[meta] theory of handwavium 'magic'

[kentmagus]

(Excerpt from a book put inside a vault with lots of security precautions)
On Handwaved Movie and Television Props
It's determined that influencing handwavium is like herding cats. One's will influences it a bit, along with the underlying desires of the individual conflicting. If one expects one's will to affect it, then the will of an entire group would affect the handwaved device. A actors's job is to make things look like the person he or she is portraying. A thing portrayed in a movie is made to -look- the part and what's better than looking the part than having the effect that the audience(movie patrons) believe in? As Hollywood objects, they are enhanced to behave like the objects they are portraying as a better prop. Perhaps the more patrons who believe in something the more powerful it is at the time it was waved, i.e a movie prop is more powerful than a television prop and a legendary or historical movie prop is more powerful than a fictional prop?
OOClease comment.
"Evil tends to triumph over good...unless good is very, very sneaky."-Anonymous-

[Ebony]

Possibly. I've been thinking about this sort of thing for future BBI stories. 'Wavium animating corpses and the like. The one that stuck in my mind is that some idiot is going to mix 'wavium into tattoo ink and see what happens. I'm torn between the Tsoo, Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man," and something along the lines of Tetsuo's final form in "Akira" only smaller (i.e., a huge bloody mess).
On the other hand, I think that the idea that belief dictates the power of 'wavium "magic" is a good idea. If enough people believe that you can do magic, then the magic works, more or less. You could have a number of semi-humorous effects, a la the Harold Shea stories, Spellsinger series, or Schmendrick from "The Last Unicorn" (although Schmendrick's incantation of "Magic, do as you will." might not have much effect). However, it does mean that if people believe you to be a charlatan or illusionist, your magic may be easily debunked. Which might be interesting in and of itself. Imagine a 'waved magician who does really interesting things that can all can be explained off as sleight-of-hand and misdirection, but are actually 'waved effects that appear as such. Silly, but a suitable biomod limitation, I think.
Consequently, really good illusionists might convince people to have faith in their abilities. Or, it could backfire because people like Kris Angel and Penn & Teller, despite performing amazing stage magic are known to be illusionists, which might undermine any faith that people have in the magic.
However, here's how I see it developing. Someone 'waves some focus, say a replica wand from Harry Potter, or even one of the original props. He or she believes strongly enough that, for example "Accio " makes something move towards them. Their belief gets stronger, making the effect stronger and making their faith in themselves stronger. Eventually, they get it to work well enough to show someone else. Their faith in the original person's ability and the ability in the wand adds to this, increasing the strength. The more people shown cause increases in the belief, and strengthen the "magic" even more.
Of course, any amount of self-doubt undermines the whole thing. If we do use this idea, I would suggest that the person's self-esteem and faith in self become the lynchpin. If you don't think you can do it, it doesn't work, no matter how many people believe you can. Fear of failure, injury, and doubts limit your strength. It doesn't matter how many people think you can fly; if you're afraid of heights, you'll never get that broom or carpet off the ground.
I'm not sure we want to open this can of worms. Maybe the Hogwart's faction is experimenting with this, but can't get reproducable results. Maybe James Randi visits someone claiming to be able to use 'wavium to make a broom fly, and they can't do it around him because of the weight of his skepticism. I'm open to it, but in the Pulper/BBI idea, magic should be mysterious and murky, rather than quantifiable. I think that we should keep it that way, at least for the first generation of Fenspace. If it exists, it's not something that is terribly reliable or empirical, but rather something that some people can do, some of the time.
Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Bob Schroeck]

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Maybe James Randi visits someone claiming to be able to use 'wavium to make a broom fly, and they can't do it around him because of the weight of his skepticism.

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Why would Randi be skeptical of Handwavium? The proof that it works is in orbit around most of the planets in the solar system.
Maybe during the early years, when it wasn't really well-known, Randi and CSICOP might have had some doubts about this "miracle goo", but in 2012 and later? When there's tourist traffic to freaking Jupiter using wavecraft? I mean, it turns cars into starships. What would be so unbelievable about making a broom fly?
Hell, after a while, CSICOP's default fall-back position for anything too unexplainable would probably evolve to "it's gotta be handwavium".

-- Bob
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I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....

[Ebony]

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Hell, after a while, CSICOP's default fall-back position for anything too unexplainable would probably evolve to "it's gotta be handwavium".

