Nanoha FanFiction Discussion

[Nijiru]

@Nanya: You have two lines in twice on your first post. :P

Spoiler for Correction:

Nanoha smiled sheepishly. "Thank you, Arisa-chan."

"Hey, no problem." Arisa pushed the credit card towards the man, who took it. "It's not so expensive here, plus this gives me some practice."

[MeisterBabylon]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

If it's an attempt at blending which works off the idea that the universe are the same, but that the characters have never encountered each other this is often true. Still the rule isn't iron clad either, I've seen some fairly large crossovers that didn't use alternate universes or the like. While harder to do without opening up gapping plot holes if done well they can be quite interesting to read as the author weaves the different canons together.

As in any writing it's really the skill of the author that most contributes to success or failure though.

If you just toss the blending idea and go for alternate worlds though the number of crossovers possible is much higher. It’s also easier to explain. (And if you already have magic or sci-fi frankly not that outlandish as the Many Worlds theory isn’t rock solid, but it is a possibility.) In this case even if the former option is chosen I do think it could work with only minor reworking. We don't hear much about Espers in Negima, but we don't really see anything that says they're impossible either and focusing on a Magic user it would have little reason to show much of them either. Negima also seems to show that various sorts of magical socities or cabals exist and that magic is actively hidden which would again fit rather neatly with the Index-verse.

So really it's the TSAB that becomes the big problem with such a cross IMO. According to canon Earth does not have a large magic using community, but then again one could go with the old "As far as they know..." out. Indeed one could perhaps even weave a background that the reason magic is hidden is because of the TSAB. Perhaps not wanting to be bothered with its rules and regulations the magic users of Earth are aware of the TSAB, but content to hide and let the TSAB think it’s an uninteresting world of magic blunts. Using this approach it would seem likely that Earth was "lost" sometime in the past probably during the massive wars that brought down the Belkan Empire which destroyed records of it. Another option is that a small core of mages may have actively destroyed records of it and used it as a "safe house" to ride out the war. (This also explains some of the differences in practice as the Earth mages have developed there own systems separate from the large state taught styles of the TSAB.)

The TSAB appears to have had a very minor presence on the world, only showing up at all when a very large scale disturbance was detected. They appear as of S1 to have no permanent bases or monitoring installation on the planet. It’s entirely possible that after a brief survey decades ago which showed an underdeveloped world with no active magic community the TSAB “monitoring” consisted of the occasional fly by of a ship ever few years. Such a weak knee approach would likely not uncover a magical underground that even the planets permanent residents are not aware of. After the Jewel Seed and Book of Darkness incident though they seem to have taken more of an interest in the world. This could finally result in them perhaps uncovering some oddities that lead to them digging deeper and uncovering the hidden magic users.

With a bit of work it's often possible to fit a number of universe together into one, but it's not always possible and sometimes some things do need to be trimmed to fit. Having said that I myself largely prefer the "Inter-universe travel" approach, it's frankly not that outlandish compared to what many universes already have, and while unlikely perhaps not actually impossible even in real life. It also IMO allows for more flexibility in how they universe meet and interact since by tweaking the method used and the rules about it you can allow or disallow allot of stuff fairly plausibly. (It also frees you of a possibly heavy and limiting backstory to explain why they two series haven't met until now.)

I've acutally pondered this myself a bit as of late as I've been screwing around with a Halo/Macross/other stuff crossover.

...

......

........

...am I seeing things? Tk actually contributing to the crack building?!?!?!

That said, my thoughts exactly. I'll leave the rest to the good hands of FFT.

[RadiantBeam]

Seventh chapter of "Shadowfire" is officially up and running: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5301936/7/Shadowfire

If only I'd thought ahead and written everything out for BtBR and "Sisters" as well...

[deathcurse]

But life would be too easy if you had done that!

Wonder if Nanoha remembers this in retrospect post-Sunrise?

[MeisterBabylon]

Just a little food for thought, since I don't know where in the world this would go... in my explorations of the definition of magic and irony, I've come across a new perspective to the issue.

We see Nanoha World "stuff" and call it magic because we have no understanding of the concepts involved that run the show, and others where it outright counters what we already know about our world. The world itself calling it magic seems to lend credence to the theory, but that in effect is a red herring. They know so much about their magic that it's actually a science to them. However, there are also instances where they know little or nothing about something and how they work. That to them is the real magic!

When you learn about how something works, it ceases to exist as magic and becomes simply an aspect of logic. Hence, if the TSAB were to encounter ESPers, or if the idea of Inherent Skills is completely foreign to them, that is their magic to them.

