User blog comment:Zippertrain85/The reasons why Serana is not from the First Era./@comment-3217145-20130510005609/@comment-3217145-20130510183423

I did question it. It stood up to the test.
 * "That quote isn't even part of the plot, you could go through the whole Dawnguard DLC and never hear about it."

Irrelevant. That would make every historical book in every game non-canon, because they're not connected to the plot.


 * "She even said how she was so lonely and never left the castle in the Dawnguard questline."

Irrelevant. She says she's been outside before (like to Winterhold), and if she literally "never" left, HOW DID SHE GET TO DIMHOLLOW?


 * "I still think it's possible that Harkon could've tried to keep her blind to current events to keep power over her."

Irrelevant. I don't care what you think, prove it's possible. All he cares about is the prophecy, which has nothing to do with "current events." I gave you 8 points to counter just for starters, swing away.


 * "Their could be Garan, but maybe she was locked up after Garan showed up. He could've been one hundred and it could've been the end of the Third Era."

Irrelevant. First show how Serana could be from the Third Era and not know what the Empire is (don't just tell me, show me by responding to the above point), THEN show why it even matters how old Garan (not Vingalmo) is, THEN tie in Garan's supposed age.


 * "Harkon does have a Mythic Dawn poster in his room, so they were out and about at that time."

Irrelevant. Harkon wasn't buried, he could have Ulfric's autograph and it wouldn't matter.


 * "He probably didn't want to say "I was a farmer and started worshipping Molag Bal one day, then he turned me into a Vampire and I lived in this castle since" because that isn't intimidating. He wants to be like that to keep power. It's not that unlikely based off of his power hungry actions throughout the DLC."

Irrelevant. Why would I assume that's true in the first place? It's more likely he's telling the truth, because Bethesda has no reason to give him that backstory and then cover it up completely and leave absolutely no hints of it in the game, and Valerica and Serana, who HATE Harkon, keep calling him a king and never badmouth him about his past and his egotistical lies. You can't just make something up and say "see? You can't prove me wrong!" I have no reason to believe you. Nothing in the game supports this.

Are you noticing a pattern?

It may be one quote, but:
 * 1) It has infinitely more weight than anything you say because none of your "evidence" proves anything. You're throwing out facts then making statements that they don't prove. If it's "evidence," it's factual, and people wouldn't be providing alternate, equally valid interpretations of what you claim the evidence proves. Your point about Solitude, for example, isn't evidence because there's no lore about Solitude to prove anything, just your guesses about what's "likely." Garan's one quote isn't evidence because it's just your word against mine about how to interpret it, and there's no link between that and Vingalmo's completely unrelated quote. The Moth Priests aren't evidence because nothing anywhere says where or when they started, so it's not impossible that Serana knows about them (especially since the Volkihars had a good reason to look for them). A preponderance of personal opinions will never amount to a shred of evidence, so the quote continues to outweigh you.
 * 2) Despite claims to the contrary, saying that your word has the same power as Bethesda's is INCREDIBLY arrogant. They are the authority. They made the game.
 * 3) You're asserting that she isn't from the First Era, but I never asserted that she is. I accept this as most probably true because there's one very obvious, deliberate clue in the game that's clearly meant to give this information. You provided another scenario, so now I believe it could be either of those, or some other time I'm not aware of when the Empire wasn't around. You have to prove a problem. I have no reason to stop believing even minor events until you can PROVE a problem, and show it's more likely that you're right than that any other idea is.

Maybe this will help to understand what I mean.

There are more options than "true" and "false." There are two opposites to the phrase "I know this is true": "I know this is FALSE," and "I DO NOT know this is true." In reality, something is either true or false, but that doesn't mean we know which one it is. Arguing that something may not be true doesn't require it to be false, it just means we don't know. I could say that all the galaxies in the universe are arranged in the shape of a giant universal teacup, we just can't see all of them, and our information is time-lagged due to the speed of light. You would rightly say "why on earth do you think that?" You could never say "you're wrong because [x]," since there's no way to see all the galaxies and show that I'm wrong, but there would be no reason to believe me, or someone else who says "no, dummy, they're shaped like a dragon." No one has to prove that you cannot be right, only that there's no reason to think you are. Once they do, it doesn't prove the assertion wrong, it shows that we have no reason to believe it instead of not believing it.

What you're doing is more like saying the Milky Way is shaped like a donut, then giving a lot of inferences and claims and assumptions to show the Galileo might have lied about his observations or that we've never taken a picture of the galaxy from outside it. We have evidence that directly contradicts your statement, and nothing you're bringing up matters.


 * "not everything in the game is necessarly correct lore wise."

EVERYTHING IN THE GAME IS CORRECT LORE-WISE.

Bethesda made it, and they decide what's lore. Except for some exceptions: You MUST start with the assumption that everything stated is fact, because if you pick and choose, you can show that ALL of it's lies, because it's a fictional world.
 * 1) Things with INTENTIONAL evidence to show that they're lies or opinion, because that shows that Bethesda (who decides what's lore) DECIDED to give wrong information and let you find the truth. For example, the quest Blood on the Ice implies that the court wizard is a murderer, but that's provably false, and not lore. "The Talos Problem" has extremely obvious bias and other characters in the game express the opposite opinion, so you don't have to accept that book as fact.
 * 2) Obvious instances of scaling or simplification for technical or practical purposes (days being way too short, crops being insufficient, money weighing nothing). This includes the lack of specific kinds of rocks (unless Bethesda confirms otherwise), because there's only one kind of rock in the entire game, because unimportant textures and world models cost memory.
 * 3) Retcons. Obviously these don't show up until the next game comes out to do the retcon, so we don't have to bother with this yet.

Once you've done that, (and I've already explained this), you only have plot holes. You can only show that two pieces of lore contradict each other. When this happens, you don't know which one supersedes the other until you have direct confirmation from Bethesda or a later game (from Bethesda, who decides what's lore) that accepts one interpretation over another. That's why I can't accept these arguments. You can't just say that Bethesda is lying without saying why. Why would they lie? Why should I believe any number of alternative explanations when they have no manifestation in the game? You can't fill in an absence of lore with your own speculation. That's fanfiction. I already granted that you have a valid theory, so focus on that. Or just call the whole thing sloppy, confusing writing that is all accurate and canon. Give up this pointless fight over speculative details that you can't prove and don't need.