Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

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Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Kwipper »

I recently was informed of a book called M.T.H.O.S and after browsing through the first few pages of it, it's basically a book of Shapeshifting using Magick. Here is the link, let me know what or how you feel about this.

http://www.lulu.com/content/2102874
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by JoshuaMadoc »

I feel pessimistic, because since it says "magic", i'm taking it as how whole book won't expand further than different combinations of what shifts first and the traditional hallucinogenic lightshow effect.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by RedEye »

I'll have to research the book a bit more, but most "Magic" is just a form of technology or biology we can't understand yet.

A south american indian (non-contact type) would consider a bic lighter to be "magic", while certain fish can lay eggs without a male's help, and produce differentiated offspring, supposedly impossible.

meh...magic is somebody else's stuff I don't understand...
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Terastas »

Honestly, the first thing it reminded me of was the Ill Will Press's "Amplified Bible" episode (13+ link).

Regarding shapeshifting through magic in fiction. . . Well, it's not that magic doesn't have a place in fiction, but the thing is that once you let a little bit of magic seep in, you pretty much open the proverbial floodgates to the presence of all sorts of other magic-derived weird crap, otherwise the shaepshifting explanation becomes the mother of all generic plot devices.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by RedEye »

That depends.
If the "Magic" angle is used all over the place to avoid having to explain plot lapses; then, yeah, it's formula and b-o-r-i-n-g.

On the other paw, if "Magic" is used sparingly, and follows specific rules that are as detrimental as they are useful; and the "Magic" is limited to specific situations, then it's a usable format.

Let's say that the first Werewolf was the result of a tryst between a Wolf-god and a mortal woman; and their offspring became Werewolves: then you're using a divine source for a specific "magical" action, which is not only believable, but makes sense to a degree.

It's all in how the "Magic" is used, IMHO.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by outwarddoodles »

I agree right along with what Red-Eye said: Magick has it own 'laws' and 'physics' -- or it should, anyway.

For example: If a mage could bring back another dead character with the slightest twitch of his hand, that would be empty and unrealistic. But if a mage were forced to sacrifice his own life to give life to another -- by adding the 'cost' to the magic, it becomes more complete and realistic.

Obviously, anyone could go more in depth, but any good writer knows that magick has to work according to a system.

About the book: Sounds interesting, but that could just be me. Of course, I wouldn't doubt if this book is more along the lines of spiritual/psychological shapeshifting rather than the 'real-thing.'

Edit: After previewing this book, well... no wonder somebody's grandmother think's we're a gang.
:lol:
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Terastas »

outwarddoodles wrote:I agree right along with what Red-Eye said: Magick has it own 'laws' and 'physics' -- or it should, anyway.

For example: If a mage could bring back another dead character with the slightest twitch of his hand, that would be empty and unrealistic. But if a mage were forced to sacrifice his own life to give life to another -- by adding the 'cost' to the magic, it becomes more complete and realistic.
Equivalent Exchange, in other words.

It doesn't have to be that rigorous, but yes, when you involve magic in writing, you do want to put rules in place concerning its use so that it doesn't become too much of a convenience. Generally, any use of magic should come with either an equivalent cost (must give a life to take a life) or an equivalent risk (spell might bring him back a zombie or backfire and kill the caster).

It sucks the interest right out of the story if its too much of a convenience for them. Like the dragon balls in Dragon Ball Z; because they could use the dragon balls to restore everything that had been lost just by wishing for it, it reached a point where the entire planet was destroyed on a daily basis just to keep the plot mildly interesting.
:P

Only time you can make magic a convenience is when it's a convenience for everyone. Like in Dungeons & Dragons -- "You're a wizard? Yeah, big deal, get in line with the rest of em.'"

So I guess the rule of thumb regarding magic in fiction would be that it has to be one of the following:
1) Big cost.
2) Big risk.
3) Big whoop.
:grinp:
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Berserker »

Add: 4) Big Mystery.

Magic is incredibly rare. No one knows how it occurs, or what the cost for using it is, because its users are fickle, transient, or mysterious. A wizard could really be an old man, or he might be a god, but what do you know? He caused lightning to strike from thin air once. Even though he hasn't done it since, and even though he seems like a wise fellow, you don't understand it and you're scared stiff of what else he might be capable of.

A warrior turns into a werewolf. Did you really see him do that? What foul witchery is this? You don't know how or why this wolf-man came to be: he just is, and as far as you know he's the only one of his kind. Oh God, I hope he doesn't decide to eat you!
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Terastas »

Berserker wrote:Add: 4) Big Mystery.

Magic is incredibly rare. No one knows how it occurs, or what the cost for using it is, because its users are fickle, transient, or mysterious. A wizard could really be an old man, or he might be a god, but what do you know? He caused lightning to strike from thin air once. Even though he hasn't done it since, and even though he seems like a wise fellow, you don't understand it and you're scared stiff of what else he might be capable of.

A warrior turns into a werewolf. Did you really see him do that? What foul witchery is this? You don't know how or why this wolf-man came to be: he just is, and as far as you know he's the only one of his kind. Oh God, I hope he doesn't decide to eat you!
Mm. You could do that, but the problem is that including magic without any explanation is what typically degenerates it into a generic plot device. Ideally your protagonists should never have to keep secrets from the reader, and in the hands of an antagonist it takes on the appearance of a cheap plot device designed to keep the story going.

