![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1TITPvU:
dimir-charmer:
I know that the Force is basically Space Magic ™ anyway, but entertain me:
Stormtroopers, casting in unison, chanting and moving, not knowing the theory or impact of their casting, but following orders. Finn, after getting out, with a brain full of magic that requires hundreds and hundreds of other people working in tandem to work properly. Someone shows him how to cast a charm on his own, and he is blown away; he had never thought that it was something you could do individually.
The pilots of the resistance, cockpits hung with good luck charms of hundreds of different planets and species. “This one was made during the alignment of the stars, which only happens once a hundred years” Pava says, knocking her fingernail against a star-strung chain hung from her headrest. “Oh yeah? Snap says, producing a small bag from under his flight suit. “Moon sand, from the first time the species achieved space flight, blessed by three different sects.” “Nice.” Pava says admiringly. Most of them are trinkets, cheap pieces of junk pawned to off-worlders. All the pilots know this.Most of them, if you asked them seriously, would claim it was all a bunch of garbage. But when a single screw up in your job means that you burn up in atmosphere, or get ejected from your seat at nearly light-speed, or collide with a meteor belt, you take all the extra luck you can get. They keep the bags fed, and ring the bells, and kiss the images; you never know what a little bit of an edge can do.
Leia is the last known practitioner of Alderaanian low magic. It requires ritual, and dozens of different plants that are now extinct, and the light of a moon now wandering lonely in an asteroid belt. It’s not something she is good at; she curses at her little herb garden as the plants refuse to grow, her braided charms fall apart even as she weaves them, and as a princess ‘magical education’ was the first thing cut when she needed to learn to shoot, and encrypt messages, and resist torture techniques. But when her son turns nine, for his coming of age she crowns him with the same flowers, woven in the same patterns that her mother made for her, and blesses him with everything that should come with the crown: Respect, power, and a legacy etched in the stars themselves. Her planet is dead, but her son received the same blessings she did. That is something; that is something.
Poe, given a pen and half a moment, can create runes in half a dozen different languages. He scrawls them up and down his arms before he goes out missions, writes them in get well soon cards, spray paints them on the side of hangers, and carves them into the side of his toolbox. He once spent a very productive dozen rest periods inscribing every rune he knew for ‘safety’ and ‘protection’ and ‘safe return’ into all the individual pieces of BB-8. The other pilots tease him about it, that he shows more concern for the droid than for his own safety. It’s funny, right up until it’s not.
Han, like many pilots, knows only a smattering of blessings and curses. His are all spoken things, minor magic without preparation and without materials. Hexes whispered out of the corner of the mouth to make an opponent trip, or panted under the breath to make your feet swifter, your aim truer, your dodges quicker than whoever was shooting at you. He doesn’t see the appeal of the fancy stuff, until he sees Leia, on what would have been Alderaan’s solstice hunched over a bowl of fragrant herbs, starlight and an undeniable sense of home filling the air.
Luke knows folk magic, farmers magic, home grown on Tatooine. People expect it to be massive, flashy, larger than life, but it’s exactly life sized. Luke knows to rub a nail on a tooth and stick it in a tree to cure a toothache, to divine the sex of a baby with a needle and thread, to spit into the wind and tell you when rain is coming. He’s unnervingly accurate, but his magic is mundane, fundamentally. It’s magic intended for hearth and home, and for family, although it didn’t manage to keep a single one of those together.
Rey’s magic, much like Rey herself, is wild, untrained and deeply powerful. The force of her intent can floor everyone in a 100 foot radius, including herself. She can push herself for days longer without food or water than she should be able to, and everyone around her feels the same hunger, the same desperate thirst that she does. She has gotten into more arguments than she can remember where she has had to stop yelling to stamp the fire out of her wrap. Her fear causes ice inches thick to form on the interrogation chamber on star-killer base. Her joy, when Finn wakes, causes every flower in a three mile radius to spontaneously blossom. She is shakingly powerful, and unrefined; standing near her when magic leaks out is like standing in the path of a tidal wave.
dimir-charmer:
I know that the Force is basically Space Magic ™ anyway, but entertain me:
Stormtroopers, casting in unison, chanting and moving, not knowing the theory or impact of their casting, but following orders. Finn, after getting out, with a brain full of magic that requires hundreds and hundreds of other people working in tandem to work properly. Someone shows him how to cast a charm on his own, and he is blown away; he had never thought that it was something you could do individually.
