hard to be a fantasy writer in a world where everybody who talks about fantasy writing seems to only want to talk about 'magic systems'
For my own fantasy story even though it’s intentionally a bit RPG-ish I feel like I have to be very careful about how I describe how the magic works. It’s just not what the story is about. I don’t really know how it works, even, I just have some guidelines to keep it internally consistent.
This but "science fiction" with FTL. Just stop it, you don't need FTL, you need to look at the papers of scientists from the 1970's about megastructures.
Realtalk if I hear the words “magic system” the only thing I take away from the conversation is “book not for me - place speaker under scrutiny”.
True, I love Frieren but I literally do not care how the magic works (roughly 30% of the dialogue), just keep giving me melancholic reminiscing and shopping adventures.
okay but that doesn't exclude the fantasy setting from having magic right
People forgot that the fun of magic is using it for fun and not just rules! Idc if fire against water is 30% less powerful or whatever, I'm much more interested in "Oh, Bob the fire mage needs to convince Alana the water mage to stop fighting, how is he gonna do it?" and the many, many answers
yea fantasy is supposed to be about like beautiful prose style and whimsical descriptions. there can be magic systems in it, but it's about making me feel in love with your world. it's about atmosphere, tone, and emotion
"Magic systems" at their worst make you feel like you're reading a manual for a car you're never going to drive.
only one of my fantasy stories had the characters talk about the rules of magic, but that one was specifically about a group of people who suddenly discovered magic exists and started doing Science to it to figure shit out everywhere else, it’s enough that I know the rules of the world
I do enjoy a good magic system, but I have to say in my own novel that I'm working on it's pretty low magic and there's not much of a defined system to it