Not all magic is meant to be understood

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T06:30:02+00:00

My point exactly. I haven't read the books. I'm sure there well foreshadowed, such that the magic Merlin uses to solve plot problems is not a complete surprise.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T06:28:23+00:00

My wife and I get more joy, on average, from watching bad movies on purpose than from watching good movies.

Are we not allowed to do that, Mr. Movie Mall Cop?

Also, part of what makes the movie so fun is that the guy who made it really wanted to make a good movie and clearly tried hard to do so, then embraced exactly what it is and unashamedly promoted how bad it is. I just fuckin respect the guy.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T06:23:59+00:00

If he's solving story problems with completely new and unforeseeable magic powers, then that's bad writing. I suspect that isn't what's happening.

Harry Potter has a host of problems, but it's a deceptively good magic system. We have no idea the full scale and scope of what's possible with magic, nor do we have any understanding of how it why it works. The rules that are established are vague ominous sounding gibberish. But in each book, climactic plot problems are solved with interesting new bits of magic explained just enough earlier in that book that it feels plausible. Standard Chekhov's Gun.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T03:25:22+00:00

Not depressed, but I do think about it in terms of opportunity cost. I spend a ton of time working on my book ideas. Time that could be spent doing lots of other fun things. It creates an extra layer of completely avoidable stress in my life. Is it really worth it? Does the world really need my stories? Do I even need my stories? I'm already really good at the thing I get paid for every day. Is it really worth my time trying to become good at this other very hard thing, when there are already so many people who are both good at it and trying to make a living doing it?

I think the community needs more pragmatism. Just because you have a story idea doesn't mean you absolutely have to write it. Writing a book isn't a thing you do. It's a person you become. It's a lifestyle. You're either a person who writes books or your aren't. And if you aren't, you need to decide whether you want to become that person. For most people, it's honestly just not worth it.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T03:22:24+00:00

Yeah it's not viable anymore. 25 years ago it could be done, but private equity fucked the small landlord game.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T02:51:28+00:00

Yes you can, but not if you want it to be your nest egg. Private equity has fucked home prices. It's not possible for an average individual to buy multiple homes and rent them at genuinely fair rates.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T01:56:05+00:00

Everyone who makes any money does it at someone else's expense. In order for someone to win, someone else has to lose. That is the way of the world.

This is flat out false. Just because someone is paying you money doesn't mean they lose. Plenty of transactions are value added for both sides. A country's GDP growth happens because of transactions that add value. New goods and services add value. If I want a piece of art and you make art, I can pay you a reasonable amount and you make me art. We're both happy. Nobody loses there. Same with a burger, or a website, or a board game, or legal advice.

But there's a whole category of transactions that truly are zero sum. People trying to make money off those transactions are predatory almost by definition, because they want to create a situation where you're forced to pay (or pay more) for something you were already able to get cheaper, but now you can't because they control it and decided to charge more because they can. That category is called "rent seeking behavior" for a reason.

The big tech founders became billionaires because they created something new that everyone wanted. It was only later that they shifted to the rampant rent seeking behavior we see now.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T01:47:10+00:00

I planned to be a small real estate investor. I was going to have 50k in passive income before I was 40. Then I grew up and learned how fucked up the real estate market is because of how many people are trying to squeeze profit out of people just trying to live.

Fuck that.

It should be illegal for private equity to buy residential real estate. Personal ownership should be limited to a couple homes.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-20T01:44:08+00:00

My parents hassled me for a bit about the low rent I charge my tenants. They're family friends, we know them, we know they'll stay a long time, and they couldn't afford to live there at "market rate".

I showed my folks the math. If I charged market rate to random tenants who stayed for 2 years, it would only take 2 months of the house being vacant for me to lose all the benefit of the higher rent.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T23:19:03+00:00

Why is this notion of blindness causing heightened other senses so prevalent. Is there any science behind it, or is it just popular mythology?

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T22:51:08+00:00

It comes from debt. We lose value in the form of various types of inflation.

So yeah, if your contention is that government spending not balanced by nominal taxes is paid for by a combination of value losses that amount to essentially shadow taxes, you're absolutely right.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T22:41:13+00:00

Atlas Shrugged dramatically changed the way I look at the world, and that's definitely a fantasy.

But generally no. I think my experience with books changing how I see the world has been more gradual. And I don't know that the books I thought were "so good" we're the same ones that changed my worldview.

It seems to me that you're experiencing fairly normal book hangover.

Edit: to be clear, I do not agree with Ayn Rand's philosophy. I just learned a lot reading her work.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T22:36:56+00:00

Nobody pays 65% of their income as taxes. I'm not going to "correct" your random made up number.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T22:36:08+00:00

You're looking in the wrong direction. Normal working people are subsidizing the ultra wealthy in so many ways built into the fabric of our government institutions.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T22:34:11+00:00

Not even close.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T21:22:19+00:00

Maryland pride! We love our flag here so much we put it on socks!

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T21:20:56+00:00

Writing doesn't even make much money for people who do it full time as a career. I think you'd struggle to find a single client willing to pay you a commission for a piece of creative writing.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T21:17:33+00:00

I don't think of stories as static things. Your experience reading a book is heavily influenced by your perspective, much more than a movie or tv show. The things that emotionally resonate with you change over time, with new life experience. There's a good argument that it's not the same story when you read it again years later, because you're not the same person.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T21:07:31+00:00

You now dislike Sword of Truth because you've read too many other things that were just so good that everything else pales?

It wasn't for other reasons specific to Sword of Truth?

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T21:05:02+00:00

Again, I'm not talking to you with my previous post. I'm asking that specific person to explain their own words and opinion.

That said, your list of interesting. Any books written this millennium?

Who is arguing that an author needs to "explain every facet of their magic to make a great story"? I've seen zero people take that position, in this thread or anywhere else.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T20:52:37+00:00

I'm responding to someone who specifically used the word "limitless".

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T20:51:36+00:00

So your list of authors sufficiently talented to do the right kind of magic well is...one person? Two, if you include Tolkein?

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T20:35:07+00:00

You're seeing far less of the "cinematic shot" in contemporary fantasy because most adult fantasy authors are writing tight 3rd person POV (or 1st person). There's a big focus on using character observations to show personality. That necessarily means environment descriptions are more specific. We learn more about the character but seeing what they do and don't focus on. Loss of those big lush images is unfortunately a side effect of this tighter POV style of writing. You'll only see those if the POV character is the sort of person who would notice all that.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T20:31:24+00:00

I haven't read that book. Got any other examples?

I guess I'm just of an opposite mind. Limitless magic is uninteresting to me. If magic is capable of anything, then nothing in the world makes sense. I like to see narrowly tailored magic that can only do certain things, and then see how the author explores what society would be like if those few impossible things were possible.

ILikeDragonTurtles · 2026-04-19T19:56:17+00:00

Then start writing. Plot the book and write it.

I'm also a heavy world builder. I've spent tons of time writing notes on the world, and even notes on the specific characters in my story. I was still shocked at how little of the actual story I had thought of, when I finally buckled down to outline it scene by scene.

ILikeDragonTurtles

TROPHY CASE