It's been around a month or so since I was firmly told to leave the Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Original Character community. The reasons are… not so manifold, if it comes down to it, but the net effect is that I've been working on other things apart from MSLN-related works now, since the burden of expectations has been removed. I'll still be writing OC fanfic, since otherwise my head will asplode (a feeling many writers will find familiar), but I have no illusions that anyone other than myself will be interested, and I am an easy audience to please. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't at least slightly annoyed, and it is this annoyance which proves that the problem which necessitated my exit lies with me.

So it goes.

What was introduced about two-thirds of the way of the first season of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha has thoroughly assimilated the rest of the series into itself by season three: a sideways genre shift from a Magical Girl show into something more military.

I have mentioned before that I like the magical girl aspects of MSLN, which puts me somewhat diametrically opposite from a great many of the series' fans, who make their displeasure at my tastes very well known. This does mean that I have a reluctance to explore the military aspects of the Time-Space Administration Bureau, and since those are what many of the fanfic writers exploring the Nanoha-verse focus on (if they're not writing romance stories), I have somewhat free rein over pretty much everything else.

I'm getting tired of searching for suitable and relevant pictures to break up the Wall of Text. So I'm going to try not bothering this time, and see if it's especially jarring.

I must admit to an intense bias here: I don't like the military. Or rather, I don't like what the miltary does to accomplish its stated general objective. It strikes me as being hugely inefficient, and it'll take too long to get into the details here.

However, the military does provide another result: a large group of people who have been conditioned to do exactly as ordered (useful for crises which require manpower), and who have significant amounts of funding. Enough funding, in fact, to be able to requisition high-level research and researchers, in order to create lots of hardware that makes pretty bangs and flashes. Which is, I think, a large part of the appeal in military-oriented fiction.

This is the primary reason for the Nanoha-verse's obsession with the military aspects of the TSAB, I think. We know it's certainly not for the aggressive part, since the main characters act with disdain towards the viewpoint expressed by the hawkish Regius, and are "proven" morally right, although I strongly suspect that the argument will not hold up in logical and reasonable debate.

The TSAB provides substantial support and resources, as well as a convenient way for the protagonists to meet and work together as a team: because they are ordered to. In exchange, the TSAB theoretically expects everything a military expects of its personnel, such as the regimentation and obeying of bizarre orders necessary to maintain the ability for a sizeable group of testosterone-filled soldiers to follow even more bizarre orders without question, and certainly without hauling off and using all that pretty flash and bang hardware to slaughter each other.

However, this aspect is not really explored all that much in the Nanoha-verse, since it gets in the way of showing the big flashy battles. The TSAB's role in the lives of the characters reminds me more of Freedom Corps in City of Heroes (and Arachnos for City of Villains): a support organization for the highly individualistic player characters, giving them the necessary backup and amenities, but not requiring more than a token presence in the narrative, except when railroading the characters so as not to break the story. There could be significant involvement in the character's backstory, but on screen is another matter.

This resemblance was noted when I pondered the Barrier Jackets: the important characters have somewhat individualized outfits when in the field, and the similarities can be (and in fact are) explained as a Supergroup thing. The background characters, however, all get uniform, er, uniforms.

The upshot of this is that when I first created my Original Characters, I placed them in the TSAB military Just Because, but I couldn't keep my own biases from influencing the narrative. Therefore, I went through lots of plot contortions to get them (or at least the one surviving character) out of the military, and my next OC specifically declined the offer to join the TSAB.

Which brings up another question: can she refuse to join?

My view of the TSAB is that its primary role is like Star Trek's Federation: an interdimensional/interplanetary body overseeing its members, and providing overall assistance and support in major crises, but not primarily military: Starfleet is not the whole of the Federation.

And in such a utopian view, I cannot see the TSAB forcing someone to join. I suppose they can offer incentives, such as a high salary or some such, but if a potential mage has any objections, they can remain civilian.

Registration is probably mandatory anyway. I don't like how Marvel handled the Civil War arc, since it was so biased that stupidity was the only explanation for the actions of people on all sides, but City of Heroes has had superhero registration as part of its character creation process, partly to explain why no two characters can have the same name on a given server. The Superhero Registration Act in Civil War is more like the Might For Right act in CoH's backstory, which was noted as Bad and Wrong.

