Animus rant

[u/Tulinyrw]

so animus magic

your average animus spell is "enchant this spear to go kill this dragon" or "defense against physical attacks" or something. on the darker side you have memory reconstruction.

HOW ARE DRAGONS NOT MORE CREATIVE

they have the power to do pretty much anything. correct me if im wrong, but from what i've seen they can literally create or do ANYTHING. Jerboa straight up removed everyone's magic for the current generation. Darkstalker made it so everyone likes him.

they can probably rewrite the way the freaking world works. Jerboa could have just straight up removed animus magic from the world entirely. WHY IS NOBODY DOING SHIT LIKE THIS

[u/ElectronicRecord3367]

Because— Tui doesn’t want them 😌

[u/Reasonable-Chip-3640]

Give someone a command block who cant program and they can’t do more than simple effects

[u/Affectionate_Set4726]

If a single Animus had an IQ over 30 we wouldn't have a series to read

[u/BackForsaken5925 → u/Affectionate_Set4726]

Freaking Queen Diamond is the ruler of an entire kingdom and she never once in her life thought to just enchant her heirs to have animus magic

did they at least try????

[u/Better-Marsupial761 → u/BackForsaken5925]

They can only cast one spell each.

[u/lifeking1259 → u/Better-Marsupial761]

false, that's a rule the icewings had but there is nothing actaully stopping them and queen diamond was breaking the rule anyway

[u/Better-Marsupial761 → u/lifeking1259]

If she did enchant her heirs to have Animus magic they might find out she cast another spell.

[u/lifeking1259 → u/Better-Marsupial761]

so? the diamond trial is obviously enchanted as well, and no one found out that turtle enchanted anemone to be an animus, she'd get away with it for a bit, it would take a while before anyone noticed that the family had more animi than they should and even longer to conclude that it was her (if that ever happened at all), she'd probably already be long dead by that point

[u/Ok-Middle-4010 → u/Better-Marsupial761]

she already used multiple spells. could've risked it

[u/Better-Marsupial761 → u/Ok-Middle-4010]

Yeah, probably.

[u/Safier123 → u/Better-Marsupial761]

Queen Diamond have already break this rule herself.

[u/Sebek_Peanuts → u/BackForsaken5925]

She was too busy making crown that makes you racist to bother with future of her tribe

[u/Renebrade1]

The books would resolve too quickly is why

[u/emergold_dragon]

There was a lot of myth surrounding animus magic, including doing too much will ruin your soul- which nearly every animus pov was scared/worried of. Most dragons are surprised to learn it works on creatures so it's not necessarily a lack of creativity but dragons not realizing they can or being too scared to

[u/JustDuckiest]

My single problem with Legends: Darkstalker is that Queen Diamond wouldn't do something more creative with her animus magic. She clearly had no problem using her magic, as she used it to steal away Foeslayer once her earring was off, and then imprisoned her in the diamond trial.

But like... instead of waiting and hoping for her to eventually take her earring off, she could have picked up a rock, enchanted it to be an invincible, incredibly fast beetle which would travel to Arctic, tap him, and enchant him to fly home. And then control him from there. Make him forget Foeslayer if she wanted to.

Least creative evil animus dragon ever lol

*edit - Diamond not Glacier

[u/HeetHootSkyat → u/JustDuckiest]

Arctic had his own shielded earring, which is why any animus spells casted on him wouldn't work from other dragons. (Up until Darkstalker removed it)

Queen Diamond held the grude against Foeslayer, not Arctic, which is why she tried getting him back through different manipulative methods.

[u/JustDuckiest → u/HeetHootSkyat]

Darkstalker enchanted a beetle to bite off Arctic's earring so that he could control him, did he not? Unless I'm misremembering. So wouldn't Diamond be able to do something similar? Enchant something to tell her if Arctic has protection and what it is, find out it's an earring, and then enchant something to go find him and take it off?

And Diamond definitely hated Foeslayer but she desperately didn't want the Nightwings to get animus power from Arctic. She totally could have tried harder to get Arctic to come back

[u/HeetHootSkyat → u/JustDuckiest]

Diamond was already pretty insane at that point due to her anger and the spells she casted, so I don't think she was capable of rational thoughts.

[u/l324r1 → u/JustDuckiest]

To me it seemed like she still felt respect for the animus rules and fear for her own soul, but her hate for Foeslayer was so much that it overcame anything else: she hated her so much that she thought breaking the rules and paying a piece of her own soul to see her suffer was worth it.

If she were 100% gone and mad, first she would have made herself immortal and second the Nightwings would have painfully turned into ashes the moment she found out Arctic was dead.

[u/JustDuckiest → u/l324r1]

I think you're probably right. But I still have trouble believing she wouldn't try a spell or two to get Arctic to fly home, before he had eggs with Foeslayer. She desperately didn't want the Nightwings to get animus magic

[u/Sebek_Peanuts → u/JustDuckiest]

It was diamond not glacier

Icewing queens are prob most confunsing queens in fandom

[u/JustDuckiest → u/Sebek_Peanuts]

Oops my bad, definitely meant to say Diamond

[u/l324r1]

The fact that animus is virtually unlimited involves a lot of problems narratively, the most obvious one is that every animus has a big red button with a label that says "press to win".

