thoughtformed | ARADIA MEGIDO'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL

over the past couple of months ive noticed something
there are quite a few people here here who talk about the same general idea of an activity involving the manipulation of time and or space to create certain outcomes
or explore certain alternatives
which can be colloquially called TIME TRAVEL since thats technically what it is even if youre not calling it that
i am just going to lump it together under that to make my point easier
but all the specifics and the actual methods seem to differ from person to person
or really from alternate possibility of moving through and altering time to alternate possibility
since some of us come from the same place and use the same power and rules to different purposes and techniques
so to take some of the confusion out of it and make it easier for everyone to understand what everyone else is talking about i have compiled this handy guide to all the versions of time travel ive come across
complete with charts!

for reference here is our hypothetical time traveler

OPTION 1: THE ALPHA TIMELINE

if your name is dave strider or aradia megido this is how you do time travel
looked at from the perspective of someone who isnt a time traveler this is how it looks

but really its more like

all things are technically happening all the time simultaneously everywhere
and have happened and will happen at the same time
and thus all events must proceed according to what the alpha timeline dictates
everything that happens is what has supposed to happen
however everything that ever could happen has also happened
like this

our hypothetical time traveler is faced with an event where he or she can respond in aa number of different ways
the alpha timeline must happen! (in red)
but all the other ways he could have chosen must also happen (in black)
we call these doomed timelines
not because they are necessarily better or worse from an individual perspective but because they are not what was supposed to happen and are thus sooner or later going to be destroyed

as an example
there was a doomed timeline in which our team did not ignore eridan ampora while he shot down angels but instead included him and tried to help him
from eridans perspective this is a significant improvement
or maybe it isnt i can never really be sure with eridan
but this is not what the alpha timeline required and nobody but a time player would ever be aware that it was even a possibility

anyway time players can interact with these doomed timelines like this:

red is alpha black is doomed
and the doomed copy is the one with the star over his head
the alpha time traveler as far as any of us know cant get to the doomed timelines
but the doomed timeline time traveler can go back to the moment the decision was made and prevent it from happening
thus preserving the alpha timeline and making sure things go the way they supposed to
you can do this as many times as is necessary to preserve the alpha timeline
by the end of my quest we had an army of over one thousand aradias accumulated
the only rule is that a doomed timeline version of the time traveler is eventually destined to die
somehow and in some way

the alpha time traveler also has the possibility to set up a series of time loops in which he or she lives the same time over and over to accomplish a number of tasks

which means you can have three or four or more copies of yourself running around doing things at any one time
as long as theyre all doing what should be happening
(if theyre not they create and enter a doomed timeline and maybe youll hear back from them)

OPTION B: ERASE AND START OVER
this one is pretty straight forward and i am not sure it really needs a diagram but i made one anyway

something happens that you dont like
but you know that somewhere the possibility that you want exists by the law of statistics
all things are possible somewhere with the right combination of events
so you go back and undo everything
and try all over again
over and over until you get the results you want

OPTION C: SOMETHING SOMETHING BIG BLUE BOX
remember the alpha timeline

this is another ball of stuff all things happening all the time kind of idea
only instead of moving through the timeline yourself you need a big blue box to do it

then you can go wherever you want to go
i think you can change things?
the doctor was not very clear on that but maybe one of his other incarnations can shed some light on that subject

OPTION D: BACK TO THE FUTURE?
we return to the linear timeline

but say you want to go back and you accidentally make something happen that changes the way events would play out
congratulations!
you have just created a brand new timeline

the previous timeline is only crossed out because apparently marty mcfly cant get back to it again
but i am not sure that means it does not exist
similarly doc brown insists that there is the possibility of alternate split off timeline bad futures where things did not play out like he believes they should have
but i am not sure if that really constitutes something like a doomed timeline or if he just didnt like the outcome

so thats it!
as you can see dave and i do it in a very complicated fashion but i think for most other people it becomes a much simpler matter
but if i have it wrong please feel free to let me know so i can add the intricacies and details to the guide for future reference
and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

ARADIA MEGIDO'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL

private;

private;

private;