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Magic systems - What Are They And What The Fuck Do Those Words Mean

You know what, I'm an aspiring fantasy writer. I'm going to talk about my personal experience with building magic into a setting.

Omicron Toots His Own Horn

Snowflake Quest is a quest run by yours truly on this very forum, currently on hiatus. The Twilight Age is a novel manuscript currently in the Hell of Editing. What maters here is that both are set in the same setting, yet present magic in vastly different ways.

Magic in the Twilight Age

The Twilight Age (placeholder title) is a story of supernatural investigation in a modern urban fantasy setting, whose protagonist is a mythological creature. The setting of the Twilight Age is one in which powerful magic has withered through the ages, and the potential for its return to prominence is both enticing and menacing.

Therefore, magic must serve a number of design goals.

1) Magic is intuitive to the characters yet opaque to the reader. This may seem odd or counterintuitive but serves thematic purposes. Supernatural beings in the TA setting largely live in insular and standoffish communities when they have communities at all. Their forms of magic are varied and usually unknown to each other. Furthermore, the main character and antagonist both use old, forgotten forms of magic which are further unknown. Having characters treat their magic as familiar without their rules being clear to he audience emphasizes how characters in the setting feel towards each other. Magic is weird, not a known quantity, and its full capabilities and limitations a hazardous guess at best. While the protagonist does unveil some aspects of her magic, having it remain in parts obscure and not fully understood serves to keep her as a bizarre, not quite understood figure despite the story being told from her point of view.

2) Magic is ritualistic and oblique. Precisely because of the above, magic must be constrained in its use as a problem solver, or it will undermine all tension in the story due to its nebulous scope. As a result, even though the rules and scope of magic are kept blurry, it is made clear early on that it requires preparation and ritual that is increasingly esoteric the more powerful it is, and that its effects are often - though not always - not straightforward but instead create effects with strong aesthetics and intricate effects.

Ultimately, however, magic is supposed to be surprising, and its intervention in the story often lacks direct foreshadowing, because it exists as a menacing, ambiguous force that has mostly faded from this world and which cannot yet be fully grasped.

By contrast, most characters involved have "capabilities." This is not a term used in the story, and I only use it here to clarify concepts involved. While magic is weird, some people are just very strong, or clairvoyant, or some other gift that is part of being whatever supernatural creature they are. These are not thought of as "magic," or even "powers;" they're just part of being what the character is. Because such powers are more immediate, convenient and straightforward in their implications, they are much more often used to solve or cause problems, and as a result must be more carefully explained and foreshadowed, their scope and limitations established earlier and more clearly.

So, as an example, here are some examples of supernatural "powers" established, then used:
  • The protagonist encounters a locked door, and breaks it open with a strong push. This establishes the scope of her strength as later used in more high-stakes confrontations.
  • The protagonist gets into a minor fight, and suffers shallow cuts. These barely bleed and quickly become painless. Later, she is threatened with a shotgun, and her internal monologue comments that the blast would injure her, but that she would survive it. This establishes her resilience; she later becomes involved in a much more serious fight, and survives injuries which would have been lethal to a human being.
  • A jaguar-like creature manifests out of a cloud of smoke and is associated with a god of smoke and shadow, then during a fight with the heroine turns into smoke to avoid her blows, then later performs other such tricks.
  • A character with ties to the ghostly generates an aura of cold which increases in intensity with her anger in her first appearance. Later, she is shown using that very aura to cross a burning building without harm from the flames.
By contrast, these are examples of things treated as "magic" by the story:
  • The protagonist carries a knife for what she says is self-defense. While it initially seems like the knife is a weapon of its own, when she becomes involved in her first fight scene she instead uses it to cut her arm and shed her own blood, which crystallizes into flint and cause her hands to become claws of stone.
  • A priest of an Aztec sun-god rips out the hearts of this god's totem animal in sacrifice, then consumes these hearts to summon images of the birds made out of flame which he sends to burn his enemy. Later, when backed against the wall, he instead consumed all his remaining hearts in a single crude burst of fire.
  • The protagonist crushes a figurine carved out of obsidian and mixes the shards with her blood, then out of these shards summons a swarm of bats, in a mirror image of the priest's actions; indeed, the bats are used to devour the flaming birds.
  • The protagonist is informed that a ritual which would summon a ghost to be interrogated is both dangerous and unethical, but her lack of familiarity with such magic leaves her misunderstanding or disbelieving the extent of this. She manages to get someone to conduct that ritual for her; its symbolism is largely lost on her, and it goes very wrong for reasons she at the time cannot fully understand.
  • The main antagonist paints himself blue and wears a mask in the effigy of his god. This enhances his ability in ways which are not fully explored, beyond a sense of making him faster and stronger, as the protagonist only fights him briefly, and in their second bout shatters his mask as her finishing move.
What am I getting to with this... Ah, right.

