No Ontological Inertia/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Effects caused by magic do not outlive the mage.

  • Straight: The heroes kill Marco the Magnificent at the end of Tales of Troperia. All the people he turned to stone return to living flesh.
  • Exaggerated: The heroes kill Catherine the Conjurer. The entire Empire transforms from a monster-infested volcanic wasteland to a peaceful verdant paradise.
  • Justified: "Magic" is the imposition of the caster's will upon the natural order of the universe. Once that will no longer exists, the universe snaps back to its normal state.
  • Inverted: If the magic effect is dispelled, the mage dies.
    • The heroes find an elixir that can reverse petrification, when they're done pouring it on the statues, Marco the Magnificent dies.
    • Catherine the Conjurer's summoned monsters and devil spawns are all slain, and this kills her.
  • Subverted: The heroes are sure that killing Marco the Magnificent will restore everything to normal... but when he is finally slain, nothing gets better.
  • Double Subverted: ...because that was only a magical duplicate of Marco, of course! Genre Savvy readers knew something was up, because they were only halfway through the trilogy.
  • Parodied: Magical effects only last as long as the mage is concentrating on them, and Connie the Cute Witch has a rather short attention span.
  • Deconstructed: Marco the Magnificent is fully aware that the effects of his magic will fade with his death. That's why he's hellbent on attaining eternal life, regardless of the cost.
      • Alternately, and in addition to Marco's reason for focusing on eternal life, the heroes issue him a Shut UP, Hannibal lecture and promptly exterminate the foul being that was once a mage. Unfortunately, the motive that started Marco on his dark quest for immortality was not a selfish one, but rather a magic-powered cage around an even stronger evil.
      • On top of that, any beneficial magic he may have done before becoming an evil mage goes away as well.
    • Catherine the Conjurer does her dirty work done through mundane means where possible, so the effects will be permanent. This is the reason why she used slaves to build her new palace by hand for the last eight years rather than conjure one up overnight, and why she relies on a network of assassins instead of long-distance curses.
  • Zig Zagged: Some magical effects fade with the death of the caster, others don't, depending on the rules of magic in the story.
  • Averted: No mages die in the course of the story, so whether their spells have ontological inertia or not is not tested.
  • Enforced: "We want to do lots of transformations of the main characters, but have them clear again by the next episode. How about making it so the transformations go away when the villain does?"
  • Lampshaded: "Magic is like dewdrops and rainbows, beautiful but impermanent."
  • Invoked: Generally invoked in-universe.
  • Defied: Marco the Magnificent researches ways to keep his spells powered even after his death, to be a permanent monument to his greatness.
  • Discussed: "Don't worry, Alice. All we have to do is find the monster that did this and get rid of them. Then everyone in the village will be fine again."
  • Conversed: "It must be a bummer to study magic all that time and then learn it's all just going to go away in the end."

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