Iris Messages, Sending Stones and Disappearing Love Letters: Why we love magical communication devices

Why do we love magical communication devices? This episode will look and fantasy stories such as Percy Jackson, Dungeons and Dragons, Divine Rivals and Avatar the Last Airbender to find out when magical communication is necessary, when it's cliche and why we especially like magic in romance.

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Transcript

(Read an excerpt from Divine Rivals)

Hello and welcome to Greeks and Geeks, the podcast which takes us on a persnikity but fun journey deep diving into the lore behind our favourite stories. And you just listened to an excerpt of one of my favourite fantasy books in recent years, Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross. The basic concept is two rival journalists in a war-torn fantastical world, begin to communicate through their magical typewriters. There begins a tale of romance, war, journalism and mistaken identities.

Such stories use magical communication devices time and time again. But why is it so compelling to us? Why do writers insist on interesting ways to communicate in their fantasy worlds? Why do readers and viewers flock to these stories time and time again? I’m here to do a deep dive and analyse some of these movies and books to find out what makes these devices so compelling to us using some of mine, and the Greeks and Geeks communities favourite types of magical communication devices to hopefully make my point. Let’s get into it shall we?

Firstly we have to discuss what a magical communication device even is. Simply put a magical communication device is a communication device derived from fantastical elements that don’t exist in reality…and least any reality that I know of. I’m a millennial so there’s still part of me that hopes that some magical fantasy realm lays beyond a wardrobe just waiting for me to find. Anyways these devices go beyond what regular mortals have access to. This is different to Sci-fi communication devices, because communication devices in science fiction are built on that kind of futuristic element of what humans might be able to achieve, where we might be able to go. Two different kinds of what ifs. With science fiction communication devices, its “what if we took this phone idea we already have, made it smaller, and added a little screen so we can actually send messages and information instantly?” such as was the case when Star Trek first introduced the PADDs in the 1980s. With magical communication devices, it’s simply “what if people had magical powers or a special, magical way to talk back and forth?” or “how can people in my fantasy world communicate if modern methods don’t exist or can’t be accessed?”

So what forms does this take? Well as is common with fantasy, the possibilities are endless. But usually you’ll find it involves something combination or form of the following:

1.       An animal, could be a magical or enchanted one but could also be normal

2.       A spell like in DnD

3.       A ritual (slightly different from a spell, like you have to complete certain steps and usually rely on a deity to help you)

4.       A regular device from our world that’s enchanted in some way to produce an instant method of communication.

Today I’m going to be discussing a few examples of magical communication devices, their purposes and some of their pitfalls.

Of course I’ll be relying on my good ol’ faithful, Percy Jackson to kick start this episode, but also some DnD too!

And now I’m just thinking about a DnD style version of Percy Jackson, has anyone ever done that? That sounds so cool ANYWHO’S on with the show!

(MUSIC)

Messaging for purpose

(read an excerpt from Percy Jackson portraying Iris Messages)

To put things in the most obvious way possible, the barest of bones reason to have magical methods of communication is…well to communicate. It is simply a function thing, in a fantasy world where modern methods of communication aren’t available to you, you need a way of passing information from one character to another. 

Let’s look at Iris messaging in Percy Jackson for example. Like a lot of modern authors, Rick Riordan had to nerf modern technology in order for many of his plots to work.  Could you imagine if Demigods could use phones? Like they could just get an uber ride to the underworld, GPS to navigate the minotaur’s labyrinth or using an Air Tag to find out where on earth Grover is in Sea of Monsters, there are many ways that phones could have solved the problem a lot sooner. So Rick Riordan invented the idea that using modern phones and technology means that monsters, who actively hunt demigods in his version of Greek Mythology, can sense them and hunt them better. So it’s best if they don’t use them.

But then how do you get information to someone urgently? Well in the world of Percy Jackson, Rick Riordan did something quite clever. He used the Greek Gods themselves as a way to communicate. Specifically, the Greek Goddess Iris. Most people know that Hermes is a messenger god but, as he is also one of the Olympians his role in the novels is also more of a complicated father, so to have him be a messenger for demigods might get a bit…well let’s just say Luke might have had even more issues if he’d needed to spend money to see his dad and leave it at that.

Enter a lesser known goddess, Iris the goddess of rainbows, who was also known as a messenger goddess for the Olympians. Not much is really written about her in ancient sources, so Rick Riordan could use his imagination to fill in the gaps. In Percy Jackson, they spend a gold drachma and find mist to create a rainbow in order to send a message. So this is an example of a ritualistic type of fantasy messaging service and I probably could have said that in less words. Ritualistic communication device? I don’t know. Anyways this does one of two things, it creates a bigger barrier to entry than that a simple phone, meaning that they can’t rely on Iris Messages all the time because they might not be able to complete the ritual, or the goddess could be “busy” and not be able to connect the messages, and it therefore means that these messages have to generally be important for either the characters or plot reasons.

