Intro/FAQ

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Acatalepsy
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Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:33 am
Location: America, Fuck Yeah! Or something.

Intro/FAQ

Post by Acatalepsy »

The Continuity Wars is a setting dreamed up around a specific question. That question is "what would things be like if you could go backwards in time?". Now, there has been plenty written on the subject already, but none of it really addresses the what-if to my satisfaction. Sure, there are stories where the characters go back in time. But few deal with the ensuing problems: time travel exists. Therefore time travel will end up existing, even if you decide to destroy the DeLorean. What happens when more than one person has it? What happens when everyone has it, and is using it screw over everyone else?

So, this. The Continuity Wars. Not a struggle to save the universe - it will get along fine without you. Not really a struggle for survival, either - are you killed if you never existed? A struggle for being, a fight for the ability to control the future of the timeline and ensure one's own simple existence. If there's one rule of the Continuity Wars, it's do unto the other man has he would do unto you - just be damned sure to do it first.

FAQ:
Q:So, time travel. You're really going to try and make sense of it? What about the grandfather paradox? What about cause-less events?
A:It's a little bit complicated for a one paragraph, but basically, they are extremely unlikely. Using probability rather than simple binary exists/doesn't exist really helps make this possible. It's not entirely impossible, though, to kill your own grandfather. It's just that a configuring where you go and kill your own grandfather is unlikely to come about in the first place. If there is no possible original timeline where an event could originate, then the effect will not occur, even though it technically could.

Q:What exactly are you trying to do?
A:For those of you not easily distracted, take a look at this link. I want to avert, subvert, deconstruct, and if not possible at least justify the stuff on that list. For everyone else, I want to explore time travel as a concept more deeply than any one source (to my knowledge anyway) has tried to do.

Q: So what about the setting itself? Who is fighting the Continuity Wars? What are the sides? Is it plucky time-rebels versus evil time traveling empire, or what?
A: No. It's everybody. Versus everybody. That includes, to some degree, their own descendants and ancestors.

Q:Wait what? How can you have a universe that includes "everybody"? If anything can happen, then there is no universe in any real sense - its not specific enough!
A: (1) That's not a question, and (2) everything doesn't necessarily happen, it just could have happened. But for the purposes of exploring what goes on in a time travel heavy 'verse, I'll be focusing on the perspective of the "Timeline Alpha" the most stable and probable timeline and its far future, which is not necessarily stable but the residents have figured out ways around that sort of problem.

Q:You do know time travel doesn't exist, right? That it doesn't need to make logical sense, and it in fact can't make logical sense.
A: Magic doesn't exist either, and we do magic on this forum too, don't we? In any case, the goal of this 'verse is half as an intellectual challenge to make it make the most sense possible, while still conforming to my other goals.

Q:What about these meta guys? You say you have rules, but these guys don't seem to follow them!
A:In general, there is a way that they could have followed the rules - nothing they do is completely impossible for a more flat person, but the path they take is a bit improbable. In any case, they fall under the 'sufficiently advanced technology' clause...nothing they do is strictly impossible, but you'd have to be a meta to actually do any of it. In general for every inexplicable things a meta does there are at least a decade or so worth of time looping to make it happen that a flat can't witness.
Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes.

- Bruce Sterling
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