: Stars for Gothmog!
: That also brings up an interesting point in the Myth
: world, or any other fantasy one that someone would
: like to discuss (I don't care, but if it's one I've
: never heard of, odds are I won't be able to take part,
: for better or worse)
Does it have to be fantasy? I only have much experience with real-life magic, and a few work-alikes like the Mage: The Ascention rules.
: Is magic
: A) Something that you are either born with the ability to
: use or not. Either you're born with the full powers
: you'll ever have (untrained, but the potential won't
: increase with training)
: B) Something can you might be born knowing how, might be
: able to be taught how, or simply unable to use.
: C) Other (Tell me your theory, and as long as it doesn't
: involve monkey suits and buttered toast I'll listen.
: Paladin's honour I won't mock it.)
: Seraph
: P.S. If it involves buttered monkeys and toasted suits...
: *starts laughing like he just inhaled something*
Anything technically can "do" magic. Hell you're all doing it right now, it's just the same boring magic every god damn thing in the universe is constantly doing all the time so we don't even call it "magic". As far as doing more unusual - or to be more precise, more improbable - feats of will, all it takes is the right mindset. Now, having the right mindset doesn't just mean "knowing how to do magic" - I could tell you the technical details till I'm blue in the face of how it technically works and what you have to do to do it, but it doesn't mean you'd be able to. A good analogy is TaeKwonDo - I can tell you the technical details of how to do a jump-spin round kick, but that doesn't mean you can go out and do one. You need to have the "feel" for it.
Now, getting the "feel" for magic is something that can be 'learned', but not in a book-learning sort of way. It's like how you 'learn' to fit in socially, or 'learn' how to hit on people... you just have to somehow find the right state of mind to be in. Now as for genetics or anything, certain personality types make it much easier to do this. Mine, for example, makes it very easy to do, so long as I'm not upset about anything, because I have a naturally calm arrogance. That is, I'm not all worked up about how much better than anyone I am. I just know through and through balls to bones that I'm right and it's not even possibly conceivable that I might not be.
Like gravity - you don't think, well, maybe things will fall up this time. You just know, because it's ALWAYS that way, and so it's not even a big deal. Now, not even I can do this yet, but if you realized that it was possible for something to fall up, it's just incredibly unlikely, but you were completely sure that this was that one in seven million times that something would fall up - well, especially if nobody else is around expecting it to fall down, it's pretty damn likely that it would fall up, if there was any possible reason that it could.
But for most mages it's limited to much more mundane things, but it's still quite useful to be able to forge your own luck. I mean really, how likely was it that every light I drove past on my way home tonight would start to turn green right as I waved my hands at them? Of course they turned green because that's just how the timing of the lights was working tonight... but how likely is it that that timing would be so perfectly synched to my hand gestures, hmm?
