The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
Serack:
How about this.
Harry's magic is tied up in his belief of what reality should be.
Harry believes revolvers are older, more reliable technology, and thus are less susceptible to his wizard's aura.
Harry believes automatics are newer, less reliable technology.
Automatic weapons fail around him more frequently than his revolver.
Actual complexity and failure rates may matter, but what really matters is what Harry believes about his magic. And thus, his natural hex is more likely to cause failures in the automatics who's technology he is suspicious of.
And even if that understanding is incomplete, it explains the body of evidence well enough that I'm satisfied.
Zaphodess:
--- Quote from: Serack on July 22, 2017, 02:19:29 AM ---How about this.
Harry's magic is tied up in his belief of what reality should be.
Harry believes revolvers are older, more reliable technology, and thus are less susceptible to his wizard's aura.
Harry believes automatics are newer, less reliable technology.
Automatic weapons fail around him more frequently than his revolver.
Actual complexity and failure rates may matter, but what really matters is what Harry believes about his magic. And thus, his natural hex is more likely to cause failures in the automatics who's technology he is suspicious of.
--- End quote ---
That's probably a part of it, but it doesn't explain very well how that belief came into existence in the first place. It's not something Harry alone believes, it's shared by all wizards as far as we know.
We'd have to look at instances of Harry interacting (badly or otherwise) with technology when he isn't aware of it. Cell phones in peoples's pockets malfunctioning when he had no idea there was a cell phone or something like that.
ETA and btw: Butters is using the Murphyonic field theory in Day One to sense the final attack. It caused a conflict with the electromagnetic field in his ear plugs or something. He theorized that magic is something similar to electromagnetic waves that disturbs normal electromagnetic fields. It reminded me of the problems I sometimes have with my WLAN: too many interferences from neighbor's WLANs and my own electronic stuff.
--- Quote from: Serack on July 22, 2017, 02:19:29 AM ---And even if that understanding is incomplete, it explains the body of evidence well enough that I'm satisfied.
--- End quote ---
Great read. Thanx for the link. :)
Serack:
--- Quote from: Zaphodess on July 22, 2017, 11:00:01 AM ---That's probably a part of it, but it doesn't explain very well how that belief came into existence in the first place. It's not something Harry alone believes, it's shared by all wizards as far as we know.
--- End quote ---
Ok, so are you familiar with Jim's comments about... blah, I'll blanket quote em.
--- Quote ---As technology advances, will wizards become marginalized?
It sort of depends on where magic goes. Magic wasn’t always screwing up post WW2 tech. Before WW2 magic had other effects. It sorta changes slowly over time, and about every 3 centuries it rolls over into something else. At one time, instead of magic making machines flip out it made cream go bad. Before that magic made weird molls on your skin and fire would burn slightly different colors when you were around it. I do mention this in Ghost story (in passing). It’s not really aware or something like that, but it is something that changes along with the people who use it.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote ---PR: So, do you, yourself, when you're writing them, do you draw lines in your head between, say, the sort of magic that Harry does and the sort of magic the people in Bayport are capable of? Or is it just an issue of skill and quantity?
JB: Well, it's all a little bit different, but everyone interacts with that kind of energy in a different way. For instance, wizards cause disruptions in technology and other things around them because, you know, people are never all one thing or all the other, people are a conflicted group of weirdos, and so when you have human beings that are using magic, that sort of self-inner conflict, that's one of the side-effects that comes out, that's why they wreck things that are around them. If you're a fairy who's using magic, you're doing the same thing as a human being, but you don't have that cluttered human nature. You can sit around as a fairy and play X-box all you want, you're never going to ruin it, and still be an awesome wizard, but not as Dresden.
--- End quote ---
Now here's my more detailed theory on how the murpheonic field came to be. Quoted from my theory on black magic. (note: I wrote the below outside of the context of this nit-picky argument about gun mechanisms. I'll try to tie it to that after the quote)
--- Quote from: Serack on November 24, 2013, 11:36:19 AM ---Reality Pushes Back
In other words, if you use your will/mind as an applied force to change reality, reality will exert an equal and opposite force upon your will/mind that could be changing it as well.
My thoughts on this idea of reality pushing back come from multiple inspirations. One of the most poignant is how Harry insists to Lash that if she has been changing him, she pretty much has to have changed in return.xrt#X
Even more fundamental is the nature of the "murpheonic field." Or at least why it exists from my theorizing PoV. As a wizard develops his ability to shape reality according to his will, he is coming into direct conflict with the fact that humanity has been doing a pretty dang good job of defining just exactly how reality is supposed to work, and as a result is accomplishing all these really cool technological things. But because the wizard is a member of humanity, and is breaking these hard and fast "rules" that this cool technology is based off of, his magic interferes with it and makes it likely to fail.