The magic of the Twilight Age is built on symbolic and thematic associations as understood by whoever is practicing them. There is no manual which clearly outlines its capabilities, bit if I do my job well there does not need to be: If I succeed, the reader eventually gains an intuitive sense of how things work based on their imagery and ritual.

The main character is a monster/deity from a religion based on human and animal sacrifice, whose goddess has in her portfolio butterflies, bats and claws of flint. As a result, she sheds her blood to grow stone claws, and sacrifices an image of a butterfly to summon bats. The antagonist worships a god of war and the sun, and so costumes himself in the image of his god to gain strength and speed, and summons "warriors" of "sunlight" in the form of fiery birds from sacrificed animals. The ambivalent ally is of a completely different nature, one the protagonist knows little about, and so her magic appears arcane to her except where she can get explanations - but when that magic begins to serve to solve problems in the plot, rough guidelines on its symbolism are provided.

In this conception, magic is mystical, esoterical, but still not completely obscure. It is understood by imagery and thematic portfolios rather than any explanation of how it works on a fundamental level - there is little explanation of where power is drawn from and how such effects are made to happen. Magic id powerful, but steeped in ritual, dramatic in effect, and often with the potential for collateral damage or running out of control. Magic is foreign, external to some extent.

This is by contrast with the various characters' more simple, physical abilities, which are simply who they are and which they do not think of as "magic." They simlly happen to be fast, or strong, or able to see ghosts or turn into smoke, as an innate part of just being who they are.

Oof. That was a lot of words talking about my stuff. Sorry. I started writing this up intending to contrast the above approach to that of my Quest, but this felt a lot longer to write on a phone than it actually is. Maybe later.

I hope this was useful to someone somewhere to some extent.
 
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Magic in a narrative sense, is whatever bullshit you use in your story that is supernatural but creates wonder, engenders excitement and ensures competence. This is the kind of magic that people both use in the colloquial sense (movie magic) and the metafictional sense (Vin Diesel being a Car Wizard). This is also the kind of magic that people do not like talking about in a mechanistic sense, as doing so robs it of its wonder. Nobody likes seeing the wires, as it were.

Now magic in the practical sense, is anything that influences events by supernatural means, especially if it makes events more whimsical or extraordinary. In a truly reductionist sense, this can be glowing runes or burning chrome: Clarke's Law is not just a truism of pulp, it's a truism of speculative fiction in general. The woo bullshit you use to drive the plot beyond the norm is magic. It's why anyone gives a damn about Shadowrun and Mage: the Ascension; those systems understand that hypertech at the end of the day is another form of magic and allows them to mingle.

Finally, magic in the systemic sense is something that draws off of cultural signs and symbols in order to create the feel of something superstitious and mystical/irrational. It's entirely a personal feeling thing, with no logic behind it. There's a quote about speculative fiction, in which you must determine if the black box at the heart of your story is covered in runes or circuits, for that determines who will read it. With steampunk being a thing, you would add gears to the box, but the idea is the same; what you call your supernatural narrative power is the brand of speculative fiction you're selling.

If your magic makes sense in an empirical, logical, scientific way, some people get upset because that's "not magic". This disregards the fact that anthropological magic was used as a way for indigenous people to understand the world with well tested and logical (at the time) methods. Magic was never antithetical to tech until the Industrial Revolution and the Rational/Romantic Western Thought Schism, it was tech. There's a reason our natural sciences came from the same group of motherfuckers jizzing into horse wombs to make servants and drinking liquid mercury for eternal life; they were experimenting with the knowledge schema they had. If you flip this course to science, of course, you get the Hard/Soft Sci-first divide.

