I've got a problem with writing classic Wizards. · 9:35pm May 31st, 2018
It's not that I dont like magic. It's not that I dont like wizards and other spell casters. Its that I HATE the idea that magic should be unexplained. Are you kidding me? The idea behind wizards is they sit down and gain their powers by studying the nature of magic and learning how to manipualte it. But the audience shouldn't know even the basics of what they do?
"Yes, magic isn't supposed to make sense. It's magic and it can do things science can't."
Except science isn't a force that does things. Science isn't a body of knowledge. Science is a process, a tool, a way to learn about things. Science is nothing more, nor anything less, than this exact 7 step process:
- Make an Observation. Scientists are naturally curious about the world. ...
- Form a Question. After making an interesting observation, a scientific mind itches to find out more about it. ...
- Form a Hypothesis. Guess at an answer to your question using logic, reason, and prior knowledge...
- Conduct an Experiment. Find a way to test your hypothesis, preferably as simply as possible. ...
- Analyze the Data and Draw a Conclusion.
- Go to step 1 and do it again. You have to be able to do it over and over again to be certain it's a real thing.
That's it. That's science. Science isn't how cars work. It's not what makes computers compute. It's the process by which we discovered the knowledge that allows us to make cars and computers. Therefore, no. Magic can't do anything science couldn't explain. If it can be observed, it can be understood through the process that is science.
This makes wizards scientists. They may be studying the esoteric physics of a fantasy world, but they are scientists. The only difference is the laws of their universe permit different interactions than the laws of our universe.
"Okay, but that's not the point. Magic is supposed to be something mysterious, a thing that isn't understood except by the few who use it."
Sure, and for the non-wizard characters that's fine. Even good! You dont know how a transistor works in real life, it's not something you need to know. Not even if you use them. But the wizard characters should know what magic can and can't do. Because it IS their job to know. And if characters should know something, then the author must come up with that thing. So there SHOULD be rules for magic, even if the audience never sees them. That way your magic is consistent.
It MUST be consistent because your audience needs to know how magic works. I dare someone to get invested in a story where magic clearly has no limits at all, or is so poorly defined as to appear to have no limits at all. Unless you're the kid who wrote Axe Cop, that story will be next to impossible to care about. If any problem can be solved with a flick of a wand, there's no drama. No tension. No conflict. No story.
SO sure, Jake Brenson dosn't need to know how that mage casts fireball. But that mage does need to know, and the audience needs to know at the very least what that mage CAN'T do.
Which means magic shouldn't be mysterious. Magic should be the most well understood thing in your story. Your readers should know what it can't do, and who can use it. They should learn a little of how it works too, that flavors the setting like nothing else can. "It's magic" is less powerful than "I called upon my ancestors' ghosts to aid me by crafting this fireball for me to throw at my enemies."
"Okay, but magic should be different from technology! The two things should be opposites because magic is special and technology is... boring."
Except magic is technology. It's not technology we can build IRL, but in universe magic is a physical property of the natural universe. One wizards study and learn to manipulate. Do you know what technology is? It's nature we trained to do clever tricks by studying how nature works. Standard fantasy fiction insists that I write wizards as mysterious, nebulous, ill defined people who can make things happen with no explanation as to how when what they are in truth is fantasy scientists who whiled the power to manipulate the universe with their minds, sticks, or crystals (or whatever else). They are smart people who use their univerce's natural laws to create technology of a kind we wont have in real life.
That's not demystifying, or making wizards less cool. It's frankly making them cooler. It's also doing something more important than telling a story. It's helping people understand something about real life. Wizards are real, we call them scientists. Magic is real, we call it technology. Magic is a force we can understand, and its that understanding which lets us do the amazing, jaw dropping, wonderful things we can do.
My friends, magic is science. If you asked a wizard how magic worked, they would tell you something that would go a little bit like this...
If magic is technology, and friendship is magic, did that mean friendship is also technology?
That video is epic.
But you need to make rules so even the characters in the story know what’s going on. If some one asks someone else to do something and they said they couldn’t, the obvious next response is, “Why not?” And you can’t just say that magic doesn’t work that way, because then they want to know how it works, and if you can’t explain that, you’re up a creek without a paddle OR the damn canoe.
Although I agree that magic must have limits, the one that really needs to know them is the author, as long as that doesn't detract from the story. If it's being told from the point of view of someone who doesn't know jack about magic it won't make sense for the reader to know either. It makes the reveal, when relevant, that much more powerful.
Playing the devil's advocate, Harry Potter has garbage magic rules. JK didn't create a system for it to work, she had done superficial guidelines for standard limitations such as "death is final", and that's it. It wasn't a story about magic, in the end, and what magic there was in it was considerably more conceitual than anything. So it can be done... It just won't be very interesting magic, to me at least.
4873694
My only friends are my games so your theory checks out!
4873694
Yes. According to my headcanon, it's actually a wadgeload of precursor tech that's been stuffed into their genome. It's basically a computer with an I/O system that uses as-yet-unknown physics to manipulate crap at range. Do this on a small enough scale, or with enough ordering, and you can transmute CO2 to its constituents and burn it again, for instance. Poof, poof, Flambe!