Hence, What We Are Shown As Magic Is Actually Science. And as long as IS and IA continue to be skirted around in canon, as long as Lost Logia exist, as long as no one understands the concept of ESP, these unknowns are then the real magic of Nanoha World.

[itanshi1]

hey kha, read post 1 of the magic tech thread

[MeisterBabylon]

Hey I built that thread until it got hijacked. Since then, I've refused to post there as much as possible.

My post was more a cry of frustration at people in some places that forget that simple principle and keep asking to be Dreadsock'd as a result, which I can't since I don't have the rulebooks nor the Dreadnaught to sock them with.

For everyone else, that is why you often see me claim that the magic in Nanoha is actually what you should call "Science" (Even then it's still a bad use of the word!!!) But most importantly, I hope it would serve as a little inspiration. It opens an avenue of fics to mainstream if you will. If me saying that in red spurs a lurker to become the next Sci-fi-fantasy Satashi, I'd be very happy.

[LoweGear]

The point of Kha's post methinks is that while we do believe in the saying that "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable magic" as per the words of the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the Nanohaverse having "true" magic is not really impossible.

The reason people call anything "magic" is to explain phenomenon which they cannot explain with logic and reason. And yet in Nanohaverse, their "magic" is so well understood in both mechanism and principle that for the most part it ceases to be "magic" and actually becomes science. However, if they are confronted with a phenomenon that defies all their current knowledge about mana-based technology, then to them that becomes their true "magic".

It's all a matter of cultural perspective: To a Roman living in the Year 1 AD, the workings of a television set would be so inexplicably illogical that he would treat it as "miraculous" or "magical", and yet for us here in the Year 2009 AD that said television works is taken for granted as a fact of life; or we could take the example of Lightning: people from that time treated lightning as a God in and of itself, and yet today lightning is seen as little more than an extremely powerful electric current. And yet if people from, say 4009 AD would go back and show us things like physical shapeshifting, FTL teleportation, interdimensional travel and easy energy-mass conversion technologies we would be so hard-pressed to explain the technology behind them that we really might describe it as magic. (Of course, there is the fact that 21st-century mentality is that we've grown so accustomed to outlandish concepts with sci-fi that we might simply be open minded and say that it's an "unexplainable technology", but then again seeing is another matter entirely).

Given that the universe (and if you believe it, the multiverse) is such a infinitesmally vast place and that even our most cutting edge physics can only scratch the surface of what makes the universe tick (even SuperString and M Theory may not be an accurate representations of the universe, as they're only approximations), we won't be running out of new sciences to discover anytime soon, however as long as we run into phenomena that our current scientific knowledge doesn't understand or comprehend, then to many people, it would simply be described as "magic".

It's not impossible to think then that the TSAB, as advanced as they are, will actually be able to find phenomena that stretch the limits of their understanding of the physical world, or shatters it altogether.

PS: I actually had pondered over these alot when trying to justify the existence for my OC group EXCOM

[itanshi1]

does post one of the magic tech thread not cover this? i know not of hijacking

[MeisterBabylon]

Thanks for covering my back Lowe. =3

PPS: Aaah... It would be boring otherwise. There'd be nothing new to learn!

For me, it's more of how I depict the workings of Nanohaverse, where all the lasers and sci-fi stuff are metaphorically expressed in describing canon magic, and where I then introduce users of "science" powers that utilize elements stereotyped as magic from our perspective. It's just me I guess. It's a bit hard to understand considering that it's only been expressed in character profiles thus far...



@itanshi: No that post is perfectly fine. I'm just afraid that posting what I said earlier in the tech thread will invoke yet another firestorm there... So I'm not going to risk waking the dragon if you will


My English really is that bad, I know. >_<

[LoweGear]

Thinking about it, we are hijacking this thread Still, the fear of setting off another sh**storm in Magic and Tech thread is what prevents us from using that place to post matters like these due to the presence of certain people... *cough*

[itanshi1]

but you are saying things that have already been fully established, this is redundant x_x;

[Nanya01]

Originally Posted by Nijiru

@Nanya: You have two lines in twice on your first post. :P

Spoiler for Correction:

Nanoha smiled sheepishly. "Thank you, Arisa-chan."

"Hey, no problem." Arisa pushed the credit card towards the man, who took it. "It's not so expensive here, plus this gives me some practice."

Ah! Thanks. Missed that somehow.

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by MeisterBabylon

Just a little food for thought, since I don't know where in the world this would go... in my explorations of the definition of magic and irony, I've come across a new perspective to the issue.

