Magic, being the Original Gothic (OG) rules breaker, has had people from every culture on the planet working with the idea since pretty much the dawn of mankind, long before even recorded history, and as a result is the most broad of all anti-physics; which means writers have complete freedom to define it's limits however they want to; which has the unfortunate side effect of having magic used as a convenient plot device with no clear rules or limitations, and the worst of them have their magic characters occasionally getting a select case of "the dumb" when their particular brand of cheating would be an obvious solution to a problem they want solved another way in the story. That ranting tangent aside, to go over some of the types of magics in fictional worlds (hoorah for sub-sub-categories):
Divine Magic: This style of magic has some sentient non-human(s) associated with it who dictate the rules of how it works, and said power(s) that be are often fairly loose with who he(they) let use his(their) particular brand of ass-whoop. Since in this case magic is tied to a sentient super existence, what spells can do is pretty much open to whatever the author feels like with arbitrary limitations being easy to justify, though often a bad idea if it's something that seems made up on the fly and not common knowledge shared with the reader. In this style of magic the rules for casting are better if they are well defined and ritual style spells are very much in theme and make for a strong reinforcement of the concept that mages are actually asking some divine power to pour a pile of hurt on that particular guy who cut him off on the freeway a half hour ago.
Magic with it's own Rules: This is a lot like the divine style of magic, with it's only distinguishing feature being that the rules governing magic are just there, with no visible intelligent hand governing how it works. One of the big limitations that isn't apparent in this style of magic is given in the description; it has no sentient design behind it so the spells made from it have to somewhat justify their complexity. In such interpretations it really hurts the suspension of disbelief if, for example, a one word magic phrase turns a person into a bunny, which is a feat that you would think would take a complex amount of instructions for a non-intelligent force to do exactly what you wish of it, and makes your magic system look closer to the divine style ones with a more vague sentient force behind spells rather than a natural non-intellect, or possibly something more like the next paragraph.
Magic as a sentient "slave" force: This is a lot like divine magic in the sense that their is a non-human intelligence attached to magic, with the difference being that said intelligence is magic itself rather than a separate being, and is very cooperative. In this interpretation, magic basically takes the spell flickers general ideas for how he wants his spell to go down, and then does it's best to please the bathrobe wearing loser. This is the most common, and also laziest, interpretation of magic, and the default one I assume when no other possible category applies, which is a lot of the time since most writers don't bother thinking about magic as something other than "magic: explanation=none". While me having to make this concept is the result of lazy writing, there is some interesting story telling that can be done around said sentience, and in a story where the presence of magic is a minor point, the more lazy and straight forward approaches are generally forgivable, or even desirable.
Magic as a Mindless Energy: This interpretation treats magic more as a disembodied massive electric socket, and is distinguished from "Magic with it's own Rules" by not being capable of any of the complex feats like spell casting without some tech element attached to it. For this reason, blending with technology is very common in this category, which makes for cool looking but impractical vehicles and near anachronistic magic based devices, such as magic guns in a medieval setting, all of which is a nice way of adding flavor to your world. Using such a craftsmanship heavy interpretation of magic, however, also makes for a very limited style of actual spell casting, which helps keep the plot holes that other styles suffer from away, but also can keep things a bit more grounded than a writer may like; though keeping spells to simple energy output styles like blasts of heat or telekinetic style impacts can make for some interesting ways of using such a style if the writer is imaginative enough to use limited concepts creatively.
While magic bluntly ignores the laws of reality with no tangible connection to the world, rooted anti-physics have direct connections to other concepts that actually exist, such as genetics or thought. Some examples of rooted anti-physics include:
While rooted anti-physics has a connection to the real world, how it works beyond said connection is in most ways similar with all of the sub categories of magic that have been stated above but, unlike magic, the all have what I like to call, and highlight in bold for emphasis, the in-built anti-physics generator. While magic is an external force that is manipulated to utterly break conventional understanding, rooted anti-physics rely on an extra natural power source that's either built into the self, or shoved into their by fate via ridiculous circumstance. This element is used entirely too often to write some silly us vs them style teen angst story where they believe the world is out to get them, and is because the author believes that everyone not them is a flaming bigoted asshole. While the previous sentence can be done in ways that don't completely make me vomit vitriol onto pages of text, different takes on characters being suddenly handed the keys to your shiny new god like cheaty face abilities have a lot of relatively unexplored areas that are ripe for authors who don't take insanely stupid views of the general public.
If you paid attention to the opening paragraph in this document, you'd know what the next thing I'm going to talk about is, so I won't repeat myself. On to the examples!:
Unlike the previous two anti-physics, there is nothing about tech anti-physics that permanently makes the person a reality defying deity; if you take away the equipment, all that is left is a normal human, or something along those lines at least. Tech is the one branch of anti-physics that's actually called on to explain how it works, mostly due to it's close relation to actually technology. Said explanations usually use pseudo science and the occasional black box dead end, which doubles as the source of the rules breaking. While this makes for some mildly amusing reading for technically oriented minds like myself, the vast majority of the public puts it in the "don't care" category, and occasionally there are too many details for even the writer himself to remember. The biggest positive of tech anti-physics is that it makes for creative imagery and cool visualizations a lot more easily than the other branches of anti-physics thanks to it's reliance on cool looking, and usually ridiculous, gadgets and machines.
Anti-physics comes in a lot of shapes and forms and when used well it can make a world into a unique place that stands out from others in it's genre, but there are also a lot of unintended factors introduced into a world when the writer decides to add anti-physics to it, which can make for some poor execution down the road.
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