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True, but he's notorious for "if you can't reproduce it, you can't do it" and 'wavium seems a bit unpredictable. You have a valid point.Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Cobalt Greywalker]

This is the sort of thing A.C. is undergoing right now. As much as she dislikes being identified as Sailor Mars, there is enough general belief for this in the Senshi faction that it is influencing the Handwavium in her body, and thus influencing her. I felt it was a 'logical' (logical being in quotes because Handwavium has its own logic, so to speak) consciquence of how Handwavium works. You want your car to fly, you get airtight seals and an engine that causes an anti-gravity effect. The fact that someone's done it means YOU can do it too.
In A.C.'s case, the two conflicting beliefs (fore and against) are balanced because A.C. has the home advantage (being the mind in CONTROL of said body of 'wavium).
Such a thing does have its downside. The fact something CAN be done means that something LIKE IT can ALSO be done. Depending on what the initial thing was, you may not WANT anyone to know it's been done. It's for reasons like these that some people keep the processes to create certain things a secret.
Thus be careful what you make with Handwavium. This is why Pratchett's Law is so useful.

[kentmagus]

Handwave animating corpses?
I thought handwavium only enhances attributes? How it can animate something that's dead?
Response to self: Perhaps one can animate it due to those frog-leg twitching experiments and such?
Why would handwavium do anything with tattoo ink besides making it better ink or a better tattoo?
Stage magicians sure as long as the illusionists can believe they do real magic. Their mind's in control of their body, plus they'd also need 'wavium -in- their body or the objects being manipulated. Sometimes both.
Harry Potter's wand. That was an example that popped into my mind. One of the original props would be stronger than a replica to my way of thinking, because if it'sa replica, it's just one mind. Herding wavium by by thousands of audience members who've seen the live-action movie series and the original mind to make it work is a lot more powerful. Also, it's a Hollywood prop which are supposed to look like things, and there's no better enhancement to a prop, than actually doing what it's pretending to do. Saves on special effects budgets. Self-doubt does undermine the whole thing. It's the original mind's will making it what it wants.
Flying carpet. The theory of 'wavium magic I presented wouldn't work on it, because unless you can find a live-action movie or television series prop(for the whole series), i.e Knight Rider, rather than a made-for-TV movie, every person in the world has a different idea of what a flying carpet would look like. The made-for-TV movie would be less powerful, i.e have a time limit per year or something.
Can't see why a broom can't fly. That's the one thing handwavium can make things do with no trouble, just with a lot of quirks. Flight is reproducible.
Sailor Mars.The original's mind should be much more powerful than however many people believe that they're someone else. People have different versions of characters in live-action in their head and that would conflict with each other cancelling each other out.
Solution: Some bright spark made a live-action movie.
Secret: Unless it's the Professor, I can't see anyone willingly give the keys to the kingdom even if it has been duplicated 169 times before in secret.
Note: Avoid giving live-action movie actors handwavium biomods.
Pratchett's Law:Cool. I'll just steal his ideas. It worked for Shakespeare.
"Evil tends to triumph over good...unless good is very, very sneaky."-Anonymous-

[robkelk]

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Handwave animating corpses?
I thought handwavium only enhances attributes? How it can animate something that's dead?

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Oh, handwavium can do a lot more than that - just ask Trigon, Gina, Dee, Ryoko, Miyu, Catty, Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Sora, Yayoi, Kohran, Yoriko, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, Fate, Simon-Peter, Buckaroo, Callisto, Gay Deceiver, Brother-Captain Galvius, Hermes, Millie, Vioarr, Durandal, Leela, Excel, Avril, Kasumi, Adonis, Greenpeace, d'Sparil, Harlequin, or Viola.
And those are just the AIs mentioned so far in the stories. If handwavium can make an inert collection of wires and metal talk and move around of its own free will, imagine what it could do with - or to - a once-living body.
(No, I'm not going to write that story. This plotbunny's free to whoever wants it.)

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Also, it's a Hollywood prop which are supposed to look like things, and there's no better enhancement to a prop, than actually doing what it's pretending to do.

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Better not handwave a prop sword, then. (Handwavium might not "do" ranged weapons or explosions, but it does "do" edges...)

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The theory of 'wavium magic I presented wouldn't work on it, because unless you can find a live-action movie or television series prop(for the whole series), i.e Knight Rider, rather than a made-for-TV movie, every person in the world has a different idea of what a flying carpet would look like.

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There are some common elements, though - they're always big enough for one or two people, never larger; they're always Persian rugs; and so on. That might be enough for the 'wavium to key on...

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The made-for-TV movie would be less powerful, i.e have a time limit per year or something.

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The Blue Blazer Irregulars managed to create a few items from a 24-year-old cult film (and an older novel), so a per-year time limit might be too restrictive.

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Pratchett's Law:Cool. I'll just steal his ideas. It worked for Shakespeare.

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Shakespeare stole from Pratchett? Okay, when did the Professor invent a time machine?
(Edit: Changed an absolute to a probable. I'm not God here...)
-Rob Kelk
"Actually, my goal is to write neat stories. The money just makes it possible for me to write them faster and then buy neat toys."
Ryk E. Spoor, 7 November 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Norgarth]

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Why would handwavium due anything with tattoo ink besides making it better ink or a better tattoo?

