Harry vs. Nita
Mar. 30th, 2007 05:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalOr why I prefer ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dduane's So You Want to be a Wizard to Rowling's Harry Potter.
I read the first HP book and thought it was cute, and then saw CoS and lost interest in continuing to read the series. Diane Duane's SYWBaW, on the other hand, has cheerfully grabbed me by the brainstem and demands that I pick up the third book and the rest of the series now. I think I've finally figured out why.
It's got to do with reality, or lack thereof. Both series have got potent similarities. They're both tales of modern kids, in the modern world, who discover there's capital M Magic just around the corner. Magic that mundane folk either can't or just refuse to see, but that they themselves have access to. They've found a secret, and it's wonderful. To a point at least.
But here's the thing. Rowling's Wizarding World isn't really set in the Real World. It's deliberately seperate. Wizards have their own money, their own newspapers, their own candies, their own shops, their own seperate little culture that's pretty much divorced from the Muggles as much as possible. To the point that some wizards can barely handle the concept of bicycles, much less dealing with ATM's, cable TV, Homeland InSecurity, or any other aspects of modern life.
Nita's world in So You Want to be a Wizard, OTOH, is definitely in the real world, even when it takes a side trip into an alternate reality. She's in New York. It smells like New York. It looks like New York. You don't pass through a magic wall to visit the wizard shops, you look up an address in The Book and take a trip downtown to the little corner shop, where if you ask the right questions, the owner will show some stuff he has set aside for his "special" customers.
The people are real. Carl and Tom, Nita's main advisors, are Wizards, but Wizarding doesn't pay the bills (and if you do use it to pay the bills you're setting yourself up for a fall), so they work their Real World jobs, bitch about their crazy pet bird, and occasionally teleport straight out of the shower when their friends need help RIGHT NOW.
The magic seems more real. Yes there are spells. Quick ones that can make an enemy's blow slide off you, and harder ones that can do far more fantastic things. But you pay a price, every single time. Sometimes it's small, sometimes it's The Ultimate Price, but you have to pay it and you can never, ever, dodge it without someone else getting hurt. This is slammed home to Nita very hard in Deep Wizardry when she fails to read the fine print (almost literally) when she agrees to participate in a ceremony to keep the Lone Power at bay.
I think this part comes from Diane Duane's science fiction background. A quote from LMB's Komarr fits her concept of Wizarding nicely, "Perpetual Motion is against my religion." Just because you're performing magical spells doesn't mean you can ignore the physics of the real world. There's a marvelous moment in Deep Wizardry when Nita and her friend Kit are trying to convince her parents that yes, she can do magic, and they're refusing to believe them, even as Kit teleports several times right in front of them.
So they set up a really big teleport, straight to the Moon, to convince them. Which involves the usual Gathering of Esoteric Items to complete the trip, and also a quick discussion between Kit and Nita about how big the force bubble they're going to create has to be, so they've got enough air for the journey. Magic in this context is another branch of science, and you can't ignore the one just because you've got access to the other.
Oh, and here's another thing I prefer about magic in Nita and Kit's world:
You don't do it for fun.
Okay, you can, but that isn't what it's there for. When you are playing with Magic you are, on one level or another, fucking around with Reality. Reality generally doesn't care for that, and rather hopes you have a good reason for what you're doing.
You don't become a Wizard because you're born with the right bloodline. You become a Wizard because the Powers That Be take a good look at you, notice that you have a habit of looking at the world from a slightly off-center perspective, and then make you an offer, in the form of a book that just happens to catch your attention. It has a little paragraph in the back that you have to read. You have to agree to become a Wizard, to become Illuminated and never look at the world in the same way again. Don't do it unless you really know what you're getting into.
Why? Because Wizarding is a job. Wizards are the unsung, unseen, unthanked guardians of reality. They're the ones keeping the Lone Power, the creator of Death and Entropy, at bay. The Lone Power would spit on Voldemort are a freaking poseur of the lowest order. Who'd want to take over the Wizarding World? The Lone Power plays with universes, and it is only by the blood sweat and tears of the Wizards that he has not twisted our world into a hell beyond imagining.
Makes winning the Quidditch match look kinda lame in comparison, really.
dduane's So You Want to be a Wizard to Rowling's Harry Potter.I read the first HP book and thought it was cute, and then saw CoS and lost interest in continuing to read the series. Diane Duane's SYWBaW, on the other hand, has cheerfully grabbed me by the brainstem and demands that I pick up the third book and the rest of the series now. I think I've finally figured out why.
It's got to do with reality, or lack thereof. Both series have got potent similarities. They're both tales of modern kids, in the modern world, who discover there's capital M Magic just around the corner. Magic that mundane folk either can't or just refuse to see, but that they themselves have access to. They've found a secret, and it's wonderful. To a point at least.
