#magic in the real world

[chaoticsorceressztc]

Today I realized that if we had magic in the real world we would have to have 24/7 grave keepers or shifts and the like walking about the grounds to make sure no one animates the corpse of old Charles Von Eldritch. There'd have to be legal disputes over using someone's reanimated corpse in a movie and whether or not you were allowed to. Just because people would think "Hey! If I 'Employ' a corpse, I DON'T HAVE TO PAY SAID CORPSE!" Grave robbers would be on the rise, and they wouldn't just be robbing graves, half of them would probably be Necromancers trying to work on the black market. You'd have to worry about your dead cousin's corpse appearing on live TV years after their death! Just because some MORON said they had "Totally gotten the rights to do so" when they obviously hadn't.

Grave keepers would definitely need to be pretty powerful just to be able for them to be employed, not to mention how THOROUGH their background checks would have to be to make sure they weren't secretly a necromancer looking for a quick buck.

Now you may be thinking "If this hypothetical place has magic, why wouldn't you just revive everyone who dies through a revival spell or something?" Well not everybody wants to live forever, now do they? There's gonna be graves for the people who decided it was finally their time. Or maybe capitalism made it so being revived costs more than it's worth to be revived in the first place. Imagine being in debt for life after JUST coming BACK to life.

Basically, necromancy is a good reason for not wanting magic in the real world.

[hobgobknowsbest]

[maia-in-nightmareland]

People forget that magic comes in many different forms, it's not always from wizards in epic fantasy movies, sometimes it comes in the shape of beautifully written words on paper, read under candle light during dark autumn storms.

[broodygaming]

I love the allegories of Laudna and addiction.

Because it’s easy to think “well we did this way back when. They DEFEATED DELILAH!” This should be done right?

They defeated Delilah. While Launda was trapped in the tree. They did.

And I think anyone who has ever had a loved one struggle with addictions or an abusive relationship can agree on one thing : you can’t fix it for them.

They have to HAVE TO fight it themselves and choose to walk away themselves.

She can’t be trapped in a tree this time. She has to fight Delilah herself.

[crowsgrudge]

fionna's world being represented by a dandelion makes so much sense ... they're weeds. yet people make wishes through them, changing their whole meaning from something meant to be destroyed to something hopeful.

dandelions are also resilient and it makes sense that something associated with them would. you know. perservere despite the destruction caused by the scarab.

but ultimately i think what REALLY made me tear up over this is that dandelions are really boring plants. when you're a kid you blow on them and make your wish but they're not eyecatching or anything but still, fionna's final wish was for her old world to still exist as it was when she left it (> plain and simple. boring even).

like the moment she realized she would lose her friends, and that her friends might forget each other if the world got its magic back, she immediately decided she didn't want it and I think that ties back to the dandelion metaphor so well... like, do you really need magic to be real to find it everywhere? or can you turn something boring into something magical?

[ryllen]

[littlenim]

how did the writers of DE make it so addicting to try and get Kim to like... smile near-imperceptibly at you in the flickering light of a cigarette glow. genuinely about to write a google docs page of word salad on this and how the way it's so irrelevant and almost certainly fruitless makes it so tantalizing

[hellspawnmotel]

terranigma, a cool game

[needlebeetles]

I am seeing a bit of straying from the source material in the Kipperlilly Copperkettle tag tonight, so I’d just like to say: She thinks magical hardship specifically gives students an unfair advantage at Aguefort, not having an association with the magical generally. So, Kristen Applebees the literal chosen one of a god, Adaine Abernant, Oracle of Everyone, and Fabian Aramais Seacaster, son of an incredibly rich pirate who later becomes an incredibly powerful demon, would not fall underneath this rule. Riz Gukgak, whose dad got eaten by a dragon, would. I will concede that experiencing magical hardship does can give characters a kind of automatic questline, (“your dad is cursed? go uncurse your dad!”) but also like. This questline comes at the expense of having experienced magical hardship. Riz’s dad is dead.

Kipperlilly (so far, I do suspect there might be something up with her family, cause kids who want so badly to have something loudly fucked up happening to them usually have something quietly and mundanely fucked up happening to them) lived a relatively comfortable, if boring, life, but grew jealous over the fact that other adventurers got cool meaningful quests while she and her party were killing rats in the starting area (by choice).

