Does Not Like Magic

Someone who, despite living in a world where magic is part of everyday life, considers magic to be "unnatural" and something you should avoid at all costs.

The person who dislikes magic may be a practitioner of Arbitrary Skepticism.

Compare Flat Earth Atheist. Both are about supernatural settings where one character is set apart by preferring the mundane, whether by choice or ignorance - but it is still much closer related to Nay Theist: Both Flat Earth Atheist and Nay Theist refuse to believe/worship, while a Magic Hater just thinks it is bad, evil or dangerous.

Common in magical settings among Church Militants. Standard for the Anti-Magical Faction.

Muggles (the trope, not the common folk like the word is used in Harry Potter) are typically suspicious of magic because they are All the Other Reindeer.

Compare Magic Is Evil (the Magic Hater may consider it to be), Anti-Magical Faction (where a whole society feels this way), and Ban on Magic.

Examples of Does Not Like Magic include:

Comic Books

• Tony Stark of the Marvel Universe.
  • Hank Pym as well, although to a slightly lesser degree.
  • Reed Richards too. He's long since given up on trying to study and decipher magic and has accepted that it's just something he'll never be able to fully understand.
• Batman fits this trope to a T... but he somehow beats the crap out of every magical villain ever.
  • In The Return of Bruce Wayne comic 2 of 6 he does protect those who are accused of witchcraft but are truly innocent. That and he is seen as a man of magical powers in the first two issues by some people.
• DC Comics Doctor Thirteen doesn't believe in magic and is a professional debunker of magic - in the same universe that has the Phantom Stranger, Zatanna, the Spectre, Etrigan, Doctor Fate...
  • Brian Azarello applied the most simple solution to this problem when he wrote the Doctor Thirteen backup in Tales of the Unexpected - ol' Doc is in denial of reality. When I, Vampire offhandedly mentions Dr. Fate, Thirteen calls him a cut-rate huckster who uses hypnosis to simulate the supernatural.
  • For extra irony points, Doctor Thirteen's daughter Traci is a mage.
• Nick Fury, at least as imagined in Marvel 1602. He's willing to work with Doctor Strange, but does not trust him or his art. A little odd, considering he does trust Carlos Javier's team, when he would have no basis for distinguishing between their disparate power sources.
• Chase Stein of the Runaways doesn't like magic, though he doesn't have anything against Team Mom Nico (who happens to be a magician). After he used Nico's Staff of One on a villain he claimed that he wanted to puke and said he would never do it again if had a choice. In a later arc after Gertrude's death and explaining to Nico that he planned to sacrifice himself to the Gibborim so they would revive her, Chase took the Staff of One from Nico telling her he was going to get rid of the "evil stick" so she could lead a happy life.

Film

• Cast a Deadly Spell. Phillip Lovecraft refuses to use any kind of magic, even though everyone else does. This is repeatedly commented on by other characters.

Literature

• Sam Vimes from the Discworld City Watch novels doesn't trust magic enough to use it in his investigations, although he does consider supernatural creatures and forensic alchemists quite useful.

Vimes: You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic. That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!
Carrot: That's the significant factor, sir.

