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been another long while, but today's subject is on how magic plays with the social hierarchies in fiction. it's a lot more difficult to generalize magic in fanfiction, because literally anything counts. if you stretch the definition enough, even something as based in technology as science fiction can be categorized as magical. having said that, the following aspects of magic that i'll be talking about are really rather limited as opposed to the conversation about a/b/o or even other tropes like enemies to lovers.
i think the main thing about magic aus that nobody really likes to think about is how society would actually be organized. if magic is widespread on a societal level, where everyone has some capacity for magic, then would the world not fall into chaos? i'm not even making an argument for inherent moral depravity in people here, but would police not have a far harder time trying to maintain order if people have access to a hypothetically unrestricted range of abilities? in that case, there would exist two major routes, the first being an outside suppression of the magic (which would have accompanying struggles of: how do you ensure that the restriction holds true? what would even suppress the magic? how is that procured, and would it have any effects on the user? how would this have changed history?), and the second being a fundamental change to the world building to prevent any "excess" abilities (which then has the commonplace question of, well, people finding ingenious ways to use even lame-sounding abilities. so what then?)
the above is my personal stance, which is to say that when i read any world that has magic as a sort of given, i prefer there to be a logical explanation as to why the world hasn't devolved into a state of anarchy yet. citing an example (not from fanfiction), i think that the system present in harry potter is really ridiculous. you have the unforgiveable curses, but you literally get taught what the key phrase to activate those curses are in school. i would suggest a safeguard placed into the wands themselves, but since wandless magic exists, there's no real barrier preventing anyone from using the curse. the thing about magic in world building and this untapped potential to easily murder someone without having actual barriers preventing them from using the curse is that it then undermines everything else. how can you ever feel safe? of course, consequences exist, and in real life, someone could hypothetically take an axe and smash one's skull in anyway, but the thing about the magical setting is that it's so unpredictable. yes, someone could take the axe, but you would've seen the axe. if someone is able to take their wand out, cast a spell they learned in school on you, and kill you instantly without any real repercussion aside from being thrown in wizard jail (which also: can they not just use all of their floo powder escape magic here?), how has society not absolutely crumbled?
regardless, moving on from the logistics of actually having prevalent usable magic in society, i feel like another underappreciated aspect of magic aus is inequality baked into the system. when you look at works that have magic & abilities baked into them, there's this immediate sense of inequality. i don't read much shounen, so i don't have specific citations for this, but i know it's a common trope in shounen manga to have a stratified class system for abilities, where a "good" ability gets you into an elite class, and a "bad" ability leaves you stranded. i think this is super underexplored and presents an excellent opportunity for commentary to be made on the advantages presented to someone at birth from things such as wealth and access to care. even the trope itself realizes this to some extent; the main character starts off as an underdog in a "lower" class (literally!), but it's never really explored to the extent that i would love it to be.
because i always love thinking about logistics, that ties right back into how magic is usable in society. assuming that the magic is truly unlimited in the regard of what domains of life it can affect, then things like democracy would be totally unstable. monarchies, too, for that matter, if it's not hereditary. and i do understand that people love to talk about a concept of inherent morality, but i find that difficult to truly hold up if something like magic were to be unregulated. my personal stance on a great deal of Situations is that they ultimately come back to being viable solely in dystopias and not much else. there it is, though!
i think the main thing about magic aus that nobody really likes to think about is how society would actually be organized. if magic is widespread on a societal level, where everyone has some capacity for magic, then would the world not fall into chaos? i'm not even making an argument for inherent moral depravity in people here, but would police not have a far harder time trying to maintain order if people have access to a hypothetically unrestricted range of abilities? in that case, there would exist two major routes, the first being an outside suppression of the magic (which would have accompanying struggles of: how do you ensure that the restriction holds true? what would even suppress the magic? how is that procured, and would it have any effects on the user? how would this have changed history?), and the second being a fundamental change to the world building to prevent any "excess" abilities (which then has the commonplace question of, well, people finding ingenious ways to use even lame-sounding abilities. so what then?)
the above is my personal stance, which is to say that when i read any world that has magic as a sort of given, i prefer there to be a logical explanation as to why the world hasn't devolved into a state of anarchy yet. citing an example (not from fanfiction), i think that the system present in harry potter is really ridiculous. you have the unforgiveable curses, but you literally get taught what the key phrase to activate those curses are in school. i would suggest a safeguard placed into the wands themselves, but since wandless magic exists, there's no real barrier preventing anyone from using the curse. the thing about magic in world building and this untapped potential to easily murder someone without having actual barriers preventing them from using the curse is that it then undermines everything else. how can you ever feel safe? of course, consequences exist, and in real life, someone could hypothetically take an axe and smash one's skull in anyway, but the thing about the magical setting is that it's so unpredictable. yes, someone could take the axe, but you would've seen the axe. if someone is able to take their wand out, cast a spell they learned in school on you, and kill you instantly without any real repercussion aside from being thrown in wizard jail (which also: can they not just use all of their floo powder escape magic here?), how has society not absolutely crumbled?
regardless, moving on from the logistics of actually having prevalent usable magic in society, i feel like another underappreciated aspect of magic aus is inequality baked into the system. when you look at works that have magic & abilities baked into them, there's this immediate sense of inequality. i don't read much shounen, so i don't have specific citations for this, but i know it's a common trope in shounen manga to have a stratified class system for abilities, where a "good" ability gets you into an elite class, and a "bad" ability leaves you stranded. i think this is super underexplored and presents an excellent opportunity for commentary to be made on the advantages presented to someone at birth from things such as wealth and access to care. even the trope itself realizes this to some extent; the main character starts off as an underdog in a "lower" class (literally!), but it's never really explored to the extent that i would love it to be.
because i always love thinking about logistics, that ties right back into how magic is usable in society. assuming that the magic is truly unlimited in the regard of what domains of life it can affect, then things like democracy would be totally unstable. monarchies, too, for that matter, if it's not hereditary. and i do understand that people love to talk about a concept of inherent morality, but i find that difficult to truly hold up if something like magic were to be unregulated. my personal stance on a great deal of Situations is that they ultimately come back to being viable solely in dystopias and not much else. there it is, though!
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