Gunnerkrigg Court 8: Thrown for a Loup

[slayerx]

Feel free to ignore my time travel ranting if you don't want to share my headache

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I just Re-read where Kat explains the bird, and I think I've got it.

Kat knows that if she does nothing, everything will be fine. Everything you said above applies - Annie survives in this timeline no matter what.

However.

The original Kat created the bird because she was so sad that she broke time in order to save Annie. If our Kat does not send the bird back, that will create another Kat who loses Annie. The loop goes infinitely, and every time Kat doesn't send the bird back another version of herself becomes incredibly sad. Another version of Annie dies.

Kat has to maintain the loop or create infinite suffering across the multi-verse. I'm not saying this is accurate, but it appears to be what Kat believes.

I can't really buy that... I mean Kat's not just trying to repeat what the other Kat did, she's actually creating every known instance of the bird's appearing in the comic, including the ones she wouldn't even know about (like the instances of the bird appearing before Zimmy, which Kat treats as unintentional). The comic here is implying that Annie was not saved by an alternate Kat that lost Annie, but by OUR Kat

Here Kat is not effecting and creating an alternate timeline, but is instead effecting her own timeline. But we were told that's not how things worked for the Other Kat that lost Annie... losing Annie is what led that Kat to seek out the norns and send the birds to save her, but if Kat could effect her own timeline like our Kat can, then she would be living in a timeline where Annie never died, just like our Kat and would have never experienced what it was like to lose Annie.

The thing about time loops is that there is no real beginning to the loop. "Event A" happens because "Event B" happened, and "Event B" happened because "Event A" happened. One can not happen without the other. In a time loop situation there shouldn't even really be a "first Kat" or multiple other kats, there would just be our kat.

Why do parallel universes and time loops invalidate each other?

They are pretty much two different solutions to the same problem, which is solving for time travel paradoxes. With a timeloop, everything that happens is part of the same timeline, which is why the time loop exists; "Event A" happens because you went back in time to make it happen and its not possible for you to NOT make it happen because that would break casuality. However if your time travel rules state that changing the past creates an alternate timeline, then that in turn breaks the time loop. Going back in time to create "Event A" does not change YOUR timeline, it creates a new timeline where "Event A" happens, and since "Event A" already happened, there's no incentive or reason for the people of that timeline to go back in time and make "Event A" happen. You can't really create a loop, if your changes create a new timeline that you yourself are separate from

And this is why introducing time travel to a story can be such a mess

This setting clearly has mythical magic, should we just be assuming that the hypothetical physics / logic of time travel even apply?

Even if a story has a mythical magic system, there should still be internal consistency within the story about how the magic works. It doesn't have to follow OUR logic, but it should have to follow its own internal logic... If a character does "A" and gets result "B", then anyone in the story that also does "A" should get result "B".

If one kat messing with time creates an alternate timeline, then our kat doing the same should also result in an alternate timeline. If our Kat can not change time and can only repeat what's already been done (time loop), then that means that no other Kat's should be able to change their timelines either