Mazey

Because all people who might want to harm children appear inherently creepy?

Here's an idea, rather than just judging someone on first impressions, actually get to know someone before leaving your children with them.
I would never leave my children with someone I'd only met once, regardless of my first impressions.

Why do you believe that a bad person can never give a good first impression and a good person can never give a bad one?

He could have just been having a bad day.

I don't know, I've never met the guy, he could be a complete ****-hole for all I know, but one bad encounter is hardly enough to make such a judgement.


And, as a general observation, people on internet forums seem to love finding fault with the personalities of web-comic artists, for some reason.

Yes, of course they can absorb the costs, but they can also absorb the costs of paying one person.

"But then loads of other people with get on the band wagon1!!!!!1!!111111!!!!"

Except they won't. We're not talking about a class-action case, we're talking about an individual small claim. Those have a tendency to not get advertised as much. Paying off one person before it even gets to court means you can carry on ripping off everyone else who isn't threatening legal action.

Yeah, that makes sense... It's always a good idea for a company to ignore the laws and court orders of a country they operate in just because their headquarters are located somewhere else...

You're not very bright are you Forbin?

1. Most companies give in to any small claims legal proceedings immediately. Why? Because the legal costs of fighting it are almost always higher than the actual claim, and companies don't care about fighting things on the "principle" of the matter.

2. Not everyone lives in America with your crappy legal system.

No.
Statesman didn't wear a helmet, he wore a mask in the shape of the helmet.
The only exception is the original promo issue of the CoH comic, which is the image pictured there, where he wears a full helmet.

That doesn't change the statement you quoted in the slightest, nor address the individual points I made that you failed to quote.

Using the word the way most people do it is still the case that it is less effective and less accurate than using the more specific words for any particular situation where someone might use it.

As I said before, the word is so vague that the only difference between saying "that story's inconsistent" and "I don't like that story" is that the former might fool someone into thinking you've actually bothered to make an attempt at analysing the story before spouting your mouth off. In the context of writing, it's nothing but a buzz word with no real meaning of it's own at all.

Criticism is good for a writer, but that doesn't mean the word "inconsistent" is the best way to do it. That word can refer to many things all of which can be referred to in a more specific manner, which is more helpful and less vague. Further, most of the time people use it, there's actually little justification that it's actually true, while the other way of referring to the issue can be justified.

Here's some specific examples:
1) Are you criticising the fact that a group of intergalactic nomadic aliens were hunted to extinction, even though at least a few of them should have had no trouble escaping?
You certainly might want to call that inconsistent, but really you have no reason to assume it is, the writer might have a very good reason as to how it happened, they just never explained it properly, hence, it seems far better to simply call it a plot hole.

2) Are you criticising the fact that a character in the story is suddenly acting differently to the way the story has established how they would act?
That certainly seems inconsistent but, again, the writer might well have done it for a specific reason which wasn't explained properly, so, it seems far better to call it bad characterisation.

3) Are you criticising that the story refers to an event happening on a Thursday one time, and then Wednesday another?
This is certainly the most justifiable way of using the word inconsistency, but it doesn't seem likely that the writer intended those days to be different and, if told, would likely just chance the word for future editions of the book, so surely it's better to just call it a mistake.

Whatever the situation, calling the story inconsistent is less effective and less accurate than more specific words would be.

Yes.

You claim I said that I "insist that it's actually meaningless and impossible to use for its intended purpose..."
When what I said was "Calling a story inconsistent is either inaccurate, meaningless or pointless. My point is exactly that it's a bad way to criticise a story and, if you want to do so, there are far better options."

Which are completely different things.

If you're still having problems, note how in what I said "meaninglessness" was only one option out of three, while in what you claimed I said it was the only option, and note how I never once said that it was impossible to use it for its intended purpose.

I never said you couldn't call a story inconsistent, just that any time you might, there is a better way to describe your problem with the story instead.

Well, I didn't say that, so...

Oh good, more name dropping as though that means anything...
You winzzorz againz!!! Gratzorz!

As far as I can tell, you're just responding with "NUH UH!"

Again, I was not using the phrase "two time-lines" in the same sense as you.

Even assuming you're interpreting it all correctly, where's your proof that those two people were actually right? "Well they're smarter than you. " isn't a valid answer.

Yes, exactly. Calling a story inconsistent is either inaccurate, meaningless or pointless. My point is exactly that it's a bad way to criticise a story and, if you want to do so, there are far better options.

It doesn't have meaning. It's a paradox for the sake of it.
I wasn't trying to use it as an example of an inconsistent story, merely as an example of how contradictions can provably exist in written words, to the point of a statement contradicting itself.
Sorry for the confusion.

Edit: That said, I would love to dive into a few decades of logical set theory with you Arcanaville. It's always been one of my favourite subjects.

Which is why I specified that it was the writer that made the statement about their own book.

If you're calling that into question, then that's an entirely different discussion.

I was using "false" to mean "¬true".

Certainly, but that doesn't make the paradoxes not paradoxical, just that you have to be careful when stating them.

Thank you for the explanation, that certainly makes more sense, although there is still not a necessary link that I can see.

Regardless lets, for a second, assume it's provable that no story can be inconsistent in a way that can't be explained.
In which case, saying "This story is inconsistent" is nothing more than a poncy way of saying "I don't like this story." And it would still be far more meaningful to say something like "This has a plot hole" or "I find this story overly convoluted."

I'm not enforcing any rules. Either are absolutely fine, and neither have the situation where the story had it been both Thursday and Wednesday simultaneously. Which was the original story.

Now, of course, that story could be retconned, but that's another issue.

What I'm saying is that there are some inconsistencies that simply are, they can't be changed without altering the original story. Simply adding bits is not enough.

If a writer says explicitly that there is no time-travel and that everything said out-of-character is true, then the Wednesday-Thursday is inherently an inconsistency. One that can be retconned, but not claimed to have been correct in the first place.

That's the exact same thing, just using different words.

Yes, I read that, and I Googled it, I'm still not see how any of it is relevant.

Oh, and the Hineson-Martin Theorem and the Godburg Rebuttal clearly prove how you're completely wrong, to the point I don't have to explain the relevance at all.

And, as I explained, a reader's choice to believe something isn't inconsistent when it is, doesn't mean it stops being inconsistent.

Further, equally, a reader's choice to believe something is inconsistent when it isn't, doesn't mean it starts being inconsistent.

And I still don't understand what your post was trying to show. I said the statements about Wednesday and Thursday had to be completely out-of-character, while your example was still from the perspective of one of the characters.

That's a case of two time-lines, not the same sense of two time-lines as you're thinking of, but two time-lines nevertheless.

Time-line B overwriting time-line A, is still two time-lines.

Ah yes, name dropping without any link or explanation of the relevance...
You automatically win now! Gratz!

???

You can already join the Praetorian Resistance.

I'm really not sure what you're trying to get at there. Could you explain it please?

Which is why I specified that those claims were made out-of-character.

Time travel could allow Wednesday in time-line A and Thursday in time-line B, but not both Wednesday and Thursday in the same time-line. If the story says the latter, then it is inconsistent.

No you can't. There are some things which are outright contradictory, factually so. You can write your story with a contradiction, and then claim it isn't, and your audience might even believe you, but that doesn't mean you haven't written something inconsistent.

I can write down the sentence "This sentence is false." doesn't mean I can give any kind of explanation as to how it's consistent. Because it factually isn't.