2009-07-19, 11:56 | Link #2201 | |
Sword Wielding Penguin
|
Quote:
|
|
2009-07-19, 12:09 | Link #2202 |
Secret Society BLANKET
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: 3 times the passion of normal flamenco
|
The laws of thermodynamics also do not explain stuff like polymorphing, or telepathy, or even how mages fly.
Keroko's point was that while there are scientific explanations that can be applied to Nanohaverse magic, there will still be some stuff that can't and won't be explained 100% by science (not without going into pseudoscientifics anyway, which any sci-fi buff can pull out of his rear). There is a point where you have to draw the line about turning magic into science, thus voiding the entire premise behind a series with the name "Magical" on it. (I am talking about the issue from a literary perspective mind you, not from a scientific perspective).
__________________
|
2009-07-19, 13:07 | Link #2203 | |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
|
Quote:
Example: Nanoha blasting her way through no less than 5 bulkheads, completely obliterating the bridge Quattro stands on, and yet having Quattro come out with little more than dusted clothing and a KO. Last I checked kinetic damage wasn't known for being picky. Which is my point. There are some things magic can do that aren't in the physics books. In other news, re-viewing episode 25 revealed that there were stealth drones present at the battle with the Redshirts. Looks like the Nalemess Hordes of the TSAB aren't so incompetent after all. |
|
2009-07-19, 14:25 | Link #2204 | |
Blazing General
Join Date: May 2006
Location: CA
Age: 37
|
Quote:
Our physics was developed by studying our universe. It can only be expected to explain our universe.
__________________
|
|
2009-07-19, 14:46 | Link #2205 |
blinded by blood
Author
|
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.
__________________
|
2009-07-19, 14:46 | Link #2206 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
|
There's two problems here.
First is that we haven't seen "enough" of the Nanohaverse to divine its laws of magic. Clearly they're capable of subverting physical laws through magic. But we don't know what kind of operating principles underlie that magic, beyond the barest thumbnail sketch. To be fair, not even the people IN the show fully understand magic, because of the presence of Lost Logia, which clearly work but in ways that nobody understands. The second difficulty is that we can't draw precise conclusions even from the things we DO see. Despite Ark's obsession with stadia ranging, the fact is that we're viewing a dramatic production that happily plays with the time scale to produce dramatic effects, and in addition it's not a particularly high-budget one, which means that there's an inherent error factor present in ANY measurement we might take. Reality doesn't screw up, so if a scientist sees it, he can at least say he saw it. Nanohaverse reality does screw up. ;p |
2009-07-19, 14:57 | Link #2207 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
|
Quote:
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. |
|
2009-07-19, 15:10 | Link #2208 |
blinded by blood
Author
|
Magic A is Magic A doesn't mean you have to explain how the magic works, in a pseudoscientific manner, using Rein-chan style infodumps.
To be consistent is easy; just show each spell consistently throughout the work. Don't make one spell do something totally random and unrelated. If a mage is shown to be at a specific level of experience and power, don't show them destroying the world two minutes later.
__________________
|
2009-07-19, 15:19 | Link #2209 | |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
|
Quote:
That being said, I do agree that there needs to be some laydown on how this resistance works. Not any deep scientific explanation, just an explanation that makes sense. Something like... Magic reacts to Nena's body in a similar way as it would to an AMF. A natural form of it, if you will, which is called a 'resistance to magic'. Then we can deepen that out even more and make it the unofficial source of the AMF technology. After all, a lot of technologies in real life are inspired by nature. It's a simple explanation, gives more food for other fics, and it works. |
|
2009-07-19, 15:19 | Link #2210 |
Sword Wielding Penguin
|
And When someone here can show me a blatent violation of Thermodynamics 0, 1 , 2, or 3... we can simply dismiss everything as 'a Wizzard did it'.
The functions of thermodynamics are so ingrained in our understanding of the fundamentals of order, that I've never actually seen a piece of fiction, even of High Fantasy, that has ever violated it as part of the general course of things. The First and Second Laws being violated would actually be Plot Killers. The first laws says you can't get something from nothing. Even the high magic users have to do something to get the spells that seem really epic compared to them to work. Either sacrifice the virgin or expend energy over time... Not even conjuring things from thin air violates it... note the 'thin air'. The secondly makes it absolutely clear that you cannot reduce entropy in a closed system, and if you do, you're not a closed system, but causing an increase in entropy of the system around you. Otherwise a mere thought could undo damage and bring people back from the dead... essentially reverse everything that has occured without disturbing anything. The only entities I can think of in all of fiction capable of bending, let alone violating Thermodynamics, are the Qs in Star Trek, and the occaisional Random Omnipotent Being of a particular story... Maybe Haruhi with her ability to cause 'unconditional information' with subconcious thoughts. But in general, the violation of Thermodynamics instantly makes that character a god without limits in the universe. |
2009-07-19, 15:30 | Link #2211 |
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
|
Wait wait wait, so just because Nanohaverse magic hasn't violated the laws of aerodynamics, everything in Nanohaverse has to adhere to physics? What kind of logic is that?
