Uniocular
Yeah, it is a bit of a conundrum.
Though, would it be possible that Max somehow doesn't stop existing when she rewinds? I mean, when she woke back up in the alpha timeline, it seemed like she was in the middle of doing something, and Chloe didn't act like she had just disappeared out of no where.
edited 26th Aug '15 2:07:06 PM by Mukora
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."
I assumed the the rewind and the photo time travel worked differently. For the rewind, she literally rewinds until one point, and can only "go back" the regular way (by letting time pass). With the photo travel, though, she jumps until one point in time and then jumps "back". The second method seems to create a new timeline, but the first don't.
At any rate, I don't think Max stops existing in either case.
The problem I have with that is that it would mean either (A) Max would need to return to exactly the time and place where she was when she left (which she obviously doesn't), or (B) somehow Max returns to a world where she's been doing things that she wasn't consciously aware of, which is supremely fucking creepy. Hell, even wondering what happened to the Alt!Max that had been living that life before Max showed up in the Alt-Timeline is disturbing.
I mean, maybe if she swaps places with the version of herself that she's replacing—but that raises even more questions, like—what caused that Max to jump to the Prime-Timeline? Was it a synchronized action by the two of them? Unlikely. Does only one of them need to activate the power in order to swap places with the other? More likely, but disturbing to imagine that Max can just displace another version of herself on a whim. I don't want to wake up one day with no memory of the previous day (or worse, with memories) in which some total stranger who happens to be me from an alternate universe was running around living my life. That's incredibly fridge-horrifying.
Its Time Travel.
They're are going to be 'plot holes' and etc no matter what you do until we have a better grasp of what time travel would be if possible. And even then, god only knows if maybe time travel itself could create IRL Plot Holes.
Its just kind of a gimmie of the genre.
Not really. If you don't think time travel can be done without creating plot holes, you're not reading the right time travel fiction. Plot holes are a hallmark of bad writing—not a necessary evil of the Time Travel trope by its nature.
edited 26th Aug '15 3:25:26 PM by SolipSchism
Every mission's a suicide mission!
Time travel itself is hella confusing, complex, and potentially plot-holing and world-shattering.
If Max went back and stepped on an ant, then went to the present, it could be radically different.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion."
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Well, what I meant is that even the best Time Travel Fiction even has the slightest holes in them. There's bound to be a hole somewhere the more you analyze and look at it. Its just kind of going to happen unless the writer is a master scientist/someone who would know the ins and outs of theoretical time travel.
And most writers just aren't.
Sure, they won't always be MASSIVE GLARING plot holes, but plot holes just kind of are going to happen sometimes. Not always, but they do just because Time Travel is very complex and hard to understand and sometimes hard to articulate the language needed. Its also harder to follow mentally; there's not a straight line from one event to another so it can be more difficult for some writers to keep track of every single detail. The most commonly forgotten details are who knows what information.
It just happens. I just kind of accept it and move on when it comes to Time Travel.
Two problems:
Perhaps you should read some time travel fiction by authors who are well-educated scientists who know the ins and outs of theoretical time travel. I can name one off the top of my head: Greg Egan. Try the short stories "Lost Continent" and "Oracle", or if you're feeling ambitiously mathematical and scientific, try the Orthogonal trilogy. Don't just assume a trope or genre is riddled with problems until you've exhausted the medium. I guarantee you'll have missed something significant.
My second problem is that you've essentially said "Almost all time travel fiction has at least minor problems or plot holes... and therefore big plot holes are not an issue."
Which is like me saying that being shot with a BB pellet doesn't really hurt all that much, and therefore getting shot by an M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun is harmless.
Edited to add the word "trilogy", forgot it. No other changes.
edited 27th Aug '15 12:01:42 PM by SolipSchism
Well, yes, there are writers who have a clear grasp of physics and ACTUAL theoretical time travel will probably do an exellent job of things. But they aren't the only writers who have done Time Travel stories. Bioshock: Infinite, Dragon Age, Time Traveler's Wife, Lake House, Harry Potter. Even Back to the Future, arguably THE most popular and well known time travel story, has a lot of plot issues in keeping track of everything that goes on during the story.