The TSAB also probably handles more administrative stuff like a common currency, which I assume to be the standard science fiction staple of "credits". It resolves and arbitrates disputes between member worlds, preferably without needing to send the big guns in. It sends aid and relief to disaster-hit areas. Other than that, however, I see it respecting the autonomy of the worlds in its care, with the various branches on every world and country having the name and authority of the TSAB, but able to act on their own jurisdiction.

And in this, civilian matters such as economics and diplomacy are much more important than military might. Citizens need to feel safe, but they also need to be able to eat, and be assured that tomorrow is going to be more or less like today.

Part of this could be their handling of powerful mages, which I've heard rumblings of discontent about. Why stick these high-powered fighters in desk jobs?

Because, I think, that was their entire intention: the TSAB is not a magocracy. Non-mages are the overwhelming majority (canonically), and we have all sorts of comics like Watchmen which rather histrionically shows the consequences of having superpowered beings do everything. (No, I don't like Watchmen. Too depressing.) I have to appreciate the wisdom of neutering a person of mass destruction by piling paperwork on them. It does also teach them that in a bureaucracy, if you want to use your magic, you'd better have a damn good reason for it, because you'll have to fill out forms in triplicate explaining why.

Portraying this as a struggle between the superpowered and the nonpowered has already been done before, in DC's Kingdom Come. (Didn't like Kingdom Come either. Too reliant on knowing who the heck all these DC characters were.) If one were to believe that fiction is a relatively accurate portrayal of the human condition, the more power a person possesses, with only a few exceptions, the more limited their emotional maturity. Some of these superhero battles resemble nothing more than playground tantrums: the primary problem is that the tantrum-maker is likely not going to stop until they've destroyed several lives in the process.

There is a conversation in the novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, where a character (Ian Malcolm, whom I cannot help but think of as the author avatar) complains that power obtained without requisite training or sacrifice is inherently corrupting, since someone trained to be able to kill with his bare hands has to also know not to kill with his bare hands, at least indiscriminately. Marvel Comics' Peter Parker puts it more succinctly: with great power comes (or rather, should come) great responsibility. In typical superhero comics fashion, it's repeated over and over and over and over again, just in case any reader misses it.

The TSAB, hopefully, teaches responsibility to its recruits, who apparently may join as early as age nine. This does not always work, partly because the TSAB also apparently does not employ any therapists, or Teana's anvilicious outburst would have been avoided much more easily. The lessons taught are not explicitly defined, but I like to think that one of them is that power alone means very little, without a cause or goal to put it to.

It is one reason why I find a lot of action series alienating: the protagonists in a great many of those wish to obtain power. Why? Because they want to be powerful. Why do they want to be powerful? To protect themselves and their friends from threats. So if they're powerful enough to protect their friends, is that mission accomplished? No, because there are always potentially more powerful enemies out there.

It's like there's a Dungeon Master out there throwing the entire range (CR-sorted) of the Monster Manual at the heroes just so they have a reason to use the experience points they're getting.

I personally have the belief that if you defuse a hostage situation by killing all the hostage-takers, you get a certain amount of experience, but if you defuse it by not killing anyone and ending the situation peacefully, you get a much greater amount of experience. Diplomacy trumps firepower.

Needless to say, I've gotten a great deal of flak for this viewpoint. If you're thinking of commenting along the lines of "try talking to a bullet", suffice to say that I've heard it all before.

In any case, this is probably why the TSAB sticks its superheroes behind desks: the most important part of having power is knowing when to use that power, and when not to use that power. In its defense, the Nanoha-verse is pretty good at this, with Nanoha trying to talk to her opponents before blasting them. Since the show knows its audience, though, this usually just results in the antagonists being complete idiots and not responding, thus providing Nanoha with the excuse to unleash the flash and bang.

All of the above is why I have my original characters out of the military arm of the TSAB: I realized that it is much more effective to have my preferred character type in some other position. Freelancer, if all else fails, although there is a promising idea I've had about the historical research division, which allows me to utilize the poor screentime-less Yuuno Scrya.

I do find the prospect of introducing the mythology of Midchilda far, far more interesting than having huge battles. This is possibly unnatural.

So it goes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under mahou shoujo lyrical nanoha strikers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.