Trying to avoid appropriation

A lot of RPGs use mana and chi as words for game mechanisms that measure magical energy and life energy. It makes me kind of uncomfortable, but when I went looking for alternatives I got reminded all over again that English is at least three languages in a coat. English has been mugging other languages for parts since forever, and every word has traces of conquest in it, but swallowing these two whole and spitting out the actual cultural context seems a bit much.

I think I'm going with thaumic, as in thaumatology, measured in thaums ala Pratchett.
Also vitality, vital energy,probably measured qualitatively so it's flowing well or badly, positively or negatively inclined.
That's mixing greek and latin pasts into the mix, but if the Healers use Latin and the Scholars' works are literally all greek to them, that's got potential for story in it.

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This seems like an overly complicated system of magics, but I'm used to comics where people can do very similar things through power sources ranging across everything GURPS can throw at them.


Distinct traditions with distinct histories and as far as they know sistinct power sources is a great way to leave loopholes, contradictions, and other sources of friction.




And yet I keep fiddling with rules and phrasing, instead of writing fiction.

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1990 The Flash was not very good. Characters don't spend much time being people, their off duty activities always exist only to set up the plot, the only woman regular or repeating is Tina, and everyone seems over invested in reading her and Barry as romantic. Including the writers, who put her in formalwear a lot. I don't think she has solved anything with science yet. I'm bored.

It has a weird aesthetic too, cars are from the forties and fifties. Which is very Earth Two.

There was a bad guy from the fifties who cryo froze himself to see the future and then plugged himself in to the TV and uploaded himself. That had a lot of elements from all over that didn't seem to fit together. Like him staying young forever, as if he was a rerun. Filled up some lines of dialogue, contrasted with the old dude coming out of retirement, difficult to feel much about it. I guess it tried?

There was a thing in the lab where Tina had to wait to be rescued rather than sciencing the hell out of it. Boo.

And there was a story for Julio the sidekick, which was full of jazz and black people and crime and prison. :eyeroll:

I'm not finding much to keep my attention. Oh well.