We see Nanoha World "stuff" and call it magic because we have no understanding of the concepts involved that run the show, and others where it outright counters what we already know about our world. The world itself calling it magic seems to lend credence to the theory, but that in effect is a red herring. They know so much about their magic that it's actually a science to them. However, there are also instances where they know little or nothing about something and how they work. That to them is the real magic!

You've got it backwards.

We see Nanoha World "stuff" and call it magic entirely because they call it magic.

Simply put: let's say you turn on StrikerS. You see a highly-advanced future civilization. You see holographic computer screens. Targeting displays. Spaceships. Clones. Combat Cyborgs (setting aside the fact that the cyborgs apparently don't run on magic). Brains existing in life-support tubes. Mad scientists running amok. What would you think? "Sci-fi series with plenty Sufficiently Advanced Technology." When Nanoha & Co. go into their superhero antics, I'd bet the word "nanotechnology" would go through at least 67% of all brains watching as an explanation for how they're doing that.

But no. We call it "magic." Because the people inhabiting this sci-fi society call it magic. It just so happens that "magic" is a proven, objectively verifiable force in the Nanohaverse, so the societies that encounter it do what a normal human civilization would do: they apply the scientific method to study "magic," and they learn some of the laws that it works by, and having found that it's an efficient way to do things, as well as a clean, low-polluting way, and possibly for sociopolitical reasons as well ("our planet has a high concentration of mages, so we'll make magic the technological/combat base for known space, preventing most potential rivals from being able to mount an external threat"), made it the basis for their technology.

It's correct to point out that there are things about magic that Midchildan society doesn't understand. Indeed, they're in a similar position with regard to magic as we in the real world are with regard to real-world physics (as LoweGear highlights).

But there is a difference.

The very definition of magic is as a supernatural force. Once you're writing fiction and define something as magic, physical laws are out the window if you want them to be. Sure, you can run your magic system on something similar to the law of conservation of energy, but if you don't want to, you don't have to. Don't feel like thinking up a hand-wave (or trying to apply the latest known principles of Cold Hard Science(TM) ) for FTL travel or how clones can be imprinted with the memories of what they took the clone's DNA from? No problem--it's magic!

The fact that the cultural response to magic in the Nanohaverse is to treat it in a scientific fashion should not be allowed to distract from the fact that by identifying it as magic, it is something different than the laws which govern our real-world universe.

This is probably the single strongest reason why I'm attracted to the Nanoha franchise. It combines the futuristic setting of science fiction with the mystery and wonder of fantasy. It makes possible the uber-idealistic outlook of Nanoha and her friends, which in a more reality-based universe would look childish, naive, and doomed to get them badly hurt.

Now, I know there are a lot of people on these boards who take the opposite view: they delight in restricting the Nanohaverse's "magic" to being merely another form of Sufficiently Advanced Technology (even to the extreme of stating that magic in the Nanohaverse must comply with the laws of physics as we know them). That's clearly a matter of opinion, and frankly when one is running around creating fanfiction, one is free to take whatever position one wants to in one's interpretation of canon, so long as it makes for a good story! (Hey, if I can write a story in which Arisa comes back from the dead as a ghost, who the hell am I to tell someone else that they can't write a story in which a Divine Buster has to comply with the First Law of Thermodynamics?) But I can't help but think that in doing so, it's kind of missing the point. If Midchildan magic is just technology by another name, then how is the Nanohaverse different from Star Wars or Warhammer 40K or (especially) Stargate or any other sci-fi franchise? That's why I write stories--and like to read stories--which treat the magic as being magic, so that when it needs to be there, that note of fantasy and wonder can be evoked.

(Well, okay, there is really very little loli fanservice in Star Trek, but besides that! )

[itanshi1]

That's what I've been saying x_X repeatedly. Thanks anyways ^^

Wish I had more to add on topic, but I really don't, sigh. Post more fanfics

Yeah relocated all this to the tech thread

[Keroko]

Aileen: Oh look, the bipedals are debating the reality magic. It's so amusing to see them talking about forces beyond their comprehension as if they know all about them. But really though, remember this?

I think it's time we go and see whether you even managed to save one tiny little life before we continue debating finer points of magic, don't you think?

In a flash of light, you return to the underground lab. You blink as you remember the choice. Right. Run at the drone and try to bash it of Quint. You charge at the drone, ignoring a warning cry from Megane and raise your arms to smash your device into the drone as hard as you can.

*shunk*

The sound of metal piercing flesh makes itself known as the drone raises one of its unoccupied legs and thrusts it forward, piercing you chest straight trough. The cries of your commanding officers fade away as the life bleeds out of your body through the hole in your chest.

Suddenly, as if waking up, you open your eyes and find yourself in the white world again, apparently still wearing the Ground Force uniform. Your device is in the hands of Aileen, who is looking it over with what seems like fascination.

