Magic is magic in my games. The gestures, etc. for a spell being performed must be the same as if anyone else is casting it, and the results always look the same was well. If a player wanted their magic missiles to look like chickens, I would just look at them sideways, and tell them to just roll damage. Sorry, but I do take my D&D games, etc. seriously -- and to me, such things take away from that and my enjoyment of the game.
Heh, for me, the magic I care about is psionic. I couldnt care less about specific finger gestures, rare ingredient, or ritual. Most of psionic training is learning how to avoid spellcasting accidentally.
When I think about D&D magic, its flavors organize by power source: martial, psionic, primal, divine, and arcane. Each source has its own set of methods to participate in magical effects.
Psionic and primal rely on innate magic, ones own soul. These are internal sources of magic. In this animistic context, rocks, rivers, plants, etcetera have a soul. Wolves might altogether have a collective soul, a lupine spiritual presence and influence. There are levels to a soul: aura (Material), spirit (Ethereal), and mind (Astral). The term ki refers to a bodily aura. Nature beings are less actively minds, but all have auras to various degrees, and some have a strong spirit influence.
Martial is like nonmagical reallife while extraordinary feats sometimes utilize the innate ki aura.
Divine and arcane rely on external magic, namely the mysterious quality inherent in existence itself, the ambient magic sometimes referred to as the Weave. Divine connects with this external magic via archetypal symbols, cultural paradigms, and linguistics. It tends to focus on the miracle of the primordial "creation", where Astral thought preexists Material effect, as well as an ongoing miraculous sustenance and intervention. Most divine spells should rely on a verbal component, whether spoken out loud or silently contemplated. There can be a material component in the form of a cultural symbol that helps tap into the collective magic of the sacred community. A somatic component is less salient, albeit can serve as a kind of sign language to communicate the worldview of the community. Divine magic is all about sacred texts and sacred language.
Arcane connects to this external magic of the Weave via the magic properties inherent in ordinary objects, like ingredients that require specific material components to construct a ritual process for a specific magical effect. Individual arcanists can tweak this process to personalize an effect. It is like writing a computer code. One can tweak this code, but whatever it is, it runs the same way every time. An arcane wand or other focus, is a high tech magic device that can substitute for various material components. It is often the case in arcane magic, that the arcanist utilizes ones own soul via intentions and concentration as one of the ingredients among the components. Indeed, in the list of spell components, V, S, and M, one can add C for concentration. In the case of Sorcerers, their own body is any and every material component. They might still require verbal and somatic, but they dont need to study the protoscience of ordinary objects. Generally, I hope 2024 removes the costly gp component from every spell because the game rules requiring external money interfere extremely with the flavor of innate magic. Spells that need to avoid spamming, such as undead animation, should have appropriately flavorful limits in the spell description.