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Metaphysical App: Difference between revisions
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▲{{trope workshop}}
[[File:Darwin'sGameSnake.png|350px|thumb|right|Just another mobile game preying on another innocent user.]]
{{quote|''There's an app for that.''}}
A '''Metaphysical App''' is a smartphone or PDA app -- which is to say, a specialized computer program -- that has a paranormal or supernatural function. By their very nature they're found in [[Urban Fantasy]] or "soft" [[Speculative Fiction]] settings where the tech base is ''at least'' advanced enough to support hand-held computing devices capable of running reasonably complex programs. The magic is in the ''program'', not the device it runs on.<ref>Otherwise you're just dealing with a conventionally enchanted hand-held item.</ref> There are settings where non-mobile computers or free-willed [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]]s can perform magic, [[Well, This Is Not That Trope|but in neither case could one classify them as "apps"]].▼
▲A '''Metaphysical App''' is a smartphone or PDA app (or, more rarely, an application on a desktop computer) -- which is to say, a specialized computer program -- that has a paranormal or supernatural function. By their very nature they're found in [[Urban Fantasy]] or "soft" [[Speculative Fiction]] settings where the tech base is ''at least'' advanced enough to support hand-held computing devices capable of running reasonably complex programs. The magic is in the ''program'', not the device it runs on.<ref>Otherwise you're just dealing with a conventionally enchanted hand-held item.</ref> There are settings where non-mobile computers or free-willed [[Artificial Intelligence|AI]]s can perform magic, [[Well, This Is Not That Trope|but in neither case could one classify them as "apps"]].
Exactly ''how'' such a program accomplishes its function is open to authorial [[Hand Wave|handwaving]]. They may be genuine [[Post-Modern Magik]], where technological means are being used to produce a magical effect. On the other hand, it may just be [[Clarke's Third Law]] in play, with an ultimately [[Magic From Technology|mundane reason for what just ''looks like'' magic]], however advanced it might be. Regardless, be careful that a [[Technopath]] doesn't get their hands on a phone or PDA that contains one of these.
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Like many such tropes, the existence of Metaphysical Apps can be either a major plot element of the story in which they appear, or simple "flavor" details, like any other everyday technology.
Not to be confused with a [[Magical Computer]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
*''[[Darwin's Game]]'' (as pictured above) gives each participant a Sigil, [[Superpower Lottery|a power randomly bestowed on the user]]. The players participate for survival where they fight one another with their Sigil or weapons gained from the app.
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* The ''[[Digimon]]'' franchise likes to play with this, with computer programs entering the real world, and humans entering cyberspace.
** ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' has Henry receive his Digimon, Terriermon, by essentially pulling him from his computer screen after playing the in-universe Digimon videogame.
== [[Literature]] ==
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== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* The [[Augmented Reality Game]] at the heart of the Korean series ''[[Memories of the Alhambra]]''. It runs as an app on a newly-designed electronic contact lens device, and somehow seems able to blur the border between reality and the game world.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[GURPS]] Technomancer'' is a tabletop RPG setting where magic and late-20th-century science coexist and the two can be used together. One of their scientific advances is a "mana coprocessor" - needless to say, a computer's spellchecker doesn't check one's spelling in this setting.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* ''[[Ingress]]'' is an [[Augmented Reality Game]] where two factions -- the Resistance and the Enlightened -- fight over the transdimensional energy called Exotic Matter or XM. They use the app to harness XM, which the Enlightened want to make humanity enlightened. At the same time, the Resistance wishes to restrict Exotic Matter due to the mental damage it can cause.
* ''[[Action Taimanin]]'' has an interesting twist on the premise. One Taimanin uses her smartphone to summon creations made on it to attack enemies, but despite the world setting being one where [[Magitek|technology and magic]] often dovetail, the powers in question have nothing to do with the phone. Rather, the powers of the user simply cause the contents of the smartphone to physically manifest, with the phone and or any other electronic medium simply being used as a conductor/spell book.
== [[Web Animation]] ==
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* The web novel ''[[Pet King]]'' has a supernatural app that can capture average and magical animals. The main character uses this to run his petshop and increases business.
* The "[[Master PC]]" -- a computer program found on both desktop machines and lately smart phones, which gives its user [[Reality Warper]] powers over every person within about fifty miles -- has been the center of a series of mostly erotic stories written and posted to the web by many different authors since the middle-late 1990s.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Parodied in ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'': In an ''[[Avengers: Endgame]]'' parody, the villain downloads a Doomsday app that turns people into crystals.
* Richie Rich, friend of the ''[[Harvey Street Girls]]'', has created apps that can make him invisible and walk on walls like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
{{reflist}}
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