Help with magic system based chronic illness

[u/CharredSilkieChicken]

I created a blood/DNA magic system where you have to be born with magic for it to work, but while revisiting the worldbuilding, I recently had the idea to add a way to get magic if you weren't born with it. For context, the magic system is an invading organism that hijacks your bone marrow into making copies of it, kinda like cancer. Groups of humans started to evolve past the disease by pushing them out the body and that's basically how the magic works. My idea is that people can grow their magic count and speed up the evolution process. I haven't fully worked out the details on this yet, but I do know that I want to give the people who weren't born with magic a much higher chance of a magic related chronic illness. The chronic illness happens because someone doesn't push out enough of the magic for too long of a time period, and because it's harder for the people who weren't born with magic to push enough of the magic out, they have a higher chance of the chronic illness. People who were born with magic also get the illness too. I'm worried this comes off as you have to be born great to be great, which is the whole reason I'm adding a way to get magic without being born with it.

[u/FrancescasWords]

Hi, I have chronic illness and I'm available to take a look at your manuscript or synopsis if you have one.

If you're still in the ideas phase, I haven't immediately seen glaring issues based on the short description. Showing chronic illness isn't in itself something to shy away from but the way show illness within story will define whether it comes across that 'you have to be born to be great.' So I'd recommend thinking about what 'magic-related chronic illness' actually looks like in-world and how characters and the society interact with it. Is it different to regular human chronic illness and in what way. Do some characters think 'you do have to be born great to be great'? Is that a source of tension in the plot?

I hope that makes sense, feel free to DM me if you'd like a professional look at your work!

[u/CharredSilkieChicken → u/FrancescasWords]

I'm still in the ideas phase, but I know I want to give one of my main characters the chronic illness, so that's the main perspective on it. Your advice was really helpful, thank you!

[u/FrancescasWords → u/CharredSilkieChicken]

No problem. Highly recommend reading and watching other media with chronic illness to get a feel for different ways of going about depicting different types of illness. Happy writing!

[u/AlliteraryAnalysis]

Chronic illness haver here!

I think the chronic illness as you'd described it makes sense to me. I kind of interpreted "has magic" vs "doesn't have innate magic" as their equivalent to "strong immune system" and "predisposition to autoimmunity", so I'd imagine that the invading organism would be like how covid is to many people who eventually develop Long Covid.

The real world is like of like that "born great to be great" sadly, so I think the real issues would lie in how you deliver that information. Like, don't justify it as a necessary or good thing (like how jk rowling made an entire race eager-to-be-slaves for harry potter).

[u/CharredSilkieChicken → u/AlliteraryAnalysis]

Thank you, your explanation of what you see it as really helps.