That analogy is poor and not what I meant at all. I never said that ALL Time Travel fiction will have plot holes, but there are certainly a number of them who do have plot holes and inconsistencies with how its time travel works or other things. Its not a big deal. I think its just easier to accept it as a goof and move on with the work because there's not likely to be a significant answer as to why there's a discrepancy.
You actually did pretty much exactly say that time travel stories always have plot holes. Several times.
And I am not talking about minor plot holes—I'm talking about things that I explicitly referred to as "disturbing" and "Fridge Horror". Those aren't minor plot holes, that's shit that it would be weird if you weren't thinking about it.
Oh crap. I see what you mean. I did say that... Oops. I didn't mean to say it in those words, but I did. I deeply apologize.
There's no need to apologize. :p
I'm just saying, like, small plot holes are one thing, but big plot holes are not something I'm willing to write off as just "an unavoidable flaw of the medium/genre/trope". Like, plot holes are bad writing. The bigger the plot hole, the worse the writing. That's just... how writing works.
Well, yeah, plot holes are often a sign of bad writing. Though, I just think that there are some plot holes that are just kind of... understandable? I'm not sure if that's the best word to use, but I guess there are some I just understand how they happen in the writing process and just kind of move on.
Like, Plot Holes with Back to the Future are understandable for various reasons here and there. I get why Marty's personality didn't 180 at the end of the film even though its logically bullshit that he stayed the same.
But plot holes like the 'Take a photo or stop an altercation' choices that have happened once or twice in Li S are ones I'm less likely to forgive. Mostly because the game goes out of its way to teach us that way of thinking so its borderline hypocritical to do otherwise.
Life is strange is nominated on six categories for the Golden Joysticks Awards (Namely: Best Storytelling, Best Audio, Best Original Game, Best Gaming Performance for Ashly Burch, Best Gaming Moment and Ultimate Game of the year)
You can vote here: http://www.gamesradar.com/goldenjoystickawards/vote/
Who is Ashley Birch (presumably Max or Chloe?), and what is the Moment?
Chloe.
edited 2nd Sep '15 8:37:15 AM by VeryMelon
Makes sense. She is (no offense Max) better voiced than Max.
...You could almost say she's hella good.
There were an awful lot of nominations that I wouldn't have really considered putting there. Talia Forrester from Go T and Vasquez from Tft Bl? I don't remember anything particularly impressive. Not to say they weren't good performances, but there wasn't any particuar moment where I went 'Yes! This is an absolutely amazing impressive top of the line voice acting performance and has to be so hard to act!'
Kind of sad that it wasn't nominated for Visual Design. Even more sadly hilarious is that most of the games nominated either have very similar visual designs or sat firmly on the side of 'realistic' graphics over any other design choices.
I really want to vote for Life is Strange in most of the categories, but I keep choosing Ori...
Telltale is at the point where they just get nominated for everything.
Every mission's a suicide mission!
Why is this so cute oh my god it should be illegal to be this cute OH MY GOD
Still no word on Episode 5???
Why aren't you laughing?
Can't be much longer now. It's been four or five weeks since ep4.
If they only JUST wrote the final lines for the game, that seems odd to me.
Well, I mean, I'm torn between two interpretations of the game, basically hinging on either the Many-Worlds Interpretation as it would relate to time travel, or the time travel structure where you can freely go back and change things, and only the current timeline exists. I feel like the latter interpretation is rife with problems, though (like the question of how to morally interpret the idea that you are basically genociding everyone in the universe every time you go back at all, for any reason and recreating the universe from an earlier point), so I'm inclined to go with the former. (Also, the MWI is awesome.)
In which case, when you travel back in time, you are not destroying the timeline, just leaving it—which means literally every time you travel back in time, you simply disappear, leaving that universe to continue on without you—probably very confused as to why this girl just disappeared. Which is hard to grok, but it does mean you're really just taking a branching of timelines, going back to a previous branch, and traveling down a different branch each time (or, if you prefer, going back and forging a new branch each time).
The problem with that idea (from a storytelling perspective) is exactly what you guys described: It means, sure, you're experiencing a timeline where you got everything just the way you wanted it, but you're also leaving behind a timeline for every time you fucked it up—and the people in that timeline just have to suck it up and deal with it because you can literally never go back. Which is some pretty fucked up Fridge Horror.
edited 26th Aug '15 1:53:46 PM by SolipSchism