Wave of the hand

* See also Magic_Fantasy and Cuz
* See also Infinite Stupidity
* See also Real World vs Magic_Fantasy
* See also Quantum_Particles_Can_Do_Anything
* See also Canon
 "It is like they just waved their hand and it appeared ... like Magic." - Becky Thatcher in 'Tom Sawyer Revisited' 
=="Canticum Asaph fortis Deus, Abire debuit, claudus EST DE ASINO SCRIPTORES eguisset" - Ovid==
==THE MIGHTY GOD "CUZ" IS ALL THAT THOSE LAME-ARSED WRITERS EVER NEED !!! - Ovid==
 Ovid : The part of the quote left out is "AND I SHIT BIGGER THAN THEY ARE !!!"
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"WAVE OF THE HAND" - Summoning something as if by Magic - Done Too Easy, too unrealistic, without supporting details or plausibility.
Creating something out of thin air -- to "make out of whole cloth" ( To fabricate something completely fictional/unworkable or utterly false )
For Writers to choose to do something with LITTLE REAL EFFORT taken : Them not even caring to check if it is likely/rational/true/factual nor to correct the error. Having "Missing important details and/or logical steps, and being against : Common Sense, Tradition, Intuition, or Worldly examples."
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 "A Story So Flawed That Even The Teller's Dog Does Not Buy It" - Mark Twain 
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Used in a Sentence :
"The 'Wave of the hand' faux-quantum aspects in Infinite BS, which are used to justify Columbia's setting and story, was weakly connected to any/all Real Theory, was blatantly implausible, and was not even consistent with itself. "
Seriously, We Coulda had TeslaPunk. And they coulda skipped their Faux-science and gone for more effort in improving Combat -- For them to actually deserve those absurdly high game ratings the ass-licking game review entities gave them).
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Clueless Gamemakers :
Portraying Fink 'Looking at things through Tears, and THEN building them, and EVEN mass producing them as Products' -- THAT'S about the same as : Taking Ken Levine and have HIM look at your typical Desktop Computer or Laptop, and THEN have him make one from Tinkertoys and Mechano/Erector-set parts ( and, of course, toilet paper tubes ). 
Wouldn't it have been simpler to have Fink actually steal most futuristic things through Tears, instead of that incredibly ludicrous idea that HE made all of them in his little (HUGE) cliche 19th century technology-level factory ? We could have had a whole lot of disparate/eclectic objects from different time eras all being jumbled together ( preferably in semi-clever discordant ways - The Player never knows what to expect to see next ). To the people of 1893-1912, it would look strange (even alien) anyway, whether the things were from 1930 or 2016 or 2112. But then, What was seen IN THE GAME already WOULD appear strange and new to Columbites across the ~20 years it floated about.
Seriously, If you are going to tell a Story, then at least put a little effort up front ( where it is easiest to get things right/logical/coordinated from the start - *BEFORE* you dig yourself into a hole with 'trailer' demonstrated content ). Make the 'Science' and 'Engineering' more real/plausible, instead of just Pretty Nonsense. Effort thinking through how things work and having them done in a conventional/ordinary/understood way makes 'Things Which Are Extraordinary' stand out all the more. Unfortunately, that's not how Infinite BS was done.
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Fantasy ? - Sorry This MMORPG is to be REAL BioShock :
NOT 'Flower Bombs' and 'Lollipop Guns' used against the Hello-Kitty look-alike meanies and the blue-skinned mole-men. NOT Giant Goldfish are menacing the Magic City once again and SO Lets put on our propeller hats, get our magic tridents and be after them.
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FANTASY - That is effectively what Infinite BS was.
'Quantum Physics' is just a buzzword to these writers, abused to justify what they did in-game. 'Tesla Coil' would have been just as good (better), even with all the things Tesla promised, he fell WELL-SHORT of Time Travel and Omniscient Cross Dimensionalism, Anti-Gravity (sortof) - those still weren't quite on his list.
The Rapture Reborn MMORPG would go in the Opposite Direction - More towards reality, which might be difficult to write, and will take more thought/imagination ( ie- some of those Plasmids and Tonic stuff are a bit hard to justify ), but that challenge is what makes it worthwhile -- a bigger REAL Achievement to accomplish.
