So apparently we're going to LVFC this weekend.
Shit, I dunno man, I'm just a foxcatbatmewdraggyloaf thing. ¯\(ツ)/¯I don't plan things. I just sit here drawing until someone tells me where to go.
It isn't a huge trip though. We'll be gone all weekend but I should still be able to get a comic done this week. And also next week. So I'ma plan to get comics done, but it DOES put quite a damper on time I'd normally set aside for bonus art things, pushing back the Cera x Nuben art and others.
Anyway, if any of y'all are going to LVFC, maybe I'll see you there!
Comic This week: God Slayers - Page 247
Also hey I guess April 1st is this week too. I'm not gonna do a prank or anything. As I've said on previous years the best April jokes are ones that are well thought out and have a ton of effort put into them, and I simply don't have anything prepared.
Previews this week are varied and numerous. I'm at a point right now where I know what comes next in Kiva's tale, but I can take the story in a few different directions to wrap up Chapter 14 and check in on a few other characters before starting Chapter 15 properly. I'm not entirely sure which direction to take it in next, so I'm sorta roughing out a few different pages at once. "Pantsing" at its finest, I suppose. >.>
In any case, of these previews, which one do you think I'm most excited about doing next? No, it's certainly NOT Kiva being eaten by Xane. Why would you say that. That isn't even canon. Shame on you.
Ramble:
I wanna ramble on a little about the science of writing magic systems and the suspension of disbelief. Hopefully nothing I talk about here ends up challenging YOUR suspension of disbelief. Even though we all know that fiction is all fake, sometimes just acknowledging that can spoil the fun. Anyway, that's the fair warning, feel free to skip this if you want cuz I'm about to talk shop. Writing shop!
I keep thinking about magic systems lately after having a bit of a kerfuffle last week with a friend. The rub came from me trying to explain how there's no true "magic" in my fictional universe, which is something I've stated many times, and then trying to explain some of the finer points of my broader universe creation mythos to same friend in the following breath. But I think by declaring up front my universe has no "magic" and then trying to explain some of my fictional magic systems, I created a scenario where my friend seemed unwilling to suspend their disbelief, and it became increasingly frustrating to speak to them about the topic. My friend is a scientist, so... systematic and analytical disassembly is kind of their forte, and my frustration came largely from them asking very poignant questions and me having no good answers to them because, turns out: It's all just fucking magic.
So my friend may have simply been trying to get me to admit what I assumed we both understood was self-evident: It's magic because it's fiction. Fiction is magic. If you plot a graph with Reality at the origin and soft wizard magic on the positive X axis, everything that is mathematically greater than Reality by any degree is "magic" because none of it is Reality. When I speak about my universe I'm usually doing it from an in-universe perspective, as a character standing in that world, because I live there in my mind 24/7. From that perspective, there really is no magic, but when we step outside of that universe and back into reality, it's all magic.
So, taking a step back, what am I really trying to say when I declare that there's no "magic" in my universe? Well, I think all I really mean by that is that my characters can only accomplish their version of "magic" through the use of a technology, which, in my mind, imposes more innate limitations on what is available to them than, say, the "a wizard did it" meme. 🎷In my universe, basically all the problems posed by physics have been solved at one time or another. Though much of that technology IS lost, and much of it is irrecoverable, the potential for rediscovery makes it more plausible to encounter a high tech device that is capable of what you or I might know as "magic" in this universe when compared with a different universe that has yet to even invent such a thing. The Ancestors have destroyed matter, they've built dyson spheres, they've breached timelines and they've colonized the stars. They accomplished all that is or will ever be possible and they did it all long after humanity went extinct trying to leave their sad little rock. Ergo, in my fictional universe, there's not very many limitations on what technology can do, because the Ancestors (and I use the term loosely) have, at one point or another, already cleared away those obstacles and solved those problems, leaving their very capable technology scattered all over the place. However, just because we don't understand it, doesn't mean that it's really "magic." I don't understand the stupid technology rectangle in my pocket or how it does the multitudinous dumb things it does literally all of the time, but it's still a very real device that we've built in reality. It's not magic. So when I say that there's no magic in my universe, all I'm really saying is that all of my fictional universe's "magic" was first made by someone or something. No matter what it is or what it does, someone/thing, at some point, understood exactly how it works to the extent at which they were able to build it. And that suggests very important practical and economical limitations on what can be done with a technology-based "magic."
