Talk:Fictional universe of Harry Potter

Merge proposal: Magical creatures

Hello! I am proposing that Magical creatures in Harry Potter be merged into this page. I did a lot of work on the Magical Creatures page, which included:

1. Moving descriptions of individual characters (Dobby, Fawkes, etc) to List of Harry Potter characters.
2. Condensing (often to a very large degree) the descriptions of creatures, so that all of them fit in one list. The more notable ones (Dementors, goblins, etc) used to have their own sections, but those sections were full of plot summaries (which can be found on other pages) and excessive in-universe details more appropriate to a fan wiki. You can view the page as it existed before I started editing here.

Once those tasks were done, I introduced a list of the more notable creatures onto this page. The descriptions for these creatures are shortened versions of the descriptions on the Magical Creatures page.

The Magical Creatures page is now simply a list of every single creature that shows up in the Harry Potter universe. I don't think the majority of this list is notable, and there is no real-world context for most of the entries. I propose that we add the full descriptions of the notable creatures onto this page, then redirect the Magical Creatures page to this one. I don't think we need to list all the minor creatures anywhere, unless someone makes a case that they are notable for some reason.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Update: I'm retracting my merge proposal after the feedback given below.

Wafflewombat (talk) 05:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions to the magical creatures in Harry Potter page. Managing list sizes and due coverage of disparate items is frequently difficult editing work.

Concerning the inclusion of any given creature in the list, per WP:NNC in the notability guideline, [t]he notability guideline does not apply to the contents of articles or of stand-alone lists. Notability is determined for a topic, i. e. question is whether the topic—magical creatures in Harry Potter—is notable. From there, inclusion of content in the article is about editorial discretion and consensus, guided by considerations like due weight. Editors may decide to make a list exhaustive, or they may decide to focus on list items of a certain degree of significance.

As for the topic, for all my personal thoughts about the author and her fiction, I feel obliged to conclude that the topic of magical creatures in Harry Potter is notable. Magical creatures in Harry Potter are the focus of the latest franchise expansion, and they're a major facet of the reception and interpretation of the overall setting and franchise. The topic receives significant coverage in academic sources, fulfilling the general notability guideline. A few examples (listed alphabetically by surname) with brief descriptions of their coverage:

• Tracy Bealer, "Consider the Dementor: Discipline, Punishment, and Magical Citizenship in Harry Potter", Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy 6, no. 3 (2019): 36–47
  • Covers specifically Dementors as part of examining the depiction of carceral punishment, connecting the depiction in Harry Potter to the function of prison in the real world
• Lauren Berman, "Dragons and Serpents in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series: Are They Evil?", Mythlore: A Journal of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature (2008), 27, no. 1, 45–65
  • About the mythological tropes from real-world cultures that Rowling's depiction of dragons draws upon and mixes together, and also about the aesthetic purpose they serve in instilling readers with a sense of wonder
• Peter Dendle, "Monsters, Creatures, and Pets at Hogwarts: Animal Stewardship in the World of Harry Potter", in Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, 2nd ed., ed. Elizabeth E. Heilman (Routledge, 2008)
  • Covers the depiction of animals and animal stewardship, examining it as a reflection of then-contemporaneous controversies and anxieties about animal ethics in the real world during the 1990s and early 2000s
• Jen Harrison, "Posthuman Power: The Magic of Hybridity in the Harry Potter Series", Children's Literature Association Quarterly 43, no. 3 (Fall 2018): 325–343
  • A lot of coverage of magical creatures throughout the franchise, part of a study of the theme of hybridity throughout the narrative; connects the depiction of magical creatures to Rowling's claim that Fantastic Beasts is supposed to have a political message about confronting xenophobia and oppression.
• Laura Hartmann, "The Black Dog and the Boggart: Fantastic Beasts in Joanne K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Where to Find Them in Mythology and Traditional Folklore", in "Harry – Yer a Wizard": Exploring J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter Universe, eds. Marion Gymnich, Hanne Birk, Denise Burkhard Tectum Verlag, ), 41–50
  • Connecting Rowling's depiction of magical creatures in Azkaban to the mythological tropes and real-world cultures that originated them (by way of aside, I think the seemingly backward book title is because (Tectum Verlag is a German publisher, so some of the content has been translated from German)
• Annia Hugosson, "The 'Care' of Magical Creatures? A Moral Critique of the Animal Lover Trope in Harry Potter", Journal of Animal Ethics 11, no. 2 (Fall 2021): 60–72
  • A critique of the Potter franchise's depiction of animal care, connecting the behavior of characters like Hagrid to controversies and principles in animal ethics
• Maggie Meimaridi, "'Come Seek Us Where Our Voices Sound': Encountering the Mermaid in Harry Potter", in The Philosophical Power of Fairy Tales from Around the World, ed. W. C. Turgeon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024): 55–69
  • Covers the mythological tropes from real-world cultures that inspire and undergird the depiction of mermaids in Harry Potter, and where the Potter franchise borrows from and departs from those tropes.
• Anna Mik, "Magizoology: The Magical Creatures Studies J. K. Rowling's Postulates on Animals in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them on Examples from Graeco-Roman Mythology", Maska 33 (2017): 21–32
  • Covers Rowling's depiction of magical creatures as part of the popular reception of mythological tropes (centaurs, mercreatures, etc.)
• Michael Ostling, "Harry Potter and the Disenchantment of the World", Journal of Contemporary Religion 18, no. 1 (2003): 3–23
  • Analyzes several aspects of the Potter franchise, including magical creatures (albeit to a limited extent, as this is the source in this list with the least focus on magical creatures, but even its short analysis is of such depth as to feel significant) as part of understanding the franchise as part of the cultural phenomenon of disenchantment
• Charles D. Wilson, "The Failed Wizard Justice System: Race and Access to Justice in Harry Potter", in Harry Potter and the Other: Race, Justice, and Difference in the Wizarding World, eds. Sarah Park Dahlen and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (University Press of Mississippi, 2022), 287–304
  • Interprets the exclusion of magical creatures like centaurs and werewolves from full personhood/citizenship in the setting as part of the franchise's troubled refraction of themes of real-world racism and injustice

This is what I found searching for coverage that uses the term "magical creatures" generally. If one also looks for coverage of specific creatures, like Harry Potter's goblins and house elves, there's also a lot of material there, examining matters such as antisemitic stereotypes in the goblin depiction or the troubled portrayal of slavery in the house elf subplots.