So even if you don't reveal the rules of magic to the reader, you should have them in your mind as you're writing it.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Berserker »

Terastas wrote:
Berserker wrote:Add: 4) Big Mystery.

Magic is incredibly rare. No one knows how it occurs, or what the cost for using it is, because its users are fickle, transient, or mysterious. A wizard could really be an old man, or he might be a god, but what do you know? He caused lightning to strike from thin air once. Even though he hasn't done it since, and even though he seems like a wise fellow, you don't understand it and you're scared stiff of what else he might be capable of.

A warrior turns into a werewolf. Did you really see him do that? What foul witchery is this? You don't know how or why this wolf-man came to be: he just is, and as far as you know he's the only one of his kind. Oh God, I hope he doesn't decide to eat you!
Mm. You could do that, but the problem is that including magic without any explanation is what typically degenerates it into a generic plot device. Ideally your protagonists should never have to keep secrets from the reader, and in the hands of an antagonist it takes on the appearance of a cheap plot device designed to keep the story going.

So even if you don't reveal the rules of magic to the reader, you should have them in your mind as you're writing it.
I disagree. I think including magic without explanation is what makes it magic in the first place.

Did Charles Perrault create rules for how and why magic worked when his Fairy Godmother turned a pumpkin into a coach? Of course not: it was that she was a fairy and that's what fairies can do. (I suppose the "system" is that it turns back at the stroke of Midnight, but still.) In The Hobbit, was there a hidden science behind The Ring turning Bilbo invisible, or Beorn becoming a bear? No; the ring was magic and that was its secret, and Beorn turning into a bear was his, and that was the end of it. There wasn't a system involved with either of these things. (At least not until the Lord of the Rings.)

In fact, in my previous example I had Gandalf's light (from The Return of the King) in mind. He could do that because he was a wizard, and wizards have magic powers. He did it on a whim and seemingly with no consequence, and yet, this moment was one of the most powerful scenes in the story.

I think magic can be used both sparingly and without explanation. In most good writing, magic can "seep in" all over the place with no rhyme or reason whatsoever, and still not devolve into a slippery slope or turn into a boring plot device.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Terastas »

Hate to be a nitpick, but:

The fairy godmother's pumpkin coach had implied rules attached. Though we don't know why her magic could only be sustained until midnight, those were the rules she had to work with.

The One Ring's magic came with a great risk and at a great expense. Sauron forged his soul into the ring, thus even those that knew absolutely nothing of the ring's power became possessed by it. Remember the opening scene in Return of the King with Smeagol and Deagol? Bilbao and Frodo had limited resistance to the ring's corruptive nature as hobbits, but in the long term, it gradually possessed them as well.

As for Gandalf, apart from him being centuries old and having studied magic for God only knows how long (in which case his time and effort put into the study of magic would have been the great cost), Gandalf is a Maiar, which in the LotR universe would be more or less the equivalent of an archangel. Magic was second nature to Gandalf because he was of otherworldly origin himself.

Again, the rules of magic in Middle Earth were not clearly stated, but they were still there.

And besides, light? In D&D, illumination is one of the simplest cantrips available. A scene from The Venture Brothers comes to mind -- after Dr. Orpheus defended his status as a necromancer by creating balls of fire in his hands, Venture took out a match and lit it.

The key word in equivalent exchange, in this case, would be "equivalent." You can dabble in little bitty things and not have to bore your readers with the details, but you can't just expect your reader to accept magic without any rules or consequences as a whole and expect them to remain entertained.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Berserker »

The One Ring's magic came with a great risk and at a great expense. Sauron forged his soul into the ring, thus even those that knew absolutely nothing of the ring's power became possessed by it. Remember the opening scene in Return of the King with Smeagol and Deagol? Bilbao and Frodo had limited resistance to the ring's corruptive nature as hobbits, but in the long term, it gradually possessed them as well.
You're talking about the ring in The Lord of the Rings. I'm actually talking about the ring in The Hobbit.

D&D is a game and has rules, it has nothing to do with literature. Gandalf shot a "shaft of white light" from his staff that drove away the Nazgul. Who cares if this is a "cantrip" in some game. There wasn't an "equivalent exchange" there.

And who knows how long Gandalf studied magic? Or that he was a Maiar? These things are never revealed to the first-time reader of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's writing, we have no idea what magic is or how it works. Even behind the scenes, Tolkien is never clear on this. There simply is no "cost" and "consequence" for many of the examples of magic in both the Hobbit and LOTR. Gandalf used magic many times in both of these works with no apparent consequence, explanation, or system.

The fact of the matter is, in many stories, magic is both mysterious and capricious, taking the form of one-off miracles that are not formulaic or replicable, and its rules are never adjudicated by the author.

