Harry Potter and the Military Industrial Complex
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
Wizards are perfect assassins. If they went for the leaders, muggles would drown in chaos.
Obligatory Harry Potter With Guns trailer
Harry got tired of drinking tea
This made me realize two things about Harry Potter. 1: why do the wizards not simply use magic AND guns? 2: oculus repairo is a stupid fucking spell. You’re telling me there’s a specific spell just for repairing glasses? That’s just bad writing.
You’ve never watched a teleshopping channel, have you? Reality is what’s bad writing.
I dled the whole thing. It’s awesome.
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 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.
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.
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.
I think the guns would help against wizards as much as they help against oppression. They are a helpful tool, for sure, but the ability to communicate and form plans is massively superior. And wizards, like modern tech giants, can impede that.
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.
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?
Me, but it’s a secret.
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.
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.
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.
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.
WP ?
Writing Prompt
Expecto AGM-114
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
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.
I’ve been reading the mangas Japan Summons and Gate. I’d love to see a comic of a Western military curbstomping some magic beings
I personally think it depends on exactly what the limits of Magic are - it could be anything from Muggles eradicating Wizards, to the opposite, all very plausibly. To me, it comes down to the power of modern surveillance vs. the power of notice-me-not + space-expansion + anti-detection spells. Plus there’s a whole bunch of other powerful spells and devices (time turners, for example), but the muggles have a while fuckton of gold and other valuables to recruit these capabilities to their side as well.
I would also consider the logistics of war. There’s a military saying: novices study tactics, experts study logistics.
How long would it take to train a wizard to get to that level vs. a muggle with a gun? It feels like the classic knight vs. armed peasant situation.
That plus being able to cut off food supplies or infrastructure- just saying the US military was able to take out sadams military capabilities faster than he could react.
But the inverse also applies - there’s not much stopping wizards from portkeying/apparating into the Oval Office or the pentagon and magibombing them, or Avada-ing key targets. Wizards are probably the worst kind of guerrilla fighters - ones unchecked by range. And as far as food is concerned, food multiplication is a thing. I personally believe that in the long term, the way muggles would win would be through subverting wizards, not by pure overwhelming force.
Wizards win logistics, they can enchant a car to hold as much as a 747. They can teleport, fly, levitate, and banish things. Their biggest problem is raw numbers.
Alakablam!
Started reading that once. I think it was fairly newish then, but I’m not sure. It irritated how they did my boy Ronald. Movie Ron was a box of hair with a broken wand, but book Ron was clever and inventive and generally very good at creative problem solving.
Loved it. Way better than the original.
I cast ICBM
