fahye | Muggle Studies (a challenge)

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Muggle Studies (a challenge)

This is the closest I have to a Harry Potter icon, which is not hugely surprising because I do not really talk about HP much at all, and have written a grand total of two fics for the fandom, both years ago.

However!

What with the Potterdammerung and a fic idea that burrowed itself into my head and then refused to go away, I've been thinking much more than usual about the nature of Rowling's wizarding universe: more precisely, how it differs from the Muggle universe. Where the boundaries are. The things that needs must be conceptualised completely differently by magic-users, and/or to what extent these concepts are compatible with non-magic ones. How is gender handled in a society that contains Metamorphmagi? What's the hard magical theory behind Potions? How do the Muggleborn reconcile early education with later knowledge? What is magic like in China/Italy/Mexico? Does religion play any part in the magical world?

I'll hold up two fics as initial examples:

pogrebin's Comme la Pluie, which she wrote in response to a challenge about wizarding porn. It's very disturbing, but I love that it really does extend what we know and assume about magic and shows us a use for it that we haven't considered before.

resonant8's Transfigurations, which is notable for two things: the detail with which it, to all extents and purposes, invents a whole branch of magic (calligromancy) and also the things it says about magic in America vs. magic in England, and how the cultures and mythologies of a country can influence their whole approach to magic itself.

My own fic idea is one that looks at Healing/mediwizards vs. Muggle medicine - the different ways they conceptualise the body and the limits of the practitioner, and to what extent 'complementary medicine' (as advocated by Augustus Pye!) might work.

Other topics that I and some others have come up with include:

theatre (the technicalities, the traditions, the performances)
music (either composition or performance)
food and cooking
architecture and design
books
gambling
languages and linguistics
transport and infrastructure
clothing
religion
cultural differences
puzzles (what's the magical equivalent of the crossword/jigsaw/Rubik's cube?)
maths/numbers/Arithmancy
prejudice (maybe not that related to blood status or to House – what about sexual orientation/race in the human sense/etc?)
gender
pornography
law
politics
historical periods (and magical society during these periods)
sociology/anthropology
research & development (scientists have been constantly proven dead wrong – what about stages in the development of magic? what's happening on the cutting edge of research? who determines what is researched?)
quantum theory/magical theory in its most raw form
chemistry/potions
celebrations and holidays
weapons and warfare
economics and trade

Obviously, as someone studying medical subjects, I am going to have great fun combining magic and medicine. And this is by no means limited to the list above: anyone is welcome to write on any topic, I want this to be an opportunity for people to play around in their own fields and bring their own expert knowledge to the table. So no matter what you do and what you know - be it physics, psychology, engineering, sex, sewing, linguistics, accounting, sports, education, anything at all - you can probe the edges of the concept and work out how it might fit into the wizarding world. Or you can research something new. Or you can just be wildly inventive.

If enough people are interested, I'll set up a community for the challenge. There'd be a deadline, but the timeframe would be longer rather than shorter - and there wouldn't be any sort of assignments handed out, just people nominating what they'd like to write about and then doing so. Feel free to double up on subjects - nobody's going to have the same perspective as you! - or to take a whole handful of them and write a collection of vignettes.

Seriously, anything goes. Any topic. Any point in canon. Any character. Any pairing, if you want to include pairings.

So...who's interested? And what might you want to explore?

ETA:

hpmugglestudies! Now with FAQ (a more detailed version of this post, basically) and sign-up form.

(Pimp far! Pimp wide! The more people that play, the greater the range of topics that will be covered, and the more fun it'll be. Now that the community exists, you can pimp it instead of this post.)

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. . . . you know, I am not much of an HP-fic-writer, but . . . universe-exploring sounds fun.

And I've been itching to write really and not knowing what.

You can explore anything. And you don't have to use Rowling's characters; it's the universe that's the point, so OCs would be perfectly fine and probably even necessary.

Yoooou should do theatre :D Costuming! Technical design!

Damn you, evil word temptress!

