"So before you sent me back again, you told me to always check in with you to make sure we keep the timeline straight. But if you've only seen past me and um... future me, then future future me hasn't been here yet. Which means everything is still screwed up because I rushed things way too fast with Applejack." Rainbow Dash was clearly frustrated.
"Why is Applejack so important for this?"
"Because we have to make sure that everything that happened before this mess started still happens."
"I'm well aware of that, and I'm pretty sure future me is the one who told you. But what exactly was it that 'happened' with Applejack that hasn't happened yet? And why do you need to interfere to make it happen?"
Rainbow Dash took a step back and blushed slightly. "AJ and I... uh... we... " Stammering with embarassment, Dash realized her wings were beginning to tingle. She would need Twilight's help making sure this all worked out, and it'd be hard to get help if she didn't know what was going on, but that still didn't make admitting it any easier. They hadn't told any of their friends yet. Or, their future selves wouldn't have... yet... told... their future friends. That sounded right. Taking a deep breath, the cyan pegasus prepared to let out her secret.
"APPLEJACK AND I ARE IN LOVE!" Dash quickly shouted, her blush and her wings rising.
"That's... that's great Dash! But how does that relate to... when did you two figure this out?
"Yes, great, but you can't tell anypony about this yet! For one, WE don't know it yet right now, but even once we DO we hadn't told anypony else yet and I couldn't tell any of you if she wasn't ready. I'm only telling you now because I have to! We had our big talk about how we felt yesterday. But not the yesterday that was before today. The yesterday that it was for me before I went back to the here today. I think? This stuff is really confusing Twilight!"
"And at least one of you, besides the 'past' you, talked to Applejack about this?"
"Well, yes and no. Original past me eventually does, but we're worried about the future mes. And the FIRST one didn't. We did talk, but only about the farm. You told me you were ready to send me back to the future, and that we didn't have a lot of time for some reason. You rushed me back, and then you... future you... started asking me a bunch of questions about when and where I talked to who. And AJ had been really angry with me when we talked, so I was sure I'd screwed up. You told me you had figured out that I had been supposed to talk to AJ about... how I feel. So I needed to go back again."
"So that's you now? Then what's this about ONLY three of you?"
"That's just it, you told me that you had already sent me back a second time to fix the AJ situation! You told me that THAT me was going to get things moving in the right direction, but you weren't sure whether or not everything would be completely fixed. You went to go look at all these crazy charts and graphs and notes you had and told me that I would need to go back and do something drastic with Applejack AFTER the first two of me that went back talked to her, but BEFORE the past me who hadn't done any time travel. The last one of me that was mucking around with time travel needs to be positive that AJ is ready to have 'the talk' with the me that's from the time we're going back to. I figured it wouldn't be too hard to do that, so I went back again and... um... did something drastic with Applejack. But she acted like it came completely out of the blue! It sounded like I hadn't told her anything yet, and this whole thing about who was where when got really confusing. I came here to try and have you help me clear it up, but apparently I got back here BEFORE the future me that was supposed to start talking mushy. So now I'm worried that things are gonna be more screwed up than ever because I almost definitely pushed her too fast! She didn't seem ready. I think I got to her before the first future me even apologized for the farm!"
"Oh... wow. I'm actually really impressed you were able to keep track of all that. Charts and graphs sound like a great idea to help keep this going smoothly. You'll have to thank future me the next time you go back for inspiring me to... give myself the idea. So okay, I'll keep some documentation going to help us figure this out. You just make sure any time you go forward or backward, you check in with me and give me all the details. Now as for YOU you, you just go hide somewhere like future me wisely told you to do, but not anywhere that you already are. Make sure that each time I tell you to hide, you hide somewhere that you aren't already hiding. Think you can handle that?"
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[Author's note]
Okay everypony, I hope you're ready. I don't know if 'adventure' is the right tag, but none of the others adequately describe shenanigans of this calibre. No, we won't be slaying monsters or finding ancient artifacts. But we WILL be tying the timeline in knots. Get ready for this to get much more complicated now that the warmup is over. THIS time, I'm spelling everything out in a nice Egghead Planner to Witless Executor chat to keep everypony on the same page as we set out for ridiculousness. But that might not always happen.
ALSO, let me know if you feel the chapter lengths are appropriate. I keep thinking they should be longer because so many other stories use longer chapters, but they feel right to me. What do YOU think?
I am suddenly reminded of both Doctor Who and Homestuck.