One of the best examples of this is, in my opinion, Sea of Monsters, the second book in the Percy Jackson series. At the start of the novel, the mentor figure Chiron is accused of poisoning Thalia’s pine tree, the tree which protects Camp Half Blood, and is sacked because of it. However, through some clever use of Iris Message trickery, Percy is able to get the true culprit to confess in a way which has everyone back at Camp Half Blood in the know, exonerating Chiron and setting the stage for a fun end-of-book battle with one severely enraged baddie. If they hadn’t had the magical method of communicating, then Chiron’s innocence might not have been proven in time.

Also, as I mentioned before, Iris messaging can and has been known to fail, so it can’t be used as a quick way to resolve issues. Take Son of Neptune, the second book in the Heroes of Olympus series, for example. Percy tries to send an Iris Message to Annabeth but it fails to connect. He had the drachma and the rainbow necessary, but the message didn’t send. If it had been successful, then a major plot point would have been resolved a lot sooner. Percy had been taken from Camp Half Blood, his memories erased by the Goddess Hera, and had been separated from his girlfriend Annabeth. 

Annabeth spent months frantically searching for him to no avail and I spent the whole first book in the Heroes of Olympus series mentally running around like the dad in finding Nemo yelling “HAVE YOU SEEN MY SON?!” Meanwhile Percy, despite his memory loss, could remember tiny fragments and so knew that Annabeth was someone important to him. If he’d connected the call, all romantic and dramatic tension from their separation would have been resolved in a deeply unsatisfying way. I mean it would have made me panic less but I’m used to panicking. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the plot. The fact that Percy couldn’t fully remember her was the reason that the Iris Message failed to connect. So here we have an example of a magical messaging not being used for communication, but the opposite, and that lack of communication being incredibly poignant, making the readers care for the characters and root for them harder. Imagine if it was a phone with “no signal” or the phone was accidentally smashed. I don’t know about you, but that feels a lot less weighty than the effort Percy put into sending an Iris message, the build up and hope as this was something that worked in the past, only for that hope to come crashing down. I feel like we as readers go through it a lot more when something magical, something greater than our mere technology, fails. Plus the fact that Percy has to rely on the Goddess means that there’s far less control over the situation. A phone with no signal can be solved by…finding signal. A busted phone can be repaired or you can get a new one. There’s only one Iris and if she’s not going to play ball, well then you’re out of luck. It actually goes well with the theme that, even for the nicer gods, the demigods aren’t overly that important to them as individuals.

But restrictions in communication aren’t just good for plot reasons or dramatic effect, they’re also perfect for comedy. Those of you that enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, might be familiar with communication spells such as sending. In the second campaign of Critical Role, the character Jester played by actress Laura Bailey, often used sending to communicate with the NPCs they’d met along the way. The thing about the messaging spell she used was that it was restricted by a very small amount of words and Jester is a very chatty character. The comedy used to come from the fact that she would run out of words but still not be finished with her message, so you could imagine a very confused character getting half a message sent straight into their brains. Alternatively, when other characters started counting the words to help her, she would then complete her message and have words left over, so she used to ask random questions such as “are you pooping?” and “do you miss us?” which made serious moments turn into silliness and brought light-heartedness to a campaign that could have some very dark moments in it.

But there are other reasons we love magical messaging in our stories, and that’s because it’s a great aid for our next purpose, romance.

(Music)

Messaging in Romance

Life is not a book, Alex. And it can be over in a second. I was having lunch with my mother at Daley Plaza and a man was killed right in front of me. He died in my arms. And I thought, "It can't end just like that on Valentine's Day." And I thought about all the people who love him, waiting at home, who will never see him again. And then I thought, "What if there is no one? What if you live your whole life and no one is waiting?"

That little excerpt what from a letter written by the main character Kate in the romantic film The Lake House. Which was actually set in 2004/2006, so why on earth is she writing a letter?

I’ve mentioned before that as the world gets more modern, and modern communication devices exist, we tend to romanticise old fashioned ways of communicating. For example the way people used to write love letters to each other, over great distances and even over time. I believe in our day and age of instant communication and instant gratification, we’ve romanticised the ability to yearn. The popularity of regency era romances such as Bridgerton, the never-ending love of Jane Austen novels and the explosion of the romantasy genre over recent years represents our need for escapism from the seemingly never-ending rat race that late-stage capitalism makes us run. A frequent complaint I hear about from the dating scene is how impersonal it is, with things like dating apps making the act of finding a life partner quite cold and calculated. But it could also be considered a necessary one since so many people are so time poor.

So it makes sense that the combination of magical communication devices and romance can be a hit. The Lakehouse starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock is about an architect and a doctor living in the same lake house but two years apart. They meet and begin communicating using the magical mailbox at the end of the drive. So this is an example of an everyday object, even one used for communication, somehow becoming fantastical. Despite being a bit of a dud critically, the movie did well at the box office. And yes there are issues with time paradoxes and the story can be contrived, butthe chemistry between Keanu and Sandra is incredible. I was a teenager when it came out and I absolutely loved it so I’m speaking with a bit of a nostalgia brain here. But it’s the idea of a (somewhat) modern era romance being able to have a bit of magic and a bit of yearning, which I think makes it easier for the audience to place ourselves in the roles of Kate and Alex. We want to be able to yearn, we want the slow burn and magical communication. Or maybe it’s just the avoidant attachment style’s dream and the anxious attachment style’s nightmare, who knows?

