Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for July 22, 2021

So, the Stable Time Loop as TV Tropes calls it?

Also, I wonder if Phoebe’s dad recognizes his daughter as the time traveler he met as a kid.

“25 years. Give or take.”

Remember that when the Doctor described it as “a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey… stuff…” those weren’t actually his words. He was just reading from a script created by the Bootstrap Paradox. So really, that was the laws of time describing themselves.

suit yourself, Ethan

SINCE nothing can change the timeline (he thinks) AND his adult self has not remembered this visit, THEREFORE either it never happened or he has a fungible memory.

I’m not very fond of time-travel stories, though Heinlein’s All You Zombies is as good a one as I’ve seen.

Added mention of today’s strip on the Back to the Future wikia.

Well then never mind my comments, do what you want. Go crazy. It was meant to happen.

Hmm? Predestination? I know a good joke about predestination.

Now I’m getting vibes of them not stopping Judgment Day, but postponing it.

Pretty convenient rule.

“OK, see, the Time Keepers created the Sacred Timeline…”

Don’t go easy on her, Dad.

I think he remembers it but holds off saying anything until he knows Phoebe went back. Maybe after the conversation about how he liked camp, he’s already suspecting this is the, well, time.

Brraack to the future!

The ancient Greeks believed in a form of this. If someone hears a prophecy from the Gods, and tries to do something to keep the prophecy from happening, the Gods will change other things to keep the prophecy on track.

For example, in Oedipus Rex, it was prophesied at his birth that the title character would murder his father and marry his mother. His father sent him to a neighboring kingdom where he was raised by different parents. Later, when he was a young man, Oedipus heard the same prophecy and left his home. He came across his real father while traveling and killed him in a fit of road rage. He later married the queen and became king, had a few children and then learned the truth. Thus the prophecy fulfilled itself.

I’m wondering if the reason we never see Ethan working is that Phoebe left behind some information that allowed him to make a bazillion dollars so he can just kick back and play video games.

Free will? Hah! Everything that happens has been pre-determined since the Big Bang. Nothing changes anything.

“Tell your parents to buy stock in Amazon, and look for a thing called Bitcoin and buy it the first time you hear about it.”

Funny he should say this, as I myself had speculated about this being the case here just yesterday. :P

I feel like it should be “ascribe” rather than “subscribe”. But I imagine most people say “subscribe”, making it de facto correct.

You could get the same result if time travel runs on “many worlds” rules. Changes to the past create a new timeline, so you can’t change your own.

The Bell Inequality proves that there “the” timeline is NOT fixed and unchangeable. Nuclear power and electronic transistors work because the world has intrinsic quantum uncertainty. It is impressive for Ethan to be thinking about such questions at his age. He may be surprised if he encounters quantum mechanics in his reading.

I have a Loki ad on the side of my screen as I read this.

I prefer X-Men: Animated Series rules. Time travel does impact the future, but anyone who traveled exists “outside of time” and so remembers the way things were before the change took place. Plus the music in that series was awesome.

obviously he hasn’t met the TVA.

One good thing about meeting your future offspring is the assurance that you won’t die before siring said offspring.

So everyone in Prison is their through no fault of their own. Interesting….

This is what we call the Barry Allen paradox.

Once the present goes into syndication, it becomes permanent and unalterable except in rare cases such as “Garfield Minus Garfield”.

It’s fixed and what you do divides the timeline into the original and the one you messed with.

As far as I’m concerned, nobody in a timeline knows how time travel works, or how paradoxes are resolved, until SOMEONE GOES BACK IN TIME. For all we know, the rules about it aren’t even set yet until that happens. (And if Star Trek is any indication, even then they’re still in flux. There are at least four different models working in that canon.) And just because a model seems like it’s impossible (like Back to the Future), doesn’t actually mean it is impossible; it probably just means that it’s deity-aided.

That said… obviously, unicorns have done time travel before and they should know what the rules are. They may not remember. Or they may have been too self-absorbed to notice. But their rules are likely set.

If THIS is the fixed timelinie… i call DO-OVER!!!

i usually blame phoebe for anything i know i didn’t personally cause