Books with emotion based magic system

[daydreamer]

Do any of you know of any novels or work of fantasy with an emotion based magic system? I'm currently woking on one where emotions are used as catalysts to perform a magical act.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Do any of you know of any novels or work of fantasy with an emotion based magic system? I'm currently woking on one where emotions are used as catalysts to perform a magical act.

This is a lot more common than you think, it's just implicit. Does Star Wars count? Sith draw on anger and hatred to strengthen their powers, while Jedi use calm and control.

In almost every book with magic or powers, strong emotions CAN trigger powers. In Harry Potter, Harry inflated Aunt Marge accidentally when she was slandering his parents. I also remember Scarlet Witch having an awakening of power after Quicksilver dies in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

But don't think I'm disowning your idea! I love this aspect of magic and powers. A story where you HAVE to use emotions to perform magic would be cool. Especially if, as in Star Wars, certain powers can only be utilized using certain emotions. What if a user needed to experience sadness and grief to use a power...? They could listen to sad songs or something, but if they wanted to be MORE powerful...

Taking this kind of magic system to its logical conclusion is downright terrifying.

 

[daydreamer]

Thanks for the info, it is as u said i want my system to rely on emotion to perform magic. My mages would be trained with triggers for certain emotions. For instance, and this isnt what its going to be it, they may be train to be angry when they see red by conditioning so they may carry a red cloth to look at when anger is needed. This is a stupid example but i hope you get my drift.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Thanks for the info, it is as u said i want my system to rely on emotion to perform magic. My mages would be trained with triggers for certain emotions. For instance, and this isnt what its going to be it, they may be train to be angry when they see red by conditioning so they may carry a red cloth to look at when anger is needed. This is a stupid example but i hope you get my drift.

Oh. That's really cool!

 

[K.S. Crooks]

Strictly speaking this is not magic, but the power rings in the DC comic universe use emotions to make them work.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Strictly speaking this is not magic, but the power rings in the DC comic universe use emotions to make them work.

It's basically the same thing as magic.

 

[Caged Maiden]

wow. I LOVE this concept. I'm bipolar, so with all the feeling I do...I hope I'd be a supreme or something in that world. Or a super villain, maybe, because I often can't control my emotions. HA! That might be a fun concept to play with, btw. Taking into consideration how some people are seemingly emotionless or don't sway too far in either high or low direction, but others, like me, have drastic mood swings. Hope you share this with us as you get working on it, it sounds amazing.

BTW, in one of my stories, I have a girl who is stuck in a bad situation, far from home and scared when someone pursuing their group (her bodyguard, her, and her younger brother) catch up and surprise them in the night. The guy jumps on her bodyguard and without him, she knows they'll die. He screams for her to hand him his sword, as the two are wrestling, but it's magical, and she doesn't want to touch it. He's about to die, so she uses her magic to do something like a force push sort of spell and she shoves the attacker off the bodyguard. But with her fear out of control, she uses too much energy, and rather than just push the attacker, she kills him by caving in his chest.

Right after that, she falls into a despondent state because she exerted herself too much and nearly killed herself, in her emotional state. While emotion doesn't fuel magic in my world, it certainly plays a part in how much magical energy comes out of a spell, and in the book, she even talks about how the mage council are imposing laws on students, because people have died recently, doing spells that are too far above their skill level. In my world, mages are sort of conduits, streaming energy through their bodies, and if they're not ready to handle it, they suffer headaches, nausea, exhaustion, etc. just like people who tax themselves physically. It'd be like me trying to run a marathon...I don't think I could make it one mile.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

wow. I LOVE this concept. I'm bipolar, so with all the feeling I do...I hope I'd be a supreme or something in that world. Or a super villain, maybe, because I often can't control my emotions. HA! That might be a fun concept to play with, btw. Taking into consideration how some people are seemingly emotionless or don't sway too far in either high or low direction, but others, like me, have drastic mood swings. Hope you share this with us as you get working on it, it sounds amazing.