Teleporting, frickin' lazor beams, it's all possible (theoretically) with today's physics, so why not use that?
The "friendship" thing is a combination of a safety interlock and power sharing. The powers can only be used if the owner thinks that they are doing good or in defense of friends, and those who are close to them can subconsciously share power. Thus, Pinkie is crazy OP because she is friends with everyone. My theory is that she offloads it to everyone nearby, and doesn't actually have magic capabilities of her own. That or she's a disguised or nearly-ascended alicorn, but that will wait until I actually figure my story out.
Ascension? That's when the owner has done enough research into the how of magic that it triggers Developer Mode (there's a few other routes, such as a military version, and the EoH are actually the master command keys for the system; that's why they are so effective). There'd be some sort of way to do this more reliably, but the precursors having left put the systems into this fallback mode, designed to keep the more powerful stuff out of the hooves of the general public.
The end result of the process is that it activates a better power supply, stops cellular aging, and moves the brain into a pocket dimension so that they are impossible to kill. So long as they have access to any kind of matter and enough time, they come back.
Also, that is the best summary of one of my personal complaints, AND the video is hilarious, so thanks. I'll be linking this often, I suspect...
This is cool. Speaking of magic and it's rules and guidelines, I am wondering if you would be interested in doing a story in my fantasy word I made.
'Hard-magic' is so much better than the 'mystical mumbo-jumbo magics'.
I still need a little more work towards defining magic and rules (as I'm trying to go with something a little more me), yet, inspiration is always being drawn upon -- including the strangest: a banana with a bite taken out of it... led me to damaged horns having less control, and the more damage the less control (if the horn is completely removed then the Unicorn might as well be a pseudo-Earth pone).
Indeed. I have no issue with people not knowing why it works. After all, you cant always answer that. We can say what gravity does, abuse the crap out of it for our magic science technology, but we cant answer why gravity works the way it does. I like to know How it works, but only require the input and output parts. Its fine even if the wizard doesnt understand the reason that waving his wand and saying flipendo results in a force being applied to what he pointed his wand at. Its replicable and teliable enough for practical use. ( and if impractical, well, you might see it in research at least, or else nobody would use it)
You dont NEED a full underlying system for a story, but it has to be assumed to exist. There must be restrictions or else logical inconsistancies, god mode nonsense, or whatever will occur in the setting...
This is why fanfics for poorly defined systems like Harry Potter go crazy 90% of the time.
Anyhow, yea. You dont pause the story to explain how a gun works, unless it is special in some way. And some people who interact with it dont have to understand how it works. But it Must have a way it works, how pulling the trigger results in a tiny metal object to emerge from one end at high speed, resulting in a piercing impact to whatever it hits. But, without details, you might assume it would work in vacuum, underwater, without ammo, or aim itself. Details as to how it functions in different situations will resolve that.
If an engineering story, you might talk about how it uses gunpowder or how it uses the explosion to load another bullet. If not, detail like that isnt needed.
Its fine for the wizard to not know how a fireball works. He must however know how to use it, or it makes no sense.
So, if Wizards are "Magic" Scientists would Artificers be "Magic" Engineers?
Also, this, right here, is why I will forever and always blame "Electricity not working in Hogwarts" as JKR Wizards being too f
ing ignorant and isolationist to know what a plug and power socket do, or what a battery is to keep things running hundreds of miles off the nearest power grid...
4873698 That was the entire point of what I was saying. Everything has to work SOMEHOW. That includes magic.
4873763 You're welcome :3 I've got a lot of blogposts like this if you care to dig through them.
4873789 Mabey, what's the idea?
4873860 Yeah... Harry Potter is just, bad. Realy really bad... Especially since the villen is completely unthreatening and dson't have any more power than any other wizard. He's written like someone who respawns after DECADES and coud be put down by a Navy Seal via gun and a grassy knoll. Just shoot him once every like 11 or so years when he comes back. Problem solved!
4874002
Do you want me to PM you the information about my world?
4874039 Yes :3
4874041
I will do it tomorrow.
4874002
The only reason Harry Potter works even a little (and I'm being generous for the sake of making my point), is because the setting takes place in the 90's, before modern security systems, telecommunication, and the Internet really hit their strides. A common theme among the Harry Potter Fanfiction community is that unless they learn to adapt, by the mid 2000's their "Statute of Secrecy" would have been blown wide open and their society would have been exposed to the rest of the world where all of the things you mentioned would have then become very real concerns. No amount of mind-wiping spells can erase something once it's found it's way onto 4-chan...
Beyond that, their society is so insular and cut off from the rest of the world that they're completely ignorant of modern advancements more recent than the 1800's. I've mentioned before in other places that Arthur Weasley is essentially their government's foremost expert on non-magical people, and he can't even pronounce "Electricity" properly and badgers Hermione's Dentist parents on the purpose and function of a Rubber Duck of all the inane things. These are people who have replaced their common sense and curiosity with "Magic", and as a result they believe anything and everything they're told by an authority source, which makes them a bunch of Sheep, so when someone like Tom Riddle comes along who isn't afraid to break a few eggs to make an omelet they fold like a bunch of wet paper bags...
