Quote:
Originally Posted by synaesthetic
Shor t responses:
Magic is magic. If it was science it'd be called science. I have no obligation--nay, I have no physical ability to explain something that is inherently inexplicable!
I hate pseudoscience technobabble. It's the major reason I loathe Star Trek. So in everything I write, I display results [of technologies or supernatural abilities that do not exist], but avoid explanations by placing the story viewpoint from the eyes of an uninformed layperson rather than a scientist.
And Nanoha mages do asspull inexplicable amounts of destructive power. Nanoha's massive "no holding back, full power!" shots produce much more kinetic energy than a human body could ever generate in thousands of lifetimes.
I never really understood why it's not acceptable to just call magic magic and stop trying to Commander Data it.
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The thing is, even magic in fantasy settings have rules, and magic in naohaverse have even more so as they work off mathematicla equations.
Yes, every mage should have a different kind of magic available to him (shown in high-end mages having their own spells), but there are still things people are more or less able to do.
Hand waving stuff by "it's magic" is a good way to stretch disbelief. You can say "it's magic", but then you had better be able to have an idea of how that magic works.
For example, you could say that instead of the classic LC, your characters unconsciously uses his magic to constantly haden his magical defenses, much like a high-end mage is able to withstand magical impacts without defenses (or, a better example would be with the big ass monsters seen in A's, who seemed "resistant" to magic)
Its not a question of "technobabble", it's a question of you laying down the groundrules in your own fanfiction, in order to prevent, in the long term, stretch of disbelief from the reader: it may be personal taste, but unexplainable tools (to the author, not the reader) may mean that down the road, you may be tempted to handwave "continuity" in favor of "plot ideas".
This is a thing that happens too in professional works, but it doesn't make it any less annoying, because suspense means nothing if the writer/authors doesn't follow continuity in his own work.
Following continuity with MGLN-verse is secondary, but in my mind you *must* know what you are writing.