Entry One-Hundred-Sixty-Five, Year Fifteen.
Let me go on record by saying I fucking hate time travel. It's super fucking spooky, and I'm so fucking positive that If I fuck with it too much, it's going to fuck back. And I really don't want to get fucked by time travel. That having been said, I've created a time machine. Now I know what you're thinking, but I'm not really a fan of prune juice, especially in a swimming pool. Jokes aside, I do have a good reason for this. Several in fact. Reason number one? I can. Reason number two, I wanted to. Reason number three...
Well, for a while, I was desperate enough to consider using one.
Now that it's finished, though, it remains firmly on the shelf. If there's one thing I've learned watching cartoons, it's this. "Time Travel is for Immortals and Fools." is an axiom I hold near and dear to my heart, and one I have no plans of putting to the test any time soon. But one thing I suppose is important is the fact that, now that I have a time machine, I can, at the very least, combat other time travelers. Like, say, ones who threaten to destroy time by using ancient time-warping spells to alter the past.
Yeah, see, I'm not a big fan of getting reset either. Ergo, instead of dismantling this time machine, I'm going to hold onto it, store it somewhere safe, and hope I never have to break the puppy out. Especially considering one simple fact. It's not really a very good time machine. My first attempts at using it for strictly testing purposes were... Less than stellar.
Test number one, which was unmanned, worked well enough, I would only send it forward, and then back, observing the results accordingly. This experiment showed that the machine's accuracy left a bit to be desired. Further tests only compounded that, culminating in me determining that every pound of weight in the time machine makes it more inaccurate with it's destination.
I was able to fix this problem with some carefully re-tuned Timeshift Crystals, but even then, the time traveler would have to make a judgement call, and choose to risk one of three things. Missing their intended location by a random portion, missing their intended time by a random portion... Or missing their intended timeline by a random portion. Yeah, see, that kind of answer would freak me out too.
After I got a report back indicating that my Time Machine, however briefly, had entered a parallel universe created through a DIFFERENT type of time travel, and that my own time machine was incapable of generating new timelines, I jerked my metaphorical hand back as though it were burned. So fucking spooky. I was tempted to destroy my time machine right there and then, but at the same time, realized that it was too late to shove the genie back in the bottle.
If there existed other versions of myself in parallel timelines, it would only take one of the time machines they made falling into the wrong hands to screw me over, even if I myself destroyed this one. Furthermore, the other me's would presumably also realize this, increasing the amount of total time machines. It would be a fucking Cell Situation all over again if I just assumed getting rid of my time machine would get rid of all of my time machines, and I'd be the Trunks who was dumb enough to assume so. So I'm back to Plan A. Shelve it until I need it.
That being said, I plan to consult a fortune teller next week, by asking her very specific questions about the future, I can determine a great many things about this timeline, and where it's headed. Namely, if it's a doomed timeline. Regardless of the results, I plan to use a mind-wipe on myself to remove the answers the fortune teller gives me from my memories, and use a timer to ensure that I spend exactly one hour asking her questions.
By combining these two things, and the Tree of Harmony subtly manipulating time on it's own, I should be able to "Synchronize" any alternate versions of myself, preventing the various timelines from deviating due to the answers I receive from the fortune teller. I also have a relic designed to cure the mind-wiping if certain conditions are met, which would allow me to immediately know which timeline I'm in, and make plans accordingly to preserve the prime timeline.
I really screwed the pooch on this one, but It's better than just being helpless if a threat comes using time as a medium of assault.
Entry One-Hundred-Sixty-Six, Year Fifteen.
One thing worth mentioning, the commissioning of this machine has also taught me a great deal about the potential of Timeshift Crystals. Possibly even more than the creation of the Master Sword afforded me. They really are quite the miraculous substance. Apparently nobody thought to tie time-manipulating magic to raw, grown crystals before. Their loss, I guess.
Like seriously, even though on their own, they can't actually generate new timelines, they ARE capable of... basically fulfilling all of one's time-related needs, including the preservation of certain types of paradox object, stabilizing the fabric of time within an area, and of course, the wide, wide range of methods that it can be put towards for manipulating time on a smaller, more manageable scale.
