I don’t know if they grill actual macaroni’s or if it’s just a figure of…something…What I do know is that dinner was delicious. And now I’m watching The Illusionist, which is fantastic, and pondering sleep, which I’m also quite fond of.
I’ve been trying to flesh out a workable and interesting fantastic world, and to that end I was talking to Kim after dinner. I didn’t give her any context, so this conversation was just her answering my weird questions:
Me: What is the cost of magic?
Kim: What?
Me: The cost, to do magic. What does it cost?
Kim: A lot.
Me: Ok…but what?
Kim: Your soul.
Me: Well, that’s a lot.
Kim: yeah.
Me: What if it’s a selfless act? Does it still cost your soul?
Kim: well, no. If it’s selfless, it’s free.
Me: But there’s really no such thing as a truly selfless act, is there?
Kim: I guess not.
This raises an interesting dilemma. If the cost of magic is variable based on intent, some sort of consciousness is implied on the part of magic. Some kind of ability to discern the heart and mind of its practitioner, and then a framework with which it makes value judgments after that discernment has been made. This flies in the face of magic being a set of Laws, like the laws of physics. Relatively inert, and with no will or agenda of its own.
What then? Is it inert and without aim, or imbued with the apparatus to judge, decide, and penalize based on intent? I guess it could be developed interestingly either way.
So the question is, what is the cost of magic?
Intention is dead, dude. Didn’t you get the notice?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_fallacy
Har har.
I think you basically need to choose the type of world you want to write about–in my mind, this question of magic brings about two distinct possibilities. Either the world is sacred or it’s secular. If you want to have some sort of moral element to yr magic, you gotta go the route of Lewis, Tolkien, Dickens, Rowling, Kipling–they create universes where actions beget moral repercussions, even if they don’t seem to at first. This is not to say that everyone always gets what they deserve, but in general there are demarcations between good and evil, and actions fall into one of those categories.
Conversely, your universe could be based on the idea that morality is irrelevant to actions and their subsequent consequences. This doesn’t necessarily mean that characters can’t act in moral ways, just that the framework of the universe isn’t based on good / evil distinctions. Examples of this can be seen in all those goddamn D & D novels, or Conan, or Vonnegut, or Dick, or Alan Moore’s stuff. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t redemptive or morally whatever, just that the world they exist in is ambiguous toward good and evil.
There are probably shades of gray in there that I haven’t bothered to find. Maybe this is useful?