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Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

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Solusandra said:
Most people are really pretty boring. I fully expect 90% of them will abuse flight and telekinesis, and only touch the other spells because one of the worse chaos guys are bothering them. The core exception to this would be healbots and gadgets who would try to sell their services for a quick buck.

The reason worm is so bad, as you describe is that: a) all parahumans are PTSD cases at best, and alien plants as common : b) learned helplessness. You do good, here come paras to attack you; you do bad, here come paras to attack you; you do nothing, here come paras to attack you; you get out of the way... you get the idea. With mages and guardian beasts, you get a MASSIVE influx of people who reflect the societies they spring from. And extreme elements? They're extreme. Fringe. Powerful mostly because they're loud, IRL and mostly because they have paras in worm. When those paras are drowned out though..? By people WITHOUT PTSD and only as likely to be crazy as your neighbor?

Again, most people are boring. The problem is you only hear the loud ones.
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SirKaid said:
The reason Bet sucks is that shards deliberately select the people most likely to cause problems to get powers and then wait for them to suffer horrible trauma first. Parahumans are not a random selection of humanity.

The vast majority of people are fundamentally okay. Society could not function if this was not the case. If you add powers to a truly random selection of the population then you'll get a majority of civilians, a minority of police, and a smaller minority of criminals. This would be a vast improvement to the current situation.
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I find your optimism a bit disturbing. Yes, the average person is going to be boring, but that is only by the standards of their society. Earth Bet right now is a mess ruled by people with power taking what they want, when they want, with only 10% of parahumans choosing to become heroes. Mages wouldn't have conflict drives shoved in their heads by aliens, but they would have an example of how to use power surrounding them, shaping how they think, how they pursue their goals, how they would use power.

Out here in meat space, we have a number of societies that have guns not just available but owned by a majority of adults. In Switzerland, every last person is trained in how to use and take care of fire arms, taught when their use is warranted, in a culture that puts gun safety as the premier ideal of gun culture. Then you can look at places like the worst examples of the Middle East, India, Africa, and the Americas. None of these locations is all bad, but widespread gun ownership is secondary to a culture of each person or each tribe even within a single country all being out for themselves first. The average person becomes violent because the average itself IS violent.

Earth Bet takes the worst, most violent, least cooperative elements of out here and makes them the default for most of the world. The exceptions exist by the few most powerful enforcing cooperation which, from the outside, is just the same thing as happens in their Africa by having the very strongest insist that fairness should be a thing.

I feel I'm describing this very poorly, so I'm going to stop here and hope it's coherent enough to convey some of what I was aiming for.
 
[X] Take a job at DragonTech – His contributions to society have a minimal likelihood of being connected to him, but he gets Dragon's protection if anything goes wrong with his tech.
 
Silently Watches said:
Tim would not learn anything from of them, and it would destroy the contents of the vial. That would be such a waste.

Its effect is cruel, but it doesn't do anything bad to mages, spells, or magitech. If you want more information, give it to somebody to drink.
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There's someone with a Rare Skill in the PRT, right? Let's make as overpowered a mage as we can without a device.
 
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[X] Take a job at DragonTech – His contributions to society have a minimal likelihood of being connected to him, but he gets Dragon's protection if anything goes wrong with his tech.
 
Wyrd said:
I take it you mean "without a template", as it's templates that destroy rare skills. They work just fine with devices, and if it's somebody in the PRT, they don't have parahuman powers to lose.
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No, I meant without a device. I was quoting SW's post on the Cauldron formula who synergyzes with magic because I meant we should give that formula to the person with the Rare Skill.
 
Wyrd said:
Then you can look at places like the worst examples of the Middle East, India, Africa, and the Americas.
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Excuse me, America has more guns than the entire African continent, and only 1% of the death rate. We are not one of the bad examples. And multiple longitudinal studies have shown that states with high gun ownership among civilians not only have less crime, but criminals interviewed openly state they avoid homes and businesses where they think the owner has a gun.
South and central america...
Wyrd said:
I find your optimism pessimism a bit disturbing.
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So right back at you.
 
