#human magic

[an-error-0ccurred]

GERSON DROPPED MASSIVE LORE!!!!!

[toastling]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

New chapter of my Amity journaling fic is out. Hope you guys like! The next one is gonna be a real doozy.

[its-leethee]

What kind of magic does the Jailer use, and what is her connection to the Key of Aaravos?

I have thought for a while that perhaps the Jailer is neither a primal nor a dark magic user, and that she utilized the Key of Aaravos to serve an important role in his imprisonment. Now, there isn't a lot of overt evidence for my hypothesis here; this is a ramble of pure speculation. I'm going to do my best to present the dialogue and canon-consistent logic to support my thoughts. Here goes:

The prevailing opinion in Xadia is that "human magic" is akin to trickery and sleight of hand. When confronted with Callum's claim of being a primal mage in 5x07, Nyx dismisses his boast reflexively: “I’ve seen ‘human magic.’ Fake ropes, false doors, birds and rabbits stuffed into clothing.” To her, it's common knowledge that humans can't use real primal magic, and her derisive attitude shows she doesn't have much respect for human magic either. As for dark magic, Nyx doesn't even mention it at all; as Lujanne said in 2x01, "we do not call that practice magic. It's an atrocity."

But human magic has one more specialty: creating and solving puzzles. The mechanical devices and riddles guarding the secrets in Kpp'ar's labyrinthine house and the rock-stone puzzle hiding the staircase to Viren's dungeon are story-significant examples of the types of innovations created by human magic. In 1x03, Ezran solves the rock-stone puzzle to reveal the staircase hiding Viren's dungeon. Callum answers the riddle posed by Rex Igneous in 4x08, "having knowledge isn't knowing knowledge…. He has a map!"

So neither a primal mage nor a dark mage would resort to puzzles and riddles, the gimmicks used by magic-less humans. So let's now consider the Jailer.

During the post-season four Discord Q&A, Aaron Ehasz states that the Jailer is a "mastermind of prisons and puzzles."

In episode 5x05, Archmage Akiyu tells the story of how she met the Jailer and introduces her as "a human mage." Akiyu goes on to explain:

"The archdragons had given the Jailer a daunting task, to design a magical prison that could hold a Startouch Elf. She needed my powers to craft the prison itself." (emphasis mine).

It stands to reason that a competent dark mage, with the notoreity to catch the attention of the archdragons, could bring that kind of power into her grasp on her own. So why would the Jailer seek out the powers of primal archmage, unless she couldn't wield that power herself? Furthermore, knowing the prejudice that the archdragons hold against dark magic--all of humanity was driven out of Xadia for refusing to forswear its use--I don't believe the archdragons would ever condone cooperating with a dark mage, even to quell an existential crisis like a demi-god bent on world destruction.

Akiyu tells us one more intriguing thing that the Jailer said:

"'The puzzle is the real prison,' she told me with a proud smile," (again, emphasis mine)

There's another word besides "magic" that we can use to describe the practice of creating and solving puzzles: cryptography; the art and science of creating and breaking codes and ciphers. The terms code and cipher are often used interchangeably, but their meanings are technically different. Basically, a code uses arbitrary substitutions while a cipher uses an algorithm.

Now, if you wish to solve a puzzle, you're going to need all the pieces - and if you wish to solve a cipher or code, you're going to need a key.

More than one use has been hinted at for the Key of Aaravos. We've heard Rayla refer to it several times as a toy and a game piece (1x04, 2x07). In the book two novelization, Callum notices that the Key left marks on the ground that appeared to point toward Xadia (we get a glimpse of those lines in early episode 2x07). In 4x07, we get suspiciously up-close framing of the Key when Callum asks, "is there no primal gem for star magic?"