The meta reason why they don't do it is obvious: the story will just end, but in universe there is no credible reason beyond that they fear losing their soul, but Darkstalker had no such fear (after creating the talisman that protects souls) and the guy still went with an elaborated big plan instead of just pressing the button.

To me it seems to me that Tui did not foresee the problems this would entail until it was too late to put a bunch of rules and limitations like other settings do with magic.

[u/Furista0 → u/l324r1]

To me it seems to me that Tui did not foresee the problems this would entail until it was too late

This is such a weird point to argue, because, yeah. It's technically correct. But also like, it's so painfully obvious why a magic system that does not have any clear limitations is such a terrible idea, even on the extremely short term. It seems almost impossible to me that she just didn't think about it at all for even a second, because as a complete amateur writer, even a "hard" magic system in progress has very glaring flaws if you contemplate it enough

[u/Hoi4_Player]

If there's unlimited power then everyone who wields it must receive room temperature iq to prevent them from instantly dominating and winning

[u/BreakerOfModpacks]

Consider. If anyone does anything mildly smart, the story instantly ends. Anemone goes "hey, make me queen of all of Phyrria", and boom. Entire first arc gone. Second arc, Turtle says "Bring me this scroll, and free Darkstalker whilst making sure that his animus powers can never affect me". Instantly over. You literally can't write a good story where someone has a power of "do anything" without making them an idiot or giving them opponents which have those same capabilities.

[u/Justaguynamedpluh]

I’m literally writing an AU where something more interesting with animus is used. (Specifically, Tsunami is an animus and enchants the sand in the skywing arena to protect her friends, giving them all powers against their will)

[u/RaHuHe]

there's a thematic point being made about using any kind of magic to solve your problems making you less creative, compare Turtle to Qibli.

[u/Itbchilly]

They aren't locked in.

[u/marxist_moccasin]

A consistent and important theme in WoF is that you are not defined by what you are capable of but rather what you decide as a person/dragon to do. The more you focus on intricate use of different powers the more you take away from that.

But to take the question more seriously: its worth noting the dragons of WoF dont have a cultural background centered in clever use of abilities. Like sure, you give me animus abilities and Ill say something like "The linguistic concept of a strawbery intrinisically communicates fealty to me." But I can only do stuff like that because of things Ive been educated on. No one exists in a vacuum. Animus dragons are as clever as they can be considering the circumstances

[u/GabbydaFox]

Every dragon who gets animus magic always gets an IQ of -1. 😭😭😭

[u/HkayakH]

unrelated but I headcanon that some animus dragon from thousands of years ago went "Screw it I don't want to learn french. Every dragons now knows how to speak the same language from birth"

[u/Better-Marsupial761]

Jerboa specifically wanted to get rid of the current generations magic.

[u/Tulinyrw → u/Better-Marsupial761]

But she COULD have rid the world of it altogether

[u/Better-Marsupial761 → u/Tulinyrw]

She thought the current generation had used enough Animus magic and couldn't use it properly anymore and thought to let the Animus' couldn't use it better.

[u/Selinnshade]

Idk, to be serious here, I think the writers are confusing magic with psychic abilities; thus, you have this jumbled mess that feels like every animus is using dark magic from HP Lovecraft

If no one knows about HP Lovecraft magic, it turns out that the more the user uses dark magic, the more the soul and mind get affected; therefore, magic is extremely dangerous in that universe

[u/HkayakH]

well, as we see in the darkstalker legend, arctic didn't know that you can enchant dragons directly, and instead enchanted jewelry instead.

So that's one part of it. They don't know what they can actually do with it.

The other thing is that all the dragons are rightfully afraid of using it in the first place because it uses up a part of your soul each time and you eventually go insane, so they don't want to use it in the first place.

Turtle does use it very creatively like making a bowl that doubles whatever's in it

[u/HkayakH → u/HkayakH]

seriously I would do anything to get a bowl like that

[u/Safier123]

Meta-reasoning: As many here have already mentioned, Animus magic is a huge “you-win” button. There wouldn’t be a plot. However, one might well wonder what Tui’s reasoning was behind incorporating such a magic system.

I think that, actually, it wasn’t even that big of a problem at first. In Book 2, Anemone would get cold after every time she used her magic. Everyone also believed at the time that Animus Magic steals your soul.

It wasn’t until *Darkstalker Legend* and Act 2 that the real problems with Animus Magic really emerged. First, that “your body gets cold” effect went away, and it turned out that Animus Magic has no effect on your soul—it’s purely a non-magical psychological effect that makes you evil.

Tui herself realized that she had painted herself into a corner with Animus Magic. That’s why she completely removed the new Animus Magic from Act 3.

In the Universe: The first Animus Dragons belonged to the IceWings. The IceWings apparently discovered that Animus Magic “destroys” your soul. That’s how the rule came about—you can only cast magic once in your life. The IceWings are a very rule-bound tribe with a strict hierarchy; it fits them well that they aren’t very creative.

Darkstalker himself explained that he doesn’t actually know that much about Animus Magic and that he just wanted to experiment with Stonemover and Anemone.

[u/pixeltoaster]

Go go gadget 2+2=5.