I really, really hate how the Tarkir block's plot has turned out. It has great elements, don't get me wrong: dragons, time travel, bear punching. And the stories themselves are well written, very descriptive and evocative.
The overarching plot however, is where my problems lie. The heart of it is the new timeline: it makes no sense.
Sarkhan needed to save Ugin so he can help with the Eldrazi. Fine. There's an easy work around, just have him capture Ugin's consciousness while his body's dying and then return to it to his remains in the present (how does a spirit have bones anyway?). Simple, clear cut, timeline doesn't change or if it does, barely so. The characters we came to know in Khans are all unaltered. I mean, sure Narset was hurt and seemingly killed, but Sarkhan was far away and maybe her spark ignited in that moment. Who knows what might've been?
BUT NOOOOOOOOOO! We have to have a new timeline! It's not like the Khans characters reacting to the sudden return of dragons, which they've based much of their culture around for centuries, would be INTERESTING or anything! Instead, we get the same characters, but they're different because dragons were stopped from going extinct!
Hang on a second...that happened a thousand years in the past. That would mean that the events that led to the people being born in the present NEVER HAPPENED! All the people who died hunting dragons to extinction: never died. So they might go on to have kids with people they otherwise would not have, and the people who lived, may now die under the rule of dragons and not pass on their genes. For Narset, Zurgo, Sidisi and the rest to even EXIST, some near omniscient being would have to manipulate the bloodlines of several species over the course of a millennium! Whether the creative team didn't spot this, or just chose to ignore it, I find either insulting. If Sarkhan had gone back a generation, MAYBE it would be plausible, but a thousand years?! Give me a freaking break! This especially infuriates me as someone who aspires to write for Magic one day.
Sarkhan needed to save Ugin so he can help with the Eldrazi. Fine. There's an easy work around, just have him capture Ugin's consciousness while his body's dying and then return to it to his remains in the present (how does a spirit have bones anyway?). Simple, clear cut, timeline doesn't change or if it does, barely so.
For Narset, Zurgo, Sidisi and the rest to even EXIST, some near omniscient being would have to manipulate the bloodlines of several species over the course of a millennium!
Or they're just fated to exist regardless of the timeline.
Alternatively the creative team understands basic story structure.
Perhaps the elasticity of time tries to make the characters happen as best it can, but with a big enough ripple (such as the dragons taking over) the events are still pushed out of whack? Would explain why the same old Khans exist, just drastically different from what they were before.
I don't see how you find this insulting. And honestly if you have this attitude I really don't think you're a good fit for writing for wizards. You don't want to take any big chances or do some weird stuff with your stories, and I have a feeling they'd be pretty much same old same old.
The heart of it is the new timeline: it makes no sense.
Sloppily handled time travel is like that.
Fixed that for you.
I mean, it's a bit naive to expect such a complex theme to be handled properly in Magic, where story usually takes so many backseats it ends up the rear trunk, but blaming this on time travel itself is just bad, because there are ways to make time travel make sense and enhance story.
It's just that in order to pull it off, you often have to base the entire setting and story around the time travel element, which Magic obviously can't do. And instead of trying to get close, they just abandoned the idea of "making sense" altogether and just slapped as many ill-informed tropes into the story as they could.
As for the original poster's points:
First off, the entire block was set around time travel. It was not concepted to bring back Ugin. That was only done because it worked so wonderfully with timetravel and because it so nicely ties into the current sotry arc with the Eldrazi etc. The base concept for the block, before any creative person sat down to flesh it out, however, was always around time travel.
Second, you may find this annoying, sure, but as Wolfaxe has said, being "insulted" is a bit too much.
The whole time travel plot was pretty sloppily handled. I've just chalked up the entire Tarkir storyline as a "means to an end" -- the end being getting Ugin revived so that Creative can move onto the Eldrazi storyline, which seems as though it will span several blocks. I just hope that we don't come back to Tarkir for awhile, because, man, what a creative dud that turned out to be.
