You Already Changed the Past: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not...about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. The major problem is quite simply one of [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|grammar.]]''|'''Douglas Adams''', ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/The Restaurant At The End of The Universe|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]''}}

** He encounters the brand-new original manuscript of a poem he'd studied in his own century, and wonders how it would pick up the stains he'd seen on it in his own time. A poet he recently met then walks in carrying some food, puts it down, and picks up the manuscript with his greasy hands to look it over.

** He encounters a 17th century book with an inscription in it that shakes him up. He later travels accidentally to that century, and on encountering the then-new book, writes the pig-Latin inscription addressed to himself that he would read in the future.

* Used extensively in ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'' this seems to be the whole purpose of future(er) Asahina. Who is suspected to be the superior of Present(or rather not-so-future) Asahina, and puts her younger self trough all the missions and trouble she already went trough herself. So she already changed the past because she will order herself to go to the past and change it so she can get to the future and order herself to change the past.

* Minor example in ''[[Young Wizards|So You Want To Be A Wizard]]'' by [[Diane Duane]]: Nita and Kit are stopped for a moment on their way to a world gate by a loud bang on the other side of a door they are about to open. It turns out at the end of the book {{spoiler|that it was Nita herself, coming back from the future a little earlier than planned and trying to avoid meeting their younger selves}}.

** Sarda did this to himself. As a young wizard, he time-traveled back to the beginning of the universe, only to find that a White Mage had gotten there first. After living through all of creation being formed around him, Sarda planned to put that White Mage into a pocket dimension before she could go back in time to the universe' start...only for that pocket dimension to be the beginning of the universe.

{{quote|'''Sarda:''' So now I know how she got there ''and'' what it feels like when I utterly screw with someone's lifelong ambitions.}}

* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', only [[Time Master|Dave, the Knight of Time and Aradia, the Maid of Time]] get to go back in time and create [[Alternate Universe]]s. Everyone else, no matter how much they've screwed around with the timeline, can only make [[Stable Time Loop]]s, and the Trolls regularly insist that they've already lost the game and that [[You Can't Fight Fate]]. It probably helps that all in-universe timechanging items have built-in failsafes against causing paradoxes.

{{quote|Volair: "You can't change the future, Pierce. Past, future, it all fits together like a big, freaky jigsaw."

Pierce (Who just accidentally broke the [[Unresolved Sexual Tension|UST]] between his future parents): "So the future you knows we're here?"

Volair: "No, but I will if you tell me the date you're from." }}

* Time travel in ''[[The Way of the Metagamer]]'' runs entirely on predestination. This doesn't stop it from being ludicrously convoluted.

* In ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', Chuck Goodrich is a time traveler from the future who comes to avoid [[The End of the World as We Know It]] play with this tropes. it's not like you ''can't'' change the past...you can change ''[[Failure Is the Only Option|how]]'' it will be [[The End of the World as We Know It]].

* In ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]'' Mojo Jojo goes to the past to kill the adolescent Professor Utonium before he can create the Girls. The Girls pursue him. It turns out that in the past Professor was a lazy ass and a bully with no interest in becoming a scientist and creating the Girls, if it wasn't for Mojo's interference and the consequent encounter with and rescue by the Girls that gave him inspiration.

* In the season 2 episode "It's About Time" of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', Twilight Sparkle is visited by her future self (from a week later, looking entirely worn) and told "whatever you do, don't..." with the sentence being cut off. Past Twilight then spends the whole week worrying about and trying to prevent whatever happens during the next week, with each incident causing her to gain the looks of Future Twilight, indicating she hasn't changed the future at all. {{spoiler|She only then learns later that nothing actually happens. So she goes back into the past to tell her past self "Whatever you do, don't... worry about the future" only to end up being pulled back into the future right where it cut off for Past Twilight, setting the events into motion for the whole episode.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fate and Prophecy Tropes]]

[[Category:Plots]]