• Fflewddur Fflam of Prydain Chronicles regularly complains about the dangers of magic and every time the protagonists find some artefact, he tries to convince them to throw it away.
• Harry Potter: Aunt Petunia, after being told she couldn't go to Hogwarts like her sister Lily, decided that all wizards and witches were "freaks" - an attitude she extended to her orphaned nephew (who didn't even know he was a wizard) more than a decade later.
• Juliet E. Mckenna's Aldabreshin Compass books have an entire archipelago which despises magic as perverse and has the death penalty for users, of course being under attack by dragons and evil savage bloody thirsty wizards tends to have that effect (the aesop of the series is of course magic is neither good or bad, but depends on the wielder). Astrology is considered okay though.
• Alanna, the heroine of Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet, starts out this way, despite having wicked awesome magical powers. She got over it. Later on, she met Liam, who had the same hang-ups.
• While magic isn't common in A Song of Ice and Fire, there's several groups and people who dislike it. The Dothraki culture is fearful of it, and the Maesters - an institution of scholars - are opposed to it as well because it clashes with their naturalistic worldview. Varys has personal reasons for disliking magic - he was castrated as a child as part of a strange supernatural ritual.
• This is the centaur's hat in Xanth: Having, or displaying, a magic talent is considered "obscene" and grounds for exile from their homeland.
  • It might be worth mentioning that not only are all Xanth centaurs legally required to be Muggles, but that none of them actually are. They're so Anti magic they manage to repress their talents.
• Most of the slum inhabitants of The Black Magician Trilogy are magic haters since magic belongs to the oppressors, and (in the beginning) the Magic Haters include the protagonist.
• In Soon I Will Be Invincible, the one person from The Champions that Doctor Impossible cannot tolerate as much as his nemesis CoreFire is the team's resident illusionist, Mister Mystic, if only because magic is the one thing that cannot be explained by Doctor Impossible's endeared science.
• The Commander hates magic for some very good reasons.
• Michael from the Knight and Rogue Series has no issue with small magics like magica plants and animals that have their properties enhanced, or Gifts that allow humans to detect magica. Genuine human magic, however, freaks him out. This makes it rather unfortunate that he becomes the only (intelligent) human to be able to wield magic.
• Harry Dresden explains this as a fear of the unknown, the dark things that come in the night. A number of the rules of magic work to enforce stereotypes like that. (Magic doesn't work as well in the day, most magical creatures aren't friendly, and so forth).
  • Murphy claims that when Harry stops being his snarky, Adorkable self, he becomes an icon of fearsome power, so much that even she's afraid, and she's covering his back. She understands exactly why muggles would want to kill off wizards.
  • Played with; the muggles can be just as effective at ruining someone's day as any wizard or fae, and getting mortals involved in a magical conflict is seen as akin to whipping out nukes. It says something about the Dresdenverse where everyone is scared of everyone, for entirely valid reasons.
• In the Sword of Truth, this crops up a lot. Everyone has at least a small spark of the Gift ("Han" in the Swordverse) and could learn to use magic to an extent, but they're fearful and jealous of "born wizards", who have a LOT of the Gift. Played with, in that a large fraction of magic is just being clever and tricking people, and isn't 'magical' per se, but still swells the wizards' reputation.
  • The Imperial Order plays off this a lot, claiming that all naturally-born wizards and sorceresses are evil and must be purged. That doesn't stop them from employing the wizards and sorceresses, mind you. Jagang does seem to genuinely believe that he and the wizards and sorceresses are necessary evils.
  • Bizarrely, the Mord-Sith, a harem of fearless, skintight-red-leather clad, magical-taser-bearing amazon torturer bodyguards whose primary purpose is to protect the Lord Rahl from magic by capturing enemy magic and using that magic to torture its owner, are freaking terrified of anything to do with magic.
  • Richard thoroughly disapproves of prophecy. Prophets are considered one of the most dangerous kinds of wizards around, because of their future knowledge, ranking in closely after War Wizards, but there's only been one of those in three thousand years, Richard, obviously. Most of the people who are afraid of prophets are afraid of them for their future knowledge and ability to start wars by telling prophecy to the untrained. Richard? He doesn't like it because it's riddles that interfere with free will.

Live Action TV

• Darren on Bewitched, of course the way Endora treats him probably contributes to this.
• Brit from Dante's Cove actively dislikes and distrusts magic, despite dating someone who practices magic, and seeing it in her day-to-day life. The fact that she kept herself untouched by magic out of distrust becomes a plot point in the finale.
• This is the central conflict of Merlin. King Uther Pendragon doesn't trust magic due to the circumstances surrounding his wife's death, and seeing as he's the king this results in Camelot living under a Ban on Magic. The young Merlin has to train in secret while using his powers to help an almost-as-young Prince Arthur.

Manga

• Chisame Hasegawa from Mahou Sensei Negima, or so she thinks.