In a true magic system, a wizard can wave their hands and say some words and accomplish whatever they can imagine. Depending on the universe, they are usually limited in some ways, but there doesn't always need to be a huge difference for them between conjuring a cup of tea, moving mountains or oceans, or transforming hordes of invading goblins into kittens. In many cases the wizard doesn't even need to fully understand their own power. They just wave their arms around and the thing happens, and we suspend our disbelief because they're a Wizard and it's generally pretty well accepted that a Wizard can do the thing the author says the Wizard is doing. Their power probably comes from somewhere, but it's ancient and mysterious and unknowable and shush don't talk about it. When you replace that wizard with a technology, in my mind it imposes an internal logic that limits what is possible because it must now be accomplished by a machine instead of some mythical metaphysical force. Machines are usually incapable of independent thought, they have no creativity or imagination, they lack adaptation or flexibility. Machines are usually built only to solve a narrow band of problems, and often in the interest of self, sale and/or profit. Some may have multiple functions, but they still cannot easily solve any problem they weren't built for, and an inventor won't (generally) bother inventing a machine that performs a function that is outright wasteful or useless. Machines are limited by an internal logic that performs its function when it is activated, and even if they are capable of decision-making, those decisions are, as well, dictated by their internal logic. An Ancestor supercomputer could have all the answers in the universe, but it has no arms and legs and cannot leave the facility in which it was built. An Ancestor gun could potentially be the best thing in the universe at slaying one's foes, but that's literally all it is good for. An Ancestor espresso machine might be able to brew the perfect latte 100% of the time, and it may also be able to brew any other coffee drink in any configuration a user can ask for, but it's never going to be able to wave its arms and summon a field of flowers for you. One thing all these machines have in common is that they are very limited in what they can do, and they usually require power and materials to accomplish the one thing they do. Also, they can all break, compromising their one function. Technology is incredibly restrictive when compared to all the myriad things one creative wizard with a Prestidigitation spell can do.
But on a scale of magic systems from Reality to Soft Magic, where does my universe even fall? When I think about it seriously? NGL, it's probably pretty soft. But let's take a look and dig into it. This scale is based on how much a reader needs to suspend their disbelief.
0 - Reality - This is what is indisputably real, via an earthbound human perspective, and while we haven't solved most of the mysteries of our reality yet, (and while some factions seem hell-bent on denying said reality,) everything that is real and confirmed and tested and confirmed again falls into this category. This is science before the fiction.Large values of 0 - Everything beyond this point is "magic." And I do mean everything. Some amount of disbelief is required for everything past this point. Beginning with 0.00 -infinity zeros- 01. Because like, fiction.1 - Hard Sci-Fi - This is a category for science fiction that's based on reality or real science. I think many of Michael Crichton's novels belong in this category, where his science fiction is often based on real life technological pursuits, sometimes imagining them out to a logical extreme as a classic cautionary science fiction tale. There's a lot of actual science that backs the claims made by the author, and while the stories still fall into the realm of fiction, they seem pretty plausible in the relatively near future even under intense scrutiny because the author did a fuckton of research before writing their story.2 - Semi-hard Sci-Fi - This is where I consider something like Star Trek to fall. They don't claim to be science, but they also don't claim to be magic. They claim to be the fictional future. Everything they do is a technology, but they've got magical things like warp speed and teleportation and phasers and holodecks. It's technology that's advanced beyond our wildest imaginations, but it's also technology that can INSPIRE real world researchers in actual pursuits. And that's really neat. But in terms of disbelief suspending, already we don't generally question what is plausible to be accomplished by technology in the Star Trek universe because it all seems like something that could be possible given N number of centuries from where we are now + maybe contact with more advanced alien species that know way more than we do.3 - Soft Sci Fi/Hard Magic - This category begins to blur the line between science fiction technology and fantasy magic. I consider something like Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series to end up in this category. It's technically more magic than sci-fi, taking place in another universe, with rules that are impossible outside