A recent trend I’ve seen in romance is the idea of soulmate bonds, or bonds between romantic people. These bonds tend to have magical elements to them such as being able to sense when the other is near, feel their emotions or even communicate telepathically. This is similar to the sending spells in DnD in that the character’s voice gets sent straight into the mind of the other person, only this is much more intimate because it’s not something everyone can do. Only the person you’re romantically involved with can communicate with you this way if you choose to let them in or not, and it’s always reciprocated. This level of intimacy is something that regular people can only dream about and can be a very romantic notion in the right context. It’s a way for the reader to quickly establish just how deep a relationship is and if we should root for them or not. 

Again going back to that idea that magical communication can only happen between romantic partners is, I think, particularly enjoyable for those who like the romantasy genre because of how it symbolises such a deep connection. Although people are talking about it and there now seems to be a push in the right direction, loneliness and isolation has been on the rise for years and the idea of forming deep connections seems harder and harder. To have a bond so deep that you can communicate with someone via you own mind, the most personal and intimate place a person has, is alluring in a world where we feel like we’re in our own personal bubble most of the time. And it’s not just romance where this pops up, books like Eragon where the dragon and its rider can communicate telepathically show how deep their bond is too.

But there are other purposes too beyond the squealing and thinking it’s super cute or creepy depending on your idea of romantic. In a fantasy setting, usually there are things or people, general threats trying to keep our romantic leads apart. Having a way to communicate wordlessly can actually be a great boon to the character and help steer them out of trouble. Also I can’t believe I just used the phrase “a great boon” I’m sorry guys I’ve been rewatching Frasier recently and his snooty language seems to be rubbing off on me.

I think for me, I really like this kind of fantastical, romantic way of communicating because it’s something we will never be able to do. I love my husband deeply but if I’m far away from him, I have to text him if I want to let him know I’m thinking of him. Now the idea of being able to mentally tell each other “I love you!” when we can’t get to our phones isn’t actually that romantic in real life because I am easily startled and I know I’d jump out of my skin every time, but I think it’s great in a fictional setting. There are some things we like to read more about in fiction than experience in reality I suppose.

Another magical communication story that recently exploded in popularity was Divine Rivals, a novel by Rebecca Ross. As I mentioned at the start, the story is of two rival journalists in a magical land where gods and goddesses still walk the earth. The world is kind of reminiscent of the early twentieth century, particularly the world wars in terms of inspiration. However it being a totally made-up world means that the author can play with the rules of magic a little, especially as the gods are behind the most recent war tearing their world apart. Iris and Kitt are two people from very different backgrounds but they both possess a magical typewriter. These typewriters can send messages back and forth, similarly to how the mailbox works in The Lake House except instead of time, the letter gets magically transported through space. At first, neither of them know they are talking to their hated rival so with their walls down they are able to communicate and form a close bond which soon turns romantic. The tension comes from if and when they’ll find out they’re talking to their rivals.

So now we have communication devices that not only serve the romantic plot but also part of the character and the overall world. Rebecca Ross is actually releasing a book about the goddesses behind the magical typewriters. The fact that typewriters are a symbolic of the journalistic careers of Iris and Kitt, the fact that they’re rare magical objects which attract the attention of the gods and the fact that they serve as a way to bring our two leads closer together shows how incredibly well written this novel is. 

Because regardless of what the magical communication device, it should serve some purpose. 

Personally I like magical communication devices because we can really get into a character’s mind and see what makes them tick. Character driven stories such as romantic ones or romantasy ones are perfect for having those deep conversations, the same way you could in regency era romances with love letters, the opposite way we communicate via Whatsapp. 

So we’ve talked about the types of magical communication devices, the purposes and why readers might find them alluring, but what about the pros and cons of these communication devices? Let’s look at that in the final section, the pros and cons of magical communication devices:

(Music)

Magical communications devices, at the end of the day, can be not only useful but incredibly fun tools for writers. When a writer gets around the communications difficulties in their world in a creative way, it sparks the reader’s imagination and engages them in the world and story a lot more. And in the best stories magical communication can be so good, it can even help expand the lore or the world. Take Avatar the Last Airbender for example. Where most people are cut off from the spirit world, and their loved ones, only the Avatar is able to communicate with the spirits of previous Avatars, his past lives, and actually learn lessons from them. As a result of this fun idea, fans grew incredibly curious about the past Avatars and now there are even books and I believe even upcoming shows about some of the more popular ones.

-          Nostalgia

-          Gives writers a chance to really stretch their creativity

-          Creativity is fun and engaging to readers. It can cause miscommunications, whacky situations, or increase compelling romantic tension in interesting and fun ways.

Cons

-          Is it always necessary? (but it’s fun)

-          Can be contrived if not too careful

-          Have to beware of being overly reliant on it

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