#Magic systems

[thenalexica]

Different ways you see the high cost of magic in fantasy

Magic burns away memories Spells age caster dramatically Using power causes physical mutations Each spell shortens lifespan Magic leaves permanent scars/marks Losing ability to feel emotions Magic addiction/withdrawal Forgetting loved ones Growing detachment from humanity Hearing voices/whispers constantly Magical debt passes to descendants Power requires human sacrifice Magic corrupts surrounding nature Spells need rare/illegal components Using magic breaks reality's fabric

[kinsey3furry300]

the Necromancer reviving dead bacteria to fix your gut biome.

The telaporter fishing parasites out of a starving child.

The scryer locating a cancerous growth early on.

The shady as fuck warlock who is specked for killing everything in a certain area, and only killing everything in a certain area, becoming a walking autoclave.

The werewolf or druid wildshapeing to smell if you're about to have a seizure.

Dr Acula one again tasting all the blood samples for anemia.

Magical healing and comfort, but not just healing magic

A character with fire/heat powers massaging a knotted muscle with hot hands, being able to dig in nice and deep as the warmth relaxes the area

A character with ice/cold powers carding their fingers through someone's hair, soothing a headache

A character with hypnotic powers lulling someone into a trance and clearing their mind, easing their anxieties so they can hopefully get some sleep

A character with plant magic keeping a bouquet fresh and vibrant by their friend's bedside, knowing the colors will at the very least cheer them up and give them something beautiful to look at

A character with water magic combining it with a soft cloth washing away tears, sweat, or blood from another character's face

A character with electricity magic frantically grabbing someone near-death and shocking them, refusing to move until they hear their heart leap back to life and pulse under their hands

[whereserpentswalk]

Wizards are ordered from oldest to youngest. All wizards are nonbinary.

[cy-cyborg]

Dealing with Healing and Disability in fantasy: Writing Disability

[ID: An image of the main character from Eragon, a white teenage boy with blond hair in silver armour as he sits, with his hand outstretched. On his hand is a glowing blue mark. He is visibly straining as he attempts to heal a large creature in front of him. /End ID]

I'm a massive fan of the fantasy genre, which is why it's so incredibly frustrating when I see so much resistance to adding disability representation to fantasy works. People's go-to reason for leaving us out is usually something to the effect of "But my setting has magic so disability wouldn't exist, it can just be healed!" so let's talk about magic, specifically healing magic, in these settings, and how you can use it without erasing disability from your story.

Ok, let's start with why you would even want to avoid erasing disability from a setting in the first place. I talked about this in a lot more detail in my post on The Miracle Cure. this line of thinking is another version of this trope, but applied to a whole setting (or at least, to the majority of people in the setting) instead of an individual, so it's going to run into the same issues I discussed there. To summarise the points that are relevant to this particular version of the trope though:

Not every disabled person wants or needs a cure - many of us see our disability as a part of our identity. Do difficulties come with being disabled? absolutely! It's literally part of the definition, but for some people in the disabled community, if you took our disabilities away, we would be entirely different people. While it is far from universal, there is a significant number of us who, if given a magical cure with no strings attached, would not take it. Saying no one in your setting would be disabled because these healing spells exists ignores this part of the community.

It messes with the stakes of your story - Just like how resurrecting characters or showing that this is something that is indeed possible in the setting can leave your audience feeling cheated or like they don't have to worry about a character *actually* ever dying. healing a character's disability, or establishing that disability doesn't exist in your setting because "magic" runs into the same problem. It will leave your readers or viewers feeling like they don't have to worry about your characters getting seriously hurt because it will only be temporary, which means your hero's actions carry significantly less risk, which in turn, lowers the stakes and tension if not handled very, very carefully.

It's an over-used trope - quite plainly and simply, this trope shows up a lot in the fantasy genre, to the point where I'd say it's just overused and kind of boring.

So with the "why should you avoid it" covered, let's look at how you can actually handle the topic.