And a few months back, one of the TDP creators shared on Twitter about a season 6 scene that was eventually cut. In the scene, Callum holds the Key up to a symbol on a wall and says, "I'm gleaming the cube!" (if anyone remembers this twitter convo and can provide me a link to this, I would be so grateful)

This is the Key feature we're all most familiar with: its glow. When exposed to a source of magic, the corresponding primal magic symbol on the Key lights up. This is why I think one of the potential functions of the Key of Aaravos is as a cryptographic key. If it were held up to a magic-infused symbol, the glow effect would reveal the primal magic source - and in this way it could be used to decode a secret message.

In cryptography, a key is the series of words, symbols or phrases that contain all of the basic information you need to decode or understand a specific coded message. Both the sender and receiver of the coded message need to know the key in order to create the coded message or decode it into plaintext - to lock or unlock the meaning behind a cipher or code.

I can't speculate on the exact nature of the secrets that she encrypted with it, but the Key can literally shed light on the solution! It was a toy that was repurposed by a the Jailer, magicless human mage and mastermind of ciphers and codes, to protect the secrets of Aaravos and his prison.

Exactly what secrets it will be used to reveal remains part of the Mystery.

if you're interested in learning more about cryptography, this page has links to a lot of my favorite resources

Recommended reading for more Key of Aaravos and the Jailer theories:

the post that initially enabled my crazy train of thoughts, thank you @beautifulterriblequeen

super rad analysis of the Jailer's unique character design by @kradogsrats, who also authored one of my favorite alternative hypothesis for the real function of the Key of Aaravos

an amazing thorough and detailed Key analysis, by @raayllum and another very interesting conversation about the Key here

Special thanks to @raayllum for answering my random Akiyu and Jailer questions, and to @self-spaghettification for giving me the push I needed to bring this essay together!

[sixminutestoriesblog]

nao-name

I'm going to get a bit philosophical. Researching today's topic dropped me through an ice sheet I hadn't realize was thin and things went a bit deep. I still think its worth writing though, so here we go.

In the beginning of all things, God said “let there Be”, named a thing and it was.  From His words all life and everything that would spin outward from that came into existence.  One of the first things He told His newly created humans to do was to name all the life they found living around them.

Whether you take it as myth, metaphor or fact, I think its telling that the people writing down that specific creation story considered naming a thing enough to bring it into existence.  There is something buried deep inside humanity that considers being able to True Name a thing powerful.  Controlling.  Summoning.  From the beginning of the world to Rumpelstiltskin's fairy tale to modern urban fantasy where a hero has to learn the demon's name to banish it, humanity is fascinated with the power naming something imparts.  We name our pets, our cars, give our friends nicknames and, sometimes, we even rename ourselves.  

Take a mental trip backward with me.  Let’s go to the very beginning of language.  Once upon a time, there were - well, perhaps not humans, perhaps not yet, but there were people.  There were people who had learned to articulate sounds into the vastness of the wilderness.  Sounds that didn’t just warn of danger or rejoice over finding fresh water or call the group together.  Sounds that, sung and trilled and coughed and grunted from mouth to mouth, had started to share ideas that went beyond survival, sounds that needed to grow in complexity to match the minds they were coming from.  It wasn’t enough to say “the cave is safe” anymore.  It became “the cave is dry” and then, perhaps, “the cave will fit all of us” and then, in time “the cave is home”.  And eventually it wasn’t ‘the cave’ anymore; it was ‘home’.  

'Let’s go home.'

And ‘home’ meant something different than simply ‘the cave’ even though it was the cave that was being referred to when home was mentioned.  Words, perhaps for the first time, had caught an emotion and turned it into a solid thing.  Home.  Something you only felt to start but that you had made solid when you had called a specific place that word.  In a way, you had taken what wasn’t known and had made it real simply by giving it a name.  Now, when you said ‘home’ everyone in the group knew what you meant and felt what that meaning was in their own hearts.  That was power, enclosing something hereto unknown in the shell of a word, where it could now be understood and passed from person to person, mouth to mouth. Tamed and given a place in the framework of daily life.

