Time Resets and different Timelines

For the purposes of this topic I will focus on continuity, the thing that moves the story from event A to event B in a proper way. Many times, there are gaps in whatever happens between events A and B. It can be the writer deliberately withholding information from the reader or viewer as means of creating mystery. This is not part of what I want to analyze, so I will leave it aside and focus on a different case: When we have a time jump. Notice I didn’t say time skip, because this is commonly used for when we jump forward in time; a time jump can go either way. So leaving the time skip aside as a different topic, let’s focus on what happens when time is not moving only forward, or is not linear in general.

Many stories are presented in media res, meaning they do not start from the beginning. They can use flashbacks to show what happened in the past, or even jump ahead to what happens later, and then return to the present so they can show how we got there. They are means to unravel the plot in more intriguing ways. What must be made clear is that the line of events in these cases is still linear; it’s simply the order that they are presented not linear. Which is also not what I want to talk about, so I leave even that aside and focus on the other case when we have the exact opposite type of a story: When the order of events is linear, but the line of events isn’t.

Traditionally, this happens when we have time travel. The continuity is broken because a character can move backwards in time, change something, and this way performs a time reset as he shapes continuity in a completely different way. As cool as that sounds, it is a very lazy plot devise. Consequence is the most obvious issue. You do not face the results of your bad choices if you can go back in time and change them to whatever you like. It’s like cheating on a test. You know the right answers before the questions are given to you. Or it’s like playing a visual novel. You realize you made a bad choice, and instead of continuing to play the story based on said choice, you load a saved file from a previous point in time and redo the whole thing, this time making a different choice.

There are those who don’t consider this to be much of a problem, since despite the whole story being rewritten, the one going back in time still retains the memory of everything that happened. Meaning, he is learning from his mistakes and does get character development, regardless of the rest of the world not remembering it anymore. The same thing applies for the reader and the viewer. Even if the characters don’t remember it, we know and remember anything that happened before it changed. So if it works, why do I make such a big fuss about it? 

Well, because according to continuity, it is still a major flaw. The common problem all time travel stories have is the time paradox. If you go back in time and kill your grandfather, how were you born in first place, so you can go back in time and kill your grandfather? Using the same logic, if you did something wrong, and you go back in time to change it, then if that mistake never happened, how did you know you made a mistake and needed to go back in time in the first place? 

The best way out of this is to create a closed loop, meaning that the character going back in time is not really changing something, he is just caught in an infinite circle of trying to undo something he caused, only to this way help it happen exactly as it was.

But, this solution is not fun for most readers and viewers. It makes it seem destiny is inescapable and that people are not learning, they are just becoming what they were always meant to be. This is why most prefer the wrong way out of this problem, which is the many worlds interpretation. Every time something changes in a timeline, creates a completely different timeline, which does not replace the first but rather coexists with it. Thus there is no paradox anymore, since you are no longer in the timeline you began from, but in a new timeline that you created with your change. Hooray, no problems anymore! Or are there?

You see, the many worlds interpretation, suggests that there is an infinite number of universes, one for every possible outcome of every action, every person ever made. Do you know what that means for time travel? It makes it meaningless! Even if you create a timeline where everything happens exactly as you want them to happen, there will still be an infinite number of timelines where things don’t happen as you want them to. You effort is insignificant. But wait, you might think, isn’t it rewarding to at least get to all the trouble of creating a timeline exactly as you want it, so at least one of the infinite versions of you will have a good life? No! It isn’t! There is no reason to bother doing even that. If there is an infinite number of timelines, then by probability alone, this perfect timeline exists even if you don’t do anything. Time travel is pointless. 

And even if we go very optimistic about it and say that there can only be two or three timelines at the most at any given time, thus making it very important to change things properly in one of them, the very existence of time travel makes that one insignificant too. At any given moment in the future, anyone can use time travel once again, and undo anything the characters struggled to achieve. There is no finality, anything can be undone as easily as it’s done. There is no satisfying ending either, since there can always be more time travel to ruin everything that was achieved before. Seriously, a company can make an infinite amount of sequels out of a time travel story and excuse it by saying time changed, let’s do this all over again. 

You can defend any of these types of stories all you want as “it’s fiction, it doesn’t need to be realistic” or “it is fun, so it doesn’t matter if it makes no sense.” But writing-wise only the closed loop scenario holds up, with the rest of them working only as comedy or rule of cool. If you try to defend them as ingenious or well written, you will be mistaken.

