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beccaelizabethI need to sit down and make words go in a row again. Any. Whatever story comes out of my head, getting written down.
For a while now I've been meaning to do like a rewrite of Star Trek but translated into fantasy. So they don't have sufficiently advanced scienxe, they have straight up magic.
Which means they have the Prime Directive episode where they cannot reveal themselves to the locals because they are Insufficiently Advanced, but they mean the locals can't even do cantrips.
Sure they've strapped themselves to explosives and thrown themselves at nearby planetoids, maybe even bent the laws of physics to do it really fast, but consider: cannot cast a single spell. Not one fireball. Not even prestidigitation.
Like, machine guns are A Lot, sure, but they can't cast a Cure spell, so really, they cannot be trusted.
And any exposure to true magical cultures would irreparably damage their culture! Sure they seem backwards to us, none of them can read minds, there's not a single Dancing Lights to be seen, no illusions, nary a summoning. But they must be given time to develop these things for themselves! Cultural contamination would forever erase their unique contributions!
And who knows what they could do with Real Power? After all, the explorers from the height of civilisation have only just now recovered from the recent Unpleasantness. How could people still willing to wage war at this scale cope with the ability to raise skeletons?
The trouble is they all sound stupid. Because that's the point. Tech or magic, it's bloody stupid.
But that leaves the characters running around sounding stupid for the length of the story.
I mean, even before I get insecure about my ability to make characters open mouths and sound like a people.
I keep wanting to yell at the world and a certain tendency to straw man the opposition doesnt make for good stories.
One thing worth taking a story for a walk for is if you need all the parts to get where you're going. It needs thesis, antithesis, synthesis. A couple of ideas get in a fight and create a new idea. If you only really like the one idea and dont need to make a new idea, that's... more shouty. Less interesting. Potentially cathartic when the 'right' side wins, but still.
If I want to write this I have to pretend like I agree with each speaker while they're speaking. Just long enough to put their side.
... think I'm kind of wore out of that?
But I also kind of want a reverse portal fantasy where these magic users go to tech land and kindly explain why they can't possibly teach them any damn thing, and it's not because the Masquerade, it's because the Prime Directive. But they relent just far enough to rescue some poor local children! Four of them. Who are called Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. And have some Thoughts already about magic and so forth.
To my mind a civilisation is ready to be contacted when they can have the thought that other people think differently but just as well. If they're all renaisance hierachy of being and they see someone not human and they can only file them as angel, animal, or demon, they are not going to be good neighbours and contacting them is going to be a seismic paradigm shift. But if they have the idea already that people can be people and just be different at it, there's room for meeting new people.
But introducing a new source of power would also be epic disruptive. Like knowledge is power but power is also power? So the ability to use matter antimatter annihilation to power your replicators and the ability to use arcane energies to Create Food would be suuuuuper world changey. But so would a Light spell, esp if that Light could make a food grow. See also lightbulbs. Solar power. Wind power turned into useful to humans work. Magic as an entirely new source of energy would change EVERYthing.
So there are legit concerns.
... even high level spells dont have the destructive power tech can get a hold of.
BUT the power they do have has no supply chain or factories involved, someone can just, like, say words and do a little dance.
There are a few artefacts of unimaginable might, but that always seems to boil down to the ability to kill a few thousand people. Um, tech can do that, and make more copies of how to do that later.
Tech is pretty scary.
Mind, Curse of the Crimson Throne has a whole section on the disease worshippers inventing a new bio weapon, so, magic is also scary, it's just easier to do some things than others.
So I want to say that not sharing knowledge is mean stupid wrong, Prime Directive can stuff it, BUT I can also think up Many adverse consequences to dropping new ideas in to an area, tech or magic.
Magic defamiliarises the argument though, and means that, say, Earth is not ready to join the interplanar community.
Not sharing knowledge is stupid because like if someone doesnt know a thing you dont say oh too bad they are not Worthy, you say here is the book and there is the course and trasitionally around a quarter century later you say oh hi you invented new knowledge we did not know before kudos.
Like going from alphabet to doctorate does not take all that long. Many of us are planning to live another quarter century. We'll be 25 years older whether we share everything we know or not. Share the knowledge.
But then people will Do Things with the knowledge.
But so will we. So who gets to decide who is Worthy?
I mean, look at what we did.
Fantasy world people could have done absolutely anything. But usually they've just thrown fireballs at each other. Not used the Decanter of Endless Water to push water wheels for endless power. Just as one world changer that the spells logically imply.
... that's the thing about magic though, it's either a case of endless energy, perpetual motion, all of that physics breaking stuff
or
it comes from somewhere.
And deciding where just... changes everything.
The ethics depend on the physics.
Because the consequences do.
