Stable Time Loop: Difference between revisions

 

== Fan Works ==

* ''[[Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality]]'' has four of these to date, the most notable one being when {{spoiler|Harry pulled a prank on himself using a Time Turner, an Invisibility Cloak, two pies, and several sheets of parchment.}}

** His attempt to use Time Loop Logic (see Real Life below) as a manually-performed perfect algorithm was... less than successful. The output: {{spoiler|'''DO NOT MESS WITH TIME'''}}

* One ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfic (the name escapes me}{{verify}}) had a four-year-old Harry being sent back in time to when his parents were newly married. In the end, {{spoiler|Harry gets sent back to the present, completely forgetting everything that happened. Meanwhile in the past, Sirius convinces James to to make Peter his and Lily's secret keeper so they won't be killed, and the future Harry came from will never be.}} [[Downer Ending|...yeah.]]

* In the ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' fic ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20120423185747/http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6904903/1/Chasing_An_Empty_Dream Chasing an Empty Dream]'', {{spoiler|after a few characters end up centuries in the past curtsey of [[Black Magic|England's magic]], Germany ends up saving Holy Roman Empire's life. Moments later, he's shocked to find out he had just saved himself}}.

* The [[Marvel Universe|Marvel-verse]] fanfic ''[http://archiveofourown.org/series/10104 Dreams of the Waking Man]'' {{spoiler|is all about one giant stable time-loop.}} In the far future, Deadpool helps Cable and Hope to return to the present, which causes a chain of events that influences the entire Marvel universe {{spoiler|and ensures Deadpool will always be in the Future to help Cable and Hope to get back to the present.}}

* The ''[[Harry Potter]]/[[Sailor Moon]]/[[Ranma ½]]'' fic ''[[The Girl Who Loved]]'' incorporates at least ''three'' stable time loops, including the canon one responsible for Chibi-Usa's presence in the past. Another involves several people from the Crystal Millennium era going back to the 1990s to ''pretend to be the Black Moon Family'' and ensure that the Senshi's conflict with them remains basically bloodless.

* In H. Beam Piper's short story ''Flight from Tomorrow'', a tyrant in the very far future forces a scientist to create a time machine for him as the ultimate escape route, and he uses it to flee into the past from a rebellion at the beginning of the story. He is not expecting a Stable Time Loop - quite the contrary - but the scientist not only left out some important information but sabotaged the machine, so that he went back not to the time he had researched, but to the mid-twentieth century. The tyrant is hunted down and killed as a plague-carrier. The scientist in his own time explains to the rebels that they cannot pursue the tyrant into the past, or they will meet the same fate; the scientist's audience realizes that a mysterious artifact from the distant past must be where the tyrant's body was covered over with concrete to prevent further contamination.

* In ''[[The Anubis Gates]]'' by [[Tim Powers]], the protagonist, Brendan Doyle, becomes the victim of [[Grand Theft Me]] in the 1800s and realizes that he is destined to be the poet, William Ashbless, whom he was researching in the present day. Partway through the book, he panics on realizing nobody ever ''wrote'' Ashbless's poetry—he copied it from memory earlier—but then shrugs it off, deciding that as long as it was ''there'', nobody would be bothered.

** Specifically, Ridcully's argument relies on the old "you can't step on an ant if you don't exist." His logic is that if they're in the past NOW, then they've already been there thousands of years ago, when it was now. Therefore, anything they do, they've already done (because it's the past and the past has already happened), and it's vitally important that they do whatever they do, because if they didn't, they wouldn't have done it and they'd have done the different thing instead.

** On a smaller scale, minor recurring character Mrs. Cake is a psychic who is known to answer peoples' questions before they ask them; she then insists they ask, to stabilize the time loop, or she'll get a migraine.

*** Also the first paragraph of the book takes place later in the story, despite being chronologically first.

** Stable Time Loop is often used as a justification for being unable to change history in the Potterverse, but it seems to contradict what Hermione tells Harry in ''Prizoner Of Azkaban'' about wizards and witches having to be careful to avoid killing their past and future selves. One can explain this in various ways, but the end result is that canon is not entirely clear.

*** Probably it was a mistake made by J. K. Rowling, who did not realise that killing your past self would have caused a paradox. In-universe, it could be explained by Hermione being nervous about what they are doing that she makes that mistake - or else [[Fridge Horror|someone made that mistake, but was able to send notice of what he had done]].

** See the [https://web.archive.org/web/20130501112339/http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Weird_Time_Shit Weird Time Shit] page on the MSPA Wiki (massive spoilers). The most prominent examples being {{spoiler|John receiving the same bunny for his birthday thrice,}} and {{spoiler|an ectobiology session where John basically creates himself, his friends, and their guardians, who are sent to Earth at different points of time by meteor-defense-portal-displacement.}}

*** Best of all, the latter actually leads to the former. After {{spoiler|Dave gives John the first bunny, John gives it to baby Rose, who fixes it with her sewing needles thirteen years into the future and gives it back to John, who then gives it to baby Jade. Jade has it taken from her accidentally by an [[Alternate Universe]] version of ''her grandfather'', named Jake. He then fixes it up again, and tunes it up to be incredibly dangerous, before sending it back to her. It gets waylaid on the way, allowing [[Punch Clock Villain|Jack Noir]] to take it and use the Black Queens [[Ring of Power|Ring of Orbs Fourfold]] horribly mess up John's session. The bunny eventually gets back to John a third time, [[Big Damn Heroes|just in time to]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|save him from]] [[Big Bad|Jack Noir]], but not before things become so irreparably damaged that they need to ''restart their universe'', through an [[Apocalypse How|apocalypse of at ''least'' Class X-4]] to fix it.}} And best of all? The {{spoiler|restarted time line is ''the one Jake comes from''.}}

*** To clarify: {{spoiler|Doc Scratch, a being powered by the Green Sun, set forth a plan that would end in Earth and Alternia being destroyed. Earth was destroyed by the Sovereign Slayer, another being powered by the Green Sun, while Doc Scratch personally manipulated events on Alternia to lead to the destruction of the universe. The circumstantially simultaneous destructions activated the Tumor, a giant bomb that, when activated, will create the Green Sun. Ironically, the people who put the Tumor in place thought they were trying to destroy the sun...}}

*** {{spoiler|On top of all this, the Green Sun is located at the center of a "region" known as paradox space, which as the name suggests eats logic and shits "It just did, now shut up about it". Distance and time interact in incomprehensible ways, so that you have to know the proper route to not only ensure you end up ''where'' you're going, but you get there at the right time too; going three feet to your left could rocket you a million years into the future, and you'd never even notice until you got there.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Tropes of Legend]]

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]