Glowy purple magic

[lonespark]

The decision to have people in the Dragon Prince universe refer to glowy purple magic dealing with death and souls as "dark magic" disappoints me.

Like, I know that even though "quintesscence" is a nifty word that refers to a similar concept, they couldn't use that in this timeline. Ok.

And they didn't call it "black magic" so hey, congrats for being one level up from ultimate racism and lack of originality, I guess?

It's just crappy and I feel like anyone giving it some thought could come up with something referring to the use of life/death energy. Possibly they could have just called it "the 7th source," but that's probably too awkward...

My girlfriend thinks it looks like black light / ultraviolet radiation, which is neat and probably related to some useful terms.

But like, even just thinking about the magic system... You already have several sources that generate light. You have star magic, and sky magic, which seems more like weather magic so far, but certainly includes darkness at times. Something that would actually make sense being called "Dark Magic" would be something more like space magic. The emptiness between the stars.

(Dark matter and dark energy are things, if also kinda uncreatively/imprecisely named...)

It reminds me of this poem:
http://www.odins-gift.com/poth/S/spacegoddess.htm

but they're not doing space, so... death & souls magic. Needs a better name. Glowy purple magic for fashion-concious Disney witches.

Comments

[silveradept]

It does need a new name. Probably something more like "life magic" to make it seem less like terrible things are happening, given how much humans don't like admitting their own villainy.

[lonespark]

Yeah. They don't, but elves and dragons sure don't either... I meant on the show, did you just mean in general? We def don't! And yeah, I was thinking earlier about more ways to use euphemisms and softpedaling, equivalents of "Clear Skies Act."

[silveradept]

I meant in both places, but I would expect the humans to call it "life magic" and the elves to call it "death magic" or something similar because of the source of the power and the uses it gets put to. Nice little worldbuilding thing there, the dispute about what the magic is.

[lonespark]

ohhh, ok. that's a great idea!

[alatefeline]

I enjoyed reading these meta thoughts and found them thought-provoking even though it's not my fandom; thank you for posting.

[lonespark]

Thanks for reading!

I am bringing my longer-form fandom shitposting back from The Land Where They Hate Nipples

[alatefeline]

I appreciate this. :D