Magic and Technology of MGLN

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Even when someone is pushing on the gas (Precia) to the point of overload ... well, the earthquake was impressive, but crediting the observed performance with the capacity for the destruction of the world (much less dimension) seems very ... optimistic.

It takes time before the car reaches the point of overload. If you slam the breaks before that happens (Lindy), no overload.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Great, now entire universes collapsed in your mind, in the face of the pictures, which show nowhere near the amount of catacylsm needed to collapse an entire universe in a reasonable timeframe.

Oh come on, they're called dimensional dislocations for a reason, you know? Not 'planet dislocations' not 'continent dislocations' not 'city dislocations' dimensional dislocations, meaning the effects apply on a dimensional scale.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

You have about three characters, two of which are from uncertain accreditation of the TSAB (curse StrikerS for this - we could have pretended they somehow made it work before that), and the third is all of 9 years old, speaking in an unknown context (we can't even decide whether they meant a universe, a planet, or a civilization when they blubbered sekai ...), with them having an unknown amount of knowledge about the particular Lost Logia involved ... some strong backup you have there when faced against the very consistent visible evidence of it falling far short

Either there's something funny with dimensional dislocations (such as, they are ridiculously easy), and thus there's a contextual misunderstanding on our part, or else...

Yes, I have about 3 characters, and the fact that the distortions are called 'dimensional distortions' how much characters do you have supporting that Jewel Seeds would not have destroyed the world had Precia been left to do her thing?

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

What PART of those things look like they can destroy worlds even with a million of them put together...

Oh, just the fact that everyone involved, who have been dealing with this for the greater part of their lives and thus know a lot about it say they will. That, and the fact that they risked their lives to stop it, even to the point where the ship's captain herself stepped in when things were reaching critical points.

[tshouryuu]

Originally Posted by ghazghkull

Mind you I'm asking on a general scale, basically in accordance to the fluff that the series itself has provided, and from the sounds of things, the way I'd like to have him combat is illegal by TSAB laws, which therefore limits the amount of physical damage down to mostly just burns from direct contact, which therefore means to actually kill someone would require a proxy, such as a falling piece of masonry, or other such rubble.

Am I correct?

Originally Posted by Keroko

Canonically, magic does have the abillity to kill. However, unlike real bullets they can be put to a 'stun' or 'rubber bullet' setting, so to say.

I'm going to regret this... but ghazghkull, I have figured out a way for you to have what you want but still be TSAB legal except that your mage cannot use it as a common attack since there isn't any sure barrier breaking magics and if there's any it would be high level.

[dkellis]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

What PART of those things look like they can destroy worlds even with a million of them put together...

Probably the same part wherein ten kilograms of a sort of silvery-white metal, if properly prepared and "activated", can be put into a bomb which can wipe out a city.

They may not look all that threatening, and the way Scaglietti used them may not be very powerful, but I'm inclined to believe the characters when they say that it has the potential to create great destruction.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Keroko

It takes time before the car reaches the point of overload. If you slam the breaks before that happens (Lindy), no overload.

Actually, they were already recorded as being on overload power before Lindy began moving.

Oh come on, they're called dimensional dislocations for a reason, you know? Not 'planet dislocations' not 'continent dislocations' not 'city dislocations' dimensional dislocations, meaning the effects apply on a dimensional scale.

Here's mine: The descriptor is qualitative instead of quantitative. A little shimmer that does no one harm, as long as it touched dimensional space is rated dimensional (jiken).

Yes, I have about 3 characters, and the fact that the distortions are called 'dimensional distortions' how much characters do you have supporting that Jewel Seeds would not have destroyed the world had Precia been left to do her thing?

In exchange, I have all the observations on my side. I don't know about you - where I came from, that's the preferable position.

Oh, just the fact that everyone involved, who have been dealing with this for the greater part of their lives and thus know a lot about it say they will. That, and the fact that they risked their lives to stop it, even to the point where the ship's captain herself stepped in when things were reaching critical points.

In other words, you agree that they don't look like they could, and you are merely blindly trusting dubious authorities speaking in unknown context with an unknown amount of knowledge.

[dkellis]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

In exchange, I have all the observations on my side. I don't know about you - where I came from, that's the preferable position.

Would you mind recapping those observations? I'm not really seeing anything that decisively contradicts the possibility that the Jewel Seeds might cause the vaguely-defined destruction of the world.

In other words, you agree that they don't look like they could, and you are merely blindly trusting dubious authorities speaking in unknown context with an unknown amount of knowledge.

