lizzie

tysm for the tag @simplyfianella! <33

reading: ignoring my school work i am still somehow reading just lovers (the jegulus fic) and also reading everything comes back to you (byler fic)

last series: haven't watched anything since stranger things baited my queer

last movie: i watched scream yesterday 10/10

last song: accidentally in love from shrek 2😭

sweet or salty: salty always

coffee or tea: cofffffeeeee all the way (i'm having one rn)

working on: studying💔

thank you smm for the tag <33 :DDD

reading: Disintegration by moonymoment (im obsessed)

last series: brooklyn 99 (i just started watching it and it will surely become one of my hyperfixations)

last movie: Everything Everywhere All at Once (i sobbed watching it)

last song: Must Be Love by Laufey

sweet or salty: i have a huge sweet tooth but my teeth are sensitive to sugar so i eat salty more 💔

coffee or tea: tea. I hate coffee (but to be fair I've only tried black coffee so)

working on: writing my fic :]

Hihi thanks you for tagging me 🤗

reading: a lot of one shot since im a bit busy but the main fic i read are The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower by canonsiriusblack (marauders fandom) and Footnotes in History by onemorechapter2000 (asoiaf fandom). Both are really good

last series: Irma Vep by Olivier Assayas and Percy Jackson and the Olympians

last movie: Avatar by James Cameron (I love this movie soo much -even if the second is my favorite- I'm currently rewatching the entire saga)

last song: Thérèse by Maya Hawke

sweet or salty: For me, sugar becomes too curing after a while. So definitely the savoury just for the cheese (brie, camembert, blue, Tom, raclette, fondue, I love cheese 😩)

coffee or tea: I hate both 😔

working on: shooting my short movie, my art work, crafting my own universe, role playing with my friends, paint animation, A LOT OF THINGS, A LOT

JKR is terrible at world-building, so why not just invent societies for our own countries? (And even invent more schools because, what the hell, you mean Africa is only allowed one while the UK has one all to itself?)

Create a wizarding world for our cultures, with pureblood societies that have their own characteristics, places (please, more places and jobs than just working at the Ministry), like wizarding villages or new types of jobs that actually make sense in the country. Because I’m willing to believe that the magical world has a more or less similar culture everywhere, but at some point Muggle culture is bound to influence wizarding culture.

MY PERSONAL TAKE ON AFRICAN MAGICAL SOCIETY.

Preface! Africa is a large and diverse continent full of a plethora of cultures and languages, said languages each with different dialects and societal standards. My hcs tie in close to my own home, that being in Zimbabwe.

• Zimbabwean magic and spirituality are tied in tight, practically interchangeable therefore there's not really "purebloods" in the societies. Magic calls one to be it's vessel the same way the ancestors call one to speak their will. This is the wide belief.

• There are old families that dabble in magic, they run the education in their communities and have "schools" where all who have magical kids send their children. There the magical kids are taught to hone their ability according to the makings of their magical core.

•Blood Magic is more widely used than potion brewing because it's faster and more effective (also where tf am I finna find eye of newt in Gokwe yk?)

• Magic is viewed as intuitive! Wandless magic is standard! No spells! No wands! External tools for magic are seen as narrow and crippling because magic is everywhere, using a wand to draw on it would be like drinking from a lake with straw, why not just cup your hands instead?

• Magical jobs are wide an interchangeable with "muggle" jobs. Witch doctors, sorceresses, herbalists, midwives, architects, teachers, cursehunters, diplomats etc etc

• Magical Societies are close knitted with magical beings, wix make deals with mermaids, have tea with forest sprites, speak to mountain spirits and so on and so forth. There is no prejudice because they have learnt to live together easily.

•There's a magical totem system that ties into the magic that makes up one's magical core base. It's often according to tribe/clan so families and relatives tend to have the same core bases. This is often used track families and to avoid incest marriages (Zimbabwean don't play about that shit lol, it's taboo)

• There is no "official" governance of magic. Which means no "statute of secrecy" (it's not necessary because wix and muggles live in harmony), no underage magic tracking (what even man?) Etc etc. Each community has a teacher and their knowledge is bestowed to an apprentice and/or their family thus the magic theory is maintained. That's the closest to governance of magic otherwise they basically follow the muggle systems of hierarchy like chiefs, village heads etc etc

But then BAM! Colonialism!

• the coming of the missionaries scatters the societies and they go largely into hiing because colonialism has demonized spirituality and magic alike. Mediums, Seers and wix are being burnt alive. The old families now teach in secret. The colonisation is largely muggle (Ministry of Magic lovesss the whole 'splendid isolation' schmuck) so it's relatively easy to go hush hush abt it.

I love being educated about how a society I don’t know much about works, and discovering something new and original about something I looove 🤭

I enjoy so much what you create and propose : there’s no distinction between any type of being. It’s something I feel like we really don’t get in JKR’s work (how surprising). AND THE FACT THAT THEY WOULD RESPECT SEERS, OMG YES. Sybill should have been treated that way.

Also, this might make no sense, but I find your idea about magic being practiced without wands really interesting, and it actually makes a lot of sense. Because how the hell did the first witches and wizards use magic? They didn’t discover their abilities while holding a stick. It also makes me believe even more in the theory that Ministries use wands to control the population (I hope I’m making sense here).

AND DAMN, YOUR POINT ABOUT COLONISATION.

I. NEED. TO. KNOW. HOW. EUROPEAN. WIZARDS. WERE. IMPLICATED. IN. COLONISATION.

That’s something that, I think, is never mentioned, and it’s important, since (yay) JKR gave us some non-white characters who could possibly be descendants of wizards originating from colonised countries (I might be really, really wrong, so correct me if I am).

JKR is terrible at world-building, so why not just invent societies for our own countries? (And even invent more schools because, what the hell, you mean Africa is only allowed one while the UK has one all to itself?)

Create a wizarding world for our cultures, with pureblood societies that have their own characteristics, places (please, more places and jobs than just working at the Ministry), like wizarding villages or new types of jobs that actually make sense in the country. Because I’m willing to believe that the magical world has a more or less similar culture everywhere, but at some point Muggle culture is bound to influence wizarding culture.

There have been a lot of inventions from the Middle East, for example: a lot of surgical tools still used today, algebra, coffee, windmills, clocks, etc., so I would like to think a lot of the magical inventions originated by arabs, as well.

I think wizards and witches alike were probably influenced by Muggle religion, so either they had some weird religious guilt, were defensive about it, became religious themselves, or did not give a damn. But a lot of them were influenced in some type of way.

Another fun idea is that there's this annual global Ancient Ruins competition where students from around the world compete to see who can decode a ruin the most accurately, and Egypt wins every time, I'm telling you.

I love love love this and definitely need to see some visual art about this : clothes, schools, especially how the house about knowledge looks. (To be even more precise, the house about art, because Arab art is so gorgeous and beautiful !!!)

This is proof that we can all build a wizarding world that makes sense in all cultures and is not built by a racist transphobe who doesn’t give a shit about having logical world-building.

Also, about queerness: I read a fanfic that I found amazing on the world-building side (Toujours Noir by OneMoreChapter_2000), where wizard society fully (or at least more than ours) accepts queerness. I found this idea really cool that in pureblood wizard society it’s normal, even the norm (and legal, since Harry Potter takes place in 1991 and same-sex marriage was legalized in 2014 in the UK, I think), to have gay and even poly marriages and relationships.