Timelines!? HRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNGGG! -brain failure-

A stable time loop is that you couldn't have taken the action that you took in the past unless your future self had gone back and made you do it.

Random thing: I have the first wave McDonald's pony figures on my desk at work. I looked over this morning, and I noticed that someone had taken Twilight off her stand and placed her on Cheerilee in such a way that it looked like she was humping her.

Either someone is joking around, or we have a Twi/Cheerilee shipper in the office.

edited 6th Jan '13 6:11:47 PM by edvedd

Could be. Or maybe they're both    cursed    and move around at night, making sweet plastic love.

That can't be, because I have Pinkie and Dash in close proximity and nothing happened.

Are you sure nothing happened? Perhaps those two are simply more experienced at concealing their little romantic meetings.

Maybe they're    cursed    too, but just like to watch. *winkwink*

In the original timeline, they got married, but then RD had to make a deal with Mephisto to bring his aunt back to life and they got unmarried.

Clearly you need to move Rainbow closer to Applejack.

I suppose plastic figures can't leave *cough cough* evidence.

They didn't bring Applejack over, so I can't do that.

edited 6th Jan '13 6:25:05 PM by edvedd

Well there's your problem, then.

I ship it.

Red rover, red rover, bring Applejack over.

@Kyler: The issue isn't how the loop is broken, (it never is), the problem is how it starts. The Twilight from the Doomed timeline must have traveled back with a legitimate warning, or else the loop of Twilight sending messages back to herself would never have started.

I have no clue if this makes any sense.◊

You're trying to apply logic to a time travel story. I think it's a failed cause.

I'm pretty sure that MA Larson tweet was a joke.

or else the loop of Twilight sending messages back to herself would never have started.

Yes, that's what happened. When Pinkie's mane prevented the stable time loop from being created, the paradox obliterated the timeline and recreated it as one in which Twilight never came back with a message, thus averting the paradox by completely removing the time loop from the timeline. In the new timeline, Twilight never went back in time, and was never visited by her future self.

So what we've actually got is timeline A in which the events of It's About Time played out as we know them, timeline B in which It's About Time played out the same, except for the manecut which broke the time loop, and timeline B 2.0 in which timeline B was reset without the paradox by completely removing the time loop, which ultimately resulted in the show's cancellation.

^ Well duh, but what fun would it be if we just let it go at that? :P

edited 6th Jan '13 6:42:11 PM by Wryte

Problem Solved.

edited 6th Jan '13 7:13:01 PM by SuperGex

Let me try putting it another way: the paradox scratched timeline B's null session and rebooted it without the paradox, but only succeeded in creating another null session where the players never even made it into the game.

How about this: Timeline A Twilight went back in time purely For the Lulz, and from her vantage point in Timeline A she laughed along with us at the chaos in Timeline B.

Wryte: I think the confusion is that Larson's tweet leads one to assume that, not only was there a timeline where Equestria was destroyed as a direct result of Pinkie's unkempt mane, but that at least one instance of Twilight went back in time to warn her past self about that destruction.

Whereas in your proposed scenario, Twilight never went back in time to warn about a genuine disaster, just to warn her past self not to worry. (And the true disaster fell when Twilight didn't go back.)

Wryte: But that overcomplicates the issue. It's entirely possible to sequence the events in a way that doesn't result in a paradox at all:

1. In the original timeline(A), Twilight doesn't receive any message from her future self, and as a result she goes about her day as usual, which leads to the show being cancelled.

2. Somehow, at a point in timeline A after it's doomed, but before it actually ends, she somehow becomes aware of the impeding doom, researches the spell, and sends the message to her past self. This message begins Timeline B. Twilight A returns to her own timeline.

3. Timeline B, iteration 1: Having received the message from Twilight A, Twilight B disaster-proofs Equestria, saving it. Pinkie accompanies her to the library and finds the spell. Twilight B, unaware that Twilight A's message was legit, assumes it was a stable time loop sending a message to her past self warning her not to worry.

4. Timeline B, iterations 2-N: All further iterations of the loop are self-perpetuating, as Twilight saves Equestria and sends the message to herself.

No paradox required.

Of course, the alternative is that there's only one timeline with a loop, and the disaster never happens.

@Meta: EXACTLY. The problem I had with Wryte's theory is that the two timelines he theorizes are mutually exclusive. Timeline A (the disaster one) never sees Twilight send a message back, hence it can't be related to the others. She must have gone back in the initial timeline, or the one we see couldn't occur.

edited 6th Jan '13 7:05:00 PM by JapaneseTeeth

But then none of the doomed timelines were actually caused by Pinkie's mane.

In other words, Time Travel-centric episodes are actually dire warnings from alternate universes where one badly-written episode got the show cancelled.