Pet Peeves in Fanfiction

[Fellow Human]

In Worm it kinda makes sense, since we literally do have insane parahumans who claim to have magic but are just parahumans (see Myrddin and the Fairy Queen)

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Magic is still a better explanation than "physics that we don't completely understand or have to keep adding exception as if its English language". Better to think things possible than stretching out in setting explanation like it's a rubber band.

 

[Chronocidal]

I generally agree with your point here. At the same time, it does make sense to me that if one thing that was previously believed impossible occurs, one has grounds to argue that another, also impossible, thing may be just as real.

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I think the important thing here is that the impossible thing being shown as real indicates that our understanding of what is possible is incomplete. Making it hard to define something as "impossible", until we can map out and explain the new phenomena.

Aliens existing doesn't provide evidence towards a possibility magic existing, because nothing about our existing logical framework and understanding of physical laws makes them impossible. Their visit was improbable, sure, but not impossible.

Aliens with Faster-than-Light travel existing does open up the possibility of something that fulfils a definition to be called "magic" maybe existing, because it violates concepts currently held to be immutable; since at least one "law of nature" has been proven false, all other laws need to be re-examined in that context, and something previously declared "impossible" because it also violated those rules is no longer actually disproved in that manner.

However, this "other things might be possible" phase only really lasts as long as it takes for scientists to understand and test the new axioms — so, looking at the earlier example of Stargate, people like Drs Carter, McKay, and Zelenka would make that adjustment period rather short, and soon be able to re-confirm some things as still being impossible in the newly expanded model of the universe.

(Not necessarily able to re-confirm everything else as impossible, but enough that you can no longer just say that anything might be possible)

 

[hghwolf]

It doesn't make anything else true, but possible if another impossible thing happened.

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No.

Here let me break it down for you :

• We do not believe X is possible based on our current understanding of reality
• We do not believe Y is possible based on our current understanding of reality
• X is not Y, the reasons we believe X to be impossible are not the same reasons we believe Y to be impossible
• X happens
• Our understanding of reality changes
• We still do not believe Y is possible because X=/=Y, and what informed our understanding of the impossibility of X is not what informed our understanding of the impossibility of Y

Like... if someone cast a magic missile, at the darkness or otherwise, that would indicate other 'magic spells' are possible but it still wouldn't indicate Sectoids, so while we now know magic exists there is no reason for us to believe aliens do.

At the same time, it does make sense to me that if one thing that was previously believed impossible occurs, one has grounds to argue that another, also impossible, thing may be just as real.

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It might make sense to you, but it just... doesn't unless the previously thought to be impossible thing disproves one or all of the theories that make the other impossible.

 

[Valmond]

Magic is still a better explanation than "physics that we don't completely understand or have to keep adding exception as if its English language". Better to think things possible than stretching out in setting explanation like it's a rubber band.

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Well at that point you might as well call parahuman powers as magic.
Like i get your point, but the example is a bad one.

 

[hghwolf]

Well at that point you might as well label para human powers as magic.

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They are though.

They still don't prove the existence of other kinds of magic like Naruto ninja bullshit or elemental bending that work under different rules.

Insofar as you can say parahuman powers have rules anyway.

 

[Valmond]

They are though.

They still don't prove the existence of other kinds of magic like Naruto ninja bullshit or elemental bending that work under different rules.

Insofar as you can say parahuman powers have rules anyway.

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I think you missed my point, though i do not disagree with what you are saying.
They are effectively magic.
But the setting does not call them magic.
So if something else that is magic shows up, people are very unlikely to start calling them magic without some extensive evidence.
In the same way we don't start calling something magic just because is goes against our previous understanding of the universe, instead we go and see if whatever happened was a fluke, and update our understanding of the universe to fit the newly learned thing.

 

[Fellow Human]

No.

Here let me break it down for you :

• We do not believe X is possible based on our current understanding of reality
• We do not believe Y is possible based on our current understanding of reality
• X is not Y, the reasons we believe X to be impossible are not the same reasons we believe Y to be impossible
• X happens
• Our understanding of reality changes
• We still do not believe Y is possible because X=/=Y, and what informed our understanding of the impossibility of X is not what informed our understanding of the impossibility of Y

Like... if someone cast a magic missile, at the darkness or otherwise, that would indicate other 'magic spells' are possible but it still wouldn't indicate Sectoids, so while we now know magic exists there is no reason for us to believe aliens do.