The heart of it is the new timeline: it makes no sense.
Sloppily handled time travel is like that.
Fixed that for you.
Can you name some popular time travel fiction that isn't completely ridiculous? Honestly the Tarkir plotline makes more sense than any of the Back to the Future or Terminator movies.
The heart of it is the new timeline: it makes no sense.
Sloppily handled time travel is like that.
Fixed that for you.
Can you name some popular time travel fiction that isn't completely ridiculous? Honestly the Tarkir plotline makes more sense than any of the Back to the Future or Terminator movies.
I would cite Butterfly effect, although it also had its "fate" elements in it, but you would probably dismiss it as not popular enough. Back to the Future does not strike me as a serious movie at all, so I don't see how it applies here. And Terminator is not really worse than the Tarkir storyline. I'd say they're about even.
There's also homestuck, which may be hard to take serious due to its goofy nature, but it does timetravel really well. There are no wishy-washy explanations for things the author didn't care about, and the only plotholes are genuine mistakes and not "eh, I don't care" excuses. (Note that for this argument I only talk about timetravel, the fact that in homestuck babies can survive entering the atmosphere of a planet riding a meteor has nothing to do with the time travel logic of the setting.)
I'm well aware that time travel doesn't always make sense. It's actually one of my favorite story elements: Back to the Future, Doctor Who, various episodes of Star Trek, heck the third Harry Potter book! So I'm very used to ignoring inconsistencies if the story is captivating enough. Tarkir's story isn't though. This is getting into my other major issue with Magic's storyline, it's fragmented nature. As uneven as the novels could be sometimes, they at least kept to a traditional dramatic structure. Uncharted Realms does a better job of fleshing out worlds, yes, but in terms of telling a cohesive, satisfying story, I feel it's lacking something, perhaps scale or impact.
As for my being insulted, I feel insulted that such little thought was given to implications of the effects of the altered timeline. The butterfly or ripple effect would be, as I said, minimal if Sarkhan had merely traveled back a generation or so, but over the course of a millennium, it starts to become just a bit too much. The multiverse has a way of fixing itself as we've seen with the Mending, sure. But the thing is, one of Magic's only other occasions of altering the past, Tolaria, resulted in CATASTROPHIC consequences! Granted, that may have had more to due with the machine overloading. And don't get me started on the vagueness of the time travel method and its strength comparative to Urza's time experiments.
I guess what it comes down to is that I see the consequences of Sarkhan's actions as being a matter of simple cause and effect. However, the creative team have chosen to ignore the logical effect in favor of one that better fits their idea of a good story, 2+2=5 as it were. Sarkhan saves Ugin, therefore he was never born in the new timeline, but the old timeline still exists, because it and Sarkhan HAVE to exist in order for Sarkhan to have never been born. Confusing? Yes. But it tracks. And yet, Sarkhan wasn't born in the new timeline, yet Narset and everyone else WAS? Which is it Magic?!
Sarkhan saves Ugin, therefore he was never born in the new timeline, but the old timeline still exists, because it and Sarkhan HAVE to exist in order for Sarkhan to have never been born. Confusing? Yes. But it tracks. And yet, Sarkhan wasn't born in the new timeline, yet Narset and everyone else WAS? Which is it Magic?!
I believe when Sarkhan says he was never born, he means that he was born in a non-existant timeline, therefore his birth has never happened, therefore he was never born. He's basically talking about himself, not his doppelganger in Tarkir 2.0, who I expect to actually have been born. It could be that Sarkhan 2.0 however never triggered his spark and probably even died before the DTK events.
Or maybe Sarkhan 2.0 was never born, while everyone else is. Apparently the multiverse is extremely arbitrary with this kind of stuff.
The book "Timeline" has a pretty fun explanation for all of this. Travelling in time there is just slipping into another Universe in the multiverse, because not all universes are simultaneous. The idea here is that all Sarkhan really accomplished is leaving a universe that was doomed to be consumed by the Eldrazi and went into a different universe that is not. From his perspective, time travel, but from the multiverse's perspective, no different from moving between planes.
