Overanalysis of a children's TV Show IS fun!

Sweater Belle.

Smartass.

@Wryte: Interesting theory, but at what point does Twilight realize the consequences and go back with her message?

Never; thus causing the paradox.

Keep up, dude. :P

Also, @Gex: Your avatar makes that response ten times better. XD

edited 6th Jan '13 5:11:48 PM by Wryte

I wonder if the weather's nice in Sweater Town?

Then again, it's probably pretty stormy down there.

I wonder what King Sombra's cutie mark looked like. :hmm

I keep thinking the feathery part of Sagittarius' arrow is chest fluff, for some reason. It's distracting.

Looks more like Rarity a marshmallow.

A marshmallow...?

That's a new one, to say the least!

@Wryte: The problem is that it causes a paradox either way. If Equestria collapsed, then Twilight would never have sent the warning back in time, and hence they never would have prevented the paradox and subsequent destruction of Equestria. As a result, future Twilight literally appears out of nowhere. Either that or it was a temporal impossibility for the paradox to actually occur.

EDIT: Nevermind. My brain wasn't working properly.

edited 6th Jan '13 5:34:32 PM by crowlover

No, you're not following this right. Because Pinkie didn't find the time spell, Twilight didn't go back in time.

Because Twilight didn't go back in time, the events of It's About Time never took place, and we got what Twilight would have been doing for a week instead: meetings and social gatherings.

The weak episode would have shaken the fanbase's confidence in the show, eventually leading to the show being cancelled in season 3, thus ending Equestria.

Except if the time loop completes, Equestria doesn't collapse because Twilight averts the disaster by clipping Pinkie's hair.

What I'm saying is that I'm not sure if there's a way for both timelines to diverge from the same basic timeline. Let's say we have the initial timeline, timeline A. This timeline diverges into:

A1: In which Future Twilight never delivers the message and Equestria collapses due to metaphysical weirdness

A2: In which Future Twilight does deliver the message, and Equestria is safe.

Wryte's theory only allows for Timeline A2 to occur because as soon as Future Twilight appears the disaster is averted because Future Twilight's appearance results in Pinkie's hair being clipped. It's a stable time loop. This is all well and good except for the fact that the A1 timeline was never actually in danger of occurring.

Okay, I agree with that, the problem is that Pinkie wouldn't be in the library looking for the spell unless Future Twilight had delivered the message. Pinkie wouldn't be there in the first place unless Twilight had found the spell in the previous timeline. By that point the time loop is already in place, and it won't deviate from the set path (Twilight receives the message and disaster proofs Equestria, including trimming Pinkie's hair) unless an outside force manipulates it.

Basically, the fact that Twilight received the message in the first place means that the scene of "Pinkie in the library with hair in her eyes" doesn't happen unless something outside the timeline changes it. Either Twilight doesn't get the message in any timeline (A1), or she does, and averts the disaster (A2).

edited 6th Jan '13 5:44:28 PM by JapaneseTeeth

If you change the future, you change the past. The effects ripple up and down the timeline.

edited 6th Jan '13 5:44:47 PM by JMQwilleran

All this time related stuff is hurting my head! -brain explodes-

I knew it looked familiar. I thought it might have been an updated version of the video though.

Obligatory.

"He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future, conquers the past." —Kane

Is this a good time to talk about Achron again? You should all play it if you don't already.

On the topic of the future and the past and all other time shenanigans, I just have this to say:

Visual aides!◊

I'm going to have to make my own timeline now, aren't I?

How do you even break a stable time loop? Isn't that kind of impossible by definition? (That, or it was never a stable time loop to begin with.)

Heh, "stable"...

Yes. Everyone must make a timeline for homework. It will be graded and given back, there will be a test.

^^ That's why it's a paradox!