But here's the thing. Rowling's Wizarding World isn't really set in the Real World. It's deliberately seperate. Wizards have their own money, their own newspapers, their own candies, their own shops, their own seperate little culture that's pretty much divorced from the Muggles as much as possible. To the point that some wizards can barely handle the concept of bicycles, much less dealing with ATM's, cable TV, Homeland InSecurity, or any other aspects of modern life.
Nita's world in So You Want to be a Wizard, OTOH, is definitely in the real world, even when it takes a side trip into an alternate reality. She's in New York. It smells like New York. It looks like New York. You don't pass through a magic wall to visit the wizard shops, you look up an address in The Book and take a trip downtown to the little corner shop, where if you ask the right questions, the owner will show some stuff he has set aside for his "special" customers.
The people are real. Carl and Tom, Nita's main advisors, are Wizards, but Wizarding doesn't pay the bills (and if you do use it to pay the bills you're setting yourself up for a fall), so they work their Real World jobs, bitch about their crazy pet bird, and occasionally teleport straight out of the shower when their friends need help RIGHT NOW.
The magic seems more real. Yes there are spells. Quick ones that can make an enemy's blow slide off you, and harder ones that can do far more fantastic things. But you pay a price, every single time. Sometimes it's small, sometimes it's The Ultimate Price, but you have to pay it and you can never, ever, dodge it without someone else getting hurt. This is slammed home to Nita very hard in Deep Wizardry when she fails to read the fine print (almost literally) when she agrees to participate in a ceremony to keep the Lone Power at bay.
I think this part comes from Diane Duane's science fiction background. A quote from LMB's Komarr fits her concept of Wizarding nicely, "Perpetual Motion is against my religion." Just because you're performing magical spells doesn't mean you can ignore the physics of the real world. There's a marvelous moment in Deep Wizardry when Nita and her friend Kit are trying to convince her parents that yes, she can do magic, and they're refusing to believe them, even as Kit teleports several times right in front of them.
So they set up a really big teleport, straight to the Moon, to convince them. Which involves the usual Gathering of Esoteric Items to complete the trip, and also a quick discussion between Kit and Nita about how big the force bubble they're going to create has to be, so they've got enough air for the journey. Magic in this context is another branch of science, and you can't ignore the one just because you've got access to the other.
Oh, and here's another thing I prefer about magic in Nita and Kit's world:
You don't do it for fun.
Okay, you can, but that isn't what it's there for. When you are playing with Magic you are, on one level or another, fucking around with Reality. Reality generally doesn't care for that, and rather hopes you have a good reason for what you're doing.
You don't become a Wizard because you're born with the right bloodline. You become a Wizard because the Powers That Be take a good look at you, notice that you have a habit of looking at the world from a slightly off-center perspective, and then make you an offer, in the form of a book that just happens to catch your attention. It has a little paragraph in the back that you have to read. You have to agree to become a Wizard, to become Illuminated and never look at the world in the same way again. Don't do it unless you really know what you're getting into.
Why? Because Wizarding is a job. Wizards are the unsung, unseen, unthanked guardians of reality. They're the ones keeping the Lone Power, the creator of Death and Entropy, at bay. The Lone Power would spit on Voldemort are a freaking poseur of the lowest order. Who'd want to take over the Wizarding World? The Lone Power plays with universes, and it is only by the blood sweat and tears of the Wizards that he has not twisted our world into a hell beyond imagining.
Makes winning the Quidditch match look kinda lame in comparison, really.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 11:53 pm (UTC)Although Harry Potter books are engrossing and fun, I'm going to (eventually) convince all my friends they need to read Diane Duane's books. And they'll love them, too.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 12:17 am (UTC)I like that you can do magick for fun in the Potterverse, even though I think the Potterverse has a horrific morality. Why shouldn't you do magick for fun? People do science for fun! The Potterverse is amorality masquerading as morality--the Wizardry books are a little too fucking moral for me. :)
YMMV, and clearly does.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 06:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 06:33 am (UTC)I still love Duane as an author, but my favourite books of hers are the Rihannsu books, not because they're Trek, but because they are NOT about the Lone Power vs (fantasy polyamourists/kid wizards/cat wizards). I love the Rihannsu culture and characters.
And I absolutely can't swallow "cancer has a right to life" as a philosophy. Nope. I have read the book after that one, but I'm way behind on the series--I just haven't liked it as well since she went there.
OTOH, the only book I've hated as much as Half-Blood Prince was Lord Foul's Bane. Those two really I should rate by the force with which they hit walls rather than the words I said to them :)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-02 07:01 am (UTC)A lot.
I also unfortunately still care what happens to Draco and to Severus. I doubt it will be any good. I care what happens to Harry but not very much. After HBP, I cannot be arsed to care a whit what happens to Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley or Hermione Granger. I had some inkling that Ron was dreadful; the level of dreadfulness in Ginny and Hermione, however, surprised me.