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How about a Tattoo that wanders around on your body?

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Better not handwave a prop sword, then. (Handwavium might not "do" ranged weapons or explosions, but it does "do" edges...)

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I can just see the havoc when some nut gets his hands on one of those 'official replica' swords of say Excaliber or such and tries declaring himself king of England. Or an Excaliber from some Arthurian movie.__________________
"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." - Terry Pratchett
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Bob Schroeck]

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How about a Tattoo that wanders around on your body?

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I just saw a video somewhere on the net over the weekend showing just that... I think it was linked off of Fark.com, but I'll have to wait until I get home to check that.

-- Bob
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I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....

[Ebony]

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Handwave animating corpses?How it can animate something that's dead?
Response to self: Perhaps one can animate it due to those frog-leg twitching experiments and such?

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If all it did was "enhance attributes" the Fensphere would not be chock full of catgirls, transgenders, or cyborgs. I have been considering something similar to the Solanum virus from The Zombie Survival Guide, although a 'waved exoskeleton, guided by remote, might also work. Really, I'm just entertaining the idea of Buckaroo Banzai Against the Zombie King.

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Why would handwavium do anything with tattoo ink besides making it better ink or a better tattoo?

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Why would eating 'wavium-impregnated fruit turn the Jason into San Gokuu? Because it's 'wavium; it does weird shit. Right now, I'm just brainstorming. I still need to finish "Terror From the Shadows" before going to the next story.
Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[kentmagus]

List of AIs. They made the AIs intentionally? I was of the opinion that they just popped up. Considering a Death Lord villain now.
Persian Rugs. I can just see some guy waving some other carpet to fly and then it turning into a Persian rug cause that's what flying carpets are supposed to look like.
Not talking about Buckaroo Banzai. Just some made-for-TV film that's dumped into the remains bin that's no one's ever heard of.
Excalibur and prop swords. Everyone forgets the scabbard's more important. Maybe the nutter too?
Enhance attributes: A point. I'll stick with enhance attributes as the intentional part though. "Evil tends to triumph over good...unless good is very, very sneaky."-Anonymous-

[robkelk]

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They made the AIs intentionally? I was of the opinion that they just popped up.

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Well, it would be rather silly to build robot bodies that look like fictional characters and then not try to put the matching personalities in them... But that only applies to Ryoko, Miyu, Catty, Sora, Yayoi, Kohran, Yoriko, Kasumi, and Greenpeace. (And none of them are exact matches for their templates, although Kohran comes close.)
Many but not all of the non-android AIs did "just pop up," though. The earliest ones (such as Trigon) were surprises, but after a while, the emergence of an AI in the vehicle you just handwaved (such as Avril) became expected.
-Rob Kelk
"Actually, my goal is to write neat stories. The money just makes it possible for me to write them faster and then buy neat toys."
Ryk E. Spoor, 7 November 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[M Fnord]

Wargh! Finally, a chance to catch up (the life of a contractor is not all sweetness and light, my children).
Anyway, in no particular order:
On props and the power of belief: The key to this is "versimilitude = functionality." Particularly with stuff coming out of visual-genre fandoms, the more realistic it *looks* the more likely it'll *work* on the first try. "Hero" props, the ones designed for closeups and to be in the shot on a regular basis, are going to work better than props designed for distance shots or to be carried by extras (which are often just lumps of wood or polystyrene painted to look vaguely like the hero prop).
Now, does this matter? For the vast majority of devices, I'm not so sure it does. Fan replicas, toys & whatnot are all based off the blueprints for the hero props, and sometimes they have more innate function than the props they're emulating. For stuff like tricorders, handlinks, even wands to an extent, one of the big things is that they're ubquitous - *everybody* has 'em. If you're a Trekkie, having Captain Kirk's communicator may provide some social mojo, but 'waved it's just another cellphone.
If belief has an effect it's on special things, objects that fen *know* there's only One of in the (story) world. Excalibur, Anduril, the Elder Wand, the Genesis Device, the Oscillation Overthruster... stuff like that. If you got your hands on the props for *those* and 'waved them, colelctive belief would enhance the effect within the limitations of the handwavium.
On magic and handwavium: I suppose it depends on what you mean by "magic." We already have two major examples in Fenspace of neopagan ritual workings being used to manipulate handwavium to pretty strong effect - the Jason and Grover's Corners. There, the ritual acts as a focus for delivering a clear mental image to the handwavium, and it works. Really well, in fact.
We also have - back in the Inelegant Truth's opening story, IIRC - a throwaway reference to Potterites handwashing sticks and remotes to create wands. This doesn't work out as well, partly because handwavium needs a base to work from, and dead wood just doesn't have the structure to latch onto properly, and partly because wands have a number of blatantly offensive functions, and with enough bloody-minded Wizards out there the collective unconscious may trip the weapons lock on wands.
On handwavium zombies: Given that ritual works very well with handwavium, and that zombies are (in fantasy fiction, anyway) often created by rituals, I don't see any major obstacles in the way of Buckaroo Banzai Against the Zombie King. All one needs is one wack hougan with a supply of biomod guacamole, and the whole thing just gets weird...
On handwavium and CSICOP: The fun thing about handwavium is that while a lot of minor effects aren't reproducable, the *major* ones are. That alone is enough to win the JREF Prize and ensure the next two generations of scientists go nutty trying to unravel the hows and whys of handwavium.
On the spontaneous generation of AI: Consciousness is an emergent property of handwavium. This is the True Knowledge.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Bob Schroeck]

