Dr. Manhattan, the outlier, gets his powers through a science accident. And they come at a huge cost of his humanity and empathy, which limits his employment of them (and motivation to do so), which prevents the SuperMan problem. But that's all the leap you take.
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So when there's a plot device about the weapon of mass destruction being the psychic blast caused by the death throes of an alien, it's an actual WTF moment. Moore did not establish that in that world, aliens existed. Nor that any sort of mental powers were a thing.
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Having built his world, it was a leap to another world. And it was so bad, clunky, and disjoint that the movie adaptation (rightly!) didn't even try to adapt it. They instead changed it to a story that made more sense.
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At least for me as a reader, I will accept any world that the author wants to create. But once that world is created and established, you don't get to change a new world and ask me to suspend disbelief in a new and different way again.
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Note that this is DIFFERENT from REVEALING things about the established world or magic system -- and Brandon Sanderson is masterful at this. He reveals more about his worlds without asking you to believe new things about their underlying fictional metaphysics.
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His laws of magic (and his systems are "hard magic" -- they operate in a way that Dean would consider like SciFi) guide his writing, and he has a very clear idea of how things work before he starts using them in his book https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic …
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In particular, his first law of magic is that the author's ability to solve a conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic. This also applies to technology, "hero powers," whatever the speculative fictional device of the work is.
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That is why the WATCHMEN Graphic Novel doesn't work. We're led to understand that there basically is no magic, there's some technology, on an otherwise-standard alternate earth. An alien's psychic death throes has nothing to do with that system of powers.
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The Deathly Hallows aren't quite as bad (just so clunky that I'll never get over it). But the concept of such "super magical items" was not introduced in Rowling's rather "soft" magic system. And so it just stands out like a sore thumb.
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They ask you to take a second leap of faith; it doesn't work well. My friend
@MorlockP's award-winning Aristillus series does not suffer from these flaws, because he's planned it out in advance. He knows what's going to happen. And things operate naturally (at least so far).2 replies 1 retweet 7 likesShow this thread
there is 1 new assumption in books 3 and 4, max. ...and, actually, it's an assumption that's packed into one of the 3 assumptions from the first two. "How does the AG drive work?" will be explored.
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