Talk:Alp/@comment-25041612-20141009072715/@comment-26097222-20150227214835

That's pretty much my point though -- wants. Charm magic in MGE seems to be largely if not entirely based on amplifying buried, subconscious or denied urges and kinks. In a species where you either are or you're not (toggle switches), this is a relatively safe thing. At worst you get uncloseted and less repressed. But humans are psychologically screwed up. It's a miracle that most of us can act sanely much of the time. Quite a lot of our behavior is irrational then rationalized in such a way that we remember it being rational all along -- we instinctively shy away from the idea that we're not in control of ourselves to the extent many people subconsciously repress the knowledge. That's why psychology and psychiatry are businesses that will never die. Consciously we act as if we're mostly rational, or at least we try to. But subconsciously even the sanest people are a mess. The really sane-seeming people have a meta balance going on that keeps them in check, but even they can go loony if the balance is disturbed. Ancient survival instincts, childhood traumas, whims masquerading as needs, you name it we have it. Psychologists are more aware of it than most, but even they act irrationally a lot of the time, then rationalize in their memories. The main difference between insane people and sane people is the 'sane' people agree with the world's consensus of what reality is and the 'insane' disagree. That's why charm magic would be so incredibly dangerous to humans. We have slider bars as I've mentioned before. Slider bars is a simplification, it's more like an infinitely adjustable venn diagram -- but it's even worse than that, since it's four-dimensional. Charm magic reaches into that mess and selectively messes with the settings. Unintended consequences are the least of what could happen. The magic that can take a species with toggle switches and uncloset a repressed desire can, with our venn diagrams, almost completely rewrite who we are as people. Take a straight male, who has no conscious desire to have sex with little girls or other men, who likes being a man for example. If an Alice can make him lust after her, then he could also be made to feel sexually attracted to other men or even to feel uncomfortable in his body, like pre-op transgenders do. It comes down to how powerful the charm magic is. But it wouldn't have to be god-like to screw a human up royally.