Olaf's question on time

Michiel Prior M.J.Prior at let.rug.nl
Wed Nov 12 16:30:42 CET 2003


Hi Olaf,

Well, hm, *my* reason for pinning Barks' stories down to their exact 
date of publication is that I need *some* dates to be exact, otherwise 
there isn't any logical reasoning possible. Without dates, the 
reasoning would be something like "Ludwig lives in Duckburg and 
Matilda in Scotland and we never see them together and all this 
takes place somewhere in the 20th century in an unidentified steady-
flowing timeloop and it isn't possible to place any story before or after 
another", which is also fine, because then there's less logic to bother 
about. 

For such 'games of logic' as my attempt to pin down a date for 
Matilda's marriage and such, one *needs* 'exact' dates to *exclude* 
other possibilities. The fun is that those stories weren't intended to 
be absolutely logical and show logical interdependency, and still one 
is able to attempt AND find a possible logical structure to connect 
them.

The fun is that Don Rosa simply wasn't allowed to show Ludwig, but 
that doesn't matter, because the story still makes sense (allright, 
nobody's seen it yet) and one can still have a go on it by approaching 
it in a 'logical' way and finding a 'logical' reason for his absence.

One could say "Ludwig has lived forever in Duckburg", but I prefer to 
say "Ludwig arrived in Duckburg in 1961" [a Strobl story].

I don't think I have answered your question yet, Olaf. I think the 
answer is: the logical game won't work if all stories have 'stretchable' 
dates. Which dates one chooses *not* to stretch is a matter of 
preference.

Greetings,

Michiel Prior.


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