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Old 07-22-2022, 07:38 PM   #20
VIVIT
 
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Join Date: Jun 2018
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Default Re: You got magic in my scifi game!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Nah, it means "everything supernatural", which is reasonably accurate.
It's less "magic is everything supernatual" and more "supernatural things cannot be objectively categorized". Real thaumaturgical practices ("real" in the sense that people actually do them) are variously categorized as magical, miraculous, psychic, or some word in the native language of the practitioners with no direct English translation based on criteria that are no more empirically verifiable than whether the practices have any actual power, and observers of the practices may categorize them differently than the practitioners do. Fictional thaumaturgical practices are categorized however the author wants, and from a factual perspective, it's impossible to argue against those categorizations, not simply because Magic Don't Real, but because the real-life counterpart to magic has no widely agreed upon definition.

TL;DR: what is and is not "magic" depends on the setting, in real life as much as in fiction.
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