I started a site over at http://www.warpr0n.com but was having a bit of difficulty communicating the point. Then during a discussion over at Making Light, Keir Leslie posted a great nugget here:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009721.html#237564
She said: “Certain works use force as handwavium”
And that was exactly what I was trying to get at.
“Handwavium” is any use of language meant to distract the audience from reality. As it relates to war, violence, and use of force, handwavium refers to some event in which the speaker attempts to imbue with powers beyond what that act of war, violence, or force could normally be expected to produce.
War Handwavium is quite common in political speeches. It’s also used for interesting effects in fiction.
Does a “romantic” portrayal of war change our view of war? How can we measure if a work of fiction is portraying war “romantically”? This is what the war-handwavium scoring system attempts to measure. Whether you like a story or not, whether it is a “good” story or not, is not what is being measured here. What is being measured is how a story presents war, violence, and force in non-realistic ways.