Limited Access and Expensive Costs

One of the most common ways to deal with healing and disability in a fantasy setting, is to make the healing magic available, but inaccessible to most of the population. The most popular way to do that is by making the services of a magical healer capable of curing a disability really expensive to the point that most people just can't afford it. If this is the approach you're going to use, you also typically have to make that type of magic quite rare. To use D&D terms, if every first level sorcerer, bard, cleric and druid can heal a spinal injury, it's going to result in a lot of people who are able to undercut those massive prices and the expense will drop as demand goes down. If that last sentence didn't give you a hint, this is really popular method in stories that are critiquing capitalistic mindsets and ideologies, and is most commonly used by authors from the USA and other countries with a similar medical system, since it mirrors a lot of the difficulties faced by disabled Americans. If done right, this approach can be very effective, but it does need to be thought through more carefully than I think people tend to do. Mainly because a lot of fantasy stories end with the main character becoming rich and/or powerful, and so these prohibitively expensive cure become attainable by the story's end, which a lot of authors and writer's just never address. Of course, another approach is to make the availability of the magic itself the barrier. Maybe there just aren't that many people around who know the magic required for that kind of healing, so even without a prohibitive price tag, it's just not something that's an option for most people. If we're looking at a D&D-type setting, maybe you need to be an exceptionally high level to cast the more powerful healing spell, or maybe the spell requires some rare or lost material component. I'd personally advise people to be careful using this approach, since it often leads to stories centred around finding a miracle cure, which then just falls back into that trope more often than not.

Just outright state that some characters don't want/need it

Another, admittedly more direct approach, is to make it that these "cures" exist and are easily attainable, but to just make it that your character or others they encounter don't want or need it. This approach works best for characters who are born with their disabilities or who already had them for a long time before a cure was made available to them. Even within those groups though, this method works better with some types of characters than others depending on many other traits (personality, cultural beliefs, etc), and isn't really a one-size-fits-all solution, but to be fair, that's kind of the point. Some people will want a cure for their disabilities, others are content with their body's the way they are. There's a few caveats I have with this kind of approach though:

you want to make sure you, as the author, understand why some people in real life don't want a cure, and not just in a "yeah I know these people exist but I don't really get it" kind of way. I'm not saying you have to have a deep, personal understanding or anything, but some degree of understanding is required unless you want to sound like one of those "inspirational" body positivity posts that used to show up on Instagram back in the day.

Be wary when using cultural beliefs as a reasoning. It can work, but when media uses cultural beliefs as a reason for turning down some kind of cure, it's often intending to critique extreme beliefs about medicine, such as the ones seen in some New Age Spirituality groups and particularly intense Christian churches. As a general rule of thumb, it's probably not a good idea to connect these kinds of beliefs to disabled people just being happy in their bodies. Alternatively, you also need to be mindful of the "stuck in time" trope - a trope about indigenous people who are depicted as primitive or, as the name suggests, stuck in an earlier time, for "spurning the ways of the white man" which usually includes medicine or the setting's equivalent magic. I'm not the best person to advise you on how to avoid this specific trope, but my partner (who's Taino) has informed me of how often it shows up in fantasy specifically and we both thought it was worth including a warning at least so creators who are interested in this method know to do some further research.

Give the "cures" long-lasting side effects

Often in the real world, when a "cure" for a disability does exist, it's not a perfect solution and comes with a lot of side effects. For example, if you loose part of your arm in an accident, but you're able to get to a hospital quickly with said severed arm, it can sometimes be reattached, but doing so comes at a cost. Most people I know who had this done had a lot of issues with nerve damage, reduced strength, reduced fine-motor control and often a great deal of pain with no clear source. Two of the people I know who's limbs were saved ended up having them optionally re-amputated only a few years later. Likewise, I know many people who are paraplegics and quadriplegics via spinal injuries, who were able to regain the use of their arms and/or legs. However, the process was not an easy one, and involved years of intense physiotherapy and strength training. For some of them, they need to continue to do this work permanently just to maintain use of the effected limbs, so much so that it impacts their ability to do things like work a full-time job and engage in their hobbies regularly, and even then, none of them will be able bodied again. Even with all that work, they all still experience reduced strength and reduced control of the limbs. depending on the type, place and severity of the injury, some people are able to get back to "almost able bodied" again - such was the case for my childhood best friend's dad, but they often still have to deal with chronic pain from the injury or chronic fatigue.

Even though we are talking about magic in a fantasy setting, we can still look to real-life examples of "cures" to get ideas. Perhaps the magic used has a similar side effect. Yes, your paraplegic character can be "cured" enough to walk again, but the magic maintaining the spell needs a power source to keep it going, so it draws on the person's innate energy within their body, using the very energy the body needs to function and do things like move their limbs. They are cured, but constantly exhausted unless they're very careful, and if the spell is especially strong, the body might struggle to move at all, resulting in something that looks and functions similar to the nerve damage folks with spinal injuries sometimes deal with that causes that muscle weakness and motor control issues. Your amputee might be able to have their leg regrown, but it will always be slightly off. The regrown leg is weaker and causes them to walk with a limp, maybe even requiring them to use a cane or other mobility aid.

