Is Ice/Fire opposition too stereotypical?
I'm writing a story where a secondary story-line (it's about a companion of the main character) is basically about a fire mage and an ice mage.
It fits well in the story and the fire/ice elements aren't coming out of nowhere, but I wonder if it will bother the reader?
Does it depend on whether I write it well? Or is it better that I change the elements anyway?
This is a hard-fantasy story. The main character has two companions. One of them was born in a family proficient in the use of explosions, which I basically call fire magic. His father died as a rebel fighting a party of loyal soldiers (including a renowned ice user) who were killed in the process. Said ice user's son will seek revenge on the explosions user's son. This isn't the main plot, but it plays an important role nevertheless.
According to my calculations, I'm in for one thousand pages, so of course there's much more to the story, BUT I wouldn't want that to discourage the reader from reading further...
As for what different magic types there are: actually, I at least have psychological magic, body transformations (includes healing), explosions, moving objects, heating, cooling, etc.
Ice is moving objects + cooling at least.
Fire is explosions + heating at least.
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I wouldn't just use fire and ice. The classic Four Elements (earth, air, fire, water) have been used for mythological and magical structures for many stories. Look at the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra cartoon series just for starters.
Having mages whose powers fall into one of those four categories (or expand them to metal, electricity, stone, etc. depending on how advanced the civilization is), with opposing pairs, is completely doable. Make it the basis for all your magic, not just the secondary storyline, and if your worldbuilding works, then you're fine. Sure, it's been done before, but there have been lots of vampires and wizards and mages and quests before, and the bookstores are not emptying any time soon. Go for it.
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I think fire and ice can be two fundamental magic forces in your story if you frame it as powers of increasing and decreasing temperature, powers of giving energy to and taking energy from particles.
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It is a bit stereotypical, but for good reason. The two are opposing forces. I don't mean in the sense of physical frozen water and whatever the hell fire is, but in the sense of endothermic (absorbs heat) and exothermic (emits heat) reactions. The two are opposing ends of the 'thermal' spectrum, like how midday is the opposite of midnight. Using ice magic and fire magic is perfectly acceptable.
What would be stereotypical (and somewhat cliché) would be to make the characters a personification of those elements. Typically fire-users are energetic hot-heads who are quick to anger and ice-users are oddly calm and relaxed because those traits fit the elements. But if magic were to exist, people would not necissarily be personifications of the magic they use, people would have personalities and they would choose to use a certain magic. There is no reason to not have an excitable, bubbly ice-user or a miserable, lazy fire-user.
Admittedly there might be cultural influence (e.g. the fire nation favours power, the ice nation favours wisdom) but that would not be steadfast - there do exist Americans who don't like American football or hamburgers, there do exist Britons who do not like football or tea. Heck, all nations are divided by their politics alone, no matter what traits their culture favours.
TL;DR: Fire and Ice magic is fine, but don't make the people personifications of their powers.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28666. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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