Tabletop RPG

• Dungeons & Dragons
  • Surprisingly, Elminster, greatest archmage of the Forgotten Realms was originally like this. His hometown was destroyed by a dragon-riding mage that killed his parents, and very nearly killed him too, which he found to be a part of the coup installing an oppressive magocracy. This led to him having a rather intense grudge against mages until the goddess of Magic herself decided to step into his life. Seeing her temple knee-deep in dust and her servant dicing like salad insolent Magelords sort of helped.
    • Bedine and Uthgardt barbarians consider arcane magic sort of ignominious trickery. The former used to exile magic-users, the latter may or may not attack a wizard upon identification. At least Bedine has a good reason: spellcasting may attract Phaerimm inclined to make anyone around "disappear".
  • In the Eberron campaign setting, the Ashbound sect of Druids feels this way about arcane magic (the sort practiced by Wizards and Sorcerers), although they're generally tolerant of divine magic (the sort practiced by Clerics and—unsurprisingly—Druids).
• Shadowrun. In early editions the Detective archetype character would not touch magic, though his cases often involved it.

Video Games

• The Night Elves from the Warcraft franchise are an entire race of those. Partially justified by reckless abuse of magic by their empress Azshara, which drew the attention of the Burning Legion. However, unlike some other universes, it takes deliberate effort to attract demonic attention; responsible use of magic does not result in such consequences. As a result, the night elves' predisposition against magic is largely a prejudice.
  • After several years since joining the Alliance, which contains several races which practice arcane and even demonic magic without much ill consequence, the Night Elves have gotten over their prejudice and allowed the exiled practitioners of magic to rejoin their society. As a result, as of the latest expansion, night elves may become mages.
• In Dreamfall, in the magic half of the world, there's an oppressive theocratic empire called the Azadi. They believe in technology and are trying to snuff out magic. They force conquered populations to employ their Steampunk devices instead of using magical means, and even round up magical beings into ghettos to separate them from the normal human population. It's too bad for them technology just doesn't work right in their universe.
• Valygar Corthala from Baldur's Gate 2, due to his family history. His parents had come to a tragic end after being corrupted by the power of magic, and his whole line family was cursed because of his infamous Evil Sorcerer ancestor.
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Dr. Strasse dismisses the occult SS division as a bunch of hooey, even though it works. He desperately is trying to advance his Super Soldier programs to compete.
• Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: Superman. Considering his vulnerability to magic, this is very much justified.
• There's a group of people in Tales of Innocence that have the supernatural ability to seal Devic Artes (which are a totally different thing than magic).
• Fenris from Dragon Age II despises all magic users, since he was enslaved and turned into a living weapon by mages in Tevinter.
  • Carver is a lesser case and he feels this way for reasons that one could argue are a lot more petty. Still, he's usually reasonable about it, and with Character Development later in the game mostly gets over it. Unlike Fenris, he also seems to blame magic itself more for the problems it causes, rather than mages.
• The native Nords in Skyrim don't trust magic (with the possible exception of the Restoration school), which puts them at odds with the College of Winterhold. Anytime the Dragonborn asks people where s/he can learn magic, they respond with scorn and distrust before pointing to the College. Jarl Korir of Winterhold hates the College even more than most, to the point that the other Jarls are tired of his outspoken opinions, despite the fact that the College is the only reason anyone still cares about Winterhold. The new Nord apprentice Osmund was practically disowned by his family when he decided to pursue the path of magic. The College's reputation isn't wholly undeserved—the safety of apprentices isn't really given high priority, the mages have few qualms about exploring tombs and barrows (Osmund is the only one who complains), the College may have been involved with the disaster that nearly destroyed Winterhold in the past, and the Artifact of Doom that is discovered in the College questline nearly destroys the world. The College's Enchanter resents this attitude and notes the hypocrisy of the local Nords who are still eager to take advantage of his enchanting services. To him, there's no difference between wielding magic and wielding magical weapons. The distrust of magic in Skyrim may have something to do with its history of warfare with the magic-wielding Altmer (whose military is composed entirely of wizards and Magic Knights).

Web Comics

• This is pretty much the point of No Room for Magic. The title character, Magic McAllister, doesn't like living in a fantasy world. Naturally everyone else thinks it's cool.
• Digger doesn't trust magic one bit, mostly because she's seen the damage caused by dwarves who used magic in their tunnels.

Western Animation

• "I'm just a guy... with a boomerang... didn't ask for all this flying... and magic..."