I would cite Butterfly effect, although it also had its "fate" elements in it, but you would probably dismiss it as not popular enough. Back to the Future does not strike me as a serious movie at all, so I don't see how it applies here. And Terminator is not really worse than the Tarkir storyline. I'd say they're about even.
There's also homestuck, which may be hard to take serious due to its goofy nature, but it does timetravel really well. There are no wishy-washy explanations for things the author didn't care about, and the only plotholes are genuine mistakes and not "eh, I don't care" excuses. (Note that for this argument I only talk about timetravel, the fact that in homestuck babies can survive entering the atmosphere of a planet riding a meteor has nothing to do with the time travel logic of the setting.)
I like butterfly effect, but it's really inconsistent in how it treats time travel. For example, when he tries to invoke stigmata to his fellow cellmate, they wouldn't have appeared in the present, they would have always been there (in order to be consistent with the way the diary passages normally work).
I'm well aware that time travel doesn't always make sense. It's actually one of my favorite story elements: Back to the Future, Doctor Who, various episodes of Star Trek, heck the third Harry Potter book! So I'm very used to ignoring inconsistencies if the story is captivating enough. Tarkir's story isn't though. This is getting into my other major issue with Magic's storyline, it's fragmented nature. As uneven as the novels could be sometimes, they at least kept to a traditional dramatic structure. Uncharted Realms does a better job of fleshing out worlds, yes, but in terms of telling a cohesive, satisfying story, I feel it's lacking something, perhaps scale or impact.
As for my being insulted, I feel insulted that such little thought was given to implications of the effects of the altered timeline. The butterfly or ripple effect would be, as I said, minimal if Sarkhan had merely traveled back a generation or so, but over the course of a millennium, it starts to become just a bit too much. The multiverse has a way of fixing itself as we've seen with the Mending, sure. But the thing is, one of Magic's only other occasions of altering the past, Tolaria, resulted in CATASTROPHIC consequences! Granted, that may have had more to due with the machine overloading. And don't get me started on the vagueness of the time travel method and its strength comparative to Urza's time experiments.
I guess what it comes down to is that I see the consequences of Sarkhan's actions as being a matter of simple cause and effect. However, the creative team have chosen to ignore the logical effect in favor of one that better fits their idea of a good story, 2+2=5 as it were. Sarkhan saves Ugin, therefore he was never born in the new timeline, but the old timeline still exists, because it and Sarkhan HAVE to exist in order for Sarkhan to have never been born. Confusing? Yes. But it tracks. And yet, Sarkhan wasn't born in the new timeline, yet Narset and everyone else WAS? Which is it Magic?!
People have this idea that the notion of the "ripple effect" or "butterfly effect means that things have to change by a certain amount. There are lots and lots of things that change in modern Tarkir, but people are caught up on the fact that creative decided to keep some characters still present in an altered fates type setting. But even the examples you list of time travel you like violates that. In Back to the Future, characters still all stay around Hill Valley for no real reason. It's equally likely that Biff gets beat up and just moves on with his life somewhere. But it's better to see what he looks like following the altercation. Heck, even in Back to the Future III, you're talking about Marty traveling back to 1885 and nothing happens in the present. At all.
And at least KTK hasn't had any of the "Character goes back in time and changes things but also does something that the original person remembers, showing that he always changed time but also always didn't change time" baloney that some things (ex. Harry Potter) do.
