Time Won't Let You [S2: "It's About Time"]
Luna peered curiously into the Starswirl the Bearded Wing of the Canterlot Archives. "Sister? What are you doing here?"
A scroll was floating in Celestia's magic, and she had a wistful expression on her face. "Just...thinking," she said.
Luna trotted up to her and examined the scroll. Her brow furrowed. "Time travel, Celestia?"
Celestia shook her head. "Twilight Sparkle had a recent misadventure here involving this spell. I didn't get all the details—mostly just a warning to put stronger security on this wing—but apparently, she used this spell and inadvertently created a minor stable time loop."
"Oh dear," Luna said, brushing a hoof across her muzzle. "Now, what possible reason could she have to do something so foolish?"
"I don't know," Celestia said as her eyes searched the spell longingly. "But...if she was trying to warn her past self about some mistake..."
Luna caught the wistfulness in Celestia's eyes and felt alarm bells go off in her head. "Celestia? What are you thinking?"
Celestia's eyes swam over the spell. "I was thinking, if a unicorn could go back a short distance in time for long enough to pass along a warning...perhaps an alicorn could go back farther, make the spell last long enough to deliver a truly clear message..."
"Sister," Luna said warningly.
"Think of it, Luna," Celestia said softly. "I could stop myself from...from driving Sunset Shimmer away..."
"Sister, no," Luna said imploringly. "This is a dangerous line of thought—"
"Isn't there something you regret?" Celestia asked. "Something you'd change?"
Luna paused, frowning. Bowing her head, she admitted, "I...suppose if I had it to do over again, perhaps I could avoid becoming Nightm—"
Both sisters were blown off their hooves by a powerful burst of silver-violet magic which crackled with electricity and buffeted the entire room with strong gusts of wind. As the magical light faded, they saw a robed, wrinkled unicorn stallion with a stiff scrub of bristly brown beard shot through with silver and white.
Celestia blinked. "Starswirl...?"
Starswirl regarded both of them calmly, then seized the spell scroll Celestia still held in his magic, rolled it up, and filed it away in its proper place on the shelf. "Knowledge is a dangerous thing," he said gravely. "Surely you have not forgotten the many times I imparted this wisdom upon you, Celestia."
Celestia scuffed the floor with a hoof. "But—"
Starswirl closed his eyes and shook his head. "Whatever foolishness the two of you were considering...giving in to your desires would irrevocably harm the future of Equestria." He looked the two of them over and gave them a soft, kind, sad smile. "You can never erase your mistakes, my old students. I'm sorry, but you must live with your pain and learn from it."
And in a crackle of electrically-charged magic, he was gone.
Celestia and Luna looked at one another. Celestia sighed. "He has a point," she admitted.
Luna bowed her head. "Perhaps...we should seal this wing together."
The alicorn sisters left the Starswirl the Bearded Wing several minutes later, hearts heavy with the missed opportunity to unburden themselves of old, painful regrets.
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Yeah... messing with time usually isn't a good idea. Changing the past almost always results in paradoxes, and by extension, the destruction of the universe. I can only think of two examples where that kind of thing actually worked: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and this episode.
7308430 Eh, in this episode the time travel ultimately didn't have any point besides being a "Self fulfilling phrophecy".
That message from Starswirl has a haunting pre-recorded message vibe to it. Like, he isn't actually there, he's just got a spell set up that makes him appear to be there and levitates the scroll back to its assigned position.
7308442 True, but that's usually the only way to make Time Travel work without paradoxes.
Honestly I am more in the camp of doctor who and the hitchhikers guide. The universe is a big place and can handle a paradox or five hundred no problem, unless you are actively trying to damage it. That being said trying to change the past is a very risky gamble, because so many things change that the new future may bear no resemblance to the original one. Though really I would say that mostly only applies if you change the past and then return to the future. If you stay in the past you can fix problems as they occur and its not hard to get a future that's better than you started with, even if there are unexpected consequences.
Celestia, please, listen to me. Don't. There's a reason time travel is dangerous.
He does.
Yes.
Except if they did, they didn't do a very good job, considering Starlight would break in a few seasons later.
7308430
There was a Harry Potter fanfic I read once which took it in an interesting direction; Harry deliberately tried to set up a stable time loop using a time turner as a test (he had a number which was the product of two three-digit primes; using the Time-Turner, he gave himself a piece of paper from the future; if it was blank, he would write "101x101", if it had two numbers he'd check if they were right, if not, increment the right-hand number by two UNLESS it was 999, in which case he'd increment the left-hand number by two and set the right one back to 101). He expected that when he opened the paper, he'd find the prime factors of the number he had in front of him.
When he opened the paper, he found (in his own, slightly shaky, handwriting) the message "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME".
7308605
Yeah, but that doesn't mean you'll like the way the universe handles it. (It might, for example, do so by settling on a single, consistent timeline that has you struck by lightning seconds before casting the spell).
A lot more poignant than I was expecting for this episode, but certainly well executed in that poignancy.
7309065
Ah, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Fun times.
Time travel is so complicated. 9 out of 10 times you either create a paradox or end up worse off overall. If only it could be as easy as some people imagine it to be.
There's also the way Dragonriders of Pern handles time-travel, or at least the way I see it as handling it. Being able to time travel creates a timeline with so few variables that sometimes time travelling is the only way for certain parts of history to have happened and as such, the only way the future can progress.
Technically it just handles it as every instance of time travel is a stable time loop. Lessa had to go back in time to get the other weyrs cause they had already left to follow her to the future making her have to go back to get them cause the other weyrs had disappeared.
The Timey Wimey ball is very complicated and confusing. Changing the past usually has unforeseen consequences.
Paradoxes can destroy the unviverse, like almost happened in the Last Great Time War.
7308460
Alternate timelines is common, and works just fine without paradox. Marty and Doc Brown are familiar with that kind of time travel. It's what Starlight did, too, so we know time magic can work that way in MLP. The only problem with multiple timelines is that you can end up stuck in a worse one than you started.
A great alternate timelines story is The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter. It's an authorized sequel to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. At the end of The Time Machine, the narrator returns to his present, and the novel is a documentation of his trip to the future. At the start of The Time Ships, he gets back to the future, but it's a different timeline because The Time Machine was published. He eventually travels to his own past, and gets lost in the timelines from there.
I like how Tryptych handled this same issue. "IF we hadn't ALREADY used our one trip for the best of reasons..." "I know. I know..."
We just don't get to learn HOW.
7309864
Yey! A fellow pern fan.
Hmm... time travel, never a good thing! Always screws up shit...
Nice job
7309864
And then there's Jaxom and Ruth. The stuff they get up to - in The White Dragon and All the Weyrs of Pern will give you a headache sorting out causality...especially because Ruth is so blase about it all.
7308430
Or creates an alternate universe.
7664108
Ruth understands that the best answer to any problem is "Fuck you, I'm a dragon".
I'm still waiting on Spike to learn this.
Ok wat.
So not only can Starswirl sense whenever his two students are about to do something disastrous (even if they're separated by millennia), but he can also travel to said time and place, and speak modern Equestrian...? WHY DOES (almost) EVERY WRITER FORGET LANGUAGE CHANGES OVER TIME? HOW DID STARSWIRL KNOW CELESTIA AND LUNA WERE ABOUT TO FUCK UP THE TIMESTREAM? WHY DID HE NOT STOP STARLIGHT?!?
7664108
It's actually all STILL standard time loops, it's just that time travel is something Ruth is really talented at. There's also the implication that the loops are supported by both riders and dragons getting psychic feedback from their geminis. And the firelizard collective memory adds to the complication.