MAGIC in fantasy, soft magic vs hard magic: FANTASY RE-ARMED

[Music] greatings i'm shad and i want to talk a little bit about magic systems in fantasy now if you're thinking okay wizards and stuff harry potter gandalf lord of the rings everything actually that the idea the concept even just what is a magic system applies far more broadly ex spin okay each x-men is an individual wizard who can cast one or two spells among some that essentially okay star wars force they called Wizards even in stars at times okay but a magic system is basically any type of supernatural abilities something that exists in the universe and there are a lot of fun they add a interesting fantastical elements to a story they can be actual plot devices used to cause conflict for the heroes or used to resolve plot itself they can actually be the mechanisms used to ask interesting philosophical questions through storytelling okay and so this is where there's a criticism that so many people try and use to dismiss arguments like why are you taking X seriously when it's a sudden I get a property made for children with spaces that's generally what people use for say trying to deflect in this regard criticisms against Star Wars you shouldn't be taking seriously when it that's such a dumb disingenuous argument because there are some very serious concepts in Star Wars okay concepts about resisting corruption resisting in in the evil that is growing overcoming the lure of power of forgiveness and what's interesting certainly those concepts are just meant it mentioned intertwined around how the force the magical fantasy element is employed in Star Wars the dark side of the force overcoming in a you know in a temptation in a evil and stuff like that and becoming better than what you were even in the face of temptation anger rage and all that stuff these are all really cool concepts that's wrapped around a fantasy thing and then to say because it's just fantasy these aren't serious concepts is dumb and disingenuous not in actual fact we can for certain concepts easier through fantasy then we can if we were to just try and make it a alternate history story or whatever okay because the fantasy lets you do certain things I've done this with my own novel Chronicles of ever fall shadow of the contract so fantasy and magic enables you to ask really interesting kind of what-if scenarios even philosophical kind of ethical dilemmas that you wouldn't be able to do if you didn't employ this fantasy elements in the first place and so far from making a fantasy property less valid to be taken seriously it can actually enhance it and so that argument is so blasted stupid I can't stand it so fantasy is awesome it enables you to do really cool creative things now there's a potential of I guess danger with fear with fantastical um and stuff like that because they don't have hard and fast set rules in the real world there are properties about the real world that we understand just through observation like gravity okay and if you have someone in a non like when I say non fantasy will still be fiction but say an alternate history or whatever just a struggle retelling you have someone suddenly flying okay when they should have been Oh fantastic elements in this especially if you're doing a historical drama you'd be like what the heck that's not how gravity works everyone knows how gravity works and so we expect the very one to operate according to those laws in that world but when you introduce an element that doesn't have set rules their author is making up the rules it can cause very strong potential problems because it can be used disingenuously unrealistically unrealistically yes and realistically I'll get there and also in deus ex machina because you could have just the magic come in and save the heroes and from all the problems and stuff like that and so these are the potential problems dangers okay when you employ fantastical elements in stories now there are generally two camps or two ways magic is employed in stories and this is the whole point of the video I don't talk about even with some of the Tanja's but I think there were relevant tangents that I went to in the first place but I had to get that off flashes but now we're getting into the real core meat of this subject are these two camps and how they're employee because I think the definition between these two camps which is jet it's called hard magic and soft magic can be very misunderstood and I want to help define them a little bit more so they can be employed a little bit better in literature so a soft magic is generally defined as one that doesn't have rules and that's the one that I want to push back on I say no that's a bad definition I also think it's an ingrate definition a soft magic system is actually more one that is less understood by the reader in what it is capable of doing okay a hard magic system is one in which has very strict rules but actually at once you add two more important elements to these things to help define them and also would help them be employed in storytelling much more effectively and it's in the limitations of what they can do I feel a hard magic system has far more limitations in what I can do you and a soft magic system has less limitations okay it is capable of doing far more because it's just kind of magic that the rules are less defined and so some good examples of what I would say or on the side of soft magic systems would be say a Harry Potter and even Wheel of Time let me let me explain that a little bit more you see even with say The Wheel of Time magic system and these aren't spoils I'm just kind of explaining well in world well building elements of it there's no strict limitation on what the magic can do except from the things we have seen it do and what the in world characters have discovered that the magic can do it or not or how the magic can achieve it when a new spell is introduced in Harry Potter at no point do you think or they shouldn't be added do that the magic doesn't allow that in employment because it's a far more loose there I say soft magic system if the characters can do it the magic kids then establish that magic can do it a more hard magic system that's more restrictive defines quite clearly the parameters in which it operates and then if it did something outside of those parameters you'd be like it shouldn't be able to do that that's not how the magic works let's take Brandon Sanderson's miss born as an example Lumet edition hardcover very cool and this isn't a spoiler it's just an explanation of the world-building makeup of the magic system in miss pawn and it's really interesting unique it has a fuel source and so to do the magic you need to ingest specific types of metal that fuel the magic now that does open it up to certain possibilities for instance there might be undiscovered metals that could fuel other magic abilities because there's specific metal fuels a specific magical ability okay pewter for instance enhances one's physical characteristics