I find the "But everything would be totally different, these people wouldn't have been born!" argument to be really, really hollow. Yes, from a scientific standpoint, things would have been wildly different! But what story has ever done that? Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is about as classic a time travel story as you can get, and the main character of that changes things back in dinosaur times, and when he arrives back in 'his' present, the exact same people were running for presidency on the exact same platforms, except the other guy won (and some words are spelled differently). It's a much more interesting story beat to show Zurgo as High King *****kicker Khan of the Mardu contrasted with Zurgo "Gets Yelled at by Kolaghan" Bellstriker than it is to say "Here's Zurgo, he's awesome! Now Zurgo never existed at all! Wasn't that great?". Saying that it needs to follow strict logic just comes across as you trying to find a way to feel superior to the authors for your superior understanding of a technology that doesn't actually exist.
Things do get a little muddled with the multiverse existing, but most everything works out the same, so hey. Sarkhan's existence is meant to be something that even Sarkhan isn't entirely sure about the logic of--his personal timeline is preserved (let's say by the same magic that whisked him through time in the first place), but from the perspective of anyone else in Tarkir, he popped up out of nowhere fully formed. It's a weird outlier created by strange magic. It doesn't exactly ruin my immersion.
The core of the Tarkir storyline was not to portray time-travel as scientificly correct as possible but rather to tell a story of change. In KTK, the Kahns were introduced and a Tarkir without dragons was characterized. FRF took us to the historically critical moments that would affect the fate of Tarkir for centuries to come. DTK contrasted how Tarkir has changed compared to it's "original" iteration and there is no better way than directly comparing important characters (e.g. khans) or places (e.g. abzan/dromoka fortress).
For me, the Tarkir storyline has done everything I wanted to see. The only thing that strikes me as "artifical" is that Sarkhan has no second iteration, I think it would have been easier and more interesting to have his DTK-version be killed by a dragon which would lead to an intresting controversy whether or not Sarkhan actually did himself a favor...
I'm well aware that time travel doesn't always make sense. It's actually one of my favorite story elements: Back to the Future, Doctor Who, various episodes of Star Trek, heck the third Harry Potter book! So I'm very used to ignoring inconsistencies if the story is captivating enough. Tarkir's story isn't though. This is getting into my other major issue with Magic's storyline, it's fragmented nature. As uneven as the novels could be sometimes, they at least kept to a traditional dramatic structure. Uncharted Realms does a better job of fleshing out worlds, yes, but in terms of telling a cohesive, satisfying story, I feel it's lacking something, perhaps scale or impact.
As for my being insulted, I feel insulted that such little thought was given to implications of the effects of the altered timeline. The butterfly or ripple effect would be, as I said, minimal if Sarkhan had merely traveled back a generation or so, but over the course of a millennium, it starts to become just a bit too much. The multiverse has a way of fixing itself as we've seen with the Mending, sure. But the thing is, one of Magic's only other occasions of altering the past, Tolaria, resulted in CATASTROPHIC consequences! Granted, that may have had more to due with the machine overloading. And don't get me started on the vagueness of the time travel method and its strength comparative to Urza's time experiments.
I guess what it comes down to is that I see the consequences of Sarkhan's actions as being a matter of simple cause and effect. However, the creative team have chosen to ignore the logical effect in favor of one that better fits their idea of a good story, 2+2=5 as it were. Sarkhan saves Ugin, therefore he was never born in the new timeline, but the old timeline still exists, because it and Sarkhan HAVE to exist in order for Sarkhan to have never been born. Confusing? Yes. But it tracks. And yet, Sarkhan wasn't born in the new timeline, yet Narset and everyone else WAS? Which is it Magic?!
It seems you'd rather have a story that is awful and off putting for a game then doesn't it?
I would cite Butterfly effect, although it also had its "fate" elements in it, but you would probably dismiss it as not popular enough. Back to the Future does not strike me as a serious movie at all, so I don't see how it applies here. And Terminator is not really worse than the Tarkir storyline. I'd say they're about even.
There's also homestuck, which may be hard to take serious due to its goofy nature, but it does timetravel really well. There are no wishy-washy explanations for things the author didn't care about, and the only plotholes are genuine mistakes and not "eh, I don't care" excuses. (Note that for this argument I only talk about timetravel, the fact that in homestuck babies can survive entering the atmosphere of a planet riding a meteor has nothing to do with the time travel logic of the setting.)