Yes. Yes, I am. It's all we have to go on, really.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Arc, you're going a bit over the top. Plot relevent information says normal jewel seeds cause massive catastrophy if allowed to run out of control. Implications say world devastating or even ending/destroying. And there is a way this would happen that falls into the terms of 'running out of control'.

A hundred years ago, I'll bet you nobody thought little pieces of slightly grey metal that catch fire in the air could blow an entire city away. These little pieces of metal turned out to be uranium and plutonium, and the action is called a runaway chain reaction, resulting in the famed Nuclear Explosion...
THAT would be the threat of unstable jewel seeds. Not just, yay power surge... more like... "OH F**K! Catastrophic chain reaction!" on a dimensional level. Dimension Nukes.

[PhoenixFlare]

I hope you guys don't mind an honest opinion. :3

There are basically two ways to view the current issue, and none of them are actually wrong or right.

Ark is stating his opinions from the visual perspective, whereas the rest comes from the verbal side. His opinion is more towards, "I'd not believe it until it's proven true (by visual expectation)." The rest is leaning more for "I believe it's true (by verbal statements) until proven untrue."

If you see it from his point of view, they are not totally wrong. Neither are those supporting verbal statements from the character. It would be better if the verbal statements are actually confirmed by some believable visuals (like, the earthquake affecting other continents as well instead of just Uminari alone), but unfortunately, the producers did not seem to take it into account.

That leaves us to judge the issue by our own perception. Is there really a point of contention here? :3

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Actually, they were already recorded as being on overload power before Lindy began moving.

Not true, Precia had only started to activate them shortly before Lindy arived and supressed them.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Here's mine: The descriptor is qualitative instead of quantitative. A little shimmer that does no one harm, as long as it touched dimensional space is rated dimensional (jiken).

The description may be qualitative, but that does not change the fact that Lindy still said that many worlds collapsed. In a qualitative description, this ranks as a 'high dimensional dislocation' that did destroy several worlds.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

In exchange, I have all the observations on my side. I don't know about you - where I came from, that's the preferable position.

No you don't. All you have is a world that wasn't destroyed because the process was stopped before it had gone beyond the point of no return. That does not equal it being impossible. Your observations are purely speculative, whereas the characters words and actions are far more objective.

For example, how does a volcanic eruption start? Often it does so with an earthquake. However, the earthquake is the least of the concern of the inhabitants, it is what follows the earthquake that is more dangerous. Just because the cast managed to stop the proccess before it could get beyond earthquake level does not mean that automatically the earth would not have been destroyed.

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

In other words, you agree that they don't look like they could, and you are merely blindly trusting dubious authorities speaking in unknown context with an unknown amount of knowledge.

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never agreed that they don't look like they could. Don't twist my words.

[dkellis]

Personally I'm just operating under the belief that we have no idea what a Dimensional Distortion even looks like, or what is involved therein. It could very well be that a minor earthquake in a Japanese city is an apparently non-sequitur precursor to reality itself folding up in mind-bending ways.

[arkhangelsk]

Now that I'm back home, I'm rechecking the episodes themselves. My spot is even better than I thought it would be - the Ep8 dialog is not really in my way at all! I think I'll do a throughout job and punch it all into a webpage, so wait for it.

[Keroko]

Of course, I'll do some further re-checking myself too.

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

My spot is even better than I thought it would be - the Ep8 dialog is not really in my way at all!

Is it? I wonder if we're watching the same episode at all. Here are the lines that I feel support the case that the Seeds are world-wreckers. Italics are my emphasis.

0:10:49.03, How they're supposed to be used is unknown, but depending on the user...
0:10:53.48, ...it can harness enough power to not only destroy a single world, but all of dimensional space.

But you say they don't know what they're talking about, right? So let's move on.

0:11:05.67, The Lost Logia you two are searching for... the Jewel Seeds...
0:11:09.50, are crystallized forms of energy for dimensional interference.
0:11:12.97, If several Seeds were activated together, a dimensional distortion would occur and, worst case scenario...
0:11:19.05, a dimensional dislocation could be created because they're so dangerous.

Again, you say they're talking rubbish, they have no idea what Jewel Seeds are or that they can do this, right?

0:11:22.92, When you fought that black mage, that flash of light was an explosion which had a huge impact on space.
0:11:27.98, That was a dimensional distortion.
0:11:36.94, Even using a couple thousandths of its power can cause that large of a disaster.
0:11:44.14, The effect of gathering and activating several of them to their fullest extent at once is unfathomable.

See? They barely used the Seed's power in ep7 when they hit it, and it produced an event that was detectable across dimensional space, not confined to a single dimension.
There you go, these are the lines that support our case. Will you please show something to support your case? Simply undermining ours isn't helping you, you know. Do you have visuals that flat out contradict what is said here? Not just halfways like the earthquake dying down before it could shatter the planet.

