Questionable Content?
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2022 10:59 pm
I just ran across the Mistipedia article about Arabelle. This is like the seventh article I've ran across in the last few months that had me scratching my head.
As most of us know, it's utterly impossible for Madame Eva to be Strahd's sister in the standard timeline. Mainly because Madame Eva is of a race that can (seemingly) travel the breadth of the space/time continuum at will. It's one of the main reasons that WotC announced that CoS was in an alternate timeline back in the day, instead of repairing the massive incongruities that it caused. I mean, technically STRAHD is not Barovian "royalty", let along nobility, but certainly Madame Eva cannot be his sister in the standard timeline/continuum. (Which is not to say that it's not an entertaining idea, because it is.)
YES, most of us know that CoS is a separate timeline, but there will always be a steady stream of people who don't automatically know that. To make matters worse, most of these pages have the "This content is CANON" blurb pasted across the top. I REALLY think articles like this one ought to be labeled as Questionable Canon instead. The responsible thing to do would be to explain to people WHY CoS made a mess of this particular point (although that is a debatable element, I admit). However, at the very least we ought to have some sort of special disclaimer which states that it is ONLY canon in the CoS Timeline, but is broken in the standard timeline. ..or some such thing.
Just for the record, this isn't ACTUALLY my first post here. My old account was under an old email or something.. probably Yahoo or Hotmail something. I don't see the need to comment on here but every few years though, so this time around I just created a new account, as I couldn't easily find the old one. :/
As most of us know, it's utterly impossible for Madame Eva to be Strahd's sister in the standard timeline. Mainly because Madame Eva is of a race that can (seemingly) travel the breadth of the space/time continuum at will. It's one of the main reasons that WotC announced that CoS was in an alternate timeline back in the day, instead of repairing the massive incongruities that it caused. I mean, technically STRAHD is not Barovian "royalty", let along nobility, but certainly Madame Eva cannot be his sister in the standard timeline/continuum. (Which is not to say that it's not an entertaining idea, because it is.)
YES, most of us know that CoS is a separate timeline, but there will always be a steady stream of people who don't automatically know that. To make matters worse, most of these pages have the "This content is CANON" blurb pasted across the top. I REALLY think articles like this one ought to be labeled as Questionable Canon instead. The responsible thing to do would be to explain to people WHY CoS made a mess of this particular point (although that is a debatable element, I admit). However, at the very least we ought to have some sort of special disclaimer which states that it is ONLY canon in the CoS Timeline, but is broken in the standard timeline. ..or some such thing.
Just for the record, this isn't ACTUALLY my first post here. My old account was under an old email or something.. probably Yahoo or Hotmail something. I don't see the need to comment on here but every few years though, so this time around I just created a new account, as I couldn't easily find the old one. :/