I feel like this thread from earlier (and my response) is a good response to this one https://hexbear.net/post/217485/comment/2768512
Well so one big hang-up for me is the blurring of science/technology and magic, both sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and its converse. But I am just being a nerd there so let’s skip that.
This is such a huge thing though. So many people today don’t want Magic to be Magic. They want a setting that is Magic-Punk. Magic as a technology, as a science, and as a resource.
What is the point of magic if not an exploration of a reality that is not our own? Why in the hell would mages be content to slave away under the shackles of capitalism? (speaking here of setting where mages are often just more efficient labors, in some settings replacing able-bodied people as the proletarian class entirely!) If these mages are so powerful and common they can constitute an entire working class, then at least be realistic an interesting; the cities would devolve into gang warfare and lawlessness almost immediately. the average worker has guns for hands!!
I tend to be into fae-wildy, Kind Of Other Dimensions But Incomprehensible To Us, Chaos Magick-y type stuff.
fuck yes, this! if there exists a shimmer of another possible world, why doesn't it rupture everything in this fantasy? why the fuck would you write a story that takes new possibilities and shackles them to the horizon of our neo-liberal world??
i know that's the concept, but i think it's an apt name for the genre known as "magical realism". except smug liberals would hate to admit to themselves that their ideology has a choke point
The Mighty Boosh might be considered magical realism, but either way, my take is I can handle magic being commonplace in fiction as long as it isn't excessively gamified and especially if it isn't metagamified.
Capitalist realism is bleak enough. Turning magic into an exploitable resource with predictable returns has a similar bleakness for me and I generally don't enjoy fiction with too much of that.
on the other hand if Magic is Magic you have to justify why nobody made an attempt at rigorous study of it and how anybody has learned to do anything with it.
Often it's as simple as magic doesn't have consistent rules that can be rigorously studied, and you just have to rely on vibes and stuff an old dude told you and hope for the best. Also having to ask nature spirits and gods for help and kind of just hoping they like your offering of cigarettes and whisky enough to help you.
Often it’s as simple as magic doesn’t have consistent rules that can be rigorously studied, and you just have to rely on vibes and stuff an old dude told you and hope for the best
huh i thought we decided deus ex machina sorts of plot contrivances were bad.
Why should I automatically think plot contrivance/god from the machine are always bad? They can exist in a story and be okay if the story overall is good/entertaining (though I'll give you that when they're bad, they're pretty bad - e.g. any movie set in the era of telephones that bores you into being aware that major plot points can be solved with a phone call ).
well for one thing we already called it a contrivance.
god from the machine is bad because it's nakedly from the machine. it's low-effort it's not clever. it's non-s equitur
like, taste is subjective or whatever, but our hegemonic culture I think rightly disapproves of a writer solving a plot problem by having somebody show up who had nothing to do with the whole rest of the story or having some random event happen.... unless it's carefully done as a subversion of expectations like having some family drama and then they all die in an earthquake and there's some point being made.
I do like it when "Hard-Magic" books do engage with this (this is yet another opportunity for me to plug the Commonweal series for making godlike eldritch magic from beyond hell mostly a branch of Civil/Military Engineering for a revolutionary Socialist state)
I feel like this thread from earlier (and my response) is a good response to this one https://hexbear.net/post/217485/comment/2768512
I think they are talking about authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and such
fuck yes, this! if there exists a shimmer of another possible world, why doesn't it rupture everything in this fantasy? why the fuck would you write a story that takes new possibilities and shackles them to the horizon of our neo-liberal world??
capitalist realism
i know that's the concept, but i think it's an apt name for the genre known as "magical realism". except smug liberals would hate to admit to themselves that their ideology has a choke point
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I'm thinking the OP is getting the genre mixed up
Maybe they meant like gritty fantasy or something lol
Seems like they're ranting about George RR Martin more than Gabo
Stuff like The Dresden Files or Vampire: the Masquerade is usually called Urban Fantasy, tho, and we still call Gambo Thrones fantasy.
Magical realism has a certain literary, postmodernist bent that's kinda distinctive from that, even if the category is too broad to be useful.
The Mighty Boosh might be considered magical realism, but either way, my take is I can handle magic being commonplace in fiction as long as it isn't excessively gamified and especially if it isn't metagamified.
Capitalist realism is bleak enough. Turning magic into an exploitable resource with predictable returns has a similar bleakness for me and I generally don't enjoy fiction with too much of that.
on the other hand if Magic is Magic you have to justify why nobody made an attempt at rigorous study of it and how anybody has learned to do anything with it.
Often it's as simple as magic doesn't have consistent rules that can be rigorously studied, and you just have to rely on vibes and stuff an old dude told you and hope for the best. Also having to ask nature spirits and gods for help and kind of just hoping they like your offering of cigarettes and whisky enough to help you.
huh i thought we decided deus ex machina sorts of plot contrivances were bad.
Why should I automatically think plot contrivance/god from the machine are always bad? They can exist in a story and be okay if the story overall is good/entertaining (though I'll give you that when they're bad, they're pretty bad - e.g. any movie set in the era of telephones that bores you into being aware that major plot points can be solved with a phone call ).
well for one thing we already called it a contrivance.
god from the machine is bad because it's nakedly from the machine. it's low-effort it's not clever. it's non-s equitur
like, taste is subjective or whatever, but our hegemonic culture I think rightly disapproves of a writer solving a plot problem by having somebody show up who had nothing to do with the whole rest of the story or having some random event happen.... unless it's carefully done as a subversion of expectations like having some family drama and then they all die in an earthquake and there's some point being made.
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I do like it when "Hard-Magic" books do engage with this (this is yet another opportunity for me to plug the Commonweal series for making godlike eldritch magic from beyond hell mostly a branch of Civil/Military Engineering for a revolutionary Socialist state)