I tell you that to tell you this: a magic system is whatever the narrative rules you set for yourself are, in regards to the black box at the heart of your speculative fiction.
 
Magic is whatever the fyck you want it to be. It can be systematized or unknowable, grand or barely beyond mundane. It doesn't even have to be consistent. As long as it supports your plot and isn't your plot, you can make it anything you want, it doesn't matter. Because in the end magic is just one of the setting tools you use to create your aesthetic and narrative.
 
Iron Wolf said:
I also don't think it's inherently wrong. I also don't think it's the be-all-end-all. Rather than a magical system I would propose something like a magical framework -- give yourself a few ground rules (can you bring people back from the dead?) and then make it exactly as nonlinear and opaque or as rationalized and logical as you need.
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Ironwolf-last-Night: Magic systems are just what writers create when they can't write science fiction.
 
Rook said:
No.
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Ah. OK. Now that my first concerns are over, @Jemnite (or perhaps @Rook, since you seem to know what Jemnite is talking about), could you explain the context behind "can't write science fiction" in this indirect quote? It's the sort of statement that can be interpreted differently, and it seems to be related to an IRC discussion or something like that?
 
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vicky_molokh said:
Ah. OK. Now that my first concerns are over, @Jemnite (or perhaps @Rook, since you seem to know what Jemnite is talking about), could you explain the context behind "can't write science fiction" in this indirect quote? It's the sort of statement that can be interpreted differently, and it seems to be related to an IRC discussion or something like that?
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The context is I was joking.

EDIT: On discord with @Jemnite so now I have to suspect Rook is wiretapping me to know I wasn't saying that! :V
 
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I'm pretty sure what Iron Wolf was saying is that systemized magic systems are ways for people to write about an ordered universe of science without having to study science.
 
Cetashwayo said:
I'm pretty sure what Iron Wolf was saying is that systemized magic systems are ways for people to write about an ordered universe of science without having to study science.
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No actually it was just a joke he made about how he was going scifi supremacist and he was like "you should post this @Jemnite it'll rile people up" and I was like why don't you do it? and then he was like no i can't do that I already made a serious effort post.

Basically it was just a dumb inside-joke shitpost and you nerds should stop reading so much into it. Also star trek is the greatest and better than lord of the rings the end.
 
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I'm pretty sure what I meant to say is that Blindsight is the greatest magical girl story of all time.

To get back vaguely on track:
Cetashwayo said:
I'm pretty sure what Iron Wolf was saying is that systemized magic systems are ways for people to write about an ordered universe of science without having to study science.
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As Jemnite says, it was 100% a joke. However, in pondering my own joke I started to think about what is the purpose of going very codified in magic, and making it more like a science. And it is similar to what you're reading into my joke.

It lets you write your own rules. Which doesn't necessarily imply you don't understand science. I wouldn't be so condescending as to actually assume that. In fact, I'd assume the opposite -- you have to know a bit about what the rules of science are to break them in a consistent manner and/or supplement them with your own. Does it therefore make something less 'magical' if the rules of that magic are so quantifiable? I don't think so. I just think it's a different flavor.
 
I think that people have preferences that can influence their thinking. I would have to agree with you that there is no inherent "better way" for this. Also, the next 3 pages will be, mod-mandated, discussing Ironwolf's statement that he made 100% seriously.

Anyways, to carry on that, I think it's more helpful to explain particular uses of those kinds of systems and magic in a story than to argue which is better. Because like, I prefer more loose and mysterious magic. Some people don't. Some people like all kinds of stuff. It's less important than integrating it well into the story and having it make some sense thematically and just in general.
 
Iron Wolf said:
Does it therefore make something less 'magical' if the rules of that magic are so quantifiable?
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Personally, I think it does. Atleast for me. Because to me magic in a fictional context describes something that defies human attempts to codify it and put it into neat little boxes for easy understanding and use. It's something that has existed before us, will exist after us, and doesn't really give two shits either way. That's not to say that your magic system isn't magic because it's a system, but as long as it's clear that magic that people in the setting use is only a small piece of the bigger picture mere mortals managed to squirrel away for their own use to study in a limited way. As long as it's not a thinly veiled RPG system or a series of abstracted doohickeys the characters push an abstracted button to use.

