Discussion Main / NoOntologicalInertia

How does this apply with Time Travel tropes? For example, take Back the Future. Ontological inertia seems be an actual metaphysical quality in the franchise that exists between the two extremes that are presented. Altering the past changes the future, causing things to cease to exist, but because of inertia they don't immediately cease to exist, driving the core conflict of the film. It's a line of reasoning that is related to, but distinct from this trope when played straight.

I made an account to ask whether I could add the decline of M- sur M- in <em>Les Miserables</em> to this trope (Valjean/Madeleine leaves to sacrifice himself for his lookalike, and the whole town just kind of goes to pot because he was the source of all of its stability and economic dynamism). It seems to me that it would fit, but it also sticks out in being non-magical. As I am quite new I thought I'd ask here first.

Not sure how the efficiency of the medicine in "The Hunger Games" fits this trope. Did I miss something?

Removed the following Natter that violated Example Indentation from the Sailor Moon example in Anime and Manga.

• It's quite possible to justify all three of those cases. In the first, in the new continuity, there was no Nephrite. Naru and Umino just naturally grew together in the replacement year (besides, their relationship seems to reset somewhat. Naru doesn't display nearly as much romantic interest in Umino at the start of the Makaiju arc as she did at the beginning of the Nijizuishou arc). In the second, it's a case of Magic A Is Magic A. When the youma stops applying the effort to fight off reality, reality starts happening again. In the third, the change happens over a few instances of Time Travel. It's quite possible ChibiUsa went a little further forward than she did backward, and skipped out on the rebuild effort, and/or that since the cause of the destruction was erased, the destruction ceased to happen. This is true of most examples of this trope, however.

Now, Collapsing Lair is definitely a subtrope of No Ontological Inertia ... but it is a separate subtrope that does exist.

A lot of the examples here are just flat-out Collapsing Lairs, and some of them written as though they were ON the Collapsing Lair page instead of this one, like they'd been copy-pasted and not edited afterwards.

I'd propose moving every entry that describes a "building that falls apart when its maker or inhabitant is killed" to the Collapsing Lair page.

This seems like it should be linked to Load-Bearing Boss somewhere.

Aralith: Removed the bit about the tree falling in the woods, because it's totally wrong. Trees falling in the woods with no one around to hear them do NOT make sounds. They make sound waves, sure, but sound waves are just pressure differences within the atmosphere. It takes the brain/ear combo of a living creature to receive and translate these waves into actual sound. Bottom line, sound itself requires a receptor to exist, which the proverbial tree scenario just doesn't have.