Magic in Holla Forums

Ever since Harry Potter, magic has just been used as guns, there's nothing enchanting or magical about it. So I'm wondering, has anyone ever done magic right in Holla Forums stuff? Like animated movies, shows or books? What do you think of when you think of magic and spells?

Well to be fair, it is guns AND medkits in Final Fantasy and such-like games, which themselves take inspiration from D&D (though I understand that also has "wishes" which the DM is encouraged to corrupt).
But to bring us back to Holla Forums, it was also a shield in the D&D cartoon, and The Shadow uses it more for concealment and frightening people, his guns are, well, guns.

One of the positive points of John Constantine's original Hellblazer run is that John's actually a pretty shitty spell caster, but he makes up for it by using what little he knows in conjunction with his experience as a con man. Like the time he fools a demon into drinking holy water to delay him from taking the soul of a friend. Or how he manipulates the lords of Hell into curing his lung cancer to avoid a war over who claims his soul.

Why need magic at all when you have the real thing?

Attention-Hungry Games 20 >>63793

Hey Holla Forums, we need you here again.

Been a while since you've linked to another board, user?

Aww shit

>>>/sudo/

I liked how magic was handled in The Invisibles, sometimes it was direct force, like Jim Crow's bone-pointing gun that was fuelled by erotic visualisations- it turns sex into death, sometimes it was a plot device, like Big Malkie having to sacrifice his civilian cover as a "human sacrifice" to stop a bomb, so he had to go back to being Mr. Six, but mostly it was just a way for the heroes to load the dice it their favour, like when they stole the AIDS vaccine from Area 52, they had Lord Fanny draw a sigil with corn around the entrance and jack off in a jeep to charge it, while trying to imagine the National Enquirer catching Bigfoot going down on her in a motel room.

Matt Wagner's Mage books are probably good, too.

The original Books of Magic comic handled magic well. It wasn't over explained or straightforward. There was a real sense of mystery and enchantment to what the various magicians were doing and experiencing.

The Invisibles featured a lot of magic in the modern/chaote style. That comic did have characters using magic in fairly direct, pragmatic ways, including some flashy pyrotechnic scenes, but a lot of it was more genuinely magical, like psychic time travel, communing with god-forms, messing with perception, and so on.

I loved that. What a great way to take a basic concept and give it an interesting new twist. I found it really emotionally affecting, too.

This joke will sadly be lost on most people.

However, even in RPGs magic was more than "shoot a laser out of a wand/hand," bunch of minor utilitarian uses, and silly hexes. Despite being mostly used to deal damage, attacks are far more creative than anything you can see in Harry Potter. Spell that's basically remote invisible sword is considered to be a peak of creativity.


I was about to post those. Sandman also has magic/godly powers in it, and it's handled pretty well for the most part. Hellboy tends to go for the "magic as a ritual" sort of thing, which is also good and underused nowadays.

The Authority books and Gravel generally go with "magic is guns" approach, but at least it is more creative than simply shooting killing rays. Dresden Files mixes demonic pacts, alchemy, rituals, magic circles, divination, etc., but primary uses are still shooting magic blasts and making shields.
Not sure about Dr. Strange overall, but early books I have read were mostly astral bodies fist-fighting. That coupled with Stan Lee's writing style turned me off of reading any more. Modern stories I read had tendency to just feature boring "magical lasers." However, I do like Marvel's (and to some extent DC's) idea that magic is something "borrowed," bought through contracts, channeled through artifacts.

Then there was also a comic that I forgot the name of, where a mage-detective and his assistant used some out of the box magic to solve supernatural crimes. It had no "shooting magical lasers" at all, and instead relied on rituals, artifacts, talking to spirits, divination, etc. Magic was a lot like one in Constantine, but a bit amped up.

It is actually pretty old. That's pretty much how was in many tabletop RPGs and videogames.

