world for like 5 minutes it falls completely apart.

[philstar22]

Can you give me an example? Because I honestly don't see it.

[(Anonymous)]

How does the wizard economy work? We know the Weaselys are poor - but why are they poor? How's the Minister for Magic selected? How does wizarding society sustain itself when there's apparently only like, what, 40 kids born every year, going by the size of Hogwarts?

[philstar22]

I take the numbers with a grain of salt because JKR has always been bad with numbers.

What do you mean how does the wizard economy work? The same as any other? I'm pretty sure that money can't be conjured, as we have no evidence of this happening.

They are poor because Arthur isn't paid much and because the idea of things like conjuring muggle things and then selling them to muggles wouldn't be considered by a family like the Weasleys and is also probably very illegal. I don't get why that is a question?

I assume the minister of magic is selected the same way the British prime minister is selected. Just because we don't see the selection process because we see things from Harry's POV doesn't mean there isn't one.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, you did kind of just answer one of those with "I assume it works in such-and-such a way", which is kind of my point.

And with the economy my point is like... the whole basis of wizarding society seems like it's different and isolated enough that there's no reason to expect it to work like a muggle economy. People are poor in society because, for one reason or another, they're not able to demand enough compensation for their labor to make up for their expenses. But the whole question of expenses, ownership, production, and labor are totally different in a wizarding economy. I mean, what do wizards even DO? Again, I think it only works if you assume it just works.

And that's fine! I'm 100% fine with that, I really don't give a shit about it, and I don't think it's supposed to make sense. The Weaselys are poor because they're the poor-but-honest and friendly and awesome shabby family out in the sticks. I don't need anything more than that. He's a civil servant because he's a civil servant. That's what JKR wanted in the story, and so that's what she wrote, and that's fine. It doesn't have to make sense. But the side effect of that is that you can't try to make it sense, because it won't, so don't even bother. Just assume it works like Georgian England except with spells and it's fine.

But when you start asking questions like the ones OP asked, you do get to a point where there aren't any satisfactory answers except "that's just the way it works, because it does". So it's silly to ask those questions. And that's my view.

[philstar22]

Okay, I guess we are defining "falling apart" differently then? Because to me that would mean inconsistency or things that as given in canon doesn't work. I'm fine with making assumptions because I think you have to do that with any canon, though maybe more so with Potter. What I have a problem with is when a fictional world is inconsistent within itself or if something in it wouldn't work even if you assumed things.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess what I mean by falling apart is that, if you go up to any part of the world of Harry Potter, and you ask "Why is it this way? How does this work? What's the deal with that?", there's just never going to be a satisfactory answer drawn from the text. And that's what I think OP is doing in asking these questions. The answer is going to be "JKR wanted the story to work that way for aesthetic reasons, just roll with it."

Which again I'm fine with.

[iggy]

I don't know why the wizarding economy wouldn't just work the same as the standard UK economy for the most part. It seems odd to me to call it a lack of worldbuilding when everything seems to point to as such.

[philstar22]

Yup. I don't think every single detail of a world explains, and I think that assuming basic things like economies work unless something in canon about the economy wouldn't actually work is something you have to do for most canons.

[(Anonymous)]

The Weasleys are poor because they haven't mastered the Ascendio Bootstrappus spell.

lol

[raspberryrain]

Oooh, smart.

[fingalsanteater]

Lmao.

[diet_poison]

lol

[cloud_riven]

Is there a sj fic for this? I would read that.

[(Anonymous)]

when there's apparently only like, what, 40 kids born every year, going by the size of Hogwarts?

Remember that the Hogwarts we see is *surviving kids born during the last war* and does not necessarily represent the average size of incoming classes.

[(Anonymous)]

But it's still going to be on about the same order of magnitude.

[(Anonymous)]

Two years after Harry should have been a boom year, plus the ones after, yet we don't see that in the text. Possibly Harry just doesn't notice, but still.

[(Anonymous)]

Totally agree that a lot of the economic stuff doesn't really hang together, but someone pointed out that Harry's school year (and the years near it) is probably abnormally small due to the number of people in their parents' generation who were killed or went missing in the last war, and we never actually see how big any of the other years are.