(I . . . may actually have already had a conversation with someone on the subject of wizarding costuming. >.>)

Ooh. I love this. World-building is always so fascinating, and JK's world-building, while very detailed in certain aspects, isn't very broad (it's not a criticism, they are meant to be books for children, after all), and juxtaposes our ideas about modern and pre-modern society in interesting ways. The institutions of law and punishment, for example, seems incredibly medieval, barely civilised; the integration of different strata of society through the universal education system, so that "class" doesn't seem as much a point of difference as "House" (and what a tangle for the Hindu-background witches and wizards this must be, who have to also add "caste" to that tangle); does the wizarding world have its own creation myths; does it see itself as being in an era of ascension or decline; is its trade relationship with the non-wizarding world parasitic (we never hear of wizards farming, it seems)... And I could go on all day.

Ooh, I will dig up some links for you when I am coherent. I play a lot in this world.

So write a fic! *tempts*

Wow, you've just added a huge pile of ideas to the mix. Anything in particular that you think you'd want to fic out?

Interesting that you mentioned the Hindu idea - another fic of

pogrebin's, Dissipate (http://pogrebin.livejournal.com/26088.html), examines how Indian ideas of magic might be different from British ones.

Muahahah. I'm trying to make it as open-ended as possible so that even people who normally don't write in HP can find something to latch onto and fic out.

(There you go then!)

I have an old one with origin story!

Of Padraic and the Serpents

Oooh, that's really interesting.

If I set up the fic challenge, would you write something new? Tom-esque or otherwise? :D

That story is amazing! Thanks for directing me to it.

I avoid writing fic in HP because I'm relatively unfamiliar with the books as canon, and there are so many ways to stray. :) But I might try writing something set in the past.

That writer plays around quite a bit with the kinds of concepts that I want this fic challenge to involve, I really love her stuff.

History fic! Excellent, what sort of time period?

The problem with fic, as opposed to meta, is that you need an "in". I supposed Professor Binns could be one - I wonder around what time he might have died; if he's teaching the same material that he did when he was alive, it can't have been too long ago. Or Godric's sword, maybe, following it into the Orient through the time of the crusades?

This is more meta-based than many fic challenges, true, and I think the interest will be in seeing how people incorporate their ideas into some kind of narrative. It also makes the projections concrete rather than hypothetical, which I think is more fun.

Godric's sword, maybe, following it into the Orient through the time of the crusades

I love that idea. I love it HUGE AMOUNTS. Crusaaaaades!

Hurrah! Any topic in particular catch your eye?

Your icon is making me want to do a figure-skating fic in addition to my medical one :)

*eyes everything*

Yep.

Whore for research. This should be...interesting. And yet agreeably addictive.

*laughs* However will you choose? I figure that for all the history geeks out there, there's always the option of following one particular cultural thread through time - even something really obscure, like books and writing. Did magic begin as an oral tradition? What might have been lost? (Were all the books in the library of Alexandria strictly non-magical?) Was there some kind of great step forward in communicable magic when quills were invented? And what is it about quills that keeps the wizarding world using them instead of anything else?

Er.

*stops talking*

I skated for eight years and I've been involved with it off-and-on as a choreographer and judge in the nine years since then, so it has a special place in my heart!

That sounds fascinating! I especially love card games in fic, and I found the few glimpses we got of gambling in the HP-verse (mostly Ludo Bagman and the Quidditch World Cup) to be really interesting. If cards are still used to gamble with, how can magic help you cheat/how can cheating be prevented?

This is insanely interesting. Once upon a time i half-plotted a giant fic about magic in the muggle sense (card tricks, illusion, educated guesswork) and wizard magic and how muggles aware of the wizarding world dealt with that knowledge and their own apparent limitations. Not well, of course. ;) And as I STILL have no computer internet and a weekend at home, perhaps I will fiddle. It was post-OOTP, though, and more H/D than anything, but meh. Details.

