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Post by djublonskopf on Apr 13, 2009 15:28:41 GMT
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 30, 2009 16:43:27 GMT
How different is this triangular portal from the circular things that Anja and her husband can "cast" to bind Reynardine now?
It's even got circuitry patterns, although they're more . . . flowy, and less straight. But I don't think it's any more incredible than the Reynardine binding.
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 20, 2009 17:28:23 GMT
The 3rd girl in the photo is Nancy Drew.
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 11, 2009 13:42:04 GMT
Obviously the letter is to Jeanne. She's hoping Muut will get shanked.
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 10, 2009 16:29:30 GMT
Maybe the reason the psychopomps didn't come for Surma was because they didn't know she was dead.
She sees them when nobody else can . . . maybe they see her differently, too.
So when she died, they just didn't know. To the psychopomps, she was just regular ol' Surma.
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 9, 2009 21:51:46 GMT
Perhaps the psychopomps were "powerless to help" Surma as well.
And perhaps Jeanne, whom the psychopomps are also powerless to help, is fully aware of her fate (unlike the boy who burned down his house) . . . but she is just ornery, and has decided not to go, and she will cut anyone who tries.
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 9, 2009 15:22:06 GMT
This page looks a lot different now. Something about the gardener, or the garden, or just the laughter reminded her of saying goodbye?
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 9, 2009 12:47:00 GMT
So the important word was "powerless"?
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 8, 2009 3:20:20 GMT
Is that a crown over that person's head (in the "wait" strip), or is it the head of a fox?
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 2, 2009 4:40:21 GMT
The vial, really, is what gives me pause. It's that sort of Batman-esque behavior that crosses into creepytown. Annie: "I need to talk to a psychopomp right now, where's my ant in a vial?" Ketrak: "BZZ-CLICK. WHY ARE YOU MAKING MORE WORK FOR KETRAK." Annie: "I want Muut to know that I'm NOT MARRYING HIM! Or that GHOST!" Ketrak: "WHAT." Ohhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha . . . oh man, oh man, I laughed and laughed and laughed as soon as I read that "WHAT". Ohhhh my that was funny thank you.
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Post by djublonskopf on Mar 1, 2009 2:28:06 GMT
I also got the impression that it wasn't so much "I don't care what you think" as "I am going to save you from spending time beating yourself up about how big a deal something is when it isn't that big a deal"
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Post by djublonskopf on Feb 28, 2009 7:00:38 GMT
It's also the name of a book from 1883.
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Post by djublonskopf on Feb 27, 2009 22:00:44 GMT
I think Tom said that Ketrak has the power to reveal himself or not.
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Post by djublonskopf on Feb 27, 2009 17:50:46 GMT
Warrl and Imaginaryfriend, you both make good points. I hadn't considered the "rare" magic aspect. It makes sense though . . . a universe where every data point makes this nice neat line except for that one magical thing that ruins it all . . . and scientists wonder at it, puzzle over it, get frustrated and bury it outside, and all agree to never speak of it again. Ha! And you're right, Imaginaryfriend, that conservation of mass is held to, but not necessarily conservation of energy. Imagine this scenario . . . . . . Anja is sitting some distance above a flywheel, holding the blinker stone "B". B Anja ----
v v | v \ | / \ | / v------o------v / | \ / | \ v | v v Now Anja drops the blinker stone: Anja ----
v v | v \ | / B \ | / v------o------v / | \ / | \ v | v v The blinker stone catches on the flywheel and starts it spinning: Anja ----
v v | v \ | / \ | / v------o------v / | \ B / | \ v | v v Anja *blinks* it back into her hand: B Anja ----
v v | v \ | / \ | / v------o------v / | \ * / | \ v | v v The flywheel's still going to be spinning, just because of its own rotational inertia . . . but now she can let go of the blinker stone again and get the flywheel spinning even faster. And faster. And faster. And faster. Because she's not doing the work of lifting the blinker stone back up (which is usually the case, and why this can't be used for free energy in OUR universe), she's getting free energy out of the system. The Court could gain infinite "real" energy from etheric technology, if this is really how it works . . ..