BTW, in one of my stories, I have a girl who is stuck in a bad situation, far from home and scared when someone pursuing their group (her bodyguard, her, and her younger brother) catch up and surprise them in the night. The guy jumps on her bodyguard and without him, she knows they'll die. He screams for her to hand him his sword, as the two are wrestling, but it's magical, and she doesn't want to touch it. He's about to die, so she uses her magic to do something like a force push sort of spell and she shoves the attacker off the bodyguard. But with her fear out of control, she uses too much energy, and rather than just push the attacker, she kills him by caving in his chest.

Right after that, she falls into a despondent state because she exerted herself too much and nearly killed herself, in her emotional state. While emotion doesn't fuel magic in my world, it certainly plays a part in how much magical energy comes out of a spell, and in the book, she even talks about how the mage council are imposing laws on students, because people have died recently, doing spells that are too far above their skill level. In my world, mages are sort of conduits, streaming energy through their bodies, and if they're not ready to handle it, they suffer headaches, nausea, exhaustion, etc. just like people who tax themselves physically. It'd be like me trying to run a marathon...I don't think I could make it one mile.

I second this. I'm not bipolar but I am at least not neurotypical...and am a very sensitive person generally. (Not saying my experience is comparable to yours, CM...) but I would be a powerful mage, and probably quite feared...Fear-driven spells would be my specialty, unfortunately. Anxiety (but is anxiety really fear? Or is it just a physical and mental reaction? Anyway, whole 'nother topic.)

My WIP that I put aside deals a lot with concepts like this. It's kind of a "superpowers" thing rather than magic, where everyone has one superpower. Anyway, I have characters with very dark powers, many of them good people. Power is often emotion-triggered--people usually discover their powers in a moment of emotional distress, especially if someone they love is in danger. The characters often lose control of their powers in moments of passion and the consequences are very nasty. My MC uses her (very dark) power on her love interest on accident when she's angry at him. Multiple times. Worse still, as she begins to suffer from PTSD and other stuff, her powers get harder and harder to control. (My powers are hell, honestly. They can kill their users, drive them to suicide, destroy them mentally, push away everyone they love. I also second the fatigue/vomiting/etc symptoms...except in my universe it's worse. The powers are often more of a disability than anything, and that's why I love them.)

I really love powers and I really love exploring how they affect the lives of their users. I love writing superhumans because the super underscores the human, makes it more raw. Also there's the complexity of superpowers, how they can be both a strength and a weakness. Anyway...

Emotion-driven magic system= REALLY REALLY COOL. I, like CM, want to see this when its finished.

 

[daydreamer]

I will definitely try and share when im finished , i have powers for the emotions but have not finished fleshing out the system.

 

[skip.knox]

yeah, there's plenty to work with there. You could have a character who has a small emotional range and has to struggle with trying to cultivate emotions. No trivial thing, since you can't really force yourself to feel any particular thing. Then again, actors do something like simulate emotions, to the point that it can take a toll on them. Such a neutral person might have an emotional explosion in response to a trauma.

At the other extreme, you could have a character who has trouble controlling their emotions. Worse, their emotional swings can happen unexpectedly. Such a person could be downright dangerous, to themselves and others.

Then there are the people who can more or less generate emotions, or emotional facsimiles, who truly feel what they feel at the moment, then are capable of feeling the opposite in the next moment. Would faking an emotion produce magical effects?

There are also emotions that are not bursts, like anger or fear. In the DC chart above, something like avarice can be a lifelong tendency. A better example might be jealousy, which can persist for years. In that case, I can envision a character who struggles to be rid of an emotion, in order to be rid of its magical side-effects.

Lots to work with.

 

[Svrtnsse]

The magic in my setting is not based on emotions, but emotion can still be a significant factor. Emotions spawn dragons - literally. To be more specific: if a large enough group of people experience the same emotion strongly enough, or for a long enough period of time, the aether (magic-stuff) will cause a dragon to spawn.
The dragon has a colour and a temperament to reflect the emotion that spawned it. Black is fear. Rage is red. And so on.

Historically, dragons have mostly occurred during large battles (rage, fear), or natural catastrophes (fear), but there are other less common situations where dragons have been spawned as well.

