my favorite part of worldbuilding is just falling down the what if rabbit hole hehe and this entire video feels like someone standing on the edge of that hole and telling me to jump inside ☺ I'm only casually building a magic system right now (though honestly my sci fi stories feel pretty magical to me LOL because I get to just play with physics hehe)
The magic system that you're using in Moths is so fascinating. (And I thought the comparison between witchcraft and alchemy with arithmetic and calculus was very clever and easy to understand.) I really like the parallels that you're drawing between magic and health/pharmaceuticals. That's a very refreshing take, and I think that goes very well with how magic has been traditionally viewed in our own world. You don't hear too many legends of people throwing fireballs from their palms. It's always like...someone learned how to live forever, and they can cure you of all ailments, which I guess is all anyone wants, really. Haha (Also, I peeped that Goblin reference. 👀👀👀👀 It's been on my backlog forever, and I _would_ say this would be my sign to start it, but Netflix booted my ability to use my family's premium plan a couple days ago. Le sigh...)
thank you so much! I put a lot of thought into it and I worked in (vet) med for a while so it felt relevant :) haha I actually never finished goblin but it's an iconic one!!
Amazing series, Lynn! I think an interesting distinction in the discussion of hard and soft magic is not just about whether there are 'rules,' but also the degree to which the reader is made to understand the rules. E.g. Alice and Wonderland feels like there are no rules/systems at all, because it is so dreamlike. On the other hand, Princess Mononoke, or maybe Spirited Away, gives me the impression that there are definitely predictable rules in the world, but it wasn't important for the viewer to understand them. I think there's a quote from a fantasy writer who said something like "the satisfaction the reader derives from magic being used to solve a problem is directly proportional to the degree to which the reader understands that magic system." It kinda goes back to what you said about magic sometimes being used as a convenient solution to any obstacle.
That quote is from Brandon Sanderson, the guy who coined the "magic system" dichotomy. He goes into a lot of detail in his essays (the Laws of Magic) about how hard magic is for the sake of the audience, not the characters. It's why he says Harry Potter is in the middle, as we are always told exactly what the spells the characters can use do, but new spells seem to appear every book with no rhyme or reason. So while we don't know what magic can and can't do in totality, we do know what our cast can do at any given time.
I will be coming back to this video at some point to finish it, but on the subject of magic system: yes, all these components are important, and at the same time it can be easy to forget just HOW MANY components there are. Arthur C. Clarke once said "any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic", but that's the frustration with using the word "magic" at all. You can't please everyone, which is especially true for the fantasy genre because "magic" almost always has the connotation of being a cop-out. I like how you bring up cost & profit as two sides of the magic, which can provide sense regardless of whether the system is hard or soft.
I love writing myths and folktales for my worlds, but what I also like to do is projecting those myths onto the night sky. For instance, in our own night skies we have the legend of Perseus and Andromeda, and we have the planets named after Roman gods. I have one fantasy world with two moons, which are supposed to represent two lovers forever chasing each other (and sometimes meeting). So the scope for adding depth to your world is immense!
I highly recommend that you watch Avatar the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra! You should do a reaction series from a writing perspective and provide your critiques and talk about the story structure.
This was a super wonderful and helpful video!!! One big thing I've found when thinking about religion in my story is that so much low-level profanity, at least in English, is based in religion, particularly Christianity. Stuff like 'Jesus Christ!', 'Oh my God!' and 'God damnit!' etc. So it's been fun/challenging to think of ways for characters to express frustration that doesn't invoke that.
lynn worldbuilding vid drop?? absolute gem ! loved hearing about TIGER and MOTHS and i'm totally gonna refer to this when i start thinking about magic system for my next project !! and specific examples are super helpful, thanks for sharing :)
I am having a hard time thinking of magic, myths, and faith for my book. I created a world, and want to know what each country is like, even if I don't use it in my book.
I also found it unexpected, and very helpful, that you talked about religion instead of gods. Whenever I think about worldbuilding, I think about the design of the pantheon of gods, and then I just assume that everyone in my world knows all the stories about those gods. But coming at it from a religious point of view brings up two interesting paths; 1) not everyone in the world would have the same religion (this one is actually pretty obvious), and 2) phrasing it as a religion rather than 'the gods' implies that the people may actually be wrong about the origins of their world. Really interesting stuff! I'm new to this channel, so it may have been covered many times before, but it'd be really cool if we could read some of your stuff!
Wow, the bit about pantheons vs. religion honestly hadn't occurred to me! Really great addition. I do have a couple of published short stories out, the link is in the description box a little ways down if you're interested! thank you so much for watching, and welcome to the channel :)
Thank you for this series, it really has been interesting hearing your thoughts on these elements! One thing that really stood out to me in this video was the alchemy for Moths, in part because of something I've been mulling over in my own setting; This history of a magic system's development. Because if we treat magic as more of a "science," lots of stories treat it as something that always is, that we just know how it works and that understanding doesn't really grow beyond that. But if we look towards own own history of science, from alchemical elixirs made with mercury to gene editing, the path between now and then has always been a labyrinth. Even today we're still learning new things and updating our perspectives!
