The ONE thing you want to know...

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!

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.

Just went back to reread your post and I read it wrong. The first read I gave it I took only the second statement was out of character.

I still can see ways a writer can make it work IF he did it intentionally. An out of character narrator can still lie or missrepresent facts. If it never gets mentioned throughout the entire story then it indeed is inconsistency.

I'm not saying inconsistency does not occur, just that it can be caught and you can recover from it should you decide to, without having to go back and rewrite the previous events.

This can be especially true in serialized stories, where inconcistency is the most likely but you get future chances to clean up the stains. Even as an out-of-character narrator.

BTW, the theory of creating separate timelines is just one of various theories. Some say you actually rewrite history. Most accepted theories I have gazed at simply state that all time travel that can happen would already had also happened so there is no actual changes or branching of timelines possible.

As far as fiction goes, it's a bit of a bad point to focus on unless you are the writer of the story that can set the rules for the universe in that story. You seem to be doing that right now, but you are doing it in responce to some one catching a potential hole in the forced inconcistency. Since you want to force the inconsistency you going back and enforcing rules that were not stated at first.

Oh and a link: Duhem–Quine thesis

No, it's one timeline with two different states.

Given earlier in the thread. Keep up.

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.

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.

When the writer says "everything I'm about to tell you is true" they could be an unreliable narrator. There's no way to declare the narrator as absolutely reliable without potentially unreliable narration.

In fact, since many stories specifically rely on unreliable narrators, you can never be certain if any particular story contains one.

Incidentally, the sentence "this sentence is false" is not necessarily a contradiction either. That's an English sentence, and whether it expresses a contradiction depends on what idea the writer attempted to express, because those words do not have a single universal definition in English. If the writer is using the word "false" to mean "not provably true" then the sentence expresses the idea "this sentence is not provably true." That sentence could be true but not provably true, or it could be false and not provably false, and neither meaning is a contradiction.

On the other hand he could have meant false to mean "provably false" in which case the sentence expresses "this sentence is provably false." In that case, its almost certainly false, just not provably so.

You have to be careful between constructing paradoxes in mathematical frameworks and attempting to prove them when uttered by human beings using a language without a singular formalized system for logical comprehension.

The basic idea is that truth is a function of systems, not singular statements. Truth is determined by context. A statement can be true or false depending on the framework surrounding it. To prove an idea true or false requires bringing in other assumptions, which themselves could be true or false depending on other assumptions.

Its a short bus ride from being unable to determine the truth or falseness of a statement without resorting to exterior assumptions, to determining if a statement is contradictory without similarly bringing in other assumptions, each of which can be recursively challenged without limit.

$$$

They started with Warcraft lore before WoW launched, and they have more people continuing to write lore than Paragon Studios would have in their entire building on take your child to work day.

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."

Ahem...

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Talk:H...s_and_Villains

@SpaceNut - My 50s, AE arcs and current projects at ParagonWiki

...I forgot what experience means.

Precisely. All of that prior lore is summarized inside the game in book form.

Our studio has a "story bible" which contains much the same sort of world lore within its pages. Most of it is probably as not as thoroughly developed as that other game's past history but is that really a reason for NONE of it to be accessible inside the game?

I have to think that even if they only put a single summer intern to the task each year that the past eight years would have been plenty of time for most of it to have been typed up and formatted and fleshed out and inserted into the game.

The fact that a forum thread like the Canon Fodder thread can exist or that I could write Manticore or Arctic Sun or Hero One or (apparently) Protean and get answers means that there are answers to be had.

They just don't want to give them to us and for the life of me I can't understand why. Well, I DO understand: the whole straight jacket thing, which is my point - other games don't seem to feel that their lore is a straight jacket. They feel that it adds value.

Why does our studio treat player access to the lore as a liability?

If you're attempting to get technical, then prove "this statement is ¬true" has meaning. If its a meaningless statement, it says nothing about the story its contained within. Its therefore a contradiction without implication. It can be dismissed because its of no consequence. The story itself continues to have no contradiction.

You're about to dive into a few decades of logical set theory. I hope you packed a lunch.

I'm not sure it actually does, but I can think of two logical reasons it might do so.

First, they want to encourage players to maximize their playtime by playing through every single bit of content in the game. They encourage lore mavens to do so by spreading the lore throughout the game rather than collating it in places that can be easily located.

