Chapter Discussion: Prisoner of Azkaban Ch 16: Professor Trelawney's prediction

[June Ewing]

No: HPFGUIDX 190234

> June:
>> so the writers
>> can make their own rules when writing their stories. How can
>> there be set rules for something that does not exist? JK Rowling
>> broke no rules because there are no rules.

> Bart:
> Well, the short-short story I wrote showed that there have to
> be SOME rules. Here's the basic rule in fantasy writing: outside
of the fantastic elements, the story and characters have to be as
believable as possible. Leaving an unresolvable paradox is not
believable. There is something in fantastic literature called a
"time loop"; that is a reality that is based on someone traveling
back in time and changing the past. There is often a question of
how the time loop started. The easiest way to handle it is to have
the person who changes time not change their own past (such as
saving Buckbeak; whether Buckbeak originally lived or died would
> not have changed the actions of any of the time travelers).
>
> <snip>


June:
There still cannot be a set rule for imagination. Everyone has
different imaginations and you cannot tell someone that their way
of writing something in their imagination is wrong. This being
said we will never get off this subject if we do not agree to
disagree. I personally thought that J.K. Rowling did an excellent
job in writing the time travel and you don't. That is normal, if
everyone thought the same way, it would be a very boring world
indeed, however make a point but do not put down someone else for
theirs because neither of us is wrong if we have different points
of view which is all you can have concerning time travel because
it does not exist and to be perfectly honest with you, I do not
believe it ever will (although that would be cool).

That being said I do have my own ideas of what could happen if it
did. For instance, if you went back in time and made a change it
does stand to reason (and I think everyone who has ever written
about time travel has included this) that if you do make a change,
the smallest change would change everything that would be connected
to it. For example, let's say that in the past you have a sibling
that passed away so you go back in time and you stop whatever
happened to that sibling (maybe he drowned and you stopped that
from happening) then when you come back to your own time you would
find that in some way every thing around you has changed, even
yourself. Now there is an extra person in the world so whatever
he has done has affected the world. Maybe he became something
amazing and your world has gotten much better, but then maybe he
became a criminal and every thing has turned upside down in your
world because of things he did.

I fully agree with you that in a case like that, that yes there are
rules and it has been noted in most if not all movies and books that
when you go messing around in time like that, things will happen but
I don't think that there are exact rules that everyone has to follow
for some thing that does not exsist. I myself think the idea of time
travel is cool but also think it would be dangerous.