Insanity and Fantasy Worlds

[SirNitram]

One common theme in high-fantasy(Be it modern, gothic, medieval..) is that the mind has some level of influence on reality. Yet we all know the mind can go horribly wrong. Many forms of insanity can manifest, and one would presume in the highly morphic realms of fantasy, it should be capable of altering reality.

This thread has two main goals as I set it out. One, to talk about any examples of this idea cropping up in various series(I am told the show Nick Night, about a vampiric detective, had an individual whose Multiple Personality Disorder granted immunity to vampiric weaknesses.. So strong were the other two personalities in not believing in vampires, they could walk in sunlight, move into holy ground, eat food..), and to toss about possible ideas for those of us who write.

Game on.

[Stormin]

I don't know if it is cause or effect, but sometimes the most powerful mages are insane in fantasy worlds.
And in cases like Sword of Truth, the author himself is not exactly stable either.

[Darth Wong]

Maybe fantasy world powers only work if you believe in them. So an insane guy who doesn't believe something will hurt him actually becomes immune to these fantasy-world spells and monsters whose power rests entirely on the belief that they can hurt you.

[SirNitram]

Maybe fantasy world powers only work if you believe in them. So an insane guy who doesn't believe something will hurt him actually becomes immune to these fantasy-world spells and monsters whose power rests entirely on the belief that they can hurt you.

That's overstating it; aside from illusion magic, such doesn't tend to work. Unless it's Discworld.

[Tasoth]

Or Mage

[haas mark]

One common theme in high-fantasy(Be it modern, gothic, medieval..) is that the mind has some level of influence on reality. Yet we all know the mind can go horribly wrong. Many forms of insanity can manifest, and one would presume in the highly morphic realms of fantasy, it should be capable of altering reality.

This thread has two main goals as I set it out. One, to talk about any examples of this idea cropping up in various series(I am told the show Nick Night, about a vampiric detective, had an individual whose Multiple Personality Disorder granted immunity to vampiric weaknesses.. So strong were the other two personalities in not believing in vampires, they could walk in sunlight, move into holy ground, eat food..), and to toss about possible ideas for those of us who write.

Game on.

Mind going bad is shown pretty well in LotR (the One Ring) and WoT (the Taint), if you ask me.

As per a vampire with MPD, I find it a very interesting idea, though I don't think that it is viable. Given that a vampire is a vampire is a vampire, it wouldn't work no matter how much influence the personalities have. That's all in the head (and a better disorder would probably be Dissociative Identity Disorder, anyhow). But given fantasy fiction, it could very well happen.

~ver

[Drooling Iguana]

The show was called Forever Knight, not Nick Night. Nick Knight (with a "k") was the name of the main character,

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Maybe fantasy world powers only work if you believe in them. So an insane guy who doesn't believe something will hurt him actually becomes immune to these fantasy-world spells and monsters whose power rests entirely on the belief that they can hurt you.

This its self should be a form of magic, however. My "scientific" (the correct designation would be "empirical" I believe) theory of how to explain magical worlds is to say they basically work according to the concept of a Platonic universe. If we accept the Ideal Form of the Sentient being to be Reason, than the Reasoning mind can through their sharing in the Form of Equality interact with other Ideal Forms; and so, perhaps a measure of power through the Ideal World becomes possible over the lesser representations of other Ideal Forms, even as our own Ideal Form--Reason, the rational mind--has influence over the function of the more animal base of the body.

What this essentially means is that someone who negates a magic power, has simply demonstrated the ability to influence the Form of that power; greater than it can their own--this influence being represented in the restoration of what they see as proper (or in the situation of direct control, one would see, perhaps, a counter-magic attack). If one uses this theory to evaluate fantasy worlds, one can toss real-world physics out the door and simply rely on Platonic Theory to explain what happens, which, considering the level of violation of physics usually seen in heavy fantasy realms, is perhaps not unjust.

(Especially since if it is a different universe there's no guarantee that it would have remotely the same physical laws that our own does.)

[SAMAS]

Maybe fantasy world powers only work if you believe in them. So an insane guy who doesn't believe something will hurt him actually becomes immune to these fantasy-world spells and monsters whose power rests entirely on the belief that they can hurt you.

That's kinda the idea behind the Nega-Psychic in Palladium's Beyond the Supernatural and RIFTS games. In BTS, a Nega-Psychic is a Psychic who, ironically, doesn't believe in magic, psionics, or the supernatural. His disbelief, comined with his power, actually has the ability to disrupt magic.

In RIFTS, however, a Nega-Psychic is just defiant and rediculously stubbourn. After all, it's hard to not believe in the supernatural when you're staring down a Dragon. But their defiance has the same effect as the RTS version's unbelief.

[Peregrin Toker]

What about the Cthulhu Mythos, where the knowledge that explains magic can drive a person insane??