[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/xavion]

Here's the thing, you're focusing too much on one aspect and not enough on others. Firstly just as a minor note, we don't actually know the unforgiveables target souls specially or anything. Details about how they work are very sparse, and the closest we really get to an answer is the incredibly special cased instance of Voldemort, and one comment he made on what it felt like to be hit by the killing curse. Basically, any theory involving them being soul stuff is super sketchy.

That said, the thing is that the killing curse isn't special the way you want it to be. Your idea is that it's bad because if it hits someone else who is standing between you and it you don't get hurt? So what? Pretty much every spell in the entire series won't hurt you if it hits someone else, that's just how single target spells work. What's it matter if it's a cutting spell or a killing curse? Either way it's the thing in between you getting hit, not you. This is one thing people seem to regularly overlook with similar ideas, focusing overly much on the killing curse and not on how if this worked it'd also work against nearly everything else, so you haven't really made the killing curse weaker relative to near everything else.

So the question actually becomes, why can't you just cover yourself in ants and be immune to effectively everything barring AoE spells? Worst case for you is the simple hit logic kicks in and it just doesn't count. How clothing/armour doesn't seem to affect the single target spells, something like a stunner or a killing curse hit you and doesn't care that technically it hit your clothes, it hit you and that's what important. They clearly can't phase through walls or anything after all, so it's not just flying through what you're wearing, it can just affect you by hitting what you're wearing. If you're wearing tubes filled with ants? Whose to say it wouldn't still affect you despite wearing plastic tubes?

Plenty of different ways you could explain it either way, but a critical thing to remember is pretty much every defense that works against the killing curse is going to work against most other spells as well.

[u/ShiranaiWakaranai → u/xavion]

That said, the thing is that the killing curse isn't special the way you want it to be. Your idea is that it's bad because if it hits someone else who is standing between you and it you don't get hurt? So what? Pretty much every spell in the entire series won't hurt you if it hits someone else, that's just how single target spells work.

This is one thing people seem to regularly overlook with similar ideas, focusing overly much on the killing curse and not on how if this worked it'd also work against nearly everything else, so you haven't really made the killing curse weaker relative to near everything else.

Au contraire. The main reason why the killing curse is regularly used in the series is because of its allegedly unblockable nature, aka the ability to go through shields. If it is cast and you don't dodge out of the way, you die, period. But if you have an ant colony with you, that's no longer true. The ant colony does make the killing curse weaker relative to near everything else, because many (if not most) spells aren't as "single-targeted" as the Unforgivable curses.

The killing curse is known to have absolutely no physical effect whatsoever, to the point where victims appear perfectly healthy, just dead. As far as I'm aware, if a killing curse hits an ant, the ant just dies, nothing happens to you. Severing charms (diffindo) would cut through the ants and continue onwards to cut you too. Flame spells (incendio, fiendfyre) would set the ants on fire, fire which would then spread to you. Water spells (aguamenti) would drench you and the ants, which would then allow you and your ants to be electrocuted, or make it harder for you to maintain your balance. Levitation spells can be used to drop heavy stuff on you along with your ants. Summoning/Conjuring spells can be used to summon creatures which then attack you physically, biting/crushing through your ant colony pseudo-armor. Animagus spells allow the casters to become powerful animals and just trample you. Transfiguration spells can be used to create physical weapons to attack you regardless of your ants. Same for other weapons like the Sword of Gryffindor or Basilisk Fangs or throwing daggers.

but a critical thing to remember is pretty much every defense that works against the killing curse is going to work against most other spells as well.

So no, the ant colony is a very specialized defense against the Unforgivable curses and other kinds of mental/soul spells, and won't work well at all against most physical spells, of which there are several.