I feel like this thread from earlier (and my response) is a good response to this one https://hexbear.net/post/217485/comment/2768512
Well so one big hang-up for me is the blurring of science/technology and magic, both sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and its converse. But I am just being a nerd there so let’s skip that.
This is such a huge thing though. So many people today don’t want Magic to be Magic. They want a setting that is Magic-Punk. Magic as a technology, as a science, and as a resource.
What is the point of magic if not an exploration of a reality that is not our own? Why in the hell would mages be content to slave away under the shackles of capitalism? (speaking here of setting where mages are often just more efficient labors, in some settings replacing able-bodied people as the proletarian class entirely!) If these mages are so powerful and common they can constitute an entire working class, then at least be realistic an interesting; the cities would devolve into gang warfare and lawlessness almost immediately. the average worker has guns for hands!!
I tend to be into fae-wildy, Kind Of Other Dimensions But Incomprehensible To Us, Chaos Magick-y type stuff.
fuck yes, this! if there exists a shimmer of another possible world, why doesn’t it rupture everything in this fantasy? why the fuck would you write a story that takes new possibilities and shackles them to the horizon of our neo-liberal world??
i know that’s the concept, but i think it’s an apt name for the genre known as “magical realism”. except smug liberals would hate to admit to themselves that their ideology has a choke point
on the other hand if Magic is Magic you have to justify why nobody made an attempt at rigorous study of it and how anybody has learned to do anything with it.
Often it’s as simple as magic doesn’t have consistent rules that can be rigorously studied, and you just have to rely on vibes and stuff an old dude told you and hope for the best. Also having to ask nature spirits and gods for help and kind of just hoping they like your offering of cigarettes and whisky enough to help you.
Often it’s as simple as magic doesn’t have consistent rules that can be rigorously studied, and you just have to rely on vibes and stuff an old dude told you and hope for the best
huh i thought we decided deus ex machina sorts of plot contrivances were bad.
