I've been thinking again (run for cover!).
This time, it was on why handwavium can act so differently with different people. And I came to the hypothesis that for them...it's different handwavium.
Here's my reasoning: first, handwavium must have some store of knowledge that it's using to build/upgrade items. I don't believe that it's just magically waving its arms to make things happen (if it had arms), and if it didn't have SOME sort of tech library to direct what it does, I can't see it doing anything but sitting there. Pretty much everybody can get the handwavium to access certain levels of that library - the 'general spaceship' level is at an 'all users' access level.
The thing is - the handwavium resonates with its users, and depending on who's using it, other levels of the tech library get unlocked. The Professor has free reign in the 'mad science' directory, with probably some odd access points here and there in the other sections. My character pretty much lives in the biology section. It might be random, it might be what resonates best with the knowledge/ideas that the character has...but for each person, handwavium acts differently because it actually IS different, in the knowledge that it can draw on.
This also has some fun ramifications when you have multiple people working on a single project. If the handwavium is unlocked for all of their sections, then you might get weird crossovers and synergies that you wouldn't see with just one person acting alone. Bob's ship...moon?...might be a good example. You have a lot of people who worked together to make it, and some very interesting quirks popped out in the end product. The synthesis of the wildlife making an AI sounds like a GOOD example of what you might get from wiccans and computer-inclined people working together, for instance. This has a fair bit of potential for interesting creations, I think - especially if you've got several people with wildly different access levels to the handwavium library. *grin* A good reason to keep the Jason and the Professor from working on any joint projects, most likely. Lord only knows WHAT you'd get.
So - feelings, opinions? This just popped into my head, and I thought I'd see what people thought of it.
This time, it was on why handwavium can act so differently with different people. And I came to the hypothesis that for them...it's different handwavium.
Here's my reasoning: first, handwavium must have some store of knowledge that it's using to build/upgrade items. I don't believe that it's just magically waving its arms to make things happen (if it had arms), and if it didn't have SOME sort of tech library to direct what it does, I can't see it doing anything but sitting there. Pretty much everybody can get the handwavium to access certain levels of that library - the 'general spaceship' level is at an 'all users' access level.
The thing is - the handwavium resonates with its users, and depending on who's using it, other levels of the tech library get unlocked. The Professor has free reign in the 'mad science' directory, with probably some odd access points here and there in the other sections. My character pretty much lives in the biology section. It might be random, it might be what resonates best with the knowledge/ideas that the character has...but for each person, handwavium acts differently because it actually IS different, in the knowledge that it can draw on.
This also has some fun ramifications when you have multiple people working on a single project. If the handwavium is unlocked for all of their sections, then you might get weird crossovers and synergies that you wouldn't see with just one person acting alone. Bob's ship...moon?...might be a good example. You have a lot of people who worked together to make it, and some very interesting quirks popped out in the end product. The synthesis of the wildlife making an AI sounds like a GOOD example of what you might get from wiccans and computer-inclined people working together, for instance. This has a fair bit of potential for interesting creations, I think - especially if you've got several people with wildly different access levels to the handwavium library. *grin* A good reason to keep the Jason and the Professor from working on any joint projects, most likely. Lord only knows WHAT you'd get.
So - feelings, opinions? This just popped into my head, and I thought I'd see what people thought of it.