Stable Time Loop vs Tricked Out Time

I've been looking at the Tricked Out Time page, which is ostensibly about faking a stable time loop via the future time travelers replicating what the people in the past saw.

However, I noticed that a lot of the examples are instances where the actual stable time loop is possibly what actually what happened the whole time. For example, take the Chrono Trigger example in the latter page. The page treats it like Crono died and then the time travel prevented that by replacing him with the doll in that instant, but given that the whole point is to trick the people in the past, it's entirely possible that it was actually the doll that died the entire time, and Crono always got saved by being pulled into the future in a legitimate stable time loop.

A lot of the examples are like this; since the very premise of the trope involves creating a situation identical to what the people in the past saw, the only way to tell is if the future characters notice a difference only in retrospect, or the viewer gets privileged information.

Should examples that are ambiguous like the one above be put in Stable Time Loop, Tricked Out Time, or both?

My view is that Tricked Out Time is a specific subtrope of Stable Time Loop, since it incorporates all the elements of the larger trope. The distinct element that TOT adds is the deliberate manipulation of the time loop to make it stable.

So any example incorporating that intentional element (from an omniscient perspective) would go in TOT and not in STL according to the "most specific subtrope" rule.

The current description of Tricked Out Time states that it's specifically for occasions where it's not actually a Stable Time Loop, but rather instead one is faked by making it as close as possible to what the people saw originally so that the difference isn't noticed.

Another option is to change the description of TOT so that it covers both situations where effort is made by the time travelers to preserve the loop behind the scenes: the one where it was always "tricked out" even on the original iteration, and the one where it's not actually a stable time loop but is instead just closely made to look like one by the time travelers, with a note that it's often ambiguous which it is.

If there are no objections, I could do that myself later. Do I need to post some kind of editing request somewhere to get permission to moderately rewrite the description of a trope like this?

Edited by Fwahm on Feb 16th 2021 at 9:50:59 AM

Hmm, on reviewing the trope it seems pretty clear that it's for when a Stable Time Loop is "faked", but I would contend at a metaphysical level that this makes the loop stable.

These ambiguous examples that you are citing... the problem seems to be that there is a lack of clarity as to which scenario actually applies. This might be sufficient proof that the definitions are ambiguous if there are enough such cases.

To take an example from The Number of the Beast, a character is recorded to have died in a car crash but authorities Never Found the Body*. The protagonists go back in time to rescue her from that exact moment after hypothesizing that they had done so in the past already. Which trope is it an example of? The sequence of events is coherent whether they came up with the idea in the future and then altered the past so that nobody would notice or they had already done it and were enacting the "future" part of the sequence.

*I'll have to reread the chapter because I can't remember if there was no body or if there was and they dumped a brainless clone at the scene to mimic it. Either way it's the same result.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 1:42:51 PM

Depending on the precise execution, it can be either.

For example, in the second Doctor Who example in TOT, it's confirmed that originally the explosion was caused by a bomb in the original timeline, but the Doctor and his allies meddled with the incident after coming there from the future, getting rid of the bomb and causing the explosion a different way such that no one in the past knew it wasn't from said bomb.

On the other hand, in the Harry Potter example, it's made clear that nothing was changed, with all the events in the past always having been done by Future!Harry.

Then, there's the examples where it's never made clear which happened, like the Chrono Trigger example. The characters don't discuss the incident any after it happens, and the replacement was perfect enough that it was impossible to tell whether it was Crono or a clone that died originally.

I think it'd be a good idea to expand the TOT article's description to explicitly include all occasions of someone trying to replicate a previously seen event via time travel, including when it's a stable time loop, when it's only "close enough", and when it's ambiguous between the two possibilities.

Edited by Fwahm on Feb 16th 2021 at 11:21:55 AM

I agree, but that leaves the problem of example overlap. Ideally an example should be on only one of those tropes. How can we sufficiently distinguish them so there's no ambiguity? Or are we saying that an intentionally created Stable Time Loop is also an example of Tricked Out Time?

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 2:26:10 PM

I think that as long as the action involves someone from the future using time travel to replicate a past event for the purposes tricking the people watching it, it should count for Tricked Out Time, whether that results in a stable time loop, is just "close enough", or its left ambiguous.

As for preventing duplicates, I'd lean towards including it only on Tricked Out Time if it's ambiguous or only "close enough", and on Stable Time Loop if it's confirmed to be one. Either that, or TOT could be removed as a subtrope of STL, since it's about the goals and actions of the time travelers instead of the exact time phenomena that results as with STL, so that examples could be put on both articles as applicable.

Edited by Fwahm on Feb 16th 2021 at 11:36:42 AM