SAMASzero wrote:Killer Cyborg wrote:SAMASzero wrote:I would point out that the Other Side is saying that Erin Tarn's writing on the subject is: A: not sacrosanct, and B: unconfirmed even in the original document. i.e.: Erin Tarn herself was saying that the information could be wrong, which turned out to be the case. Like I said before, this is why the writing had so much uncertainty and vagueness. It wasn't Kevin saying "Nobody's in Japan", it was Kevin saying "I have no idea/plans for Japan at the time of this writing".
Right.
In order:
a) it is not sacrosanct, but it is pretty clear that Kevin intended her words to be accurate. This is clear because of the time and trouble he goes through to have specific points of information stated as clear fact, and other pieces of information stated as rumors or otherwise qualified and therefore specifically marked as being questionable.
How can you say that the words were intended to be accurate, when the Author herself says they may not be?
Because Tarn isn't really the author- Siembieda is.
And I have yet to hear a good explanation for why Siembieda would, after taking the time and trouble to mention all the times that Tarn is working off of any kind of questionable information, try to add in yet another layer of "but this might not be true!" for a game series that he only expected to write two more books for, one of them being a conversion book.
The simplest explanation is still that Kevin originally intended for Japan to be unpopulated, and later changed his mind.
Nobody has ever, in any way, come up with anything that makes this an unlikely theory.
For that matter, how can you say that Kevin intended for Japan to be unpopulated when he approved the creation of World Book 8 in the first place? They did not just sneak into the printing room,and start up the presses late at night while Kevin was asleep like the Republicans did to Archie 3.
Because Kevin, like anybody else, can change his mind.
When he wrote the RMB, he expected to follow it with ONE World Book that detailed the entire planet. That doesn't leave much room for "let's have secret stuff in Japan!" or other similar notions that he expected to ever do anything with that region ever again.
Then, YEARS LATER, Patrick Nowak approached Kevin with either the idea for a Rifts: Japan book, or a manuscript for it, and Kevin got excited about it and greenlit the project.
b) Tarn NEVER ONCE states that her information could be wrong, excepting times where she specifies that she is repeating rumors or other information that is likewise marked as being questionable.
In other words,
when they could be wrong.
Right.
And since Japan was not one of the times that she specified that she could be wrong, that indicates that it wasn't.
All that she actually states is that her knowledge is not complete.
That is not the same as her knowledge being wrong.
If you wanna be picky, we can use the term "incorrect" instead. I'm not tying to say the lady is lying or anything.
It nets out the same.
Having a gap in your knowledge means "I don't know."
Which is not the same as "I know x" and late X is proven to be untrue. That's not a gap, that's being wrong... or incorrect, or whatever you want to call it.
She chalks up "Australia and the rest of the world" as areas that she knows absolutely nothing about. That right there is a pretty freakin' huge gap in her knowledge of the world- more than enough to justify an anal-retentive academic from not wanting her work published due to this kind of gap in knowledge.
She
didn't want it published.
Sigh.
That's what I meant.
I'd think that the typo was pretty clear.
It's fixed now, at any rate.
c) If Kevin wanted to say "nobody knows what's in Japan," he would have said so specifically. How do we know? Because that's what he does with every other place where he wants to say that. He chalks Africa up as "dark and mysterious." He has Tarn flat-out state that she KNOWS NOTHING about "Australia and the rest of the world." The only thing that he mentions about India is that there are rumors of cannibalistic D-Bees there.
If Kevin wanted nobody to be in Japan,
South America 2 would've been World Book 8.
Believe it or not, those books were published years after the RMB, not while Kevin was writing it.
IF Kevin wanted Japan to be a blank spot on the map, something left open for future development, he would have done something similar with Japan. He would have had Tarn say "Japan is still the mysterious Orient on the other side of the world!" or he'd have had Tarn say, "I know nothing about Japan, Australia, or the rest of the world." Or he'd have had Tarn say, "The only thing I know about Japan is that there are rumors of...."
But he doesn't do any of these things.
He specifically does not do any of these things.
He has Tarn state as fact that Japan was wiped out by the apocalypse, and that all that's left are islands that are:
1. Small
2. Quiet.
3. Wilderness.
Then
Rifts World Book 8: Rifts' Japan came out, and that piece of information turned out to be:
1. Wrong.
2. Incorrect
3. Not in actuality.
Depends on how you mean.
If you mean that somehow the existence of that book published years after the Rifts line unexpectedly took off, and Kevin realized that he'd have to write more than one World Book, somehow proves that back when Kevin was writing the RMB he planned to do something with Japan, then you're wrong.
If you mean that the new book retconned things, then you're kind of right... except that the original RMB passage by Tarn most likely doesn't even exist anymore in-game, as Tarn would have no reason to call a heavily populated region a "small cluster of quiet wilderness islands."
Or perhaps that wasn't something she wrote. Our Changing World, the version of ToMW that Erin did write with the intent of publishing, both says that Erin has never been to Japan (but she has been to Russia), but recounts rumors (specifically said to be so) that line up with The New Empire, Republic of Japan, and the Zone.
There is only one version of the World Overview, and I've repeatedly pointed out how and why we know that this is canon.
Either read one of those posts and address it, or drop the subject, because just repeating the debunked "this isn't Tarn's words!" schtick is pretty old by now.
IF Kevin had wanted Japan to even be the kind of wilderness that has demons and significant numbers of villages or other communities existing in that wilderness, again, he would have mentioned it.
How do we know?
Because that's what he did in every other part of the planet.
And then World Book 8 came out. And all of that no longer matters.
So why are you arguing about it?
This is what is known in the business as a
Retcon. Rettroactive
Continuity. Something previously said is no longer true (for reasons good or bad). Therefore, Japan was never wiped out (and possibly, Erin Tarn never said that it was).
Welcome to the word I've been using for most of this conversation.
I'm glad you like it, and I'm glad that you're catching up.
It might have happened a lot sooner if you'd bothered reading my end of the conversation before wading in.