Balthazar's Magic
Feb. 10th, 2021 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingIn Balthazar’s pre-apocalyptic world, magic is like music in that almost everyone is able to use it and has a basic understanding of how it works. Not everyone is talented at magic, and very few people use it professionally, but there’s nothing particularly strange or unusual or “mystical” about it.
Magic is divided into broad categories that are partially based on how any given type of magic interacts with the world and partially based on culture and society. To give an example, “fire” magic is mainly concerned with the rapid transfer of heat energy, so there are a lot of metalworkers, builders, engineers, and chefs who use “fire” magic to make their jobs easier. Nobody is going around shooting fireballs at each other, in other words.
Although it’s technically possible for anyone to use any type of magic, this is extremely difficult, and almost everyone has a strong innate preference for one type. Some people can’t use magic at all, but this is rare and considered to be a minor disability, like being tonedeaf or faceblind. At around age ten, kids are grouped together based on the type of magic they favor, and part of their education is focused on that type of magic. Although there are special private schools and separatist religious communities, generally speaking, most kids go through standard public education, with magic training being largely supplementary and extracurricular. For most kids, magic training is a special class period they have once a week on Friday afternoons, or they might go to two weeks of magic camp during the summer.
The type of magic you specialize in has nothing to do with your personality or nonmagical abilities (although there are, of course, plenty of stereotypes). The type of magic you specialize in isn’t determined by genetics either, but most kids tend to take after one of their parents. If both parents specialize in the same type of magic, there’s still only about a 50% chance that their child will specialize in that type of magic. Almost every religious tradition has a long and colorful history of being wrong about this, but it’s not really possible to have a kid who’s an especially strong user of a certain type of magic even if both of their parents are.
Both of Balthazar’s parents are doctors who specialize in “healing” magic, which involves using quantum physics to manipulate matter at an atomic level. This is technically the type of magic Balthazar uses, but his magic manifests in his ability to use subatomic quantum mechanics to manipulate time, not matter.
There are a lot of social, cultural, and religious taboos regarding the use of magic, and one of the most primal of these taboos is that you shouldn’t use your magic to alter someone else’s body or mind without their consent. Balthazar understands from an early age that his time magic does both, and he understands how upsetting this is – it’s basically like killing or raping someone while they’re asleep.
As a little kid, Balthazar doesn’t use his magic because he’s terrified that he will be kidnapped by some sort of vague yet menacing secret government agency, which will presumably turn him into a human experiment and force him to use his magic for nefarious purposes. He's seen movies where this happens, after all, so clearly it must be true. Once he develops a better sense of consensus reality and moral character at around age seven or eight, he makes a firm decision not to use his magic because it’s unethical.
The extraordinary nature of his magic aside, Balthazar is a relatively normal kid, but he pretends to be completely inept at magic so that he won’t be put in a situation in which he accidentally reveals himself. His parents want him to become a doctor, or a pharmacist at the very least, so they put a lot of pressure on him to correct what they see as his laziness while shaming him into a STEM educational track that he hates. Because kids in middle school and high school tend to hang out with people who share their magic specialty, and because Balthazar doesn’t have a specialty, he never forms any close friendships while growing up. Balthazar isn’t unintelligent and is in fact highly magically talented, and he resents seeing other people praised and rewarded for things he feels he could do with ease if he didn’t have to hide his abilities.
Between the constant tension at home, his loneliness at school, and his frustration with the world in general, Balthazar develops a personality that I think most people would describe as “difficult.” He lives alone, he doesn’t talk to his parents, he’s never been in a lasting romantic relationship, he’s not on social media, and he treats his coworkers with open disdain. He hates his job as tech support at a biomedical research firm, but he doesn’t want to quit because he can’t tolerate roommates and refuses to move back in with his family.
When the apocalypse happens, Balthazar is 25 years old and spends his nights and weekends bingewatching Netflix because he doesn’t have anything else going on in his life. He’s managed to convince himself that, because he’ll always have to keep his magic secret, he’ll never be able to have a meaningful connection with another human being. Because he’s a romantic at heart, though, he has a fierce crush on one of the younger researchers at his firm. Unfortunately for him, this woman is once-in-a-century genius, and it’s because of her actions that the apocalypse happens in the first place. Balthazar’s sense of wanting to save the woman he thinks he loves (along with the rest of his world), combined with his staggering inability to communicate with other people, propels him into a series of time travel adventures that ultimately land him in the far distant future.
By the time the story begins – which is well after Balthazar decided to become “the Demon King” – he has completely discarded his moral scruples and uses magic just because he can. In particular, he uses time magic to get extra sleep, jack off without getting his clothes dirty, eat things he knows will make him sick, restart conversations after he’s said something embarrassing, and so on. In addition, he’s figured out how to use quantum dimensional magic to travel long distances, which involves a type of time travel as well. Balthazar’s reasoning is that none of this matters because everything in the current timeline will cease to exist once he successfully prevents the apocalypse. This is also how he came to justify murder (and, in the past, murder on an enormous scale), so everyday time magic seems relatively minor by comparison.
