Find The Plothole In This One: Reasons To Edit. · 8:49pm Apr 22nd, 2017
So... I almost forgot to upload my Warrior Meet chapter today. Stuff's been happening, computer tests and interviews and whatnot. I failed at the last interview, got 22/55 when you need 33 to pass. Computer tests are going well, though, mostly because they recycle the exact same questions for each one.
Anyway, a thought occurred to me recently, regarding a major plothole in my original novel. I figured, after some deliberation, I'd toss it out there for your consideration, because it's related to magic and how it can muck up your plots. So here goes, pay attention:
My main character is a certified unmaker. This is a type of mage, one that specialises in making and dispelling curses as well as magic-made glues and cement, or oilslicks, basically simple conjured material stuff. They're the type who study the roots of magic, the mechanisms. The ones who will tell you "Don't do this while you're casting fireballs or they'll blow up in your face" or "That's not how that magic works, because such and such." This is important: my main character is a magic know-it-all and a bit of a snob. Think Apple or Linux fanboys, or pc gamers versus console peasants, but less of a jerk about it and genuinely concerned about the world at large.
Now, part of the curriculum is dissolving cements made by magic. This is a more recent thing I expanded on, but basically there's different types adhesives and preservatives, even explosives made by manifesting magic. And, much like different types of curses, they all have their unique composition and a unique counter-measure. Every venom has its own specific antivenom. Conjured amber doesn't dissolve to the same thing a conjured spider's web would. You can't un-petrify a gorgon victim with the same spell as a cockatrice victim, that sort of logic.
The mission, the central plot, is to go to reindeer country and open a door that's been sealed with a compound method. The reason the main gets sent and no one else is because she accidentally managed to cast a universal dispel: she can create a kind of acidic mist that eats away at any kind of curse magic, any kind of magical cement, anything summoned, it gets destroyed. The original unmaker spell, basically, the Holy Grail of curse breaking magic. She can do to that door what would otherwise take a research group and a whole faculty of Masters of Magic.
The reason she needs to break down this door is because behind it, there's a small study, a private room, left behind by a rogue unicorn in ancient times. The tomes in the bookcases there are, supposedly, all dangerous; terrorist manuals, essentially. Nothing too bad in modern times, just not the sort of thing you want the general public to have access to. But there's one that's definitely dangerous; the equivalent of a nuke making manual, with some materials included. So she needs to get that one, specifically.
Two obstacles regarding the books: each one is sealed, all of them in different ways. So the spiderweb and amber kind of differences play up there. Second, there's no marking on the outside. She can't tell which book she's unsealing until after she's unlocked it. Third problem, unrelated to the books, she has a ten-year-old unicorn boy in her care who may or may not have been the result of a teenage pregnancy, and she really needs to get him proper education back home. But that's not relevant to the story.
So how it plays out is: she unlocks the door, mistakenly thinks she'll be done in a matter of days, tells some important characters that it'll be done in days, but then when she still hasn't found the right book, she realises there's a whole cellar beneath the room she'd been checking, filled to the brim with more sealed books, as well as spikes on the ground, so one wrong step in the dark and she'd be hurt, or dead. She finds this room because she's a bat pony (sort of), complete with sonar. I'm handwaving that she didn't find it sooner because she needs to be touching a surface to get a view of what's beyond it, and she never pinged the smaller room itself before that. Again, not the main problem.
Repeating the sequence of events here: she unseals the door with the spell that only she can do, then unseals a bunch of books one at a time, each with the right spell as per her education, then stumbles upon a workload she cannot hope to handle within the timeframe she got herself in.
Can you find the major flaw in this sequence? I'm somewhat embarrassed it took me this long to think of it myself.
Here's a song about groupies to help you think.
On a completely unrelated note: finally saw Guardians of the Galaxy, on BBC. Was confused at certain points, never disappointed. Looking forward to watching Baby Groot kick ass and take names. Especially considering he probably can't write.
Why does she need to find the right manual? If there's a load of terrorist manuals and one nuke-making manual, I'd expect the powers-that-be to jump on "just burn the whole lot" as an easier solution.
Are the books sealed magically? If so, why doesn't the universal dispel work on them? (Assuming there's a reason in there)
4507020
Because the so-called terrorist stuff is just basic military training, things that can be taught in school. Things that history has revealed. The nuke contains spells that no one else knows, the forgotten stuff. Mythical-level things.
Edit for clarity: if you give any of the other books to a disgruntled pony or deer, you end up with dime-a-dozen a villain causing city-wide mayhem, no different from other criminal wizards who were taught in schools. Give that one book to the same pony or deer, you end up with a one-of-a-kind supervillain that can end the world.
They can't actually 'burn' the whole thing, because technically the library is in reindeer country, and the powers that be are a nation that used to be enemies. You torch the place, it's an act of war.
You are right about the universal dispel, that's the one. They're sealed magically, and normally it'd take a regular unmaker to open them. But then why not use the universal dispel from the getgo to save time? That's the major flaw: anyone who can open the door wouldn't have to waste time doing the books one by one.
4507027
My thoughts on that flaw would be something like:
Older inks are often acidic/corrosive/toxic, and destroy the paper they were written on, which is one reason modern archivists have such a hard task keeping books in one piece. The older a book is, the more effort is involved keeping it in one piece when you try to read it. Of course, by the time printed books became feasible, scribes had hundreds of years experience making better less volatile ink and more resilient paper. So those documents last better.
In a world with magic, maybe they didn't bother improving their ink and paper making technology. Just slap an anti-ageing spell on a book as the last stage of publishing. Maybe it's also some kind of immutability charm, that means you can more easily tell if a book's been modified. But the downside of books having magical protection against age is that casting a general dispel on it could quite easily make your priceless ancient grimoire crumble to dust.
4507053
Yeah, that thought had crossed my mind, too. I'm in the process of
editingcorrecting it so she does use the universal one right from the start, given that it makes her claims of not needing that much time a lot more powerful. It'll also allow for more drama, because it's a very draining spell with no documentation to help her. But the books treated for anti-age react like any other book would that's been left vacuum-packed. The seals are the protection, removing it won't damage the book itself.Of course, using acid, magical or otherwise, has its own associated risks for books, so I can still add some tension/need for skill to that situation.
It's like the whole 'I've got a gun, why don't I just shoot him' thing that came up in Indiana Jones at some point. I think it was Raiders. Which is why I put it up here: when you introduce magic to these kinds of plot, sometimes you can forget some obvious issues. I'm sure the writers of Avatar: the Last Airbender had similar issues, too. But I ramble.
Thanks for the feedback, at any rate.