Or, how do the various magic systems in the Metacontinuity interact?


Some characters have magic powers or spells that are defined in terms of their own works of fiction, rather than being defined in real-world terms.

How do they interact with each other, and with the systems with capabilities and limitations defined in real-world units?


Here are a few suggestions to start the discussion; feel free to tear these apart and use them to build a more robust system.

First: Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make Lyrical Nanoha's magic systems not only self-consistent, but also consistent across the Belkan and Midchildan systems. And it appears that TYPE-MOON used the same system for Fate/stay night.

Which means that Yuuno cannot force Saber to teleport, since his rank in the spell is B+ and she can ignore all magic that's less than rank A. He can, however, catch her in a Struggle Bind.

Since two works in the Metacontinuity appear to use the same system already, shall we use it as well for our baseline?


Second: The Sailor Senshi are shown to be among the most powerful spellcasters in their world, and most of them have four attacks. I propose, if we're going with the Midchildan/Belkan/Fate system, setting their first-season attacks at rank A, their "Ail and En" arc attacks at rank A+, their later-second-season attacks at rank AA, their "Infinity"/S attacks at rank AAA, and their SuperS attacks at rank S. As a counterpoint to starting with powerful magic, they do start with the "stand, pose, and call the attack" limitation on these attacks.


Third: There's a second, more powerful type of magic that Caster calls "True Magic", that always defeats normal magic. No matter which story a mage is from, spells cast from the heart are intrinsically more powerful than spells cast from the mind (as far as I can remember), so that's a decent starting point for a definition of True Magic. Magical formulae are (usually) easier than raw Will and Word, so there isn't a lot of True Magic out there.

Particular cases: The Clow Cards weren't True Magic, but the Sakura Cards are. True Sight is not, but Glam Sight is. Moon Spiral Heart Attack isn't, but a Ginzuishou effect is. Starlight Breaker usually isn't, unless Nanoha is pouring her heart into the spell (as she did at the end of StrikerS).


And that's as far as I've gotten, so far. If this is the approach that we want to take, then seelie, Crowleyan (both Rental Magica and Academy City versions), Cephiran, Yggdrasilian, and Remnantian magic needs to be integrated with what's given above. (And when Arc 2 comes around, Forcelian, Orarian, and Claire Bible magic will also need to be incorporated.)


Thoughts? Additions? Bouquets? Brickbats?

We've had some thoughts about putting the original Sakura Wars characters into the Metacontinuity, and we've even figured out where they are. What we haven't figured out is who they're fighting. They can't fight their canon foes:

Quote:As to why they need a spur line to the subway lines... well, everybody knows why the Kobu need ready access to any point in Atlanta.*

* Everybody but the writers, that is... It can't be to fight demons - Hild won't let them wreak havoc on Earth during the duration of the emergency.

Apparently, opera villainesses are usually altos. Can anybody provide some examples of this, preferably in a format similar to "Alice in Alice and Bob is written for an alto", please?

I'll take examples from musicals (stage or film), too...

Because this doesn't fit nicely anywhere else - some place to talk about taking off-the-shelf resources and turning them into art for TNB.

Keep in mind that I use Daz Studio, but I have the filters that allow use of some resources for Autodesk or Blender.

...and Trump publicly says the words "I didn’t win the election."

Of course, in the same breath he insists it was still rigged.

Apparently, Muse Records released a collection of 50 covers of 4'33" back in 2019.

He's a child of Chinese and Canadian parents.

She's the child of a deaf mother and her first language was Pidgin Signed English.

They fight racism and ableism!

Not a joke: Ian Griffiths and Amy Braun are "HALF/ASIAN with Amy the CODA" (official website and Youtube channel).

Which, for our purposes, raises a question...

Doug only gets powers from music if he understands the lyrics. Do the lyrics need to be sung, or can they be signed? (And does Doug know any sign languages?)

I notice that we're coming right up on 200 users and 200,000 posts overall, according to the stats at the bottom of the top level page. Get your noisemakers and party hats ready!

edit: I finally remembered the word I goddamn meant to use for the title. That's been bothering me ever since.

The Terror Of MAPSERVER!

They say you should always start by writing the end of your story first.

Anyone here ever heard of A Silver Mt. Zion?  Very very indy group up in Canada.  I can't really do them justice - you have to listen to them yourselves.  I highly recommend you start with their first two albums.

The reason why i bring them up is because I recently listened to their fourth album, Horses In The Sky, and the last few minutes of the first track (starting at the eight minute mark) has this round going:

When the world is sick
Can no one be well?
But I dreamt we were so beautiful and strong.

And so I have this scene in my head of a possible, final fight with Salem...

"So.  Here we are once again.  I never thought I would have someone be an even greater thorn in my side than Oz, but you have never ceased to surprise me, Benjamin."

"You honestly think I'm about to kick the bucket already?" said Benjamin through clenched teeth as he slowly levered himself up.

"Do you honestly think you have much more to give?"

"Salem, you should know by now how capable I am of dissociating.  You'll need to burn me to ashes first.  And your pet fire maiden ain't around this time."

"Hmph.  I can do that just fine on my own."

"Actually, you can't," said Ben with a grin.  "Because we're both Writers here.  The most powerful ones, in fact.  Which means we're pretty evenly matched.  But there's a critical difference between you and me."

"Oh?  And what's that, praytell."

"Haven't you ever noticed how many red strings of fate I got coming off my fingers?  You love no one.  You use people up and discard them.  But every connection I make?  That is something precious to me.  I never abandoned any friend that didn't betray me.  And in return?  They will come running when I call them."

"Your 'friends' are all busy with other things.  I made sure of that this time."

"Then you don't know me very well, Salem.  I've said it once and I'll say it before: Ganesha ain't got shit on me.  I don't just remove obstacles, I fucking obliterate them with extreme prejudice."

"You can't be everywhere at once!"

"No, maybe I can't.  But I'm also more diabolical than you can ever be, even on a good day.  It's not the one 'Me' you should worry about.  Instead, it's the infinite number of 'Me' from all the possibilities to ever exist."

"...no.  That's not possible!  This universe is completely self-contained!"

"Heh-heh-heh.  Like I said.  I'm more diabolical than you can ever be.  And when someone tells me something isn't possible?  That just means that they haven't figured out the cheat that makes it possible.  And I'm all about the cheating."

And then from just about anywhere and everywhere, they start arriving.  His wives.  His children.  His grandchildren.  His brothers and sisters.  His friends.  All of them sent by Benjamins that came from other universes.  The weak ones.  The strong ones.  The dumb ones.  The smart ones.  Each of them was a solution to a particular obstacle that Salem had placed.

And in the mean time, Benjamin is putting out the most powerful anti-magic field he's ever mustered up, burning himself out in order to pull it off, just so that Salem can't launch a preemptive attack on the new arrivals or make an escape.

And the entire time he's doing that, he's singing that round.  And as they all gather, all of them readying their most powerful attacks, they're joining him in the round.

"When the world is sick, can no one be well?  But I dreamt that we were so beautiful and strong."

It's a bit like that line from another one of my favorite songs, "Defend Atlantis" by the Flobots: "Survival, we unified to focus on.  And the voices were many, but we spoke as one."

Salem is defeated.  But a compromise is proposed: a counter-universe to act as a yang to their universe's ying.  Darkness and Light have their own places, though a small bit of contamination (the dots in the ying-yang) is allowed to keep both from stagnating.

In this, true balance is achieved.  Most people in both universes can live good lives.  And there is still need for "Heroes" on both sides.

Whatcha think?