Here's another analogy for you.

A room is on fire, the firemen arrive. One of them says, "If we don't stop it, it will burn down the house, then the whole neighbourhood" They proceed to extinguish the blaze before it spreads. Good job.
Except you say to them, "You're dumb. You don't know what you're talking about. That fire could never have burned down the neighbourhood. It's not big enough, therefore it can never be big enough."

That's how I see your argument. How do you see it?

Originally Posted by Keroko

Of course, I'll do some further re-checking myself too.

You go, Keroko! I may not agree with you that the Cradle is a planet destroyer, but I do agree that the Seeds are.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

You go, Keroko! I may not agree with you that the Cradle is a planet destroyer, but I do agree that the Seeds are.

Oh yes, that was how this started wasn't it? Talk about argument derailment.

Think of it like this: If Jewel Seeds can destroy a planet, why would a Lost Logia warship, which was made to destroy things, not be able to?

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by Keroko

If Jewel Seeds can destroy a planet, why would a Lost Logia warship, which was made to destroy things, not be able to?

I just rewatched StrikerS ep19 where Jail gloats about his new toy. Looks like I misremembered the line. He said it created and destroyed a world in the old times. If that was meant literally, then yes, I have to conceed that that thing does have a planet killer weapon onboard. That would also mean it has something that can create habitable planets, too.
Otherwise, the simpler meaning is that it was used to forge an empire, then felled it.
But yes, the way things are, Jail could have been speaking literally. Oh dear.

[Avatar_notADV]

Please don't post the dialogue. You're gonna make me go check mine, and... well, I mean, I can talk about it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to actually post the scripts, huh? ;p

There's been mention of nuclear reactions as an example of "whoa, these things have only a little power on their own but go off huge if you cook 'em just right". The metaphor is more apropos than you know. Think about the precise engineering necessary to design a proper implosion-core weapon; if everything isn't rigged just so, to a precision that's almost stupid, the hydrogen fusion fails to occur. You still get an explosion, but it's a peewee explosion, not the full Monty, as it were. (This happened to North Korea when it did its nuclear test, we presume from the pathetic yield detected.)

Ark's certainly correct in that world-destroying is a whole different kettle of fish from the sort of power the Jewel Seeds tend to leak randomly. (Keep in mind that such power is actually said to be what, less than 1/10,000th of the actual power of a Jewel Seed.) Precia is trying to make them go critical, for the tremendous boom that follows; she needs the distortion to happen, because she's looking to use that as a path to Alhazard. Whatever - she's a bit nuts too... She's involved in a long process, not really with the number that she calculated would be necessary, not really with the reactor support she was counting on, not after Nanoha went and sealed it.

Is there any wonder that Precia's attempt didn't display its full power? Not enough material, not enough energy, not enough time, and then you have Lindy (an accomplished mage in her own right, though if we're going to go all Ark-like, we never actually see her use her own magic other than this; so how strong is she?) actually in there attempting to stop it from happening. Instead of the multiple-dimensions-falling-to-ruin event that Precia was going for, we get a destroyed Garden of Time and a little shakin' observable elsewhere, plus enough instability that local travel is somewhat hampered for months.

(This argues that the Garden of Time is, for all intents and purposes, really "close" to Nanoha's Earth.)

Keroko, well... a nuclear carrier has a big load of nuclear material, so why can't it blow up with a multi-megaton explosion? Mostly 'cause that's not what it's made for, huh? ;p We don't see anything that leads us to believe that the Cradle can go Death Star. We -can- believe that, in the proper orbit, it can become an unassailable platform, and that nothing on Mid is properly defended from that. Presumably it could destroy Mid in the sense that you could just hang up there in orbit and pound away at it until nobody lived there anymore, but you could also do that with an Arc and patience. (Could you? We have no idea what the recharge requirements on that thing are, after all. Maybe it's one shot and back to dock for replenishment/repair?)

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

Is it? I wonder if we're watching the same episode at all. Here are the lines that I feel support the case that the Seeds are world-wreckers. Italics are my emphasis.

That's what happens when you rely entirely on a fansub. They are OK for most things, but get into situations where the meaning of individual words matter and they don't always hold up:
http://arkhangelsk.onlinewebshop.net...jewelseed.html

Look at my analysis of the same passages and see if it makes sense to you.

But you say they don't know what they're talking about, right? So let's move on.

Not only me, but they flat out admitted they don't really know what they are talking about. Further, the line you quoted does not specifically refer to Jewel Seeds, but Lost Logia in general.

