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Metaphysical App - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Jun 03 2024

Metaphysical App (trope)

"What sort of arcane operating system can run magical spells?"
"...UNIX."

A Metaphysical App is a program that has metaphysical functions in a setting. The program's power comes from the software itself rather than the hardware. They are often Post-Modern Magik, where the software can utilize magic or a similar supernatural power to execute (which can involve connecting the computer to an external magic source, like a robot wielding a magic wand). Others may be more of Clarke's Third Law due to advanced technology. If the program's origins are magical, they are often found in Urban Fantasy. However, more sci-fi instances could happen.

Super-Trope to The Most Dangerous Video Game.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • Angel Beats!: Angel Player is the mysterious software created in the afterlife and discovered by Kanade Tachibana, which grants her supernatural abilities in the form of Guard Skills while also being responsible for turning NPCs into Shadows.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun: The Treasure Hunter App has players earn prizes by photographing accident sites around Academy City. The app can also predict disasters with a high success rate, since it's based on Miyama Shaei's Esper ability to predict future events.
  • Darwin's Game: The Darwin's Game is an app in which players are bestowed powers called Sigils. It also has a gacha function, where players can spend points to gain weapons. Players fight in Deadly Games or events for survival and to get higher ranks.
  • K: The Green Clan, Jungle, has a social network/game app on their phones that can receive Green Aura powers without meeting the King. However, they do not become true Clansmen, and their powers can be taken away if they lose points in the game. To become the Green King's genuine clan member, one must get enough points to reach the highest rank in the game (J-rank — the ranks are taken from the letters in JUNGLE, E being the lowest rank, J the highest).
  • Magilumiere Co. Ltd.: Magical Girls' spells are pre-coded programs that manipulate magical energy through patterns that give various applications, especially when fighting Kali. They must be prepared beforehand; otherwise, the Magical Girls in the field must wait for their programmer to finish writing them. However, they may need a new spell to deal with Kali, which creates a surprise threat.
  • Space Patrol Luluco: The Blackhole App is a quasi-legal app distributed by Midori through the middle school. It allows the user to teleport objects through it, which is used for theft.

Literature 

  • Digital Devil Story: Akemi Nakajima develops a computer program that summons demons. He uses his programming skills and magical knowledge to negotiate a contract with a demon, using it to get revenge against the injustice he encountered at school.
  • The Doctor Who Missing Adventures novel Millennial Rites has the concept of a Quantum Mnemonic, a program which, run on a conventional computer, has effects that could best be described as magical. One small, self-contained module, when run, produces a magical lightshow and transforms the motherboard of the computer it runs on into silk.
  • The main premise of the Endo and Kobayashi Live! novels involves the two Japanese Ordinary High School Students try to MST Kobayashi's favourite Romance Game MagiKoi, and then the game's characters start to be able to hear their commentaries. But why does this happen? As it turns out, the MagiKoi world is a separate but equally real dimension. Long story short, The Maker of that dimension was banished to our Earth due to his Mad Love with a humanoid from the other universe, so on our universe, he possessed a human and bankrolled MagiKoi, with a hidden God Mode that serves as an interface to his original universe. He does that to manipulate the current reincarnation of his romantic interest — that is, Fiene — into going to our world to be with him.
  • The Laundry Files: Math and calculations are magic, and since computers can do both, with a properly written app and sufficient peripherals, a magic can use a camera as a Taken for Granite beam projector.
  • Other Covenants: In "Three Stars", Shlomovich has an app on his phone to detect demons.
  • Vivere Militare Est: Many preternatural weapons are powered by these, but special mention goes to despoiler bombs, which use computers powered by enriched gastplasm to read spells thousands of times faster than a human can and without the spiritual corruption that usually results from humans doing so. The result is a Soul Eating attack scaled up to such a point that it can kill everyone in an entire city and turn it into an Eldritch Location, as was done to Kyoto in this world's version of the Hiroshima bombing.