"Such an amazing device. Supports defensive spells, increased stability, reinforces your grounding position, mental scope, it even has support for rapid fire and firing on the move. Truly an amazing Mid Childan device."

Aileen's fascinated look changes immediately as she looks up and glares at you.

"Which of course makes your action all the more idiotic. You're a Mid Childan mage holding a Mid Childan device and you think its a smart idea to run up to a drone designed for close combat? I mean if you don't want to save Quint you only have to say so. Let's try again." Aileen once again fades away in the whiteness of the world, you hear her fading voice tell you one last thing. "Oh, and by the way, if you have any questions just ask. I'll give you the best dictionary."

When the white itself fades away, you once again face the same choice.

A: Try shooting the drone of Quint.

B: Run at the drone and bash it of Quint.

C: Help Megane with the drone attacking her.

D: Do nothing.

[Nanya01]

Megane survived in the original timeline, I'd try to shoot the drone off of Quint.

So, A.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Still need votes over here in the hangar. I've got a pair of ordinance techs fighting over the loadout for the Phoenix.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by LoweGear

The point of Kha's post methinks is that while we do believe in the saying that "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable magic" as per the words of the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the Nanohaverse having "true" magic is not really impossible.

Leaving aside my issues with "True magic" based on Nanoha canon. (Namely that there is zero evidence for it and plenty against and it's been done to death with my view made clear) I'll talk about some of the philosophical aspects discussed here.

Firs off I don't really buy into that quote entirely myself. To me that quote while elegant has also has a certain ring of falsehood. Basically it would IMO never work on anyone with a grasp of the scientific method, as they'd see not magic, but merely a technology they do not yet understand.


More accurately it might be said:
"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to ignorant savages with no education in reasoning or the scientific method."

Which admittedly isn't quite as elegant... Still the problem is that Nanoha-verse is clearly driven by a scientific not religious or mystical approach to magic. So they would be highly unlikely to class anything as "true magic". It would simply be a skill or effect they could no yet duplicate that warrants study.

The reason people call anything "magic" is to explain phenomenon which they cannot explain with logic and reason. And yet in Nanohaverse, their "magic" is so well understood in both mechanism and principle that for the most part it ceases to be "magic" and actually becomes science. However, if they are confronted with a phenomenon that defies all their current knowledge about mana-based technology, then to them that becomes their true "magic".

The first part was true in ancient times, but thinking advances as well as technology and new ideas greatly influence how we view things. While people a thousand years ago might have been inclined to use magic to explain something almost no one today would. The scientific method, skepticism, and reason have penetrated so deeply into human thought processes now that magic really has no place left.

On seeing something unexplained most people would not be inclined to shout “WITCHCRAFT!”, but be curious and intrigued as to how it was done. They’d be looking for the “trick” that was used, not assuming it’s simply “unexplainable” or "magic". I see more or less no reason the TSAB, which has been exposed to many fantastic things it can now fully explain, should be different. Why when seeing something new they wouldn't go "Intresting I wonder how it was done?", but instead. "ZOMG TRUE MAGIC!!!"

It's all a matter of cultural perspective: To a Roman living in the Year 1 AD, the workings of a television set would be so inexplicably illogical that he would treat it as "miraculous" or "magical", and yet for us here in the Year 2009 AD that said television works is taken for granted as a fact of life; or we could take the example of Lightning: people from that time treated lightning as a God in and of itself, and yet today lightning is seen as little more than an extremely powerful electric current. And yet if people from, say 4009 AD would go back and show us things like physical shapeshifting, FTL teleportation, interdimensional travel and easy energy-mass conversion technologies we would be so hard-pressed to explain the technology behind them that we really might describe it as magic. (Of course, there is the fact that 21st-century mentality is that we've grown so accustomed to outlandish concepts with sci-fi that we might simply be open minded and say that it's an "unexplainable technology", but then again seeing is another matter entirely).

It would not be regarded as magic. The reason is simple frankly the scientific method has taken hold in the human mind now. Science allows no room for magic merely things it hasn't quite figured out yet. Indeed if something is possible and repeatable then it's merely a phenomena to be studied and explained. What exactly it is or is doing is of no consequence at all.

Science really did kill magic. In a metaphorical sense anyway.

Even in roman times I think the reaction would depend on who you showed it too. An illiterate peasant might indeed consider it magic, but a better educated scholar might not be so quick to toss out reason and logic and declare it magical. Even back then those men had the same mental capacity as us and where more cleaver then we often give them credit for. Actually Rome or Greece might be more likely to question its magical nature then some places since both had there share of skeptics with regards to the divine and supposed magic.

