Fantasy fiction is a psyop

[skykiii]

Lately, I have thought about it and noticed that most fantasy media--whether its novels, anime, film, games, images formed out of tea leaves, ants performing interpretive dance, etc.--tend to have a couple of recurring themes.

Moreover, they're the kind of themes I call "cope themes." Basically, "this thing doesn't exist, and if it did, that would actually suck. So be glad it doesn't."

What I want to talk about is magic, which on some level I think must be real--pretty much it makes no sense humanity lasted this long without it--but in fantasy fiction:

"If Magic were real, it would suck for one (or more) of the following reasons:"
A. It would be tightly-controlled by some secret society, like in Dragonlance.
B. It would be a genetic thing, essentially a superpower, so no different than being born athletic.
C. It would be extremely complicated to do, requiring rare ingredients and sigils and shit.
D. It would come with some bullshit trade-off, like cursing someone means that you'll suffer misfortune later in life, or some shit like that.
E. The only way to do it is to enter into a deal with a demon, and those always go bad, so its best to just never mess with it.
F. It's always just the Gods granting you a favor so really its not you doing it, its your magical best friend in the sky.

It occurs to me that if I were a dictator and I wanted to prevent people from discovering magic and potentially using it to overthrow me, this is exactly the kind of thing I would psyop people into believing. Then I would tell people that it's a good thing we live in a mostly sciency world where, incidentally, my dictatorship practically controls all the science and can basically lie to you about shit and you can't really contradict me.

A former member of this very forum once told me the "all magic comes from demons" thing. That person said their evidence was they had talked to a demon and it had told them so.

.... My question is why the fuck would you believe anything a DEMON says? Yeah, of course it's gonna tell you that it's services are required! Do you think car repair shops ever tell people to repair their own cars?

Anyway, I'm gonna go take my meds now.

 

[We Are The Witches]

What I want to talk about is magic, which on some level I think must be real--pretty much it makes no sense humanity lasted this long without it

What?

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[Nicholas Gur]

Non magic believers when I cast 15 9mm magic missiles from my Berettic wand.

 

[Whatevermancer]

magic, which on some level I think must be real

Nigga, that's nuts.

"this thing doesn't exist, and if it did, that would actually suck. So be glad it doesn't."

It's not about it, it's about "if this thing existed, what would be the implications for the society?" It's just that those implications are often negative.

It occurs to me that if I were a dictator and I wanted to prevent people from discovering magic and potentially using it to overthrow me, this is exactly the kind of thing I would psyop people into believing.

In those fictional stories magic is still worth using despite all of its drawbacks, so why would you use them to dissuade people from discovering magic? Also, look at the Harry Potter adults.

 

[CryoRevival #SJ-112]

If you want some schitzo takes on magic and its relationship to shared human reality, check out Alan Moore talking about the way artists and musicians 'create reality and truth'. Him being a writer, its the same wanky thing more commonly witnessed but no less common than in comedians where they think they are not just tellers of truth, but setters of truth.

However, it does pair well with a dip in Tolkeins Legendarium magic system, where essentially powerful beings speak and determine reality (in line with first being the word, and the word was god, and the word was with god).

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

young wizards today be up in their towers, doomscrolling on their orbs too much. Go outside and ponder some grass.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

What I want to talk about is magic, which on some level I think must be real--pretty much it makes no sense humanity lasted this long without it--but in fantasy fiction:

This is the same schizo logic as "humans are too fucking stupid to build the Pyramids/Stonehenge/Nazca Lines, clearly it must be the work of aliens!"

Do you think something as powerful and versatile as magic wouldn't be controlled and limited to the elite if it existed? When this is even the case for technology in real life? It's not like you can just buy a rocket launcher or a nuke.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

"If Magic were real, it would suck for one (or more) of the following reasons:"
A. It would be tightly-controlled by some secret society, like in Dragonlance.
B. It would be a genetic thing, essentially a superpower, so no different than being born athletic.
C. It would be extremely complicated to do, requiring rare ingredients and sigils and shit.
D. It would come with some bullshit trade-off, like cursing someone means that you'll suffer misfortune later in life, or some shit like that.
E. The only way to do it is to enter into a deal with a demon, and those always go bad, so its best to just never mess with it.
F. It's always just the Gods granting you a favor so really its not you doing it, its your magical best friend in the sky.

so, typically, in a story, you need what's called a "conflict" to establish a compelling context for the narrative, usually by establishing stakes, or some kind of obstacle the main character must journey to overtake. that's because "One day Gregor Samsa awoke to find he was a cool ass wizard, and could do all kinds of cool ass wizard shit, and then his life pretty much immediately became amazing and stayed that way forever THE END" isn't really a great read. these items on your list are all examples of conflicts. hope this helps. keep reading y'all!

