The emotional distance of magic systems

Or, why I will never be Brandon Sanderson

This tweet shouldn’t have set off the furor that it did:

Alex Luco | Fantasy Writer/Singer ✨ @AlexLucoMusic

What’s your unpopular fantasy opinion?

But wow, it turns out that a lot of people were waiting to answer it. And what they wanted to say was that magic systems suck!¹

Which drew… not a lot of argument, actually? The responses I’ve seen could be sorted into two broad categories:

1. “Oh god yes, I am so sick of magic systems, I want magic in fantasy novels to be mysterious, numinous, strange, unquantifiable, why does it have to have these stupid RULES, who decided that was fun?!?”

2. “I like magic systems, actually.” And then they’d mention Brandon Sanderson.

But in general, the discussion remained polite. Yes, you can like Brandon Sanderson, it’s clear that many do, and this has led to him having so much money he could build a house out of it and heat it by burning still more of his money in his money-brick fireplace. In other words, the popularity of magical systems is not in any danger at the moment, whether or not a bunch of carping authors on Twitter don’t like them.

Nor do those advocating something else want to banish magic systems entirely. It’s just that the pendulum has been swinging towards books with systematized magic for a long time, and some of us would like to see it reverse course, just for a bit.

It’s clear this is a discussion that’s been overdue in fantasy.

So what is the difference? Because I did wade into the fray with a couple of tweets, one of which was:

A Cunning Matthew Claxton Impersonator @ouranosaurus

"If you give a tooth to the old well on the edge of town under a new moon, you will win your true love's heart" >>> "If your wand is fully charged you can project 8.3 gigawatts of lightning at the sphinx."

And someone (do NOT go and bug them about this) suggested those were both magic systems, because they were repeatable.

I see the place that came from, but I disagree.

There is a place in fantasy for magic that comes out of nowhere. Miracles, the general weirdness of magic realism, or stories in which a single magical change has inexplicably happened, like water falls from nowhere when people lie.

But repeatable magic is not necessarily systemic magic.

Systematic magic is magic in which the rules are widely understood, and often are also woven into a deeper underlying scheme that explains things like the overall limits of magic, its origins and sources, and its connection to humans.

So to take my example, yes, the tooth in the well is repeatable. But it’s not a magic system unless there’s more. Is there a well in every town like this? Is there some subterranean well-dwelling society of goblins who collect human teeth and grant wishes in return? Is magic based on power stored in human bones? Are there gods in the wells who accept sacrifices from humans?²

The less I answer about the whys and wherefores, the less systematic it is. Why teeth? Because it’s creepy and painful! You want something real bad? Pull out one of your own choppers with pliers and drop it into a dark well in the middle of nowhere! That’s blood and bone and love and desperation and mystery! That’s magic!

The farther you get towards systematic magic, the less it becomes mysterious and strange and potentially hazardous. Eventually, it becomes superpowers.

Which are a fine thing in their place. I, too, would like to be able to stick to walls and lift a car and swing through the city on webs. But while it’s fun, it’s not exactly eldritch, is it? After you’ve seen Peter Parker go ‘thwip’ a few hundred times, it’s about as mysterious as turning on a tap. It’s not merely repeatable, it’s reliable and safe, dangerous only insofar as you procrastinate with your webshooter maintenance. There’s an emotional distance, that is inevitable there. If a spell feels like a crescent wrench or a gun, it’s not doing the same thing in your story as other kinds of magic.

Spider-Man, going ‘thwip.’

This is the difference between magic systems and numinous magic. One exists to give a repeatable experience, to both the characters and the readers.³

The other exists to serve the reader in other ways. It’s there as a part of the plot, sure, (wish on this monkey’s paw, you get three, see how it works!) but also to set a mood, or to emphasize themes.

Which is another way of saying that systematic magic is about a certain kind of story – usually one in which characters have a particular kind of agency, and are attempting to solve a problem. The magics of the story will be tools or obstacles for these characters, the rules makes the stakes of each obstacle clear.

Whereas the types of stories that feature non-systematic magic will be different. They may be quests, but they are less likely to be built around a classic adventure structure, and the Hero’s Journey may not be in evidence at all. The characters may lack much agency beyond trying to survive, or hold onto their loved ones. Non-systematic magic often puts the characters at a remove from magic. They may be bystanders in a world shaped by magic, they may be victims of magic, or their own magic is unpredictable and dangerous.

(There is obviously room to argue endlessly about whether a particular story features a true system or not.)⁴

Systematic magic isn’t objectively better or worse than non-systematic magic, because this is about stories, and objectivity is a mirage. But I know I prefer strange, dangerous, evocative magic, and that means if you try to sell me on a story by saying it has a really well-thought-out, internally logical magic system, you’re actually ensuring I’ll give it a miss.

Remember, as always, don’t hit those buttons. They’re fragile, and they break easily. Plus, how many more freakin’ newsletters do you need in your inbox, really?

1. My answer was something about how pastiche is a dead end for genre, which may be the subject for another post someday, if I don’t get sidetracked writing about how Moonstruck is secretly a werewolf movie.

2. Are you sure the heart will still be in your true love’s chest cavity when you get it? Did the well specify that in writing? You better get that in writing.

3. A lot of replies in the debate suggest that any magic that’s not part of a system will result in deus ex machina endings in which the heroes whip out some spell the reader has never seen to end the story. I’m sure someone’s written this, but I don’t think there’s actually a lot of examples, at least not in published fiction. Bit of a strawman argument.

4. A Wizard of Earthsea’s true names – magic system? I want your 2,000 word essays on my desk by 9 a.m. on Monday.