scuba soph: I think I just exploded.
scuba soph: http://fahye.livejournal.com/448993.html
scuba soph: someone put a bullet through the voice in my head that is screaming "ARCHAEOLOGY OF MAGIC!"
jezrana: *cannot do that*
bookelfe: I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave. *HALvoice*
ironic segue: Only if someone does the same to me when it comes to magical library theory. *staring, awed*
daemmygee: i will do magical stand up comedians
daemmygee: "and then he took off his robe and i said wow, transfigurations really wasn't your subject, was it?"
Vivien529: I have a Slytherin origin story with a side of why Latin became the magical language. I geek out over history of magic.
shaticordia: I am actually very curious if, like, Ancient Chinese is the language of magic in China
shaticordia: or if it's still Latin
shaticordia: because it'd be kind of hilarious if it was still Latin
Vivien529: Heh
shaticordia: China: What the fuck?
Vivien529: I think it's just Latin for the Europeans/Americans
Vivien529: Personally
bookelfe: in America, the language of magic is definitely Cat Macroese.
shaticordia: YES
bookelfe: "I CAN HAS YOUR WAND NOW."
bookelfe: "SURPRIES EXPLOSION."
setsthingsright: it's like aborigines in the outback? still Latin
setsthingsright: prehistoric american magic? Done in Latin
shaticordia: yes, Lynne!!
shaticordia: magic did not exist until Latin was invented.
setsthingsright: Magicians on Mars? LATIN
shaticordia: YES
setsthingsright: *giggles*
shaticordia: our utopic vision, Lynne
shaticordia: let me show you it
setsthingsright: *wipes away tear*
setsthingsright: it is beautiful, shati
scuba soph: I think the language of magic in a culture is defined by the time period in which magic was... regularised?
shaticordia: that actually makes sense, Sophie
shaticordia: so...I prefer my extrapolation
setsthingsright: shati just has a Latin fetish
setsthingsright: *solemn*
shaticordia: it's true
scuba soph: eg. pre-Graeco-Romans, magic would have been a lot more... raw. Just magic, channelled more by things like pseudo-religious rituals, as opposed to spells?
shaticordia: ...exactly!
scuba soph: and the Graeco-Roman period was the age in Europe in which magic was tamed.
Vivien529: *nods at Sophie*
scuba soph: but dude, I bet egyptian magic would be awesome, because obviously they would have had a handle on it way before the greeks and romans
StarCPenny: The Atlanteans. *lofty*
scuba soph: so their spell language would be this mix of like phoenician and coptic and all sorts of things.
Zebosity: Sophie: In Greco-Roman Egypt, you mean, or before?
scuba soph: it's like... why have I forgotten all my linguistics.
Zebosity: I am just trying to remember when it turned into Coptic. *grin* But yes, I like this image lots.
scuba soph: i mean they would have had their own spell system and language for it before the Greco-Roman period, but then when the Greeks and Romans were like ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
scuba soph: there would have been melding. *squishes them together*
Zebosity: *nodnod*
Zebosity: And now I am trying to fit it into Middle Egyptian writing. *facepalms*
Zebosity: Like. Determinatives and wand gestures and such.
Zebosity: THEY MUST INTERRELATE um somehow.
scuba soph: and wandless and wordless magic obviously exists in wizarding world
Zebosity: But I am picturing -- okay, determinatives in hieroglyphic are symbols that are... categorization. Like, the name of a god, and then the THIS HERE'S A GOD symbol on the end to make it clearer.
scuba soph: so i like to imagine that what is taught in hogwarts is like... the standardised magic language
Zebosity: And I am picturing a word you say that covers a class of spells, sorta.
scuba soph: like the way Castilian is the Official Spanish
Zebosity: And then a vocabulary of wand movements or just intention that shapes the particular spell within that.
Zebosity: And god I am a dork.
SweeneyAgonistes: Yes.
Zebosity: *nods at Sophie*
scuba soph: even though there are a squillion widely-spoken languages that are actually in common use in Spain
Zebosity: And you learn Official Spanish. And then you go to actually live in Spain, and you go "...Oh."

