I doubt it since they mentioned the Darkhold, which from what I understand is basically Marvel's version of the Necronomicon.
Agents of Shield - Season 4
- Thread starter MarsWeeps
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I doubt it since they mentioned the Darkhold, which from what I understand is basically Marvel's version of the Necronomicon.
^^ Yup, that's exactly what it is.
Indeed. Not only has that plot twist been used a million times and not only is it something that happens frequently in the real world, but in terms of the story it was just a sub-plot that lasted maybe ten or fifteen minutes of screen time and didn't really amount to much. If there isn't more to it, why would they bother to do it at all?
I suspect there will be some fallout for May, but I think it was also used as an excuse to make Simmons suspicious of Fitz and their doctor friend. (What secrets are he/they keeping from Shield and from her?) She's going to want to know about that energy source.
IIRC the Necronomicon exists in the Marvel lore too, but the general idea is that the Darkhold is the master text while the Necronomicon and other such similar works are but an incomplete copies.
As for this "proving" there's no science involved: what is a dark tomb of arcane secrets and eldrich spells other than a text book for *really* complicated and exotic science?
Also, the people messing with it were ding so in a lab and it was some kind of technology that trapped them in their current state, no? Plus, it's not like we haven't seen anything like this before on both AoS & AC.
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It'll just prove that magic is real. Albeit classified as a new branch of science with its own laws, rules, and methods that completely spit in the face of physics and chemistry. And with which a certain level of artistry, intent, and willpower is useful, too.
The impression I'm getting from the 'Doctor Strange' trailers and from that little snippet in Ant-Man, is that the general idea with magic is that it's mostly to do with higher dimensional physics. Things that seem physically impossible, but only because we're limited in our perceptions to three spacial dimensions and one time dimension.
There's all kinds of crazy mind bending stuff in quantum physics, string theory and the like that with a little fictional fudging could be used to frame this stuff, if not explicitly "explain" it (because that would be boring and unnecessary.)
Plus it's being heavily implied that the time stone is the one in play in this movie, so that adds all kinds of possibilities. "Time travel" being by far the least complicated.
Honestly I prefer this route not because I feel everything needs to be explained, but because I think it's more interesting to shine a light on just how freaky and exotic the universe seems to be and how narrow our perception of reality really is. Personally, no eldrich horror or fire ball hurling sorcerer can frighten or entrance me anywhere near as much as this.
The problem with that is that, then, it'll let any super-scientist come up with an endless array of gadgets that completely negate magicians. It's better to keep them completely separate, else it does undermine the whole point of magic existing in the first place.
Well that's the classic "if Batman had time to prepare" argument and applies just as much to science as anything else. You could just as easily say anyone can just find an *even more powerful* magical talisman to counter that that other guys magic.
The end result is the same and honestly, the latter is the more likely scenario because the thing with mind-bendingly advanced physics is that it's *really* hard to figure out. Not "I had to stay up all night figuring it out" hard, more like "it took this species a million years to build a neutron star quantum computer and it took the computer itself two billion years to calculate and collapse the super-position the variables" hard. We're basically talking about the kind of thing a civilisation that's a type-3 on the Kardashev scale would find taxing at best. Which is at the point where, as I've said before, the distinction between "science magic" and "magic magic" becomes essentially meaningless.
Mere human scientists may be able to reverse engineer some of it (like the arc reactor) or follow some of the instructions (like the Darkhold) but it's always a pale shadow of the real thing. Even the Asgardians have limits to their knowledge and abilities.
The problem with the "magic is just magic" approach is that there are no rules, thus there are not stakes and no consequences that can't be undone and that leads to lazy storytelling. Anything can be magicked away, anything can be created and anything can be destroyed. Even fantasy needs some grounding--a point of reference--in order to have meaning.
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Interesting to see the Watchdogs upping their reach. Felix Blake has new and mysteriously interesting friends, and not just that one politician we saw here, probably. To be conducting operations in five nations simultaneously? USA, UK, Spain, Turkey and Russia.
And which Russian city was it? Novosibirsk or Krasnoyarsk seem the most likely candidates going by Mace's office map.
And which Russian city was it? Novosibirsk or Krasnoyarsk seem the most likely candidates going by Mace's office map.
