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scarlet--wiccan · 5 months

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Do you think there’s a meaningful distinction between “witches” and other magic users in the marvel universe (beyond, potentially, gender)?

Witch and warlock are obviously treated more or less as gender-swapped synonyms and both have somewhat negative connotations that don’t get associated with people like Dr Strange (afaik), but I feel like there might be more to it, I’m just not sure. Calling Nico or Billy a witch feels more accurate than calling Cleo or Victor a witch, but I can’t figure out if this is grounded in anything besides my own opinion

Yes, actually! We can identify social, cultural, mythical and practical factors distinguishing "witches" from other types of magicians. However, those distinctions are not always clear. As you noted, the word "witch" is often used very broadly to describe any female spellcaster. As a reader, you'll have to rely on context to determine whether the writer is denoting a specific type of magician, or just using gendered language.

Functionally speaking, all forms of magic are basically interchangeable. Most spellcasters have the same powers and abilities, and writers don't always put in the effort to make them feel unique. That doesn't necessarily bother me, so long as they are tailoring the language and imagery to suit each character's background, but that doesn't happen as often as I'd like. Again, you'll just need to use critical thinking to figure out when a lack of distinction is really just a lack of creativity and effort.

With that out of the way, let's break down what we do know about witchcraft, and the history of witches, in the Marvel world!

Social: Witches have historically gathered in covens, settlements and societies, and have even endured literal witch-hunts. In real life, this is not quite the truth, but it Marvel comics, we can say that witches comprise distinct societies which suffer distinct forms of persecution. We also know that many witches belong to a magical lineage, and that these witch families often use a special naming convention to identify themselves with unique colors and symbols, indicating that witches have unique customs and traditions setting them apart.

Cultural: In Marvel comics, all forms of magical or spiritual folk practice are literally real, in the same way that all mythologies and polytheistic religions are literally real-- Asgard is a real place, Thor is a real person, and spells have real power. Witchcraft is typically represented as a form of European folk magic. Other traditions, such as vodou, voodoo, and multiple forms of Indigenous spirituality have also been demonstrated, and are often grouped together, along with witchcraft, under a broad category of "cultural magic." As shown in Midnight Suns, many of these traditions from around the world have a certain shared history, as the Coven at Mount Wundagore included representatives from numerous cultures.

Mythological: "Witchcraft" itself exists as an abstract entity, like Death, Nightmare, or Eternity. She is the source of witchcraft's power, but also a symbolic representation of all witches and the natural balance of magic, and she is sometimes worshipped as a goddess. Witchcraft resides at the heart of the Witches' Road, an Inner Plane uniquely accessible to witches that transcends time and is connected to many of the mythical realms. Witchcraft may also be intrinsically connected to chaos magic-- ancient witches were responsible for binding and harnessing Earth's natural chaos magic; Witchcraft, the entity, is shown consorting with an abstract Chaos entity; and we know that Wundagore and the Darkhold are connected to many cults and covens throughout history.

Practical: Unfortunately, this is the weakest area. For a brief time, Wanda's magical practice borrowed a lot of Wiccan motifs, which was problematic in its own right, but in modern comics, we just don't get to see enough of how witches, specifically, do magic. Most characters who practice some form of traditional magic have a closer connection to natural elements and the spirit world, and they may have particular powers related to their background. Doctor Voodoo is a great example, although the actual depiction of his culture is deeply flawed. Scarlet Witch (2015) introduced certain unique abilities, such as witches' sight; specific mechanics around the cost of magic; and a style of spellcasting that relied on Wanda's knowledge of real-world languages and magical symbols. Billy and Nico also use varying degrees of wordplay, so I like this approach and I would focus on building that into a cohesive magical system if I was a writer.

#wanda maximoff #scarlet witch #agatha harkness #billy kaplan #wiccan #nico minoru #jericho drumm #witchcraft #magical theory

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comicaurora · 2 years

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Hey Red, longtime fan of your channel and as of yesterday Aurora binge-reader

I have a few questions about your comic, answer as many or as few or as none at all as you want, and I apologize in advance for my physics-and-worldbuilding-junkie lizard brain that absolutely adores and wants to grok your awesome fantasy series, Please know this all comes from my own insatiable curiosity and passion for your comic

First of all, the metal caste gets their free will from recieving a spark at puberty, or from being struck by lightning and being "chosen", but could a mage give a spark to an unsparked metal caste by zapping them with lightning? could you be zapped multiple times? what happens if an already sparked metal caste is struck by lightning?