If I would compare my attitude to it to any scientific framework, I'd say that my ideal wizards are like quantum physicists. Theoretically by our layman's understanding they're experts in the field, but when they try to explain it to you they sound like fucking crazy people.

Even though it doesn't have traditional spells and wizards type magic, the Lovecraftian underpinnings of Bloodborne portrays this concept perfectly for me. You don't know why Micolash wears a giant cage on his head, and chances are he doesn't really know why either, but you can't say it's not doing something.
 
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Cetashwayo said:
Anyways, to carry on that, I think it's more helpful to explain particular uses of those kinds of systems and magic in a story than to argue which is better. Because like, I prefer more loose and mysterious magic. Some people don't. Some people like all kinds of stuff. It's less important than integrating it well into the story and having it make some sense thematically and just in general.
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I tried D:
 
Cetashwayo said:
Anyways, to carry on that, I think it's more helpful to explain particular uses of those kinds of systems and magic in a story than to argue which is better. Because like, I prefer more loose and mysterious magic. Some people don't. Some people like all kinds of stuff. It's less important than integrating it well into the story and having it make some sense thematically and just in general.
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It really depends on the kind of story you are telling. Just like any element of the setting the magic you create can be as complex or as vague as it needs to be. Further, it can be an incredibly complex system you never tell the audience about. You could have a fifty page dissertation on how magic works in your story world but the audience only gets an incredibly vague idea of it because none of the characters know this and thus all they see is "The Crypt King and the Shining Council seem incredibly reluctant to use magic on each other and instead rely on the armies of terror and band of ragtag heroes respectively to track down the MacGuffin Stone and use it to 'cast the world into darkness for ten thousand years' or 'seal away the Crypt King's evil and save the land'."

Generally speaking if you are telling the equivalent of a magical murder mystery, that is if you are presenting a puzzle to the audience that the characters will solve by understanding how magic works, than you should make certain the audience knows enough about magic that the answer, when it comes, is not an obvious asspull. If you are telling a story which will focus on magical conflict as a way of allowing you to have kickass fight scenes and action than the audience should be informed of how magic works so they know the stakes of the conflict and thus how much tension there is in a scene. That is, if your magicians should be able to laugh away a handful of humans armed with swords but not a wizard assassin the audience will know a scene where they confront mortal guards is an excuse for a beatdown that makes the wizard look cool while the wizard assassin fight is the one they need to be tense and concerned about. If your magic is being used metaphorically, to say something about a piece of philosophy or an idea you want to represent than the audience should know enough about it that they can get the metaphor. If you want to say 'Magic is Friendship' then the audience doesn't need to know much about how magic works aside from the fact that ultimately people with friends win over those without them.
 
I would like to just point out that Sanderson's First Law is named not for Brandon Sanderson, but his brother Jordan.

Brandon Sanderson writes magic as basically a tool, because he fundamentally started out with a heist novel (and still writes them), and thus loves "tools to meet the puzzle" type plots. Therefore, in his stories, the reader needs to have at least a basic idea of the functionality of magic, otherwise the reader can't understand how clever the character is being with applying her tools to the problem.

Sanderson's First Law is designed to draw the line of distinction between "magic as tool" and "magic as narrative mover" because as @Sucal pointed out, it confusing the two leads to bad Harry Potter fanfic. Ironically enough, Harry Potter also very much leans towards heist style narrative and applying tools to puzzles. But the "tools" of of HP are not the magic spells but the knowledge of the world and it's people and artifacts and the interrelationships thereof. Victories come not from cleverly using or applying magic, but from cleverly understanding relationships and motivations. This same logic applies to Scott Westerfield's Leviathan trilogy, where the steampuck mechs and biotech animals provide narrative support but it is courage and kindness that turn locks and solve problems.

Which leads me to the conclusion I have. Regardless of what magic is, the point of a "magic system" is to serve the narrative. Which means that when you need tools, you use magic-as-tools, and when you need narrative shifts, you have magic-as-plot, and you make sure not to confused the two.