The pilots of the resistance, cockpits hung with good luck charms of hundreds of different planets and species. “This one was made during the alignment of the stars, which only happens once a hundred years” Pava says, knocking her fingernail against a star-strung chain hung from her headrest. “Oh yeah? Snap says, producing a small bag from under his flight suit. “Moon sand, from the first time the species achieved space flight, blessed by three different sects.” “Nice.” Pava says admiringly. Most of them are trinkets, cheap pieces of junk pawned to off-worlders. All the pilots know this.Most of them, if you asked them seriously, would claim it was all a bunch of garbage. But when a single screw up in your job means that you burn up in atmosphere, or get ejected from your seat at nearly light-speed, or collide with a meteor belt, you take all the extra luck you can get. They keep the bags fed, and ring the bells, and kiss the images; you never know what a little bit of an edge can do.
Leia is the last known practitioner of Alderaanian low magic. It requires ritual, and dozens of different plants that are now extinct, and the light of a moon now wandering lonely in an asteroid belt. It’s not something she is good at; she curses at her little herb garden as the plants refuse to grow, her braided charms fall apart even as she weaves them, and as a princess ‘magical education’ was the first thing cut when she needed to learn to shoot, and encrypt messages, and resist torture techniques. But when her son turns nine, for his coming of age she crowns him with the same flowers, woven in the same patterns that her mother made for her, and blesses him with everything that should come with the crown: Respect, power, and a legacy etched in the stars themselves. Her planet is dead, but her son received the same blessings she did. That is something; that is something.
Poe, given a pen and half a moment, can create runes in half a dozen different languages. He scrawls them up and down his arms before he goes out missions, writes them in get well soon cards, spray paints them on the side of hangers, and carves them into the side of his toolbox. He once spent a very productive dozen rest periods inscribing every rune he knew for ‘safety’ and ‘protection’ and ‘safe return’ into all the individual pieces of BB-8. The other pilots tease him about it, that he shows more concern for the droid than for his own safety. It’s funny, right up until it’s not.
Han, like many pilots, knows only a smattering of blessings and curses. His are all spoken things, minor magic without preparation and without materials. Hexes whispered out of the corner of the mouth to make an opponent trip, or panted under the breath to make your feet swifter, your aim truer, your dodges quicker than whoever was shooting at you. He doesn’t see the appeal of the fancy stuff, until he sees Leia, on what would have been Alderaan’s solstice hunched over a bowl of fragrant herbs, starlight and an undeniable sense of home filling the air.
Luke knows folk magic, farmers magic, home grown on Tatooine. People expect it to be massive, flashy, larger than life, but it’s exactly life sized. Luke knows to rub a nail on a tooth and stick it in a tree to cure a toothache, to divine the sex of a baby with a needle and thread, to spit into the wind and tell you when rain is coming. He’s unnervingly accurate, but his magic is mundane, fundamentally. It’s magic intended for hearth and home, and for family, although it didn’t manage to keep a single one of those together.
Rey’s magic, much like Rey herself, is wild, untrained and deeply powerful. The force of her intent can floor everyone in a 100 foot radius, including herself. She can push herself for days longer without food or water than she should be able to, and everyone around her feels the same hunger, the same desperate thirst that she does. She has gotten into more arguments than she can remember where she has had to stop yelling to stamp the fire out of her wrap. Her fear causes ice inches thick to form on the interrogation chamber on star-killer base. Her joy, when Finn wakes, causes every flower in a three mile radius to spontaneously blossom. She is shakingly powerful, and unrefined; standing near her when magic leaks out is like standing in the path of a tidal wave.
