How Ponies Travel Through Time · 3:28am Dec 10th, 2017
Okay, since some people don't seem to be putting the hints together in the story and are scratching their heads, I'll just go and explain how the time travel in my fic works.
It's mostly based off a line Dr Whooves said in the 100th episode, "Bringing time forward, to you."
It's an interesting concept and there actually is a theoretical time machine that would work along those lines. Although, I doubt the writer behind that episode had the degree in theoretical physics, and just wanted to make a nonsensical timey-whimy line.
Now, before I get started on the time travel spell, you need to get an idea of the temporal mechanic idea I'm working with here. Think of time like a sentence you are reading, and you are here---> (X). Right there, to the left. Or you were, but now you're here. Eventually, you will get to this part of the sentence, but you had no idea what this part of the sentence was going to say until you got here. Now, I know this whole paragraph existed before you started reading this point and while there are theories that say every moment in time already exists, it's just our ability to perceive more than one word in it at a time that is what creates the illusion of time, we're not going with that idea.
We're going with the theory that the future has yet to be written, but the past is a static and unchanging thing that can be looked back on, but never visited but still exists because it's existence supports the existence of reality. Like a sentence you can only read once. And once you've read it for the first time, that moment of discovery, of experiencing it for the first time is gone. You can still remember it and look back on it, but you can never discover it ever again. But, it still exists, if it stopped existing, this paragraph wouldn't be nearly as long.
Now, another part of this theory is I wrote Sunset saying, "There is no such thing as time travel".
Working along that theory, what Starlight is doing isn't actually time travel. Her spell does two things, it takes her out of the normal flow of time, then erases reality up to a certain point, like hitting the backspace on your keyboard, then drops herself back into her old reality at whatever point in the sentence that she stopped her cursor on. Everything in reality after that point where she dropped in is gone, erased to the point she decided to move back to. However, this only happens when she decides she wants to erase events, up until then, she's merely floating around in the other dimension, waiting for Twilight to try and follow her with Spike.
Now, that's only half the spell, the other half of the spell affects the temporal constant of the universe that the spell is cast on. That part of the spell sets the 'temporal axis' of a dimension to spin at...let's say, 2, 4, 5, 10, or a 100,000,000,000 times faster than it did before. Without that half of the spell, Twilight and Spike would have had to sit around for ten years before they reached the point where reality was back to the part in the sentence where they left from the first time to find out how the rewrite of the sentence went.
So it is not a time travel spell.
It is a destroy all of existence up to a certain point, and then start again from there spell.
The spell Twilight used in season 2, THAT'S a time travel spell, but it could only exist in a universe where the paragraph that this sentence is written in is already complete.
These statements seem to be in conflict, unless you're disregarding that part of the canon?
I kinda got that much? I mean, I didn't think too hard about it.
it was everypony in the know knowing about it that was making me scratch my head. Sure, I suppose if Celestia took Sunset's story at face value time travel, or erasure or removal is a logical conclusion...I'm just not convinced that ponies are logical.
Though now that I AM thinking about it.......just how fucking overpowered IS Starlight Glamtard, to just erase X time? Or is reality just THAT fragile? (Or only fragile if you know how to break it?)
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She's stealing power from The Elements of Harmony via the table.
That does explain the time travel much more nicely, thank you. Am I to presume then that Sunset got caught up in the time travel spell when Starlight began her shenannigans and that's how she got sent back?
But then, why didn't anyone else get caught in it? And wouldn't stuff have happened when Starlight and Twilight kept using the map? Unless Sunset was left in one of their rewritten timelines and they kept making others and now we're dealing with alternate timelines, with the Prime!Sunset in one and the Prime!Starlight and Prime!Twilight back in the proper one once they finished the episode's events.
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The time travel spells are in direct conflict with each other. Either you can alter the past, or everything that's going to happen, will happen, even when you go back to try and change what has already happened, because THAT's already happened as well, you just don't know it yet.
But, this is the series that just forgot about Rainbow Power because the toys didn't sell. So...I think asking them to keep a canonical accounting of the nature of how reality works is a bit much.
4745224 the time line, kinda.
Sunset sees mirror/ arrives from earth then rainboom then nightmare moon comes back.
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Now that you say that, I suppose I forgot about the context of that Twilight episode (it heavily implies that the future is unchangeable), but maybe that's more to do with the fact that Twilight tried to change her own past because that creates a paradox. Starlight wasn't trying to change her own past, just the pasts of others. When Starlight shows the events of her own past, it's just through illusion spells perhaps to avoid Twilight being able to interfere and create the same sort of paradox. So it's all consistent, from a certain point of view.
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The seasons 2 time spell was a "it happend so it will happend so it must happen" type. this type of spell sets up a feedback loop where cause is effect and effect is cause. The type used in the glem glam redemption was a "if time is written in stone then i'm a sand blaster" type spell, this type of spell is also known as save-scaming.
WOOOO CAUSALITY LOOPS
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A pair of issues, at least one of which you can easily wave off.
