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'''}}

* ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'' has these every few chapters, and so many that any unresolved ones are offering {{spoiler|Kyon protection from the IDSE.}} As soon as he resolves the last one...

 

== Film ==

* 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]].

* The Space theme of ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' was stuck in one complex Stable Time Loop in which the characters constantly revenge their own actions to themselves. It ended taking up most of the other themes, and (as expected) ended in a [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] [http://irregularwebcomic.net/2166.html at the end of that year].

** Of course, parts of the time loop were unstable, as Iki Piki's Splanch is now, theoretically, infinitely old.

* The entire Surreptitious Machinations story arc of ''[[General Protection Fault]]'' was ultimately about ''stopping'' a Stable Time Loop that a tyrant was using to stay in power.

* Occurs in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' during the {{spoiler|"[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/050124 Oceans Unmoving]"}} [[Story Arc]], thanks to a godlike who decides "[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/060201 Life's SO much funner with the paradox rules turned off!]"

** 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.}}

** The episode "M.I.A." hints at what could be a possible out within a Stable Time Loop: {{spoiler|Goliath travels back to [[World War Two]] London to investigate an accusation that he caused the death of a gargoyle back then. When it seems that the Gargoyle in question really is marked for death by fate, Goliath takes him to the present day with him, saving his life, but still preserving the effects of his death}}. Or fate could just have been screwing with him to achieve the predestined result.

* The ''[[Star Trek: The Animated Series]]'' episode "Yesteryear" has Kirk and Spock return from a trip to the past to find that the ship suddenly has a different science officer, and no one else knows who Spock is. Spock relates a memory from his childhood when his life was saved by an adult Vulcan, who he realizes looked exactly like he does now. So he has to take one more trip to the past to save himself and set things right.

** ...which actually proves to be only a semi-stable time loop. If it were a ''true'' stable time loop, Crocker would have had AJ's tracker the entire time. Either that, or he 'forgot' that he had it until immediately after Timmy gets back from his time-travel.

* ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' featured a truly epic multi-layer time loop revealed over the course of several episodes. 11 million years ago, A3 led a [[Turned Against Their Masters|revolt against the Quintessons]]; however, in 2006, the Quintessons yanked A3 into their own time to prevent themselves from losing Cybertron. Blaster, Perceptor, Blurr, and Wreck-Gar go back in time to help the rebellion, while the Aerialbots save A3 from the Quintessons. A3 returns to his own time to lead the rebellion. Two million years later, A3, now known as Alpha Trion, meets the Aerialbots, who have travelled back in time from 1986. The Aerialbots persuade him to save the life of a young dock worker named Orion Pax, who he rebuilds into Optimus Prime (and also rebuilds Orion's girlfriend Ariel into [[FemBot|Elita One]]), leading to the formation of the Autobots as a whole and their role as enemies of the Decepticons. The Aerialbots return to their own time and then, in 1984, Optimus Prime and Alpha Trion build the Aerialbots from a group of shuttles. You may wish to draw a diagram.

** This also counts as [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]], because the reason the Aerialbots were in the past was due to Megatron's [[Time Machine]]; he was trying to use it to set a trap for them and send them back to the literal Beginning of Time, but the other Autobots intervened, causing the device to malfunction and "only" send them two million years into Cybertron's past.

* ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003]]'' notably in "Timing is Everything".

* In ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' the [[Time Travel|time-travelling]] villain Warp ''thinks'' he's taking part in a Stable Time Loop; he goes back in time to steal a special clock because, a hundred years in the future, the historical records say that he went back in time to steal it. Unfortunately for him, the Teen Titans prove themselves able to [[Screw Destiny]] and stop Warp from stealing the clock, wrecking the time loop.

* An episode of ''[[Family Guy]]'' explicitly pointed out the trope when Stewie and Brian accidentally caused the Big Bang due to time travel.

* In the ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' episode "[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2/E20 Its About Time|It's About Time]]", Twilight Sparkle comes across her (very badly injured) future self, who came from next Tuesday morning to give her a very serious message, but Twilight keeps interrupting her future self, until she gets sent back to the future before she could finish her warning. Present Twilight spends the next several days worrying about averting impending doom and getting more and more injured because of random events, matching up her future self's injuries {{spoiler|until next Tuesday morning comes, and absolutely nothing bad happens,}} which is when Twilight decides to use a special magic scroll to go back in time and warn her past self that nothing bad was going to happen and she had no reason at all to worry about. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, her past self kept interrupting her until the time travel spell wears out and Twilight returns to the future- which is now her present. Then she realizes what she has done: her half-done attempt to warn her past self about not worrying is what made her worry in the first place and created a stable time loop. After a few moments, she decides to shrug it off and declares it her past self's problem now.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Tropes of Legend]]

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]