 

[R.H. Smith]

I like the concept. The only thing, in my humble opinion, I can see messing with your concept, is the fact that the more broken you are emotionally, the more powerful. So someone that had the worse childhood (parents died, got sent to foster homes, was raped/molested, etc.) will be the most powerful due to their roiling emotions. Good for a villain, but what about your MC? Your MC would have to be as broken as the villain to stand a chance of having equal power, unless he/she suffered from Anger Management issues or the such My question is, what is the internal struggle your MC will go through so that he/she is magically powerful enough to battle the villain, without losing their humanity?

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I like the concept. The only thing, in my humble opinion, I can see messing with your concept, is the fact that the more broken you are emotionally, the more powerful. So someone that had the worse childhood (parents died, got sent to foster homes, was raped/molested, etc.) will be the most powerful due to their roiling emotions. Good for a villain, but what about your MC? Your MC would have to be as broken as the villain to stand a chance of having equal power, unless he/she suffered from Anger Management issues or the such My question is, what is the internal struggle your MC will go through so that he/she is magically powerful enough to battle the villain, without losing their humanity?

That's not a problem, that's exactly why this concept is so interesting...

 

[skip.knox]

Yeah. I rather like the notion of the hero being as broken as the villain. And therefore as powerful. Reminds me, a bit, of Unbreakable.

 

[Caged Maiden]

And, why can't good emotions create great effects? When I have mood swings, they go in both directions, and I'm a generally happy person, very passionate and very squishy, but then I'm a raving lunatic when i get upset, and I break everything around me because nothing's more important than how I feel at that moment. I could see magic as both great and terrifying...all out of one person and their lack of self-control. I don't think anyone needs to be "broken" emotionally, in fact, people who are really traumatized tend to have dulled emotions because they have to cope somehow. I think it makes sense that people would learn how to channel their good feelings first, and after they show some proficiency, their teachers start delving into the "dark side" of magic. Defense Against the Dark Arts, anyone?

 

[TheCatholicCrow]

At the other extreme, you could have a character who has trouble controlling their emotions. Worse, their emotional swings can happen unexpectedly. Such a person could be downright dangerous, to themselves and others....
In that case, I can envision a character who struggles to be rid of an emotion, in order to be rid of its magical side-effects.

OR who tries to be hermit so she can practice her magic without restraint. That's an option too.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Yeah. I rather like the notion of the hero being as broken as the villain. And therefore as powerful. Reminds me, a bit, of Unbreakable.

That's the fun part. Putting them through hell, giving them hungry inner demons. What makes the heroes different from the villains is how they respond.

Or maybe, there is no real difference; it's all in point of view...

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

This concept has so many awesome implications. You can have some characters who hate and fear all magic because of its association with destructive emotions. You can have characters who always distrusted magic until they suffered a devastating loss and their grief sparked a tremendous outpouring of power. You could have a character who fears his powers, but his fear is what triggers the powers, so it just turns into a vicious cycle. You could have a character who is very emotional and is constantly setting things on fire and making things explode, or something. You could have a villain who craves power, but his dark past has hardened his heart so much that he is no longer able to feel normally, so he can't access the power he wants. You could have characters facing their deepest fears and destroying what they love most to access power.

What sorts of magic would be controlled by infatuation, for example? Jealousy? Embarrassment? Lust? Honestly, magical powers that could only be accessed through embarrassment...think of the implications.

 

[CupofJoe]

In some of the D&L Eddings books they use "the will & the word" as the source of the magic. One of the thing you can't do with magic is to make something not exist [if you do it sort of rebounds and you go pof instead].
This is also used as an explanation for why there are so few magicians. When the power comes to the fore maybe when someone is really angry and upset. They want to to unmake/destroy something in their way and pof!... no more them.
Emotion based magic could be a very steep learning curve...

 

[Jordan R Murray]

I would also take a peek at how Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy uses emotions in his magic system. He calls it emotional allomancy. Basically, where you use magic to create or enhance a certain emotion that other people feel- even a crowd, with powerful effects. Sanderson does a decent job of incorporating it as one part of a more diverse range of magical abilities in the series, but having an entire magic system based on it could have some really interesting paths to follow. Good luck with it!