Do certain subgroups of humans that were elementally influenced or evolved show specific proclivities towards respective elements? (like are there a lot of stone mage metal-castes)

What are the crystal caste and where did they come from/were first mentioned either in a post or in the story? Rattle off as many varieties and their general deal as you want

Would the inhabitants of aurora ever have to retool or add new holidays if in the future any significant enough conceptual gods arise?

Is the white dragon real in the sense of as VD's opposite or is she just not real/is just a created god

If so, what's the actual source of the paladin's magic and how does it fit in with the elements?

Can gods channel the elements and be mages?

If so, why didn't VD posses the twins or have a god created for him to channel magic through?

how is VD even able to influence anything if he's stuck inside the adamantine prison?

if the white dragon is real, does she correspond to an eighth element?

is the eighth element soul?

if not what is soul? and is anything in this world not made of "elements" in the "stuff made from a primordial or whatever made them" way?

is adamantine made of the same stuff as soul?

are there more than eight elements?

where do stars come from?

where did the moons come from?

are there more planets besides the world we know?

do they have living things?

does the amalgam star look kind of like the green sun from homestuck (look it up)

do the other 4 promordials (and the 1-2 dragons) have progenitors like life's amalgam star and fire's two mysterious parents?

is or was there a whole society of primordials out in space?

If the promordials happened to develop a different language/alphabet would their great runes look different?

And some fun meta questions and comments:

I love the auroran calender, being that it is far more mathmatically clean and consistent than our own, (I watched your Thoth gambles with the moon video), is this sort of wish fufillment? I also love how you incorporated some chaos back in with the red moon sword and added a three day intercalery period

What are some common tropes you knowingly subverted or played with when writing the story?

It's extremely refreshing that Kendal doesn't have "chosen one" angst, instead he has much more subdued "no one will get hurt because of me" and "am I human?" angst

What's your opinion on tv tropes, (I for one, have wasted so many hours on it)

Did the primordials have a super-fun six man band dynamic?

who was the comic relief?

What's your actual opinion on Erin (I find his character super fun/compelling and I find his hubris hilarious)

The god mechanics have kind of a neil gaiman feel, I love it!

Vash gives off extreme shonen protagonist vibes (like goku + thor + spiderman) Is this on purpose? I love it

Kendal also seems pretty shonen protagonisty

Could you make an entire chapter where Erin just reads one of his magic textbooks and we get an in depth look at the study of magic and everything the people in the story know about it (I'm kidding of course but I also would actually eat that up like chocolate pudding because I'm a total lore junkie)

And sorry this is soooo long, you prob won't respond and I don't want to annoy you, just really curious and excited about your comic!

Holy heck, okay, let's count it down

The lightning that sparks a metal-caste cannot be influenced by another will - so a mage's lightning won't have this effect. If an already-sparked metal-caste is struck by lightning they receive a Second Spark and become a Stormbreaker.

Yep! For instance, almost all Ignans are fire mages.

The Crystal Caste live on the Helm-East continents and were influenced by the increased presence of Stone's bones, which are the source of all natural crystal. They haven't been mentioned in the comic yet, but have been discussed some out here. They're allegedly ruled by the Adamant Caste located on the northern continent, a family descended from the first Adamant King who led a rebellion against the magically dominant Glassfolk that once ruled the region. They possess the unique ability to control and redirect magic other people cast, even more rare among the Crystal-Caste who are very rarely mages of any kind. Under the Adamant Caste on the equatorial continent are three empires in a tense stalemate - the militarily powerful Sapphire Empire, the naturally-protected Ruby Empire shielded by a mountain range and a vast desert, and the weaker Emerald Empire that sprawls on the eastern coast and has only maintained its power at a level comparable to the other two through uniquely cunning tactics and a habit of accepting the talents of non-Crystal-Caste into the court - even some ferin.

Not unless they wanted to. The gods that get festivals are the ones it's easy to theme a party around.

Unknown!

See above!

Nope! The gods control the elements in a completely different way than mortals do. Rather than channeling elemental energy/primordial souls, they seem to impose their own soul on the elements they wish to manipulate, embodying it and reshaping it that way.

See above!

The Void Dragon is a living primordial being. We have no parameters for what abilities we can expect him to have, as all the other primordials we know of are dead. Evidently he can exert a degree of surveillance and physical control outside of his body. Maybe that's something all primordials could do!

Presumably the Light Dragon would correspond to an eighth element.

If soul energy is an element like the other primordials, it doesn't behave the same way any of them do, and it seems to universally permeate everywhere anyone has looked so far.