You could even say that the wizard's mind has been warped by his continued use of magic to reshape reality, until the parts of reality that utilize highly specialized physical laws that his magic flies in the face of [I.E. technology] become highly unreliable to him.
--- End quote ---
Ok, back to gun mechanisms... let see. Another way of framing the above murpheonic theory is that modern mankind has used the Scientific Method to nail down the mechanisms of how stuff works pretty well. But outside the lab, things break down, or have failures. Somehow when the side effect of magic making cream go bad, morphed into the murpheonic field, it manifested into emphasizing the things brake down or have failures aspect of technology, and even though the M1911 was a WW1 service semi-automatic pistol, the fact that it's generally perceived that it has modes of failure that are a part of it's technological advances over Harry's trusty '38 make it susceptible to his murpheonic field.
Here are two anecdotes slightly offset from this discussion but that are relevant.
Compared to me, my step father is a gun nut. He prefers a trusty revolver too, but he doesn't have a problem with an "automatic" so much as a problem with a police force deploying them without sufficient training in how to clear a failure. And he once stopped and showed me the house that was involved in a shoot-out when the local county sheriff's office converted from revolvers to automatics across the force. Several deputies died during that shootout, and he blames it on their not being sufficiently trained in clearing a failure in their automatics.
When I was a soldier, in basic training, they drilled me in clearing my M-16 to the point where we did it in synchronized formation step by step, eyes front until we all in synchrony slanted our weapons and looked down to check that the chamber was empty. Look up and tilt the weapon back to the vertical plane. Release the bolt. *Slam* the entire formation's bolts slide home at once.
Ok second anecdote. As a green beta I once tried to call out referring to the P90 as a carbine in a beta comment. Jim responded with a WALL of text about the P90, carbines, sub-machine guns, and the differences between them. So Jim knows more about guns than me. Although I doubt he's spent as many nights cuddling with an M-16.
Independent George:
--- Quote from: Serack on July 22, 2017, 02:19:29 AM ---How about this.
Harry's magic is tied up in his belief of what reality should be.
Harry believes revolvers are older, more reliable technology, and thus are less susceptible to his wizard's aura.
Harry believes automatics are newer, less reliable technology.
Automatic weapons fail around him more frequently than his revolver.
Actual complexity and failure rates may matter, but what really matters is what Harry believes about his magic. And thus, his natural hex is more likely to cause failures in the automatics who's technology he is suspicious of.
--- End quote ---
This is more or less how I've always assumed it works. Harry is conflicted about newer technology because it's not something he doesn't 'get' on a fundamental level. If I lived in the DF universe and knew Harry, I'd suggest Harry try detail stripping & re-assembling a Glock and a revolver, and then see how well each one worked afterwards.
But I don't live in the DF universe, and don't think this really matters much in the story. Unless somebody sits Harry down and points out how much more mechanically complex a revolver is to a modern semi-auto, it's not going to affect Harry. Butters is the person most likely to try experimenting like this, but he doesn't strike me as a gun guy (especially now that he's got a light saber).
Of course, there's always the possibility that once Harry learns how complex revolvers are, they won't work in his presence, either. Actually, scratch that; of course they won't work once Harry learns how complex they are. It's Harry.
jonas:
--- Quote from: Serack on July 22, 2017, 02:19:29 AM ---How about this.
Harry's magic is tied up in his belief of what reality should be.
Harry believes revolvers are older, more reliable technology, and thus are less susceptible to his wizard's aura.
Harry believes automatics are newer, less reliable technology.
Automatic weapons fail around him more frequently than his revolver.
Actual complexity and failure rates may matter, but what really matters is what Harry believes about his magic. And thus, his natural hex is more likely to cause failures in the automatics who's technology he is suspicious of.
And even if that understanding is incomplete, it explains the body of evidence well enough that I'm satisfied.
--- End quote ---
That's an incredibly generalized idea. It aligns the info we already know quite well, don't get me wrong, excellent organization on it. I just can't see it being the definite answer to anything. With all your inside info your theorizing has suffered with this generalization effect in recent years. Even what you choose to respond to as far as others theories has changed... avoiding heavy or major topical theorizing. Not really fair that, as the main chooser of 'quality theories'.
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