Tag Archives: magic

Glowing Tats, Black Spots and Other Marks of Magic

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“When you’re touched by magic, nothing’s ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch . . . “ ― Charles de Lint

As readers of fantasy, we know magic. Even if only in our mind’s eye, we’ve cast a million spells (or a hundred million) and whether we plumb the depths of each new tome in search of the reasons a man may bend metal with his will, or whether we simply revel in the audacity of worlds in which graffiti comes to life, or a trumpet solo a can rebuff a hurricane, none can say that “magic” has not left its mark on us.

So perhaps it is only natural that we would seek the same for the characters in our fiction, or perhaps it is because we’ve seen our heroes changed by magic that we are changed by it too. Whatever the case, this beloved trope finds our hearts in many forms, a few of which I thought it would be fun to discuss this #WyrdAndWonder for the prompt: Marks of Magic.

First up . . .

The Power Tattoo

We’ve all seen this in some form or other. The Power Tattoo page of TV Tropes shows Avatar: The Last Airbender as the header image, and I can’t deny that it is a striking and clear use of the trope. I’ve only seen a few episodes so this usage did not immediately jump to mind, but I think it will be a great example for pretty much everyone else alive.

For me, I had to dig back into my childhood, and the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon) by Christopher Paolini to find a decent example. For those of us also blowing the dust off those old memories (and hopefully a couple hardcovers), the Dragon Riders were marked with the gedway ignasia, a silver mark on their palm, which signified them as magic users. I’m sure there are a thousand other examples from books and literature but most of my ready memories of this trope came from video games (I think it’s something that works a little better, and is therefore more common, in visual mediums).

For instance, in Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, Abe gets a pair of hand tattoos that allow him to transform into an avatar of Shrykull, the god of lightning. In the sequel Abe’s Exoddus, he gets a chest tattoo that lets him heal the sick. I played these games for HOURS as a kid, and despite all of that, did not progress very far through the game. I have since repurchased the remastered editions as an adult, and am only fairing slightly better. Perhaps if I manage to finish, I can post a review.

A second video game, and prominent tattoo, which jumped to mind was the large red tattoo — which I’m sure many people could recognize the character just based on that alone — which Kratos bears in the God of War series.

Fun fact, this awesome tat is not actually an example of the trope as I thought at first. He does use magic but his power is not related to the acquisition of the tattoo. His tattoos are actually meant to honor his brother Deimos who had a similar pattern of birthmarks which caused him to be mistaken for the ‘marked warrior’ which was prophesized to slay the gods of Olympus.

This works out pretty bad for Deimos and essentially just encourages the prophecy’s completion as Deimos’s kidnapping, and torture, in the land of the dead, just adds to the MANY reasons Kratos’s default setting is kill-all-gods (take a look at what that setting might look like in Ancient Egypt).

With that first one out of the way, our second trope is . . .

The Mark of the Supernatural

This mark of magic can be seen in many fantasies and is generally written as some physical characteristic which distinguishes the character as supernatural or magical.

The range of features that can be endowed with paranormal significance is as broad as the author’s imagination, but some easily visible features have become quite common.

Hair color, for instance, is a distinguishing characteristic for Geralt, the main character from The Witcher. His lovely locks are prematurely white, a result of his supernatural mutations, and the horrific procedures he had to endure to acquire them.

Eye-color seems to be even more common with notable use in Brandon Sanderson’s epic Stormlight Archive (aka the “lighteyes”).

Second, consuming ‘spice’ on Arrakis turns the the whites of people’s eyes blue and their irises an even deeper blue. Consuming the spice has all sorts of supernatural and essentially magical implications in Dune.

Another interesting take on this comes in Kushiel’s Dart. The main character, Phedre, has a mote in her eye which marks her as blessed by Kushiel. She is an ‘anguissette’, someone who endures pain for sexual pleasure. It is essentially her superpower within the first book.