Some characters might decide these trade-offs are worth it, and while this cures their initial disability, it leaves them with another. Others might simply decide the initial disability is less trouble than these side effects, and choose to stay as they are.

Consider if these are actually cures

Speaking of looking to the real world for ideas, you might also want to consider whether these cures are doing what the people peddling them are claiming they do. Let's look at the so-called autism cures that spring up every couple of months as an example.

Without getting into the… hotly debated specifics, there are many therapies that are often labelled as "cures" for autism, but in reality, all they are doing is teaching autistic people how to make their autistic traits less noticeable to others. This is called masking, and it's a skill that often comes at great cost to an autistic person's mental health, especially when it's a behaviour that is forced on them. Many of these therapies give the appearance of being a cure, but the disability is still there, as are the needs and difficulties that come with it, they're just hidden away. From an outside perspective though, it often does look like a success, at least in the short-term. Then there are the entirely fake cures with no basis in reality, the things you'll find from your classic snake-oil salesmen. Even in a fantasy setting where real magic exists, these kinds of scams and misleading treatments can still exist. In fact, I think it would make them even more common than they are in the real world, since there's less suspension of disbelief required for people to fall for them. "What do you mean this miracle tonic is a scam? Phil next door can conjure flames in his hand and make the plants grow with a snap of his fingers, why is it so hard to believe this tonic could regrow my missing limb?"

I think the only example of this approach I've seen, at least recently, is from The Owl House. The magic in this world can do incredible things, but it works in very specific and defined ways. Eda's curse (which can be viewed as an allegory for many disabilities and chronic illnesses) is seemingly an exception to this, and as such, nothing is able to cure it. Treat it, yes, but not cure it. Eda's mother doesn't accept this though, and seeks out a cure anyway and ends up falling for a scam who's "treatments" just make things worse.

In your own stories, you can either have these scams just not work, or kind of work, but in ways that are harmful and just not worth it, like worse versions of the examples in the previous point. Alternatively, like Eda, it's entirely reasonable that a character who's been the target of these scams before might just not want to bother anymore. Eda is a really good example of this approach handled in a way that doesn't make her sad and depressed about it either. She's tried her mum's methods, they didn't work, and now she's found her own way of dealing with it that she's happy with. She only gets upset when her boundaries are ignored by Luz and her mother.

Think about how the healing magic is actually working

If you have a magic system that leans more on the "hard magic" side of things, a great way to get around the issue of healing magic erasing disability is to stop and think about how your healing magic actually works.

My favourite way of doing this is to make healing magic work by accelerating the natural processes of your body. Your body will, given enough time (assuming it remains infection-free) close a slash from a sword and mend a broken bone, but it will never regrow it's own limbs. It will never heal damage to it's own spinal cord. It will never undo whatever causes autism or fix it's own irregularities. Not without help. Likewise, healing magic alone won't do any of these things either, it's just accelerating the existing process and usually, by extension making it safer, since a wound staying open for an hour before you get to a healer is much less likely to get infected than one that slowly and naturally heals over a few weeks. In one of my own works, I take this even further by making it that the healing magic is only accelerating cell growth and repair, but the healer has to direct it. In order to actually heal, the healer needs to know the anatomy of what they're fixing to the finest detail. A spell can reconnect a torn muscle to a bone, but if you don't understand the structures that allow that to happen in the first place, you're likely going to make things worse. For this reason, you won't really see people using this kind of magic to, say, regrow limbs, even though it technically is possible. A limb is a complicated thing. The healer needs to be able to perfectly envision all the bones, the cartilage, the tendons and ligaments, the muscles (including the little ones, like those found in your skin that make your hair stand on end and give you goose bumps), the fat and skin tissues, all the nerves, all the blood vessels, all the structures within the bone that create your blood. Everything, and they need to know how it all connects, how it is supposed to move and be able to keep that clearly in their mind simultaneously while casting. Their mental image also has to match with the patient's internal "map" of the body and the lost limb, or they'll continue to experience phantom limb sensation even if the healing is successful. It's technically possible, but the chances they'll mess something up is too high, and so it's just not worth the risk to most people, including my main character.

Put Restrictions on the magic

This is mostly just the same advice as above, but for softer magic systems. put limits and restrictions on your healing magic. These can be innate (so things the magic itself is just incapable of doing) or external (things like laws that put limitations on certain types of magic and spells).