Magic has been done pretty well in the Unwritten and Locke and Key in terms of how ordinary moerals would process it if they suddenly discovered that magic really exists. There is no spell-casting - both of series primarily feature magical items and magic entities messing with protagonist's lives. However, magic effects in both are more creative than simply "shoot fire/lightning/energy beam."

slightly off topic I see backgrounds that look like this in a lot of old stuff, usually its got that sword and sorcery vibe or is conan-ish
is there a name for these bacgrounds other then just fantasy?
pic related is he-man btw

When did we get an influx of grade-school kids on Holla Forums?

fuck off im 22
even if I had experienced this when it was happening I probably wouldnt know the name, if it had one

There there user, its okay. There's no need to a shamed that you're underage and browsing Holla Forums.

I blame video games. Combat-focused magic is more flashy and easier to design a game around than the almost limitless number of spells you could come up with for a more flexible game like D&D that's only really limited by imagination. Compare modern magic-users to a classic "wizard" character like Gandalf; he rarely used magic, and even when he did, it was never just "I cast fireball!" or dumb shit like that.

user you would have to be fucking 45 to have watched he man when you were 10 years old, my mother isnt even 45
dont be a nigger

user, there's no point in boasting. By the fact you're bothering to get into your personal life after a single shitpost, tells everyone who sees this you're far far younger than your average wizard on here or severely retarded. I personally go with both.

question still stands grandpa

Sure thing kiddo, Im a long ole time gaemr gator warrior from the days of old, ranging around four hundred and twenty years old. From the great furry wars in the land of Jewtube to the viking raids on the cancer stain known as 9fuck. I've seen the inside of the bowls which most around here call home, long are the days where one could easily enter any shithole and pretend to be an idiot. For which any groups that acts like a fuckwad, will eventually be invaded by fuckwads who believe they are in good company. Shame really, I remember it as if it were just yesterday when the smoothest thing when it came to decent degenerative material came in the form of a flash video, and I mean the ole flash video where it had no pause button and had a high probability of giving your toaster a nasty disease from Tijuana. Of course, depending whether you had Unix, DOS or BeOS and bless those poor souls who ended up with Vista as a wife.

Pastoral? Scenic?

Writing a character who's main power is knowledge is more difficult than fireball tosser. Constantine used to be like Gandalf, in that he relied on knowledge and information over actual spells. Now that many Vertigo books are brought back into mainstream DC, Constantine is just watered down and quippy spell-slinger.

4chan implemented a new snf potentially malicious script about a month ago. It resulted in yet another small exodus. All legacy boards have been affected.

You know, that explains a lot actually. Maybe the rumors are true, that they're using the servers for mining.


Don't forget movies too, who needs to imagine when there's plenty of shiny things on the big screen.


I say Pastoral but refrain from talking to that user, he looks like a shitposter.

Inefficient, considering they're already using a large portion of the hardware to run the site.
They just sell people's data to the highest bidder. The Chink Moot has done it on 2 other large IBs and will continue to do so. He even installed JS that has to be allowed or else the site shits itself, so the casual idiot, aka all of them now, just enable JS completely to let the Chink grab even more data.

So basically what he originally was doing to 2channel until Jim kicked him out.

Yes. 2ch and 2channel were both affected by him, and Japanons tried to warn people on halfchan, but no one listened because all they saw was someone that wasn't Moot.

Wait, I thought 2ch and 2channel were two different entities.

...

Stop talking bullshit we are on a decline I dont get why people think we have alot of newfags here

It's probably a combination of both. Also, IP count is not entirely accurate, and if I remember correctly, after one of the summer or spring updates it tends to lower numbers even more than it used to.

Oh come on, did you even watch those movies?

And considering in old RPG universes the mages just throw fire and lightning at each other, it's not much deeper.

Mage: The Awakening and Enter The Shadowside had pretty good mechanics for magic. And Call Of Cthulhu is pretty good for always enacting a cost for power.