The nature and origin of soul energy is unknown. The Collector would very much like an answer to the same question!

Adamant is the perfect balanced fusion of the six elemental primordials, and it's a physical substance. Soul energy is a typically invisible energy that permeates everything. They are not the same thing.

Confirmed yes, starmetal is not any of the known elements and is theorized to be literal cooled shards of dead stars. Thus we know there are more elements out there, even if it is just one more element.

The origins of stars are largely unknown, but some observers with very good telescopes claim that new stars sometimes appear in luminous gassy nebulas.

The moons are the destroyed remains of Stone's armaments - a sword and a tower shield. Without him, over time they crumbled and gravity took over. That's why they're called Sword and Shield.

Unknown!

See above!

Pretty dope but no, it's much weirder than that

Yes!

Unknown but possible!

Evidence suggests that the runic language is the writing system of the Primordials, so by definition the runes would look the same.

META QUESTIONS:

Definitely wish fulfillment on my part. I just like it when things evenly divide other things. Is that so wrong?

Oh so many. Chief among them is the Easy Romantic Subplot Between The Male Lead And The First Girl. There was a draft (when I was like eleven) where of course that was going to be a thing, and then I realized I super didn't need to do anything I didn't want to do, and their relationship can just be whatever. Outside of that I don't tend to think of storytelling in terms of what tropes to avoid so much as I let the characters do what makes sense for them, and sometimes that means skipping over more easy stock plots or sources of conflict.

Kendal's flavor of angst is, in my opinion, significantly more relatable than "boohoo having a cosmic destiny and awesome sword is really sad and I wish my life was boring", like even though that's probably what WOULD happen I like this a lot more

love me some TVTropes, I spent like six months in highschool devouring as much of it as I could find and emerged changed - an elevated being, one could say. To this day I like going on TVTropes after I finish a series and just reading through the bite-sized analysis and highlights.

yeup!

definitely Lightning

I love Erin very much. I write a lot of paragons who will always try to do the most morally right thing they can manage - so it's very refreshing to write somebody who literally thinks he's too smart for that. Erin has a moral compass - he even follows it sometimes - but he prides himself on prioritizing real things like knowledge and power. Erin will use any tools he has available to succeed - in theory. In practice he's rigidly principled and it frustrates him immensely. Erin is like a "season 1 villain turned season 2 grumpy ally" except we fully skipped season 1. Erin is also convinced he's the main character, which is very funny to me. Also sometimes it's just fun to write someone being a huge dick to people who deserve it, and since I have a lot of protagonists who either can't or won't stand up for themselves, letting Erin loose on the people hurting them is very cathartic.

Thanks! Neil Gaiman's attitude towards gods definitely influenced me, although I put my own spin on it to make it work in a way I actually fully enjoyed.

Vash's protagonist vibes are absolutely intentional. He is the hero of the wrong story - every brash, powerful, badass protagonist trait I like rolled into one. Literally the most mortifyingly known I've ever felt was when I sent the first chapter to a friend of mine and she saw the first page he talked on and immediately responded "so this dude is based on Inuyasha right?"

Kendal has the outward appearance of the most classic hero I could construct, but on the inside is very different - a lot more melancholy and very laser-focused on his task, caring achingly deeply but slowly learning to let himself be cared for in return. Many hero's journeys focus on the protagonist's personal desires and flaws distracting them from their inevitable quest, but I thought it would be interesting if Kendal had the exact opposite problem - a being driven by a singular heroic purpose learning to let himself do and feel literally anything else.

if we ever get to the Mage Academy this could very well happen and that is a threat

#asks #aurora #long post

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616witch · 2 years

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why aren't you an avengers hater?

Hi anon!

I do like the Avengers; specifically, the version I got to know in the initial few comics, & their development until the 70s & 80s, and hell, i even appreciate some of what was going on in the 90s. part of this is because i simply have to; most of my favourite characters are majorly affiliated with the avengers, like scarlet witch, the vision, hank pym, wonder man, wasp, hercules etc, so if i didn't like them or didn't learn to appreciate them i'd probably struggle. you'd be hard pressed to find a hardcore fan of wanda, for example, and not have them at the very least tolerate the team, otherwise you'd be missing out on the crucial moments of her development, and this goes for other characters.

