Modern Fantasy usually avoids becoming sci-fi by having its fantastical elements tempered by rarity and accessibility; e.g., the existence of wizards in THE DRESDEN FILES doesn't matter because such things are niche and too divorced from normality to change things macroscopically
-
Show this thread
-
Replying to @Nymphomachy
fantasy also generally has very strong anthropocentric aspects to its magic--doing things that would alter the human condition is invariably somehow Beyond The Pale and requires Great Sacrifice and Difficulty
1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes -
Replying to @perdricof @Nymphomachy
hence it being normal and easy in The Magicians to jaunt around the multiverse, but impossibly difficult to (say) cure cancer, or perform cosmetic surgery on yourself, because Sickness and Being Plain are just things the human must learn to live with
1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes -
Replying to @perdricof @Nymphomachy
Stuff like Mage the Ascension gets explicit about the meta nature of this - whenever you try to do something in the normal world you're fighting "the consensus" of what is and isn't possible here, and the rules literally change if you just abandon Earth for Doissetep
1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
like i can give considered genre analyses of this trope but there's also a part of me that's always just screaming BULLSHIT!
1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes -
like seriously even if you want an anthropocentric universe, building conservativism into the fabric of reality is just lazy, caveman science fiction at its worst
3 replies 1 retweet 6 likes -
currently in the middle of CONTROL, which i'm loving, where the universe is affected by human minds and culture--but weirdly, in ways we can't predict or understand like a meaning you're always just in the edge of grasping
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
rather than human culture simply setting the parameters of reality with no other inputs in that function, which is just uninteresting the author's biases reflected back without addition
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @perdricof @Nymphomachy
I would say that just saying the setting of Mage: the Ascension is "human culture decides what's true with no external inputs" is deeply unfair That doesn't actually make any sense -- then normal mundane scientists would never be able to disprove theories, etc.
3 replies 0 retweets 4 likes -
The metaplot of Mage is very much that the Consensus *is* being pushed and prodded and pulled by subtle forces ordinary Mages don't really understand, and the whole journey of Ascension is to try to figure it out
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
It's the whole thing in Time of Judgment with Days of Fire angrily warning the Mages that they're just tenants busting up the furniture as though the original architect and landlord is never coming back But he is, and he's mad (and Hunters are just the foam on the tide)
-
-
Like this is actually a big thing in Mage, the universe "wants" death to exist, and is becoming "stricter" about it as time passes The Dark Ages stuff for Mage with the backstory of the Tremere -- making youth potions used to be relatively easy, it's getting harder and harder
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes -
And it's obviously not because regular mortals *want* to die Nobody wants to die, and yet something deep inside of us, this cosmic force, keeps whispering this awful idea that it's inevitable, that we *must* die, that we *will* die (The Wyrm from Werewolf, Oblivion from Wraith)
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.