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An Example About Infinite BS : 
The way Fink has created all these things and products which the Player sees in Columbia. Fink could allegedly see things 'through Tears', and then he just makes them. Easy-Peasy, Right ?
OK, an equivalent of "that is " :
Ken Levine has an electronic watch. HE HAS IT IN HIS HAND. He knows what it is ( and at least its external function ) what it does. So now let's have him TRY TO MAKE another. <<< THIS example has NOT THE FAR BIGGER (more difficult) TASK OF setting up an assembly line and producing them, so as to be able to sell them as a consumer product.
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA - NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS COULD HE DO THAT ( in a comparable Infinite BS environment --- NOR PROBABLY TODAY ). That Watch is the product of A Thousand far Greater Minds.
It is not a matter of being smart. It is a matter of the thousand and one complex things required to achieve that task.
Modern Materials and Tools have to be FIRST made. Fink would NEED vast Know-how and Skills ( which he doesn't possess ) in at least a DOZEN different technical disciplines of HOW to use those Tools and Materials -- to do what is required. 
The actual design (in this case supposedly done via SEEING the thing) HAS to be Reverse-Engineered ( yet more Tools and Techniques - itself - a VERY complex and advanced process/ability ) JUST TO ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND enough about it all to EVEN SET THE BASIC DESIGN REQUIREMENTS OF ANY MECHANISM.
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SO NO. This is just ONE TYPE OF the Infinite BS game's awful/feeble/inept BAD Fantasy aspects he had carelessly tossed together and pushed blatantly at the Player. (( Magic 'comes in' and out goes most of the story relevancy especially to ANYTHING Historic. ))
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In reality, it might take a lifetime for someone ( like Levine) to even make a merely adequate workable WIRE, when you point them at the ground and say "What you need is down there, Copper, Go To It" ( Remember there ain't no Home Depot, nor well-stocked mining supply house, nor the "Mining and Smelting Copper For Morons" Book being available ... Tools, Fuels, Construction, Skill, Understanding of all of it, etc, etc, etc ... )
(( Bleh - Infinite BS WAS Feeble Lazy Fantasy - WORSE ... Lazy Bad Fantasy. Feeble Lazy Fantasy - To Mis-Quote Ovid : "I SHIT ON Such Pretentious Flawed Storytelling" - the kind we saw in Infinite BS. ))
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In For a Pound of BS, In For a Ton ... ( And your $60 ... NO REFUND!!! )
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Snap of the Fingers ( Wave of the Hand ) :
Just a bit odd how Eleanor and Tenenbaum (in BS2) can arbitrarily remove Alpha Series conditioning, and tweak Vita-Chambers with such ease when the story requires them to.
Well some of it was part of Tenenbaum's area of work, and she probably knew where to find the info of how the Vita-Chamber worked. Actually, the problem of many such conditionings is that they are easier to disrupt than they are to maintain. Tenenbaum got Little Sisters away from Big Daddies by herself, so she may have developed some acute understanding of what was needed to disable the BDs in many ways ( without requiring major fire-power or surgery ). We don't know the details of how long Tenenbaum may have worked on Sigma ( perhaps months ?? Or even how long Jack had been incommunicado while she did similar for him ).
Eleanor had years to mess around with Vita-Chamber's in the story ( They include hints she messed around with machines alot as a child to try to justify he super-scientist/engineerEleanor being a "Wrench Wench" - TV Tropes https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WrenchWench . abilities ), and there were many Little Sisters to help her find information about how they worked. Your waking ( as Delta ) may have been after a LONG sequence of 'attempts' which didn't quite work.
And as for Ryan's 'death', with Delta remade after 10 years (allegedly) just from DNA from somewhere else than where he died, that kinda takes the wind out of the Nay-Sayers who say "But that machine was turned off and all the others were too far away". In my opinion, they really blew it ( in BS1 ), with not having Ryan 'Twisting the Twist' by really having ALSO faked HIS own death to 'get' Fontaine/Atlas - Which would have been far more logical than him suddenly turning into a Surrender Monkey, and leaving Rapture to the enemy he despised ( and right at a point he was winning ).
