“This one lost me a bit because I don’t really like magic in fantasy stories.
It’s one of the things that usually keeps me away from fantasy as a genre.
One problem with magic is that it’s usually a bit vague, so it’s pretty easy to have it work when you need to and fail when you need to. I mean, the whole thing where Green Lantern’s ring didn’t work against yellow objects was pretty stupid, but at least it was fairly consistent and lent itself to the creation of the bad guy: Urinnatoor! Yes, I made him up. ALL comic book characters are made up, so Urinnatoor is no different, you snob.
The second problem is that there’s usually a little too much explanation of how magic works, and that shit is boring. Because it’s all just made-up anyway, so while a lot of fantasy writers think a thorough explanation helps, it actually makes things much worse. A vague theoretical like, “The force is a thing that you can harness and do stuff with” is way better than “You’ve got these weird thingies in your cells, the count of which determines how good you are at force stuff.” Because the more explanation exists, the less perfect it is. Okay, if you can count and detect these midichlorians, why can’t you transfer them to someone else? Can you extract them? Why do people consider the Jedi a wacky religious sect if what they’re saying is objectively provable?
The third problem is that I don’t really care for “systems” of magic or what have you. I’m just not a systems guy. I don’t like RPGs with complicated systems to manage, I don’t like systems used in the workplace that usually just mean I have another spreadsheet to fill out for no one to look at, and I usually find systems of magic in fantasy to just be another thing to keep track of in an informational way, but not in an emotional way or way that really affects the story or characters.
All that said, Berserk still slaps.”