I like butterfly effect, but it's really inconsistent in how it treats time travel. For example, when he tries to invoke stigmata to his fellow cellmate, they wouldn't have appeared in the present, they would have always been there (in order to be consistent with the way the diary passages normally work).
Oh yeah, that scene.
Still, I think it qualifies, because Vorthospike asked for a story that wasn't completely ridiculous and Butterfly effect fits that bill in my opinion, even if it has its... moments.
I would cite Butterfly effect, although it also had its "fate" elements in it, but you would probably dismiss it as not popular enough. Back to the Future does not strike me as a serious movie at all, so I don't see how it applies here. And Terminator is not really worse than the Tarkir storyline. I'd say they're about even.
There's also homestuck, which may be hard to take serious due to its goofy nature, but it does timetravel really well. There are no wishy-washy explanations for things the author didn't care about, and the only plotholes are genuine mistakes and not "eh, I don't care" excuses. (Note that for this argument I only talk about timetravel, the fact that in homestuck babies can survive entering the atmosphere of a planet riding a meteor has nothing to do with the time travel logic of the setting.)
I like butterfly effect, but it's really inconsistent in how it treats time travel. For example, when he tries to invoke stigmata to his fellow cellmate, they wouldn't have appeared in the present, they would have always been there (in order to be consistent with the way the diary passages normally work).
Oh yeah, that scene.
Still, I think it qualifies, because Vorthospike asked for a story that wasn't completely ridiculous and Butterfly effect fits that bill in my opinion, even if it has its... moments.
The Butterfly effect is probably the closest you can get to a widely known time travel story that isn't riddled with enormous plot holes, at least not plot holes that relate to the time travel itself. I guess I should also specify time travel into the past since jumping forward doesn't cause the same problems. The broader point is that time travel stories are rarely judged for their strict technical plausibility. (And I know we've had this discussion before but given the time travel is impossible I consider any claims of strict technical plausibility to be absurd on their face.) Takir block is internally consistent and basically follows the tropes and cliches established by the genre. It isn't ambitious but its hardly worth complaining about.
However given that the OP has admitted that Doctor Who presents a sufficiently plausible view time travel I think we can reasonably dismiss the OP's complaints as whining.
I generally hate time travelling because I don't think anyone has ever managed to tell such a story in a manner that succesfully suspended my disbelief. Tarkir is no different, although, when it comes to ranking every single time travel story I've read/watched, it's certainly placed near the bottom.
Oh, well. Even at the height of my interest in Magic storyline, I never thought it was exactly amazing fiction anyway, so I think I'll survive. I do hope to eventually read something in the game's canon that entertains me as much as stuff like Brothers' War, The Thran, and Kamigawa. I admit Theros came close.
The heart of it is the new timeline: it makes no sense.
Sloppily handled time travel is like that.
Fixed that for you.
Can you name some popular time travel fiction that isn't completely ridiculous? Honestly the Tarkir plotline makes more sense than any of the Back to the Future or Terminator movies.
Urza's Saga
/thread
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I'm well aware that time travel doesn't always make sense. It's actually one of my favorite story elements: Back to the Future, Doctor Who, various episodes of Star Trek, heck the third Harry Potter book! So I'm very used to ignoring inconsistencies if the story is captivating enough. Tarkir's story isn't though. This is getting into my other major issue with Magic's storyline, it's fragmented nature. As uneven as the novels could be sometimes, they at least kept to a traditional dramatic structure. Uncharted Realms does a better job of fleshing out worlds, yes, but in terms of telling a cohesive, satisfying story, I feel it's lacking something, perhaps scale or impact.
