this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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A lot of people point out that it doesn't make any sense that Harry and Ron didn't like their schoolwork. Well I figured out why:

It's because the magic system is just as boring in-universe as out of universe. It doesn't make any sense in universe either. Harry and Ron realised Rowling's magic system kinda stinks way before we did, because they spent all day learning it.

If Sanderson had been writing Harry Potter, then Harry and Ron would have liked learning magic as much as Hermione did (Also, Sanderson actually DID write a book about a super-school, it's called Skyward, it's good)

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[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 40 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (7 children)

This is the one thing I really appreciated about the Discworld books on a recent re-read. The wizards are hilariously incapable of doing anything useful. Terry Pratchett doesn't give a super clear series of rules for the magic system but it's abundantly clear that the wizards are incapable of actually useful magic, and mostly just get too tired up in internal power struggles to ever do anything. And in the book Sourcery, the first sourcerer (one who can create new spells) to grace the disc takes over the world, realizes running the entire world is too stressful and tedious then creates his own pocket dimension to play with magic in instead (I'm oversimplifiing here, skipping over a bunch of interpersonal stuff related to a sentient wizard's staff run by a dead guy who tricked Death among other details but that's the general gist)

By making the wizards so useless it bypasses any of the logical problems posed by creating a world with magic in it. There's no "why no use this spell" "why not magic out of this problem" etc. all because the wizards are too useless to actually do anything

[–] Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Rincewind isn't useless at most things, he's only useless at magic.

Esk is actually able to use magic to solve problems, because she's a precocious child and also female.

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