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Consciousness is an emergent property of handwavium. This is the True Knowledge.

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Or maybe not so emergent -- there are, after all, theories that 'wavium itself is sentient to some degree.

-- Bob
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I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere....

[Feinan]

Ok...I've been meaning to reply to this thread for some time, just because of how the Jason views handwavium and magic.

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I suppose it depends on what you mean by "magic." We already have two major examples in Fenspace of neopagan ritual workings being used to manipulate handwavium to pretty strong effect - the Jason and Grover's Corners. There, the ritual acts as a focus for delivering a clear mental image to the handwavium, and it works. Really well, in fact.

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Yes, it does. And by the time of the SOS-Con, if you asked the Jason about it, he'd tell you that it's possible it works so well because handwavium itself has a magical component. *grin* In fact, if he knew about Paralabs and the fact that they blame the indeterminate mana level of Fenspace on handwavium (from the Infinite Worlds writeup), he'd nod and agree wholeheartedly.
Mind you, he didn't always feel this way. At first, he simply felt it was a case of Clarke's Law. He had no problem when one or two of his biomods exhibited Lamarckian inheritance patterns; after all, if you're going to add a substance that greatly alters a lifeform, it's not unreasonable that it might leave the organism's DNA in a state of flux. And it can be potentially damned useful. The Lego Genetics, on the other hand...while it's a nice image to be able to create a mouse with a trunk by popping the 'trunk' gene out of elephant DNA and putting it into a mouse genome, it simply doesn't work that way. Except...with handwavium, it DOES. This was a lot harder for him to swallow, but since it was definitely happening, he rolled with it. And he could just possible see where a sufficiently advanced tech could extrapolate the development of a trunk from an example of elephant DNA, and then figure out how to fit that into a mouse.
What really got him to sit back and scratch his head was when he first met Wiregeek, though. Wiregeek and his carbon-fiber enhanced Alaskan fireweed. While he had heard of one or two people incorporating non-organics into biomods before, this was the first real example he'd run into. He was used to using various lifeforms/cells for his own biomods - even if the Lego Genetics tended to make his look askance at the stuff, it DID work, and the Jason is pragmatic in that regard. But this...it was basically the straw that broke the camel's back as far as Clarke's Law went. The problem was, the handwavium was incorporating things into a biomod that didn't have _DNA_. As far as the Jason was concerned, this was several orders of magnitude above just Legowork. First, the stuff had to actually analyze the substance and figure out what to do. Then it had to determine how to express those traits in a living organism - not just in the originally-exposed cells, but in future growth as well. This means it had to a) determine exactly what proteins/expression pathways would be needed to give those traits, b) design the genes for those needed systems from the ground up, since the non-organic additions don't have DNA(!), and then c) incorporate it into the new biomodded organism in a fashion that results in a viable outcome.
The problem was - it obviously could do that. He was examining the results, after all. But he felt that something like this was SO complex that handwavium might have gone beyond Clarke's Law, and was actually coming at things from the other side - Niven's reply, concerning sufficiently-advanced magic. At the very least, he felt it was quite possible that handwavium blurred the boundaries between technology and magic. With how well the stuff responded to ritual magic, both early examples he'd tried and more complex technomagic ideas later, this idea has become more and more reinforced for him. At this point, he's quite willing to espouse the belief that the stuff might actually be some sort of technomagical construct itself. The problem is, of course, proving things one way or the other. Still, as enigmatic as handwavium can be, it's certainly as viable a method of viewing/dealing with the stuff as any.
*grin* As for handwavium's awareness/sentience - I have to admit, this got me to thinking odd thoughts. The Temple portion of the Fateful Lightning was always meant to be just color for the ship. But the Goddesses depicted do seem to react, at least to general stimuli. I honestly wonder how they'd react to more direct stimuli now. Between this and the magic portions, I have two images/scenes in my head - one, the Goddesses reacting to something, and two, a limit break ritual for the Lightning. I don't write combat much, at least not space-scenes, so I doubt that I'd ever use them. But would people be interested in seeing them? If so, I'll put them up and if you want to use them in something of yours, you can feel free...