As for my being insulted, I feel insulted that such little thought was given to implications of the effects of the altered timeline. The butterfly or ripple effect would be, as I said, minimal if Sarkhan had merely traveled back a generation or so, but over the course of a millennium, it starts to become just a bit too much. The multiverse has a way of fixing itself as we've seen with the Mending, sure. But the thing is, one of Magic's only other occasions of altering the past, Tolaria, resulted in CATASTROPHIC consequences! Granted, that may have had more to due with the machine overloading. And don't get me started on the vagueness of the time travel method and its strength comparative to Urza's time experiments.
I guess what it comes down to is that I see the consequences of Sarkhan's actions as being a matter of simple cause and effect. However, the creative team have chosen to ignore the logical effect in favor of one that better fits their idea of a good story, 2+2=5 as it were. Sarkhan saves Ugin, therefore he was never born in the new timeline, but the old timeline still exists, because it and Sarkhan HAVE to exist in order for Sarkhan to have never been born. Confusing? Yes. But it tracks. And yet, Sarkhan wasn't born in the new timeline, yet Narset and everyone else WAS? Which is it Magic?!
It seems you'd rather have a story that is awful and off putting for a game then doesn't it?
Unfortunately, the story ended up being awful anyway. Not that we should have expected it to be good, it was shoehorned into existence to fit a block that was designed as a bridge between the old 3 set block model to the new 2 set per block model.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
The heart of it is the new timeline: it makes no sense.
Sloppily handled time travel is like that.
Fixed that for you.
Can you name some popular time travel fiction that isn't completely ridiculous? Honestly the Tarkir plotline makes more sense than any of the Back to the Future or Terminator movies.
Urza's Saga
/thread
You clearly don't know much about the story or any Magic story if you think that's the case. Tarkir's been well received at basically every level.
Upon reflection, I think I really latched onto the inconsistencies in the timelines because I had hoped to be proved right when I predicted the simpler explanation I shared previously, which I made before Doug Beyer's Reforged Chain UR came out. I also have an unhealthy and, I admit, unwarranted dislike of Doug Beyer himself, who's really just been a focal point for my dissatisfaction with Magic's more diffuse storytelling. I probably felt the need to call attention to the contradictions because I've endeavored in my own writing to correct or explain some of Magic's less than cogent events and lore.
So, yes, I admit my argument was a bit hypocritical and, like time travel, contradictory. How appropriate.
Personally, I find the "branching timelines" approach to be the best way to handle time travel. You go into the past to change something? Oops, you didn't actually change anything. All you did was create a new universe; the old one still exists. That way you avoid all the annoying paradoxes that comes with this plot.
I may like this approach best because of how Dragonball handled it.
The overarching plot however, is where my problems lie. The heart of it is the new timeline: it makes no sense.
Sarkhan needed to save Ugin so he can help with the Eldrazi. Fine. There's an easy work around, just have him capture Ugin's consciousness while his body's dying and then return to it to his remains in the present (how does a spirit have bones anyway?). Simple, clear cut, timeline doesn't change or if it does, barely so. The characters we came to know in Khans are all unaltered. I mean, sure Narset was hurt and seemingly killed, but Sarkhan was far away and maybe her spark ignited in that moment. Who knows what might've been?
BUT NOOOOOOOOOO! We have to have a new timeline! It's not like the Khans characters reacting to the sudden return of dragons, which they've based much of their culture around for centuries, would be INTERESTING or anything! Instead, we get the same characters, but they're different because dragons were stopped from going extinct!
Hang on a second...that happened a thousand years in the past. That would mean that the events that led to the people being born in the present NEVER HAPPENED! All the people who died hunting dragons to extinction: never died. So they might go on to have kids with people they otherwise would not have, and the people who lived, may now die under the rule of dragons and not pass on their genes. For Narset, Zurgo, Sidisi and the rest to even EXIST, some near omniscient being would have to manipulate the bloodlines of several species over the course of a millennium! Whether the creative team didn't spot this, or just chose to ignore it, I find either insulting. If Sarkhan had gone back a generation, MAYBE it would be plausible, but a thousand years?! Give me a freaking break! This especially infuriates me as someone who aspires to write for Magic one day.