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TOO MANY Missing Pieces (BAD WRITING):
Jeremiah Fink the Caveman vs Advanced Technology
Too much we see in Infinite BS where somehow someone (Fink) just looks at an idea, and next thing they are mass producing something based on it as a consumer good. Machinery is produced that performs tasks which we barely can do today, when at that time a Flush Toilet was looked on as a modern marvel. This is actually ridiculous, and as much Fantasy as the Quantumz Bullshit is. 
* Materials that don't exist yet
* Tools that don't exist yet ( industrial/practical tools - an even further preventative reality)
* Understanding/Expert-Skills/Detailed-Knowledge that don't exist ( and CANNOT as if you read the ingredients on a box of cornflakes, as the game proposes/assumes/contrives ). 
* Practicality which does NOT exist - Impractical products that cannot sell become horribly expensive failures ( EX- All the money in Columbia couldn't build a steel plant for ONE measly new type of steel ). 
All of these missing elements later came about ( in Reality ) because of LIFETIMES of effort by hundreds of intelligent scientists and engineers in dozens of disciplines, AND their employing hundreds of specific Technologies -- and often huge amounts of money and time to incrementally develop each one. AND THEN only for things that had practical use to have sufficient demand for them.
Infinite's Fink is like a deaf man 'listening' to Mozart through a keyhole, and then who starts to compose and play equivalent great music without even having pen and paper or even an instrument. This effectively is what they claim Fink did, and it is more Fantasy than the BS Quantum pseudo-science or Levine's strange ideas about Christianity, or about real American history.
The Luteces' quantum science achievements were supposedly produced (far too early), and had little current Real Science to base them on ( And even those that took place later 'for real' had to wait 100 years to have any practical use ).
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ADAM Genetics in BioShock Rapture itself is similar, but at least there was supposed to be years of research by Rapture's high-end technocrats, and results for the eventual manipulation of genetics to base it upon. Tenenbaum supposedly saw basics done a decade before in the work of Nazi scientists.
For my ADAM based Bio-Electronics extrapolation ( a way to facilitate/explain various Rapture mechanical marvels being possible so much earlier ), a critical missing piece was the ability to shape small features ( for the needed miniaturization employing details in fractions of millimeters ), which cellular manipulation could solve. There's a leap of imagination in employing what previously was 'medical' technology could be used to revolutionize electronics ( but note it is derivative of the base 'genetic' technology posited in Rapture ). 
For all the underwater stuff used to create Rapture, contemporary WW2 era technologies, materials and engineering/industry were sufficiently advanced, and were not so extraordinary as it is for many things shown in Columbia which would be seen as too futuristic even for today. For Infinite BS, you might as well expect some 'Hillbilly Moonshiners' to have carried out the 1969 Moonshot using magic beans, bacon and chewing tobacco Even ignoring the technical abilities such people did actually possess - quite a lot of when it came to making alcohol ... Experts in their area of technology ....
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TECHNOLOGY CHANGE - IT DON'T HAPPEN WITH 'THE WAVE OF A HAND' :
When one technology changes (is made feasible), out in the Whole REAL World there are all those people potentially available to see/understand/use it. It might get developed because of the new feasibility/opportunity. BUT Someone now has to APPLY that technology ( ideas/discoveries are just the beginning of the processReal World realities can be ignored by gamewriters, but they do that at their own peril when at the same time they try to be historic and 'enlightenedly' point to 'those old evil times' they attempt to portray. ) -- It IS ALOT of work ( and requires further genius/research to produce usable results ). 
: "Theory does not produce products" - Thomas Alva Edison 
In a tiny microcosm of a few thousand people like Columbia (OR RAPTURE), any advancements are limited by the available resources/people. That is largely what already exists at that time in the World. All that Anachronistic crap we saw in Columbia - Thing after Thing after Thing would ALL have to be developed there in Columbia to have them exist in the game ( so consider the EFFORT that would be required FOR *EACH* THING ). 
Oh, they had almost 20 years ( or 10 since the 'Secession' ) ? Sorry every other product maker ( including Fink ) would have to be a genius Tesla/Edison to achieve all that Stuff the gamemakers showed -- Even given 10/20 years. One little thing discovered/added does not change everything else immediately ( or sometimes ever ), and so the impact is not felt for a LONG time -- for even just the One Thing. 
