This story is a sequel to Hard Reset
Abstract
This is a followup story of Hard Reset, and talks about the experience of living in a loop from a more "slice of life" point of view, rather than adventures all the time. The original story ended several months after the reset point, and mentions the possibility that the time magic is still potent. The author feels like this is an important point that requires expansion. In fact, this is the most important point.
In this story, Twilight goes through her cyclic lives in a desperate and somewhat comedic search for meaning, but mostly just to avoid going mad from boredom.
Chapters (8)
You have some serious problems with tenses and awkward phrasing that make it hard to get into the story. Also the dialogue sounds really off.
7552520
Please give me some examples?
*SIGH*
Ask Celestia what it would take to convince her, then do that next time.
Apparently, it is like Asimov said in The End of Eternity, not all events are equally important and small enough events (winning lottery numbers, say) are essentially random. Or, at least they are controlled by so many small variables that it comes to essentially the same thing.
Try the Larry Niven story "All the Myriad Ways". All infinities of the same order are the same size -infinite. That is, if you have a set of "all whole numbers" & a set "every 1,000,000th prime number", they are the same size.
Yes, if you pick numbers at random you will most likely get a number from the 1st set but not the 2nd. Still, infinite is infinite. Every possible choice will be chosen infinite times. Free will is an illusion created by our inability to perceive infinity.
This explains Discord.
If the loop can't be broken, the only long term solution is to become stupid enough that it doesn't bother you.
This explains Pinkie & her idiot savant flashes.
Startin' off strong! (Man, writing the first comment on a story is stressful...)
Oooooo! This is either going to work, or everything will fail horribly.
I've actually considered that idea myself; bring someone else along.
But every time I think it through, I get to the question "If person 'A' dies, would person 'B' come back with them?"
I usually come up with it being a case of "Now there's TWO people trapped in their own individual time loops".
Twilight would continue to respawn in the library, with Lyra being as oblivious to the time loop as everybody else.
When Lyra dies, she'll respawn back at the moment that the spell was used on her.
I can imagine Twilights reaction when she casts the spell on Lyra for the first time, and suddenly Lyra displays an "older Soul" than Twilight.
That would be her reset point after all. From her perspective, Twilight has lived for about 200 years. Lyra would eventually surpass that within her loop, but still coming back to a two century old Twilight.
Well shit. Great minds think alike, I suppose.
This is an interesting story. In the original story, the emphasis is on saving Equestria and breaking the timeloop after. This story explores the mathematics of the timeloops. I also see why it is not quite as popular as the original:
In the original story, Twilight went loopy from the loops and funny crazy things. Out of the necessity of exploring the mathematics, this story is more sober.
Horizon has an interesting take on this in “Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder” in which the looping causes 3 looping wears out the multiverse, causing 3 looping universes to merge.
7591952
In direct opposite to your idea, I think like only an idiot, or someone really intent on trying to block out its philosophical significance, would not be bothered by a life that can only be lived once and then ended forever. If the significance of eternal death is truly understood it would be really horrible and make one go insane with terror.
A loopy life, if it's moderately comfortable, is clearly better than our linear and finite life. It doesn't require an idiot to enjoy it.
9215720
The first 1 million times that you do something are probably the best. After that, IMO, it gets boring.
Yes, IF a life was ended a looper might see it as a tragedy. But, it won't end. Just wait and it will return -over and over and over again. Really, the only difference between them and the looper is that they are granted the mercy of being unaware of the repetitions.
I would have suggested carrying back knowledge that Celestia knows back to herself. Something that was never revealed to Twilight before by Celestia, or told to anypony else that is currently alive...or perhaps knowledge about her staff that has never been openly shared before. Like that one scene in Groundhog Day where Bill Murry's character sums up all kinds of things about patrons in the diner they went to. Still a daaaamn good story!
I really like how you really thought rationally about the implications
I think this started off decent then just kinda dragged on too much with convincing celestia it almost more so seemed like you were making your story less of a story and more so just a check list, then also when i got to the lyra being turned into a looper as well part i thought ok this could be interesting and in a way it was but it was also quite predictable. I cant say this fic was completely bad i think another thing that killed it for me personally was the fact it was in third person and that pov also just felt like the fic was a long check list.
I’m honestly surprised Twilight didn’t think to cast the spell again. I’d assumed it would have come up as a theoretical when they were studying time magic if nothing else. Also I would think you might want to shave the changeling invasion off after a while. Twi has limitless possibilities after it concludes but is forced into a strict path during the invasion given the white out event.
Seems like twilight could have figured out immortality whith her time and knowdelenge and lived in a single timeline til the far future, during which lots of theoretical research about time travel could have been done, and maybe send everyone back together if there's some reason they can't just keep on going indefinitely.
Twilight zone music plays
Dat description, tho
!..
What?.. What?? What??! What?!!..
[insert Doctor Who repeating "What?!"]
We cannot take any more random "dates". Where is the story??!! Not to mention, you should never have... In the first place!..
Eff this ess, I'm out.
Eff this ess, I'm out!
Don't mind me, I'm-a just grab my stuff -- and leave!
'Scuse me, please!
Eff this ess, I'm out!..
Eff this ess, I'm out!
I don't know, what the eff's just happened, but I don't really care. I'm-a get the eff out of here...
Eff this ess, I'm out
!
Dear Princess Luna
Today I learned a lot about time travel and it's gluesomes implications, I also learned that there are some answers that are better to not seek, as they could unfold knowledge that could tear apart reality itself... and the worse part is that even after discovering truth, I can only think about the next question that arose from the answer, my mind can't stop creating possible scenarios that would solve the unanswered question at hand, I hope that this doesn't drive me mad...
Your very exhausted of thinking, and faithful student,
-The Luna Fan.
I worked out the theory of time travel for the story on my own, based on simple logical necessity. It seems that these rules of time travel can be rederived by any reasonable scientist, as shown here by [Sean Caroll](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/05/14/rules-for-time-travelers/)