Zebosity: I'm still stuck on ancient Egyptian magic. And the fact that for the religion, just about all we know is the high-status court religion, as they're the ones that mostly left the statues and such. We can only make tiny guesses about the everyday religion.
Zebosity: Except that it varied a lot by region and may have been quite different in a lot of ways from the king-centric royal one.
Zebosity: And I am thinking now about priestly wizards versus ordinary wizarding peasant-folk.
scuba soph: So eg. Irish wizards use european-standard latin, but probably have dozens and dozens of minor incantations in old Irish that have just... stuck around. Folk-magic, and... every-day things. Household spells.
scuba soph: like, I am imagining 'proper', schooled wizards in the Pale, and 'hedge-wizardry' outside.
shaticordia: I think we're getting into magic being a metterfor for language.
shaticordia: WE ARE URSULA K. LE GUIN!
Zebosity: A man's concepts must exceed his vocabulary, or what's a metaphor?
shaticordia: ...
Aspenx3: *groan*
Zebosity: Although I think we're using it as a metaphor for language and for worldview both, kind of. Or by turns.
shaticordia: it's culture!!
TLvop: language and worldview are somewhat inseparable, too
TLvop: or at least according to my english 102 instructor
shaticordia: is it...Sapir...Whorf?
shaticordia: something Whorf?
shaticordia: the hypothesis
Zebosity: Sapir-Whorf, yep!
shaticordia: *fistpump*
Zebosity: I knew it was something like that, but I wasn't sure of the spelling either.
daemmygee: Sapir-Whorf is way too determinative about language, at least according to comm prof
shaticordia: I think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is not all that and a bottle of rum
daemmygee: and given the arguments, i actually agree
shaticordia: but it works for colors, imo
shaticordia: possibly not much else
daemmygee: see, i don't agree with that
TLvop: I think the basic idea works in terms of--concepts and how they have meanings laid over them. But not totally and completely
TLvop: but we never formally studied it
daemmygee: you might not be able to communicate that this blue is different from the blue i call yellow, but i still believe you can see the differences in them that i do
shaticordia: Oh, sure, but you categorize them differently.
daemmygee: oh yeah, that part i agreed with
shaticordia: And -- actually race might be the best example.
shaticordia: which isn't *just* language.
shaticordia: it's just an example of arbitrary categories affecting how we perceive things.
scuba soph: *randomly* The Greeks didn't have a word for 'blue'.
Zebosity: oh?
scuba soph: they called it 'bronze'.
scuba soph: as in, the same word that they used for, uh, actual bronze.
Zebosity: Hunh.
shaticordia: however, the Inuit did not actually have sixty five/whatever words for "snow."
scuba soph: god how excited am I for 'Anthropology and the Greeks' next year.
scuba soph: SO EXCITED.
Zebosity: oooooh, Sophie.
scuba soph: okay, so basically what I want more than anything right now?
scuba soph: is UGeek.
scuba soph: with entire departments devoted to things like the anthropology of dwarves in Discworld, the archaeology of magic in HP, etc.
Zebosity: Sophie, I would ADORE UGeek.
Zebosity: Uh, shockingly.
bookelfe: it could employ us all! *shiny eyes*
bookelfe: U of Meta!
scuba soph: I would pay good money to attend UGeek.
bookelfe: hey, if NYU can hand out degrees in Evil, there can totally be a UGeek
Zebosity: Uh huh.
scuba soph: fghfjhg courses in reconstructing linguistics in Firefly-verse.
scuba soph: Beginner's Sindarin.
Zebosity: Reconstructing linguistics in Firefly-verse = HEADACHE.
shaticordia: I started writing out a theory you guys
shaticordia: whereby the Powers That Be in the FFverse are like "shit, where'd all our southeast Asian people go?"
shaticordia: so they haul Hiro into the future
shaticordia: and then they're like WAIT YOU'RE NOT CHINESE
shaticordia: but it is too late
shaticordia: because he is sleeping with post-Serenity Zoe
ironic segue: ......
scuba soph: *drifting off into starry-eyed daydreams of UGeek courses on comparative theology*
scuba soph: *course title: Reading the Light Fantastic*

Vivien529: Soph, you ought to c&p the magic talk for Fahye
scuba soph: with the subject line: 'LOOK WHAT YOU DID'.

...You foul temptress. I don't have the capability with numbers to take on the

outsideinn-continuity fic you've got poking at my brain now. But I might have to anyway. Or, you know, do something else entirely (but that's doubtful, as I'm not entirely up on the fandom).