The first of which is that, while time is relative, time and space are, physically, the same thing. This means that all of space and time in the known universe is relativistic, and prone to curvature, due to the effects of anything with a Higgs Bosson particle, because mass curves spacetime and the Higgs Bosson is what gives everything else mass.
Second, according to Starlight Glimmer and Twilight Sparkle from Shadow Play Part 1, she created Portals in Time. This is supported by the observed persistence of alternate timelines after the portal closes in The Cutie Re-Mark Part 1, when Pinkie eats a whole cake in a single bite.
To play devil's advocate, you could say that spacetime isn't a thing in this universe, due to a difference in the laws of physics. Additionally, since you appear to be throwing all of Starlight's Canon out the window, while playing to her psychopathy, I suppose it wouldn't make too much of a difference to change the spell she used. Especially since you started writing this well before the Season 7 Finale ever aired.
Speaking of recent developments, do you have any plans for the Storm King and Limbo? I'm interested in hearing or seeing how it might play out.
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Actually the reason I had Starlight show that as an illusion is because if they had traveled forward, they would have come upon come upon this scene from chapter 15...
If they had gone forward in time to , they would have run into Sunset stopping Starlight from ever starting on the path to becoming a homicidal monster. So, she just showed them a vision of what happened to her the first time, when there wasn't an alicorn around to save Sunburst.
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Which puts Shadow Play in a whole new light.
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While you've excused the showstaff for the conflicting Laws of Causality, you failed to consolidate the conflicting Laws. Is the future in a constant state of Quantum Superposition, in which, until observed, it is in simultaneous existential states? That's the only conclusion I can come up with, in which both statements are equally true.
Additionally, are there multiple futures stuck in existential superposition, chosen by probability and free will and magic? The resulting in the one observed becoming the current time?
Long story short, Friendship is Physics, and I look forward to learning the answers.
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I meant in the show, doesn't Starlight use illusion to show her past? Maybe I'm just wrong about that, but my main point was that the to spells don't necessarily have to conflict in nature because they conflicted in purpose (changing your own past versus changing that of another) and that difference could account for the different results, how they were able to affect or not affect the "future".
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Still, I like the quantum superposition angle.
I don't think he needs to get that into it. While that kind of theorizing is fun to do, we are enjoying fiction here.
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One of those questions will be kind-of answered Twilight returns to the present, and other...
Well, one of Twilight's big character flaw is that she is INCREDIBLY short-sighted. A flaw Sunset showed to Cadance, who spent a good deal of time shouting it out of her. And who will be making sure to teach her future little sister how not to do really stupid things without thinking through the consequences.
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I can approve of her teaching Twily to better think things through and I can even appreciate an occasionally smart character providing an important info-dump (so long as they keep from becoming an Exposition Fairy), but your avoidance on the subjects of Limbo and the Storm King has left my nervoucited...
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While I appreciate your laidback approach to the issue, that does sound an awful lot like "it's just a kid's show" as an excuse to cut corners...
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No, I'm just saying a story doesn't have to get into such laws-of-physics nitty-gritty detail to be enjoyed, especially when it's not a Sci-Fi. A more philosophical explanation could be given or none at all depending on how important the mechanics of time travel are to the story. That's true whoever the target audience is, and fiction can make its own rules. I only ask that it be self consistent, which is why I was trying to clear up the differences between the two spells we've been talking about.
That said, based on the last comment it seems the author wants to reveal and clarify what's going on more in story, so I appreciate the answers given thus far. The main focus of the blog (how the spell Starlight is using works) is clear enough for now.
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Agreed, with varying levels of ease.
going to disagree with you. I just think Sunset got that sweet spot of moving while changes in the timeline were happening
Wow...that's complicated. It does explain a few things, but is this going to be super relevant going forward? I mean, Sunset decided to stay, therefore solidifying herself in the timeline. Things are obviously going to happen differently now, but will this all be relevant with that in mind?
How did I keep up with this? I mean, I knew I could comprehend time travel, but I didn't know it was THIS simple to me!
Just start the sequel already where twilight having no idea what the changes are tries to fit in to the universe where sunset has captured starlight glimmer and the name 6 have been friends since childhood.
I'm itching to see this Brony!
Can we just simplify this to: "Big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey... stuff." xD.
I do see what you're saying though. It's basically like how Zecora described it in the finale, she went back and changed it, so time flows differently. If we were to look at it that way, then the Equestria Girls timeline is just a different river. I like it!
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"Physiques is simply, it just causes you a headache when you think about it."
don't know who i'm paraphrasing.
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LOVE the Doctor Who reference.
This looks a lot more like an interpretation than any kind of explanation. Do alternate timelines exist, or is there only one timeline in which events are created / uncreated? The difference does not actually matter, because it is impossible to discern them. This hurts my impression of the 'iceberg' which is the assumption that the time travel we see makes sense under the surface, but the exact details are just unknown. Now I know the author is as clueless as I am.