Refusing to share the magic because They're Not Ready (for vague and never stated consequences)
and refusing to share the magic because magic user populations stay low for a reason
are very different decisions
depending on the reason.
Ugh, am writer, I have to make up reasons.
And then play through the implications.
So that's big.
But it's like that one fic I read where animating the dead was possible but it was done by tapping the life force of the living in the universe next door.
Like, that opens up a whole set of questions, but some of the answers are A Problem
and they make parallels to consequences of globalisation and sending the work and the messes next door
or whatever you can work in.
Pathfinder clerical magic draws energy from the positive energy plane, which sounds nice, but is it finite? And if I understand correctly, it is also where the souls come from, so that bit of energy you just used for your spell could have been a person eventually. Will it now? Is using that energy source burning up the future?
Or then there's the climate emergency parallels. Energy can never be created or destroyed, just redistributed. Usually Earth gets its energy input from the Sun, which gives a calculable amount. I saw an explanation of how large storms can get that included how much energy the sun puts in. With the gases around at the moment the energy stays in, right?
But magic is energy. Every use of magic, if it really comes from 'nowhere' and isnt using up anything earthly, is adding energy to the system.
Is it enough energy to make a difference? Who knows, imaginary numbers, very large systems, I'm sure wizards dont think storms are their problem yet.
... but Golarion has a permanent storm system, and the energy for that comes from somewhere...
So there's arguments about the use of magic.
Or tech.
But! They're all arguments about the negative effects of tech and or magic in general.
The Prime Directive wants to make it an argument about why in this case the people who have power should keep it, keep it to themselves, never share it, no, nope, not once.
Which is a whole other argument.
That I cannot be having with.
We are not uniquely suited to being masters of creation. We're just people.
Other people can think differently but just as well.
... huh. maybe the federation doesnt meet my baseline criteria...
For a while now I've been meaning to do like a rewrite of Star Trek but translated into fantasy. So they don't have sufficiently advanced scienxe, they have straight up magic.
Which means they have the Prime Directive episode where they cannot reveal themselves to the locals because they are Insufficiently Advanced, but they mean the locals can't even do cantrips.
Sure they've strapped themselves to explosives and thrown themselves at nearby planetoids, maybe even bent the laws of physics to do it really fast, but consider: cannot cast a single spell. Not one fireball. Not even prestidigitation.
Like, machine guns are A Lot, sure, but they can't cast a Cure spell, so really, they cannot be trusted.
And any exposure to true magical cultures would irreparably damage their culture! Sure they seem backwards to us, none of them can read minds, there's not a single Dancing Lights to be seen, no illusions, nary a summoning. But they must be given time to develop these things for themselves! Cultural contamination would forever erase their unique contributions!
And who knows what they could do with Real Power? After all, the explorers from the height of civilisation have only just now recovered from the recent Unpleasantness. How could people still willing to wage war at this scale cope with the ability to raise skeletons?
The trouble is they all sound stupid. Because that's the point. Tech or magic, it's bloody stupid.
But that leaves the characters running around sounding stupid for the length of the story.
I mean, even before I get insecure about my ability to make characters open mouths and sound like a people.
I keep wanting to yell at the world and a certain tendency to straw man the opposition doesnt make for good stories.
One thing worth taking a story for a walk for is if you need all the parts to get where you're going. It needs thesis, antithesis, synthesis. A couple of ideas get in a fight and create a new idea. If you only really like the one idea and dont need to make a new idea, that's... more shouty. Less interesting. Potentially cathartic when the 'right' side wins, but still.
If I want to write this I have to pretend like I agree with each speaker while they're speaking. Just long enough to put their side.
... think I'm kind of wore out of that?
But I also kind of want a reverse portal fantasy where these magic users go to tech land and kindly explain why they can't possibly teach them any damn thing, and it's not because the Masquerade, it's because the Prime Directive. But they relent just far enough to rescue some poor local children! Four of them. Who are called Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. And have some Thoughts already about magic and so forth.
To my mind a civilisation is ready to be contacted when they can have the thought that other people think differently but just as well. If they're all renaisance hierachy of being and they see someone not human and they can only file them as angel, animal, or demon, they are not going to be good neighbours and contacting them is going to be a seismic paradigm shift. But if they have the idea already that people can be people and just be different at it, there's room for meeting new people.
But introducing a new source of power would also be epic disruptive. Like knowledge is power but power is also power? So the ability to use matter antimatter annihilation to power your replicators and the ability to use arcane energies to Create Food would be suuuuuper world changey. But so would a Light spell, esp if that Light could make a food grow. See also lightbulbs. Solar power. Wind power turned into useful to humans work. Magic as an entirely new source of energy would change EVERYthing.
So there are legit concerns.
... even high level spells dont have the destructive power tech can get a hold of.
BUT the power they do have has no supply chain or factories involved, someone can just, like, say words and do a little dance.
