I've been following a lovely set of arguments lately about the 'types' of magic systems and which ones are better or worse. For one side of the discussion you can read this blog post by NK Jemisin  or watch this YouTube video by a guy who makes YouTube videos (he seems great, but I don't know anything else about him). For my side you can read... this. First a few definitions. What is a Magic System? Not everybody uses the term this way, but I'm going to go with Brandon Sanderson's definition of a magic system. Your magic system is whatever group of rules and tropes wrap around the superhuman powers of your characters. In a fantasy setting, your magic system is often CALLED a magic system. It's what happens when a wizard casts a spell or summons a demon or whatever. In a science fiction story, it's the not-yet-possible tech. A warp drive and a Star Wars blaster are just as much a 'magic system' in this sense as Allomancy. And in something like a ...

 Rise of Skywalker sucked. The whole final trilogy sucked. And I'm not saying this because I didn't like a female main character (I'm totally fine with that) or the racial inclusiveness of the cast (I am highly in favor of that). It's because Rey's arc, her fight scenes, and especially the final scene, violated the basic principles of good action movies. Here's my 2-part thesis: 1. Action movies are satisfying because the just (good, virtuous) characters win. Snuff films and torture porn are a different genre with different rules.  2. In good action movies, the heroes must win in cool ways, and their victories MUST be connected to their virtue. The way they win must SHOW how they are better - not  physically stronger or tougher, but better in some way that we morally value. Smarter, more disciplined, harder working, more courageous, things like that.  What does this mean? In the real world, the winner of a fistfight is not guaranteed to be the better person. Bad...

 One of my favorite (not the best, just my favorite) television scenes is from The Sopranos. A very good show about a mafia boss in New Jersey, in this scene the main character, Tony, is at a very nice restaurant. A younger man is sitting at a nearby table wearing a baseball hat (which is poor manners for a very nice restaurant). Tony Soprano, a man accustomed to violence, a man with an air of authority (illegitimate authority, but still authority), tells the young man to take his hat off. Which he does. The Sopranos did not paint its characters as saints or even Robin Hood style thieves. They were bad men who did very bad things. But they were often bad men who did good things, or at least things modern people would like to be able to do. We (or maybe just me) would like to tell rude young people to take their hats off in nice restaurants. We would like to be able to keep our children safe, to provide a nice income for our families. We all want more power, more agency, and we live...