Well that was a delight
Jun. 5th, 2017 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethToday's dream: postgraduate study at Hogwarts.
Turns out that university and postgrad levels can be handled rather differently than school, though it has gone out of fashion of late. Nobody is quite sure exactly how it works, and the options are a bit mind boggling. Plus actual postgrad study requires a full quartet - one from each House - and they'll be together five years.
But on the up side, from outside, the whole thing, a three year degree and five year doctorate, takes about eight hours.
... and after I typed that I got distracted in the Harry Potter wiki, because it's all very well dreaming you're a Slytherin with blood just as pure as Draco Malfoy and using a bog oak and unicorn wand, but what's it all mean?
... probably being evil, apparently. Which is stupid. Entire school houses don't just be evil.
Also it makes the 'raised as a muggle' bit a tiny bit unlikely, but that bit was funny cause I'd brought a bunch of RPG rulebooks along with my actual textbooks and kept running D&D campaigns as 'practice'.
I was a bit baffled by the idea of me as ambitious, but really I do run worlds, or at least invent them, so, near enough.
... GMs as inherently Slytherin...
The post Hogwarts study would get a degree in a morning and a doctorate in a day. But you'd experience eight years. And they'd be full of adventure and daring, puzzles to perform, deeds to outdo, that sort of thing. But the philosophically tricky bit was, did you live eight years, turn time back to graduation day, and then live a completely different set that overwrote the first? Or did you create some sort of dream world? Did the person that existed for those eight years just continue to exist after? Or do you make a sort of sending and then drain it for memories? Since nobody could figure it out, nobody much wanted to try it that way any more.
But given the, er, interruptions to schooling commonly experienced in the Potter era, the idea of getting eight years in before anybody changed the rules again must have a sudden appeal.
People who study that way must seem all kinds of weird though. Eight years only they and their quartet could remember. Or only three, if you couldn't find a quartet that would take you.
So in the dream the eight year adventure centered around a base called Uttermere, which was a great big ruin, but with secrets built in. It was only this year's challenge, every year would focus on something different. But when we woke up we decided fixing up Uttermere would be a great way to spend the next few years, and it would make an ideal site for a real wizarding university, or at least research group. But while we were packing we found out Draco Malfoy had had the same idea already, somewhat before us. And that wouldn't get in our way, we'd all have an equal right to try and he'd be a real asset if he was serious, but it was vastly amusing because it meant he'd be working with Potter.
Everyone kept saying "Potter!" in Malfoy voices and bursting out laughing again.
But the good bit as a dream was just having such a lot of good work to do. Fixing up the building was going to take all of us and stretch our skills, especially because as well as the plumbing we'd have to get the magical flow right. Wizarding buildings are potentially alive, so restoring a ruin is as much a resurrection as a construction challenge. But we'd be reshaping it to new purposes. A proper research group, designed to bring together every strand of wizardry. So we had two towers for Hogwarts already, one for our quartet and one for whoever Draco brought along, but for the other towers we invite groups from other schools of wizardry.
And the greenhouses and grounds were going to be a delight to restore. ... and a challenge, from the not getting dead of unexpected magical whatsits, but we were the kind of group that considered that part of the fun.
Also neat is the idea there's like heritage site ruins you can just go move in to if you pass the right tests. Simpler than mortgages.
I like communities with a goal. I mean families have a goal of raising children, but children are tiny and terrifying and baffling, so college forever seems like a great plan.
Still though, me as Slytherin... and who would the other three be? And what kind of place would Hogwarts be if everyone knew you needed to build up a friend group from all four houses, or be shut out of getting a Doctorate?
I was thinking when I woke up it's weird I keep dreaming about flipping Draco Malfoy. I could just blame The Flash. But the thing with fic of the 'more from' school is it tends to emphasise the bad points of the protagonist, seeing as they were skipped over in source, and the good points of the enemy they're being slashed with. The good guys get shown as needing a little more of their enemy in them, which makes them seem more reasonable. And trying to lead the protagonist through falling for their enemy gives the reader a really attractive view of them. So someone being remotely likeable in canon is basically irrelevant to how a fanfic reader gets guided to react to them.
... honestly I should just stop feeling apologetic about it, I mostly read enemies to lovers, it's what works for me.
... but some of those enemies, from a pure canon point of view, really should just go to jail for pretty much ever, so, apologetic it is...
But fixing a whole culture through who your study group house shares with seems like a good spark.
