Magic! · 5:33pm Jun 5th, 2014
Before reading on, watch this interesting video on magic in narratives by MrBtongue.
So, to sum up MrBtongue's argument: Supernatural elements in narratives can be a powerful tool for evoking sentiments of mystery--whether wondrous or dreaded--and superstition in the audience, by their very virtue of being supernatural--that is, beyond our rational understanding--and this is the proper way they should be used. Unfortunately, because magic is so popular and commonplace in fantasy works now, its use is at risk of losing its supernatural allure and becoming mundane, no different from advanced technology.
I disagree with MrBtongue for three reasons, which I'll explain below. If at this point you're wondering why this is in a FIMFiction blog when the above video never mentions, whether aurally or visually, FIM, it's because FIMLand (my name for the planet Equestria is part of) is a world filled with magic both systematized and mysterious, with characters both magically adept and inept.
A. The POV also matters.
Whether or not magic comes across as mysterious is dependent not only on the extent to which the author defines it but also the point of view that the story focuses on. If Twilight casts a spell in Applejack's presence, AJ doesn't know what she's doing and therefore her wonder or fear or whatever other feeling related to the mystery is expressed to the audience. If Twilight casts a spell in Celestia's presence, Celestia probably knows exactly what she's doing and could describe the process behind it in detail; the act is no more mysterious to her than it is to Twilight. Even from Twilight's point of view magic can still convey an element of mystery. She (presumably) doesn't know everything about all the magic in FIMLand, after all, and then there's the Everfree Forest, a place that defies the normal rules of reality in Equestria. How magic is portrayed depends entirely on what exactly the author wishes to do with it, what they want to express with it (more on that in my third point), and different points of view will convey different extents of understanding, of magic or any other subject, to the audience.
B. Magic and technology are exactly the same.
"Too often supernatural elements are made mundane. Too often magic is used in fantasy the same way technology is used in science fiction: as a tool to expand narrative possibilities and nothing more. Too often magic is robbed of all its magic." - MrBtongue.
I used a clip from Star Trek The Next Generation[1], a science fiction show, to make a point about magic. I feel, especially considering Picard's elaboration on Clarke's Third Law, that that clip was apt not only to explain my first point but to evoke my second, which is this: magic and technology are the same thing.
We have our various cultural associations and assumptions for the two, an important one being how we implicitly define technology. You read the word "technology" and a thousand different concepts enter your mind, all of which are valid examples but all of which, I'm willing to bet, are human artifice and nothing else. Technology is no more or less than the practical application of knowledge.
Fire is warm: lightning knocks a tree down and sets it on fire, you stay near the fire to keep warm. That's technology.
Fire is bright: you pick up a burning branch and now you have portable illumination. That's technology.
No electricity or moving parts required, you didn't even have to start the fire--but if you do start it because you know how to, that's technology. I'm not just referring to rubbing sticks together; if you discover one day that you can produce fire with only your thoughts and use that ability after learning how to, that's also technology--the practical application of knowledge. Now, yes, fire from your thoughts is internal whereas my earlier examples are external, and that's a common conception of magic: it comes from within while artifice comes from without. Well, our bodies are machines and our brains are supercomputers, both created and upgraded entirely within a human being, and there are some interpretations of magic that feature external sources.[2]
Magic is technology, but is technology magic? Absolutely. Just watch the TNG clip again. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and, on the opposite end, any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science. They ultimately fulfill the same function in narratives: things that characters and societies know and can perform to varying extents. To someone from the middle ages, an ordinary person with a car and laptop is an inscrutable god; to someone from the present day, a captain of a Federation starship is an inscrutable god; to someone from the Federation, Q is an inscrutable god; to an ordinary earthpony working in a small town, characters like Celestia, Luna, Discord, even Twilight, are inscrutable gods...if that's how you want to portray them (more on that in my third point).