It might make sense to you, but it just... doesn't unless the previously thought to be impossible thing disproves one or all of the theories that make the other impossible.

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I get that. Aliens proven doesn't make magic possible as it's still technology. But magic existing still makes aliens very probable as other planets and galaxies exist. All I'm saying is if something very strange happens in fiction, characters shouldn't dogmatically dismiss it as not magic or not aliens.

 

[Valmond]

Aliens are probable to a point of near certainty.
That does not mean any of them would come here, even if you allow for FTL travel.

 

[Kadmus]

Magic existing has absolutely zero correlation to whether aliens exit; it literally makes no probabilistic difference, and will not make people more likely to assume the second if the first is true. You're just wrong on this point. Do you believe that Bigfoot is cooking the meals at your favourite restaurant because we have a sun? That's the level of disconnection we're working with.

If you know magic exists and see someone with green skin throwing beams of light, you are going to assume it is a magic thing. Aliens would be as insane an idea to you as they are to us today.

Most people will assume, past the point of reasonableness, that a thing that is happening is the result of things they already know about, not the result of something they do not know about. Some people will immediately jump to their pet impossible thing. Reasonable people will assess the situation and try to understand how it fits into the world as we understand it, and be excited about the potential for a greater understanding of the world, but there are very few reasonable people.

So someone in Worm going 'oh it's just a weird parahuman power' makes perfect sense until the thing in question is so insane that it breaks their understanding of parahuman powers. That is, almost never, as parahuman powers are intensely weird by default and can range from tiny to global in their effects.

 

[hghwolf]

But magic existing still makes aliens very probable as other planets and galaxies exist.

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No. The existence of a incomprehensibly vast universe makes the existence of aliens likely to the point of certainty, despite the relative rarity of planets with suitable conditions for abiogenesis, and in the same breath explains why we don't know about them.

Magic has nothing to do with this. You're trying to use Modus Ponens but in a case where P does not imply Q. You're just going 'P therefore Q' here.

 

[The Narrator]

1. In a very popular and greatly overrated Stargate x Avatar fanfic, Sam theorizes that Zuko creates fireballs with nanites... I blame that on the author making Sam retarded

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That's an entirely reasonable assumption to make in Stargate, where most apparent superhuman powers are the result of some kind technology, except when they're the result of ascension. In that fic's case, bending turned out to be related to ascension instead.

Magic is still a better explanation than "physics that we don't completely understand or have to keep adding exception as if its English language". Better to think things possible than stretching out in setting explanation like it's a rubber band.

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If it actually exists, then it is a kind of "physics we don't completely understand", by definition. Science is the study of shit that's actually real. All the shit that's actually real. If magic is real then it's in science's wheelhouse, whether you understand how it works or not. There's shit in the real world we don't full understand yet, either, and that doesn't make it not science.

 

[Pethrai Darkos]

Magic existing has absolutely zero correlation to whether aliens exit; it literally makes no probabilistic difference, and will not make people more likely to assume the second if the first is true.

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It doesn't matter weather there's correlation or not. Here's a specific example since the how/what actually matters to this.

Aliens: "Oh yeah we travel faster than light by jumping into a highly energetic side dimension called Shift Space. Shift Space generators are also how we got our matter sequencers to work."
Scientists: "Is it possible that what our ancestors called magic was actually crude Shift Space generators carved from marble and filled with chicken blood? No that would be absurd."
…
Scientists: "Best have an intern check it just to be sure."

It's not that aliens with FTL existing makes magic more likely to exist, it's that aliens with FTL existing means our current understanding of physics is wrong and so the things we could confidently state were impossible under the old model might not be under the new one.

 

[Kadmus]

It doesn't matter weather there's correlation or not. Here's a specific example since the how/what actually matters to this.