A former member of this very forum once told me the "all magic comes from demons" thing. That person said their evidence was they had talked to a demon and it had told them so.

.... My question is why the fuck would you believe anything a DEMON says? Yeah, of course it's gonna tell you that it's services are required! Do you think car repair shops ever tell people to repair their own cars?

what if he knew the demon's True Name? did you think of that? yeah didn't think so. stay humble kid.

 

[Meriasek]

This is the same schizo logic as "humans are too fucking stupid to build the Pyramids/Stonehenge/Nazca Lines, clearly it must be the work of aliens!"

Projecting their own incompetence unto all of humanity, fun times.

Fantasy Fiction often elaborates on the negative consequences of stuff because that's what could generate struggle and strife, which makes for a more interesting story.
Imagine a perfectly utopian magic world with practically no drawbacks. Much harder to come up with a relatable plotline there. Additionally, fantasy fiction often functions as an allegory for real life, so people tend to just "write what they know", and do thinly veiled allegorical plots about real world problems.
Like Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings was basically just about the dangers that industrialisation and niggers pose to white aryan supermen.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I thought the psyop was providing a window into an "isekai world" that is better than the shitty "real world" to either prevent or cause suicides.

 

[McMitch]

young wizards today be up in their towers, doomscrolling on their orbs too much. Go outside and ponder some grass.

Ver archivo adjunto 7837408

I know you’re doing a bit but that is what is happening in this image. Saruman’s rejection of his mission to advise Middle Earth in its defeat of Sauron arose from his addiction to the Orthanc stone, which mundanely blackpilled the wizard to the extent of Sauron’s power while also magically exposing Saruman to the Dark Lord’s will.

As an aside: Saruman represents his betrayal by shedding his “white” monicker for “many colors,” further reinforcing Tolkien’s beliefs in applicability in writing.

 

[skykiii]

What?

Can you elaborate on this?

This is the same schizo logic as "humans are too fucking stupid to build the Pyramids/Stonehenge/Nazca Lines, clearly it must be the work of aliens!"

These are both basically the same point so I'll answer them together. (Also sorry I took awhile to respond, stuff came up).

It's not about people being stupid, its about people being rather fragile.

Stepped on a nail? Oop, better get a shot or it could spread through your entire body and kill you!

Wait, so did cave man never step on sharp rocks or anything? I know the traditional explanation is we used to have stronger immune systems that for some reason just got weaker over time but.... I'm sure you'll understand when I say that sounds both awfully convenient but also rather illogical.

Or the million and one animals that can kill us easily and yet somehow we're still alive. Or the millions of fruits or other potential foods that are actually poisonous to us. Or or or....

And on that whole "stupid humans" thing.... well... we were all children once, and that includes the first human beings.

The non-magic/atheist view has, by necessity, to be that the first human (or whatever precursor species)--the first ones that ever existed, and thus by definition had no parents, protectors, guardians, guides of any sort--somehow went from helpless swaddling babyhood, through their terrible twos, all the way to adulthood, in a world that nobody had ever explored before, where they were figuring everything out from scratch (again, with absolutely no strategy guide or convenient helping hand), and where literally everything could kill them, and where they would've had no ideas of morality or fair play but would've gone their entire lives with little or nothing to help them grow out of the attitude you see of those babies in the clips above.... and somehow not only didn't go extinct, but instead thrived.

Yeah, no. That makes no sense. That's like telling me that you did a no-death run of Super Meat Boy on the very first session you ever played of it. If you told me you did that, I'd call you a liar.

It's kinda funny to me how the supposedly "logical" viewpoint actually makes less sense than just assuming there were magical forces and/or higher powers at work.

