John

Comment Threads

• mistafeesh commented on Magic systems and my world building process
  This distinction between medicine and quigong is a very interesting one. I like your thinking on that. As someone with a long-term health problem (CFS) I've had to think about this stuff a lot to try and work out a strategy for as much self-repair as possible, both on a hardware and software level, to continue your analogy. Stories where magic is hard graft work at hacking reality always ring truer in some way, maybe because they have analogies in the real world, whereas it always bores me when magicians get power from some sort of unobtainium type plot device....
• Fletcher Christian commented on Magic systems and my world building process
  I may attract flames here, but I would like to mention another, modern myth; that of the Angel of Retribution known as the Basilisk in the Revelations of Roko. :)...
• Dirk Bruere commented on Magic systems and my world building process
  More, the Basilisk is doing well in current mythology and is hitching a ride on Black Sun / Saturnian occultism....
• RDSouth commented on Magic systems and my world building process
  That's what fantasy IS. It's about the comfort of a static world that has always been and always will be. Even the events of the story only serve to reinforce the joy of stasis. See? Great events happen, endless turmoil and strife, but the stability of the world remains. There may be a new emperor (preordained because he was the secret son of the true emperor), but magic still works the same way, and never land will always be there so much better because it is finite, happily ever after. Science fiction is the opposite, it is about a dynamic,...
• Matt commented on Magic systems and my world building process
  That's what fantasy IS. It's about the comfort of a static world that has always been and always will be. Even the events of the story only serve to reinforce the joy of stasis. See? Great events happen, endless turmoil and strife, but the stability of the world remains. There may be a new emperor (preordained because he was the secret son of the true emperor), but magic still works the same way, and never land will always be there so much better because it is finite, happily ever after. I think that's an overly narrow definition of fantasy. It's...