![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nineveh_ukI fear that an awful lot of my attitude to life and work can be summed up by my finding it far more fun to speculate about 1920s magical science as it might be applied to what happens to the body after the Dementor’s Kiss, than to actually get down to writing more serious stuff. And then I find myself walking to the station to buy a train ticket thinking “But hang on, I’m composing this in 1920s magical pseudo-science English, but the actual lecture is being delivered in German (which, thanks to canon, Peter Wimsey naturally speaks perfectly, resolving other potential plot issues at a convenient stroke), what is the German word for soul anyway, since the character is electing not to use it, it being a layman’s term in this context, and oh damn, has this character read Freud/Jung, and does that mean I need to, and obviously witches and wizards are the sort of people who would attempt to see if a Dementor could suck the soul of a chimpanzee*, but only if they’d got to the point of considering whether a chimpanzee has self-awareness, so when did Muggles come up with that?” Meanwhile all this is taking place in Wittenberg about which I care so little it's only just occured to me to see where it actually is. Answer, not where I had imagined.
Short version: I am not going to go and read Jung to see if it fits with my total bollocks theory. It’s total bollocks. If I feel the need for completeness I can address with half a sentence of “and obviously we’re talking about physical processes, not psychological ones”.
There is some plot function to all of this, but far less than the time devoted to it deserves.
*And dolphins, and whales. Oh blast, what about Beasts? I can’t remember the Beast/Being categorisation. There’s no way that they won’t know already if Dementors can suck the souls of e.g. goblins. But since magical theology agrees with, and indeed in some respects was the foundation of, the theory that Dementors do not actually suck out people’s souls, but something along the lines of consciousness (except consciousness+plus, as lecture will demonstrate, hence the word challenges), then the possession of a soul could still be a hot topic in the Beast vs. Being lists.
Short version: I am not going to go and read Jung to see if it fits with my total bollocks theory. It’s total bollocks. If I feel the need for completeness I can address with half a sentence of “and obviously we’re talking about physical processes, not psychological ones”.
There is some plot function to all of this, but far less than the time devoted to it deserves.
*And dolphins, and whales. Oh blast, what about Beasts? I can’t remember the Beast/Being categorisation. There’s no way that they won’t know already if Dementors can suck the souls of e.g. goblins. But since magical theology agrees with, and indeed in some respects was the foundation of, the theory that Dementors do not actually suck out people’s souls, but something along the lines of consciousness (except consciousness+plus, as lecture will demonstrate, hence the word challenges), then the possession of a soul could still be a hot topic in the Beast vs. Being lists.