Do you think something as powerful and versatile as magic wouldn't be controlled and limited to the elite if it existed? When this is even the case for technology in real life? It's not like you can just buy a rocket launcher or a nuke.

This would depend on how magic works in a given setting, but in general I can't see it.

The thing is, magic is an innate ability. Regulating anything that someone could be born with is basically impossible, no matter what kind of authoritarian dictatorship you live in. There's always going to be, say, a slum area, or a distant middle-of-nowhere village nobody notices, or a planet Tatooine that nobody pays attention to where some random kid might just be born force-sensitive.

And think about it: in every case, there has to have been a first magician, the first person to experiment and find out magic was real and what they can do with it. The fact this ever happened therefore means its entirely possible for the Anakins of these worlds to end up discovering their abilities entirely on their own and being self-taught.

Again just.... how do you regulate this?

so, typically, in a story, you need what's called a "conflict" to establish a compelling context for the narrative, usually by establishing stakes, or some kind of obstacle the main character must journey to overtake. that's because "One day Gregor Samsa awoke to find he was a cool ass wizard, and could do all kinds of cool ass wizard shit, and then his life pretty much immediately became amazing and stayed that way forever THE END" isn't really a great read. these items on your list are all examples of conflicts. hope this helps. keep reading y'all!

Please, dude, I'm trying to schizopost here! Don't interject your namby-pamby rational explanations into it!

I say that, but the funny thing is, you basically just described the first Harry Potter book, the early seasons of Dragon Ball, Golden Age Superman....

Like, for some reason its been said for decades that people like for their heroes to have some sort of flaw or weakness, but in actuality it seems people are just fine with their heroes being amazing, invincible, and flawless. I think I even saw a Bettina Levy video that made this exact point about Gilgamesh.

Like Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings was basically just about the dangers that industrialisation and niggers pose to white aryan supermen.

Please tell me this was just an attempt at edgy humor. If this is seriously your interpretation of Lord of the Rings then you have no business trying to explain how storytelling works, to me or anyone else.

I thought the psyop was providing a window into an "isekai world" that is better than the shitty "real world" to either prevent or cause suicides.

Thanks, I actually completely overlooked that one.

 

[dreamworks face]

all fiction is a psyop. consider what happened with Guantanamo bay and the waterboarding controversy. initially, people were appalled. then the cia worked their jew magic and suddenly the "noble torturer" archetype was all over television - jack bauer from 24, sayid from lost, vic mackey from the shield, and most directly the entire story of zero dark thirty. suddenly the "torturer" archetype was all over tv and nobody cared about waterboarding anymore because jack bauer saved us from the missiles.

this is why having the electric jew in your living room is a terrifying proposition. there is no stopping anyone from just making up a story and suddenly legitimizing what should be morally abhorrent. when politicians stop citing bible quotes and instead cite stories from harry potter and superhero movies, that should scare the fuck out of you. how much of your beliefs about the world and what is acceptable is a result of pure propaganda and bullshit?

 

[Calandrino]

how much of your beliefs about the world and what is acceptable is a result of pure propaganda and bullshit?

I only believe what I read on here

 

[skykiii]

@dreamworks face Not sure if you're serious, but I was wondering how long it would be until I got a Bible thumper in here. I'm surprised nobody's trying to co-opt my writings into some sort of "this is why the Bible is the only truth!" message.

 

[Meriasek]

Please tell me this was just an attempt at edgy humor. If this is seriously your interpretation of Lord of the Rings then you have no business trying to explain how storytelling works, to me or anyone else.

Of course it was a joke.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

I say that, but the funny thing is, you basically just described the first Harry Potter book, the early seasons of Dragon Ball, Golden Age Superman....

Harry Potter's struggle, from the very beginning of the books, is that he's the Golden Boy and it makes him a target of both prejudice and the forces of evil, and despite having natural talent, his inexperience proves to be a constant pitfall. Superman, even during the Golden Age, has a number of key weaknesses (Kryptonite, his real identity, Lois Lane) which are often part of his struggles against the bad guys. I can't speak to Dragon Ball specifically cause I never watched it, but in DBZ at least Goku is constantly getting his ass beat on his unending journey to grind his power level and become Anime Jesus.

