this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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The magic system I made that was most pregnant with possibility was a magic field (like the electromagnetic field) that fae inhabit. By invoking their strength you were capable of doing things like creating illusions, solving puzzles, exercising foresight, and going so far as to read people's minds. At the end of the day, the fae were little energy beings who were talking to you and noticing things.
The twist was that in order to get fae and rarer variants to talk to you, you had to be entertaining. Either you were doing interesting things, talking to interesting people, or did cool things with the magic. You had to convince a fae to donate their energy. So it was like being a livestreamer talking to chat. The more entertaining you are, the higher your viewer count, the more powerful the magic.
The kingdom (republic with a court of industry leaders who are royals in all but name) allegory, of course, used cruel magic. Their military magic is fae destructive and it harvests the energy to make explosive, thrashing bursts of magic. They use it in service of upholding chattel slavery. So it causes a multi-headed international invasion to stop the practice.
The point being is that the magic system needs to be fleshed out in world building. Because if the US is pragmatically using these dark magicks for more power, it trades a characterization opportunity of them engaging in human sacrifices and bloody torturous orgies because they're braying monsters.
Clip-farming to pander to the fae for magic power is a very good bit. I would like to propose something, based on basically the sentiment described in my reply to the post: What about the state using that same principle in their own way? They have resources to put on big productions and to spread media all around, don't they? And surely they have many analysts doing "market research," so to speak, on what the fae like. Depending on how real the fae are as intelligent life, couldn't the kingdom either devise algorithmically-designed content to farm enjoyment from the fae or even cultivate certain tastes in the fae that favor themselves over their enemies? It seems like you have a system for making soft power very directly produce hard power.
Well, I don't have a good answer for you, but you've basically defined my new novel for me.
You see, I've been talking recently about how I messed up my novel because it was a magic college novel where the guy leaves to go galavanting. It was totally unfocused and had some of my worst writing habits littered throughout.
So I wanted to write a proper dark academia magic college novel. I had a mechanic that was going to carry the story and a half-formed plot for why he'd use it. But dismantling the state propaganda machine from the inside is a beautiful use of the plot. I even had the college replete with what I called "the facism wing of the school"
If I had to give you an answer, soft state power in my novels is nascent. Their neighbors are an old communist society, a post revolution republic, and a land that's generally post government. So fae aren't naturally keen to listen to them. But if they did start listening, then they would be cultivating horribly strong mages while simultaneously weakening the people who were recently at war with them. You could go so far as to get deep into the Marxism about the subtle lies of the kingdom