Solusandra said:
Excuse me, America has more guns than the entire African continent, and only 1% of the death rate. We are not one of the bad examples. And multiple longitudinal studies have shown that states with high gun ownership among civilians not only have less crime, but criminals interviewed openly state they avoid homes and businesses where they think the owner has a gun.
South and central america...

So right back at you.
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I did not mean the United States of America, but North, Central, and South America. Not all countries in any of these areas(well, except the one that IS a country large enough to be considered a subcontinent) are this bad, which is why I was referencing the worst examples in each of these areas. Even in India, it's only small areas that are that bad.

What saves the US and Switzerland from this is culture. In the first season of Nanoha, lost Logia are described as being the remnants left behind when a society advanced faster technologically than culturally. In World War I, a large part of why so many soldiers died was from the generals not adapting to new technology and just giving orders based on what used to work. In World War II, one force adapted and completely overwhelmed their opponents for some time as a result.

Earth Bet getting GBs everywhere would be like going back in time and teaching all of Europe how to make machine guns back in the bronze age or of giving nuclear weapons to Julius Caesar. The people in these times weren't stupid, but they had no mental framework that would let civilization as it was to survive the change. Chemical and nuclear weapons or biological weapons could easily have wiped the civilizations and citizenry involved from existence.

Tech by itself isn't the problem. Tech combined with human nature and the amount of damage people would inevitably cause as people tried to adapt is the problem.
 
Wyrd said:
I did not mean the United States of America, but North, Central, and South America. Not all countries in any of these areas(well, except the one that IS a country large enough to be considered a subcontinent) are this bad, which is why I was referencing the worst examples in each of these areas. Even in India, it's only small areas that are that bad.

What saves the US and Switzerland from this is culture. In the first season of Nanoha, lost Logia are described as being the remnants left behind when a society advanced faster technologically than culturally. In World War I, a large part of why so many soldiers died was from the generals not adapting to new technology and just giving orders based on what used to work. In World War II, one force adapted and completely overwhelmed their opponents for some time as a result.

Earth Bet getting GBs everywhere would be like going back in time and teaching all of Europe how to make machine guns back in the bronze age or of giving nuclear weapons to Julius Caesar. The people in these times weren't stupid, but they had no mental framework that would let civilization as it was to survive the change. Chemical and nuclear weapons or biological weapons could easily have wiped the civilizations and citizenry involved from existence.

Tech by itself isn't the problem. Tech combined with human nature and the amount of damage people would inevitably cause as people tried to adapt is the problem.
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In speculative fiction, that's called an Outside-Context Problem. There's even a TV tropes page about that Outside-Context Problem - TV Tropes. I don't necessarily agree that it would be an Outside-Context Problem, nor do I disagree, I'm just taking an opportunity to suck someone else into the infinite potholes of TV tropes.
 
Wyrd said:
Earth Bet getting GBs everywhere would be like going back in time and teaching all of Europe how to make machine guns back in the bronze age or of giving nuclear weapons to Julius Caesar. The people in these times weren't stupid, but they had no mental framework that would let civilization as it was to survive the change. Chemical and nuclear weapons or biological weapons could easily have wiped the civilizations and citizenry involved from existence.

Tech by itself isn't the problem. Tech combined with human nature and the amount of damage people would inevitably cause as people tried to adapt is the problem.
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Lab_Accident said:
In speculative fiction, that's called an Outside-Context Problem. There's even a TV tropes page about that Outside-Context Problem - TV Tropes. I don't necessarily agree that it would be an Outside-Context Problem, nor do I disagree, I'm just taking an opportunity to suck someone else into the infinite potholes of TV tropes.
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Except in earth Bet, it's not really an outside context problem. They've had parahumans swarming for 40 years. The only loss of context will be a) that the tech can be used and maintained by people who aren't either para or multi-PHD engineers and b) that the vast majority of the new para-magicals will be sane.
 