Please, dude, I'm trying to schizopost here! Don't interject your namby-pamby rational explanations into it!

I'm auditioning for reddit gold please understand.

It's not about people being stupid, its about people being rather fragile.

Stepped on a nail? Oop, better get a shot or it could spread through your entire body and kill you!

Wait, so did cave man never step on sharp rocks or anything? I know the traditional explanation is we used to have stronger immune systems that for some reason just got weaker over time but.... I'm sure you'll understand when I say that sounds both awfully convenient but also rather illogical.

Or the million and one animals that can kill us easily and yet somehow we're still alive. Or the millions of fruits or other potential foods that are actually poisonous to us. Or or or....

individuals are fragile, but the species as a whole is not. plenty of individual humans succumb to various hazards, but not enough to prevent the human race as a whole from reproducing and continuing on to the next generation. nature works the same way. you ever notice how easy it is to kill a bug? hell, you probably kill at least a couple every time you walk through the grass. not to mention all the other different animals that spend all day every day looking for bugs to eat. most of them even have specialized anatomy for it. but despite the huge number of bugs that die every day, it's not enough to wipe them out. a million die, two million are born. no magic required.

The non-magic/atheist view has, by necessity, to be that the first human (or whatever precursor species)--the first ones that ever existed, and thus by definition had no parents, protectors, guardians, guides of any sort--somehow went from helpless swaddling babyhood, through their terrible twos, all the way to adulthood, in a world that nobody had ever explored before, where they were figuring everything out from scratch (again, with absolutely no strategy guide or convenient helping hand), and where literally everything could kill them, and where they would've had no ideas of morality or fair play but would've gone their entire lives with little or nothing to help them grow out of the attitude you see of those babies in the clips above.... and somehow not only didn't go extinct, but instead thrived.

I'm an agnostic myself, so I'm not going to say this or that is how it was at the dawn of homo sapiens sapiens. but from the evolutionary point of view, changes occur in tiny steps, such that there is no case where baby humans magically appear without any parents. instead you have protozoa, then simple multicellular organisms, etc, which become complex aquatic multicellular organisms, which eventually become terrestrial, and so on, until you get prehistoric apes, which become upright, which allows for larger cranial sizes, and so early humans are formed. at each stage, the primary driving force of evolution is survival. whichever animals survive infancy to become the strongest adults and produce the most offspring are the ones who define the future generations of life. which means those future generations are defined by whatever behavioral or biological adaptations increase the likelihood of that outcome. it's not perfect - check out traumatic insemination if you want a good what-the-fuck-nature moment - but insofar as we know, the existence of life in its current form is the direct result of the survival of life in previous forms.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

Spoiler: Offtopic evolution sperging

@I'm Retarded? explained it better than I did but I'm still posting my explanation anyway.

It's not about people being stupid, its about people being rather fragile.

Human fragility is overstated by urban folks who can't fight their way out of a paper bag. We're social animals, our strength is in numbers. A family of 10 or 20 cavemen wouldn't be wiped out by a single animal. And if one caveman ate a poisonous fruit and dropped dead, the others would know to steer clear of that fruit from now on.

Yeah, no. That makes no sense. That's like telling me that you did a no-death run of Super Meat Boy on the very first session you ever played of it. If you told me you did that, I'd call you a liar.

Human babies didn't just plop into existence without any adult to give birth to them, that would be spontaneous generation, which goes against Darwinian evolution.

Evolution is a gradual process, and it's the result of differences in genetics piling up over generations. Babies must necessarily come from parents, but even children aren't 100% genetically like their parents or else they'd be clones. Over time, as the genes become increasingly different, baby apes will start resembling hairy hominids more than they do apes, and given enough time, their babies will start resembling humans more than they do hairy hominids. There is no point where a chimp gives birth to a human child or a baby gets spontaneously created, it's so gradual that you wouldn't be able to look at a caveman family and pinpoint who's the ape and who's the human.

The thing is, magic is an innate ability. Regulating anything that someone could be born with is basically impossible, no matter what kind of authoritarian dictatorship you live in. There's always going to be, say, a slum area, or a distant middle-of-nowhere village nobody notices, or a planet Tatooine that nobody pays attention to where some random kid might just be born force-sensitive.