There is very much a “stigma” against normies in Elmville, and while I can’t blame Kipperlilly, teenager, for getting caught up in that, it’s literally fine to just be an accountant, or a janitor, or a librarian. Or a middling adventuring party. Kipperlilly Copperkettle is a theatre kid jealous of child celebrities, and while that’s like. Fair and fine, she’s not a martyr for having all these big emotions centering around being mundane and not going on incredibly traumatizing quests where the world ends if you fuck it up. She’s a teenager internalizing the social values of the place she grew up in and getting mad about not fitting them without confronting the fact that these values are flawed and harmful, because she’s a teenager (which is, imo, a much more interesting narrative).

[ranticore]

i feel like something is lost when writing a deeply religious character in a 'magic/gods etc are objectively real' setting and it never scratches the itch for me to read about faith and so on. it almost feels like cheating to write someone questioning faith when the evidence of magic etc is so objective and abundant, and it's just not interesting if ur looking at it as a study or commentary on religion in the real world. by saying all this I'm covertly announcing that I've made a new setting called It's Just Earth and another catholic priest character

[almostsweetangel]

'remember when red guy used to be normal' since when was harry 'escapes the house and realizes the outside world is boring so he, unprompted, decides to bring CREATIVITY into the real world despite the fact that his time in the house was hell' spaghetti the normal one

[crimeronan]

i think there's something really beautiful about carpenter distancing herself from the trawler man every chance she gets and still getting showered by miracles while faulker, oh he of strong convictions, gets to bring the miracle of the trawler man to everyone around him but never quite gets to ascend to glory himself. i just love that they're both perfectly poised to stare at each other and each think "your goals are backwards and your methodology is dumb and possibly sacrilegious" and then still end up as something close to friends

also let's talk about how, despite these dynamics, at the end of the day, the trawler man is really just trying to give each of them what they want from him.

MMM YEAH. carpenter being beloved by multiple gods despite being such an ornery bitch who wants NOTHING to do with their sacrificial bullshit..... it really gets me. as does faulkner's ongoing crisis of faith and spiral into Faithless Cult Leader (TM). SO GOOD.

perhaps only tangentially related, but.

i've been thinking a lot about faulkner killing roemont lately. i was surprised that roemont's death ended up Breaking My Fucking Heart -- a real testament to his voice actor!! the whole pathetic old man losing everything he's worked for really.... Got To Me. ough. "don't you recognize me?" OUGH.

but i've been thinking about it in the context of faulkner's crisis of faith, too. because like. faulkner Knows that roemont is faithful. he considers roemont a heretic for trying to legalize the worship of the trawler-man, but it's like....

i feel like. killing roemont was a test of the trawler-man that faulkner devised on purpose. because if roemont dies due to the prayer marks that faulkner scrawled, then there are two possibilities:

1. the trawler-man really IS furious that the high katabasians want to legitimize the faith; the trawler-man really IS on faulkner's side; this schism really IS necessary to keep the faith "pure," and faulkner has never done anything wrong;

OR

2. the trawler-man really IS nothing but a mouth. this isn't a god with a plan or with sentience or with feelings, this is just a living river that chews things up and spits them out, and it doesn't care for its followers at all. and if that's the case, then faulkner is betraying nothing by being a faithless cult leader lying repeatedly to his people.

faulkner is devastatingly clever and constantly being underestimated. but he's also completely alone in the world. and he's Desperate for any sign that the choices he's making are the right ones. and he can't find that sign in anybody close to him, because he keeps destroying the lives of those close to him. so he has to devise his own trials....

hrugh. my boy. my boy my boy my boy.

[iwillwringyourneck]

[bunnymajo]

Creamy Mami is the kind of 80's cartoon that will just drop some batshit lore for one episode and never mention it ever again.

[rollforjackass]

i could KILL him for this. motherfucker's every interaction with children has him being, if not nice, then at minimum kind and forgiving and genuinely invested in their wellbeing.

he asks crying kids what's the matter, he's afraid to hold a baby because he's worried he'll drop it, he goes after people who are mean to kids without a second thought. his whole mentorship with timothy hunter is him trying to do right by that kid no matter how he feels about it at the time. man would be the most loving dad in the world but because of his own awful goddamn father and the ways he thinks he takes after thomas, he doesn't think that's true. i hate.

[cookiesandcantarella-art]

local author won't stop bringing the duck he's life-bonded with into the NO ANIMALS ALLOWED library

(lil doodle of hypothetical adult designs)