Second, giving players access to the lore tends to produce threads like this one: endless arguments about how stupid the writers are, how players could write a better story, assertions that tvtropes.com should be the guiding principle for story development, etc. Whatever you think of the opinions expressed herein, they spread negative feedback about the game, which may reduce player traffic.

I'm not saying that either of those reasons is necessarily or always a good one, but they might factor into the way the studio deals with lore development.

To quote a post of mine from another thread:

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

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.

It only needs to not select a champion until its too late (or at least after the time of Cole). Or decide on some other plan that doesn't involve putting all its eggs in one basket.

Deliberately no. But the Well can apparently know what the Fast Incarnates are told (otherwise who would it have taken control of States and Recluse at just the right moment when we are talking to them). So, he or his menders could well have inadvertently warned it in their various time meddling excursions.

Again, they are from the far future during/after The Storm. Their knowledge only becomes an issue if The Well has it when it has chance to choose Tyrant as a Champion. If it chooses late or chooses someone else or doesn't get chance to choose or just decides to do something else then the public knowledge of the Well need not come out.

Because he doesn't know the coming storm is coming, and the well doesn't either so it doesn't choose a champion, then he doesn't know he needs to do anything right now.

But again, that only happens if Prometheus has sufficient forewarning for such a plan to be viable. If the Storm catches him unawares, then 'starting a bunch of people on a slow path to becoming powerful enough to stop it' would be a plan doomed to failure. So, he'd probably do something else. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to work. Maybe he died.

Given that we know Dr. Acula and crew have caused meddling in the past, at least as far back as Cimerora then the length of time anyone seems to have known anything is immaterial, surely?

The whole lot is predicated on knowledge of The Coming Storm existing far enough before the Storm Comes for the current plans to make sense to The Well/Prometheus/etc... If there is no warning (and if we assume Ouro is the only source of the warning), there is no champion, Prometheus doesn't need to stop there being a champion and doesn't know Battalion are coming, there is no general knowledge of the Well.

That is where Silos comes from.

Or says he does, since he has been introduced as an entirely unreliable character.

A glass of water that was full five minutes ago and is half-full now is different from two glasses of water, one full and one half-full.

Arcanaville has explained it from a more formal perspective which is out of context; the original has to do with sets of beliefs and philosophy of science. All of a person's beliefs form an interconnected web. It is possible to add any new belief to the web no matter how contradictory if one is willing to deform the rest of the web sufficiently. That's (unintentionally; wasn't what Quine or Duhem were writing about) what powers postmodernism in a nutshell; if you're willing to embrace any amount of nonsense you can believe anything. Arcanaville's interpretation (truth is dependent on context) is coming at it from a different angle but arrives at basically the same place.

In your example, the degenerate solution is to add "Wednesday and Thursday are interchangeable" to the mix. Is this complete nonsense? <bison>OF COURSE!</bison> So what?

But even conceding that the example is irreconcilable doesn't get you anywhere really. The only types of inconsistencies you're willing to admit could exist in a story are the kind of childish mistakes that a proofreader would (or at least should) catch. If a writer oh, I don't know, says vampires can't have kids and then in the next book has a vampire knock up the lead babe, according to you this isn't inconsistent or bad writing as long as she can handwave it, and she'll always be able to do so. Your position admits of only the most trivial of objections and thus can be safely dismissed as an unreasonable criterion.

I can tell you exactly why. Positron said it himself: he feels its better to give the writers the freedom to alter, revoke, or disregard prior lore or the story bible if it will generate better stories as he defines better stories. Releasing the story bible would only bind them tighter to something they want the freedom to ignore as needed.

There's no need to search for reasons beyond that one.

You haven't explained why this is a remotely reasonable assumption, while I've stated specifically why its unreasonable. That's pretty easy to do. Watch:

Actually, he does know.

QED

I was under the impression that it was Praetorian Earth our "alternate self" came from (or, in the case of Praetorian characters, it was Primal Earth); Protean is pretty explicitly said to be working for Cole, and I thought that the hordes of dopplegangers at the end came from the clone factory on the villainside plot (in one of those weird, hard-to-wrap-your-head-around "blueside you experiences things as if there was no redside you to affect the plot and vice versa" sort of ways.)

Personally, I'd like to get back to the Coralax and Blood of the Black Stream, both of which had tantalizing hints back when there was different management involved; I'd also like to go more into the origins of the Path of the Dark and the Cimeroran connection. But I'll admit, I forget half the lore I learn after I learn it, so a lot of these questions were probably answered.