Speaking of medicine and magic, though, I desperately want to see something where someone works out that magical talent is a genetic defect. It would explain a lot about how it crops up in people.

Like standard Japanese, which doesn't actually technically exist in reality! I felt a little miffed when I found that out. I mean, it's mostly Tokyo Japanese, but it's still pretty much fabricated

*thoughtfully* I suppose the language of east asian magic would have to be a bastardised form of Ancient Chinese, because even though neither Korean nor Japanese are actually derived from it they are heavily influenced. Kind of like Latin and English; English is a Germanic language but Latin (and Greek) roots are all through it.

Well, that analogy works for Japanese, anyway. I'm not as sure about Korean since I don't speak it, but I know that it uses Chinese characters.

But that's a curious question. How much more pitch and tone would be involved in East Asian magic? It's obvious that stress is relevant in European magic-- "It's wingardium leviOsa, not levioSA"-- and English is a stress language. And to what extent would traditional Buddhist mysticism be utilised in the HP world? The magic in HP is in many ways based on the traditional English view of magic; wands, cauldrons, spells, broomsticks, etc. Myths and magic in Japan take a very different form. Putting aside what I said earlier about Chinese, the language of a lot of Buddhist magic is largely Sanskrit.

(Which, for that matter, makes me wonder about gods and mythology. The English have inherited a rather sodding boring one that you can't do much with in terms of playing around, but what about the Greek and Roman gods and the mischief they got up to? The Egyption gods? The dream-time? All the Japanese gods and spirits and monsters? Given how much HP itself draws on creatures of mythology, leprechauns, dragons, so forth, you'd have to assume all the creatures would exist, but what of the gods? Are they powerful wizards/regional equivalent who used to sometimes reveal themselves to/play havoc with muggles, or are they a force the wizards/whatever have to deal with or in the past had to deal with? And how do wizard myths and legends differ from those of the muggles? I suppose the Deathly Hallows might count...)

ARGH you've created a monster and I'm shutting up now!

--Alternately, there's the fact that American education relies far less on 'zomg boarding schools' (even though there are still some) and far more on 'zomg if you don't go to college THE WORLD WILL EXPLODE.' The ramifications of teaching magic at a day school could be interesting, ditto magic in a college/university setting.
Or there's the whole matter of different forms of government. How do you account for it? How does US democracy affect how magic is legislated?
Hmm.

Actually, the idea of - for example - the Greek and Roman gods as actually being powerful early mages or what have you would play very interestingly into the ancient characterisation of said gods in Greek and Roman mythology; less aloof and godlike, and more bawdy and vain and as flawed as the humans they rule over.

And it occurs to me to wonder whether the East Asian magical tradition involves wands at all. I mean, AFAIK, the accepted view of wands as they're used in HP is largely just as a tool for focusing and channelling a wizard/witch's magical energy. With the caveat that I'm making gargantuan generalisations and basically have no knowledge of anything ever, I wonder whether the concept of chi/qi is paralleled/incorporated at all in East Asian magic, w/r/t the harnessing and control of a person's energies from within, not without.

Yes, exactly! That's what I was thinking about RE: Roman/Greek gods-- they're so human, unlike the monotheistic and distant Christian God.

As for East Asian magic... I don't think there necessarily WOULD have to be wands. They're a particularly European concept, I think; I have the idea that Aboriginal magic might be through dance, for example, and if you needed something as a conduit for your magic it would make more sense in an Asian context to use something like Buddhist prayer beads or ofuda. In HP there are echoes and fairytales about things that actually exist in the wizarding world, and there are no wands in the myths of East Asia, which would logically mean their magic-users don't use them.

With East Asian magic, or at least Japanese... it's kind of a mix? Some of the Buddhist magic involves calling on gods to lend strength, but by and large onmyoujitsu and the like is all about focussing one's will, spiritual energy. Illusionary magic (genjutsu, a type of ninja magic) is very heavily based on this. There are a variety of other things that come into play... will power, beads, written characters, chants, hand positions, sometimes tracing out Sanskrit characters in the air. Sometimes things like direction can play a big part, or an object like a knife might be a necessary element.

The only way I write anymore is through challenges, so YES.