Finally, we could point to Geralt again as one of his mutations is cat-like eyes which allow him to see better than normal people. Surely a boon when hunting monsters that prey on said normal people.

But none of this is quite so dramatic as . . .

The Worsening Curse Mark

This is generally some kind of mark on a character that ends up being significant to the plot because of some change in said plot, or something else unusual happening. Disappearance of the mark or change in its usual behavior counts though a wound healing would not. A wound that won’t heal, festers, or gets infected can count as long as there is some plot or magical reason for this.

Harry’s scar in the Harry Potter series is a great example. The scar was inflicted by an evil curse and it hurts Harry any time Voldermort is near.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Davy Jones marks Jack Sparrow with a large cursed boil (“black spot”) which marks him as hunted by the Kraken. This is a throwback to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in which a “black spot”, burned into one side of a card or piece of paper, was handed to another pirate as a verdict of guilt (the unburned side I’m assuming meant innocence).

This device was also used in the 1930 novel Swallows and Amazons (by Arthur Ransome), given to the captain James Turner, homage to whom I believe is split between two main character names in Pirates: James Norrington and Will Turner.

What came to mind for me, perhaps has more to do with ‘worsening curse’ and maybe less to do with a physical mark, but my mind went immediately to Matrim “Mat” Cauthon from the Wheel of Time series. Across the first two novels he acquires and then loses a cursed dagger with a ruby on the hilt. During his possession of the dagger, some magical connection is formed, and the longer he is away from it, the worse his health declines.

So we’re definitely seeing the ‘worsening curse’ part of the trope but so far as I know, no physical mark was left on him aside from the worsening sickness. When (spoiler) the connection is finally broken, I do not believe he has any physical marks to signify his ordeal, however, I feel that he is psychologically changed by the experience. While in possession of the dagger, he does not act like himself, and once he is free of the curse, he is certainly not the same Mat who left Two Rivers. Therefore I’m going to argue that he has indeed been “marked” by magic, it’s just that those signs are more psychological than physical.

(I suppose there is a parallel here between Mat’s experience with the dagger, and Smeagol’s affair with the One Ring in LOTR. However, this post is already getting long enough lol.)

So . . . ?

Honestly, I’m not sure really. Many readers (and writers) are keen on the idea that magic has a ‘cost’, but I think reader’s enjoyment of magic is broader than that. While the Worsening Curse certainly has a cost, the Power Tattoo, and Mark of the Supernatural often have neutral costs, or as in the case of the Light Eyes in Stormlight, a benefit to being ‘marked’ by magic (Light Eyes enjoy higher social status in Rosharan society).

Perhaps it is only a change that is necessary.

Whatever the effect of these marks of magic on our heroes, I think it is safe to say that it is we who are truly marked by the amazing magic we read in our books, watch in movies or TV, or play in video games.

As fantasy readers we have the privilege of experiencing this magic, and to echo Charles de Lint, the only cost is on “…those people who never have the chance to know [magic’s] touch…”

What are y’all’s thoughts? Which ‘Marks of Magic’ are your favorite? Which should I have included in my post? Please leave your answers in the comments!

See you next time and happy #WyrdAndWonder!

Jade City: A Rare Gem of a Novel

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This could probably be a pretty short review. I’m half tempted to simply write ‘go read this book’ and call it a day. But I suppose I should work a little harder than that, and actually explain why I feel this way about the book. After all, it is clear while reading Jade City that it was a project of passion and painstaking craft; the end result deserves more than a sentence in review.

I think it makes sense to start with the premise. As described by the author, Fonda Lee, Jade City is essentially “The Godfather with magic and kung fu” and honestly, that description hits the nail pretty well on the head (and for me basically sells the whole thing right from the start).

Add in a sort of post World War II modern, vaguely Asian setting, and you pretty much have all the ingredients for the novel’s success listed and defined. Each of these ingredients serve as excellent hooks, and any one of them draw the reader in, but as with all good recipes, I think it’s how these things are mixed together, which really causes the book to shine.