An example of internal restriction can be seen in how some people interpret D&D's higher level healing spells like regenerate (a 7th level spell-something most characters won't have access to for quite some time). The rules as written specify that disabilities like lost limbs can be healed using this spell, but some players take this to mean that if a character was born with the disability in question, say, born without a limb, regenerate would only heal them back to their body's natural state, which for them, is still disabled.

An external restriction would be that your setting has outlawed healing magic, perhaps because healing magic carries a lot of risks for some reason, eithe to the caster or the person being healed, or maybe because the healing magic here works by selectively reviving and altering the function of cells, which makes it a form of necromancy, just on a smaller scale. Of course, you can also use the tried and true, "all magic is outlawed" approach too. In either case, it's something that will prevent some people from being able to access it, despite it being technically possible. Other external restrictions could look like not being illegal, per say, but culturally frowned upon or taboo where your character is from.

But what if I don't want to do any of this?

Well you don't have to. These are just suggestions to get you thinking about how to make a world where healing magic and disability exist, but they aren't the only ways. Just the ones I thought of.

Of course, if you'd still rather make a setting where all disability is cured because magic and you just don't want to think about it any deeper, I can't stop you. I do however, want to ask you to at least consider where you are going to draw the line. Disability, in essence, is what happens when the body stops (or never started) functioning "normally". Sometimes that happens because of an injury, sometimes it's just bad luck, but the boundary between disabled and not disabled is not as solid as I think a lot of people expect it to be, and we as a society have a lot of weird ideas about what is and isn't a disability that just, quite plainly and simply, aren't consistent. You have to remember, a magic system won't pick and choose the way we humans do, it will apply universally, regardless of our societal hang-ups about disability.

What do I mean about this?

Well, consider for a moment, what causes aging? it's the result of our body not being able to repair itself as effectively as it used to. It's the body not being able to perform that function "normally". So in a setting where all disability is cured, there would be no aging. No elderly people. No death from old age. If you erase disability, you also erase natural processes like aging. magic won't pick and choose like that, not if you want it to be consistent.

Ok, ok, maybe that's too much of a stretch, so instead, let's look at our stereotypical buff hero covered in scars because he's a badass warrior. but in a world where you can heal anything, why would anything scar? Even if it did, could another healing spell not correct that too? Scars are part of the body's natural healing process, but if no natural healing occurred, why would a scar form? Scars are also considered disabling in and of themselves too, especially large ones, since they aren't as flexible or durable as normal skin and can even restrict growth and movement.

Even common things like needing glasses are, using this definition of disability at least, a disability. glasses are a socially accepted disability aid used to correct your eyes when they do not function "normally".

Now to be fair, in reality, there are several definitions of disability, most of which include something about the impact of society. For example, in Australia (according to the Disability Royal Commission), we define disability as "An evolving concept that results from the interaction between a person with impairment(s) and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others." - or in laymen's terms, the interaction between a person's impairment and societal barriers like people not making things accessible or holding misinformed beliefs about your impairment (e.g. people in wheelchairs are weaker than people who walk). Under a definition like this, things like scars and needing glasses aren't necessarily disabilities (most of the time) but that's because of how our modern society sees them. The problem with using a definition like this though to guide what your magic system will get rid of, is that something like a magic system won't differentiate between an "impairment" that has social impacts that and one that doesn't. It will still probably get rid of anything that is technically an example of your body functioning imperfectly, which all three of these things are. The society in your setting might apply these criteria indirectly, but really, why would they? Very few people like the side effects of aging on the body (and most people typically don't want to die), the issues that come with scars or glasses are annoying (speaking as someone with both) and I can see a lot of people getting rid of them when possible too. If they don't then it's just using the "not everyone wants it approach" I mentioned earlier. If there's some law or some kind of external pressure to push people away from fixing these more normalised issues, then it's using the "restrictions" method I mentioned earlier too.

Once again, you can do whatever you like with your fantasy setting, but it's something I think that would be worth thinking about at least.

[the960writers]

Magic Doesn’t Have to Make Sense

In praise of fantasy that embraces rebellious, lawless, and delightfully un-rulebound magic.

By Molly Templeton, Published on May 22, 2025

For reasons I’m not sure I will ever fully understand, the topic of magic and rules comes up with slightly alarming frequency in SFF circles. So much so, in fact, that it is very tempting to use ominous capital letters when referring to the two bits of said topic: Magic and Rules. Does magic have to have rules? [...]

[alexanderwales]

One of the dominant models of magic and superheroes is that everyone has their "thing", what I would call a bespoke magic system, but is mostly just a power that sits orthogonal to all other powers. This crops up all the time, because it's really really good for having dynamic fights, for characterizing people through their powers, for having new surprises and twists, and just generally keeping things going.