By the way "all of dimensional space" is not actually in the Japanese. If anyone has observed evidence of a Lost Logia (ultimately the only way to know) that "destroys all of dimensional space", there will be no one left to note this, because everyone will be dead.

Again, you say they're talking rubbish, they have no idea what Jewel Seeds are or that they can do this, right?

I note that. I would like to ask. How likely is this worst case scenario? Does it cover a 25% slice or a 0.01%? How big would the dimensional dislocation be in the worst case scenario?

See? They barely used the Seed's power in ep7 when they hit it, and it produced an event that was detectable across dimensional space, not confined to a single dimension.

Isn't that to the credit of the detection instruments? In the real world, there was a cool flash. Once it dissipates, none of the buildings around us were damaged. And what disaster? They said eikyou, effect. How that became disaster is beyond me.

Here's another analogy for you.

You've just rephrased the whole forest fire thing, while ignoring the consequences of any analogy of this type.

Try this. The house is burning, but there is no flammables around the house already.

[dkellis]

I've probably forgotten or lost track in the back-and-forth, but what exactly is the disagreement here?

[Keroko]

Whether the Jewels Seeds would or would not have destroyed earth in the first season.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

Please don't post the dialogue. You're gonna make me go check mine, and... well, I mean, I can talk about it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to actually post the scripts, huh? ;p

There's been mention of nuclear reactions as an example of "whoa, these things have only a little power on their own but go off huge if you cook 'em just right". The metaphor is more apropos than you know. Think about the precise engineering necessary to design a proper implosion-core weapon; if everything isn't rigged just so, to a precision that's almost stupid, the hydrogen fusion fails to occur. You still get an explosion, but it's a peewee explosion, not the full Monty, as it were. (This happened to North Korea when it did its nuclear test, we presume from the pathetic yield detected.)

Actually, even that is not appropriate An atom actually has a lot of stored energy (E=mc^2), and a successful nuclear reaction only releases a tiny part of it.

Ark's certainly correct in that world-destroying is a whole different kettle of fish from the sort of power the Jewel Seeds tend to leak randomly.

I think no one disagrees that the observations aren't helping them.

(Keep in mind that such power is actually said to be what, less than 1/10,000th of the actual power of a Jewel Seed.)

The term used is nanmanbun no ichi, which ranges from 1/1E4 to 1/1E5. Don't say I don't believe in them. Take what they said literally (didn't they want me to do that), take the actual damage (all flash, just about no bite to the surrounding buildings), multiply by 100,000 for a whole Jewel seed, times that by 21 for all 21 jewel seeds. There, the amount of damage they can do, at least if they weren't BSing somewhere.

Precia is trying to make them go critical, for the tremendous boom that follows; she needs the distortion to happen, because she's looking to use that as a path to Alhazard. Whatever - she's a bit nuts too... She's involved in a long process, not really with the number that she calculated would be necessary, not really with the reactor support she was counting on, not after Nanoha went and sealed it.

She has 9/21 Jewel Seeds, which, with the reactor, is enough to still reach criticality. So, logically, she has a little less than half of everything. Thus, we can extrapolate the correct power for 21 seeds using what she did.

Not enough material, not enough energy, not enough time, and then you have Lindy (an accomplished mage in her own right, though if we're going to go all Ark-like, we never actually see her use her own magic other than this; so how strong is she?) actually in there attempting to stop it from happening.

Nobody knows, though supposedly Distortion Shield is S-ranked according to NanohaWiki so...

Keroko, well... a nuclear carrier has a big load of nuclear material, so why can't it blow up with a multi-megaton explosion? Mostly 'cause that's not what it's made for, huh? ;p

But he'll then ask why can't it draw a similar amount of power.

[dkellis]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Whether the Jewels Seeds would or would not have destroyed earth in the first season.

Ah, so at least I'm not completely off the mark for that one.

My interpretation is that the Jewel Seeds had the potential to do wonky things to the dimension Earth inhabits, thereby making it very possible for them to indeed destroy the Earth. However, to do so, they had to be used (or misused) in some very specific ways.

Now, whether Precia was indeed using the Jewel Seeds in that particular dimension-distorting way is not known. The TSAB, rightly so in my opinion, did not want to take any chances.

So the Jewel Seeds could have destroyed Earth, but whether they were actually going to do so is unknown, thanks to our heroes' intervention.

Also, the Jewel Seeds could have done any number of other things that have nothing to do with destroying Earth, but are just as undesirable for the TSAB. Again, whether they were actually going to do so is just as unknown.

So. Does that contradict anything that's been argued so far?