The two main things that immediately stood out to me upon reading Jade City was just how tightly plotted the novel is, and how deep the world building goes. From the very first scene, we’re exposed to the undercurrents of political unrest which will shape the main intrigue plot, a systematic but not overly (faux) scientific magic system, and some pretty exciting and harrowing action from the point of view of a seemingly minor character (who just keeps happening bumble into more and more important plot points). This could have been an absolute disaster of a first chapter in its ambition, but remarkably gets everything across to the reader in a way that draws us in, sets up the basic information that we need to continue forward, and leaves us with enough (and the right) questions to encourage us to continue reading. It really sets the tone perfectly for the novel, as the scenes which follow may not be as action packed, but they rely on the building blocks laid out here to keep the tension building throughout in a way that (to me) never felt slow or dragging.

I mentioned the worldbuilding before, and I’d like to circle back to it as it was certainly a main component of the book which really stood out. In a lot of fantasy novels, I feel like “Worldbuilding” with a capital W is often actually myth building. The author builds the setting and explains current conflicts through legends and history of the world. In a lot of fantasy, these histories are ancient, and there is often a remove of hundreds or even thousands of years between the events of the myths/legends, and the plot we experience. They are related, but there is something of a remove.

I think in a lot of stories that feature this kind of worldbuilding, the remove is (more or less) necessary in order to establish the magnitude of the stakes being set up. The epics we know in the real world are set thousands of years in our past, and so that kind of remove in a fantasy story will naturally give a kind of epic quality to the events we see in the story.

By comparison, the events of Jade City feel very young. We get a few interludes which give three parts of an old myth, but most of the history makers in this world are still alive, aging badly, and worse, are failing to live up to the myth and legend which has come up around them. To me, this was a nice contrast from more traditional fantasy, and I think only served to bring the drama of the story closer to its main actors, the No Peak clan, and specifically the Kaul family.

The next thing that stood out to me about the worldbuilding, I said in a tweet so I’ll just post that here:

“I’m not sure what I was expecting but I’m pretty much digging it. For such a deep setting it’s pretty quickly paced and (at least to me) there doesn’t seem to be much filler. I also really think the setting would make a fun board game or RTS. There so many definitions of winning.” – @jamesweber16

I got about 75% of the way through this book and realized: “If so-and-so does this, that would be a satisfying ending to the story, but also if so-and-so does this, so would that.”

And of course, the ending was completely different from either of those things and still (to me) completely satisfying.

I attribute this to Lee’s story telling, but also must acknowledge that it was the depth of the world which provided the scaffolding for her to accomplish this. Each of the main characters seemed to have their own aspect of the world in which they were striving to create change, but all interlocked, and no one plot seemed to take the backseat to any other.

Finally, despite all that I’ve been going on about the worldbuilding and the setting, this story is primarily a family drama. The interpersonal relationships were what really drove so much of the tension in the story, but I was never frustrated by this. In a lot of family conflicts, issues that effect the character’s motivations can sometimes amount to very little more than shallow squabbles which any reasonable person would ‘suck it up’ and move forward from, especially when faced with world defining problems, and it can be very frustrating to see them fail to make these changes.

This was not the case in Jade City. The family conflicts seem deeply rooted in past history, and given the lives these characters have had to lead, seems completely reasonable. But Lee takes it one step further and also shows how they are still a family, and despite everything, seem to have a real familial love (or at least respect) for each other. I pretty much ate these scenes up (as well as all the others if I’m honest) and they were some of the scenes that stuck out to me the most.

TLDR

Anyway, please give this one a shot. There is so much more I could have written about but honestly, it would probably take more words than the book has in it already, so I think any readers still here should just go forth and read it. I’m really looking forward to the sequel, Jade War, and can’t wait to gush more about that here later.

If you’ve read Jade City, please let me know your thoughts in the comments. What did you love? Was there anything you hated? I’m excited to talk about this one.

Thanks again for reading! See you next time.