It's adaptable to all kinds of genres. Superheroes are the obvious one, whether it's canonized as Quirks or just an aspect of the setting. But I'm pretty sure that the basic concept was first invented in anime, with marital arts settings, where every character had their own jutsu or whatever, or the system in theory is all about ki manipulation or equivalent exchange but in practice everyone has their own particular niche. You can slot this into urban fantasy, giving every vampire their own special Power, or you can have some magical fantasy thing where everyone has their own unique Semblance.

So this is all well and good, but it leaves us with a narrative hole, which is progression. Having a unique power is cool, because you can think of new uses for it, have unique matchups, etc., but it doesn't give you that juicy sense of becoming more, and if you're facing down terrifying villains with their own powers, then a god-tier power is just kind of ... random. Luck of the draw, rather than the consequence of a powerful will or keen mind.

You can strip out limitations and amplify effects, and this is cool and good, or you can lean back away from uniqueness and toward uniformity, which I think is sometimes the right call, depending on your narrative needs.

So you say that actually the guy who can swap places with someone and the guy who can cut people from a distance are both unwitting hyperspecialists in the same field of magic or whatever, and that in theory, with unlimited time to train and experiment and explore, each could do what the other does.

This allows for a lot of snazzy narrative stuff. Two intense rivals "learn" each other's techniques, or at least adapt them into their own technique. Maybe the guy who does teleport swaps never learns to cut from a distance, but his teleport swap incorporates a cut into it, slashing at the person he's trading places with. A widower incorporates aspects of his dead wife's power, a mentor passes down elements of his technique to all his students, a young protagonist has some angst about using the aspect he got from his abusive father, etc.

If powers are a reflection of character, then you get to physically manifest a character's relationship with other people.

[plotandelegy]

Crafting Future From Ruins: A Writer's Guide to Designing Post-Apocalyptic Technology

Photo: Standard License- Adobe Stock

Crafting post-apocalyptic tech involves blending creativity and realism. This is a guide to help you invent tech for your post-apocalyptic world:

Tinker, Tailor, Writer, Spy: Start with modern tech. Take it apart (conceptually or literally if you're feeling adventurous). Using the basics, think of how your character might put it back together with limited tools and resources.

Master the Fundamentals: Understand the basic principles underlying the tech you're working with. Physics, chemistry, and biology can be your best friends. This understanding can guide your character's resourceful innovations.

Embrace the Scrapyard: The world around you has potential tech components. Appliances, vehicles, infrastructure - how could these be deconstructed and repurposed? Your characters will need to use what's at hand.

Cherishing Old Wisdom: Pre-apocalypse books and manuals are the new internet. A character with access to this knowledge could become a vital asset in tech-building.

Indigo Everly

[dark-lord-of-awesomeness]

Listen you can't just give me new lore and expect me not to ask ESPECIALLY if it involved magic system

Does the rune you clicked with matched the kind of person you are? Like someone who is caring will click with a protection rune or a healing rune or is it based on how willing the person is to learn it?

In the ye olden days how does one know which rune they would click with like do they just try different runes and if they don't click with they moved on to a different rune? Imagine an expert just throws a bunch of runes to a baby sorcerer and be like “here try this runes and tell me how you feel about it”

If someone who studies history found that Stan's a sorcerer, what would be their reaction? And is it a shock Pikachu face?

Is magic reserve something you're born with? Or can you expand it?

Tldr : more lore! More lore! More lore! More lore! ✊✊✊

You've fallen into my trap of asking me to elaborate so i can talk more about my magic world building >:)

The first initial click will always match the type of person a sorcerer is. Stan views himself as someone who breaks things and messes stuff up, so he was drawn to the break rune (plus all the writing it over and over. Its not a necessary step but it does make it easier and speed up the process) in different circumstances he could have also clicked with the sneak, protect, illusion, or anything else that fits Stan. After that a sorcerer can technically click with any rune, as long as they work to understand it. Stan doesn't care about plants or growing things in a garden, so he's struggling.

In ye olden days as long as they knew someone had the chance to become a sorcerer they could guess which runes they'd click with. Unfortunately there wasn't a guarantee someone would click at all, even if they did have a larger magic reserve. Potential sorcerers could go to specilized schools to try and click through rune writing and doing rune activities (such as going around a castle and breaking everything they came across *coughStancough*) but its not something that can be forced (without messing the person up). There was also the chance that people would randomly become sorcerers going about their day to day lives, like how the woman Fiddleford knew clicked with the dance rune and started using it on everyone. People were taught to look for certain signs (doing a certain action over and over again, looking exhausted, zoning out, etc (which can be written off as truama)) so that if they saw their neighbor or someone they knew they could take steps in case it was a potential sorcerer clicking.

