2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

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2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

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Discussion thread for [CT]My Face Hurts
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Re: 2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

Post by Forrest »

Interesting, so polymorph magic is something more like real-life cosmetic surgery (but magical) than some high school girls fooling around going "lol look Suzie I made my boobs bigger hahah!"? Like, you're likely to polymorph a blood vessel out of place and bleed out internally if you do it on yourself without adequate precision?
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Re: 2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

Post by dark_lord_zagato »

Forrest wrote:Like, you're likely to polymorph a blood vessel out of place and bleed out internally if you do it on yourself without adequate precision?
And suddenly magic doesn't sound as fun as just stealing more priest robes.
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Re: 2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

Post by Graybeard »

Forrest wrote:Interesting, so polymorph magic is something more like real-life cosmetic surgery (but magical) than some high school girls fooling around going "lol look Suzie I made my boobs bigger hahah!"? Like, you're likely to polymorph a blood vessel out of place and bleed out internally if you do it on yourself without adequate precision?
A while back, shapeshifting/polymorphing came up for discussion in Errant Road, and what Impy relayed there from Poe was that yes, it's akin to plastic surgery, and that Poe doesn't want it to play a big role in the Errant World. Fine, I accept this -- it's his world, after all -- but I am still having a very hard time reconciling it with what Meji and Ellis told Jon earlier, and also, with the apparent routineness of the "rejuvenation treatments" that Meji's mother gets. Nor is it so easy to explain Ian's statement that he "used to be able to maintain that spell longer" -- as if he has significant experience with it.

I think it's Meji's "Introduction to Polymorphing" class that bothers me most. Consider a high-school chemistry class (and remember that Meji is of high-school age). Kids don't take chemistry in high school because they are preparing to become Ph.D. chemists or medical doctors. They do it because they use chemistry in real life, with the sophistication of that use ranging from the Ph.D. in the subject all the way down to just knowing that fire requires oxygen. There are low-end life skills for which a very basic understanding of chemistry is useful, even for someone who never wants to set foot in a laboratory as an adult, and that's what justifies the class being offered (and, in many schools, required). I would presume that an Introduction to Polymorphing class, offered at the high-school level, would have similar low-end users as its intended "customer base" as well as the students who are going to go on and become lifemages, thaumatic engineers, or whatever. So doesn't that low end imply that polymorphing is used widely, or at least, can be?
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Re: 2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

Post by Imp-Chan »

Graybeard wrote:
Forrest wrote:Interesting, so polymorph magic is something more like real-life cosmetic surgery (but magical) than some high school girls fooling around going "lol look Suzie I made my boobs bigger hahah!"? Like, you're likely to polymorph a blood vessel out of place and bleed out internally if you do it on yourself without adequate precision?
A while back, shapeshifting/polymorphing came up for discussion in Errant Road, and what Impy relayed there from Poe was that yes, it's akin to plastic surgery, and that Poe doesn't want it to play a big role in the Errant World. Fine, I accept this -- it's his world, after all -- but I am still having a very hard time reconciling it with what Meji and Ellis told Jon earlier, and also, with the apparent routineness of the "rejuvenation treatments" that Meji's mother gets. Nor is it so easy to explain Ian's statement that he "used to be able to maintain that spell longer" -- as if he has significant experience with it.

I think it's Meji's "Introduction to Polymorphing" class that bothers me most. Consider a high-school chemistry class (and remember that Meji is of high-school age). Kids don't take chemistry in high school because they are preparing to become Ph.D. chemists or medical doctors. They do it because they use chemistry in real life, with the sophistication of that use ranging from the Ph.D. in the subject all the way down to just knowing that fire requires oxygen. There are low-end life skills for which a very basic understanding of chemistry is useful, even for someone who never wants to set foot in a laboratory as an adult, and that's what justifies the class being offered (and, in many schools, required). I would presume that an Introduction to Polymorphing class, offered at the high-school level, would have similar low-end users as its intended "customer base" as well as the students who are going to go on and become lifemages, thaumatic engineers, or whatever. So doesn't that low end imply that polymorphing is used widely, or at least, can be?
Plenty of women get regular plastic surgery touch-ups. Botox here, lipo there, etc. all in an endless quest to maintain a youth nobody believes anyways. I imagine that Meji's mom is one of that variety.

Ian's familiarity with polymorph magic is also easily explained... he was apprenticed to the town healer, remember? He probably experimented widely with it on both himself and others in an effort to find some way to help his sister and the other half elves.

As for the intro course, that's actually the easiest part to understand for me. The intro course probably didn't actually teach Meji how to do self-surgery, it probably just went over the principles involved. Kids who are told that they're bright have a tendency to extrapolate their lessons in areas that interest them, though. For example, I took general drawing in high school, which was an introduction to engineering. Enough to build a house? No, not even close, but that didn't stop me from designing my parents' addition and overseeing the contractors. Jim created math theories and programmed his calculator to do his homework, and Poe wrote hundreds of Ralph and Bimbo strips in addition to a certain senior prank.