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Post by djublonskopf on Feb 27, 2009 0:21:24 GMT
Welcome to the forum, Djublonskopf! I couldn't agree with you more with respect to the natural or unnatural state of magic, though some authors like Lovecraft who have different dimensions and competing natural laws may present a problem. In fantasy stories where some people can reliably and predictably use magic and some can't, we could say that this is just another rule the author has included, or maybe that there's two sets of rules, one for mundanes and one for magical people. Magical things that work unreliably are no problem because essentially they're just plot devices that the author can use when useful to push the narrative this way or that. However, have we lost something of the definition of magic if we view it as merely a literary construct? What about cases where magic happens in a story through intervention of a (god) entity, like how Coyote gifted Reynard with the power to switch bodies? Would we then have to say that it's a rule for some characters within a story to rewrite other rules the author used up to that point, or is each incident an additional rule on its own? Is every revision/addition to the laws of the fictional universe equal to gravity or do these point to a hierarchy and "meta" rules? If the former, then we can't really discuss magic, as it's impossible to give any meaningful answer to a "why" question about a story (magical or not) except "because the author said so." Fantasy fiction authors who use magic in their works are mostly borrowing an old and very well-known (but hard to define) concept. Many authors reinvent magic in new ways in the course of telling a story, but they're working within bounds formed by their society; maybe there's a subtle negotiation between the author and the audience about what sort of fantasy (including magic) is acceptable and what would be too outlandish. Hmm . . . I like the point you bring up (and thanks for the welcome. I didn't actually realize there was a forum beyond the daily "comments" on the front until just a few days ago. Otherwise I would have joined a while ago.) Here's what I was trying to say: in a "universe" where magic was real, the residents of that universe would have such a fundamentally altered notion of "the way things are" that what we the audience see as "magic", they would see as "just the way it is". And as they figured out the mechanisms behind that, as "science". For example: let's say we lived in a universe where blinker stones existed. I can sit on the top of a mountain, and just imagine my blinker stone (which is currently down at the bottom of the ocean), and pop! It's in my hand. Now in our current, real-life universe, that violates several physical laws. Newton's first (an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force). The law of conservation of energy (by traveling from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the mountain, the stone has gained gravitational potential energy without any discernible work being done on it), and possibly even the "no information can be transferred faster than the speed of light", if the teleport really is "instantaneous". But in our "blinker-stones-really-exist" universe, things (like blinker stones) can sometimes pop from one spot to another instantaneously. If this universe's Newton had known this, he never would have written his first law the way he did in the real universe . . . because it's not a law, unless whatever is acting on the blinker stone is also considered a "force". But it doesn't produce an acceleration, just a displacement . . . so then Newton wouldn't have written his second law the way he did, nor his third (where's the equal/opposite reaction?). Blinker stones can gain energy without work being done to them (the change in altitude greatly changes the gravitational potential energy, for example), so nobody would have postulated a "conservation of energy" law to begin with. Things can travel faster than light (instantaneously!) so nobody would have ever decided it was a rule that faster-than-light was impossible. These would have been observed events, and the people trying to order and explain the universe would have to take them into account when crafting their "physical laws". The "science vs. magic" fight set up in so many works of fiction would only happen if the scientists lived in a universe that followed our (the audience's) set of rules, but the magicians lived in a universe that followed a different, "magical" set of rules. Which is ridiculous because they live in the same (fictional) universe. There's no reason scientists in the Gunnerkrigg universe would be beholden to the audience's conception of "natural laws", because the natural laws of the Gunnerkrigg universe appear to be different than the natural law of the real-life universe. If I'm talking past you instead of responding to you (imaginaryfriend), I'm sorry. I think this is responding to what you said, albeit obliquely.
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Post by djublonskopf on Feb 26, 2009 19:22:27 GMT
(The most bizarre one I've read, magic had no cost and no upper limit on its power. Catch: a direct square law. A mage's power over something INCREASED with distance. A mage could blow up a city on the other side of the planet, move stars from a few dozen light years away, but if there were a fly in the room with him he'd have to reach for a flyswatter just like anyone else.) What was this in? That's crazy! Crazy awesome!
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Post by djublonskopf on Feb 24, 2009 0:22:07 GMT
In pretty much any fictional universe where magic "exists", said magic operates under a set of internally-consistent rules. Operating within those parameters, a given magical event could happen exactly the same way over and over and over again. Magic is a testable, repeatable phenomena.
But if this is the case (within the fictional reality), then magic ought to be treated the same as any other physical law. If magic is as reliable as gravity (even if magic only engages "on command"), there is no reason that magic should be labeled "supernatural" while gravity is labeled "natural".
So any appeal to magic as being "supernatural" fails within these fictional realities. In the Gunnerkrigg universe, magic appears to operate under a set of (very) predictable parameters, and can be reliably controlled. It's not "supernatural" except from the viewpoint of the reader.
Really, in works of fiction, magic almost always means "each part of the ruleset for this fictional universe which is different from the ACTUAL ruleset of the universe occupied by the reader/viewer/etc".
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