The Youth of Zatanna
Jan. 28th, 2011 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyIn case anyone was still under the impression that Adam Beechen bothers to understand the basic properties of the characters he chooses to write, here is another example that may help to disabuse you of that notion.
For context, Zee has just been fitted with braces... because for some reason Zatara would rather spend a significant chunk of money and commit his daughter to years of pain than magic her teeth straight... and the pain and unfamiliarity of them is making her speech all drooly and unintelligible. She's waiting for her father to come pick her up when she encounters a thief.
She crashes into an electronics or toy store or something and discovers a Speak'n'Spell.
... okay. To Beechen's credit, at least he did get that it's sdrow sdrawkcab, secnetnes drawrof, which not everyone does. However, the magic is not in the words themselves and hasn't been since before the first Crisis. The mere backwards speaking of a phrase does not cause magic to happen, and Zee doesn't need to speak at all to cast a spell. The magic comes directly from her, and the words are like turning up the volume control on a stereo. What Beechen has done here is basically put a volume control knob on a blender and put it next to the stereo. That will not make the music louder, Beechen. Zee does not work that way and neither does DC logomancy.
For context, Zee has just been fitted with braces... because for some reason Zatara would rather spend a significant chunk of money and commit his daughter to years of pain than magic her teeth straight... and the pain and unfamiliarity of them is making her speech all drooly and unintelligible. She's waiting for her father to come pick her up when she encounters a thief.
She crashes into an electronics or toy store or something and discovers a Speak'n'Spell.
... okay. To Beechen's credit, at least he did get that it's sdrow sdrawkcab, secnetnes drawrof, which not everyone does. However, the magic is not in the words themselves and hasn't been since before the first Crisis. The mere backwards speaking of a phrase does not cause magic to happen, and Zee doesn't need to speak at all to cast a spell. The magic comes directly from her, and the words are like turning up the volume control on a stereo. What Beechen has done here is basically put a volume control knob on a blender and put it next to the stereo. That will not make the music louder, Beechen. Zee does not work that way and neither does DC logomancy.
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Date: 2011-01-29 11:17 am (UTC)Small magics, ones she's experienced with and has cast before, the more simple elemental stuff can be cast without words, but anything requiring a larger scale restructuring of reality needs a focus, and the backwards talking is her focus, her training wheels as it were. Over the years she got better at doing it all without speaking, but at this stage, not a problem imagining that something involving causing the expansion of her braces would be something she'd need to speak aloud for.
So even in the case you cite elsewhere, the bubble multiplication, even if it IS true magic, is a small spell, dealing with water and air manipulation, perhaps even a good practice spell for a young child to learn.