Once the first click happened baby sorcerers were taken to isolated facilities and thrown a bunch of runes and pushed through rune activities until they clicked with at least three more, after which they were free to go home or continue rune learning. They'd interview loved ones and the sorcerer to figure out what would work best, and go from there. If something didnt click after three days they'd move on (Due to rushing the process to stabilize the baby sorcerer. If Stan had been shoved writing the rune he's about to click with over and he'd click with it faster than he has been.) Stan's learning his runes in the classic fashion of doing activities and watching the world around him, which works but is very slow.

If someone who studied history and knew about sorcerers as a concept seperate from wizards learned about Stan there would be a new person living in the castle becoming Stans #1 pest. You know the type, eager to learn and watch and the exact type of person that would creep Stan out, even if they were doing it for purly academic reasons. Stan's a living relic of a long forgotten magic art, and they're going to rediscover the limits of his capabilities together :) (Stan would rather not. Please leave? He has enough problems with the dragon, demon, and McGuckets health worries)

Magic reserves are something people are born with and something that can grow over time. Everyone has a little bit of magic in them that keeps them alive and naturally connects them to magic in a non sorcerer fashion, and some are born with larger magic reserves due to blood line factors. Its similar to a muscle, the more its used the bigger it is, so weak sorcerers can get stronger the more they cast spells and push their limits. Or it can artificially grow, like if someone carries an arcane battery in their pocket and rolls it around with their bare hands while it leaks magic straight into them (but who'd be crazy enough to do that! There's all kinds of side effects from non controlled magic exposure!)

There's also a hierarchy of runes. The lowest tier is grammar and filler runes, that don't have any special innate ability to shape reality. Like how shouting the word 'the!' at someone doesnt really convey meaning. After that it goes from very specific runes, like water, to more complex ones, like liquid. Stan's first one was a complex one, as 'break' covers a whole lot more than just learning 'snap'. There's lots of ways to break something, but only so many ways you can snap. The limits of a sorcerer's ability is their magic reserve and their imagination, so Stan, who's mental ability is so strong he's a natural mindscape manipulator, has a lot of potential for being very powerful, even if by ye olden days standards he'd have a less than average sorcerer's reserve (another good thing for Fiddlefords arm). A sorcerer can 'upgrade' their clicked rune into a higher tier by doing it a lot and deepening their understanding.

[neokamui414]

The fact that in the early Young Avengers comics, Billy used Manifestation and self-help books to actualize his powers is really brilliant in a way that I don't think the writers intended or most fans / comic book readers ever realized.

See the thing about stuff like Manifestation/ Law of Attraction/ The Secret is that is these concepts were born out of scientific, philosophical, and occult intellectual developments in the 17th to 19th centuries. And a lot of it had to do with magnets, new discoveries and innovations with electricity, and a new level of intellectual focus on the will, emotions, and human psychology (the things that would eventually give rise to 20th century psychoanalysis). This is the time period where we got stuff like Mesmer and Mesmerism, the New Thought Movement, Spiritualism, and the idea of Animal Magnetism.

So you have his mother or pseudo magical reincarnation b******* mother Wanda who's aesthetics and conceptualization of magic has a lot to do with late 19th to early 21st century occultism with stuff like Wicca, Thelema, and yes Chaos Magic. And then you have his grandfather, Magneto the master of what? Magnetism?!?! (Whom incidentally also displayed in his older appearances telepathic / mind control abilities in addition to his manipulation of metal which obviously can be attributed to neuro electricity nowadays but back in the day the thing that was explicitly evoked to explain his ability to control people was, you guessed it, Animal Magnetism!)

So Wiccan's ability to execute his magic being this sort of combination/ halfway point of his mother's probability manipulation and his grandfather's ability to affect electromagnetism is actually super fucking brilliant and cool and is the kind of clarity and specificity a fictional magic system and acknowledgment of history of real world occultism that you very rarely find in comics overall, and again it was almost certainly unintentional on the writer's part which makes it both more brilliant and more frustrating!!!!

So in addition to the fact that this makes the retcon of Wanda not being Magneto's actual biological daughter even more infuriating and nonsensical, it's also one of the reasons why I'm really not vibing with the current MCU depiction of Billy even if I did like Agatha All Along.

