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Also, a hard, straight, downward stab into the main artery on the inside of the the leg in the upper thigh works in a pinch, but yes, throat and eyes are the best.
Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God
@ellette-giselle yep! exactly what I said, I’m kinda surprised I got it right….
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
@ellette-giselle @theducktator @keilah-h @whalekeeper
Forks? Information on how to hurt people with them? What… has happened here?
Anyway, thank you all for your help. I think I need to think about this a bit more. A couple of you were asking if in the stories magic was a natural ability for the heroes. The stories I currently have are either based off of fairy tales fairy tales (you help the poor old lady, and she gives you powers), Â or would be like superhero adventures, in which case the abilities. There may be things like eating special kinds of fruit to gain temporary powers. I of course can go back to this and change it as needed. The sort of stuff I would expect to find in kids books just trying to be fun. Still, the magic in these is different from the magic in Alan’s world, (which is spell casting, except instead of chanting poetry, speaking words in a weird language, or anything else that felt occultic to me, the user must imagine images.)
By the way, do you think it would be a good idea if I came up with my own vocabulary for the magic in my world to make Christian readers feel more comfortable with it? (Not that I want my readers to think the magic of this world is good, I just wonder if some would be happier if it was not directly called magic. For example, instead of Casting Spells, the characters Imagine Alterations or something like that.)
This is what I mean. This is the unfortunate problem with easily sway-able people; to put the blame on C.S. Lewis is ridiculous. Anyone who goes into the Occult because of a mainstream middle grade/YA fantasy series – they are the issue. That’s like saying you should try to jump off a cliff and fly when you see Superman doing the same. – Whaley
Yup, I agree.
Interesting idea……. does your world have a Bible? I believe I saw you mention something about no direct quotes so as not to change God’s word. However, I would be interested to see what Alan thinks when he reads it and learns about Jesus. To him, Jesus is going to seem like some super powerful Wizard, which would be really co0nfusing because the Faithful are against magic. It could spark some very interesting conversations, especially since as of yet, this culture is atheist. You haven’t mentioned any gods, so that would be the assumptions. The worship of the gods is an every day event so I would expect you to mention it sooner if it did happen. Since you haven’t, I’m guessing that at least Klaw is an atheist country. – Ellette
Yes, Klaw is an atheistic society. They believe something similar to The Big Bang Theory (random bursts of power floating around until they collided and then ‘BANG’), but a little different. Since this world has magic, they believe it was raw magic, not being controlled by anyone that caused some creatures to transform into others randomly until there was a variety of species on the planet today. They use the corruption of magic, turning its users into a new crow-like creatures as proof for this. The Faithful Scientists argue back by saying that magic does not create a new creature but combines two creatures that already exist into one (whatever the species of the wizard was before using magic + crow). Now new information is created, and if anything, some information is lost.
And yes, there are Bibles in this world. I hinted at a character owning one in The Chapter Before. I don’t think I will feature any scenes of Alan reading it (he will off-screen), and you likely will not hear any direct passages from it, but Alan is about to be told by The Faithful Wizard about The Saviour (Jesus). I’ll keep this in mind as I write this scene.
Thanks again everyone!
@linus-smallprint wow I kinda love the altered creation-evolution debate dynamic to include your magic system, that’s cool.
Also, those particular powers you mentioned that are in the books are stuff I’d be perfectly fine with if I saw it in a story. It’s actually the exact kind of thing my brother and I came up with for one of our stories.
I don’t know if calling them something other than “casting spells” is going to change anything. If someone’s reading the book, they by necessity are going to have to be ok with at least some types of magic in fiction. “Imagining alterations” sounds a little awkward and almost too scientific to me? Given that you already are trying not to make it seem occult, even though the practice is still considered evil, I think what you have is okay and you don’t need to change it.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
oooh also, am I allowed to ask a question of my own here?
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
“Imagining alterations” Kinda ups the creepy level in my opinion. It sounds pretty demonic and/or weird spiritual. I mean, saying “casting spells” gives us something to work off of. say “Imagining alterations” and that leaves our imagination to do the rest. I say leave it the way it is.
Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God
@ellette-giselle @keilah-h @theducktator @whalekeeper
I think I got a solution to how I will deal with this problem now. Thank you once more for your help.
“Imagining alterations” sounds a little awkward and almost too scientific to me? – Keilah
“Imagining alterations” Kinda ups the creepy level in my opinion. It sounds pretty demonic and/or weird spiritual. – Ellette
There is a little mixed feedback here (“Imagining alterations” was just a placeholder for something more original and neither scientific nor creepy), but since you both think it would be better to continue with ‘Casting Spells’, I will continue with that. Thanks.
oooh also, am I allowed to ask a question of my own here? – Keilah
Sure thing. Is it related to this topic?
@linus-smallprint Kinda.
So in my current WIP, which is a fanfic but I might set some original stories in the same universe, instead of the Earth as one planet, it’s a whole galaxy, and each planet roughly corresponds to a country in our world. The different species I told you about in the other forum–Drachenheul, Argonites, Changelings, etc.– they’re the ones that inhabit this universe.
I had an idea as to how all these creatures came about, and it has to do with the fact that their history is just a sci-fi version of ours. All the species are descended from humans and can hybridize with them and each other. My thought was “what if this was part of their version of the Tower of Babel event?” Like, at first there was only one species with the genetic potential to branch out but no real reason to. But after the catastrophe that’d correspond to Noah’s Flood (IDK how exactly that’d work in a world with multiple planets, but I’ll get to that some other time), and when the creatures started to rebel against God and stay on one planet, building a megacity there, He changed their bodies as well as their languages, forcing them to leave and find planets better suited for their kind (but not making them so different they weren’t at least partially human anymore).
