15:35	Winged_Knight	Yes, i just don't necessarily agree with it.
15:35	s951	if it's not a spell effect in the rulebooks v0v
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15:36	MoiraMobila	Well, magic in myth conformed to cultural beliefs about how magic works
15:36	I00thlurker	@ Rook the way a lot of D&D spells have a specific author in their title? LIke Bigby's Grasping Hand or whatever
15:36	I00thlurker	straight out of dying earth
15:36	I00thlurker	where great men through great labor managed to preserve some kind of function in the general decay
15:37	rookflop	Aye. I believe lots are named after Gygax' original PCs also, such as Bigby.
15:37	MoiraMobila	There is a loose underlying set of assumptions that vary from culture to culture
15:37	Winged_Knight	And while I don't want to put words in Moira's mouth ,I think she's right. Mgic in folklore still followed rules, just thematic ones relating to the culture in general.
15:37	rookflop	Most of the big players in Greyhawk are.
15:37	MoiraMobila	I wouldn't call them rules
15:37	Winged_Knight	So they were never just total nonsense.
15:37	MoiraMobila	I'd say assumptions
15:37	I00thlurker	There are certain rules but magic is fundamentally indistinguishable from prayer
15:37	I00thlurker	rather
15:37	I00thlurker	magic is religion
15:37	MoiraMobila	Well no actually I00thlurker
15:38	Winged_Knight	We've systemized the hell out of religion.
15:38	MoiraMobila	Yes a it more
15:38	MoiraMobila	At the correction
15:38	EricD	I'm not saying magic shouldn't have rules or be consistent in your story
15:38	EricD	It's just
15:38	I00thlurker	Magic was an invocation for help
15:38	EricD	Does everyone really have to shove that system in our face?
15:38	MoiraMobila	Not always actually I00thlurker
15:38	I00thlurker	from a third party
15:38	MoiraMobila	Many cultures had innate magic
15:38	EricD	And make it as rational and... Physics-like as possible?
15:38	I00thlurker	You know Sappho's love poetry, Winged Knight?
15:38	EricD	Can't we have magic with some wildness and mystery to it?
15:39	s951	EricD: You can just choose to skip the long ass infodumps
15:39	I00thlurker	they are /magic spells/
15:39	ES_Corp	I00thlurker: Yeah, I've come out with a strong preference for "negotiation" magic - where you find something that can do what you want and basically bribe or coax it into doing what you want
15:39	Shinaobi	s951: but not all fantasy fiction is written by Robert Jordan
15:39	Shinaobi	despite his efforts to the contrary
15:39	Shinaobi	so you can't always afford to just skip boring-looking passages
15:39	MoiraMobila	I think there's a specific set of cultural assumptions you're making I00thlurker
15:39	EricD	s951: But if I skip the scenes where they technobabble their problems with magic
15:39	EricD	I'll skip most of the plot in a lot of these books
15:39	MoiraMobila	You're not wrong but I wouldn't say you're right
15:40	rookflop	I find that people with a very specific set of assumptions about 'what is magic' just fundamentally have a very narrow frame of reference to draw from which informs what they understand.
15:40	I00thlurker	I don't think I am.
15:40	s951	EricD: precisely! :v
15:40	rookflop	Make them read a bunch of different things and who knew, their world opens up!
15:40	TenfoldShields	As a sorta side note I really do like the system that's used in Traitor Son, it's basically hermeticism and shit and has a pretty strong academic bent and military application. It's structured but also fairly idiosyncratic and relies a lot on connections
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15:40	rookflop	I'm actually reminded of my great-uncle's book that covers this topic to an extent in uncanny relevance to my area of interests.
15:40	EricD	One of the things I really like about David Keck's Durand Col books, which I think only I and s951 have read here
15:41	TenfoldShields	as above so below, as below so above, like to like being big things
15:41	EricD	Is that their magic does have a sense of wildness and mystery and danger about it
15:41	s951	i'm going to be uncharitable and say that in modern fantasy, a lot of it comes down to them being mostly widely read only in contemporary fantasy
15:41	I00thlurker	it's a fairly modern idea that humans are consciously powerful and have agency over their world without divine or powerful investiture
15:41	I00thlurker	yeah s951
15:41	s951	which is mostly shannara/d&d inspired
15:41	I00thlurker	that's pretty much it
15:41	I00thlurker	when your cultural lexicon of the fantastic is basically D&D
15:41	rookflop	My big problem with so much of modern fantasy writing is
15:41	rookflop	"we played D&D"
15:41	rookflop	or failing that it's
15:41	EricD	" Kvothe is not "omnicompetent". He struggles with several school subjects, he has a serious problem with leaping before looking, he loses at tak to Bredon, he gets his ass kicked by a little girl in Ademre. He lets one of the Chandrian get away at the bandit camp. "
15:41	rookflop	"we read Robert Jordan"
15:41	EricD	Oh no guys
15:41	I00thlurker	unfortunately what you write will be overshadowed by it
15:42	EricD	Kvothe struggles at school subjects!
