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Old 09-02-2017, 02:00 AM   #401
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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Null-Greenhouse is a myth parallel, current year 2002. Here, Earth's temperature seems totally disconnected from atmospheric CO2. Likewise, many chemicals that normally have long-term effects on life tend to break down harmlessly in open air, but this doesn't have any effect on contained chemical reactions, both natural and artificial.
...
Myth parallels where a single global conspiracy to maintain what is actually provably true in our world despite no rational reason or logic would be hard to make work in anything other than a one shot surrealistic/humorous episode, in my opinion.
It would mean that greenhouses don't work there which could have odd effects on out of season foods.
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Old 09-02-2017, 05:24 AM   #402
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Myth parallels where a single global conspiracy to maintain what is actually provably true in our world despite no rational reason or logic would be hard to make work in anything other than a one shot surrealistic/humorous episode, in my opinion.
It would mean that greenhouses don't work there which could have odd effects on out of season foods.
Not necessarily. The add on stuff where things other than carbon dioxide somehow break down more are problematic, but you could have no effect from CO2 levels with a trivial physics change (by Infinite Worlds standards) that alters its IR spectrum. Of course you get questions like why isn't the Earth an iceball (it would be if there was no atmospheric greenhouse effect at all) but changing physics failing to destroy everything despite the fact it's all delicately interconnected in reality is absolutely normal in the Infinite Worlds setting.
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Old 09-02-2017, 07:55 AM   #403
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Perhaps the water is coming from a giant submarine gate connecting to a true ocean earth.
Maybe a giant gate that connects Earth to the oceans of Mars?

(nod to XKCD)
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Old 09-02-2017, 01:38 PM   #404
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

I'm reading the book The Pagan Christs. My main annoyance with the book is that the author assumes that if a myth is told about someone then they are purely mythological. His thesis is, Christ is purely mythic because people tell mythic tales about him. People from Lincoln to Hitler have mythic stories told about them, many of these are treated as true even when they are known to be fantasy.

So try this. A world where J M Robertson was right. If anyone tells a mythic story about you, you are purely a myth with no reality whatsoever. Figures like Washington, Lincoln, Edison, Elizabeth I, Napoleon, Newton, Shakespeare, Homer, and Joan of Arc never existed, but everyone believes they did.
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Old 09-02-2017, 04:31 PM   #405
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So for a brief while in parts of the 19th and early 20th century, there were US presidents, but after that they became mythical again? I like it.
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Old 09-02-2017, 07:05 PM   #406
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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I'm reading the book The Pagan Christs. My main annoyance with the book is that the author assumes that if a myth is told about someone then they are purely mythological. His thesis is, Christ is purely mythic because people tell mythic tales about him. People from Lincoln to Hitler have mythic stories told about them, many of these are treated as true even when they are known to be fantasy.

So try this. A world where J M Robertson was right. If anyone tells a mythic story about you, you are purely a myth with no reality whatsoever. Figures like Washington, Lincoln, Edison, Elizabeth I, Napoleon, Newton, Shakespeare, Homer, and Joan of Arc never existed, but everyone believes they did.
He went pure dichotomy, either 100% real or 100% fiction for everyone ever? That's odd to say the least.

But making some people real here fictional in parallels would be interesting. I've only ever seen it the other way around.
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Old 09-02-2017, 08:47 PM   #407
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

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I'm reading the book The Pagan Christs. My main annoyance with the book is that the author assumes that if a myth is told about someone then they are purely mythological. His thesis is, Christ is purely mythic because people tell mythic tales about him. People from Lincoln to Hitler have mythic stories told about them, many of these are treated as true even when they are known to be fantasy.
I haven't read the book, but the word "myth" for theologians and laymen mean two different things. For a theologian, a "myth" is a story with religious significance, and has no bias regarding reality; to a Christian theologian, the Gospel of Mark is a collection of myths, and that theologian happens to think the myths are also historical accounts.
To a layman, "myth" has been conflated with "Greek myth" or "Norse Myth" which eventually mutated into "false story, less than an intentional lie".
Robertson might be reading research that describes "Christ myths" without knowing the theologian definition of "myth" and taking it as gospel (pun intended).
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So try this. A world where J M Robertson was right. If anyone tells a mythic story about you, you are purely a myth with no reality whatsoever. Figures like Washington, Lincoln, Edison, Elizabeth I, Napoleon, Newton, Shakespeare, Homer, and Joan of Arc never existed, but everyone believes they did.
Does this occur because the people of this world are conceptually incapable of writing fiction about people they know are real (like the world of "The Invention of Lying"), or because historical figures are retroactively removed from all points of the timeline if they are ever fictionalized?
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Old 09-02-2017, 09:01 PM   #408
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He went pure dichotomy, either 100% real or 100% fiction for everyone ever? That's odd to say the least.

But making some people real here fictional in parallels would be interesting. I've only ever seen it the other way around.
Once a long time ago, I read a comic book, I think DC maybe during the crisis, talking about Earth-Prime (our Earth) a newscaster mentioned it was a world where mythical heros like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were real.
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Old 09-02-2017, 11:03 PM   #409
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He went pure dichotomy, either 100% real or 100% fiction for everyone ever?\
No. He didn't. But he does treat the New Testament as mythology.
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Old 09-03-2017, 02:05 AM   #410
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Catalog of the Weird Parallels

That is definitely WAY too contentious to get into here, but I don't see that argument as entirely absurd regardless of your personal religion.
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