Validity

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Validity was a concept that determined whether a certain source (such as a fictional text) was truthful and whether the events depicted by that source really happened. This concept was mainly used by the Bookkeepers but was also used in the study of Meta-History.

In the Plume Coteries' Library

The Bookkeepers in the Plume Coteries' Library used validity as a measure of "real thing[s] that happened" which were documented within fiction. They endeavoured to sort all the books there between truth and fiction as well as the valid and the invalid, (PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"]) deeming valid books to be incredibly precious. (PROSE: The First Noël ^[+]Loading...["The First Noël (short story)"])

As part of an inherited duty, Bookkepers sojourned into the depths of the Library, combing its rooms and categorising the books between random gibberish, those which were readable yet false, and those which were possibly truthful and valid. There were often theories and suggested maps of plentiful veins of validity, such as a possible pattern found by Caspar's great great great great great grandmother. However, validity would fade quickly once a sojourner left such a room. Books with a chance of being valid would be taken back to civilization and evaluated by the experts; (PROSE: The First Noël ^[+]Loading...["The First Noël (short story)"]) the Bookkeepers' research teams. Valid books were placed in the Library's reading rooms.

Most types of books could be deemed valid, including fanfiction and gamebooks. When a gamebook was deemed as valid, this meant that all possible routes that could be taken in the book really happened, meaning the event it depicted was in a state of temporal flux.

Maritsa and Callum were once trapped in a reading room of the Plume Coteries' Library, in which all the books were valid, as a result of the Snowstorm. While Maritsa was performing bibliomancy on various books in the Library in an attempt to escape, Callum stated that Magic Bird of Fire was valid. Similarly, Maritsa stated that the printout of early 21st century fanfiction that Claret Doe was reading was valid. The two were unsure if the Terminator paperback was valid. They stated that the gamebook The Legions of Death, in which there were multiple possible routes, that "all the versions really happened," because it signified an event in a state of temporal flux. When it became too cold, Callum and Maritsa protested the possibility that Claret may burn some of the valid books. (PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"])

When Caspar's sister sojourned into the Library, she returned with 14 candidates for validity after three years cataloguing 101 rooms. Caspar did the same, though found several valid books that were annotated by an unknown figure, one of which was about transportation throughout history. (PROSE: The First Noël ^[+]Loading...["The First Noël (short story)"])

Upon his appearance from a pile of Nothing in the Plume Coteries' Library, [[the most canon man]] repeated "VALID, INVALID VALID INVALID VALID INVALID," and claimed he was "SO VALID" and "SO CANON!" (PROSE: How to Appear Noodles in Several Uneasy Lessons ^[+]Loading...["How to Appear Noodles in Several Uneasy Lessons (short story)"])

Elsewhere

In December 2333, Dr Olivia Kagg Waldermein argued in her paper Love & War: A Meta-Historical Investigation of the Dawn of the Cosmic Revolution that only a few surviving "Gods" were "documented over the entire span of currently-valid history" after the latest Major Space-Time Rewrite. (PROSE: Love & War ^[+]Loading...["Love & War (short story)"])

Behind the scenes

Validity is a concept used on this wiki to determine valid sources.