When you do, you get the horrible mess that was Usurpation-Okay.
 
Reveen said:
Personally, I think it does. Atleast for me. Because to me magic in a fictional context describes something that defies human attempts to codify it and put it into neat little boxes for easy understanding and use. It's something that has existed before us, will exist after us, and doesn't really give two shits either way. That's not to say that your magic system isn't magic because it's a system, but as long as it's clear that magic that people in the setting use is only a small piece of the bigger picture mere mortals managed to squirrel away for their own use to study in a limited way.
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I don't think this can be chalked up to your magic system being one way or another. I think it has to do with more how you use it (like half this thread has been saying).

Or to put it this way - if your character has made a dark pact with an incomprehensible force that has let her see the true shape of That Which Slumbers, is it inherently magical when she uses that power and knowledge to open a can of Pepsi? If you've been granted the ability to teleport by divine powers, is it magical if you use that to pilfer some Krispy Kreme donuts - which you then give to the poor, because otherwise your unspoken contract would be broken? How is this inherently more magical than someone clad in armor with the right mix of fictional elements to make it resist the breath of a scintillating dragon; flight granted by shimmering glow-floatstone wings?

I mean, if your definition of magic is when people in the setting "only [have] a small piece of the bigger picture mere mortals managed to squirrel away for their own use to study in a limited way," real life is magical. It's just that the difference between real life 'squirreled away knowledge' and Bloodborne 'squirreled away knowledge' is that the instant you realize the void of space is empty, you also realize that it hungers.

This also doesn't really detract from the fact elsewhere my finely-crafted fake physics is letting me have angel armor fight a dragon-blimp.
 
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Reveen said:
Even though it doesn't have traditional spells and wizards type magic, the Lovecraftian underpinnings of Bloodborne portrays this concept perfectly for me. You don't know why Micolash wears a giant cage on his head, and chances are he doesn't really know why either, but you can't say it's not doing something.
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We know exactly why Micolash wears a giant cage on his head.

Article:
The School of Mensis controls the Unseen Village.

This hexagonal iron cage suggests their strange ways. The cage is a device that restrains the will of the self, allowing one to see the profane world for what it is.

It also serves as an antenna that facilitates contact with the Great Ones of the dream.

But to an observer, the iron cage appears to be precisely what delivered them to their harrowing nightmare.
Source: The Mensis Cage
 
For me, magic is "supernatural effects".

By "supernatural", I refer to "beyond our natural world". Because, if the"magic" is a consistent force inherent to a fictional world, then it seems to me that it's not really magic, you know? It's just another natural phenomenon; it's observable, but not man-made. It operates under its own logic.

I'm fond of Fullmetal Alchemist and its magic for this reason; the series follows most of our world's rules (save for a few acceptable breaks from reality), except there's also Alchemy, a force that enables the manipulation of matter and "souls". How people view the magic in this world actually comes up in the third episode of Brotherhood, where a town believes that a priest is capable of "miracles" that are actually just advanced Alchemy disguised as something more. The protagonists confront this priest and expose him. Later, when another character arrives and does even more advanced Alchemy, one of these townspeople mistakes it for a "miracle" while another recognizes it as "Alchemy".

Still, Alchemists can only understand and manipulate parts of this force; when they try to exceed one of its limitations, they meet a being known as Truth, who then swipes body parts that are symbolically important to the Alchemist in exchange for forcibly granting them high-level alchemic knowledge.

I say all that to establish that "magic" kinda comes down to perspective. To us, Alchemy is magic. To the characters of Fullmetal Alchemist, it's a force intrinsic and natural to their world.

In my definition of magic, the crucial part is the "effect" bit. Magic is "changing the world without playing by the world's rules". Whether it's calling on eldritch horrors or levitating a pebble an inch off the ground, magic is an effect on the world that appears to go beyond our understanding of the world.

The weird thing is, most fictional worlds attempt to resemble ours, if for no other reason than to allow the audience to enter a comprehensible setting. Thus, whatever the magic is, it's usually viewed as a mysterious power that, despite belonging to their world, conflicts with people's understanding of it.