Magic is only an innate ability if the author wants it to be. Assuming the author made magic innate and random then yes, it wouldn't make much sense to control it because you can't decide who gets born with it.

But if what if it isn't? What if it works like alchemy where you need a specific ingredient for a spell, or you require a magical trinket like a wand? Then you can just control who can get those things. Yeah, it wouldn't be perfect, banning guns doesn't stop determined people from getting them illegally, but once again, you don't see people walking around with rocket launchers or grenades, so it's clearly possible to limit who gets what.

 

[We Are The Witches]

It's not about people being stupid, its about people being rather fragile.

Stepped on a nail? Oop, better get a shot or it could spread through your entire body and kill you!

Wait, so did cave man never step on sharp rocks or anything? I know the traditional explanation is we used to have stronger immune systems that for some reason just got weaker over time but.... I'm sure you'll understand when I say that sounds both awfully convenient but also rather illogical.

Or the million and one animals that can kill us easily and yet somehow we're still alive. Or the millions of fruits or other potential foods that are actually poisonous to us. Or or or....

And on that whole "stupid humans" thing.... well... we were all children once, and that includes the first human beings.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-N_RZJUAQY4https://youtube.com/watch?v=C1_NkAqrwBQThe non-magic/atheist view has, by necessity, to be that the first human (or whatever precursor species)--the first ones that ever existed, and thus by definition had no parents, protectors, guardians, guides of any sort--somehow went from helpless swaddling babyhood, through their terrible twos, all the way to adulthood, in a world that nobody had ever explored before, where they were figuring everything out from scratch (again, with absolutely no strategy guide or convenient helping hand), and where literally everything could kill them, and where they would've had no ideas of morality or fair play but would've gone their entire lives with little or nothing to help them grow out of the attitude you see of those babies in the clips above.... and somehow not only didn't go extinct, but instead thrived.

Yeah, no. That makes no sense. That's like telling me that you did a no-death run of Super Meat Boy on the very first session you ever played of it. If you told me you did that, I'd call you a liar.

It's kinda funny to me how the supposedly "logical" viewpoint actually makes less sense than just assuming there were magical forces and/or higher powers at work.

This is way too retarded for me to take seriously.

I'm not about to explain basic notions of evolution and human biology to a grown ass man on a forum.

 

[skykiii]

Superman, even during the Golden Age, has a number of key weaknesses (Kryptonite, his real identity, Lois Lane) which are often part of his struggles against the bad guys.

Eeeeeehh..... how much of Golden Age Superman have you read? kryptonite took a long time to be introduced (and was introduced in the radio show before the actual comics). For years Superman stories were basically him being invincible and kicking ass.

you ever notice how easy it is to kill a bug? hell, you probably kill at least a couple every time you walk through the grass. not to mention all the other different animals that spend all day every day looking for bugs to eat. most of them even have specialized anatomy for it. but despite the huge number of bugs that die every day, it's not enough to wipe them out. a million die, two million are born. no magic required.

A thing I will say about this is that.... humans give birth way less often than bugs do. With bugs I can believe they survive shit through sheer numbers because when they lay eggs, they lay dozens at a time and then they all hatch. Humans tend to have like, one baby a year.

That said, I guess we are way more durable. Autistic comparison time, its sort of a Protoss vs Zerg situation.

But if what if it isn't? What if it works like alchemy where you need a specific ingredient for a spell, or you require a magical trinket like a wand?

To be honest I've always felt that at this point, it isn't really "magic" but is basically just technology.

This is way too retarded for me to take seriously.

I'm not about to explain basic notions of evolution and human biology to a grown ass man on a forum.

Outside of one sniping remark, I wasn't talking about evolution or human biology. My problems are the starting circumstances.

Which, to be fair, define some protozoa as "the first human" (my post did allow for precursor races) and it becomes more believable as (if I'm remembering this right) they would have to survive mostly against other protozoa, and I guess I can buy that by the time whatever species first reached land and grew a brain it had some parenting instinct and rudimentary morality.

I dunno though, it still feels like a lot about pre-civilization humanity just does not make a lot of sense, with both what I know of humanity now and what I know of nature. Maybe after a nap I'll give it some thought and post the biggest questions I have.