[bodyhorror-bimbo]

I should talk about my magic systems sometimes. Maybe that would attract the other fae.

[sweetened-condensed-rage]

I'm so in love with consequential magic.

Give me arcana that feels alive, living and breathing and dangerous. Give me magic that will consume you if you aren't careful to train. I want to see battle mages carefully maintaining how much magic they've channeled so it doesn't burn them. I want ambitious wizards who unknowingly let their magic eat them alive. I want scarring that leaves the bearer unable to cast magic from a spell that was too powerful for them to handle. I want good magic users to border on ethereal and succumbing to the arcane because the human body wasn't built to handle such forces but insist on bending them to their will.

[mythcreantsblog]

Soft magic, hard magic, dark magic, oh my! Magic systems sure have gotten elaborate these days, and I admit, yours truly is partly to blame. But don’t worry, if you’re overwhelmed, need inspiration, or are just unsure of what kind of magic you want, help is right here.

Just choose one (or more!) types of magic from each section, and you can create a unique magic system that fits your story. By mixing and matching these 23 magic types, and you can create 1,680 different magic systems – or even more if you blur the lines. Paint with each color of the magical rainbow and have fun!

[tookishcombeferre]

So, I'm a little sad today because my audition did not end up going the way I'd hoped. But, I'm going to do what I do best and info dump instead. So, @shychick-52 and I were discussing the magic system in Sofia the First yesterday. We were discussing how the magic from the Mystic Isles themselves seems to be a relatively neutral force. However, the sorcerers/sorceress themselves seem to have hearts that are tuned to particular spells or styles of magic. One of the things I noticed about Greylock in the "Baileywhoops" episode is that he seems to *genuinely* love fun. Like, he conjures things to entertain the kids well because that's what his heart is tuned to. He loves to play jokes. His magic and mind is literally in line with the spirit of fun. As what Cedric says seems to imply, Greylock has always been like this. He's always been silly. He has the soul of a child in the best way. This is really nicely contrasted with Cedric who is like super practical. He thinks much more concretely which makes them really funny when their riffing off each other in the episode. But, it would also explain why Cedric has a much harder time dealing with spell work that seems, in the end, kind of frivolous. Cedric does best with things that seem to be meaningful or have a concrete purpose. While I think any sorcerer/sorceress could cast anything, I do think there's an ease or lack of concentration that comes with casting the things that come naturally to a person. Thus, because Cedric is kind of an anxious mess, 90% of his concentration is already going to keeping his composure in a given situation so he can't really put any more into casting things that his heart isn't naturally tuned to. I might have additional and more coherent thoughts on this eventually, but right now I'm also giggling at my spouse's reactions to episodes with Bean. For example, Spouse Unit 1's live reaction to the "Baileywhoops" episode: "I love that Baileywick is back, but maybe we should be toasting the two people who saved you all from drowning?! Cedric and Greylock should be the subject of the toast! Also, apparently Cedric only gets praise when he saves one of the kid's lives." - He gets it.

[whereserpentswalk]

I want a magic system that slowly drains its users. Like magic drugs but they aren't the fun kind of drug but the life ruining kind. Magic users will slowly grow paler, their weight will drop at unhealthy rates, dark marks will form around eyes that slowly seem eternally bloodshot. As time goes on they lose reproductive function, and start feeling either constantly awake or needing to sleep more. Someone who begins practicing magic in their teens will not see forty.

You're so powerful but at what cost. You're bodies wasting away, and the younger you start the better. If you stopped now mabye you could heal... but it feels so good to become something like that, something more powerful then humanity was meant to know.

Anyone want to just totally ruin their life when they become a wizard?

[satans--waifu]

Alright so… the context of this one is entirely ambiguous, make of it what you will. I‘m sure the sweaty strands have everything to do with an intense workout and nothing else

I do like the thought of the magic markings on his cheeks actually being runes and spreading as one becomes more proficient with their magic. Or maybe they just shine through as one engages in more… strenuous activities. Perhaps their visibility is connected to the amount of adrenaline your body produces at a given time? Sort of in a "adrenaline means danger and danger means we need magic to escape from the situation" biological kind of explanation? So your body then literally puts runes on itself so you can use stronger magic in an effort for self preservation. But because your body doesn’t know whether you’re producing adrenaline out of danger or euphoria, the side effect is that it will just activate in any situation in which adrenaline is produced.

I‘m overthinking it, aren‘t I? I‘m just a bit of a sucker for magic systems and how mages interact with their magic in day to day activities lmao. Like, I don‘t care how they use it in battle or whatever, tell me how it poses minor inconveniences in every day life instead.

