Creating urban fantasy magic systems using liminal space

"A heartbeat reverberated across the room, covering the entire penthouse suite in the watery hues of Oya's Eye. A thick humidity filled the space as the group of women descended into this other dimension."

I've been into liminal space since I was tiny. Their inherent eeriness mixed with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia generates an uncomfortable, almost melancholy feeling of déja vu, and it blends so perfectly with horror stories. Two very different franchises come to mind:

1. Stranger Things, of course, which does "scary creature hanging out in the backrooms" perfectly; and
2. Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun. (Hear me out.)

Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun is a folklore and magic-infused manga with an absolutely adorable, fairytale-inspired art style — so what does it have to do with liminal space, or magic systems, or horror?

Everything, girl.

I could re-read this one a thousand times. From the very first chapter it blended together some standard fare manga tropes (boy-obsessed airhead protagonist! secret magical girl duties! cute mascot monsters!) with the genuinely terrifying Seven School Mysteries hiding just beneath the surface. It takes the quintessential slice-of-life setting you see in damn near every manga and gives it a liminal space with which to haunt the ever-loving shit out of unsuspecting high school students.

What if liminal spaces can generate, but also degrade?

The liminal describes a space of transition: in between jobs, in between partners, in between stages of life.

In my story, Oya's Eye is a mysterious, kind of dreary liminal space available only to witches (or is it?) Most see it as a place for solace and recuperation in a world that largely persecutes them — but it's also home to angry, restless spirits, and even gods, making it inhospitable in the long term.

In Hanako-kun, the Near Shore and Far Shore delineate the realms between the supernatural and the normal. Once a living being crosses over to the Far Shore, they no longer belong to the living. Period. That sense of finality unlocks a deep-seated fear of death that makes liminal spaces so horror-coded.

What if power stems from manipulating boundaries?

Another thing I love about the concept of liminal space in urban fantasy: the idea that studying liminality could teach a character how to see something they usually take for granted in a whole new light.

My magic system is, so far, based on intention and sustained practice; the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. One of my characters is an esper in high school, who prides herself on her intellect and hates being reminded of her limits. So it makes sense that she would put years and years of discipline into teaching herself to pick any lock and move any object — not through telekinesis outright, but by manipulating gravity and energy simultaneously:

"Just isolate its gravitational field from the door itself, guide the internal tumblers, like so. Each component fell into alignment with surgical precision, one after another. Click, click, click, until gravity finally completed its work. Metal found metal with the certainty of a planet pulling its moon."

Her use of the Eye suits her personality — a know-it-all who wants to excel while keeping as many options open as possible. But as the story progresses, you'll start to see the pitfalls of witches who spend too much time in the Eye honing their craft. It is, after all, a bridge between the land of the living and the land of the dead: dabble in death all you want, but bringing it home will cost you.

That's something Hanako-kun did incredibly well early in the story was show you the stakes, and make you feel at once elated and completely broken by them. Iconic, honestly. (That manga broke my heart many times over, and I absolutely cannot wait to pay it forward.)

Speaking of time — another decidedly liminal concept — I can't seem to write a regular-sized blog post without returning to the GOAT, Persona 5. So here we are.

In the game, Mementos exists as a liminal space housing the desires of the collective consciousness. Sure, you can hang out down there for a while — but stay too long and you'll encounter the Reaper, a high-leveled optional boss that has, as of this writing, beat the breaks off me so bad I've decided to avoid it for the foreseeable future:

I love the idea of building yourself up with intention: the need to keep yourself firmly rooted while traversing the in-between, or risk losing yourself to the unknown.

Can liminal space highlight a character's greatest strengths and flaws at the same time?

Liminal spaces can serve as psychological pressure cookers that strip away pretense and amplify a character's core traits.

"Gravity worked differently within the Eye. When Tasha cleared the two short steps, her waist-length black hair floated behind her, trapped in slow motion, as if underwater."

There's a constant sense of walking underwater within Oya's Eye. They can't hide behind social masks or everyday distractions; each witch has to move more deliberately, which over time reveals how each one adapts and how they fight against the current.

That's what makes it such fertile ground for building one's strength as a witch: the more self-aware, intentional, and disciplined you are, the more incentivized a witch becomes to not just hone their strengths, but accept their flaws, work with them, and integrate them into their craft.

So, I guess my magic system is shadow work?

Have any liminal spaces shaped you as a person? Maybe your characters can learn something exciting (or scary) about themselves from the spaces in-between, too.