Trying to explore a theme of ‘what happens when you have power, but you don’t act on it’ with my antagonist.

[Link the Writer]

In short, my fantasy is a modern day urban wizard fantasy set in Mobile, Alabama and the theme of it revolves around two wizards with diametrically opposed views. Vaylen believes the Mägi (the magical folks) should reveal their powers to the world because to him, the cost of doing nothing is cowardice — watching people die knowing they could stop the horrors and pain. Bullar believes the exact opposite, believing that (a) the non-Mägi would never accept the Mägi, (b) to interfere with magic would be playing God and risk stripping the non-Mägi of autonomy. There’s a scene where Bullar demonstrates this by taking Hannah (the protagonist) to a scrying pool and they witness the Lincoln assassination, then he uses a charm to show her an alternative where a Mägi saved Lincoln, and the direct consequence of that: Lincoln now having to lead a nation fractured again, this time along different lines.

This whole thing was inspired by Harry Potter, specifically a line from the second movie where Snape says, ‘You have risked the exposure of our world’, and in Crimes of Grindwald where Grindwald, among other things, shows a vision of WWII and rails about why wizards can’t exert their power to rule over Muggles and prevent conflicts like that.

However, in my fantasy, it’s different. Vaylen doesn’t want to rule anyone, he just wants to prove a point by exposing the world of the Mägi to a populace he feels needs to know what they missed out on. I wrote a quick scene (below) but there is a part of me that fears he’s still leaning too close to the Grindwald side of things. Maybe the idea is that he wants to offer them a choice, rather than forcing the Mägi world on them?

I guess the idea is like both men are right *and* wrong, and Hannah tells them that in the climax? Like, ‘If magic just amounts to whether or not you can play God, I want no part in it.’ Like magic is basically the equivalent of a nuclear bomb, and Hannah is like, ‘I don’t trust it. I don’t trust either of you. I’m out. I’m gone. You’re never seeing me again.’

Thoughts?
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“So, what, you’re going to expose the Mägi world to everyone to… prove a point?”
“Precisely,” Vaylen said. Hannah leaned back in the chair, the large 18th-century portrait of the mansion’s patriarch on the edge of her vision. Vaylen paced slowly, wiggling the cigar between two fingers as he stared outward, clearly in deep thought. “It’s like what the movie said: if you have the power to stop the horrors, and you don’t, they happen because of you.”
“We’re quoting Spider-Man, now?” Hannah raised her eyebrows.
“You think its a silly little comic about a boy zipping through New York City on webs, but even the most childish stories can carry a deeper meaning.” He drew from the cigar, exhaled a cloud of smoke. Hannah wondered briefly how the curators would feel walking in here smelling tobacco on the historic furnitures. “Bullar fears playing God; he fears the possibility of being a puppeteer to the non-Mägi.”
“Don’t blame him,” Hannah shrugged. “I wouldn’t want some magical entity dictating what I can or can’t do.”
Vaylen pointed the cigar at her, smiled. “Ah, but at what cost?”
Hannah knew where he was going. “They help people. Not with magic, but… during World War II they worked underground with the resistance groups, forging papers and smuggling Jews out of danger.”
“Why wouldn’t they use their magic to stop the Nazis? Stop the horrors they perpetrated?”
Heather swallowed, her mind drawing a blank. “I…”
“We could’ve stopped it all from the very beginning, my dear,” Vaylen said. “You have this common question of: ‘would you kill Hitler as a baby?’ My answer to that is, ‘We could’ve use magic to alter his mind, make him avoid politics together. Or have that damned art school accept him.’
“But then you’d be playing God,” Hannah said. “That’s what Bullar doesn’t want.”
“So we just sit and watch, as we always had… Untold billions suffered and died, and we could’ve helped them.” Vaylen walked closer to Hannah, a knotted hand resting on her shoulder. “My intention isn’t to rule the non-Mägi with an iron fist. I’m not some evil wizard bent for power and world domination. My intention is to show the world what it lost because we chose silence.”
A silence filled the air.

 

[Madman Starryteller]

I'm not sure what the point is in saying "Hey world, you missed out on all this!" would actually be, what has happened has happened and can not be changed (unless magic allows for it in the setting). So the motivation feels off. If he wants to do it more for the sake of guiding humanity into the future, that's a whole other complicated thing.

Edit, also just because they say they could have changed things, non-magi would perhaps not believe them? And then if the magi start guiding humans, the humans may feel oppressed, and not even know what sorts of crises they're avoiding by being guided. Because they wouldn't know anything else. Unless the magi show them, but then again, it hasn't happened so who is to believe what's real or right?