These people, creating language, must have felt that power, that awe, each time a new name was given to something, bringing it into their collective conscious, sharing what it was, binding the unknown into the known with the magic of a spoken word, the new tumble of sounds.  Making it safe and also real for all of them.  Snatching it from the dangerous world around them and turning it into something they could hold with their tongues and contain with their mouths. The spoken words were acts of creation and definition.

‘That cluster of stars is The Snake.’

‘In the summer, we will go to the Red Caves and paint your hand on the wall to lay next to mine.’

‘The creature that killed your son is called Bear.’

Because, yes, sometimes, naming a thing tames it.

Sometimes, though, naming a thing just gives your fear a face.

And so, whoever they were, these first people, still learning to name things, they also developed what modern linguistics call ‘noa-names’.  Because if names had the power to create a thing, you had to be very careful what you spoke into existence.  It was too dangerous to say the name ‘Bear’ because a bear might be nearby and feel the power of his name calling to him.  To say a thing was to call it up in everyone’s mind and how far was that from calling it up in reality?  So you didn’t say ‘bear’.  

You said ‘brown’.

And everyone knew what you really meant but you hadn’t said the word itself.  You hadn’t spoken the power of the word.  You’d slid around it sideways, created the image in everyone’s mind but not let the sounds out into the air where anyone - anything -   might hear them and decide to answer.  (There’s a more in-depth post that floats around tumblr about the word ‘bear’ but I can’t find it at the moment).  The point was, people learned to say things without saying them because, at the core and heart of who we are, we know that the sounds that leave our mouths mean something.

It wasn’t a bear.  It was a brown.

It wasn’t a wolf.  It was a stranger.

It wasn’t an elf or fairy.  It was the ‘Fair Folk’ or the ‘Good Neighbors’.

It wasn’t Satan.  It was ‘Old Scratch’ or ‘The Gentleman in Black’.  (In the case of Blues songs like “The Devil’s a Busy Man”, the ‘devil’ mentioned is a nao-name itself, used for very real and immediate reasons.)

It’s not Macbeth.  It’s ‘the Scottish play’.

It's not death. It's 'taking the bus' and 'passing away'.

'Stick and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me' we teach our children - but we all know its a coping technique, not the truth. We all know, somewhere at the beginning of us, that words, written or spoken, carry weight beyond a simple sound. More languages than history can remember have echoed in this world's past, creating and calling down through time. It's become so common that we've grown careless about it, forgetting the magic of being able to name a thing, the power it invokes with each written or spoken syllable. Modern day media spin doctors ply their trade like snake oil sellers of the past, influencing the masses who don't even think about what the words they're accepting as true are creating out of reality.

So, today, just for a little while, why don't we all find the sounds that give us the very human magic we all take for granted and take it back, just a little, for ourselves and our world. Let us, once again, create something real and true and warm and kind when we open our mouths and speak to someone. The magic may be old and worn and faded from those first sounds of so long ago - but its still there, if we pay close enough attention.

A gentle word can still, sometimes, at exactly the right moment, in the exact right tone, change a person's life. Why not start today?

Why not start now?

[wayward-delver]

Leaked storyboards for The Owl House Season Finale.

by AmbasSiSk 

part 2

[take-a-dip-in-the-deadpool]

Luz after trying (and failing) to negotiate peacefully with the emperor and lilith:

[neonthewrite]

Hey Bowman! You have a chance to keep something from the Human world to keep for your own (and at proportionate size, if need be): what is it, and why do you like it?

"From the human world? Most of what I've seen, Jacob brings when he visits. Then he tells me about all kinds of things that sound like he's just making them up. Ropes that carry energy from dwelling to dwelling? A thing called Tea-V that has nothing to do with tea? Libraries and archives on this 'why-fi' that aren't even real places? It all seems too fantastical to be real!

"But I guess it's all true. I think if I could have something from it .... I'd want a phone thing so I could talk to people far away. I'd worry less about what happens in the village when I'm out patrolling. "