a hard set rule and if you ingest pewter flakes and you're capable of burning it as either a misting or a full miss borne I can earn multiple medals you then get that enhancement that's the rule so then suddenly if if some have a Miss Borna misting ingests pewter and uses it to enhance say that a different probably liked our site which is what tins should be added to attendee enhances their Zenta to be like that's against the rules unless there's an in world explanation as a direct contradiction on how the magic is set to operate now there are broader things in the whole kasnia which is the joint universe brainless anderson writes most of his fantasy settings in that allow for certain I guess extensions of magics and other ways that could be employed but for the most part very strict rules all using and defined inner and if a new spell suddenly came out of nowhere that a miss porn could suddenly teleport without ingesting metals they can just teleport we know that there's not a part of alum antic magic so they would have to be getting that ability from somewhere completely external to this specific magic system I think this is a much better definition between hard magic systems and soft magic systems one that has restrictions in what it can do very clearly defined and one that actually doesn't you could introduce any new spell and so if we apply this to Wheel of Time spells in the Wheel of Time are called weaves okay they you weave certain elements together to create certain results and if it's air or fire or whatever and sometimes they can be matching everything but what happens in the real time quite regularly is new weaves are discovered okay new ways in which the true source can be channeled and used and every time we discover something new that this magic can be used for makes perfect sense because we actually aren't given many limitations in what this magic is capable of achieving there are limitations in the way that it operates in certain instances okay there are ways to incapacitate channelers there are restrictions in how much power they can draw in and the level of strength of leaves they get some some weaves fells are too strong for people who can only use so much of the power to achieve so there are like limitations that way so it makes it a little bit more hard but it's very soft in that it can basically do anything as long as it's presented in the book and so we were to just create a new even if we went to extreme that there was a weave that could destroy the world okay I'll take a crazy amount of one power that could be possible because there's nothing in the magic system itself that restricts what it can do and even if there are they're more specific and more exceptional because whenever something is introduced a new new weave is like well yeah there's no real limit to what this magic zoom is capable of achieving or what needs to be done is there characters need to discover it basically maybe even one character even discovers one on the fly where we use have an opposite and stuff like that now it would be easy to say in the narrative that a certain weave is simply impossible because at just the power can't do it but again that would be a one specific case okay there's nothing outside that then is precluding other ways that can be used unless it is stated the actual structure of this magic system is very open-ended to create any kind of weave or spell that the author wants to put into it in contrast to this miss Bourne is very different okay allomancy has very strong restrictions and defined ways it's used hard versus soft I think this is a much better definition and the other thing that I want to kind of just define and talk about is the idea that soft magic systems get to contradict themselves and I think that is a wholly a bad way of looking at a incorrect okay no matter how soft your magic system is you are going to be educating the reader to how it operates just by the way it is used and employed as soon as that magic does anything you have established a rule and the rule is this magic can do this that's it and so soft magic systems do have rules and to say that they don't and that the author can break the rules willy-nilly well that can cause huge contradictions in the plot massive plot holes because for instance Randolph in one of the rings he is showing to do certain interesting things with his magic and then never does it again and because there's no explanation given as to the reasons why he doesn't do it like it falls or one off he doesn't have the power he can't do in that instance we are left with no other conclusion that he still has the ability to do it but is just not doing it and that's a plot hole that's a problem in order the rings we see gandalf creating a protective barrier that protects him from a Balrog he is able to heat up people's weapons so hop it I have to drop them he deflects arrows out of the sky he does a lot of interesting things and he only seems to do it once okay so the magic is really inconsistent in water rings and people generally say that's because it's a soft magic system no okay it's a soft magic system because we don't know what it is capable of doing it could essentially do anything there's no real limitations in what it can do and apart from what it's presented to the audience but as soon as we are presented that it can do something they can do it Gandalf could multiplied himself into a hundred different game doubts in front of an enemy okay he's already kind of showing that he can teleport in The Hobbit movies if he shoots a fireball we never really actually see him shoot a fireball not to my memory but if he shoots a fireball if he does any kind of magic that we kind of see in a nearly any other fantasy we would just say well yeah he'd know it because I'm magic where there's not not no reason given that he wouldn't be able to do it in the magic system itself and that is the defining thing of a soft magic system in my opinion but it still has rules and you establish it very clearly when they do something with the magic that the magic can do it now there are other ways to make it far more kind of mysterious and stuff in that the characters don't know how they did it if it was a very spontaneous random thing it still established that the magic is capable of doing it but it just kind of manifests randomly and these random kind of things that's not established how magic works and all of the Rings but say in certain more fairytale properties where magic is a very mysterious chaotic entity we're only really powerful people can seem to control and other people manifest randomly and even someone who's cursed with magic can't control and other things like adages doing random things you can have them use magic and not be able to use at the end because they simply don't know how to do it but it doesn't mean the magic to do it and that's an important distinction and it is an unspoken rule that is inherently established when you portray the magic doing it okay and if