Begging and pleading on the subject of wards

[lexin]

Pet peeve: wards.

Wards turn up in story after story, and sometimes they're used well and sometimes they're used badly...but you know what? They're not canon.Nowhere in the five books so far does JKR mention "wards" in the sense that fanfic writers use them. I've encountered them in other fantasy - I think Katherine Kurtz used them often in her

Comments

[meri_oddities]

On the other hand, there is nothing in canon that says wards are not used. I'm not sure where it comes from, but it's magical. I'm just saying...

[lexin]

Well, I just searched through my electronic copies of the books and though JKR uses various kinds of protection spells (Muggle repelling charms, makting things unplottable, the blood-kin protections around 4 Privet Drive) she's always quite specific about their limitations and effects. "Wards" may have a specific occult meaning which I'm not aware of, but as used in fanfic they seem to me to be a bit vague and waffly.

[meri_oddities]

To ward means to guard. I've always thought of them as magical burglar alarms. :-) I'm pretty sure I use them that way. :-)

[tiferet]

Wards actually are generally used in occult practise to keep non-physical beings and influences out of a space that's been cleared, so that when you're working, there's nothing there you didn't ask to be. Sometimes they also are tweaked to let you know if an area's been intruded upon.

In fantasy, they sometimes also have a 'trap' component--that is, they can damage people who force their way past them.

[lexin]

non-physical beings and influences out of a space that's been cleared, so that when you're working, there's nothing there you didn't ask to be. Sometimes they also are tweaked to let you know if an area's been intruded upon.

The thing is, if that is the agreed occult definition of a 'ward' I'm not sure that most people are using them correctly. Most fan writers seem to mean one of:
a burglar alarm - to alert them to physical entry by other wizards;
a trip wire, to alert them to the approach of a potentially hostile person (this is the most common use of the word 'ward' that I see when reading slash); or
a combination of the two.

Very rarely are they using them to keep out non-physical entities, in HP the potential hostile does usually come down to Voldemort, Death Eaters, the Headmaster, the other teachers or the other students.

The other questionable thing about HP fan writers' wards is that most of them seem to be able to be cast with a wave of the wand. There's no question in most fanfiction stories of the AD&D, "This spell

[tiferet]

I quite take your point--it's simply never bothered me before because I've been going on the theory "you can do stuff with magick in fantasy that you can't in RL." Kind of like if I were a physicist, I hope I wouldn't be the sort of physicist who screams at science fiction writers that warp drive is not only impossible now, but will always be. (I have met a few of these.)

The tweaking to let you know if something got into a warded place is where they're getting the burglar alarm idea, but yeah, I've seen them used as tripwires, and even as booby traps.

It's never bothered me before that they use it to keep out physical beings in fiction; that's just not possible for most people to do with magick in the real world, because real-world magick works a lot better on the psychological and the immaterial than it does on the material--to the point where you really can't prove that it works at all, which is why it's called magick, not science, and which is why I'm not annoyed with sceptics who think it's all BS unless they are being rude

[meri_oddities]

Didn't Mercedes Lackey use them in some of the Valdemar books?

[tiferet]

She may have, but as I loathe her writing, I wouldn't recall--I've tried very hard to purge all recollection of all the L*ck*y books I've ever read from my poor abused brain.