Internal Realism

I was watching this guy on YouTube who does a lot of movie critiques when I noticed that he had a video about Skyrim, a game I like. The actual content of the video was about verisimilitude which I found to be rather a pompous word for what amounts to internal realism. It's the idea that a world has to follow whatever rules it has. The video goes on to talk about how failing to establish this concept pulls you out of the game. This struck a chord with me because I have been feeling this dissatisfaction with the game for a while and just watching that video, I felt so much vindication. Where one might assume I would talk more about how the internal realism of the magic in the game does not work and amounts to little more than another way to kill your enemies, I will now turn to my attention to writing. While watching the video, I came to the realization that  I have been trying to do the same thing with a relatively new writing project of mine, a Harry Potter sequel.

  A lot of world building is done in the first two books but then isn’t really referred to in the book again. It always irked me a little that wand movements never mattered past like the one chapter in the first book where Flitwick says the ‘swish and flick’ line and says they are important. but then it's never brought up again in the books and in the movie we just see people pointing wands at each other. Potions are another thing which don't feel fully realized. Potions are another subsection of magic that don't feel fully realized. They are obviously important enough to be compulsorily taught in magic school but we never see much use of potions other than Polyjuice, Veritaserum and Amortentia. Sure, Harry is asked to make a Draught of Living Death, but why is it even a potion? Is it used to induce comas when needed? What about harmful uses of the potion? The books certainly mention Potions, the class a lot and Potions, the magical subclass fairly often but the lack of in-world integration really makes it seem like a theoretical subject with not many applications. This is not to say that there is no internal realism in the Harry Potter universe. The spell system is reasonably well fleshed out and implemented. The creation of Shield Hats by George and Fred Weasley by using a Shield Charm and the Ministry of Magic promptly buying up the whole stock for its employees is such a perfect example of internal realism. I, as the reader, have no doubt that if Shield Charms were real, they would be implemented in this exact way and the government would use them in the exact same way as well. I also really liked the moment in Chamber of Secrets where Harry doesn't say Diagon Alley properly and obviously isn't Diagon Alley but is quite close to it. It is easy to infer from this, some rule of magic which states that improperly saying an incantation does not have the desired effect but does produce something kind of close to it. This is somewhat soured by the fifth book where Cho doesn't say ‘expelliarmus’ properly and sets her friend's eyebrows on fire. To me, the internal realism would dictate that the spell would have a similar effect to Expelliarmus. Something like a necklace falling off or an earring or even her eyebrows falling off. Something that is close to the intended effect but not quite it. But it seems Rowling utilized Cho misspeaking as something mostly for comic effect while it could have served that purpose and also made the Harry Potter universe feel more lived in. This seems like an ideal time to talk about Rowling and her post book attempts to add more internal realism to her work. This came mostly in the form of posts on Pottermore and on podcasts. This never had the effect she most likely wanted and none of her additions have actually stuck with the general public other than the absolutely ridiculous ones (wizards shitting on the floor and then Vanishing the shit).

  Obviously, I cannot hope to rectify this for the general public nor do I plan to. I am writing it mostly for myself because I feel like there is more depth that can be added to the characters, especially Harry and Hermione. I will however, take advantage of me writing about this world to include some exposition in my sequel where following and not following the rules established by previous books has consequences in regards to wand movements as well as expanding on the rules for things like potions non verbal spells Anyway, as the first post I'm writing on this blog, I feel it is imperative to mention that there is no real purpose for the blog. It serves mostly as an outlet for thoughts I have that I usually send to my friends. To those friends, there is no escape for you, I’m still going to send whatever I feel like talking about to y’all first and then maybe edit it and put it on here.