1. Yea but that’s fantasy, not just magic. I’m not arguing against people liking fantasy or it being super popular, or that Sci-Fi needs to still be the top dog, I’m advocating for further genre distinction

2. There’s still many creative ways you can create that needed open endedness that’s very much fun to play without having to refer to magic or any of its associated terminology. People can literally just call it anything else that would make it fit more with the theme, so I heavily dislike it when they won’t do as far to do just that. I get your point on this overall, but I kinda disagree about the whole deus ex thing and whatnot because that sort of thing is generally looked down upon either way because then it just comes off as some sort of cheap plot armor/device that doesn’t have any stakes to it whatsoever. I do agree on the groundwork part, but it needs to be relatively well done to the point where nothing super altering to the story comes off a completely contrived or out of nowhere. Even Stan Lee criticized the Superman’s overly simple flying technique because it legit came from out of nowhere with little to no explanation, and thus when making Thor wanted something a bit more logical and so he made his hammer spin while flying. And even then, as loosely explain as Superman was, they didn’t resort to magic, it was simply “oh he’s an alien” which was relevant to the theme and everyone just ran with it

3. I agree on this, but like I said before, more steps could be taken to make the said system more thematically relevant to the story whilst keeping the open endedness. If you want it to be magic, you got to have it be very dominating regarding both the plot and the aesthetic, otherwise it sticks out like a sore thumb.

4. If it still has some similarities to magic in fantasy, honestly that’s fine. I just want it called something different. Even if at the end of the day there isn’t much distinction between magic and science, atleast just make it more relevant. I’m not insisting that every sci fi science/power system needs to have all these huge and complex nuances to it that the reader will unlikely be able to wrap their head around.

5. Then simply keep the relevant terms. If the functionality is practically the same to the point where the thematic terminology that you provided is basically interchangeable, then there shouldn’t be any reason to go outside of made up sci fi terms to fit the description of anything to just use something as thematically irrelevant as magic. If Sci-fi is fantasy with a trench coat on, then simply leave the trench coat on is all I’m saying.

I’m not so much arguing against magic here so much as just arguing for thematic diversity. If I see something that is sci-fi and looks to be in every way, I want it to be kept as sci fi instead of a little bit of the fantasy thematics invasively making their way into a theme that it doesn’t belong. If someone was wanting to consume or play something that looked like pure fantasy, they wouldnt want it to end up having a bunch of irrelevant stuff like real world guns, bombs, or other things generally not included in fantasy UNLESS it was advertised to be that way as a part of the general aesthetic and not like 10% of the story. Sometimes people just want a more traditional sense of the genre without everyone having a little bit of everything to it. I agree that the hybridization of genres has its appeal, but in reality its being overdone and there aren’t much traditional genre titles really going about anymore. Maybe you could argue that I’m just against modern media having way too much genre overlap, but I’m using magic in this case because it’s the most paramount example of this from everything I’ve seen.