RE: Bunnies XIII: The Bad Hutch
04-07-2024, 12:28 PM (This post was last modified: 04-07-2024, 01:09 PM by Tennie.)
04-07-2024, 12:28 PM (This post was last modified: 04-07-2024, 01:09 PM by Tennie.)
Here's some Lyrical Nanoha-related thoughts I had recently that I realized could make for some crackfic/deconstructive parody potential and thus decided to share it here to see what you think:
It's been heavily established that Nanohaverse magic works in a manner quite similar to computer programming, with spells functioning much like programs/algorithms for processing magic (much like computer programs process data). We've even seen/heard computer lingo be used in the context of magical items (for example, Hayate outright says that she established administrative access to the Book of Darkness in an effort to bring it back into control). It's even gone so far as to show that, much like real-world computer programs, some of these magical programs can be messed up in ways that can cause issues (for example, going back to the Book of Darkness, canon sources show that the corruption that turned the Tome of the Night Sky into the Book of Darkness was almost certainly due to some measure of tampering--though it's not definitively stated whether said tampering was accidental, deliberate, or some combination thereof. Perhaps the particular details of that may have been lost to the sands of time in-universe?).
That led me to wonder: What if we took things to their logical conclusion and tried making more "direct" analogues with real-world computing?
Imagine, for example, that there's more than a few spells out there whose source code is open source (perhaps published in whatever equivalents of GitHub and the like exist on the "magical Internet", or what have you), which basically anyone with the ability to run the code could use (though I'd imagine that the more destructive spells, like the ones typically intended for combat, would naturally have to be closed-source for reasons that are hopefully obvious), and perhaps anyone could make modifications to and/or request changes to be made. There could also be communities set up (similar to the likes of Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow) where people could ask for help in properly writing code for new spells.
In addition, IRL computer programming is known for being quite hard (even relatively simple-to-learn languages such as BASIC and Python have things about them that can trip up even veteran programmers, let alone novices). It's often joked in programming circles that novices will be suspicious when their code does not compile of the first try, while veterans will be suspicious when their code does compile on the first try. Even code that seems to run properly in most cases will sometimes struggle with certain "edge" cases, leading to rewrites, patches, and updates having to be put out to solve those issues. And then you get those people who weren't properly trained in computer programming working in areas where good, clean code is a necessity, which can lead (and often has led) to some wild mishaps and shenanigans. Just go and read a few entries in the programming humor site The Daily WTF to see some examples of what poor programming and general IT practices can do to someone.
Given this, it's not hard to imagine a universe wherein, for example, newly-developed spells don't exactly work as intended on the first try (leading to a lot of trial and error--the latter potentially including some really goofy results; preferably this work would be done outside of combat, as you wouldn't want to have your combat plans go to waste because you ended up, say, spraying your own self with soda instead of blasting your intended target with mana...). Also, could you imagine what kinds of spells the equivalents of IRL script-kiddies might create? I'd imagine that such things would be quite the sight to see!{1.}
{1.} This now makes me wonder if the Book of Darkness's corruption was caused by people screwing around with the Tome of the Night Sky's source code, inadvertently breaking some very important lines, and subsequently meeting a terrible end before they could fix the very issues that they'd caused...
So with that context laid out, I await seeing what your imaginations can create with it!
It's been heavily established that Nanohaverse magic works in a manner quite similar to computer programming, with spells functioning much like programs/algorithms for processing magic (much like computer programs process data). We've even seen/heard computer lingo be used in the context of magical items (for example, Hayate outright says that she established administrative access to the Book of Darkness in an effort to bring it back into control). It's even gone so far as to show that, much like real-world computer programs, some of these magical programs can be messed up in ways that can cause issues (for example, going back to the Book of Darkness, canon sources show that the corruption that turned the Tome of the Night Sky into the Book of Darkness was almost certainly due to some measure of tampering--though it's not definitively stated whether said tampering was accidental, deliberate, or some combination thereof. Perhaps the particular details of that may have been lost to the sands of time in-universe?).
That led me to wonder: What if we took things to their logical conclusion and tried making more "direct" analogues with real-world computing?
Imagine, for example, that there's more than a few spells out there whose source code is open source (perhaps published in whatever equivalents of GitHub and the like exist on the "magical Internet", or what have you), which basically anyone with the ability to run the code could use (though I'd imagine that the more destructive spells, like the ones typically intended for combat, would naturally have to be closed-source for reasons that are hopefully obvious), and perhaps anyone could make modifications to and/or request changes to be made. There could also be communities set up (similar to the likes of Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow) where people could ask for help in properly writing code for new spells.
In addition, IRL computer programming is known for being quite hard (even relatively simple-to-learn languages such as BASIC and Python have things about them that can trip up even veteran programmers, let alone novices). It's often joked in programming circles that novices will be suspicious when their code does not compile of the first try, while veterans will be suspicious when their code does compile on the first try. Even code that seems to run properly in most cases will sometimes struggle with certain "edge" cases, leading to rewrites, patches, and updates having to be put out to solve those issues. And then you get those people who weren't properly trained in computer programming working in areas where good, clean code is a necessity, which can lead (and often has led) to some wild mishaps and shenanigans. Just go and read a few entries in the programming humor site The Daily WTF to see some examples of what poor programming and general IT practices can do to someone.
Given this, it's not hard to imagine a universe wherein, for example, newly-developed spells don't exactly work as intended on the first try (leading to a lot of trial and error--the latter potentially including some really goofy results; preferably this work would be done outside of combat, as you wouldn't want to have your combat plans go to waste because you ended up, say, spraying your own self with soda instead of blasting your intended target with mana...). Also, could you imagine what kinds of spells the equivalents of IRL script-kiddies might create? I'd imagine that such things would be quite the sight to see!{1.}
{1.} This now makes me wonder if the Book of Darkness's corruption was caused by people screwing around with the Tome of the Night Sky's source code, inadvertently breaking some very important lines, and subsequently meeting a terrible end before they could fix the very issues that they'd caused...
So with that context laid out, I await seeing what your imaginations can create with it!