Magic is divided into broad categories that are partially based on how any given type of magic interacts with the world and partially based on culture and society. To give an example, “fire” magic is mainly concerned with the rapid transfer of heat energy, so there are a lot of metalworkers, builders, engineers, and chefs who use “fire” magic to make their jobs easier. Nobody is going around shooting fireballs at each other, in other words.
Although it’s technically possible for anyone to use any type of magic, this is extremely difficult, and almost everyone has a strong innate preference for one type. Some people can’t use magic at all, but this is rare and considered to be a minor disability, like being tonedeaf or faceblind. At around age ten, kids are grouped together based on the type of magic they favor, and part of their education is focused on that type of magic. Although there are special private schools and separatist religious communities, generally speaking, most kids go through standard public education, with magic training being largely supplementary and extracurricular. For most kids, magic training is a special class period they have once a week on Friday afternoons, or they might go to two weeks of magic camp during the summer.
The type of magic you specialize in has nothing to do with your personality or nonmagical abilities (although there are, of course, plenty of stereotypes). The type of magic you specialize in isn’t determined by genetics either, but most kids tend to take after one of their parents. If both parents specialize in the same type of magic, there’s still only about a 50% chance that their child will specialize in that type of magic. Almost every religious tradition has a long and colorful history of being wrong about this, but it’s not really possible to have a kid who’s an especially strong user of a certain type of magic even if both of their parents are.
Both of Balthazar’s parents are doctors who specialize in “healing” magic, which involves using quantum physics to manipulate matter at an atomic level. This is technically the type of magic Balthazar uses, but his magic manifests in his ability to use subatomic quantum mechanics to manipulate time, not matter.
There are a lot of social, cultural, and religious taboos regarding the use of magic, and one of the most primal of these taboos is that you shouldn’t use your magic to alter someone else’s body or mind without their consent. Balthazar understands from an early age that his time magic does both, and he understands how upsetting this is – it’s basically like killing or raping someone while they’re asleep.
As a little kid, Balthazar doesn’t use his magic because he’s terrified that he will be kidnapped by some sort of vague yet menacing secret government agency, which will presumably turn him into a human experiment and force him to use his magic for nefarious purposes. He's seen movies where this happens, after all, so clearly it must be true. Once he develops a better sense of consensus reality and moral character at around age seven or eight, he makes a firm decision not to use his magic because it’s unethical.
The extraordinary nature of his magic aside, Balthazar is a relatively normal kid, but he pretends to be completely inept at magic so that he won’t be put in a situation in which he accidentally reveals himself. His parents want him to become a doctor, or a pharmacist at the very least, so they put a lot of pressure on him to correct what they see as his laziness while shaming him into a STEM educational track that he hates. Because kids in middle school and high school tend to hang out with people who share their magic specialty, and because Balthazar doesn’t have a specialty, he never forms any close friendships while growing up. Balthazar isn’t unintelligent and is in fact highly magically talented, and he resents seeing other people praised and rewarded for things he feels he could do with ease if he didn’t have to hide his abilities.
Between the constant tension at home, his loneliness at school, and his frustration with the world in general, Balthazar develops a personality that I think most people would describe as “difficult.” He lives alone, he doesn’t talk to his parents, he’s never been in a lasting romantic relationship, he’s not on social media, and he treats his coworkers with open disdain. He hates his job as tech support at a biomedical research firm, but he doesn’t want to quit because he can’t tolerate roommates and refuses to move back in with his family.
When the apocalypse happens, Balthazar is 25 years old and spends his nights and weekends bingewatching Netflix because he doesn’t have anything else going on in his life. He’s managed to convince himself that, because he’ll always have to keep his magic secret, he’ll never be able to have a meaningful connection with another human being. Because he’s a romantic at heart, though, he has a fierce crush on one of the younger researchers at his firm. Unfortunately for him, this woman is once-in-a-century genius, and it’s because of her actions that the apocalypse happens in the first place. Balthazar’s sense of wanting to save the woman he thinks he loves (along with the rest of his world), combined with his staggering inability to communicate with other people, propels him into a series of time travel adventures that ultimately land him in the far distant future.
By the time the story begins – which is well after Balthazar decided to become “the Demon King” – he has completely discarded his moral scruples and uses magic just because he can. In particular, he uses time magic to get extra sleep, jack off without getting his clothes dirty, eat things he knows will make him sick, restart conversations after he’s said something embarrassing, and so on. In addition, he’s figured out how to use quantum dimensional magic to travel long distances, which involves a type of time travel as well. Balthazar’s reasoning is that none of this matters because everything in the current timeline will cease to exist once he successfully prevents the apocalypse. This is also how he came to justify murder (and, in the past, murder on an enormous scale), so everyday time magic seems relatively minor by comparison.
