Practical Folklore, Monday 2nd period

[intheeyeofthebeholding]

"Welcome back, everybody," Jon began. "My apologies for last week. This week, I thought we could begin with something a bit more nebulous than the others: witches. I'm aware we have at least some people on the island who identify as witches, and there may be more I'm unaware of. Traditionally witches are women with some form of magical power; beyond that, there are a number of possibilities for narrowing it down."

He shrugged. "Honestly, in my version of Earth, witches were mostly women that knew a bit of science and didn't like being bossed around by the church, and therefor got painted in the worst possible light so as to make it easier to kill them with impunity. It's possible some had actual power, but given the rate of experiences with the Fears, I'm guessing the vast majority did not. Other worlds, of course, may have different ratios of actual power to innocents men hated.

"In folklore I'm aware of, witches are often depicted as old women, generally living alone, and run the gamut from helpful to horrendous. The one rule of thumb seems to be that you don't want to treat them poorly. Which can be generalized to 'don't be a bastard to old women', which seems like a decent rule anyway."

Said the man who pissed people off on the regular. In his defence, he often didn't mean to! "So, let's discuss witches. Are you one, do you know any, does your world have them or stories of them? What other applications can you think of other than to treat people well?"

Comments

Re: Class discussion

[gospel_of_oblivion]

"I mean, some witches get snide because theirs is all-natural, just like sorcerers can be snobby because they can read twelve dead languages?" Illyana mused. "But it's like someone who plays baseball arguing with someone who plays basketball. It's still a sport, just different rules of engagement."

"If anyone is casting judgements, it's on what kind of magics each person is using -- creation, destruction, chaos, divine, dark, eldritch -- and for what reason...that sort of thing. Most sorcerers are only adept in eldritch. A lot of witches prefer creation or Asgardian."

True! Mostly! Just... witches tended to not like Yana. At all. It was the 'WMD of Dark Magic' Thing.

Re: Class discussion

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden's face had remained completely normal and fine as Illyana had listed off those types of magic, remaining extra normal on 'chaos'.

"What's eldritch then? Just...a way to summarize the kind of magic you can learn in books?"

Listen, she'd never played D&D, okay? Give the girl a break.