There are a few artefacts of unimaginable might, but that always seems to boil down to the ability to kill a few thousand people. Um, tech can do that, and make more copies of how to do that later.
Tech is pretty scary.
Mind, Curse of the Crimson Throne has a whole section on the disease worshippers inventing a new bio weapon, so, magic is also scary, it's just easier to do some things than others.
So I want to say that not sharing knowledge is mean stupid wrong, Prime Directive can stuff it, BUT I can also think up Many adverse consequences to dropping new ideas in to an area, tech or magic.
Magic defamiliarises the argument though, and means that, say, Earth is not ready to join the interplanar community.
Not sharing knowledge is stupid because like if someone doesnt know a thing you dont say oh too bad they are not Worthy, you say here is the book and there is the course and trasitionally around a quarter century later you say oh hi you invented new knowledge we did not know before kudos.
Like going from alphabet to doctorate does not take all that long. Many of us are planning to live another quarter century. We'll be 25 years older whether we share everything we know or not. Share the knowledge.
But then people will Do Things with the knowledge.
But so will we. So who gets to decide who is Worthy?
I mean, look at what we did.
Fantasy world people could have done absolutely anything. But usually they've just thrown fireballs at each other. Not used the Decanter of Endless Water to push water wheels for endless power. Just as one world changer that the spells logically imply.
... that's the thing about magic though, it's either a case of endless energy, perpetual motion, all of that physics breaking stuff
or
it comes from somewhere.
And deciding where just... changes everything.
The ethics depend on the physics.
Because the consequences do.
Refusing to share the magic because They're Not Ready (for vague and never stated consequences)
and refusing to share the magic because magic user populations stay low for a reason
are very different decisions
depending on the reason.
Ugh, am writer, I have to make up reasons.
And then play through the implications.
So that's big.
But it's like that one fic I read where animating the dead was possible but it was done by tapping the life force of the living in the universe next door.
Like, that opens up a whole set of questions, but some of the answers are A Problem
and they make parallels to consequences of globalisation and sending the work and the messes next door
or whatever you can work in.
Pathfinder clerical magic draws energy from the positive energy plane, which sounds nice, but is it finite? And if I understand correctly, it is also where the souls come from, so that bit of energy you just used for your spell could have been a person eventually. Will it now? Is using that energy source burning up the future?
Or then there's the climate emergency parallels. Energy can never be created or destroyed, just redistributed. Usually Earth gets its energy input from the Sun, which gives a calculable amount. I saw an explanation of how large storms can get that included how much energy the sun puts in. With the gases around at the moment the energy stays in, right?
But magic is energy. Every use of magic, if it really comes from 'nowhere' and isnt using up anything earthly, is adding energy to the system.
Is it enough energy to make a difference? Who knows, imaginary numbers, very large systems, I'm sure wizards dont think storms are their problem yet.
... but Golarion has a permanent storm system, and the energy for that comes from somewhere...
So there's arguments about the use of magic.
Or tech.
But! They're all arguments about the negative effects of tech and or magic in general.
The Prime Directive wants to make it an argument about why in this case the people who have power should keep it, keep it to themselves, never share it, no, nope, not once.
Which is a whole other argument.
That I cannot be having with.
We are not uniquely suited to being masters of creation. We're just people.
Other people can think differently but just as well.
... huh. maybe the federation doesnt meet my baseline criteria...
no subject
Date: 2020-09-04 03:56 am (UTC)Why Should I In Particular Be Allowed Magic.
Like, for a Cleric, it's because they dont do magic, they just ask the goddess for it, and She Wills It.
For the Druid it's because It's Natural, for local definitions thereof.
For the Bard, she can sweet talk the universe into it. She asks nicely. It's cooperative.
For the Sorceror, it's Because Ancestors.
Really only the wizards get stuck in of their own free will and make the universe do things Because I Say So
and I don't believe I've made a wizard on this crew.
Flux is a Cleric of Pharasma, Archer (Tillian) is a Druid, the translator Hoshi Sato is a Bard, Trip the dwarf is a Sorceror with a bond to weird tech.
If there is a Wizard would it be Malcolm? Wizard Siege Mage, using artillery?
His answer to why he personally should use magic has much to do with everyone else using it so he needs to. Like, it's practical defense logic, arms race logic.
His reason no one else should use magic is also pretty straightforwards. Means fewer people trying to blow him up. He is a fan of fewer people trying to blow him up.
Whether or not they could handle it in the abstract is somewhat less important, though he can point out the history of... what are those two countries where two individuals try to kill each other and the result is one kingdom of the undead and one dead magic zone?
Huh, guns come from the dead magic zone. He'd have an interest.
The story gets detailed and specific if it's about their personal relationship to magic.
It's just difficult to make it land Prime Directive for some of those.