Aliens: "Oh yeah we travel faster than light by jumping into a highly energetic side dimension called Shift Space. Shift Space generators are also how we got our matter sequencers to work."
Scientists: "Is it possible that what our ancestors called magic was actually crude Shift Space generators carved from marble and filled with chicken blood? No that would be absurd."
…
Scientists: "Best have an intern check it just to be sure."

It's not that aliens with FTL existing makes magic more likely to exist, it's that aliens with FTL existing means our current understanding of physics is wrong and so the things we could confidently state were impossible under the old model might not be under the new one.

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You will note that, in this example, your scientists don't go 'oh, aliens, magic is real!'. They go 'oh, we have previous evidence magic works, we have just met aliens who can do what we consider magic, there might be a connection there'. Which is completely reasonable and the exact opposite of the thing we are talking about!

 

[CanYouMeme]

Multiverse theory. Specifically, explicitly mentioning it in a story or as part of the author's notes.

Spoiler: Down-the-rabbit-hole semi-coherent rambling

It's fiction. It's not real. It doesn't strictly need justification beyond "I find this interesting enough to write about." Now you're still on the hook for bad writing of whatever variety, but a fanfic doesn't need a defense of why your particular fanfic doesn't conflict with any other fanfic or canon.

"But CanYouMeme, you ludicrously loquacious lecturer" I hear you say, "If it doesn't matter then why are you bitching about it? Surely if such a thing is as irrelevant to the story as you say, its inclusion doesn't impact the story and can be safely ignored."

Well, dear reader, there are two issues at play here, one specific to multiverse theory and one generalized problem. Including unnecessary elements in a story (especially exposition) is in and of itself a sign of bad writing. It's all too easy for an author to get wrapped up and strangled in their own prose, rambling on and on until what should be entertaining becomes drier than a three day old McDonalds burger. Few story elements kickstart this downward spiral into repetitive pedantry more reliably than some ROB rambling about "don't worry, you're special and none of that icky other-reality stuff will intrude".

But specifically to multiverse theory, all too often it's a dodge. A cop-out. A not-so-subtle sign to the reader to shut up and move along, nothing to see here. Ironically for what it purports to be, it usually ends up the OCDONUTSTEEL of fanfiction.

Don't do that. Be brave, be bold; go forth in confidence that even if your writing isn't a masterpiece, it's good enough for an evening's entertainment. Don't even mention multiverse theory, and commit to building a story so enthralling your readers don't care about other stories until the climax has faded and the epilogue brings you rest. Or introduce it to the story in bits and pieces, expanding the cast of characters and the possibilities of what-may-be.

EDIT: On a separate note; cooking for whores. As in, a character is so good at cooking that it substitutes for personality and people put up with them just because of how good the food is. Usually accompanied by "indecent moaning". All too often, the food is a hook that leads to sex.

It was fucking stupid when Radaslab did it, it's still stupid now.

 

[Pethrai Darkos]

You will note that, in this example, your scientists don't go 'oh, aliens, magic is real!'. They go 'oh, we have previous evidence magic works, we have just met aliens who can do what we consider magic, there might be a connection there'. Which is completely reasonable and the exact opposite of the thing we are talking about!

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The intent was that there wasn't previous evidence of magic (or at least enough of it to convince the scientific community) and that the crackpots saying they can use pagan rituals to control the weather might have been on to something, probably not but nobody's actually checked if they were manipulating Shift Space energies before.

Clearly that intent didn't get across.

 

[Kadmus]

The intent was that there wasn't previous evidence of magic (or at least enough of it to convince the scientific community) and that the crackpots saying they can use pagan rituals to control the weather might have been on to something, probably not but nobody's actually checked if they were manipulating Shift Space energies before.

Clearly that intent didn't get across.

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Then your example is incredibly stupid; why would scientists assume that 'magic' - for which there is no evidence of efficacy, and people have damn well checked - had anything to do with observable aliens who don't do any magic?

Like, scientists have checked if magic works. They've done so for longer than anyone has been alive. There's been no evidence that magic is real, and unless you're in a setting where magic can be - and has been - detected by the scientific method then (reasonable) scientists will absolutely not think about magic when they meet aliens.

 

[Chronocidal]

Then your example is incredibly stupid; why would scientists assume that 'magic' - for which there is no evidence of efficacy, and people have damn well checked - had anything to do with observable aliens who don't do any magic?