The feelings MrBtongue advocates magic should be used to convey--the wonder or fear of the unknown--can also be conveyed with advanced technology. A compelling voice like Saruman's can be magical, or it can be special pheromones discreetly released by the speaker, which are designed to compel the subject to compliance with the speaker. I just described a mechanical process for the latter source, but can the subject tell the difference? No. All they know is that someone is talking and they're very intent on listening. Can you, the audience, tell the difference? Not if the author decides to withold an explanation of the mechanics, and why shouldn't they? They don't owe you an explanation any more than Tolkien did, even if it's a setting filled with what we currently consider to be advanced technology. Whenever poorly understood tech or science comes up there's often a character, usually a scientist, who says "There must be a scientific/rational explanation"...but how do they know that there is? How do you know that there is? What if there isn't but the characters have to deal with it anyway? How will they deal with something or someone they don't--can't--understand?
Technology can be so advanced that it defies not only our understanding of the universe but also that of the futuristic society--or it can be used in ways that are so inexplicable and alien to us that it defies our understanding of how it should be used even if we can understand how it works. It can be associated with those classical elements--fire, ice, blood, shadows--and steeped in metaphor, for the sake of being evocative and stimulating wonder or fear in the audience, even if behind it all there's some simple explanation. It all depends on what the author wants to do with it.
[1]Good show. Watch it, and then watch Deep Space Nine, a much better show.
[2]"But gods and the Force involve spirituality", you say. Go watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos, or this short clip of Neil Degrasse Tyson, and really ask yourself whether science, if viewed in the right way, can take on a spiritual quality.
C. What matters is what the author wants to express.
This brings me to my third point, which I've repeated more than once by now. There are numerous feelings and concepts one can use magic to convey, not just the ones related to the unknown. "Correct" use of the supernatural is the same as correct use of any device in a narrative: whether or not the work successfully expresses what its author wanted it to, and whether or not the device used was effective in that expression. Sure, you can make magic mysterious and inscrutable, and I absolutely agree that they can have a very potent suggestive power if you write them intending to take advantage of that and do it right. Or you can make it commonplace in your world and explore how it changes things, how the characters live those changes, what society becomes because of those changes, what your world says about ours, etc. Sounds a lot like the principles of science fiction, doesn't it? And wouldn't you know it, some works are considered "futuristic fantasy", and nothing is explained even though there's plenty of advanced tech. The very distinction between high fantasy and sci-fi is relative.
You can create a sense of mystery even in tabletop games, for any DMs who might read this. Just because someone casts Charm Person, doesn't mean the players have to know what it is. They might try Spellcrafting it to determine, and the DM could simply say that they can't do that--or don't want to, due to the spell's effects. The DM can use no-save spells or remove the saving throws from some spells, to create a sense of helplessness and fear at the unknown (it's a lot harder to defend yourself against something you don't understand).
Yes, elaborating on the supernatural might "rob magic of its magic", but it's no different from how people in Star Trek treat the abilities to teleport and create matter from (seemingly) nothing as ordinary tools, and featuring giant spaceships as inscrutable Lovecraftian nightmares is just as mysterious and terrifying as tentacled horrors rising from the ocean. I agree that explaining something like Saruman's voice diminishes its expressive power, but that only applies to that specific instance; Tolkien wrote it a certain way because of what he wanted to express and how, and making it less mysterious would've clashed with his intentions. You both lose and gain degrees and kinds of representation depending on what you want to express.
Magic, like technology, really is just a means of expanding narrative possibilities; it's just things people can do when you get right down to it. It can be evocative, and ought to be, but not necessarily as an element of mystery. The only thing that really matters is what the author wants to express and how they want to express it.
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One last thing before I go. I'm finally back to working on something. It's not a massive epic that's totally over my head, so it'll actually get done. It's a short piece starring this guy.
Very well said. Magic is a tool just like any other, and while it can be used effectively to evoke a sense of mystery, you can easily do the same with seemingly mundane technology or flip things around with commonplace magic and mysterious and poorly understood technology.
I have contemplated the pony's reactions to my laptop on occasion, and it would absolutely be an incomprehensible thing of wonder with the ability to do nearly anything from storing a nearly limitless number of books to massive data manipulation to 3D rendering. For me it is an everyday tool, but even the princesses would be totally dumbfounded by a seemingly impossible artifact that goes against everything they ever dared to imagine.
Nice to see you're back at the writing coalface, so to speak!