Thoughts on Magic.
Magic is about feelings. The fantasy (which is in an of itself a feeling) that our feelings can change The Rules. We are all sadly bound to this earth and victims of physics as a whole. Magic lets us ask “What if we weren’t tho?”
Magic systems change depending on how writers express these feelings and how what they feel they might impact the world. A persons magic system in a book often tells one about the author, the cost of writing a magic system is the cost of being Known.
Is the magic a narrative means to an end? Is it perhaps something that is rigid and must fit The Rules? Or is it a soft magic system that has a small sticky note behind it saying “I do what I want?”
Magic is about what we feel we need and how we may in the vaunted halls of sorcerous fantasy, accomplish what we need at any given time. Runes, chants, ley lines. Those are all common tropes but not necessarily the whole. We are social animals as human beings, our psyche is impacted by what came before. Is the written word a magic in itself for conveying these ideas? Is the written word therefore a system dedicated to describing systems?
If that is true we have a magic system here on earth. It causes hallucinations of grandeur or gritty grim dark visions. It gives us windows into the perceptions on how a writer solves problems, and how the consequences of those problems may manifest. The consequence of magic is to be known for how we would plunge into these unknowns as individuals.
The consequence of escapism is other people learn how to run away with you.
