#magical horror

[rainbowchewynuggets]

Story Nugget - Easy Magic

So, magic's really cool right? It gives you the power to change reality to accomplish the impossible. And it makes sense that such a power would have a cost.

I like the horror side of that. There's something cosmically unsettling about being able to manipulate the fabric of the world you live in. It's like introducing a cheat in a videogame that messes up the code of everything else because it doesn't know how to react.

Imagine a magic system that does this. Maybe it's used with good intensions. There's some kind of problem going on that would be a lot of work to make better and/or would cost something the wielder deems too important to lose. But the motive is also a little cowardly. It's a quick fix to get around a consequence or sacrifice.

Then, when the surreal consequences start to come out, it creates other problems. A mind changed by magic begins to lose its free associations. It only keeps what its new logic will allow until there is only that one thought left inside it. An object disguised to serve a different purpose can't do either job properly again, mangling the stability of whatever or whoever it is used with. The area where the action was performed looks... wrong--and becomes more wrong. An alien tangle daring that it be remedied in order to spread its shape.

Ideally, this all would scare a person away from ever using this power again. Less ideally, the guilt and shame might motivate them to "fix" their "fix", thinking they just did it wrong. Or they simply move on, having sworn to never use the power again.

There is no end to problems, of course, so there's plenty of temptation to cheat. It forms a hole in the wielder that they come to reason must be the power itself manipulating them (rather than, say, a loneliness and entitlement that drove them toward the power in the first place). As much as they try to resist, they use this power again and again with greater and greater impact.

Word of this bizarre phenomenon travels far and wide. People fill in their own explanations for what's happening because there must be a logic to it. A way to control it. A line that connects the conflicts they'd rather not face to the chaos eroding their world. Because the anatomy of the threat defies logic entirely and unravels those patient and curious enough to investigate.

What everyone ends up looking for is a perpetrator.

The wielder, themself, hasn't been able to show their face for years. They usually move quietly between small isolated towns, looming in the back of public spaces, careful not to touch too many things. They can't speak. They can barely see. They watch the vague shapes of passersby and pull the fabric of their cloak tighter over their garbled abstract body that grows harder to hide with each act of heroism.

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INDEX

[grickle14]

A powerful potion.

[ruporas]

dragon meat, you, and me

[whereserpentswalk]

Reblog to curse your followers and mutuals.

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price and Boris Karloff wizard duel to the death

The Raven (1963) dir. Roger Corman

[noknowshame]

always a fun time when real life people are doomed by their own narratives. like guys you know it doesn’t have to be like this right? this isn’t a stageplay the foreshadowing isn’t real until you make it real

[b0lyachka]

I watched too many ✨mlp virus au✨ tiktoks this week

[cracklewink]

I finally got time to draw my take on the mlp infection trend! I call it the Harmony Syndrome AU. Mane 6 whereabouts coming soon!!

[voxbelicosa]

Valgavoth - sketchbook

[psuedofolio]

VoID gIrL SuMMeR

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

Happy spooky season everyone! It's been a year since I've made my eldritch horror magical girls, it was time to make more!

[j0celynh0rr0r]

Trying to get away?

[egophiliac]

just thinking about hair and faces

[grickle14]

Chance encounters.

[marisashorror]

Screen

(2022)