#ISMtext

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

also i think that justifying "magic systems" by claiming that they make it easier to avoid committing a faux pas in your own story, thus avoiding breaking the suspension of disbelief, simply reveals that there's too much emphasis being placed on mechanics rather than craft, and that the "magic system" is probably disjointed from theme and character and you're spilling all kinds of ink just trying and trying to argue for the existence of this worldbuilding on its own merits, because you're not using it to support character or conflict or setting or plot and vice versa. all this concern over avoiding deus ex machina is a nonissue because that is not the result of bad worldbuilding, it is the result of bad storycraft

also nothing breaks my suspension of disbelief faster than having a character infodump the carefully outlined rulebook of this rpg i am suddenly a part of in the middle of your high fantasy novel

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

elden ring is actually genius because it's one of the more recent works of fantasy i can think of that actively criticizes the very concept of a "hard" magic system that can explain everything versus a "soft" one that's fluid and explains nothing. a very GRRM-ish idea btw

the ruling world order is the Golden Order which is overseen by the Greater Will, the emissaries of which are (parts of) hands, old and withered, hands that direct the world and try to puppet the empyreans and make things work a certain way. turtle pope says that under the Golden Order, "all things can be conjoined." take any one thing in the world of elden ring and it can fit into the Golden Order

except again and again we find that the Golden Order is misguided, the Golden Order tries to pick and choose its rules and people suffer and things fall apart as a result, the Golden Order isn't even the original order that governed this world. there are Outer Gods we can't see meddling in the land that the Golden Order lore can't explain. you can try and try to hunt and mine all the lore you can, but there will always be things that don't fit into the Golden Order, things that can't be attributed to any Outer God we know of either. you find out that the Golden Order kicked out anyone it didn't like or didn't think "fit" but that doesn't mean they don't exist or don't matter, and they wind up having their own culture and their own "orders" that have all changed over the course of history. there has always been rules to the world but they can and have changed, shaped by politics and powerful individuals and collective movements. that's what keeps the rich tapestry of elden ring's fantasy world changing and evolving, and the rigid hand of some author is an intrusion upon that complex, diverse reality. we and the characters will never know it all, and nor should we

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

i think the phrase "magic system" should go away and be forgotten forever, actually