How is Time explained?

[Centinuus]

In fantasy, particularly romanticised and high fantasy, few authors tend to discuss what in their universe, is the function or origin of time. i feel many do the understandable relation of simply saying time is just as mysterious as in our own world, but ive always liked to use Fantasy as a place where i can make sense of anything as i myself dictate the laws and fundamental properties of the environment, and as such ive made Time a almost primordial force that has some unconscious omnipresent will off its own. for example the "creator" figure in my Mythos is the great flame Allunas, he created life and the world of Aphal, but even he was willed into existence, nothing simply "can be" and Time has this certain impulse to allow the properties so that even in nothingness, something will happen. thats always how ive used it at any rate, a force so pervasive and interwoven yet by no means actually a living embodiment. i could go into more detail about how ive staged the 3 existing dimensions of Aphal and how they each function but the main question for now is how other world builders tackle this interesting subject.

 

[Drakevarg]

I was actually discussing this with Chrispenycate last night over chat.

Obviously time works in your setting at the intersection of "what your audience can wrap their head around" and "how you want it to work," but personally I don't particularly like time (and wasn't even convinced it legitimately existed as anything more than an abstraction in our own world until a particular quirk of quantum mechanics was explained to me that only makes sense if time is an actual thing).

So in my own setting, "time" is just the way people discern the chain of events, but in reality only a single ever-changing present exists. There's no future, no past outside of memory, and absolutely no time travel or alternate timelines.

Personally I would stress that the only rules for time is that you should keep them consistent, but Doctor Who has proven over its 50+ year run that if you can entertain your audience sufficiently, you can change the rules on the fly and leave behind as many plot holes as you jolly well please.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

It's wibbly wobbly. I almost never explain time. I just note that it exists and has a logical progression.

 

[Centinuus]

Certainly fair enough, it can be a tricky subject to discuss in fantasy as i believe we all aspire to certain degree of realism in the way our universe functions fundamentally, but there are some, nigh, MANY things we simply cannot fully grasp in our current state, and as such cannot truly relate or place value on. while i think its a good probability that time is simply a 4th dimension, its still impossible to comprehend what that would look or feel like to someone as limited in perception as ourselves. so my approach was simply to make Time a very unbais and unknowing primordial force that simply wants things to happen, but your ever changing present is just as fantastically cryptic and still rather incomprehensible, as it should be i think.

 

[Centinuus]

Strange that Tennant so eloquently and goofily gave quite possibly one of the most solid explanation for just how much we cant comprehend time coming from the perspective of someone who CAN comprehend time, but is forced to try to explain it in our simple human words. and i agree, its a bit of a tricky subject in any medium as you tend to always contradict one thing or another. i was just curious if anyone else had taken the same approach i had or assigned different meaning.