Time travel is like that.
Good stories are not engineered to avoid change.
Or they're just fated to exist regardless of the timeline.
Alternatively the creative team understands basic story structure.
Given the way you think about stories I certainly hope that doesn't happen.
I don't see how you find this insulting. And honestly if you have this attitude I really don't think you're a good fit for writing for wizards. You don't want to take any big chances or do some weird stuff with your stories, and I have a feeling they'd be pretty much same old same old.
Fixed that for you.
I mean, it's a bit naive to expect such a complex theme to be handled properly in Magic, where story usually takes so many backseats it ends up the rear trunk, but blaming this on time travel itself is just bad, because there are ways to make time travel make sense and enhance story.
It's just that in order to pull it off, you often have to base the entire setting and story around the time travel element, which Magic obviously can't do. And instead of trying to get close, they just abandoned the idea of "making sense" altogether and just slapped as many ill-informed tropes into the story as they could.
As for the original poster's points:
First off, the entire block was set around time travel. It was not concepted to bring back Ugin. That was only done because it worked so wonderfully with timetravel and because it so nicely ties into the current sotry arc with the Eldrazi etc. The base concept for the block, before any creative person sat down to flesh it out, however, was always around time travel.
Second, you may find this annoying, sure, but as Wolfaxe has said, being "insulted" is a bit too much.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Can you name some popular time travel fiction that isn't completely ridiculous? Honestly the Tarkir plotline makes more sense than any of the Back to the Future or Terminator movies.
I would cite Butterfly effect, although it also had its "fate" elements in it, but you would probably dismiss it as not popular enough. Back to the Future does not strike me as a serious movie at all, so I don't see how it applies here. And Terminator is not really worse than the Tarkir storyline. I'd say they're about even.
There's also homestuck, which may be hard to take serious due to its goofy nature, but it does timetravel really well. There are no wishy-washy explanations for things the author didn't care about, and the only plotholes are genuine mistakes and not "eh, I don't care" excuses. (Note that for this argument I only talk about timetravel, the fact that in homestuck babies can survive entering the atmosphere of a planet riding a meteor has nothing to do with the time travel logic of the setting.)
As for my being insulted, I feel insulted that such little thought was given to implications of the effects of the altered timeline. The butterfly or ripple effect would be, as I said, minimal if Sarkhan had merely traveled back a generation or so, but over the course of a millennium, it starts to become just a bit too much. The multiverse has a way of fixing itself as we've seen with the Mending, sure. But the thing is, one of Magic's only other occasions of altering the past, Tolaria, resulted in CATASTROPHIC consequences! Granted, that may have had more to due with the machine overloading. And don't get me started on the vagueness of the time travel method and its strength comparative to Urza's time experiments.
I guess what it comes down to is that I see the consequences of Sarkhan's actions as being a matter of simple cause and effect. However, the creative team have chosen to ignore the logical effect in favor of one that better fits their idea of a good story, 2+2=5 as it were. Sarkhan saves Ugin, therefore he was never born in the new timeline, but the old timeline still exists, because it and Sarkhan HAVE to exist in order for Sarkhan to have never been born. Confusing? Yes. But it tracks. And yet, Sarkhan wasn't born in the new timeline, yet Narset and everyone else WAS? Which is it Magic?!
Art is life itself.
I believe when Sarkhan says he was never born, he means that he was born in a non-existant timeline, therefore his birth has never happened, therefore he was never born. He's basically talking about himself, not his doppelganger in Tarkir 2.0, who I expect to actually have been born. It could be that Sarkhan 2.0 however never triggered his spark and probably even died before the DTK events.
Or maybe Sarkhan 2.0 was never born, while everyone else is. Apparently the multiverse is extremely arbitrary with this kind of stuff.
I like butterfly effect, but it's really inconsistent in how it treats time travel. For example, when he tries to invoke stigmata to his fellow cellmate, they wouldn't have appeared in the present, they would have always been there (in order to be consistent with the way the diary passages normally work).