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Re: 2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

Post by Graybeard »

I dunno, Impy -- the picture still isn't coming into focus for me. Two things:
Imp-Chan wrote: Ian's familiarity with polymorph magic is also easily explained... he was apprenticed to the town healer, remember? He probably experimented widely with it on both himself and others in an effort to find some way to help his sister and the other half elves.
Perfectly sensible explanation for how Ian got the familiarity, but follow this thought where it leads. If he picked up polymorph skills as a result of being apprenticed to the town healer, it then follows that the town healer is proficient enough with such skills, not just to use them occasionally, but to teach them. If they aren't part of his regular repertoire, he's not going to invest much effort in teaching them to an apprentice. The implication is that at least some polymorph magic -- probably stopping short of a major overhaul of one's body, but still reasonably extensive if Ian is able to extrapolate it to looking like a blond Veracian priest -- is reasonably widespread and common in use.

Furthermore:
Imp-Chan wrote: As for the intro course, that's actually the easiest part to understand for me. The intro course probably didn't actually teach Meji how to do self-surgery, it probably just went over the principles involved. Kids who are told that they're bright have a tendency to extrapolate their lessons in areas that interest them, though. For example, I took general drawing in high school, which was an introduction to engineering. Enough to build a house? No, not even close, but that didn't stop me from designing my parents' addition and overseeing the contractors. Jim created math theories and programmed his calculator to do his homework, and Poe wrote hundreds of Ralph and Bimbo strips in addition to a certain senior prank.
Again, this is all fine, but consider what courses your high school did not offer. I am rather older than you, and our high-school curriculum was therefore undoubtedly different from yours (for example, no computer classes, which my own kids did take), but we could choose introductions not only to science and engineering disciplines for us nerds-in-training, but also introductory auto mechanics, carpentry, "typing" (this was a long time ago...), etc., for those whose formal education was going to end after high school and be followed by a real-world job. However, the curriculum did not extend to introductory horsemanship and horse care. Why? Because there was no reason to offer the course. It wouldn't have lined up with any real-world needs, prospects, or even significant interests. It wouldn't have been "practical" to offer a course in those subjects.

So also at Sashi Mu. An Introduction to Polymorphing class would only be offered if there was a clientele for it. Furthermore, it wouldn't just resonate with an adept spellcaster like Meji, although you're certainly right that a bright kid would try to take the subject to places where the basic course wouldn't go. There had to be something about it that resonated with the students' routine experience, even for the ones that didn't have Meji's aptitude. Again, reconciling that "something" with profound difficulty and danger in doing full-blown polymorphing, with resulting de-emphasis on polymorph magic in the most magical corner of the Errant World, is hard for me to see. They didn't teach a course on basics of high explosives at my high school, either! And the time I nearly filled one wing of our high school with cyanide gas -- true story -- was definitely not envisioned as part of the curriculum laid out for us science nerds...
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Re: 2013-02-25: [CT]My Face Hurts

Post by Imp-Chan »

I think you may be missing the core of what Poe was saying. Polymorph magic is common. What it isn't is easy to recover from, or easily reversed. Reversal is a second, more dangerous "surgery." A normal human being, subjected to polymorph magic, will require recovery time before being able to resume normal activity. That will vary depending on what is done... altering the hair color may take an hour to recover from, something more substantial may be days. It's exactly like surgery, just more versatile, cleaner, and arguably safer (or at least differently dangerous). That same recovery requirement does nothing to prevent over 9 million plastic surgeries in the US every year, most of which are cosmetic, so there's no reason to believe that the recovery time is a particular hindrance to people electing to be polymorphed. I imagine that among the well-off, it's probably pretty common, and it's not that uncommon among the middle-class. In an isolated half elf village where healing the human neighbors is a primary export, I would expect the local healer to be VERY well-versed in polymorph magic for both surgical and cosmetic purposes.

For a half elf, however, the situation is different. They recover from polymorph magic in a less predictable manner. Some suffer no ill-effects, and can sustain the polymorph for quite some time, provided they have the energy and focus available to do so. Some immediately revert and feel terrible for days. Some, like Ian, are initially able to recover from a polymorph quickly, but find their ability to sustain it wanes as they age and the consequences and recovery become increasingly unpleasant for them. Some, like Meji, are lucky... they recover in a matter of hours (like an outpatient surgery), but they also revert quickly.

As for elves, well... they could probably recover from a polymorph even faster than a half elf, but they'd also throw it off even faster. I suppose they might use it for a temporary disguise like Ian did, and they probably wouldn't hurt as much afterwards because they're glorious assholes like that, but I'm pretty sure they'd consider it beneath their dignity. For them it was probably just a fad or a fetish like 4000 years ago or something.

At any rate, polymorph magic is by no means unknown. If the understanding of the basics of polymorph magic was in some way a building block for a later part of the curriculum (such as golems?), or a substitute for another part of the curriculum, I see no reason why it wouldn't be a class. Our high school had a radio station and an entire journalism track... not every student took it (I did not), but plenty did, and it counted as, I think, a writing or social studies credit or something. Jim subverted that, too, btw. We totally need a thread for, "What horrors did you inflict on your high school?" over in general discussion, it sounds like it'd be hilarious.

^-^'

Edit: We now totally have just such a thread.
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