Tabletop Games 

Video Games 

  • Beek - Familiar Spirit: The app lets Beek and the player message each other through another world while also implying that Beek's phone should be charged despite being in a world without electricity. Later on, when Beek is near death, the app allows the player to directly connect to Beek and empowers him from just the player's desires.
  • Ingress: The Ingress Scanner is an app that allows Agents of the Enlightened or Resistance to claim portals that expel Exotic Matter, abbreviated to XM, into Earth. XM is transdimensional energy that affects the human mind. The Enlightened wish to use XM to transcend humanity, while the Resistance believes it needs to be resisted due to its ability to cause insanity.
  • Overwatch: Sombra's Hack ability is capable of disabling all non-weapon abilities of every hero in the game. While she's likely hacking the technology in the gear of several other heroes (such as Tracer's Chronal Accelerator, Torbjorn's turrets, or Bastion's... everything), it doesn't explain how she's capable of disabling beartraps and hooks (Junkrat and Roadhog, respectively), the ability to do a technically-not-Unnecessary Combat Roll (Cassidy) or the ability to throw a serrated blade (Junker Queen).
  • Pokémon:
    • Since the original games, Pokémon Red and Blue, technology has existed that apparently allows for Pokémon to be turned from data to physical matter and back, using nothing but an application to connect to "Someone's PC" to act as the storage system.
    • Porygon (and its evolutions) is composed of nothing but programming code and is essentially a computer program with a mind of its own, yet said code can physically manifest as an actual creature in real space freely and without issue. It doesn't even appear to need any advanced hardware to cross between digital and physical spaces, its software can handle that by itself.
    • Pokémon GO: The reveal trailer for the game showed the app as being one of these; while obviously not meant to be taken literally, players are seen manifesting Pokéballs with the app and throwing them at Pokemon in various environments, battling with each other, and participating in a raid to capture a Mewtwo.
  • Shin Megami Tensei:
    • Shin Megami Tensei: Stephen created the Demon Summoning Program inspired by a mishap with teleportation technology. He accidentally programmed coordinates to the Expanse that summoned a demon. He then sent out the program worldwide online, which the protagonist uses by installing it into his COMP.
    • Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey: The Red Sprite expedition team has their Demonicas installed with the Demon Summoning Program from an unknown source through the onboard AI, Arthur. The other part of the program, The Demon Fusion Program, is retrieved from Verne, the Blue Jet's Artificial Intelligence.
    • Shin Megami Tensei IV: In the past, the Demon Summoning Program was distributed through the internet, but no one knows where it is or why it was created before the ceiling over Tokyo went up. It can be installed on PCs and smartphones, and users with powerful wills can summon demons. The Counter-Demon Force uses the program as their primary weapon against the demons in Tokyo.
    • Shin Megami Tensei Liberation: Dx2: Devil Download is the app that mysteriously installs onto people's phones. It allows them to summon Demons and perform other related functions. It is used as the main weapon against the two factions of the Liberators and Acolytes.
    • Devil Survivor: The Demon Summoning Program is installed on altered multimedia devices called COMPs. The program is powered by human emotions derived from the internet, thus allowing users to contract and summon Demons. It also has another function, the Harmonizer, which will enable humans to fight Demons on the same level.
    • Devil Survivor 2: The Demon Summoning App is installed on people's phones. It allows anyone to make a contract and summon demons along with magical powers. Nicaea β ver. is also installed, which shows videos of users' possible future deaths and their friends.
    • Persona:
      • Persona 5: All of the Phantom Thieves, after they've managed to interact with the Metaverse at least once, will find the 'Metaverse Navigator' (or 'MetaNav' for short) installed on their phones; this allows free traversal into and out of both the Palaces, and Mementos. Theoretically, any of the Thieves could go off on their own to explore — and Morgana briefly does, alongside Haru, following his falling-out with Ryuji — but practically, it makes more sense to all go in at once.
      • Persona 5 Strikers has a new one in the form of EMMA, which is publicly available and popular as an intelligent virtual assistant. The Phantom Thieves are at first unaware of how it connects to the Metaverse, until Ryuji inputs the "Wonderland" keyword that they got from Alice's business card into the EMMA app. Normally, this would drag the unsuspecting user's Shadow into a Jail where their Desires are stolen, but since the main cast are Persona-users and have no separate Shadows, they get physically dragged into the Jail like the Meta-Nav. Seeing how Alice is changing the hearts of the public as a Monarch using EMMA, this leads to a Japan-wide adventure as the Phantom Thieves aim to stop the Monarchs, eventually pointing them towards the app's developer, Maddice.
      • Persona 5: The Phantom X: Much like the game it is spinning off from, the Phantom Thieves of this game can enter the Metaverse via a supernatural app. The protagonist sees it automatically appear on his phone, and later accidentally enters the Metaverse when a bike rider almost runs into him.
  • Tokyo Afterschool Summoners: SUMMONS is the mysterious smartphone app that can either grant users a Sacred Artifact or the user summon a Transient from another world as they are familiar with their Sacred Artifact. People initiating App Battles can create a Battle Zone where Sacred Artifacts' Rules can be used within a closed space. The Battle Zone disappears once the App Battle ends, and any injuries and effects are done when the battle ends. SUMMONS allows Guilds to be made by a group of users while allowing perks like marking Portals as Guild territory or having Safe Houses that can act as safe zones for guild members.

Webcomics 

  • Gunnerkrigg Court: The magic that Kat's parents, Donald and Anja Dolan, apparently use is actually the result of them accessing and manifesting applications on a computer system in the Court which has elements of the Ether in it. Among its functions seen in the comic so far are the ability to teleport relatively small items (a telescope is the largest seen so far) and functions to combat Reynardine's fatal possession powers. Anja, Donald, and the late Surma Stibnite— Antimony Carver's mother— are all linked to this system via tattoos with some Etheric component. Kat eventually gets a direct uplink to this system (or her own copy thereof) by implanting herself with a computer chip.

Websites 

Web Videos 

  • Dimension 20: Played with. Joe "JJ" Jacobs, introduced in Season 2 of The Unsleeping City campaign, is a wizard who is flavored as storing his spellbook on a laptop and manifesting spells using designs that invoke Magitek.

Western Animation 

  • Hidden Side: The Ghost Hunters use the Ghost Hunter App as their primary weapon against ghosts. It allows them to see invisible ghosts while also blasting and capturing them.