Wish-based Magic · 2:26am Mar 9th, 2022
As I get the second part of the Enforcer Remastered ready to go, starting with chapter 31, I thought I'd discuss wish-based magic™️. Unicorns in western mythology are associated with purity. MLP is at its root a children's show, so there is a limit to what violence it depicts. In their twain, these concepts combine.
MLP actually depicts an amazing amount of violence. Often it is a plant or object that gets blasted, but we remember Starlight's shoot-out with Chrysalis and her blasting Discord into another dimension. (I wrote a ATimey Little Nightmare about the consequence of that action.) MLP unicorns could hurt other ponies with magic, but only a few ever do on screen.
Magic is apparently hard.
As an SF writer who writes a lot of fantasy stories these days, I feel any good magic system requires limits. Like physics has limits. Discoverable. Quantifiable. Applicable. I've taken my observations of how defensive and offensive magic works in the show, and the western concept of unicorns, to set limits.
The result is wish-based magic. In my fantasy stories (not just MLP stories), I throw around the terms thaumaturge and thaumaturgy. Literally, this is worker of miracles and to perform miracles. My thaumaturges use geometry or pure mathematics to perform miracles because in the first Crystal Empire episode, we see Twilight solve a long square root in her head instantly, presumably with the aid of her horn. That "numerology" describes "violation physics™️, which acknowledges that magic modifies the laws of physics in predictable ways. The more a unicorn understands mathematics, or geometry in Sunset Shimmer's case, the better they can work with spells until they can perform them. The limit is, as Starlight deduces in The Runaway Bodyguard, that unicorns evolved to grant wishes and perform miracles.
Only good things. That's all they can do. Generally, this means not greatly injuring ponies. (Is there a omniscient force that judges intent? Well, that's fodder for another story, isn't it?)
But, you ask, what about all the blasting? Wish-based magic fails if it would directly harm another, and the magic knows. I am not sure yet if intention is part of the "wish predicate" in spells, because I haven't addressed it in a story and I don't add limits until I know how it will affect a story. (This is one of my writing techniques, and one reason many TV shows don't talk about obvious plot points until on-screen, and retcon when necessary. Flexibility!) My Starlight and Sunset find this limit out to their chargin and great despair in many stories. Neither are conventionally schooled, so they don't completely understand how magic works, and (apparently) books simply don't discuss hurting ponies.
Ponies, like humans, like to find ways around limits. Did we see any lawyer ponies in G4? We certainly see politicians. Magic affects things beyond the spell-effect surface (called the apparition) generally by contact. The curved arc of a shield spell is termed an apparition, as is the aura that appears around things levitated. If a unicorn were to use pure magical force to cause harm, and touch the target, that cannot work. However, if that unicorn uses magical force to heat air in a cylindrical apparition so it shoots from one end...? Getting the technique right, of course, isn't easy.
Throwing an object with malice-aforethought is another problem. The spell knows the trajectory. This is important in the soon to be published chapters in The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers REMASTERED. Can it be circumvented? You'll have to read the story to see.
One other way around the limit: How much harm will the caster suffer if the spell fails? Starlight learns how to use a Force spell as a weapon when somepony tries to murder her. Were the spell to fail, she'd be dead. It doesn't fail. You should read the lightning storm chapter early in The Runaway Bodyguard (13) to understand why she couldn't fail. Afterwards, of course, she can't figure out how to repeat the magic on demand. She has theories, and this proved great fun to write.
Now that you've read this, you can understand how Starlight and others fight in the Enforcer series.
Please comment about what you think about my magic system.