Turns out that university and postgrad levels can be handled rather differently than school, though it has gone out of fashion of late. Nobody is quite sure exactly how it works, and the options are a bit mind boggling. Plus actual postgrad study requires a full quartet - one from each House - and they'll be together five years.
But on the up side, from outside, the whole thing, a three year degree and five year doctorate, takes about eight hours.
... and after I typed that I got distracted in the Harry Potter wiki, because it's all very well dreaming you're a Slytherin with blood just as pure as Draco Malfoy and using a bog oak and unicorn wand, but what's it all mean?
... probably being evil, apparently. Which is stupid. Entire school houses don't just be evil.
Also it makes the 'raised as a muggle' bit a tiny bit unlikely, but that bit was funny cause I'd brought a bunch of RPG rulebooks along with my actual textbooks and kept running D&D campaigns as 'practice'.
I was a bit baffled by the idea of me as ambitious, but really I do run worlds, or at least invent them, so, near enough.
... GMs as inherently Slytherin...
The post Hogwarts study would get a degree in a morning and a doctorate in a day. But you'd experience eight years. And they'd be full of adventure and daring, puzzles to perform, deeds to outdo, that sort of thing. But the philosophically tricky bit was, did you live eight years, turn time back to graduation day, and then live a completely different set that overwrote the first? Or did you create some sort of dream world? Did the person that existed for those eight years just continue to exist after? Or do you make a sort of sending and then drain it for memories? Since nobody could figure it out, nobody much wanted to try it that way any more.
But given the, er, interruptions to schooling commonly experienced in the Potter era, the idea of getting eight years in before anybody changed the rules again must have a sudden appeal.
People who study that way must seem all kinds of weird though. Eight years only they and their quartet could remember. Or only three, if you couldn't find a quartet that would take you.
So in the dream the eight year adventure centered around a base called Uttermere, which was a great big ruin, but with secrets built in. It was only this year's challenge, every year would focus on something different. But when we woke up we decided fixing up Uttermere would be a great way to spend the next few years, and it would make an ideal site for a real wizarding university, or at least research group. But while we were packing we found out Draco Malfoy had had the same idea already, somewhat before us. And that wouldn't get in our way, we'd all have an equal right to try and he'd be a real asset if he was serious, but it was vastly amusing because it meant he'd be working with Potter.
Everyone kept saying "Potter!" in Malfoy voices and bursting out laughing again.
But the good bit as a dream was just having such a lot of good work to do. Fixing up the building was going to take all of us and stretch our skills, especially because as well as the plumbing we'd have to get the magical flow right. Wizarding buildings are potentially alive, so restoring a ruin is as much a resurrection as a construction challenge. But we'd be reshaping it to new purposes. A proper research group, designed to bring together every strand of wizardry. So we had two towers for Hogwarts already, one for our quartet and one for whoever Draco brought along, but for the other towers we invite groups from other schools of wizardry.
And the greenhouses and grounds were going to be a delight to restore. ... and a challenge, from the not getting dead of unexpected magical whatsits, but we were the kind of group that considered that part of the fun.
Also neat is the idea there's like heritage site ruins you can just go move in to if you pass the right tests. Simpler than mortgages.
I like communities with a goal. I mean families have a goal of raising children, but children are tiny and terrifying and baffling, so college forever seems like a great plan.
Still though, me as Slytherin... and who would the other three be? And what kind of place would Hogwarts be if everyone knew you needed to build up a friend group from all four houses, or be shut out of getting a Doctorate?
I was thinking when I woke up it's weird I keep dreaming about flipping Draco Malfoy. I could just blame The Flash. But the thing with fic of the 'more from' school is it tends to emphasise the bad points of the protagonist, seeing as they were skipped over in source, and the good points of the enemy they're being slashed with. The good guys get shown as needing a little more of their enemy in them, which makes them seem more reasonable. And trying to lead the protagonist through falling for their enemy gives the reader a really attractive view of them. So someone being remotely likeable in canon is basically irrelevant to how a fanfic reader gets guided to react to them.
... honestly I should just stop feeling apologetic about it, I mostly read enemies to lovers, it's what works for me.
... but some of those enemies, from a pure canon point of view, really should just go to jail for pretty much ever, so, apologetic it is...
But fixing a whole culture through who your study group house shares with seems like a good spark.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-06 07:21 am (UTC)Dreams just use what is around in your brain. If you remember the previous dream about Draco then it is around so you can get a sequence. Nothing sinister about it :)
A much nicer place. Most of the bullying seems to come down to the house system.