Like, scientists have checked if magic works. They've done so for longer than anyone has been alive. There's been no evidence that magic is real, and unless you're in a setting where magic can be - and has been - detected by the scientific method then (reasonable) scientists will absolutely not think about magic when they meet aliens.

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But they might pause to consider anecdotal phenomenon that had been previously dismissed as anything from "unexplained" through to "fanciful"/"delusion" or "magic", to determine which — if any — of them could (at least, theoretically) have been caused by accidental or naturally-occurring Side Space interactions.

See also: the Oklo Mine Natural Nuclear Fission Reactors, or Ball Lightning

The main point of Scientific Enquiry is repeatable experiments. If you suddenly discover that there is a factor you have been unable to measure or account for in your earlier experiments (e.g. "twice per decade the earth spends 8 hours passing through a naturally-occurring stream of Side-Space flux, which causes objects resonating at a specific frequency to slip into Side-Space and 'magically' disappear"), then that could call their results into question (because later experiments of ringing a suitably sized and shaped gong did not include the then-unknown Side-Space Flux Stream, so the gongs did not vanish. But the aliens are curious as to how Humanity managed to clutter up Side-Space with so many ancient artefacts over the millennia)

 

[Pethrai Darkos]

Then your example is incredibly stupid; why would scientists assume that 'magic' - for which there is no evidence of efficacy, and people have damn well checked - had anything to do with observable aliens who don't do any magic?

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Who said they did believe there was a connection? They've just had it demonstrated that their understanding of the universe is wrong. They don't have to think it's likely that people manipulated higher dimensional energies in order to spy on people from across town in order to get a grad student to check if they weren't wrong about this as well.

 

[Kadmus]

Who said they did believe there was a connection? They've just had it demonstrated that their understanding of the universe is wrong. They don't have to think it's likely that people manipulated higher dimensional energies in order to spy on people from across town in order to get a grad student to check if they weren't wrong about this as well.

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You did! Just because the models they use for the universe were incomplete, and just because they might be technically wrong, it doesn't make them not accurate. Just because quantum physics exists, it doesn't mean the observed reality described by thermodynamics stops being the observed reality.

And, if there were obvious things our science understanding didn't explain (of which there are many), then we would know what many of those were! When we get new scientific knowledge we re-evaluate the unexplained things! You have explicitly stated that there are no unexplained phenomena being explained by alien science.

And, again, it still wouldn't make the scientists believe magic was real. It would make them study unexplained phenomena with the new lens of already existing science.

 

[Pethrai Darkos]

And, if there were obvious things our science understanding didn't explain (of which there are many), then we would know what many of those were! When we get new scientific knowledge we re-evaluate the unexplained things! You have explicitly stated that there are no unexplained phenomena being explained by alien science.

And, again, it still wouldn't make the scientists believe magic was real. It would make them study unexplained phenomena with the new lens of already existing science.

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I didn't say there was no phenomena I said there was no credible phenomena. It's the difference between teleportation being an acknowledged thing that happens even if people aren't sure how or why and spontaneous human combustion being a thing that a friend of a roommate's niece swears happened to her cousin. Admittedly I didn't phrase it the best. @Chronocidal did a much better job at that.

Why wouldn't they believe in magic? Is it a terminology thing? Would it help if I said "an Applied Thaumaturgist manipulated the Thaumatic Field to induce an Exothermic Reaction" instead of "a Wizard used Magic to cast Fireball"?

 

[Kadmus]

I didn't say there was no phenomena I said there was no credible phenomena. It's the difference between teleportation being an acknowledged thing that happens even if people aren't sure how or why and spontaneous human combustion being a thing that a friend of a roommate's niece swears happened to her cousin. Admittedly I didn't phrase it the best. @Chronocidal did a much better job at that.

Why wouldn't they believe in magic? Is it a terminology thing? Would it help if I said "an Applied Thaumaturgist manipulated the Thaumatic Field to induce an Exothermic Reaction" instead of "a Wizard used Magic to cast Fireball"?

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...okay. I think we need to go back through this.