15:42	s951	rookflop: I read a couple of books recently that were based off tabletop game campaigns
15:42	EricD	While being the youngest magician ever admitted to Hogwarts
15:42	Shinaobi	I resent Robert Jordan so much
15:42	s951	and you can sort of tell
15:42	Shinaobi	and you know the worst part
15:42	s951	because they usually forget to make their characters interesting
15:42	Shinaobi	the weave
15:42	Shinaobi	his magic
15:42	Shinaobi	it's fucking brilliant
15:42	s951	to anyone who hasn't had them percolating in their head
15:42	Shinaobi	it's beautiful
15:42	EricD	While being a magician admitted to Hogwarts /with a fucking grant/ that he argued himself into
15:42	s951	for years and years
15:42	Shinaobi	it's goddamn beautiful
15:42	EricD	Instead of having to pay tuition like everyone else
15:42	I00thlurker	powerful investiture? cosmologically significant investiture
15:42	Shinaobi	the saidin and saidar divide is a fantastic supporting element
15:42	I00thlurker	like being the patriarch of a household
15:42	s951	I see EricD has also been reading that Something Awful let's read of The Name of the Wind
15:42	Shinaobi	to his really weird gender thematics
15:42	s951	:v
15:43	Shinaobi	it's fuckin great
15:43	Shinaobi	and I hate it
15:43	Havocfett	Hmm
15:43	Shinaobi	because it's in the goddamn wheel of time
15:43	I00thlurker	@ s951 it's what prompted similar discussions for the past few weeks
15:43	Shinaobi	and jordan's dead
15:43	Shinaobi	so he can't make it better
15:43	Shinaobi	he can't do more with it, he can't like
15:43	Shinaobi	bake it into the proverbial zeitgeist
15:43	TenfoldShields	oh man wheel of time
15:43	I00thlurker	and yet it lives on in grotesque mockeries
15:43	TenfoldShields	Fuck me.
15:43	I00thlurker	leering at you from the pages
15:43	rookflop	I've never really been that comfortable with WoT's gendered magic stuff
15:43	rookflop	>_>
15:43	Havocfett	I'm thinking of Vedic Myth for a counterpoint, where it's /mostly/ praying to the gods for help but tends towards the reliable there and there's a degree of "I'm just X good at doing stuff"
15:44	s951	what is dead can never die
15:44	I00thlurker	of lesser novels eh Shinaobi ?
15:44	TenfoldShields	That's a blast from the sorta-past
15:44	|Minow|	so this afternoon, for some variety, i went back and re-read some of the bits of The Wise Man's Fear where Kvothe trains with the Adem
15:44	s951	but gets recycled into nth order derivative fantasy
15:44	s951	more and more often
15:44	MoiraMobila	But anyway I'm on my phone and I would say that various cultures had underlying assumptions that shaped how myth worked I00thlurker and they don't all work the same
15:44	|Minow|	you should reeeeeeally read that stuff EricD
15:44	MoiraMobila	But it's an assumption not a rule
15:44	EricD	I don't think I should
15:44	Havocfett	But that also doesn't remotely resemble modern takes.
15:44	I00thlurker	I would say it's the one universal before christian rationalization moira
15:44	Shinaobi	truth told I'm not well read enough to say that it's being recycled or that it isn't I00thlurker
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15:44	TenfoldShields	14:44	Havocfett	But that also doesn't remotely resemble modern takes. <- Astras are usually god-given aren't they?
15:44	MoiraMobila	Not necessarily no I00thlurker
15:44	Shinaobi	I got used to reading on a budget of "no and I don't want to risk getting a C&D or a lawsuit"
15:44	I00thlurker	it's the real commonality of pagan and early christian belief
15:44	MoiraMobila	Like
15:45	I00thlurker	and I mean everywhere
15:45	Shinaobi	but I don't see it and nothing I've heard of fantasy literature
15:45	Havocfett	 12:45	TenfoldShields	14:44	Havocfett	But that also doesn't remotely resemble modern takes. <- Astras are usually god-given aren't they?  <- yeah, but you have non-Astra based stuff
15:45	Shinaobi	suggests to me that it's shown up elsewhere
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15:45	Havocfett	Like, half the time Indra gives out an Astra it's after he's jobbed to someone with nominally no magic
15:45	Havocfett	I think?
15:45	EricD	Jivjov thinks that Kvothe isn't omnicompetent?
15:45	TenfoldShields	Ah right right.
15:45	I00thlurker	there are Exceptional feats but those aren't Magic
15:45	Havocfett	Or at least there are a few really big examples of it
15:45	Shinaobi	it's possible that sanderson might have tried reapplying it somewhere but I ain't tryna dig through his fucking
15:45	EricD	When Kvothe's defining character trait is that he is Exceptional
15:45	Shinaobi	sea of output
15:45	Shinaobi	to see whether he did it well or not
15:45	MoiraMobila	Like at random here, ymirs well I00thlurker
15:46	EricD	Well we nickname him Blanderson Shinaobi, so...
15:46	MoiraMobila	Derives it's power in part from where it is
15:46	I00thlurker	I should be clear that everything to our ears supernatural is not necessarily so
15:46	Shinaobi	and that too EricD
15:46	I00thlurker	and certainly not magic
15:46	Shinaobi	writing on the wall suggests that it's not there to find anyway
15:46	s951	I can't actually think of a direct analogue for WoT's magic system Shinaobi
15:46	s951	and I turbonerd read bad fantasy and occasionally even good fantasy and history
15:46	s951	|Minow| will present you with my references
15:46	Havocfett	 12:46	I00thlurker	I should be clear that everything to our ears supernatural is not necessarily so <- Yeah, the big thing is that outside of the Astras and god-given stuff it's often not considered magic