So! 2023. Did my annual tarot spread this morning and the cards that came up seems to promise quite an eventful year. But I’m not gonna go into detail about that since it is a personal prediction of mine. Instead I’m gonna talk about how something that may come up as an inspiration initally may turn out to become baggage down the line. Now, I admit that I can be very impressionable when it comes to absorbing ideas and concepts from fiction and reality both all around, which I naturally have been trying to work into the worldbuilding of my comics.
Over time though, I’ve discovered that though I may proparly implement some fraction from those ideas and concepts they may, in their bulk format, become more disrupting then fulfilling. One example of this is the concept of magic. I love magic. I love fantasy. My comic Imsies the Imthology very much has an estethic reminiscent of that of a high-fantasy sort of setting.
BUT! Since these stories in actuality are taking place in a futuristic sci-fi setting, albeit a very retro-esque one, with mutants and mutation being the central theme of the entire setting, this concept – even in a rebranded sense – doesn’t quite hold water, not as a universal, omnipresent – a’ la The Force in Star Wars – kind of format at least. So, I figured I scrap the high-fantasy format of magic and instead went for a more superhero comic kind of approach.
How about instead the Imsies powers work the same way the X-Men’s mutant powers work, though applied to race rather then individual. The Illumid race in Imsies the Imthology have their pulse power, for which there may be different power levels of that goes hand in hand with an individual Illumid’s hierarchical rank in Illumid society, be at a peasant, or a warrior, or a priest. Same thing may go for other Imsie races and their race’s respective Im-power.
It feels like a more simpler, mor managable approach that helps define the setting a lot more and effectively concludes needless explanation on the concept, allowing focus to be laid upon story elements instead. It is like, if my memory serve me right, what Albert Einstein once said:
”If you can’t explain it simply. Then you don’t understand it enough yourself.”
Or something along those lines. And that’s pretty much all the thoughts I had to share with you this Sunday. Sorry if it is a bit rough. I’m still trying to recover from the sickness I had last month and still feel a bit sleepy, though it is certainly getting better by the week.
Share your thoughts in the comments if you like. Til’ next time.
NaaN (Now, always and Never)
Inspirational baggage:
Andreas_Helixfinger at 12:00AM, Jan. 8, 2023
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Andreas_Helixfinger at 10:30AM, Jan. 9, 2023
@DylanTale Comics - Indeed. That's very much the angle I'm going with here.
DylanTale Comics at 3:19PM, Jan. 8, 2023
With my comic series, when it comes to magic and/or special powers, I go with a more realistic or "grounded" direction. It's like what you said about Wolverine/the X-Men. They have all kinds of abilities that some would consider magic, but it isn't, it's found in their unique mutant X gene. I often think of Arthur C. Clarke's saying, "Magic's just science that we don't understand yet." No matter what heightened or special ability a character has, no matter how fantastic or grand it is, there's always a scientific process as to what causes that phenomenon, even if it's beyond explanation.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 8:55AM, Jan. 8, 2023
I can totally see how the way I described it came out as an RPG kind of take on magic or power. Though I imagined it as a more of a superhero comic bookie "this guy or gal can do this powerful thing and that is all you need to know about it" and then you just expand everything around that. A hilarious image popped up in my head. Imagine it like having the X-men mutant Wolverine as a race of Wolverine rather then just one character. And the race of Wolwerine's power is completely focused on having claws. Now let's say that the peasant type Wolverine has the bone claws, the warrior type Wolverine has the adamantium claws, and the priest type Wolverine have claws made of fire and they all worship the claw god named Bub🤣🤣🤣
PaulEberhardt at 6:43AM, Jan. 8, 2023
Doesn't mean I didn't like the modern kind of magic or that I thought it in any way inferior, of course. Just saying.
PaulEberhardt at 6:41AM, Jan. 8, 2023
@marcorossi: I think so, too. Old school fantasy and fairy tale magic is often much more arcane and subtle, rather than the (to my mind) pretty technocratic, sufficiently advanced technology kind "cast 'update lightning-staff to version 13.7' (realm electromagnetic magic) for 21 mana - see staff assembly manual p. 46" that modern fantasy unconsciously tends to resort to very often. People used to RPGs seem to expect magic in well-defined orderly categories. Compare that to Lord Dunsany's works with their dreamlike poetical quality, that can be considered his kind of magic (and which inspired Tolkien and virtually all of his contemporaries). I had a DM who sucked so much that I gave up on RPGs at a very tender age, so I read old books and since have had comments about my own witch character hardly ever seeming to do any magic at all, which I cannot help putting down to the way it's just not very obvious most of the time.
marcorossi at 3:00AM, Jan. 8, 2023
The most famous high fantasy story is probably LOTR, and there famously Gandalf uses very few magic. I think the idea of magic as commonly used powers has more to do with RPGs and videogames.