Time Travel Shenanigans!
Chapter length is fine. The longer chapter stories also take longer to come out.
It's got more of a "Back to the Future" vibe going for it.. and maybe that Pandorica episode of the Doctor where he went nuts with Jack's wrist timepiece. Celestia help us if Pinkie ever got her hooves on that...
This is getting to be almost as bad as Primer!
Oh god. My body is ready, but I don't think my mind is.
Wait, what? I'm confused on a number of levels now. So, there was a Rainbow Dash, and another Rainbow Dash, and a third one to make sure that... huh? There may or may not have been a fourth one. I think? <-- applejack is confused
After reading chapter five my head started hurting
This is me at the beginning of the chapter , and this is me in the middle and this is me at the end . Time travel hurts
I just started thinking about this possibility:
1. Go back in time
2. Return to the present BEFORE the moment you left.
3. Accompany yourself for steps 1-3 many times.
4. You have massive amounts of copies of yourself in the present with no way to get rid of because killing them would kill yourself because cant kill past self...
"if you've only seen past me and um... future me, then future future me hasn't been here yet"
I think you're in some serious need of "pony labels". The best solution is to borrow those numbers they used in the Best Young Flyers Competition, and paste them in the order the Dash's traveled. Or better yet, label them with the date they traveled from.
Constantly referring to the character as "Rainbow Dash" is like referring to any one of Twilight's friends as "Twilight's friend"
"Twilight's friend walked through the door, accompanied by Twilight's friend. Twilight greeted her friend as her friend went to sit down. Her friend looked sad, but Twilight didn't notice because her friend walked through the door just then and asked her friend if she'd like to come with Twilight's friend to her farm to help out. Her friend acknowledged her friend, but said she was going to be busy comforting Twilight's friend since Twilight's friend recently said some mean things to Twilight's friend in front of Twilight's friend"
^^ The story's not quite that bad, but it has the exact same problem.
All joking aside, though, what you really need to do is give each of the Dash's a distinguishing characteristic, even if the reader is the only one that picks up on it. For example, have one of the Dash's have something stuck in her hair (like a leaf or a twig). Have another Dash have a crick in her neck. Another Dash could always be hungry. The other characters don't have to pick up on these things, but it would give the audience a helping hoof in keeping things straight.
So, RD#2 (first time traveler) goes back in time to find TS who tells RD to hide from RD#1 (original) who runs into Scoot which somehow transistions to another RD#? talking to AJ which leads to ANOTHER RD(#4?) to go to TS to say she screwed up because another RD did something else so now they've got to fix something by talking to AJ about something be-sdf=sjf=agh2w3r 35a353 3a8a&*D #) #S*#* GFF8#J f893 fj892j3 ff90# fj2f0j@Jf j)JF@fjs73jfk I GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ME BRAIN NO WORK! WHAT GO ON?! CONFUSED!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS SOME INCEPTION GRADE SHIT HERE
I think my head just exploded
Right now I feel like Patrick Star in the Spongebob episode The Secret Box, just after Spongebob explained to him that "the best thing about a secret is secretly telling someone your secret, thereby secretly adding another secret to their secret collection of secrets, secretly."
You have done a wonderful job of giving me a headache and confusing me soooooo much... i thank you
TIMECEPTION!
Oh sweet Celestia save me...
I've played around with time travel concepts myself - probably too often for my own sanity - but when the concept hits application complexity rises exponentially and my brain resorts to the consistency of warm jell-o and drips out my ears.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go plug my ears.
why do you keep talking about the "time line" time is not a line its a big ball of Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey...Stuff.
Ps watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY_Ry8J_jdw.
Total Time Travel Madness?
BRING IT ON !!!
no but really, though some parts are missing (yet to come I guess)
this is really fun and I think I understand (atleast partially) so far
Graaa cant take it(vomits everywhere)
This has been a fun read so far everyone is well characterized to.
I lost track how many Rainbow dash's are there
This is me...
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5 and probably beyond:
Anyway I'm curently only on chapter 5, but I'm lovin it so far well... back to reading
This has moved from Time Paradox into Pime Taradox territory.
Well THAT was complicated and confusing. Do you have the FLOWCHART you put together to keep this fic straight? Because I think it's only decent that we get to see it.
This is so fucking awesome and so fucking confusing LOL
2273186 I'm not sure a two dimensional flowchart would be sufficient for this.