Solusandra said:
Except in earth Bet, it's not really an outside context problem. They've had parahumans swarming for 40 years. The only loss of context will be a) that the tech can be used and maintained by people who aren't either para or multi-PHD engineers and b) that the vast majority of the new para-magicals will be sane.
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And why, exactly, do you think that people getting powers through magic would change anything?

Parahumans aren't unstable because of their trigger, they're unstable because of the society that produces them and enables them.

Giving Guardian Beasts to people isn't gonna magically change the system, rather, the people who get them would adapt and act in accord to the environment they exist in.

Magic isn't inherently benevolent either, just look at Ancient Belka and Galea.
 
landcollector said:
We really don't want Magic!Outer Heaven though, imo.
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How about Magic!MSF? Magic!Diamond Dogs? Just go all the way and make Magic!FOXHOUND? Hell, we already have the Words That Kill down with the magic incantations, and all we need to do is find one horrifically injured quadraplegic to get a Cyborg Ninja - if Taylor loses an eye, then we're basically an oil rig short of being a Metal Gear organisation.
 
LancerisDead said:
And why, exactly, do you think that people getting powers through magic would change anything?

Parahumans aren't unstable because of their trigger, they're unstable because of the society that produces them and enables them.

Giving Guardian Beasts to people isn't gonna magically change the system, rather, the people who get them would adapt and act in accord to the environment they exist in.

Magic isn't inherently benevolent either, just look at Ancient Belka and Galea.
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Mages don't have conflict drive for one.

Parahumans had PTSD out the ass on top of having their shards nudge them towards conflict.
 
aceraptor said:
Mages don't have conflict drive for one.

Parahumans had PTSD out the ass on top of having their shards nudge them towards conflict.
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DestinyPlayer said:
Plus powers only go to people who are unstable, because Trigger Events. Magic would mostly go to people who are stable, and have no big traumatic event in their life.
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The issue isn't what will the people who get Guardian Beasts will do, but what the people already in power will do.
 
DestinyPlayer said:
Plus powers only go to people who are unstable, because Trigger Events. Magic would mostly go to people who are stable, and have no big traumatic event in their life.
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people who are stable are easy to deal with, even if they have superpowers. It's normal people that scare me. Even normal governments can easily be spooked into doing stupid shit, the Earth Bet governments, who are used to fighting a losing war aganst doomsday? The CUI would just incorporate Guardian Beasts into their mindwashed cape-military, The Warlords of Africa and South America might win the ensuing conflict by virtue of already being positioned, or they might lose, but conflict will follow.
 
landcollector said:
Out of curiosity, how would you be able to guarantee that in a society as scarred/under attack as Earth-Bet's? It will not be nearly as easy as some in this thread might proclaim.
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First: I said mostly.
Second: even in such shitty situations, the normal bloke off the street is much more likely to be stable than unstable. Much less actual police/military professionals. There are bad apples, and Earth Bed is likely to have a lot more of them, but they're still bad apples, and not orchards.
 
LancerisDead said:
Parahumans aren't unstable because of their trigger, they're unstable because of the society that produces them and enables them.
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I'm pretty sure parahumans are unstable because of their trigger, and the society enables them mostly because:
1) the only way to fight parahumans without going police state is to recruit other parahumans;
2) parahumans are the only defense against Endbringers;
3) Cauldron meddling to have as much parahumans as possible to fight Zion.

The third reason is dead for two years already, the second will stop matter soonish, the first is in process of resolving right now.

What happens once the society realises that hey, we don't have to tolerate this masked nuts anymore?
Crackdown on the gangs, curtailing of independent heroism, maybe even something akin to Registration Acts.
And I completely fine with it.
 
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