you don't want their characters or the enemies or the magic system to do it again you need to explain why why could it do it in this instance and it's not being done later on because when Gandalf was fighting the lich king in you know i Return of the King any number of things that he had done in previous Lord of the Rings movies with their magic would have been really useful a protective barrier that he could make would use what he doesn't do it and it's because the Lich King has you know magic as well we're not explained which King seems to just be hitting him except he makes key and our staff explain very unexplained what's going on and if you don't explain something like this okay that's a weakness in the writing to leave things that they might be able to be explained that the Lich King was simply nullifying again else magical is only magic you protects a barrier or something like that but that's me making it up on the fly out of the movies and viewers shouldn't have to do that because the other big danger of leaving it to the viewers to do it is that generally completely contradicted in later movies because the right is actually they're not aware of all they're just ignorant of these things and they accidentally put in massive hot holes and I did this with Star Wars I have a video where I look at pot holes in Star Wars and I had just a made-up excuse as to why lightsabers didn't have cross guards okay and that the energy flow couldn't be split okay or there was so much energy that the crystal could produce that only enabled them to get away with one kind of beam and everything because cross cars would be really useful but the absent in stars but then in later movies I had a cross guard which throws all my theories out the window but it was an established rule that explained this in Canon by the actual writers that was explained by a character well then it is how much is much more heart and then still might be contradicted because sometimes riders are completely oblivious to Canon but it's far less likely that stuff like that happens okay because the other big danger about magic systems and soft magic scissors are far more leaning towards this danger is deus ex machina that you can use the magic to solve the problem because just magic and this is where Brandon Sanderson's rules for magic systems that a really good one of his first rules is your ability to resolve plot in a satisfactorily manner where the magic is directly poor tional to how well the audience understands that magic system and that is absolutely true eminent and it applies not just magic it applies to anything okay applies to technology and sci-fi settings it applies to character skills and stuff like that okay if a character is that you know the final battle and they with pull out a skill out of nowhere and that suddenly saves them like what that's a form of deus ex machina but if you previously established the character has that skill okay you then inform the audience and they're aware of it they understand that mechanic and therefore when that mechanic is used later on well that's answered a great example of say technology that is shown how it is used in the in the world and then they're very consistent to the lengths and limitations of its utility is the grappling thing that the Mandalorian has in the TV series Mandalorian it's sorry straightforward of how this grappling thing works no one needs to explain it you figure it out just by watching it and then he uses it multiple things sometimes in different ways than what you might expect even in combat that's like yes that's awesome that's cool and it's applying the exact principle that Brent sense and you know rule of magic is applying because we understand how it works okay and because we understand how it works therefore when it's used to resolve conflict it is far more satisfying and because soft magic systems generally don't have defined rules and if you go according to my specific definition that it doesn't really have limitations in what it can do apart from what it shows the characters doing it can be very dangerous because say you know Harry Potter or Wheel of Time that a hero II is in a situation where they need a spell that's never been used for and they just pull out a new spell out of there because their magic system technically allows it it comes across as a bit of deus ex machina there is a specific situation where a character does this in The Wheel of Time not gonna explain what it is because the spoil isn't happens in the very last book but she actually figures out the weave in a logical way because it's pre-established how weaves work okay and so it kind of makes sense and that's more allowed and it doesn't come off as deus ex machina as it would have you just whips out a new spell out of no way that helps saver or do something and and then it's resolved because iam soft magic systems again they can do anything so therefore you could we perhaps spells to users resolve any pop that's the danger them but the thing that people don't realize I'm gonna really try and hammer home this point is that soft magic systems do have rules and the and you establish them by the way it's shown as soon as you show us spell doing something you're saying the magic can do it so the idea that soft magic systems don't have rules is incorrect in my opinion they absolutely do have rules they just have less limitations in what they were the writer the storyteller can depict it doing anything and that's with Harry Potter you like what spell couldn't be done in Harry Potter with that magic magic is kind of limitless in that sense a part of their limitation is if the character knows how to do it or not it's certainly possible in the magic they just have an instant killed spell in Harry Potter because reasons in fact in the Wheel of Time this isn't really spoil as bad as to who I'm not gonna say who figures out but that technically is an instant kill spell in real time that that just pops up eventually as well and sorry again that's why we love time magic is actually a bit more closely related to Harry Potter magic and is a good example of what I call a soft magic system so what do you think about the definitions that I have been putting forward in in this video I do look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below thank you very much for watching and of course I hope see you again so until that time [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 488,561

Keywords: magic, fantasy, medieval, star wars, lord of the rings, the force, soft magic, hard magic, avitar the last airbender, marvel, the avengers, super powers, brandon sanderson, mistborn, roleplaying, rpg, role playing, video, game, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, alomancy, harry potter, wheel of time, the true source, the one source, weeve, wheeve, spell, lightsaber, robert jordan, laws of magic, deus ex machina

Id: eatmHzNYCCE

Length: 19min 18sec (1158 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019