Not to mention Nanohaverse has already broken physics several times, teleportation, ignorance of the law of conservation of mass, magical age switching, the insertion of crystalline objects into the body with no harmful effect, traveling between dimensions, ignorance of relative physical strength, ignorance of relative physical endurance, selective kinetic damage and revival of dead people using memory transplanting on a clone. And guess what? Almost all of them were explained with 'it's magic.' |
2009-07-19, 15:39 | Link #2212 | |||||||||
Sword Wielding Penguin
|
Quote:
It's THERMODYNAMICS. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
No such law. Mass is Energy. Energy is Mass. E=MC^2 Violation of that would be a violation of Thermodynamics 1. Objects brought into existence are generated from energy and the conversion of existing local mass. Quote:
Not laws of physics. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
|||||||||
2009-07-19, 15:59 | Link #2213 | |||
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
|
So terminating your existence in one place and remaking it in another is physically possible? Sign me up for a course.
Quote:
Explain, last I checked the existence of alternate dimensions is still little more than a theory. Quote:
ディバインバスター・エクステンション – Divine Buster ・ Extension A 「Bombardment spell」 fired and effected from Mana. Mana concentrated to high density allows the target to be hit directly at long range, with no decrease in power over distance. The first offensive spell that Nanoha memorized, after 10 years it has remained one of her favorites, and has also become one of her specialty spells. No loss of power over distance. I suppose I don't have to explain to you what this means? Unlimited. Effin. Range. Seriously, why didn't I realize this before? There go all the 'magic has short range' debates. Of course, magic as it stands already ignores the law of gravity, and allows mages to do the same. Oh, and I do sharply recall getting the 'physics say this is impossible' argument thrown towards my head when talking about the physical endurance of a mage. Quote:
Oh yes, I just remembered, the Cradle violated the first law of thermodynamics with its reactor core. An artificial and by all known means eternal source of energy, self sustaining to the point where it can even regenerate itself. Last edited by Keroko; 2009-07-19 at 16:39. |
|||
2009-07-19, 16:12 | Link #2214 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
|
Quote:
Also, it's not just a question of power, but of exotic abilities. For example, we know mind-control and mind-reading exist in nanohaverse, but we don't know yet how they counter that. However, it *is* logic to believe they have countermeasure. OTOH, i would be hard press to believe in demons in MGLN. |
|
2009-07-19, 20:36 | Link #2215 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
|
The most we can say is "we have no conclusive proof that the laws of thermodynamics have been subverted". It's entirely possible to put an explanation on most of the phenomena that we see that also accounts for things like teleportation (though in Nanoha, the teleportation that they have doesn't SEEM to work like the teleportation in Star Trek, for example.)
