From the fly-man to the man-fly, are magic system reversible? p2

Going on with answering the story seeds Michael Alvill mentioned in A guide to writing magic systems.

WHEN?

Are there steam trains like in How’s moving castle, Miyazaki version? Are there police officers of both genders wearing pants XX century beginnings¹? Do you need starch for shirts? Is it contemporary? Season determines what to sow. If you’re to make your magic world some kind of isolation from the everyday life, your characters will end up wearing jeans under tunics and sending letters instead of WhatsApps as if your garden is to have marigolds in the middle of April. Or 75ish pear tree types when nowadays we might have a lot less.

Not only the time determines clothes, it has to do with speech, beliefs and progression. If it is a regression you might find yourself eliminating scenes to avoid boredom since the reader is already aware of what’s to come.

WHAT’S SOCIETY LIKE?.

Has there been a fatal collapse of the world order? Are the communists on power and zombie Lenin rules? Is all the drama in a scholar environment where everything is salted by manageable intrigues? Is it an imperial palace betrayal around the corner?

I can tell that re inventing a world that doesn’t exist is terribly taxing. Be aware. Maybe what you need is to read some history books to check up social behaviours that have already happened. Or maybe not if you’re only recycling the medieval image of things adding chocolate as an extra…

MAIN CHARACTER

This is my cue to zip my lips.
As you can see; it is impossible to sterilize the magical soil and flowerpot the same way gardeners do. In consequence, it is possible for you to end up with something totally different to what you sowed. Not telling you can reverse processes.

Like my big writing hero². Who defied the normal order: country boy goes to the city and becomes hero. He had the anti hero in the city changing because the hero arrived, stole his thunder and climbed the social ladder still being an as28650 that. The main character didn’t do the trip, he was already there. And he only had to remain sober.

This is why I believe that if there is a movie where a man ends up being a fly, why can’t the fly end up being a man?

Have fun sowing magic beans. Pasto kalo.

1. I wrote that without realizing the XXI century had begun 21 years prior to that moment. ↩︎
2. Yes, Terry Prattchet. ↩︎