Premonitions

Originally Posted by Slaunyeh

No, I'm sure there will be some vague and convoluted reason why we end up not wanting it after all that work. I am quite curious how they could make a story that made sense, about an incarnate-level villain setting up a group to rival Arachnos, and then later end up not being involved with said group after all.

Originally Posted by ketch

Why is magic the straw that will break the camels back? It has played a long time role in CoH on both blue and redside and has a reasonably established lore. The addition of more magic isn't asking you to make any new concessions that didn't already exist. The magical lore of CoH has long established the presence of souls, gods, and forms of afterlife. Adding new forms of magic isn't asking you to accept anything into the setting that hasn't already existed in one form or another.

On the whole, magic gets a carte blanche from me because it does not exist so it can behave in anyway we imagine. What really strains my suspension of disbelief is the treatment of technology and science; there is no way, as previously mentioned, that a convincing human-sized steam-powered automaton could exist or that the human body can be mutated to generate extreme heat and cold or communicate telepathically. Science and technology in this game violate natural laws in just as grievous ways as magic but also ask to me to put aside what I already know about the natural world.

Originally Posted by Unhearted

Awesome to have you! Should have some time this weekend to begin working on an alphabetical list.

If you haven't already, please join global channel 'City of Formspring' or shoot myself (@Aglow) or @Monocle Owl a tell for an invite.

Originally Posted by SilentSpy

When I read "Martial Arts for Blasters" all I could imagine was people tearing off their own legs and throwing their legs at their enemies.

Then I figured this would mean shurikens and such, not limb dismemberment.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

You don't but common courtesy requires you judge something by either its own definitions or the commonly accepted ones, and not ones uniquely your own, unless you *explicitly* state otherwise. The presumption is that you're doing the former and not the latter in a critique. Otherwise, other people would be free to do likewise: I could judge your posts by my own definitions of every word you use, and then state that its only my opinion and complain about having to preface my posts with that statement.

You should comment with the presumption of reciprocity.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

That's where you disagree with basically the entirety of the science fiction industry. Speculative science fiction often just "makes things up." It doesn't derive everything from actual scientific principles, at least as someone who actually understands science knows them. They may dress them up in technobabble good enough to fool people who don't know anything, but that's not the same thing.

The common thread that usually binds most people's definitions of science fiction is that the story itself *relies* on a consistent scientifically grounded approach to the novel things introduced within it. But it often starts with a completely made up premise. From that premise, they see where they can go. Hard science fiction tries to extrapolate from known science, but not all science fiction is equally hard in that regard.

Saying "superman is powered by solar energy" is no different than saying Galactus is powered by cosmic energy. Superman is getting about a kilowatt of power from the Sun during the daytime: that's not enough to lift himself off the ground much less fly around. And that's separate from the fact that its scientifically impossible for x-ray vision to work the way Superman uses it, that his ability to fly violates the law of conservation of momentum, that the level of invulnerability he possesses is structurally impossible for his mass. These things are only scientifically plausible in a genuine sense to people who don't know anything about science.

At least Galactus taps an energy source that delivers more power than the average home electrical wall outlet. Cosmic energy could be anything: it could be vacuum energy, or string binding energy, or an as-yet unknown vector field, or dark energy, or inflation energy. All these things exist on magnitude levels capable of vaporizing the Earth. The amount of solar energy that strikes Superman is barely enough to boil a decent sized pot of water.


In fact, the only scientific theory that plausibly explains Superman's solar dependence, and you have to make a whole bunch of miracle exceptions just to explain how those abilities can exist at all, is that solar radiation is actually just a catalyst for an energy source specific to Superman himself. His own body somehow generates all the power to do what he does, but it needs solar radiation to catalyze the reaction for some reason. Kryptonians might have evolved to use the radiation from their weaker red sun, and the higher radiation intensity from Earth's Sun radically increases their power. That also explains why Kryptonite can have such a deleterious effect on them: the radiation from Kryptonite isn't enough to kill them, its essentially a metabolic poison to them. It destabilizes their natural energy producing systems just as solar radiation energizes them.

The effort it takes to get all the way to the point where you have a plausible mechanism for solar dependence, and then a power source strong enough to produce his abilities, and *then* a set of mechanisms to allow those abilities to even exist, is way past the point of plausibly explaining how Galactus can exist.

If Professor X isn't magic, then psionic abilities exist, and the astral plane exists. Making the leap to say its possible for conscious minds to create consensus personifications is not a big leap at all. Its all built on a house of sand scientifically, but that's not because personifications are unscientific, but because the entire edifice is: an astral plane where they might originally form is unscientific, and astral projection is unscientific, and psionic powers are unscientific, and that's because Professor X is unscientific.

He's not magic because he exists within the realm of science fiction, not magical fantasy. Not especially hard science fiction, but science fiction nonetheless. And he violates the same number of laws of physics as Galactus does, and he violates them just as badly. Actually, probably worse.

Originally Posted by Leo_G

Prem, did you go premium at some point? I just remember not seeing that lovely avatar of yours but it looks like it's there again...

Originally Posted by Xanatos

Ironic.

Originally Posted by Father Xmas

Maybe. The manga/anime series Full Metal Alchemist approaches alchemy as a science even though the truth is stranger.

However a programmer may be able to break the fundamentals of magic down to the point where it could be compiled.

Originally Posted by Silver Gale

These threads make a lot more sense if you replace "superheroes" with "the sort of writing I like" and "magic" with "the sort of writing I dislike".

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

The science of fictional worlds doesn't have to be identical to the science of our world. Otherwise, lightsabers are magic. Warp drive is magic. Iron Man's suit of armor is magic: our science doesn't allow for any of them as explicitly described in those fictional universes. Mutant powers are also magic, because mutations don't allow people to violate the laws of physics: Magneto is magic. Cyclops is magic. Storm is magic. Even Wolverine is magic.

Originally Posted by Comicsluvr

Yeah...and they had all those 'Beast-Control Powers' already in the game before they did Beast Mastery. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

I got two words that makes a Clown Summoning/Control set worth while: The Joker. Feel that little tingle down your spine as you conjure up images of the most evil, sadistic clown of all?

Now think of the words Beast Summoning and try to NOT think of that almost comical movie Beast Master.

Clowns = creepy
Animals = not superhero-y enough for me.