Apply xover for fixit ... and ramble
Nov. 26th, 2022 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethToday's useful and productive daydreaming while staring at the ceiling is on the theme of
applying D&D/Pathfinder style magic items to other canons
to fix all the things.
Pathfinder is pretty profligate with its magic items. The difficulty (challenge) rating assumes you'll have a bunch of basic upgrades to your stats bought as magic items. There's magic wepons and armour for everyone, and easily bought feats to make magic items yourself if you dont like the varieties on offer. And there's healing magic - a *lot* of healing magic - even for mental illness. Granted they use not very nice language about it and it takes some high level spells to touch the mind stuff long term, but, the option is there.
Most of the 'verses I read watch listen only apply spells as drama. They're likely to be a one off, even. Characters like Willow can use magic, even use spells in a fight, but they're not likely to use the *same* spells, or develop a regular armoury. And the huge variety of spells your average D&D wizard can build up is not something you see much elsewhere in drama.
I think I've mentioned my theory before that it's hard to build a yearning having cycle with so many options available, or to build up the anticipation in the audience.
In martial arts movies they can do set pieces for fun (dont touch the ground competition) and then for deadly serious (fire or flood below). It's the same skills applied different places, and the moves dont have to be identical to be plausible payoff for audience anticipation. But they'll set the boundaries on the abilities early on too. Nobody develops the ability to fly without it being at least mentioned.
So with D&D the thing that sets the anticipation and the limits is the rulebook. At the table you've earned your way up the xp levels until you get a specific spell. You look forward to you using it. Simples†. (†Nothing about the rulebook is simples.)
Stories that want to take all the possibilities of the rulebook and then have them turn up on a character? Have their work cut out for them making it look better planned than out of nowhere.
... I've read Pathfinder tie ins that invent a new power for their character, which seems to me to be both making it more difficult for themselves and missing the point of tie ins.
But contrariwise, can we really say the 'verse has limited its possibilities when there's six bestiaries and almost as many rulebooks containing new character classes, let alone archetypes?
And you'll never run out of new spells. One new one per episode and you have five seasons covered plus a spin off.
But the thing is, when I'm planning, I'm starting to think that technology is catching up with Sufficiently Advanced. Because the magic I would want to apply as fixit? A lot of it is just better ABCs, armour bandages comms. If stories gave characters kevlar and good earpieces with body cams and decent first aid instead of dramatic last words, we'd get so many changes.
Even contemporary stuff could do more first aid. I think because writers only do it on purpose they dont want to undo it right away.
... it frustrates me greatly that the Flash never uses his powers for medicine. So much of the problem of traumatic injuries is not having enough time to fix things fast enough while they bits they connect to are still working or seal things quick enough to keep their liquids on the inside where they belong. He should have had plenty of time to do something about a basic stab wound. But no. Because drama.
And yet the Flash also invents a lot of new and mystery ways to damage people, because for instance Legends has a meat printer and replacement organs are a technology that has existed for years in Central City, so it has to get mystery to get danger.
It's frustrating because just like when they invent new and personalised laws of physics you can't tell which are the good decisions because they'll just change the rules of the 'verse when they feel like it.
... magic changes the rules. that's kind of a baseline definition of magic. magic that acts like magic would frustrate me just as much.
Magic with simple repeatable effects that take a fixed time and set of resources to apply is magic-as-tech, and does not frustrate me in the same ways, but can often be replaced by, you know, tech.
So my sense of logic and proportion loves spell levels and prerequisite chains, but they serve a function in a game, game balance, that doesn't necessarily serve the drama in a story.
But the ethics depend on the physics, depend on the cost and consequence. You can't make good decisions on bad data.
And Eobard Thawne complaining when they saved him because they took his speed is going to mean something entirely different if they in fact had another option. Yet they only had an option at all because the writers said a new rule today.
It's hard to care about characters when the meaning of their decisions is illegible in the midst of the changing basic laws.
But Buffy was trying to use magic the same way they added demons, as metaphor.
(I saw someone complain that the show both never paid Buffy and never made comparison to women's unpaid work, and I was puzzled, because that's it, that's the show, the thankless work and the risk of assault and all being turned into drama with fangs.)