Voldemort's "power" in Canon seems to come less from a measurable output compared to other wizards and more from that he knows an obscene amount of that world's variant of "Dark" Magic compared to the sheeple, and isn't bothered about using those spells and rituals in the least. In contrast, among the Fandom, it's almost universally agreed upon that Dumbledore's assurances that Harry's "Power he knows not" being "Love"... is a huge steaming load of BS...
I wish that more people understood that. Magic must also fit the setting, mood, and style of the world, story, and plot.
Just noticed that no one mentioned this:
Sanderson's First Law
An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic
Well. It depends on how 'magic' is presented in the story, at least to me. If most people don't have magic or understand it, it is "magic." Like the Genie in Aladdin from "The Arabian Nights." My favorite wizard is named Harry. No, not him, the other one. Dresden. I like how Butcher does magic. But also this quote from a Babylon 5 episode.
To me this IS 'magic.'
When it comes down to it, Gandalf, was Tolkien's version of "The Grey Wanderer" who was actually Odin. How do gods' 'magic' work? Well, Odin hanged himself on a tree to learn rune 'magic,' but it is never fully explained. Like stage 'magic' if it is explained, then it is no longer 'magic' is it? To me, in "My Little Pony Friendship is Magic" the real 'magic' user is Pinky Pie because NOBODY understands how she works... not even Discord who is a GOD of Chaos.
4875599 When stage magic is explained to me it becomes more magical. Not knowing how the tric is done, how can I say "Wow, that's clever!" and appreciate the intellect and cunning which went into creating it? After all, I see those tricks on a screen. It could be all VFX whichcraft vs cleverly preformed slight of hand. Understanding something is always better, more powerful, and more magical than not knowing.
God's Eye
You might well LOVE this crossover series. What could be more fun than Harry Dresden ending up replacing a Goa'uld overlord?
Also, the whole, Wait, so the American military has been using a magical artifact to travel to space for Years?
They are powering a Necromantic ritual with a NUCLEAR REACTOR?
Lets not get started on the arguments over whether or not the advanced technology is magic or not. Carter considers it advanced science, but the Goa'uld clearly think of it as magic, ward their libraries, consider their Hand devices (which can let them read and/or shatter minds, or blast people accross the room) as arcane Focuses.
Overall, It looks like exactly what you are looking for.
Maybe it will even give you "ideas" :D
4875890
Oh, A Subtle Knife has a great moment where a SuperScientist(Computer programming, Nanotech) loves magic shows, since they are applied Psychology. You have to be really good to be able to convince people of the magic. That the show is also run by a real magician is even better, since it shows there is much they still don't know about how the world works.
Also another scientist who was investigating superpowers was happy to be wrong on how they worked, since that just means they need a new theory. No, hes not a Psionic, fitting into a known pattern, he can just project a ghost blade from a held blade. Not a mental block, no telepathy, just blade projection. (Well, actually some telepathy, but not as that universe knows it, and also limited)
All and all, I love the way the intellectuals are treated as, well, actual intellectuals, instead of those infurating straw-scientists who can't accept the evidence of their own eyes, and realize, Yes, magic exists, superpowers are weird, but they follow rules and we can FIGURE OUT HOW THEY WORK.
Not a lot of progress has been made YET, but they are working on it.
4875599
While yea, unexplained magic can be fun, Its also fun to learn how it works, and how to abuse it. I didn't like that episode much. Pinkie sense has clear cut rules on how it works, a framework, is reliable (sort of) and works with clear Cause and Effect. (Well, Effect and cause, but precognition is like that) Its much like Jedi combat precognition or other such applications. Twilight acted as a Straw-scientist, and tried to disprove the existance of the phenominon, rather than figure out how it works and how you might, say, suppress or amplify it, replicate it, or otherwise. I mean, its not that kind of story, but her skepticism was painful. It was a huge anti-science message, which I despise. Mysteries should remain mysteries? No, I want to shine a light and figure out how it works.
Worst case, it is protecting itself, by shaping events such that Twilight is forced to give up. I mean, it was literally an Anvilicious message (Given the anvil that landed on Twilight) which was just wrong on so many levels. D&D, I would say the DM(Diabolical Meddler) doesn't want you gaming that mechanic. Novel or show, the Author/writer Dislikes Science, and is using a Straw Target. Real life. Twilight is not a scientist, but has read about them in fiction or seen them in Hollywood, (or pony equivalents) and is emulating them, without knowing how real science works.
Urgh. Just Urgh.
4879460
Rainbow Dash being recruited by the Starleague to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada. :D Wait, was that rhetorical?
Cool! Thought I love learning about magicians more than reading about that sort of thing I'll deffently give it a read. I mean come on, there's little more awesome then realizing how David Copperfield tricked a live audience into believing he had made the statue of liberty disappear using a most cunning rotating platform with music to mask the motor sounds and vibrations.