A werewolf example:

If I wrote a story about a band of adventurers on a quest, and one of the key protagonists happens to be a "grim faced warrior who can at will and by some eldritch mysticism transform into a feral beast," if I'm a good writer I can have him use his power with no background or explanation whatsoever and still maintain a very entertaining and very cool story. Just because there are no rules behind his shapeshifting doesn't mean that I'm obligated to have him use it as a generic plot device to easy-mode through every problem.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by archangel_athena »

i dont feel that its magic....ive all ways thought that we were born with the ability...its just that most never know it or just never accept it.... :P
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by RedEye »

Fact is, we use "Magick or Magic or Magery" or whatever else you want to call it every day in a religious context.

To the devout Catholic, the wafer becomes Christ's body through the Magic of transubstitution when taken in holy Communion...*
And the wine becomes the blood of Christ the same way.*
Holy Water is Bespelled water, made so by a Priest's Clerical Magic.*

We refer to some forms of Magic as "Miracles", yet the same power** is involved.

It's religion to some, and magic to others, and mummery to still others. That doesn't matter. If it works, it works...
*Researched from Roman Catholicism.
**the power of the Universe, of Creation, of Heaven...of Belief.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Uniform Two Six »

I think magic and werewolves (in the same story at least) isn't a big problem as long as the magic side of the equation doesn't get overdone. In my opinion, magic as the explaination for a werewolf's powers make a certain amount of sense. People throwing fireballs and shooting lightning does not (or maybe it does, if you're writing in the D&D or Shadowrun world, but whatever). As for it automatically spiralling out of control, there's an easy fix: How is it that ordinary mortals don't go around with god-like powers? Easy. Magic is hard. It requires study, work, concentration, years of practice, inner peace or whatever-the-hell-else you use as an excuse for why magic is uncommon in the world. Sure you could summon flames into existence with a magic spell... and Joe Schmoe can do it with a book of matches. My all time favorite incidence of this was in a murder-mystery-comedy novel set in Florida. Two Seminole Indians are getting ready to go out into the Everglades to dump a body:

"These mosquitoes are insane today. Don't you have some ancient remedy that can make them leave us in peace?"
"Yes. Those of us in the Tribe who know of it call it 'going to the store and buying yourself a can of Cutter'. Now help me get the body in the boat."
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Defensorem Lupus »

Well this does sound very interesting and I think it will help me out a lot.
Thanks.
Plus reading the description sent chills up and down my spine. Very creepy, but then again I like creepy . . . maybe a little too much.
But I think magic is relative to how people perceive it, but very much so possible . . . as a science in among itself.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Terastas »

Berserker wrote:You're talking about the ring in The Lord of the Rings. I'm actually talking about the ring in The Hobbit.
The ring from Lord of the Rings was the ring from The Hobbit. Only two people ever had possession of the ring in the Hobbit: Bilbao, who had limited resistance to its corruptive nature as a naturally taoist hobbit, and Gollum, whom the ring left absolutely F.U.B.A.R.
And who knows how long Gandalf studied magic? Or that he was a Maiar? These things are never revealed to the first-time reader of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's writing, we have no idea what magic is or how it works. Even behind the scenes, Tolkien is never clear on this. There simply is no "cost" and "consequence" for many of the examples of magic in both the Hobbit and LOTR. Gandalf used magic many times in both of these works with no apparent consequence, explanation, or system.
Actually, Tolkein did write a lot of material which was published after his death in The History of Middle-earth, much of which explained the origins of the land, its races, and their histories. It's not exactly clear if he ever had intended to publish these, but he still wrote them to use as guidelines while he was working on The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Like I said, even if the author does not explicitly reveal the rules to the reader, he should still have them in place for his own reference.

You should see all the crap I've written for my still unnamed zombie book(s); I've got over sixty pages written and only, like, three of them are part of the actual story. I wrote all that other stuff as a reference; something I will keep going back to in order to make sure everything I write in the story is linear and complementary. And I'm not done with my reference work either; far from it. But once it is done, what I hope to have is a vivid and detailed description of an expansive setting with a rich history, something which, for all I know, my grandchildren could be writing about.

It's acceptable in your example if you don't explicitly reveal the nature of his ability, but you, the author, should still have a system for your own; some explanation for yourself as to why he can't just shape-shift whenever he's bored or why not just anyone can do it either. If there are no rules, there are also no limits, so even if you don't explain why he can or cannot do something, you, his creator, should know for yourself.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by RedEye »

If you ask any stage magician, the main element of "Magic" is the mystery of "how'd he DO that" amplified by the expectation of the audience.

Robert Houdon (a French Stage magician) kept a religious war from occurring in a French colony by demonstrating an un-liftable chest that he, with his magic could lift.
Every strongman local tried to lift and failed. Then Houdon stepped up and said a few words and lifted it with one hand, thus foxing the local mullahs.
The box had an iron bottom (or iron inside) and Houdon used an electromagnet to make it un-liftable, until he told his people to turn the electricity off.

Thus there is the possiblity that the Shift or whatever is the equivalent, and we don't understand electromagnetism.
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Re: Werewolf Shapeshifting through Magick. What do you think?

Post by Silent Hunter »

The phrase "if it works for the story comes to mind." If you can put magic of the shift into the story and make it fit then its fine. Otherwise it will look really overused or odd.
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