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TemporalParadox, GrandfatherParadox and StableTimeLoop

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Asherinka from Winterfell Since: Jan, 2018
#1: Oct 27th 2024 at 5:25:48 AM

I've been reading the very lengthy descriptions of all three and it struck me that the last two tropes are just subtropes of the first one.

Temporal Paradox: Time Travel breaks the conventional flow of cause and effect:

  • Grandfather Paradox: time traveller back in the past causes something not to happen or exist, but it is already known to have happened or existed in the future
  • Stable Time Loop aka Ontological Paradox/Bootstrap Paradox/Object Paradox/The Reverse Grandfather Paradox: time traveller back in the past causes something to happen or exist, and it is already known to have happened or existed in the future

Am I getting it wrong or should we amend the descriptions and move all examples of the Temporal Paradox to either of its subtropes?

Related stuff:

Edited by Asherinka on Oct 27th 2024 at 5:31:59 AM

Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous.
Codae Since: Aug, 2022
#2: Oct 27th 2024 at 1:48:32 PM

At first I was thinking that the third soft-split category on Temporal Paradox justified keeping the supertrope page in place, but when I read through it nothing stood out as an example that couldn't be boiled down to "the timeline is inconsistent" or "although the timeline is consistent, it has a chain of cause and effect that doesn't work without time travel". So it does feel redundant to compile content on that page as well as on Grandfather Paradox and You Already Changed the Past / Stable Time Loop.

I am likewise confused as to what distinction is supposed to be conveyed by keeping the latter two tropes separate. The name "You Already Changed the Past" could work for a specific Internal Reveal in a Stable Time Loop scenario: specifically, "Contrary to your expectations, without your involvement in the past, the outcome would not be the history you're familiar with." But that's not what the trope actually is at present.

EmeraldSource Since: Jan, 2021
#3: Oct 27th 2024 at 5:29:19 PM

Time Travel is one of the most complicated stories to write, which makes it also one of the more complicated ideas to trope. That said, different tropes tend to focus on different ways it manifests within a story.

So, in a Temporal Paradox someone has an Ancestral Weapon in a vault, takes that weapon to the past and gives it to an ancestor where it becomes the ancestral weapon. It's a paradox because the weapon itself only exists within that loop. You can avoid that paradox from a writing standpoint by saying the weapon was destroyed in the present, causing the character to forge a replica and ends up giving it to an ancestor which reveals it to be the original weapon. The weapon is no longer a paradox (at least physically) because it has a beginning, middle and end, just shifted in the linear time of the universe. Both are a type of Stable Time Loop, but causes slightly different narrative conditions.

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catch_the_sun Perpetually Peckish from Shidoni Since: May, 2009 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
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#4: Oct 27th 2024 at 10:56:57 PM

How does, say, Butterfly of Doom fit in this, by the way? It's not a You Already Changed the Past or a Stable Time Loop because the new timeline has drastically divulged from the original in ways that should make the original time travel impossible. It's not a Grandfather Paradox because the change to the timeline couldn't even be remotely viewed as being relevant to the cause of the original time travel. Yet, it's pretty obvious something has gone rather funky with time.

Edited by catch_the_sun on Oct 28th 2024 at 5:01:10 AM

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FSharp Resisting a rest Since: Jan, 2019 Relationship Status: I wanna know what love is
#5: Oct 27th 2024 at 11:10:47 PM

[up] In a Butterfly of Doom scenario, a Grandfather Paradox is evident from the drastically different timeline. It's just that the writers haven't gone through the trouble of explaining who wasn't born as a result of the time travel.

In extreme cases you can get Non Sequitur Causality. Yet, in spite of how implausible it seems, this is not the original reality you time-traveled from, and so there is a Grandfather Paradox.

Edited by FSharp on Oct 27th 2024 at 2:24:53 PM

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