I'm neither repulsed or squeed by it, though I do note that someone thinks they're being really clever in a geeky, SCA/D&D, vampire cape-wearing way that they themselves invented. *sigh*

I'm not really bothered, but to me it connotes the writer as one of two fields:

1) A role-playing gamer, specifically a fan of World of Darkness gaming from the 1990s/early 2000s. (a.k.a. Mage, Vampire the Masquerade, etc)

2) A Wiccan, or devotee of other 'new age' religion.

I'd be moderately surprised if the answer was neither of the above. :D (Especially if it came up in your slush reading. :)

Is there something wrong with using the term "prestidigitation" for "stage magic"? Or maybe, when you mean manipulation of etheric forces, you should just capitalize Magic?

I'd ask them if they prefer to snort their heroin or simply inject it.

I have a hard time taking other Pagans seriously when they trot out the "K" as well. I understand very well the theory of why they do it, but I wish they'd realize that English is simply an imprecise, unholy, bastardized train wreck of stolen vocab and grammar. We have a lot of words that mean many things depending on context, and generally use them without silly misspellings, trusting the listener/reader to divine the correct meaning.

The Magick K, to me, is on a par with corporate duckspeak. As an example: "Talk", as a verb, has a well-established definition of two or more people verbally communicating to exchange information. Why, then, do duckspeakers insist on "dialoging"?

***

To take this back to the realm of fiction. A few months ago, I read a post by an agent who specializes in Spec Fic decrying the practice where authors feel compelled to give their writing that special feel by randomly replacing the vowels in certain words with "y". e.g. Electryc, Chymical or Chemicyl, Magickyl, etc.

What about "magicks" as opposed to "magic"? Using it as a plural?

When I see the word "magick" in a piece of fiction, I assume that the author is alluding to Aleister Crowley, who added the "k" to differentiate his own practices from those of stage magicians. I wouldn't assume that the author follows those or similar/derivative practices, though in a first-person narrative I would assume it of the narrator.

If further reading made it clear that the author had no knowledge of this tradition, I'd probably dismiss the work as under-researched.

I tend to think the user of a spelling like that is implying "I'm more pagan than thou." If the story's good, I don't really care. If the story sucks, well....

There are many words in the English language that mean more than one thing. If it's not clear from context that you're talking about "real" magic, then you haven't done your job as a writer. Making up words is cheating.

I was going to go with saying that I just sigh audibly and continue reading, but with far less trust in the author, but then I saw the comment about heroin, and, yeah, I gotta go with that one...

Just not much patience for the cutesy "K" variant.

Besides, stage magic is real magic, and I DON'T want to know how it's done, because it's MAGIC!

Just ask sleightgirl!