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Crowdsourcing a Detail
03-27-2014, 10:48 PM
Okay, this is a kind of silly thing to ask people to brainstorm, but hell, I've been turning it over and over in my head and can't come up with a good answer by myself.
What would be a good term for the magical equivalent of a classic pre-1996 computer hacker? Someone who discovers what the Universal Theory of Magic lets them do and then recapitulates the entire hacker evolution from larval stage to guru, only for magic? The two most obvious neologisms, "spacker" and "macker", just sound silly. I don't want something so alien sounding that the correspondence between magic and computers is completely missing, but ... I'm having a critical imagination failure here and I need help.
This isn't something immediate -- I won't need it for a few chapters yet -- so you have lots of time to argue nomenclature.
Thanks!
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I'd personally go with wacker or wicker (wizard + hacker). There are plenty of fun connotations there, such as wicker making on think of basket weaving, ie weaving magic together, and wacker pointing both toward wacko (ie, a loony, such as our dear Douglas) and whack (ie, a strong hit, which anyone proefficient with magic hacking could give to a lot of people)
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Seraviel Wrote:I'd personally go with wacker or wicker (wizard + hacker). There are plenty of fun connotations there, such as wicker making on think of basket weaving, ie weaving magic together, and wacker pointing both toward wacko (ie, a loony, such as our dear Douglas) and whack (ie, a strong hit, which anyone proefficient with magic hacking could give to a lot of people)
And from the chaotic wand movements required...
Something a little mundane-sounding, but 'Magician' might be worth it. Something that starts out sort of snotty and derisive - "It's not real magic!!one" - but sort of becomes adopted and backported to be a contraction of Magic Mathematician or something. Something that implies mastery and understanding of the base principals, rather than stick-twaddling by rote and tradition.
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I'm drawing a blank on actual words, but I keep wanting to fit 'Hermetic' in there, somewhere. HP magic doesn't seem like there's any rhyme or reason to it, and the Hermetic tradition is known for taking a scientific approach to the control of magical forces, so it fits... it's just bloody awkward to make a proper term out of.
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I'm not surprised you're asking for help with naming. Many times I've have stared a screen of prose or code for tens of minutes trying to come up with the appropriate name for a character or a variable. Semiotics is its own form of magic.
I'm going to suggest " grokker" as a possibility. It might imply a certain level of wizardry above a common hacker, but as the jargon file notes, "A good hacker could become a wizard for something given the time to study it."
And, to be honest, Harry Potter is chock full of words that "just sound silly".
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Well, my first thought was Weaver, given that the UTM (IIRC) doesn't let you cast magic directly but lets you understand and make working magic systems. You'd have to weave the magic into a form to use.
My next thought was Lego based, a Builder given the above. (I'll admit, the Lego Move did influence that one.)
Then I thought more along the weaving line and thought Wefter, after the warp and weft of a fabric. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weft]Wikipedia page for Weft.
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You could always go technojargonese and call it "Thaumaturgical Engineer".
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ECSNorway Wrote:You could always go technojargonese and call it "Thaumaturgical Engineer". Which gets shortened to "thaumaturgist," then " thaumer." People tend to like using short words instead of long ones.
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Calculator. Number cruncher. Cruncher.
The problem with "cruncher" is that you'd probably have to explain the etymology, since it of course sounds more like someone who does persuasive things to kneecaps.
Edit: I was trying for a phrase to convey the disdain more traditional magic-users, who thought of it as an Art rather than a Science, might feel for those who calculate the results in advance rather than empirically exploring possibilities.
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I was tempted to say "wildmage," but that seems more indicative of someone just poking at magic to see what happens, rather than someone who is down in the source code. Maybe "coder" or "codemage," though that implies someone who knew something about computer terminology, which puts it in Muggle territory, or implies cyphers and some sort of encrypted magic (which would be an interesting idea - magic reinforced against counterspells through complexity rather than force of will - but not particularly relevant right now). Maybe "hexcracker" or "spellcracker" (with the difference between the two being like the difference between a hacker and a cracker)?
The question is, of course, what color hat will our "hacker" be wearing?
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Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
All interesting and intriguing suggestions. "Cruncher" sadly might conflict with Doug's perjorative "crunchy", though.
True; that only occurred to me after I'd added my edit. Still, there are times when slang terms intersect from differing directions. My brother-in-law once commented that he'd heard a certain recently deceased musician was "whacked." It turned out he'd meant she was insane, or at least on the brink of it, but I only learned that after I asked what evidence he had that the Mob had murdered her. (Which says something, I guess, about my patterns of thought.)
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Quote:Cobalt Greywalker wrote:
Well, my first thought was Weaver, given that the UTM (IIRC) doesn't let you cast magic directly but lets you understand and make working magic systems. You'd have to weave the magic into a form to use.
Spellweaver and Spellforger would probably both work.
Since Doug would be founding an entirely new system for magical understanding, words based off of synonyms for Founder would also be appropriate:
Synonyms author, begetter, creator, establisher, founder, founding father, generator, inaugurator, initiator, instituter ( or institutor), originator, sire
Related Words cocreator, cofounder; conceiver, contriver, designer, deviser, formulator, innovator, introducer, inventor, spawner; builder, maker, producer; developer, pioneer, researcher, researchist; organizer, promoter; encourager, galvanizer, inspiration, inspirer
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While a good idea, Shepherd, my immediate need is for a term from Doug's world that he'd be applying.
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Magician + Mathematician = "Magimatician", maybe?
How about "Cantriper"?
The worst I can come up with is "Silicon Wizard," but that sounds like a techno-mage hero handle. Heh, maybe head of the FBI Cyber Crimes Division in Warriors World.
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Surger. A contraction/corruption of 'sciurge', meaning (loosely) 'one who works miracles through knowledge'.
Accurate, doesn't trip too clumsily off the tongue... sure, it's a horribly bastardized hybrid of Latin and Greek, but 'gnosisurgy' didn't have the right flow.
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Quote:nemonowan wrote:
How about "hexxer"?
Hm. "Hexx0r". I like "surger" too, for its derivation... and nothing says there has to be just one term...
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DeputyJones Wrote:Magician + Mathematician = "Magimatician", maybe? So, in Warrior's World, Donald Duck in Mathamagic Land was a thaumatologic primer?
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Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:
While a good idea, Shepherd, my immediate need is for a term from Doug's world that he'd be applying.
Okay. How about just calling such people Merlins?
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The Magicals sometimes swear by Merlin, how about one of his enemies? Call them Morgan's or La Fays?
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Hmm. As a tongue-in-cheek comic book reverence, Marveler (as in one who marvels)?
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The actual term for a magical scientist is a Thaumaturge. IIRC the shortened form is Thurge or Thurges. THamatURGE
Atlanteen Trilogy RPG if you must know where that came from. Its sister game has a wide variety of magics and I think it also uses the same term. I'll have to dig them both out to check to be sure. the other game is known as Talislanta with its fifty+ styles of magic.
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so the first thing that came to mind is someone that just plays around with magical theory has *got* to be called a scroll kiddy. Moving from there I would say cracker should suffice. Since real computer hackers don't want anything to do with crackers, I can see where someone from the Potterverse would pick up on it and apply it to magical means.
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Quote:DaemeonX wrote:
Since real computer hackers don't want anything to do with crackers, I can see where someone from the Potterverse would pick up on it and apply it to magical means.
But Bob said he was looking for "a term from Doug's world that he'd be applying," not a term that developed in the Potterverse.
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