The only problem is, I don’t want to make God into something He’s not. The story makes a whole lot of sense that way, but I don’t want to create severe theological problems.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
I know it doesn’t seem like I’d be doing anything wrong, but I want to be careful about how I write stuff like that.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
I had an idea as to how all these creatures came about, and it has to do with the fact that their history is just a sci-fi version of ours. All the species are descended from humans and can hybridize with them and each other. My thought was “what if this was part of their version of the Tower of Babel event?” Like, at first there was only one species with the genetic potential to branch out but no real reason to. But after the catastrophe that’d correspond to Noah’s Flood (IDK how exactly that’d work in a world with multiple planets, but I’ll get to that some other time), and when the creatures started to rebel against God and stay on one planet, building a megacity there, He changed their bodies as well as their languages, forcing them to leave and find planets better suited for their kind (but not making them so different they weren’t at least partially human anymore).
The only problem is, I don’t want to make God into something He’s not. The story makes a whole lot of sense that way, but I don’t want to create severe theological problems.
Ho ho ho! I had this exact same idea at some point for my world (minus the different planets) with the same hesitation. I understand this dilemma completely. You want to include some cool fantasy races but at the same time not twist God. You know that God created man in His own image and that salvation extends only to Adam’s descendants, so how can you fit these extra races in? And would God turn humans into different species? The closest we have in Nebuchadnezzar, but even if his mind became beast-like, he was still human.
To be honest, I have not come to a full conclusion on this myself, but perhaps we can bounce ideas off of each other to resolve this issue.
As you know, from reading what I was telling Nathan/ArcaneAxiom, I eventually decided not to do a tower of Babel-like event but switched people turning into different creatures when messing with some energy to close portals that connect that world to ours. This way, even if God would have created the crystals, it was more of an indirect thing that changed the people. I also decided to only drop hints of this history instead of providing the readers with the full thing.
I think part of it is that this is a fantasy story. We also need to trust the reader not to take it too seriously. I recently listened to a talk about Jesus’s parables, and even those are not meant to be taken too seriously. We know that God is not a literal Shepperd, but instead, a Shepherd with his sheep is a picture of how God looks after his Children. This does not mean you should be carefree and sloppy in how you deal with God in your stories, you do want to show your readers who He is. Just remember that your book is a work of fiction and is not the absolute authority on who God is. You are human, you can make mistakes in how you portray God. So can pastors and evangelists. Also, as humans, we can never fully understand God. The Bible is the absolute authority on who God is, so if you can, direct your readers to it so that they can discover Him there.
So what is your goal as a storyteller, then? You can show the reader’s truth instead of simply telling them it, and help them to see things that they could not see before. To get them to consider and think about things they would otherwise ignore. I’ve written a 20-page essay on this topic that I hope will eventually be published on this website, but I think the KP team is too busy fighting ravenous glitches right now to deal with it, so we will have to wait for that.
Now a couple of questions I think you should consider for your problem. we can never fully understand God, but he has revealed some of who he is to us, and understanding this may help you understand whether or not your story is going against who He is.
- What is the purpose of life? Why did God create the world? Why does he do what he does?
- What was the purpose of confusing the languages in The Tower of Babel?
- Why do you think God wanted mankind to spread all over the Earth?
I don’t know the answeres to all of these questions, but I think think it would do us both good to think through these.
@linus-smallprint Yeah, I thought of having it maybe be something humans did to themselves, but I decided that since there’s no real magic in this universe, that would have to be through such means as, say, genetic experimentation (they combined human DNA with that of animals to better survive the planets. But that didn’t make sense to me either, because the information on how to do so would have to have been randomly gained at a time period that would be roughly equivalent to the book of Job’s in our world, and then lost completely. For context, the current story I’m writing in this universe is set in a 1970’s type time period, and the only anachronisms are the fact that they have spaceships and teleporters.
Not only that, but such an explanation would also generate problems of its own (combining human/animal DNA is extremely unethical in our world and I don’t really want to encourage such a thing in a story like this one, and it also implies that humans were never supposed to live on those planets in the first place, which is kinda the opposite of what I was going for.)
Also, none of this will really be in the story anywhere, but for the sake of completeness I like having as much of my worldbuilding planned out as I can, so I could honestly forgo the topic completely and it won’t change the storyline.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
Honestly, I don’t really know why I’m so concerned about this, considering I only have one story set in this universe right now and it’s kind of a fan fiction which really doesn’t deal with all that.
"When in doubt, eat cheese crackers."-me to my charries who don't even know about cheese crackers
Also, none of this will really be in the story anywhere, but for the sake of completeness I like having as much of my worldbuilding planned out as I can, so I could honestly forgo the topic completely and it won’t change the storyline.
Honestly, I don’t really know why I’m so concerned about this, considering I only have one story set in this universe right now and it’s kind of a fan fiction which really doesn’t deal with all that.
Up to you. But you could sort it out now so you don’t have to later for this or another story idea you have.
Sorry this is late, this is answering the first question. I agree with everyone else, it isn’t the books fault. Yes, a book can influence how someone thinks but it’s what the person decides to do with that information and carrying it out, which is the person’s doing. If the main focus of the book is magic, then I would say that that would more likely  lead someone to want to practice magic if it’s portrayed positively, but it’s still the person reading it that chooses to do magic. Hope I made sense there.
"No! Monkeys should have pets, all monkeys should have pets!"
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