so why do i like them specifically? i guess because they offer an interesting place in marvel, in that their dynamics are... weird. like, the x-men have a very clear common cause in that they're all mutants & none of them want to get, you know, murdered, and simultaneously (in the leekirby era) want to keep mutant extremeists contained so they don't take their anger out on a defenceless human innocent. the fantastic four, while heroes, don't have that as their primary job; they're a family of explorers. the avengers are different in that they neither have a common thread really connecting them, except for the fact that they all in some way want to help other people, and recognise that this would be easier achieved with other people supporting them.

there's less strings attached, at least initially. they're a group of weird misfits that have a common cause, but a lot of the time, really find each other intolerable because they all have conflicting personalities & ways of heroing. this is different from the x-men of the era, because they all have broadly similar ways due to being taught by xavier. the fantastic four, while conflicting, balance each other out because of their defined archetypes. the avengers try to do this, but there are complications that make them interesting, and part of the intrigue for me is reading & watching how different writers grapple with trying to have different archetypes met by changing around different aspects. they are a team constantly reshuffling & remodelling, which is sort of frustrating today when a new team means a new volume, but is funner to read for me personally when things just continued as they were.

examples; when thor leaves the team, hank & janet return to the team, and hank becomes permanently stuck at 10 feet tall, because the team needed a new muscular character to act as the tank. around the time when hercules joins the team, hank becomes able to be normal sized again. we see this again when clint barton becomes goliath for some reason; the team needs a tank. janet, intitally a fun-loving, flirty character, matures as writers begin to focus on her marital problems with hank, and so beast arrives and takes on that roll. when he leaves, its not long until starfox joins the team, and similarly plays the role of flirty hedonist that beast did. this continues on & on, and its an interesting source of conflict for me between writer & team. in some ways, they're more free to reinvent & introduce characters more than the fantastic four or x-men of the same era. in other ways, they're more restricted by the very clear rules set up in what makes a superhero team work & what archetypes you need.

this is very well shown in hank pym; writers would constantly change him, his powers & identities, to justify him being there when more powerful characters inevitably came along to do what he did better, because he was only a regular human being. but they kept him around because he was psychologically interesting, which obviously resulted in the trail of yellowjacket arc. an innocuous change to make him seem more interesting had such a strange knock on effect and its interesting!

yes, you get that in other comics, but because they're not as tied together as the ff or the x-men, writers constantly have to justify why is the character there. what are they contributing. for wanda & pietro, it's because they represent a potential safe space, a way to realise their heroism that didn't exactly get much light with magneto, an opportunity to discover their potential. for janet, it's initially a way to get away from the mundanity of being a wealthy heiress, because she's developed a taste for the adrenaline of superheroics with hank, and as she grows it is because she feels a genuine responsibility for others & knows she can make more radical change there than she would as a fashion designer. for t'challa, it's initially because he wants to protect his home from them, and then because they're facing a lot of threats that could harm wakanda, and does develop a genuine appreciation & closeness for the team but his nation always comes first. and so on.

i realise i've gone on a bit and to be honest i don't think i articulated myself well, but those are the reasons i come to; they offer a clearly defined other purpose in the 616 universe, they serve interesting dilemmas for characters in a way that very naturally comes, at least in the 60s thru 80s, while for other teams like the ff it could sometimes feel a bit forced.

now, this isn't to say there aren't flaws, and i'll try to be brief when i say these; they are the team worst impacted by 9/11 and the changes it had on american politics. the change from a mostly indepentant team that actively rebelled against the government & agents put in charge of them to essentially a government puppet hurt them so much. the avengers are supposed to actively fight corruption; vision, beast, and i'm pretty sure sam wilson all try to deck gyrich in the face at least once, but after 9/11 they all listen & argue his arguments.

the change from one or two main titles to multiple also hurts the team. it makes sense; there's so many avengers characters, but having so many has made contemporary writers lose sight of what makes the avengers the avengers. what makes them matter, what makes them work. the first main reshuffle of the team brought three different villains into the team to become heroes. they shouldn't be attacking & arresting superpowered people at random, who've committed very mild crimes. they offer a place for redemption, and that has gotten lost in recent times.

anyway, sorry for rambling, but tldr; avengers mostly good, their characterisation post 9/11 is deeply unfair & needs to be actively looked at by writers if they want to move past it, and i think that most comic readers, especially a certain facet of x-men fans, should read through their earlier stuff to avoid making generalisations mostly based off contemporary event comics, because that isn't the avengers i am thinking of when i talk about them, & i think people should know those avengers before making overarcing statements abt how they're all cops or something lol

#asks #anonymous #i talk too much i apologise </3 #sorry in advance for typos

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