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[milkisgross]

[Edward's been seeing all of these different posts come up. It's obnoxious to him, but he can see the potential of being able to communicate with so many like this, so he decided to give it a try.]

It's come to my attention that there's a few people here who use "magic." From what I've seen, there's nothing like it where I come from and I have a few questions for anyone who's willing to answer.

In science, you've got different laws that everything follows. Is that the same for magic? Does some magic have laws while others don't?

Are there different fields of magic? What are they?

Where does the energy or power come from?

What makes it "magic" and not a field of science?

Comments

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[badluckblues]

Complicated question, kid. Seems to me it's different on every world, but where I come from magic isn't a thing just anyone can use. Fact is most of my people don't even believe in it anymore.

What we have are abilities that we call semblances. They aren't magic, they're just a more physical manipulation of your spiritual energy. Some families have hereditary semblances, but for most people it's a unique thing that sort of reflects something inherent about them or their personality. Case in point, my tough niece can store up the kinetic energy of the hits she takes and deal the damage back twofold, while my cute niece can move so fast she bursts into rose petals.

Magic users, on the other hand, don't need to rely on just their own energy. It's like they can tap into a force beyond themselves and draw on that to do all sorts of fancy tricks. They aren't really constrained to the physical world, at least not as we know it. Get it?

[milkisgross]

I think so. So, people where you're from can tap into their spirits for energy.

[He's repeating it just to make sure he's thinking about it correctly.]

I'm guess that people who can use magic are rare in your world then? Do you think they were more common in the past?

[badluckblues]

Yeah, it's called Aura. Anyone can do it with some training. In fact, I used to teach kids how to use it all the time.

Word is that everyone could use magic back in the day. Then shit happened and some psycho immortal woman amassed an army to rise up against the Gods to get her man back from the dead. As you can imagine, that pissed the Gods off enough to slam the reset button on humanity. And then they gathered up their toys (i.e. magic) and left.

[ And Weiss tried to say that was a long story. Well, it definitely is a long story if you are trying to explain in enough detail to fill in someone who will be fighting their war, but... that's not the case here. So Ed gets the Cliff's Notes version from Qrow. ]

So now the only magic on Remnant is just a holdover from that old world, and there's not many people around who can use it. There's more to it, obviously, but that's details.

Point is, magic is just a fairy tale to most and I was just as surprised as you to see how many people can use it here.

[milkisgross]

It looks like trying to resurrect the dead has pretty bad consequences no matter what world you're from.

I've got a couple questions about your story there. Did these gods live among people? And the wiped out all of humanity based on what one woman did? I know you mentioned an army, but there had to be some people who didn't go along with her.

[badluckblues]

So it would seem.

I don't know if the Gods lived among people necessarily, but the people could call on them. And yep, all of humanity. Poof, gone. Everyone except her. That was her punishment.

[milkisgross]

That punishment seems pretty backwards to me. I don't like the idea of Gods killing innocent people to punish someone else. Besides, wouldn't it make more sense to take away her immortality and let her die or kill her?

[badluckblues]

They wanted her to suffer. Watching everyone you know die and then wandering the world alone for thousands of years is brutally on the nose for suffering, if you ask me.

[milkisgross]

Yeah, I get that, but why did everyone else have to be punished too?

[badluckblues]

If you take out an ant colony because the ants are getting into your house, do you worry much about the moral compass of each individual ant?

[milkisgross]

There's a problem with your analogy here.

Ants aren't humans.

[badluckblues]

Look, I didn't wipe out humanity, I'm just saying. They're Gods, what do they care?

[milkisgross]

If humans caused them so much trouble, maybe they should.

[badluckblues]

They're gone now, so that takes care of that problem.

[milkisgross]

I guess so.

[Ed knows he was probably just playing Devil's Advocate here, but the argument was way too similar to the one he had with the guy who's trying to fuck with his country.]