Oh yeah, 'Automatic Stallion' ... couldn't be more complicated to make than a salad chopper, could it ?? How hard could creating dozens of NEW specialized technologies and making them work together in a Real World product be ?? (( ANSWER : HARD AND TIME CONSUMING AND HAS TO BE PAID FOR )) OH WE HAVE A BLUE ORBY THING, AND that's HOW IT WORKS !!! That thing is as complicated as an early automobile - So why not JUST HAVE THE FRICKEN AUTOMOBILE ??? ( Way of the future seen through those Tears, No ? ) (( Cuz it is 'cute' and 'neat' and 'SteamPunky' ??? No matter that it would be a nearly useless gimmick thing someone in 1700 would/could build for the King Of France )) 
Products that are to USE the New Idea - they are most often complicated/have complications : 
The lightbulb "using electric current through a filament which will glow white and give off lots of light" !!! WOW, Great Idea !!! ( BTW, IT WASN'T original to Edison. ) Oops, first we have to make a filament that last longer than 1 second before it burns out - it should last MANY hours to be practical ... It is also got to be cheap. Oops, you vibrate it and it falls apart. What materials do we test next ?? ( That bit took a year by itself. ) We need a better vacuum - lets make a machine to do that. Better build cheaper electric generators now. And how do we get the electricity to peoples houses ? Etc, etc, etc ... And then Improvements were made for further decades, to give you what YOU think of as "a simple lightbulb".
Societies accommodate those technical changes slowly ( it is called 'inertia' ). If they are found to be useful, then they get adopted ( and further developed to make them affordable to more people, leading to widespread adoption and use and improvements ), and THEN they bring other new similar things - WHICH ALSO NOW HAVE TO BE IN TURN DEVELOPED ( taking significant Time/Resources/Genius ). Meanwhile there are hundreds/thousand of other things which largely stay the same. 
Isolated inventions can sit long unused - If the time isn't right for a need, or some other enabling element is missing, or the needed development resources never materialize, or the person with a vision isn't there. It is like the Mad Scientist's/Inventor's lab that contains weird wondrous things, but they really never get out of that lab for decades (or ever) to become usable products. 
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AND to be Realistic, that required TIME should be included/accounted-for IN ANY REALISTIC STORY . This Too-Instant-Shit(tm) in the Infinite BS timeline is bad-fantasy bosh. Cutesy advanced shit, incompatible partial changes, missing pieces, things magically taken care of ... Writers can have IDEAS, but the hard/skilled part is how to fit it all into a world's context cohesively and believably ( and not just spew the first BS they can think of to cover up there flaw/lack of world detail ). 
You might claim Infinite BS had 'Story', but if the story is built out of illogical trash ( just a pretty slapped together context for a Shooter Game ), then that claim falls short (is just Sales BS).
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Sci-Fi Rapture (long before ADAM) largely used era technology to initially be built ( assuming we have it NOT located at some ridiculously absurd ocean depth ), which WAS available at the time. The Genetic Enhancement thing was totally separate from the city's construction, and the way its society had been created.
Genetic Research WAS already happening in the REAL WORLD 1950s ( better with references to Nazi research in the 1940s ). With a lot of pushing of that technologies progress ( and some genius made available ), it might have flowered when that Sea Slug ADAM discovery enabled it FAR MORE. ( Note the circumstances of Tenenbaum and Suchong and even Sinclair all being in Rapture ).
Columbia required the Quantum Floatyshit(tm) to be ready from its very start ( with various working technologies able to hold structures/vehicles in the air/to make it work as a 'city' ). Luteces meet 'The Amazing Comstock', and suddenly the Money FLOWS IN, and instantly A city block floats - Outright miraculous that Rapidity.
Consider that (real world), during that 1893 time period, they were still unsuccessfully attempting to make the simplest workable Airplanes out of cloth, light wood struts and wire, and while the required internal-combustion engines were still primitive/patheticly-underpowered. 
SO, an incredibly short timeframe was given in the Infinite BS story to accomplish far too much. Badly Shoe-horning it all into cherry-picked events ( rather needlessly -- as plenty of atrocities and other historic stuff could have been picked to fill in their social-ills commentary agenda ), which made the whole timeline wholly ludicrous ( quite poor/illogical/flawed circumstances even for a Fantasy-driven plot/story ).
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