So, first off: 'magic' is a word that means 'phenomena that are neither observed nor explained by science'. i.e. definitionally if you can see it happening but it's a mystery why, it's not magic; it's just reality working in a way we don't understand. Gravity wasn't magic before we came up with a working theory on how it operates. If you have a working theory for what happens and can't observe it - like some quantum physics, I believe - it is also not magic. And, like, we all use shit we don't understand on a day-to-day basis and that's not magic either.

I started this chain with: 'Magic existing has absolutely zero correlation to whether aliens exit; it literally makes no probabilistic difference, and will not make people more likely to assume the second if the first is true.'

You responded to that with something that comes across as scientists having a known but unexplained phenomenon that they thought alien technology could explain.

I responded articulating what I took from that post, and saying that a post about a known but unexplained phenomenon being potentially explained by alien technology and science that is more advanced than our own is the opposite of the claim 'knowing one thing that we, in reality, do not know to be true means the characters should be naturally more credulous about every other piece of bullshit, regardless of source'. I stand by this position; if you are using the scientific method to explain a thing that is known but unexplained, you are just doing more science. You are not expressing a belief in magic.

You then replied to say that there was no known but unexplained phenomenon in your example. Your example retroactively became even more stupid than the original peeve ( 'knowing one thing that we, in reality, do not know to be true means the characters should be naturally more credulous about every other piece of bullshit, regardless of source') as you made explicit that there was no phenomenon to be explained. Thus you were not describing scientists engaging in critical reassessment of their knowledge in light of new information; you were describing people with no connection to science or technology at all who happened to be lucky enough to be first contact with aliens.

@Chronocidal then interjected to agree with my initial response to your post. They appear to believe they were agreeing with you, but if you read what they say they hold the same position I do - observed but unexplained phenomena that might be explained by new knowledge should be investigated to see if the new knowledge explains them.

You then seem to have talked yourself around to agreeing with my original point! Despite having opposed it to begin with! You just seem to not realise that you explicitly stated that there was no known but unexplained phenomenon in your response to my response to your original post (sorry about this sentence, it's just very awkwardly worded).

And a scientist may believe in magic, but they can neither observe nor explain it; it is not something that is replicable either in a lab or in the wild. If there was a phenomena where you could actually corelate animal sacrifice in a specific ritual with specific weather patterns, no matter how weakly, that would not be magic. It would be an observed but unexplained phenomenon. It would be worth looking at in the light of new knowledge.

 

[Chronocidal]

I think, at this point, the discussion has devolved into quibbling over terminology, and can probably be put on hold; we appear to agree on the same basic underlying concepts and conceits, with the only differences being in the choice of definition for the term "magic" and quite what thus qualifies therein.

 

[Flightless Man]

Magic existing has absolutely zero correlation to whether aliens exit;

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Unless Aliens also have magic and are using portals to come to Earth instead of ships. ORcs, Trolls, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes are all just stranded aliens. Djinn are aliens with size control tech and they use lamps as spaceships, hibernating for a long time.

But I like what someone else in the thread said. It doesn't make anything more probable. It just shows our understanding of the possible isn't complete. It doesn't make everything possible, but it doesn expand the probable at least a bit.

 

[The Narrator]

- for which there is no evidence of efficacy, and people have damn well checked -

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This. James Randi offered an open reward of one million dollars to anyone who could demonstrate actual supernatural powers that would stand up any degree of scientific scrutiny for fifty years, and no one ever claimed it. Magic has been tested, many times, and the test has always come back "bullshit."

 

[Kazuto Morimoto]

Why is it that I don't feel comfortable with names in fanfics?

To clarify, when a character is named like "Kiss Shot Acerola Under Blade" I become confused, bemused, amused and other -used. I think to myself "They really named the character that?!?" and then slightly cringe but won't feel any discomfort. But in the end, I will find it endearing and then it will grow on to me which leads to acceptance.

On the other hand, when someone name their OC "Nexus Ultima" I proceed to cringe, grimace and have stomachaches(this tends to happen when I read bad fics for some reason) really hard. Questioning why a lot of people thinks this is a good name.

I really don't know why this happens to me or why I have such physical reactions to this kind of thing. Like a really bad case of stomachaches and sometimes makes my head feel light.