On Personal Bugbears
Sometimes there are tropes in fiction that you don't vibe with.
It doesn't matter if it serves a narrative purpose. It doesn't matter if it's thematically consistent. It doesn't matter if it's good. It doesn't matter if it even makes the story better or more coherent or resolves important questions. It's a story conceit that you just don't like, no matter what.
For me that's when the heroes' actions involve bringing about an end to magic, returning the world to mundanity, and giving up all their powers.
I get why it happens most of the time. I get the idea of the transition of the age of legends into our diminished world. I appreciate a good Tolkien as much as anyone and I'm not going to be mad at the elves leaving Middle-Earth.
But when it's this, when it's literally "humans and magic cannot coexist, and so peace can only come at the cost of magic fading from the world, and you, the hero, giving up your own magic so you can have a place in that world"?
I'm never going to like it. No matter how well it fits your story's needs. I won't enjoy it, and I wish you had done otherwise.
'Fantasy,' no matter what some say, does not inherently imply a power fantasy. I am a horror fan at heart, including some horror set in deeply mundane, #2real4me settings, and some of my favorite fantasy is set in worlds that involve little to no magic. But fantasy is a fantasy, and the turn of the world to the mundane is not why I'm here for.
So no. I don't like that all the magic is fading from the world and Terra must remain on earth not as she was, a child of two worlds, embodying the possibility of love between two people, the conflict and the pain and the fear but with the hope of balance and harmony between them in the end, and must remain in this world as only human.
It's not my jam.
While I'm going to give a counterpoint, I do understand your greater point that sometimes it's the
idea behind a plot point that is generally disliked, rather than the specifics of its background or how it's implemented. So reading this as "the magic goes away" and not liking it is entirely valid.
My counterpoint is that magic has existed in the world at two occasions: once a thousand years ago, which famously led to the War Of The Magi before being sealed away, and then about twenty years ago, when Gestahl opened the Sealed Gate and kidnapped various Espers including Terra, upon which he began constructing his Magitek Empire. And for the vast majority of the world, magic was only a widespread thing in the past year, after Kefka ended the world.
From that viewpoint, magic in the modern world is an aberration. We don't know much about the world of a thousand years past, during the War Of The Magi, especially since it sounds like introducing magic to the world was a
result of the War Of The Magi, ie the Warring Triad transforming humans into Espers to use as foot soldiers. Outside of Thamasa, the magic-users are those who were infused by Esper power, whether artificially or being Terra, and their use of magic is seen as alarming and bizarre to most of the world, as some strange new power that has unsettling implications.
So the magic going away from the world is not a descent to mundanity, but rather a
return to the same status quo that still has a lot of fantastical things.
From what we know, magic only exists due to the Warring Triad, and Kefka's disruption of them meant he somehow absorbed their ontological existence into himself (again with the "Kefka wins somehow" writing). So defeating Kefka is equivalent to destroying the Warring Triad, or at least what's left of them that holds the metaphysics of magic together.
Thus, the biggest impact of the disappearance of magic is the entire race of Espers vanishing, which we've also noted is excused by Kefka having genocided them already, and Thamasa no longer able to use magic, which is unfortunate but we don't see much of the results of, especially with Strago and Relm being part of the happy "congratulations for beating the game" ending. It's not even clear how much of Strago and Relm's abilities are part of Esper magic; Strago's Lore is
possibly based on Esper magic since it uses MP, but Relm's Sketch does not.
The rest of the party's abilities, Terra and Celes excepted, are decidedly
not related to magic as defined by Espers: Gau can Rage as much magical effects as he pleases, including actual Black Magic spells during a time when magic was not supposed to be widespread (eg Veil Dancer's Blizzara). The Figaro brothers can emulate magical effects, whether from Edgar's tech tools or Sabin's inexplicable martial arts that scale off his Magic stat. Who knows how Setzer's Slots or Mog's Dances work. Shadow uses Ninja abilities that other enemy critter Ninjas use, and which are basically the same as -ara spells.
Locke's Steal is at least relatively mundane, while Cyan's Bushido is well-understood as the standard Anime Samurai Sword Skills.
So for FFVI's setting
in specific, the magic going away doesn't actually seem to reduce the fantasy of the world by
that much, morality of Esper genocide aside. Setzer still has his (well, Darill's) airship, and there's still an entire castle that can travel underground through sand, and dead people are still ferried to the afterlife by a Phantom Train.