Given that the universe (and if you believe it, the multiverse) is such a infinitesmally vast place and that even our most cutting edge physics can only scratch the surface of what makes the universe tick (even SuperString and M Theory may not be an accurate representations of the universe, as they're only approximations),

Frankly I think we've done allot more then "scratch the surface" we have an extremely firm handle on how it behaves at the Macro scale. (which is what really matters to us) It's only at the most infinitesimal microscopic scales we haven't quite figured it out, but for the most part figuring that out is an academic thing. It's questionable if knowing how it works would allow use to exploit it, anymore then knowing how relativity works allows use to exceeded the speed of light. (Despite the better part of a century looking desperately for loopholes...)

we won't be running out of new sciences to discover anytime soon, however as long as we run into phenomena that our current scientific knowledge doesn't understand or comprehend, then to many people, it would simply be described as "magic".

On that first part I agree, but I also happen to think that if we live long enough we will explain everything sooner or later. (I also think that the current trends are unsustinable and progress will slow in the furture, I consider the "Technological Singulairty" to be poorly supported trash) On the second point... perhaps to ignorant masses without even basic schooling, but not to anyone whose thought is grounded in reason and the scientific method.

We don't fully understand what occurs in a Blackhole, I've yet to see anyone refer to it as "magic".

It's not impossible to think then that the TSAB, as advanced as they are, will actually be able to find phenomena that stretch the limits of their understanding of the physical world, or shatters it altogether.

Perhaps not impossible, but actually much less likely since the more you advance the less there left to not understand (given the level of certain TSAB tech it's not unreasonable to think they could have perfect a "Theory of Everything" centuries ago). In addition having an increasingly large base of knowledge to draw on can speed the understanding of newly encountered phenomena.

Regardless it's clear the TSAB does not endorse "it's magic j00!" as an explanation for things. So it would not label some new skill it can't fully explain "true magic", it would merely consider it an unknown and begin studying it in a scientific manner. This is also why I consider most scenarios where the TSAB goes ape shit over some new discovery illogical and absurd. People clearly grounded in scientific method would not treat some new discovery as a possible threat; at least not without study of it to determine if it truly is. (To me many of these would be like people discovering atomic fission and then the US government cracking down on them in a crazed attempt to suppress their findings using assassins and ninjas.)

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by AdmiralTigerclaw

Still need votes over here in the hangar. I've got a pair of ordinance techs fighting over the loadout for the Phoenix.

The SF-36 is not the ship for the task. Air superiority is not the main target here, plus there are plenty of mages already buzzing around to take care of that. What we need is firepower to get through the ship's armor, we can trust our mage comrades to handle the enemy fighters.

This leaves the SF-30 and the A/GS-80. Speed is not really essential here, as the target is not a fleeing enemy fighter, but it does have the highest firepower. In addition, its immunity to drone attacks means it doesn't have to worry about the drones as much as the other two fighters. To top that off, it has the speed as a backup, in case it does prove to be needed. At the very least it will make it a hell of a lot harder to hit for the Cradle's more powerful defenses. All around I'd say I choose the SF-30.

In terms of loadout, again, air superiority is not the greatest of concerns. That's what our friendlies are for. Those same friendlies also make Hammers a no-no. Dogfights are by their very nature unpredictable, and firing wildly with friendlies possibly being everywhere is not exactly conductive to good teamwork. For that reason, we'll pack Crusaders.

So, final selection: B-2.

Originally Posted by Tk3997

Regardless it's clear the TSAB does not endorse "it's magic j00!" as an explanation for things. So it would not label some new skill it can't fully explain "true magic", it would merely consider it an unknown and begin studying it in a scientific manner. This is also why I consider most scenarios where the TSAB goes ape shit over some new discovery illogical and absurd. People clearly grounded in scientific method would not treat some new discovery as a possible threat; at least not without study of it to determine if it truly is. (To me many of these would be like people discovering atomic fission and then the US government cracking down on them in a crazed attempt to suppress their findings using assassins and ninjas.)

I'm not interested in a whole 'is Nanohaverse magic, magic?' debate, as my opinion is for the most part a mirror of Dezo's. This, however, is an interesting tidbit, as that is part the plot I use for my Nanoha/To Aru crossover basically. The TSAB discovers the Earth's progress on the area of psychic powers, a field which up to that point is a complete unknown to them, and does just that: Send a team to investigate just what psychics really are, and what their psychic powers really entail. Only after they've found this out will they make any decisions on what to do with it.

Though it is sort of ironic that the so called 'scientific' psychic powers in To Aru are basically the psychic saying "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"