I see where he's coming from, but the question I can't get out of my head is "Isn't that the whole point of the trope?" My understanding of In Spite of a Nail is that, regardless of how different two parallel worlds are, or a fictional world compared to our own, critical events still happen in more or less the same way. I tried to get clarification on this, but it's been drowned out in the thread's backlog. So, rather than keep on harping in there about it, I thought I'd ask the Trope Talk forum more directly: How different is too different for this trope to apply?
I'll try and condense the entry I have to make it less wall of text-y.
In the Red Panda Adventures episode "The World Next Door" and its Sequel Episode, "A Dish Best Served Cold" a time traveler from an Alternate Timeline's World War II named Baboon McSmoothie convinces the Depression era Red Panda to help him steal the prototype of an invention that would one day become a major part of the Nazi war effort by offering him the case file of a Villain Team-Up that killed his Red Panda's Flying Squirrel. It's noted in-universe that there are vast differences between the two worlds,such as the Red Panda's costume being different, the alternate Flying Squirrel being a teenage boy instead of an adult woman, and three out of five members of the Villain Team-Up being either Gender Flipped or having different identities entirely. Despite these differences, the conference the prototype was to be displayed at, the Villain Team-Up, and eventually World War II itself, all occurs the same across both timelines. The conference in particular is part of the reason the main universe was picked for McSmoothie's heist in the first place, besides avoiding a Temporal Paradox.
Possibly worth noting is that the Alternate Timeline is actually the "Original Universe"/pilot series of Red Panda, featuring the Red Panda as a pulp hero Canadian super secret agent vs the Nazis (like those propaganda-type Captain America comic book covers) it's more parodic in nature and, in fact, regular mentions to how silly it is vs the main universe get made multiple times in "The World Next Door"
Are these worlds too different to qualify for In Spite of a Nail? If so, can I get an idea of where the threshold is because, like I said, the similarities despite the differences are, to me, exactly what the trope is about.
I've been tinkering with an entry for In Spite of a Nail for a series I like, the Red Panda Adventures. However, knowing that I can prone to Entry Pimping when it comes to series I really like, I ran it by the Is This an Example?
thread. Due to backlog, it only got one response, from Fighteer, which said "It seems like there really are a lot of differences between the two timelines, more than generally fall under the intent of In Spite of a Nail...
"
I see where he's coming from, but the question I can't get out of my head is "Isn't that the whole point of the trope?" My understanding of In Spite of a Nail is that, regardless of how different two parallel worlds are, or a fictional world compared to our own, critical events still happen in more or less the same way. I tried to get clarification on this, but it's been drowned out in the thread's backlog. So, rather than keep on harping in there about it, I thought I'd ask the Trope Talk forum more directly: How different is too different for this trope to apply?
I'll try and condense the entry I have to make it less wall of text-y.
Possibly worth noting is that the Alternate Timeline is actually the "Original Universe"/pilot series of Red Panda, featuring the Red Panda as a pulp hero Canadian super secret agent vs the Nazis (like those propaganda-type Captain America comic book covers) it's more parodic in nature and, in fact, regular mentions to how silly it is vs the main universe get made multiple times in "The World Next Door"
Are these worlds too different to qualify for In Spite of a Nail? If so, can I get an idea of where the threshold is because, like I said, the similarities despite the differences are, to me, exactly what the trope is about.