Physics and Magic

It's been a while since I made a blog post, but I kind of wanted to share a thought I've had on magic systems and why I feel the best ones are the ones that have some tie or grounding in real-world physics. What do I mean by that exactly, well there are a few examples I can give but I'll talk about my favorite; Full Metal alchemist alchemy, The Immortals Game's god slayer spell, and Right's of Ascension's Fire magic bomb.

The first is FMA's Alchemy, it is based on a real-world law of equivalence matter and energy can not be created or destroyed only transformed this grounds FMA's magic system to our reality in a way that can be easily understood.

I'll skip to RoA's firebomb. I can't remember which chapter it was but some malevolent group set off a magic bomb that burned through everything and burned non-stop. When I first read this I thought, "huh that sounds a lot like Chlorine Trifluoride." I was both surprised and joyous that Twilight later deduced that the firebomb was some kind of magical spell mixed with Chlorine Trifluoride, clearly, the writer had gone through the effort to consider chemistry in the creation of their magic system.

Finally is my favorite example from my favorite story: The God Slayer Spell from The Immortals Game. This is a spell created by Twilight using another spell called null space, which allows her to basically create her own pocket dimension where she could control the physics inside. The amount of thought put into this spell by the writer is amazing so here's how it works; first Twilight collects a bunch of iron from a nearby store and puts it in her null space, she then loops the nullspace in on itself so that the iron falls infinitely she then starts to heat up the iron, but not by using her magic directly, no but by sucking the heat from the air around her causing the area to get cold, she also redirects gravity around her to the null space causing the now super-heated iron to a sizable fraction of the speed of light she then opens a hole in her null space and fires the stream of white-hot iron and a tenth the speed of light at one of the villains cleaving them in half and setting the ground on fire in a ten-meter radius. It's even more impressive when you realize why the writer had Twilight us Iron, it's because iron is nearly impossible to fuse unless you have the power of a dying star so it wouldn't absolutely vaporize the entire half of the planet they are standing on with a million-billion fusion reactions going off all at once. Not only is this fucking cool as hell to imagine it's also crazy to see that the author actually incorporated real physics in the creation of a spell designed to kill a God.

Anyway, I personally feel that this is a great way to make a really good magic system, by incorporating real-world physics and logic into your magic system it makes it feel more believable while still being extraordinary. And it is a lot better than saying; "it's magic don't question it."

Thank, you for reading and please leave a comment talking about a time a story, movie, or show incorporated real wold physics and logic into their magic systems.