Usually, magic systems are given a proper noun or another title to establish them as being different from actual "magic", as something that belongs to the world, despite conflicting with certain aspects of it.

Obviously, I've consumed a rather limited amount of fiction, but most of the stories I've encountered don't actually refer to their supernatural force(s) as "magic". Those that do are often set in or connected to our own reality, which then justifies viewing magic as "beyond the natural world".

Now, if magic is "a supernatural effect", then there needs to be a cause, right?

Not really. In my perspective, causes for magic are optional, though they are preferable.

Now, I do have to be clear and establish that "causes" is not referring to "who" or "what" causes magic because that's pretty obvious. "Who" refers to characters that use magic and "what" refers to those parameters established to limit the use of magic, whether it's some restriction on the Users or on the magic itself.

When I say causes for magic can be optional, I mean the "how" and "why" of magic.

Sure, I like understanding the foundations of magic, but that's mostly so I can acknowledge it as a phenomenon inherent to the world, rather than a tool entirely under control of the characters.

I don't need to know why or how the Force offers visions of the future and telekinesis. I don't need to know why or how Stands can do bizarre things.

To use the example of King Crimson, "it just works". Because, ultimately, trying to explain "for what reason/purpose" or "by what means" magic happens tends to open more questions that usually don't have satisfactory answers.

You can test it, if you like. Look at a magic, whether it's in a "system" or not, and ask yourself, "why and how does this supernatural effect happen?"

Now, "magic system" is a bit trickier to narrow down, but it's also easier to discuss. Systems are just "simple things connecting to make complex things". By that definition, a "magic system" is just "magic connecting to make complex things".

The magic itself can be whatever the writer wants. Whether everyone gets to have unique abilities or everyone draws from a similar set of capabilities, it's up to what kind of story you want to be telling.

But what interests me about a magic system is seeing everything connecting.

I'm not just referring to the interactions between magic, though that too can be very interesting. I'm talking about how magic interacts with concepts outside of it.

I recognize some User names on this thread. Some of you may remember me from other threads. I tend to make a fuss about magic and world-building.

I'm aware that both of these are just parts of a fiction, but I get excited and interested about them because they appeal to a very simple desire of mine; the chance to explore ideas that aren't possible within mundane reality. I'm fascinated by perspectives on what the world becomes if only there were forces that went beyond our understanding of reality. What do people do with that power? How does society adapt to it? These are the questions I ask. Maybe I'm just weird like that. I don't know.

In any case, I've taken a stab at answering the thread questions. I'm satisfied.
 
Conjured Blade said:
You can systematize the process if you want. The five trials of initiation into Sorcery for Exalted for example.
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Exalted (at least 1E and 2E) was an example of having 'mundane magic' and 'magic magic' side-by-side. Sorcerers, Exalts, and powerful elementals, demons, gods, or spirits can bend or break the laws of reality. They can wave their hands, chant for a few minutes, and BAM SURPRISE LAVA KRAKEN! or build a city singlehandedly as a hobby over a few years, or do other awesome, wondrous, and terrific things.

But designing a manse to channel raw essence flows isn't magic, it's just math and architecture. Sure, it takes training, just like it takes training to do metalwork, or brew beer*, or get really good at spinning, weaving, and dyeing, or do basic astrology, but it isn't weird in the same way that the magic-magic is. Charms and wards and geomancy and astrology and asking for the blessings of heaven with the proper rituals are just things that ordinary people do, in the same way that ordinary people farm, and spin, and cook, and build and so on.

These systems serve two different purposes. The smaller, everyday magic is there to remind readers and players that this is not the world they know, even if things look pretty similar on the surface. The powerful, setting-shaking magic is there to let players change that world.

*And you can bet that the Realm and other states have regulations on beer. Ancient Egypt had standards for how beer was brewed, and how it was to be sealed into jars. Incidentally, Ancient Egypt may also have the first documented instance of a roach coach, because the workers on those big projects need their bread and brew from the big industrial breweries and bakeries.
 
If most magic "systems" that tried to evoke the feeling of physics or mathematics actually did so well, then there'd be little problem in my view.