With all this in mind, I don't think magical creatures in Harry Potter ought to be merged with fictional universe of Harry Potter. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 09:00, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for all this information! I guess I wasn't thinking about the broader topic of magical creatures because the page has only been functioning as a glossary without any real-world context. But that could clearly change. Thanks for listing these sources – I put them on a page which is linked from the talk page. Wafflewombat (talk) 09:16, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome; if what I found can be helpful, I'm glad. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 09:23, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Just curious, how did you find all those sources? I'm still learning the best ways to locate academic sources. Wafflewombat (talk) 09:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I often use Google Scholar [1] for its convenience, though it's worth remembering that it's an imperfect tool. There are some academic publications that don't show up in Google Scholar results because of disagreements between the Google company and those publishers about rights, access, costs, etc. And it's important to double check results that do show up, because Google Scholar sometimes pulls results from thesis and paper repositories, but Wikipedians don't generally accord BA theses and MA/MS theses the same respect as journal articles or academically-published books.

When a Google Scholar result is paywalled, depending on the repository through which it's provided, it may be accessible through the Wikipedia Library; the page explains the criteria for qualifying to use Wikipedia Library, and from there you'll be able to see the various repositories to which you can get access.

You can also check Google Books for book results from major publishers that aren't academic presses but can still typically be counted on to be reliable, especially when the author is a scholar, such as (though not limited to) Alfred A. Knopf, Basic Books, Beacon Press, Doubleday, HarperCollins, Penguin Books, PublicAffairs, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and W. W. Norton, to name just a few examples. and then try to request those books from a library that serves you. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 09:43, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this message. I've got another question for you, but don't feel obligated to reply immediately if you're still on a wikibreak.

Do you think Magic in Harry Potter should be merged into Fictional universe of Harry Potter? While Magical Creatures is, as you pointed out, an aspect of HP that has enough commentary for its own page, I think magic is so inherent to the HP universe that it doesn't make sense to keep it separate. Harry Potter wouldn't be Harry Potter without magic. I haven't looked for sources yet, but I'm not sure how someone would write about the magic in HP without essentially writing about its fictional universe. I think the only reason these pages weren't merged earlier is because they were both really long. I've condensed both of them considerably, and I think they could now be comfortably merged.

The larger issue is that both pages need way more real-world context. But I think it would be better to have one page that needs more real-world context than two.

Please let me know your thoughts! Wafflewombat (talk) 00:16, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

The shortest answer is that I'm not really sure, to be honest.

On the one hand, uou're right that there is an overlap of the articles. Magic in Harry Potter could be described and explained and contextualized as part of its fictional universe. On the other hand, whether that's enough space or not I'm unsure of. "Magical creatures" was a keyword-search-friendly phrase in a way that "magic AND Harry Potter" isn't (it's understandably clever for researchers to say things like 'the magic of Harry Potter is the symbolism/worldbuilding/music/etc.', which is good reading but makes searching for literally the fictional magic tough), so it's been hard to get, at a glance, a good impression of how much coverage the magic specifically compared to other fictional universe elements—like locations (Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, etc.), groups/factions/organizations (Muggles, wizards, the Ministry, Death Eaters, etc.), culture (wizard sports and games, holidays, history, etc.).

I have found a study of the etymological background behind Rowling's invented spell names, a linguistic study of spell syllable construction, and some translation studies work on translating spell names into different languages. The Ostling article I mentioned earlier focuses a lot on the depiction of magic as part of the franchise's participation in the social phenomenon of disenchantment. The Roger Williams University Law Review has an entire article about specifically the "unforgivable curses". There may well be more, because the Potter franchise got pretty substantial attention from academics who study popular culture, but I'm not sure of the best way to search. Maybe using spell names? (There might be an idea there; could Spells in Harry Potter be a more distinguishable topic than the much more general "magic"?)

You mention that you think it's better to have 1 article that needs more real world context than 2 articles. I guess we think about this kind of content question on Wikipedia differently. The way I see it, since Wikipedia isn't paper and there is no deadline, at least not for something where the problem isn't misinformation about something really serious (biomedicine, for example), but simply a lack of information about something not on its own immediately harmful (granting at least for the sake of consideration a death of the author separation between a creative work and the creator)—that's to say, since there's not an issue of room or deadlines, it's no worse hurt to two articles that at least inform the reader to some extent, albeit only about the fictional content of the topic and that have the potential to both be expanded, than 1 article with the same information and less room to expand. If there's enough coverage of magic in Harry Potter so as to warrant another article separate from the main fictional universe article, I figure why not have one, and contributors will grow and develop it as they have time and interest.

That's just how I see it, anyhow, though not strongly, because I haven't been able to get a good sense of the extent of the coverage. Sorry about this being something of a non-answer. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:43, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate everything you shared. I won't push the merge idea, and we'll just see how both of those articles develop. Thanks for your detailed replies to all my questions. In just a few conversations, you've already been one of the most helpful editors I've encountered. Wafflewombat (talk) 07:27, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

That's very kind of you to say, and thanks very much for hearing out my thoughts. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:53, 2 September 2024 (UTC)