[mcyt-hc-writing]

some thoughts on magic in minecraft

Most magic in Minecraft can be classified into two disciplines - enchantments and alchemy, of which alchemy is the more broad. I posit there is also a third type - evocation. But let's discuss all of them.

1. Enchantments

Enchantments are a kind of magic used to enhance or alter the functions of an item. Enchantments are permanent, and they do not appear to alter the user directly in any way.

The most obvious examples are of course the enchantments and curses placed on gear. Most of them enhance a function of that gear - making it last longer, mine faster, hit harder, or lure better - but some instead add new functions, like Mending, Wind Burst, or Riptide.

Besides gear enchantments, enchanting is overtly involved with the Enchanted Golden Apple - which is an enhanced version of a regular golden apple, indicating that enchanting can also be used to enhance the functions of consumables.

Based on its characteristic glint it's possible that enchanting is in some way involved with written books, End Crystals, Nether Stars, but it's hard to say in what way that could be.

Enchanting, notably, is tied heavily to XP - which, as we know thanks to sculk, is related to souls in some way. It is likely that anything in the game which requires XP is a form of enchanting. I posit, for example, that renaming items is actually enchanting - it isn't so simple as putting a tag on them, but in fact consists of the player altering that item's True Name through enchanting.

Could that also be true of written books?

2. Alchemy

Alchemy is a more broad term than you might think - alchemy in Minecraft is the magic art of temporarily enhancing or altering a being, typically through the use of external reagents.

The most obvious example of alchemy is potions - these alter mobs such as the player, temporarily enhancing abilities like strength or resistance, or giving them new abilities. There are many other examples, however.

There are several foods in the game that grant potion effects or interact with them, indicating that alchemy is not limited to intelligent life but that it can arise through evolution too.

Other sources of alchemical effects include beacons, conduits, end crystals (which heal the ender dragon). They appear to be in a similar category and indicate that consumption is not necessary for alchemical effects, merely some source of energy - the pyramid and sacrifice for a beacon, prismarine for a conduit, or the vast amount of energy stored within an end crystal. The beams of end crystals are similar in form to guardian laser beams - which are a natural form of alchemy (indicated by guardian beam damage being identical to Instant Damage)

Curing zombies is an alchemical process.

Finally, totems of undying are an interesting item that seem to indicate a good understanding of alchemy, due to their unique function. I also believe that they may have a link to the third school of magic...

3. Evocation

I believe that Evocation (or Summoning) is the third field of magic in Minecraft, and (unlike the others) it is compatible with other forms of magic. Evocation creates or permanently alters creatures.

The natural form of evocation is lightning - it can permanently alter many kinds of mobs, and can even summon them in the form of skeleton horse traps. Interestingly, lightning can be evoked through an enchantment - Channeling - indicating that enchantments can be used to trigger evocations.

Evokers are masters of evocation, able to summon vexes and fangs - their unique use of totems of undying suggests that totems are also a creation of evocation, not just triggering alchemical effects but actually un-doing the user's death through evocation. Considering even the evokers themselves don't use their totems, I wonder how exactly a totem permanently alters the user - such that their own creators are afraid of them.

I believe that the creation of golems - snow golems, iron golems, and the Wither - is another expression of evocation. Again, Withers are a source of a rare alchemical reagent, indicating that evocation can be used alongside alchemy.

It is likely that spawners and vaults use evocation to summon mobs.

What societies use them?

Minecraft's societies all make use of magic in some form.

Villagers appear to have some knowledge of alchemy (clerics, wandering traders), and are familiar enough with evocation to create iron golems, but the magic they are most familiar with is enchantment - enchanting appears to be well known and well understood in villager society, much better than among players.

Illagers on the other hand, despite shared origins, seem to detest enchanting and use it sparingly. They are skilled in other fields - Evokers, as said before, have mastery over evocation, while witches are experts in alchemy.

Piglins are the final major magic-using society. As the only society based in the nether they have access to nether wart and potions through it, though they seem to only use fire resistance. They also possess a divergent discipline of enchanting; we see only soul speed as players, but I wonder what other enchantments they may be keeping to themselves.

Endermen do not appear to make use of magic. End cities contain potions and enchanted gear but the endermen don't use them.

Disciplines unmentioned

There are some things that some people consider magic which I failed to mention. Let's quickly go through them.

Redstone: Probably not magic, since it is all related to a particular mineral.

Cross-dimensional travel: All portals and teleportation appear to have the same source. They aren't really linked to anything else.