the boundaries of the universe in which it exists. It contains magic presented in such a way that it's basically more of a science than an art. It has hard, clearly defined rules for how it functions, though the detailed specifics of how one, say, digests metal to gain temporary magical powers requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. The author does an incredible job of explaining how their magic works, but it still requires us to believe their universe has these forms of magic. It's not something we can just say "well, maybe one day we'll invent something like that." Like, no. No we won't.4 - Semi-hard Magic - I think this is roughly where I would put a lot of low-magic fantasy stories, and where I would probably place my own universe. It's soft-ish magic but with a lot of restrictions on what it can do or how it is used. Those restrictions do a lot of heavy lifting to support theoretical plausibility. There's an observable cause and an observable effect, but everything that happens in-between is just sort of... eh don't think about it too hard. I'd put my own universe here even though my various "magic" systems are declared to be technology-based. I don't claim them to be a magic or say that they're powered by metaphysical forces and otherworldly dimensional beings or wizards, but because the technology in my universe is also so advanced and so refined that it brushes up against (and sometimes pushes past) the very boundaries of what is physically possible in that in-universe reality, it isn't really something that screams "near future" or something we will probably EVER achieve, either. Also because none of my characters can really explain or understand how it works, it might as well be magic. I try to keep as much as I can grounded in that nebulous realm of "semi-plausibility," but writing about a world with cute and fluffy characters discovering physics-breaking technology in the ruins of a megatropolis asks for a lot of suspension of disbelief.5 - Soft Magic - I'm torn between whether Star Wars belongs in category 5 or 4, largely because the series has become inconsistent in recency as it gets juggled around between different authors. In the original trilogy though, we are asked to accept the idea of wizards in space because it's a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, basically another universe entirely. The powers of said space wizards, still vaguely defined, are definitely a soft magic system in a world of semi-hard sci fi. The power of the Jedi is ill defined because it doesn't NEED to be defined. I would definitely place D&D in category 5 as well. It asks its fans to believe in a multiverse with fae, devils, demons and celestials, teeming with actual gods and magic of all sorts that's capable of basically anything (ala Wish). The suspension of disbelief comes from the idea that it takes place in another universe entirely, one completely disconnected from ours, where nearly anything is possible. It has a form of internal logic, but no one really agrees on what that is, and also the pantheon of almighty gods are fickle and needy and liable to switch things up whenever they want.6 - A Wizard Did It!🎷- No really, the author said the wizard could just do that, and we don't need to think any harder on it than that because as soon as you do the story falls apart. This doesn't automatically make it a bad story, but it means the author is asking their audience to just go with it. That can be totally fine in the right context. Lovecraft might actually fall into this category, asking his audience to believe that there's an entire legion of ancient and unnamable and unknowable horrors lurking at the edges of our consciousness at all times for the clear purpose of telling stories that are simply meant to inspire fear. Although the Wizard Did It 🎷meme features Gandalf, ((EDIT: Nevermind, pretty sure Simpsons did it first, in reference to Xena. I made an assumption and it was wrong! Oh well, it happens.)) I'm actually not going to say that Tolkien really belongs in this category. I think he put way more thought into his magic system than many people realize, and when everything is taken together LoTR probably belongs somewhere down in 3 or 4. But... I think this category and the many successful tales told at this level stresses the overall importance of one's willingness to suspend their disbelief in order to enjoy being told a story.
So what the fuck am I even on about? I don't know. Well, I think I've simply decided that every story breaks under intense enough scrutiny, and that every fictional story has at least a little bit of magic in it. Hell, even non-fictional stories probably have magic in forms of emphasis and embellishment and in the interest of just making them more entertaining. Stories are just magic. And magic is also the glue that holds stories together. Magic is when the author gives you permission to fill in the gaps with your own imagination. Magic accounts for all the absurd levels of worldbuilding detail and all the boring nitpicky stuff that an author doesn't want to waste your time explaining because all they really want to do is tell their story. And whether you believe in magic or not, magic is fun!