Hello, everyone. Now, I've got an important question that I've had since the episode aired.

Now, from what we've seen, Starlight Glimmer prevents the Rainboom, preventing all of the Mane Six from earning their Cutie Marks and creating alternate presents. But the big thing that I can't seem to shake off is that how does Twilight still have her alicornhood, and why does Spike still exist if she never hatched him?

Now, the best excuse I can make up for this is that MLP followed the rules of Men in Black 3 (I don't know if there was an original movie or TV show that did this rule first. But if there is, be sure to correct me on that.). In that film, Boris the Animal went back in time to kill Agent K, therefore making it so that Agent J logically shouldn't have been chosen as an MIB agent. However, J still is an agent and is still able to fight Boris by travelling through time to stop him. It's a similar deal in Cutie Remark, except that each and every time Twilight fails, she sees different presents where another evil had conquered Equestria.

But enough about my rambling. What do you guys think about this?

4907619 Maybe it's somewhere along the lines of the Back to the Future "ripple-effect", where given enough time they indeed would start to disappear, but not instantaneously.

4907619 I think it was because they were connected to the Map. Didn't you see? The Map would change in each timeline, but it remains, and is not affected by time.

4907639 I guess that would make some sense, but I think that there has to be more to it than that...

4907619 perhaps it's time travel on the lines of Marvel, or Star Trek, where changing the timeline creates a Alternate timeline while the original timeline still exists so Spike and Twilight still exist. This also means each of those timelines exist as well so yeah one timeline is safe the others are all dystiopia's!

4907619
Twilight isn't replacing her alternate future self - she's just jumping in at the sequential location in the timeline. There should be another Twilight in each of the Timelines.

In my headcanon, when Starlight came back, they replaced their future selves because of the way to spell worked. That future was the baseline future.

That being said, I never really liked their interpretation of time travel here anyway - too many things that just don't make sense.

4907619 IT'S CALLED 'MAIN CHARACTER IMMUNITY'.

4907619
There are two realities (well, many, but for the sake of argument, let's limit it to two):

» The reality where the Sonic Rainboom happened; and
» The reality where the Sonic Rainboom did not happen.

Both realities exist and are equally real. What Starlight really achieved was not to create that second reality, but to take the Twilight Sparkle from the first reality, and transpose her into the second reality, which was unfamiliar to her.

4907649 Timelines jumping left and right, starting and stopping...

Also, it's a time travelling spell designed by everyone's favorite bearded unicorn. When designing one, you would probably want to make yourself to immune to it's effects, so you will still be the greatest wizard the world has ever known after you have changed history, instead of accidentally turning yourself, for example, into a farmer with no memory of who you were in the old timeline?

It's magic, so makes the whole thing kinda hard to explain logically.

4907619 Different fictions have different interpretations of how a time travel paradox works. Maybe they would have disappeared eventually. Maybe there's some loophole.
I'm thinking it might be due to Twilight having gone back in time with Starlight, instead of staying in the present. Which would also explain why Starlight was waiting for Twilight to arrive home before she cast the spell.

They don't replace their alternate selves, they show up in addition to their alternates.

When they go back to Starlight's past, we see real-future-Starlight and past Starlight in the same area, without either replacing the other.

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I am not a fan of the idea that a single timeline is changed by time travel.

What happens is that another universe is created when the slightest change happens.

That being said however... Shouldn't there be two Twilight's in the fixed universe? Because Twilight and Starlight were not present in the previous timelines.

Maybe the new fixed timeline was so similar to the old one, that the scroll was close enough to the original timeline anyways?

4907656 Actually it's called 'Ripple Effect-Proof Memory'

It could be because Alicorn ascension is outside time and space. Kinda fit with the starry void and video montage right?

4908161

The Twilight from the new timeline would have gone back to prevent the Starlight from the new timeline from changing the past, and then come back to yet another timeline, leaving our Twilight this timeline.

4908627 NO, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE HAS ONE HECK OF A POWERFUL MAIN CHARACTER IMMUNITY. SERIOUSLY, THE UNIVERSE WON'T LET HER DIE.

4908161 Whether we like or don't like ideas doesn't affect how true they are. That being said, they never tell us how timelines work, so we can make head-cannons and theories as much as we want until they get jossed.

There probably is another Twilight in the alternate realities working some terrible job for less than minimum wage, desperate for friends and wishing that she had passed the entrance exam.
Sorry, I got a bit carried away there.

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey… stuff.

The Tenth Doctor, Blink

Or

A Unicorn did it.

Seriously, I think Starlight Glimmer rigged the spell that way so that Twilight could see what she was doing. It's not a satisfying revenge plot if your foe just vanishes out of existence and never knows what you did.

Anyhow, the question you should be asking is how did Pinkie Pie continue to exist after Twilight got sucked into the past?

It should be noted that each time Twilight and Spike returned to the "present", a few years had gone by instead of just a year since Nightmare Moon's defeat. This means that Twilight and Spike traveled somewhere from 5-10 years into the future to see what would happen and why Applejack and Nightmare Moon say it's been years since everything changed.