But there are two phenomena which do not easily map and are not easily explained: -Obviously, magical energy exists; we cannot handwave THAT away. Furthermore, it exists in free form, if not everywhere then at least at most places, and also in deep space. Magic users process it through linker cores and devices, but other things affect even "loose" magic, like the Starlight Breaker, which we know to be a collection-type. (Our explanations can't contradict canon, after all...) -Nanoha devices, and even some characters, are freely able to alter their form, including gaining and losing mass. The best explanations we can come up with for this phenomenon are either (a) magic can be converted to mass, at a significantly different rate than e=mc^2 which allows for much more mass per magic, or (b) mass can be "stored" stably in a sub-dimensional or non-dimensional space, and then recalled when necessary, and transmuted as needed. We have never even posited a real-world phenomenon which could account for (a). (b) can at least be technobabbled about, but that's all it is - the existence of higher-order dimensions is essentially a construct of mathematics, not physics as we understand it. (Yes, yes, superstring theory. Come back when it can explain an observed phenomenon! ;p) It's also hard to reconcile (b) with both higher-order dimensions and also the mundane sort of alternate dimensions through which our heroes travel. The "selective kinetic damage" phenomenon is also tough to explain. Simply put, it forecloses altogether the idea that most of the beams people are throwing around are just physical energy weapons formed by magical means. If Nanoha can do serious property damage with the Starlight Breaker, but enemies struck by it aren't pulped even though their defenses had been breached already, then it's not a big-ass laser; it's a magic beam that affects things that it hits differently depending on what they are. (And in fact we know this is true, through explanations of that effect in the DVD booklets.) Of course, it's easy to misunderstand the nature of systems. It's entirely possible that a greater system, including not only the physical universe but the magical one, is obeying the laws of thermodynamics, and the apparently-thermodynamics-breaking effects we see in the physical universe are thermodynamically sound when viewed from the perspective of the greater system. I'm sure that if I had a couple of doctoral degrees in multidimensional mathematics and dimensional interfaces of magic from Cranagan University, I could offer a better explanation. Unfortunately, all I've got is "the guy who does the English scripts"... ;p But the real problem is the existence of Lost Logia. These suckers do all sorts of inexplicable things, in inexplicable ways. The Mid guys have a scientific approach to their own magic, and manipulate it with tools and formulas that are not foreign to the scientist. But as far as how the Lost Logia work, they don't really know. They might be simply more-advanced tools of the same type, but they may also work off of completely alien operating principles. Their existence, though, is absolute proof that Mid science has not fully explained magical phenomena. |
2009-07-19, 23:43 | Link #2216 |
blinded by blood
Author
|
Lost Logia appear to function more along the lines of traditional magic--unpredictable, wild, uncontrollable and ultimately dangerous. The Mid-Childan and Belkan magic styles are Magic A is Magic A--they follow their own internal rule set, regardless of whether they break the laws of physics or not.
I've always defined "magic" as a phenomenon which doesn't adhere to the laws of reality. Nanohaverse magic certainly fits. As for a more detailed explanation of how Nena possesses magic resistance, it is non-canon of course since magic resistance is not present in the canon Nanohaverse. Nena's Linker Core is different than most people's. It has an opposing polarity to the normal Linker Core--a sort of "anti-magic" property that absolutely prevents her from using any magic of her own. In such a manner, it acts as a focused, localized anti-magic field. This is something of a double-edged sword as direct magical scans of Nena will turn up nothing, since the magic is negated upon entering her body. If the TSAB were to set up multiple active magical "pinging" devices in a given area, they could fix Nena's position much in the same way that Celestial Being was found in Gundam 00 using active two-way comm devices.
__________________
|
2009-07-19, 23:45 | Link #2217 |
blinded by blood
Author
|
Lost Logia appear to function more along the lines of traditional magic--unpredictable, wild, uncontrollable and ultimately dangerous. The Mid-Childan and Belkan magic styles are Magic A is Magic A--they follow their own internal rule set, regardless of whether they break the laws of physics or not.
I've always defined "magic" as a phenomenon which doesn't adhere to the laws of reality. Nanohaverse magic certainly fits. As for a more detailed explanation of how Nena possesses magic resistance, it is non-canon of course since magic resistance is not present in the canon Nanohaverse. Nena's Linker Core is different than most people's. It has an opposing polarity to the normal Linker Core--a sort of "anti-magic" property that absolutely prevents her from using any magic of her own. In such a manner, it acts as a focused, localized anti-magic field. This is something of a double-edged sword as direct magical scans of Nena will turn up nothing, since the magic is negated upon entering her body. If the TSAB were to set up multiple active magical "pinging" devices in a given area, they could fix Nena's position much in the same way that Celestial Being was found in Gundam 00 using active two-way comm devices.
__________________
|
2009-07-20, 04:42 | Link #2218 | ||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
|
Quote:
In fact, given definitions, "magic" would not only be "subordinated" to science, but also to physics. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Try this next. Place two soda cans 1m apart. Pick up a rock and try and hit them. Note how you can choose to hit the right can and the left can isn't affected. Now try to remember that matter is in fact mostly empty space (by ratio, much more empty than the two cans and the space between them) and held together by some forcefields. Does this help? Last edited by arkhangelsk; 2009-07-20 at 05:46. |
||||
2009-07-20, 05:57 | Link #2220 | ||
Adeptus Animus
Author
Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
|
Quote:
Seriously Ark, I am done with accepting your theories as fact when you completely ignore any of my queries for canonical support for them. Midcrete, the Cradle being made of mana, you keep throwing them around because they help your side of the debate but when push comes to shove they are still theories. Find some quote or booklet page stating midcrete is weak and the Cradle is made out of mana, then come back. Quote:
That is what magic does. |
||
Thread Tools | |
|
|