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Title: Why Nala is Flawless |
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This story was inspired by one of Jason Knight's Usenet post on Nala. Full credit goes to Jason Knight for the "Nala's Paradox" used in this story. >no one addressed my contention that adult Nala IS a paradox. Not the
words, the character herself. For those that missed it the first time,
I'll repeat it. It seems you'd have to look pretty hard to find a flaw
in Nala. In fact, I haven't found one myself, and I've never heard one
reported. I think it's rather safe to say that Nala is perfect. She's flawless.
No logical problems yet. Of course, no one is flawless in real life. If
Nala is flawless, then she's unrealistic. Certainly realism is an asset
to a character, so lack thereof would be a shortcoming. If Nala is unrealistic,
then she's flawed. So, if Nala is flawless, she must be unrealistic, and
therefore flawed. At first it seems there is an easy way to resolve this
-- just let Nala be flawed. But then she *would* be realistic, and still
retain all her other good characteristics. Without a shortcoming to mention,
she must therefore be flawless -- and we're right back where we started.
There you have it, Nala is a paradox. Got that?<
HEAD ANGEL: This new Windoze 95 version of 'Soul Construction Kit' is great. No more ugly dos windows and plain text. Let's give it a test drive shall we? The first soul to define on the list today is Nala. Now, let's start by putting in her qualities. PROGRAMMER ANGEL: Yes sir. HEAD ANGEL: Hmm, we'll give her a beautiful body, with irresistible eyes and cream fur, a lot of wit, good common sense, an understanding mind, a brave heart, great fighting strength with a knack to pin any lion, yet also the gentlest purr for more "intimate" moments, a strong sense of justice, knows when it's time to bend the rules, considerate for others, modest, and... PROGRAMMER ANGEL: Sir, you're doing it again. You're not leaving any room for faults. HEAD ANGEL: I am? Oh. Well, start over...Achoo! NARRATOR: The programmer, distracted by his supervisor's sneeze, hits the enter button instead of the backspace. The computer screen flashes a message: "Input accepted: Formatting...Done." HEAD ANGEL: Accepted?! How could it be? There is supposed to be a safeguard to reject any personality without flaws! PROGRAMMER ANGEL: Well sir, it seems as though that the computer, seeing the overwhelming number of qualities, put "unrealistic" as a flaw. HEAD ANGEL: It did? (thinking)...wait a minute, if unrealistic is a flaw, then she isn't flawless, and so unrealistic isn't a flaw anymore, which means... PROGRAMMER ANGEL: ...that she is flawless but then she is unrealistic again. So she has a flaw, which means... HEAD ANGEL: ...she is realistic and becomes flawless again. Arrrrgh! This is getting us nowhere. Is there any way to cancel the formatting? PROGRAMMER ANGEL: No sir. This is still the beta version, so the 'Undo' command isn't available yet. HEAD ANGEL: Damn. Order an immediate fix of this bug. PROGRAMMER ANGEL: Yes sir. |