... treating people as metaphors goes poorly once they're, you know, people. So sometimes a vampire is a metaphor for sexual assault and sometimes it's an entire person. Sometimes a Watcher is a person and sometimes he's white colonialist patriarchy. It's a bit wobbly.
And sometimes magic is prayer and power and sex and addiction, and getting overloaded can do worse than wobble.
Using demons to be metaphors for the teen problem of the week feels like it overlaps with only having disabilities when they're a signifier. Metaphorical interpretations a requirement, even though people are in fact disabled without being a metaphor. Since there are thus far only humans around, stories use non humans as metaphor hats all the time. But I still feel like that's a problem, because people.
I like stories with superpowers in, or demons or aliens, because the gulf in ability between an ordinary person and a cape seems kind of like that between my disabled self and a regular person. You can watch people rising to meet such challenges, and see how unfair it is the world is set up to ask the impossible of them on the regular.
But also there are actual disabled people in those worlds. Somewhere. And that's an important story to get right as well.
I have rambled all over the place under that cut. Lots of vaguely connected ideas.
I sat down to write something quick about daydreaming of applying magic healing to people either transported to safety (word of recall) or preserved until they could be rescued (gentle repose).
I like the idea people would have to actually work out their problems that way.
But I don't watch the work out their problems genres. I watch the cathartic violence power fantasy kill sort of genres. I should really find other genres.
Still, even in the shows where people just don't stay dead (Thawne), it is perfectly plausible that people they've traumatised (Barry) just react with doubling down on attempts to end them. I mean, from B's point of view, what kind of problem do they have to resolve? That Thawne kills people. Which he will indeed xease to do if they can get him to stay dead this time. So.
... the story looks like it's handing us attempts at resolution and chances for the Hero to be magnanimous, but depowered and in a cage or death of personality in a lab somehow both lead to messy death, and I am just... not a fan of that part.
I guess I need to find the stories where they do the thesis antithesis synthesis thing, instead of stasis vs change where protecting the status quo is the win.
I ramble and have resolved nothing though.
applying D&D/Pathfinder style magic items to other canons
to fix all the things.
Pathfinder is pretty profligate with its magic items. The difficulty (challenge) rating assumes you'll have a bunch of basic upgrades to your stats bought as magic items. There's magic wepons and armour for everyone, and easily bought feats to make magic items yourself if you dont like the varieties on offer. And there's healing magic - a *lot* of healing magic - even for mental illness. Granted they use not very nice language about it and it takes some high level spells to touch the mind stuff long term, but, the option is there.
Most of the 'verses I read watch listen only apply spells as drama. They're likely to be a one off, even. Characters like Willow can use magic, even use spells in a fight, but they're not likely to use the *same* spells, or develop a regular armoury. And the huge variety of spells your average D&D wizard can build up is not something you see much elsewhere in drama.
I think I've mentioned my theory before that it's hard to build a yearning having cycle with so many options available, or to build up the anticipation in the audience.
In martial arts movies they can do set pieces for fun (dont touch the ground competition) and then for deadly serious (fire or flood below). It's the same skills applied different places, and the moves dont have to be identical to be plausible payoff for audience anticipation. But they'll set the boundaries on the abilities early on too. Nobody develops the ability to fly without it being at least mentioned.
So with D&D the thing that sets the anticipation and the limits is the rulebook. At the table you've earned your way up the xp levels until you get a specific spell. You look forward to you using it. Simples†. (†Nothing about the rulebook is simples.)
Stories that want to take all the possibilities of the rulebook and then have them turn up on a character? Have their work cut out for them making it look better planned than out of nowhere.
... I've read Pathfinder tie ins that invent a new power for their character, which seems to me to be both making it more difficult for themselves and missing the point of tie ins.
But contrariwise, can we really say the 'verse has limited its possibilities when there's six bestiaries and almost as many rulebooks containing new character classes, let alone archetypes?
And you'll never run out of new spells. One new one per episode and you have five seasons covered plus a spin off.
