it sucks so bad that ‘lightning magic’ in every media is just some pathetic little strands of electricity. i wanna see some LIGHTNING. show me a magic setting where lightning magic lights up a room like the sun, and the bolt is only visible as an afterimage burned into your vision. I wanna see someone cast lightning and have the thunder rattling the room and shaking everyone to their core. i want lightning magic to be a split second blast of so much power it leaves everyone’s senses reeling. c'mon guys don’t you know what real lightning looks like? we can be doing so much better than this.
I agree with this but I’m always far more upset when plant magic is incredibly weak or used exclusively for healing. Like… Have you ever seen what a tree can do to a rock? What plants over the course of a millennium can do to an area? Or what some plants can do when they grow on a living thing? Now imagine you could do all those things in an instant, anywhere you wanted. Imaging growing an oak tree in someone’s chest. Imagine growing new trees that are very resistant to fire suddenly to block an enemy spell. Imagine filling the air with pollen so thick it causes the enemy forces to suffocate. Plant magic should be the scariest magic in any setting and instead it appears gets limited to “oh, I can’t hurt anyone. I must defend and heal those I care about.” No. Rip off that guy’s limbs with strangle vines before he even gets a chance to attack your friends.
SO many elemental/natural force magics are boiled down to particular tropes and i hate it!!! like what was listed above, having nature related magic depicted as frail or used exclusively with caring for others in mind.
personally. water being depicted as calm, working around the opponents moves bugs me so much. its cool in theory, but where are the water magic users who crash into you like a WAVE!!! pulling and pushing with a fierce, storm driven tide until you’re completely senseless and don’t even know which way is up!!! unreleting attackers that completely overwhelm you, don’t hesitate to keep dragging you down even when you stop kicking. using kelp/seaweed to strangle someone within an inch of their life. there’s something so awesome to me about water magic – because water is EVERYWHERE. water makes up most of the world!!! once you’re in its domain, there’s no getting out.
alternatively… where are the support fire users. fire has significantly helped the human race. Where are the fire users running around trying to help cauterize the fresh open wounds from battle