Actually all that the dialogue in "the Neutral Zone" establishes is that Stardate 41986.0 is in 2364. Nothing else.
Yes, and I've already stated my awareness of that fact, so you should know that I don't need it explained to me.
The Chronology (which isn't a canonical resource anyway) made an assumption based on that and got it wrong.
No, it didn't "get it wrong," it chose to interpret it in a way that you
personally choose to disagree with. There is no "right" or "wrong" here -- it's all made up, it has inconsistencies, and different people make different choices about how to deal with those inconsistencies.
The makes of the show subsequently clarified where stardates fall by the placement of real world events (like the festival of lights).
No, they didn't. The stardates were never intended to convey detailed chronological information. The whole
point of stardates was to convey
no meaningful chronological information at all. Aside from the first two digits and the overall (but not invariable) tendency to increase from episode to episode, they were deliberately random. They weren't meant to be taken literally and analyzed to death, they were meant to be forgettable filler that only created the illusion of having meaning. The stardates weren't even chosen by the scriptwriters or the production staff. I believe they were left blank in the first-draft scripts and a minor staffer (perhaps the script coordinator) was responsible for inserting a random set of digits that was higher than the one from the previous week. That's all the thought or care that ever went into stardates. If a scriptwriter chose to ascribe a specific date to an episode such as the Hindu Festival of Lights, that was totally independent from the process that led to the stardate assigned to the script.
I don't dispute your premise that the occasional date/stardate equivalences can be used to create a reasonably consistent chronological model that places the beginning of a "stardate year" sometime in the middle of a Gregorian calendar year rather than on January 1st. That's a valid alternative interpretation. But just because it's possible for fans to extrapolate it after the fact, that doesn't mean it was the conscious intent of the show's makers at the time.
But that's my point, there IS canonical evidence to the contrary.
There's canonical evidence to the contrary of the Okudachron's dating for TWOK as well, but there are still plenty of novels that are based on the assumption that TWOK is in 2285. It's just something we're stuck with at this point.
Which is fine and I accept that (and as I mentioned it's not that difficult to shift stuff if you want to follow the onscreen stardates). My point really is that 41xxx = 2364 is a misconception that isn't supported by the canon (of which the chronology isn't part).
Again, it's not a misconception, because there's no "real" explanation when the whole universe is completely made up. We know that at least one episode with a 41xxx stardate happened during 2364. Therefore, it is not incorrect to say that the 41xxx stardate year overlaps with the Gregorian year 2364
to some extent. The only uncertainty is over how much overlap there is. And since it's a work of fiction, that's not a matter of objective reality, it's a matter of choice and opinion. You're perfectly entitled to your position, and it's an alternative theory that I don't have a problem with. But it's pretty obnoxious to treat your personally preferred model as a fundamental truth and insist that anyone who chooses a different interpretation is somehow out of touch with "reality." There is no reality. There's a TV show that a bunch of different people made up as they went along, often with contradictory assumptions. Fans are free to come up with different personal opinions on how to reconcile the inconsistencies, but it's just not cool to condemn others for choosing different interpretations.
Ha hahaha, I feel the same way after that previous post.