But the thing is, when I'm planning, I'm starting to think that technology is catching up with Sufficiently Advanced. Because the magic I would want to apply as fixit? A lot of it is just better ABCs, armour bandages comms. If stories gave characters kevlar and good earpieces with body cams and decent first aid instead of dramatic last words, we'd get so many changes.
Even contemporary stuff could do more first aid. I think because writers only do it on purpose they dont want to undo it right away.
... it frustrates me greatly that the Flash never uses his powers for medicine. So much of the problem of traumatic injuries is not having enough time to fix things fast enough while they bits they connect to are still working or seal things quick enough to keep their liquids on the inside where they belong. He should have had plenty of time to do something about a basic stab wound. But no. Because drama.
And yet the Flash also invents a lot of new and mystery ways to damage people, because for instance Legends has a meat printer and replacement organs are a technology that has existed for years in Central City, so it has to get mystery to get danger.
It's frustrating because just like when they invent new and personalised laws of physics you can't tell which are the good decisions because they'll just change the rules of the 'verse when they feel like it.
... magic changes the rules. that's kind of a baseline definition of magic. magic that acts like magic would frustrate me just as much.
Magic with simple repeatable effects that take a fixed time and set of resources to apply is magic-as-tech, and does not frustrate me in the same ways, but can often be replaced by, you know, tech.
So my sense of logic and proportion loves spell levels and prerequisite chains, but they serve a function in a game, game balance, that doesn't necessarily serve the drama in a story.
But the ethics depend on the physics, depend on the cost and consequence. You can't make good decisions on bad data.
And Eobard Thawne complaining when they saved him because they took his speed is going to mean something entirely different if they in fact had another option. Yet they only had an option at all because the writers said a new rule today.
It's hard to care about characters when the meaning of their decisions is illegible in the midst of the changing basic laws.
But Buffy was trying to use magic the same way they added demons, as metaphor.
(I saw someone complain that the show both never paid Buffy and never made comparison to women's unpaid work, and I was puzzled, because that's it, that's the show, the thankless work and the risk of assault and all being turned into drama with fangs.)
... treating people as metaphors goes poorly once they're, you know, people. So sometimes a vampire is a metaphor for sexual assault and sometimes it's an entire person. Sometimes a Watcher is a person and sometimes he's white colonialist patriarchy. It's a bit wobbly.
And sometimes magic is prayer and power and sex and addiction, and getting overloaded can do worse than wobble.
Using demons to be metaphors for the teen problem of the week feels like it overlaps with only having disabilities when they're a signifier. Metaphorical interpretations a requirement, even though people are in fact disabled without being a metaphor. Since there are thus far only humans around, stories use non humans as metaphor hats all the time. But I still feel like that's a problem, because people.
I like stories with superpowers in, or demons or aliens, because the gulf in ability between an ordinary person and a cape seems kind of like that between my disabled self and a regular person. You can watch people rising to meet such challenges, and see how unfair it is the world is set up to ask the impossible of them on the regular.
But also there are actual disabled people in those worlds. Somewhere. And that's an important story to get right as well.
I have rambled all over the place under that cut. Lots of vaguely connected ideas.
I sat down to write something quick about daydreaming of applying magic healing to people either transported to safety (word of recall) or preserved until they could be rescued (gentle repose).
I like the idea people would have to actually work out their problems that way.
But I don't watch the work out their problems genres. I watch the cathartic violence power fantasy kill sort of genres. I should really find other genres.
Still, even in the shows where people just don't stay dead (Thawne), it is perfectly plausible that people they've traumatised (Barry) just react with doubling down on attempts to end them. I mean, from B's point of view, what kind of problem do they have to resolve? That Thawne kills people. Which he will indeed xease to do if they can get him to stay dead this time. So.
... the story looks like it's handing us attempts at resolution and chances for the Hero to be magnanimous, but depowered and in a cage or death of personality in a lab somehow both lead to messy death, and I am just... not a fan of that part.
I guess I need to find the stories where they do the thesis antithesis synthesis thing, instead of stasis vs change where protecting the status quo is the win.
I ramble and have resolved nothing though.