Handwavium & Original Intent

[M Fnord]

In an attempt to avoid derailing the rules thread any more than is absolutely necessary:
Mid-thread, I said:

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Everybody's forgotten this - hell, I've forgotten it most of the time - but the central precept isn't that the Mundanes aren't using handwavium at all because it's dangerous and scary, they're not using handwavium for the purposes the fen are using it for because, frankly, they can think of better shit to do with handwavium than colonize space while pretending to be Klingons and space heroes and all that. They're building Utopia on their terms: nice, peaceful, prosperous and maybe a bit dull, while the fen are building Utopia on their terms: free, wooly, full of excitement, adventure and really wild things.

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To which Morganni replied:

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This seems to be hard to reconcile with all the stuff that makes it sound like it's considered actively dangerous in most nations. I suppose it might just be being used for certain applications, but the question is which and how much?

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It is hard to reconcile with the already-written stuff that makes handwavium out to be the next OMGdanger. Thankfully, by compressing the timeline down we've got a decent excuse in that by SOS-con it's been, what, only five years since handwavium was discovered. We're still in that uncertainty phase where everybody's touchy about the stuff.
I blame myself for not pushing that bit a little harder in the original plotbunny thread. It's something of an important point to the original setting - an exploration of one of the great Geek Fallacies - that got lost in the threadchurn. Ah well, water under the bridge and all that.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

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