'good' and 'evil' magic

today's dream had me waking up poking magic systems and reaching for the dictionary. which meant getting up and turning on the computer, because paper dictionaries woefully incomplete.

There were magical beings with powers that divided up into two factions, commonly known as good and evil. The point of view character had a very mixed bloodline and had like a report card of his abilities, because he had a little of everything from the common types. They used alphabets where being towards the end was more powerful. Probably they had omega powers for the bossest ones, but it might have been Z, you never know.

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So yeah, arguably Evil slightly vampire Arthur and Merlin in a 'verse with vampires and plant magic and whatever that theon thing could possibly be. As an Evil power it feeds on some aspect of intelligent life, so maybe feeding on worship? Complex politics and the quest for women who wandered off to do their own thing centuries ago.

I think that's a different spin on a lot of elements I've read before. It could work.

I'd just be a lot more interested in it from the women's point of view.

(no subject)

I watched 'I robot, you Jane', the Buffy episode with the demon in the internet.
omg computer tech so 90s. so very, very 90s.
I had forgotten. I had repressed. Can you imagine from here dropping back to 90s tech? *shudders* Screen quality like nope, pixels like woah, 256 colors, webcams like why even bother. Giant, giant type on giant boxes of monitors. The march of progress delivered us and I for one and grateful.

Also, basing an entire episode around the idea that people on the internet may *gasp* not be who they say they are! That's... that was a new concept???
And the computer geek talking like bad cyberpunk.
And there being 3 people using the computers at lunch time?
and the computer geek as a recogniseable stereotype when all they're doing is using emails.
Email. As geeky.

It's a total time machine and I don't think I could shift my internal perspective sufficiently to watch it on its own terms, it's in like the uncanny valley of history, everything was so familiar strange.

Plus there's clunky moments like characters having to find a phone on a stick before they could report in, and finding one really conveniently close to the next scene. There's a ton written about how mobile phones make plots trickier, but they simplify sometimes too.

We carry around small devices connected to the accumulated knowledge of mankind.
I like Giles' speech about how knowledge should be tangible, memorable, smelly.
But I'm pretty sure by now he'd really appreciate the ability to keyword search his entire library rather than spending six hours looking for a one line reference.
And if everyone on the planet could keyword search not just his library but the library of every watcher who ever lived? Demons beware.
... everyone beware, there'd be all sorts of unwise summonings going on. Can you imagine the trolling possibilities? Swatting but with demons. *shudders*
Still, knowledge, yaays.

I don't so much like the thing where Giles and Jenny were arguing so of course they'll end up dating. That's... she pokes him and tries to get a reaction out of him and they agree about nothing, that's not romantic.

... also, while I know the order things happen in in our universe, from Giles' point of view Ethan was first and if anyone's going to poke him for reaction and smoulder at him I feel he has dibs...



That whole bit at the end with 'we're doomed' is just 7 years in Sunnydale in a nutshell. Normal relationships? *hollow laugh*



More than the other episodes so far I watched this one aware this was a show I used to like. It felt of the past, not just from it. It was slow and clunky and explained far too many things and used language that's just dated really badly.


But the basic idea of being manipulated over the internet by our honest need to connect unfortunately remains solid.