 

[Stuart Dren]

Yeah, what did they miss out on, and what's the aim of demonstrating it? Is it to show the people that the magi do exist, could have acted, and did not?

I think the butterfly effect would take hold and make the present queerly unrecognizable with changes like that. Even if it was for the 'better,' it wouldn't be their timeline. Certain members of the populace would not even exist. That's a hard sell, unless the alternative is complete annihilation or something.

Madman noted the pieces of the oppression there. Good point that what they've avoided depends on the scrying, something they would have to trust the magi to not engineer. And yeah I agree that the threat of a uber force would immediately feel oppressive to many people. The rest might choose to worship them, of course.

 

[Link the Writer]

Ooooh crap, you’re right. The stakes. I kinda forgot about it. :/

Like, if the stakes were ‘there’s a pact between magi and non-magi that is very delicate and, if broken, will risk the destruction of the world’ or whatever, then yeah, there’d be something to fight for or against. As of now? It’s just… some guy rambling about why magic should be more open.

 

[Madman Starryteller]

Ooooh crap, you’re right. The stakes. I kinda forgot about it. :/

Like, if the stakes were ‘there’s a pact between magi and non-magi that is very delicate and, if broken, will risk the destruction of the world’ or whatever, then yeah, there’d be something to fight for or against. As of now? It’s just… some guy rambling about why magic should be more open.

You do have the setup of some political tension between the magi and humans.

 

[Link the Writer]

All I have for now is that there’s a Pact between the Magi and non-Magi, ostensibly to protect the non-Magi. There’s even a Department of Magic in DC chaired by a representative that reports directly to the POTUS.

The idea is that Vaylen has honorable goals, but he risks accidentally making the Pact not worth the ink written on it, thus galvanizing witch hunts, or Magi trying to be overlords to the non-Magi.

 

[Stuart Dren]

Yeah it could just be a non-interference clause, where their discovery is also considered a form of interference. It might even be the case that the humans have a powerful contingency plan for if they ever find evidence of violating the agreement.

It also raises the question: if the magi were acting covertly, would anyone even know? What's to stop Vaylen from just changing people's minds behind the scenes?

 

[Luxuria]

As I see it, as others have mentioned here, both of your characters are right. One should interfere, but also not interfere. I am rather shocked though that the antagonist wants to do nothing. As I see it, it is the character who wants to expose Magi who is the antagonist. Because it would cause a larger disruption in the world. Also, if he did, then it would seem likely people would be upset for the Magi doing nothing and hunt them down.

Honestly though, hidden worlds are not my specialty. I am very much into Magic is Not Hidden in my stories. So, take what I say with a grain of salt. Also, yes, there is the question of how could the Magi let all these bad things happen to humans throughout history. Which is a bigger question as it seems as if they have been around forever.

In my own opinion, I would force the characters into revealing the magi for the sake of the world. Or the direct opposite, force everyone to remain hidden at all costs-- create a secret war between the two ideas.

 

[Link the Writer]

As I see it, as others have mentioned here, both of your characters are right. One should interfere, but also not interfere. I am rather shocked though that the antagonist wants to do nothing. As I see it, it is the character who wants to expose Magi who is the antagonist. Because it would cause a larger disruption in the world. Also, if he did, then it would seem likely people would be upset for the Magi doing nothing and hunt them down.

Honestly though, hidden worlds are not my specialty. I am very much into Magic is Not Hidden in my stories. So, take what I say with a grain of salt. Also, yes, there is the question of how could the Magi let all these bad things happen to humans throughout history. Which is a bigger question as it seems as if they have been around forever.

In my own opinion, I would force the characters into revealing the magi for the sake of the world. Or the direct opposite, force everyone to remain hidden at all costs-- create a secret war between the two ideas.

That’s the basic idea. Vaylen is supposed to be the antagonist who wants to expose the Mägi. Bullar wants to keep the status quo, and this causes tension to broil between the two factions that ends in a battle over the USS Alabama memorial park (not flashy or dramatic, but enough for the non-Mägi to see that something is going on that isn’t normal.)

Maybe the stakes are like if the Mägi do reveal themselves, then it causes the mother of all international incidents, because if they were with us since the dawn of human history, how much did they secretly influence us? Didn’t influence us? The non-Mägi wouldn’t know, so paranoia would set in and we’d have something akin to the X-Men where governments around the world persecute the Mägi. (Come to think of it, the main character (who keeps flopping between Heather or Hannah) does reference the X-Men on a number of occasions.)