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The Autism of Time Resets

We are going through a trend of time resets, where every season needs to have at least one of them. I always considered this gimmick to be pointless because as I mentioned in an earlier video, from a storytelling perspective it offers an infinite amount of retries with no penalty, and the outcome can be undone by someone else anyways. 

But the plebian masses don’t care about that since all it matters to them is feels and copout happy endings. This is why I will use science to further prove how pointless it is not just narrative wise but also existential wise. Since time resets differ from time travel by not traveling in time but rather in different dimensions, means that every time you reset, you are not in the same world but rather in a copy of it. 

No matter what you do in this new world, the versions of the people you failed to save remain dead in the previous dimensions. Meaning, you are trying to save different people, not the same ones you failed to save. They may appear and act the same, but are effectively substitutes. You know, like waifus are compared to real women.  

If that doesn’t sound like it matters since you are at least saving the substitutes, this becomes even more pointless when you throw in the mix the science behind time resets. It’s all based on a convoluted logic of quantum physics and chaos theory where particles move so fast and in such erratic patterns that it’s impossible to predict where they are at any given moment. They can essentially be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. 

This duality is what theoretically creates different dimensions. Basically, everybody can be alive and dead at the same time, with your point of view giving the impression of a possibility. Outside of your personal impression, everything else is relevant, there is no right or wrong, the outcome can simultaneously be anything and nothing. In other words, quantum physics promote freaking relativism.

But beyond that, time resets are also the pinnacle of self-indulgence, since the one doing the dimensional jumps is the only one with the knowledge of what transpired in other dimensions. Only his point of view matters in a cosmological model where everything both is and isn’t. Aka, it’s autistic. Time resets give you autism. Say no to autism.             

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6 Tips for a Proper Time Travel Story

Since we are going through the decade where otakus want to eternally reset their miserable lives, and every show that has time resets is considered a masterpiece when it’s a pile of shit, here are 6 tips on how to make a proper time travel story.

1) Explain how it works. Don’t leave it as something mystical that happens at any moment, at any place, just because. Set some limitations or some prerequisites in order to make feel like it’s not something that randomly happens every time the plot demands it for convenience. And yes, of course and time travel has no legit scientific explanation, but something is still better than nothing. Steins;Gate is full of pseudo-science but at least it bothered to explain it, unlike Erased.
 
2) Give the protagonist partial control over time travel. Not complete control, since that way he will spam it and nothing will matter anymore, and not no control at all, since that way he becomes a plot device. In Steins;Gate, they know how to use time travel, and can control its variants to a degree, yet the outcome can still be unpredictable, or someone can hijack their equipment and prevent them from using it. In Erased, there is absolutely no control at all. It happens outside of the protagonist’s will. 

3) Definitely have alternative timelines when there is a change in the past. This is almost self explanatory; if you don’t do that and there is only one timeline all the time, then the story will not make any sense because of time paradoxes. Unless of course the rules of time travel are stating that you can only go back in time or the future is erased and your presence in the past exists outside of space and time, or something along these lines. It’s very hard to explain so alternative timelines is the easiest way out of anything. 

4) In case there are alternative timelines, make sure to justify why time travel matters. If there is an infinite amount of pre-existing timelines, it’s pointless to try changing something in one of them, since by default there will always be an infinite number of other timelines where everything plays out as you wanted it, even without your interference, as well as an infinite number of timelines where everything is still going to hell. There is no point to time travel in such a model. If on the other hand timelines are created only when you time travel, then it matters a lot more. Until someone else time travels and fucks up everything you accomplished that is.

5) Always keep in mind the butterfly effect. Changing one thing in the past will not result to only one change in the present. Everything will be affected in one way or another. Don’t go lazy on the changes. 

6) Do not use time travel to reset development; use it to promote development instead. This is a critical flaw of the whole concept, since everybody assumes the only reason to go back in time is to erase events from ever happening and forgetting the whole thing, instead of learning more about the past and improving yourself in the present without necessarily changing the past. History doesn’t need to be altered if you change by studying it. But no, why have character development when you can conveniently erase bad events and their consequences? I would even accept an infinite loop instead of this escapism nonsense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17CrngGuOQ