Physics and mathematics are deep and beautiful fields in which we're still finding new surprises after centuries of inquiry. Magic inspired by them would be both simple and profound, would feel far bigger than humanity whilst also tying into the rain, the ground, the stars on such a fundamental level that it could never feel anything other than something always meant to be part of the world. Charmingly eccentric yet brilliant old masters could direct vast forces and hold incredible insights into the positive and negative furies that drive the universe, and yet the whole paradigm of magic could still be changed in each age by young heroes willing to explore further armed with only with their love for the beauty of creation. It would be awesome in the best and truest sense of the word. The issue in my view with physics-inspired magic "systems" is that most of the authors who seek to emulate physics in the magic of their secondary worlds have the barest surface appreciation of the subject they want to emulate. Such creations frequently end up feeling like Dungeons and Dragons with a set of completely arbitrary pseudo-physical laws tacked on top; rather than an elegant system built of a small number of simple parts which can achieve almost unimaginable complexity, beauty, and depth.

The Force from Star Wars, for all that it's often held up as being ineffable and mysterious, honestly seems to me to do a better job of seeming like a natural* magic system than may others which consciously try. The Force is a holistic aspect of the universe in the same way that gravity or life itself is; it doesn't feel like an add-on to it. It has a simple set of starting principles which it then follows through with integrity and generality. There is a Force which flows through and binds all living things and all matter in the universe together, and if you can feel it and touch it, you can use it to alter the world-state by slightly influencing the relationships by which the Force binds it together, up to the limit of your understanding of that world-state and how it might be changed. That's it, and from that simple and elegant relation everything else the Force does can be derived. The Force also doesn't run into issues of conservation of information, which in my view are far more more common unaddressed issues for most magic systems than the more oft-complained about conservation of energy. There's any number of places you could get energy to lift an X-Wing from, but how does a sweeping spell know how to navigate your floor?

The Force may have its own cosmic will, concerned with grand sweeps of fate; which might possibly be the projection of sentient beings, or some sort of statistical balancing principle, but it doesn't feel anthropomorphic. It feels like a part of nature, like a cold front coming in on a mountaintop or a gathering thunderstorm, massive, grand, remote, inexorable. The Force may feel mysterious in how it works, as a result of our limited perspective on it, but it almost never feels arbitrary. It does not feel like a made thing or a capricious imp. It feels like, well, a force. Whilst it seems like you could do almost anything with the Force, you would have through your own skill, and by truly opening yourself to the universe; you can't simply expect it to wash your dishes for you upon command. Unless you were actually doing the mental work of holding each dish in your mind, and the cloth, and the soapy water. Which would likely lead to some cracked dishes.

What was I talking about? Oh yes.

Many magic systems manage mere consistency, but the Force manages to have a sense of integrity.


*(To clarify, what I mean by this is a system of magic that evokes the feeling of natural law, of being an inherent aspect of the universe.)
 
The best explanation for the force that I've encountered in a fanfiction is that the starwars 'verse as a whole is inside a large energy being - probably an animal rather than a sentient. The force is one of the animal's normal biological systems and force-users are mutant cells in the animal's body that are hijacking it. "Good" jedi avoid reproducing because their host animal would be healthier without these parasites. And they also try to provide some symbiotic value by acting like white blood cells to attack cancerous sith.
 
sunandshadow said:
The best explanation for the force that I've encountered in a fanfiction is that the starwars 'verse as a whole is inside a large energy being - probably an animal rather than a sentient. The force is one of the animal's normal biological systems and force-users are mutant cells in the animal's body that are hijacking it. "Good" jedi avoid reproducing because their host animal would be healthier without these parasites. And they also try to provide some symbiotic value by acting like white blood cells to attack cancerous sith.
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...

I think that just started the brain rot early.
 
sunandshadow said:
that the starwars 'verse as a whole is inside a large energy being - probably an animal
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That's... terribly mundane and not at all engaging? Also completely ridiculous.

Like, this pretty much goes against any attempt at creating a mysterious, living, true force of magic in a setting, as @Admiral Skippy has set out.

It makes the cardinal sin of trying to explain something to the readers that is best left unexplained.
 
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