Have you read Quidditch through the Ages? It goes into a little bit of the American version of Quidditch, which I think is really cool. Just like rounders and baseball!

I have Alxandria being a huge center of magical history as Millicanon for Tom. The Wizarding library was fine, and in fact, wizards and witches saved as many of our books as they could, and kept them from our undeserving hands as a result.

There has to be some kind of hopscotch/tag/hide-and-go-seek variants for Wizarding kids, too.

"Bilius, how many times have I told you not to use Floo Powder whilst playing your silly games!"

Queen of the Damned, the movie. And I believe

jinxed_icons made

fahye's (I have the exact same saved on my PC), and mine was by

zoicite_icons.

Dude, my fic is maybe going to end up being Padma/George. Sort of. And that sounds like exactly the kind of fic that I was thinking of, so you should...condense it? Adapt it? WRIIIITE.

I don't really watch anything except for the Olympics. And I do love Johnny :D

Yep, QotD. Although I have kind of appropriated the pairing to represent a different pairing that sprung up through writing futurefic for one of my RPs...thus the keywords :)

*grins unrepentantly* Pff, I wrote River as a codebreaker and basically bullshitted the whole thing using Wikipedia pages on base notation and the Fibonacci sequence.

Actually, the educational differences thing is very interesting indeed. The English are expected to have found a direction by the final years of high school (you need X and Y to be an Auror, etc.) but Americans are all about majors in college. I wonder what issues would arise from the fact that Americans specialise later, and to all extents and purposes get more years of schooling.

YOU PEOPLE ARE SUCH FREAKS. I LOVE YOU ALL. I can't believe you ended up on the frigging Whorfian hypothesis (it's perfect!).

And this was pretty much EXACTLY what I was hoping would spring from the challenge, so you'll all just have to fistfight among yourselves and determine who's writing what.

Also: Americans, bloodlines, and a lack of aristocracy. I have a feeling the American magical community is far less concerned with bloodline purity than the British, just because there's no logical basis for it in the Muggle society.

How is gender handled in a society that contains Metamorphmagi?

Very interesting! Haven't read the fic recs yet, but the inclusion of gender on your list reminded me that I'd been idly wondering about the possible application of Polyjuice Potions for people who are curious about assuming another configuration - tall, or petite; fast; strong - or sex. (I guess JKR was very careful to have F-->F and M-->M transformations, but doesn't mean the potions can't be altered! Might be an interesting sideline for the Weasleys! *g*)

And a question/clarification: is the idea that "Muggle Studies" actually straddles the border between the magic and Muggle worlds? Because some of the questions are sort of from a wizard's perspective on the Muggle world, whereas others seem to be comparisons within the wizarding world (magic in China/Italy/the U.S.), and still others possibly a Muggle view of wizardry. Of course, they can all always be twisted around and explored from any of those POVs...

Will have to check out the comm and the rest of the discussions here!

I am just.

Going to, um.

Stay over here with my Mexico and my art and maybe start trying to work that out later. Or leave it to other people, they seem to be all about the words.

yes.

JKR was very careful to have F-->F and M-->M transformations

Not always! In HBP, Crabbe and Goyle were Polyjuiced into girls when they were acting as lookouts for Draco.

'Muggle Studies' is a bit of a flippant name - it's a kind of reverse of the normal meaning, with us Muggles 'learning about' the magical world. And yeah, the idea is that you can interpret it pretty loosely: you can compare Muggle and wizrading versions of things, or just take something that we know as a Muggle thing but that Rowling never showed us as part of the magical world (such as theatre or university) or consider how the 'Muggle culture' of particular countries or time periods might have influenced magical culture. Er. Anything goes, pretty much :)

Belatedly: damn you, Fahye, I am going to have to do SO MUCH RESEARCH.

*plotting happily*

HAHAH. I knew this would appeal to the crazy researchers on my flist *smug*.

Hmmmmmm, this looks really cool. ^^ I've always been interested in spell development... do they hack into a magical mainframe and code it? How do certain words work? What if a new spell is needed?

totally recced by

cf33, btw.

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Muggle Studies (a challenge)

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LOOK WHAT YOU DID

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DO YOU THINK I'M SORRY?

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