People have this idea that the notion of the "ripple effect" or "butterfly effect means that things have to change by a certain amount. There are lots and lots of things that change in modern Tarkir, but people are caught up on the fact that creative decided to keep some characters still present in an altered fates type setting. But even the examples you list of time travel you like violates that. In Back to the Future, characters still all stay around Hill Valley for no real reason. It's equally likely that Biff gets beat up and just moves on with his life somewhere. But it's better to see what he looks like following the altercation. Heck, even in Back to the Future III, you're talking about Marty traveling back to 1885 and nothing happens in the present. At all.
And at least KTK hasn't had any of the "Character goes back in time and changes things but also does something that the original person remembers, showing that he always changed time but also always didn't change time" baloney that some things (ex. Harry Potter) do.
Things do get a little muddled with the multiverse existing, but most everything works out the same, so hey. Sarkhan's existence is meant to be something that even Sarkhan isn't entirely sure about the logic of--his personal timeline is preserved (let's say by the same magic that whisked him through time in the first place), but from the perspective of anyone else in Tarkir, he popped up out of nowhere fully formed. It's a weird outlier created by strange magic. It doesn't exactly ruin my immersion.
For me, the Tarkir storyline has done everything I wanted to see. The only thing that strikes me as "artifical" is that Sarkhan has no second iteration, I think it would have been easier and more interesting to have his DTK-version be killed by a dragon which would lead to an intresting controversy whether or not Sarkhan actually did himself a favor...
UR Mizzix of the Izmagnus ~~~ Build your own win-condition: Finite Spellslinging
UR Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer ~~~ We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic ~~~ A Guide to dying slowly
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose ~~~ Marchesa's undying Marionettes
RGW Mayael the Anima ~~~ All Hail the Big Chungus
GWU Chulane, Teller of Tales ~~~ Permanents Only ETB Shenanigans
BGU Sidisi, Brood Tyrant ~~~ Sidisi's Restless Servants
WUBRG The Ur-Dragon ~~~ Dragons eat your face
It seems you'd rather have a story that is awful and off putting for a game then doesn't it?
So in other words all of your complaints about the time travel aspect of the story are completely disingenuous? That's nice to know.
Oh yeah, that scene.
Still, I think it qualifies, because Vorthospike asked for a story that wasn't completely ridiculous and Butterfly effect fits that bill in my opinion, even if it has its... moments.
The Butterfly effect is probably the closest you can get to a widely known time travel story that isn't riddled with enormous plot holes, at least not plot holes that relate to the time travel itself. I guess I should also specify time travel into the past since jumping forward doesn't cause the same problems. The broader point is that time travel stories are rarely judged for their strict technical plausibility. (And I know we've had this discussion before but given the time travel is impossible I consider any claims of strict technical plausibility to be absurd on their face.) Takir block is internally consistent and basically follows the tropes and cliches established by the genre. It isn't ambitious but its hardly worth complaining about.
However given that the OP has admitted that Doctor Who presents a sufficiently plausible view time travel I think we can reasonably dismiss the OP's complaints as whining.
Oh, well. Even at the height of my interest in Magic storyline, I never thought it was exactly amazing fiction anyway, so I think I'll survive. I do hope to eventually read something in the game's canon that entertains me as much as stuff like Brothers' War, The Thran, and Kamigawa. I admit Theros came close.
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Urza's Saga
/thread
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Unfortunately, the story ended up being awful anyway. Not that we should have expected it to be good, it was shoehorned into existence to fit a block that was designed as a bridge between the old 3 set block model to the new 2 set per block model.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
You clearly don't know much about the story or any Magic story if you think that's the case. Tarkir's been well received at basically every level.
So, yes, I admit my argument was a bit hypocritical and, like time travel, contradictory. How appropriate.
I may like this approach best because of how Dragonball handled it.
Your mods are terrified of me.