Talk:Khans of Tarkir block

Plot flaws in the Tarkir block

Hello.

I just recently got interested in the Tarkir story on MtGStory.com. I accidentally read on the last chapter (before reading the rest) that Sarkhan Vol changed the past. As far as I am concerned, this is a plot flaw. Wikipedia relates that this type of time paradox is called "grandfather paradox" and it violates the self-consistency of the story. In other words, "changing the past" is scientifically proven to be a plot flaw.

All of this is overthinking, I know, but if you overthink, too, you have to choose:

• either the authors of the Tarkir story took it very lightly;
• or the events in the Khans of Tarkir set are non-canon.

I wait for your comments. ---Abacos (talk) 23:39, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this may be “overthinking” things, but paradox-free time travel is not necessarily impossible according to recent research. There is an interesting NPR article from 2020 that discusses this in case you are interested: Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say. This raises other questions of course, but (pardon the pun) only time will tell. The bottom line is that the story (regardless of flaws) is indeed canon. Sarkhan Vol traveled through time to save Ugin which resulted in a new timeline in which Ugin’s descendants now reign.Nivmizzetreborn (talk) 02:04, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Nice article. I am surprised that someone published a scientific paper about this. I could have written the same paper myself 10 years ago (I am a professor of physics), but I always considered "time travel debate" just as a hobby.
I guess you read the article title only. According to what is written in the article you linked, the authors of the Tarkir storyline could have done paradox-free time travel by never writing anything included in the timeline on the right (labeled "False"). Therefore the storyline of the "Khans of Tarkir" set *is* false, indeed. The "True" timeline on the left is self-consistent and paradox-free on its own.
Therefore, my position still stands, unchallenged AND supported by the article you posted. ---Abacos (talk) 16:22, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

In a literary point of view the story works out because the viewpoint character is not one who knows or cares about multiversal (the other explanation) or temporal mechanics, so (IIRC) no character makes any attempt to properly define the nature of Ugin's time travel, as opposed to someone like Teferi or Saheeli who certainly would question it. This means that there is technically no "scientific incorrectness" as it has not attempted to be scientific about it. I personally found the dynamic of a single plane in the multiverse undergoing a millennium of change being more curious, as it implies that no planeswalker ever visited Tarkir and formed memories of the dragonless plane in the meantime. Sorin barely counts because he probably disregarded anything on with the plane not related to Ugin being incapacitated. If you wanted to find more issues, the fact that seven (five khans, two background) individual characters still exist under only slightly different contexts is improbable to the extreme, and also has no bearing on the Ugin half of the story. All in all, the fact that Ugin is so powerful — him being merely "only mostly dead" still leads to dragonstorms on a plane that he doesn't even hail from is an impressive show of power — means that realistic physics gives way to his extremely powerful contingency plan and magical ability. "A Wizard Did It" is not a particularly satisfying trope, but time travel literature is rarely written for the purpose of having accurate temporal mechanics. 218.103.142.150 23:35, 13 February 2023 (UTC)