Not sure where you keep coming up with that. Magic most definitely has its own rules, its own laws, and its own methods. Those rules, laws, and methods just defy all scientific principles and sensibilities. For example, instead of erecting an electro-magnetic technobabble ectoplasmic prohibitor field, a sorcerer just has to draw a few runes on the wall and evoke the name of the hoary demon Whogivesaflipicer. Someone like Fitz would just be flabbergasted by that, rambling on about how nonsensical and impossible it is, yet it would work even better than his technobabble cage would. And even then, the cage is only working in a "curing the symptoms rather than the disease" sort of way rather than actually attacking the problem directly like the sorcerer's magic is.
I mean, sure, it's fine to allow a super-scientist to create a set of armor that ignores fire when going up against a sorcerer who can conjure an infinite number of fireballs out of thin air; it's magical, but it's still fire afterall. But allowing a super-scientist to duplicate the conjuring an infinite number of those fireballs out of thin air just makes magic pointless. And there should be plenty of things technobabble can't handle at all, in the same way that there should be plenty of things magic can't handle at all.
Mixing them together as being the same thing, just with magic being a "higher level of physics," completely undermines the distinction altogether. Sure, let Fitz and Simmons think that's what's going on, but have them fail and fail hard whenever they try to duplicate magic because that's not what magic is at all, and that'll be perfectly fine.
Science doesn't rely on a willpower, wishful thinking, and magic words. Never has, never should. Magic, however, always has and always should.
Well, you did get the nice twist that the blackout occurred just as they were going to shock her back to life, which dovetailed cleverly with the larger plot about the EMPs, and which I confess I didn't see coming.
"Oh, shit! Talk about bad timing!"
Plus, as noted elsewhere, the scientist-guy had to reveal the LMDs top-secret power source, which is bound to pay off further down the road.
That's not true at all, there are a lot of fantasy stories dealing with the rules and laws of magic, and the consequences of trying to break them. The entire arcs of Full Metal Alchemist and Once Upon A Time In Wonderland are just two stories that come to mind as soon as the topic is brought up and I'm sure there are plenty of others out there. I'm pretty sure The Dresden Files and Kate Daniels series also both lay some pretty clear rules about how exactly their magic systems work.
I know I've said that people who work on these kinds of shows and movies lie about stuff, but I haven't seen anything yet to make me think that is the case here. If they were just going to be approaching the magic in Dr. Strange and with Ghost Rider the same way they've been approaching everything else, I doubt they'd be making such a big deal out of introducing real magic into the MCU for the first time. "For the first time" would be the key phrase here, that makes it sound like we'll be seeing stuff approached in a whole new way here. We apparently will be getting a bit of science mixed in, but I think that's going to be more of a way of explain what the magic is doing, not necessarily what it is.
I have no idea where you're coming up with any of this.
Hey, everybody! Quit moping around, I'm back! Whoo-hoo! Phil Coulson Power Hour, everyone! 
I had to consider it for a moment also, but I think he was talking about consciousness, and specifically what's on our immediate conscious attention, as opposed to the various sensory, homeostasis, and memory neurons running in the background. As in, May's overwhelming fear was only located in a small part of her brain, but it was driving her illness, and threatening her very life.
It was a supernatural teen drama in its early (and best) years.
Yeah, Aida has to come out of the closet eventually, but there's got to be some after effects for May.
I do think they ultimately acknowledged the Necronomicon, but the Darkhold dates back to the early 70s when the Comics Code was first revised to allow Vampires and Werewolves (but not Zombies). The Darkhold was the source of the Russoff family curse as well as a couple of other things that I can't remember.
All the secrets of the universe are encoded in the Mandelbrot Set. We just have to figure out how to read it.Personally, no eldrich horror or fire ball hurling sorcerer can frighten or entrance me anywhere near as much as this.
To tell you the truth, I thought that bit was pushing it a little too much.
Yeah, that was definitely an unexpected "Oh shit" moment.
You mean like when freaking aliens showed in the otherwise grounded setting whose most impressive things were guy in power armor and dude who becomes a green rage monster?
It's okay, mutant powers and quasi-magical abilities are totally fine as long as you don't say they come from magic. <thumbs up>
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