To that end, I've managed to create twenty five Timeshift Pendants, ten of which I stuffed in the time machine, just in case. Though again, hopefully it won't come to that, since even with a Timeshift Pendant, if a Paradox Object wants to cease existing, there's not a whole lot I can do. The existence of a paradox object that time wants gone will actually drain the energy from a Timeshift Pendant in an imperceptible way, which also means I've got no way of telling if something's going to poof until it suddenly does, and my crystal shatters.
It's actually super annoying. I really do hope someone figures out a better way to preserve paradox objects in the future, because this really isn't a workable method for doing the job.
If they did, I wouldn't have to worry nearly as much about this dumb time travel bullshit.
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He could have just promised a tone of bits to be freed, being in the middle of the griffin lands and any griffin would have fought over the honor of rubbing that lamp, assuming they didn't kill each other in the process. How could this not be just a staged scene to get Gilda's attention and to get her guard down to making it seem like he is grateful for freeing him?
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You've got a very good point there. What could Weiss have possibly done, that his jailer assumed he would never be freed if he were kept in Griffonstone, greed capital of the world?
He certainly seemed surprised that Gilda had never heard of him before.
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Well, if he did indeed get captured and go all his important stuff swiped away, and was long enough turned to stone for that to happen and lose track of them due to the march of time, then this is what I could come up with. Celestia passed Weiss's petrified self on to the Griffin Kingdom anarchy care, with the promise to pay them constant indemnities to be put in a fault along were no pony/griffin could be swayed, and that lasted until the Kingdom went bankrupt and that vault got sacked and his statue was just tossed away like refuse while he was snousing, or or had nanaged to bribe his freedom at that point or thought they could make more bits that he could promise but couldn't move the statue any further, but didn't want to share the possible ransom so didn't tell any griffin, so left him alone and forgot about him. Or, it could be that the magic that was holding him had degraded to the point he could actually talk to someone and Gilda just so happen to arrive around that time. I feel the last one might be more convoluted, but those are the counter points that I can come up with to my own argument.
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I have a couple things to say here. First, this is just a nitpick but he wasn’t turned to stone the statue was actually a statue and he was trapped in the lamp. Second, if we compare his escape with Discord’s, which the name of the chapter already does, then Gilda being angry mirrors the CMC being chaotic and at least correlating with, if not causing, the trap to weaken. The Griffins may be greedy, but they’re otherwise mostly just apathetic so it’s at least theoretically that she’s the first person to be angry enough near him to let him communicate, or even just the straw that broke the camel’s back, especially since the Park was stated to be only rarely visited. Plus, since Discord terrorized Equestria and was locked up in Equestria (combined with how Weiss expected a non-scholarly Griffon to recognize him), it’s possible that whatever Weiss did to justify his imprissonment specifically involved fucking over the griffins in some way, at least enough for them to not want to let him out because of that. Also, and this is more evidence against him having been free and logic that he could or would have been trapped, he’s super weak right now, implying he hasn’t had any time to build up power. He doesn’t have any awesome artifacts from when he had the resources of a nation behind him and, upon his release, he’s not even strong enough to heal a bruise. Also, even if he’d be justifiably scared of Twilight at higher power than what I’m suggesting, he did throw down with a dragon and do noticeable damage while now he’s worried about being in the general vicinity of an Ursa Minor.
oh no Weiss made a pandora box and it wasn't discorded fault!
What kind of paradox object are we talking here? Like, a future version of you brings back a toaster, then you eventually bring that toaster back to give it to your younger self? Or one like you take the designs of the toaster, replicate it, then send back the new one? The second one is really just a bootstrap paradox of information, whereas the first would create an impossible object with no creation point.
I think about time travel stuff super often, so I'm quite curious to see how this pans out.
The idea of paradox sinks/stabilizations reminds me of All Night Laundry (which is fantastic).
Nothing good comes from messing with timey wimey stuff
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Especially when its all wibbly wobbly.