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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Twelve)

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Buggy said:
Zoat.

I love your story. I think you're a great writer.

I enjoy your system of avoiding stating peoples names all the time. Using colored text and context is clever and normally works very well.

But.


Can I please get some names here?

Timetrapper!Paul is talking to Oriental!Paul and Truggs is in there somewhere too. Two of the three people here are essentially the same person. I have no idea who is saying what.
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I'm >90% confident that Truggs doesn't speak in the part you quoted. It goes TT > OP > TT > OP > TT.
 
Prince Charon said:
I thought about drawing a diagram to explain what I think is happening (and a few people have given their ideas for what they think is happening, if you want to check), but then I'd get a headache.
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Yeah, I had the same idea. Started to try and visualise the diagram and gave up about ten seconds later before my eyes could fully roll up in my head.
 
Akatsunami said:
Can someone post a timetravel for dummies version of events for us mere mortals that couldn't track a single dot moving through this whole mess?
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im guessing,but it looks like every encounter with the time trapper SEEMS to be a different survivor of an aborted timeline wearing the same mantle. trying to bring the line they're from back. gotta wonder how the loop STARTED..
 
And thus the Crisis of Infinite Pauls begins.

Cheap Orange Knofe said:
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I can't. I just can't.

What the hell is happening?
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Well...

Crimson Doom said:
Legion of Superheroes found their future being wiped out, so they went back to try to figure out why. Simultaneously, the Persuader came back in time to try to kill Superman for the prestige; he failed miserably. Also simultaneously, Per Degaton came back in time to stockpile weapons that his people can use against the Reach in the future; the Team stopped enough of that process that Degaton is probably not a major problem at the moment. Even more simultaneously, some guy claiming to be Rip Hunter came back in time for... reasons? Not sure why. In any event, he was pursued by the real Rip Hunter, leading to a major time travel pileup that led to the Legion picking up Paul and Truggs and bringing them to a sealed part of time that was insulated from timeline changes. Then the Time Trapper showed up and kicked both of them out.

Now, the Time Trapper had previously worked with Savage to change history by keeping a certain person alive. Savage wanted a world where he ruled, but instead got a world ruled by China where he got thrown into the sun. The Time Trapper gave him tech to allow him to break time again until Savage got a world where he ruled. Savage promptly ruined his chances of doing so by playing king of the hill with the local superheroes. New timeline Paul and Truggs teamed up to go back in time and kill the man Savage preserved. This somehow brought Paul and Truggs back to the normal present, where the Time Trapper revealed himself as a version of the New Timeline Paul, who had aided Savage in a failed attempt to preserve his timeline.

It's probably important to note that major changes to the timeline require a lot of energy to sustain, and once the energy runs out, time tends to try to snap back to what it was before people started meddling with it. The amount of energy required is, apparently, ridiculously prohibitive.
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Aside from the fact it was Savage Mandate!Paul Disintegrated, not Lao, that's pretty much it.
 
Akatsunami said:
Renegade will look at timetraveling shenaningans. Just Look at Them Real Hard. And everything that could've happened won't happen because it hasn't happened and would only happen if it did, even though it didn't.
I am not saying nothing will happen at all, somethings likely will, is just that whatever happens won't happen for very long, and even if it does happen for very long, it won't, because it will long be fixed as well.
I might be getting the hang of it, I also might not, I either will or I won't, or did and didn't, depends on if I decide to come back to it later and make sure either way.
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It seems as if I'm the only person who actually LIKES time travel plots, provided they're done well. This one was done well from a logical consistency standpoint, which is the most important thing, but fear as to the continued existence of the better, original timeline Paul made it hard to appreciate at times. I suspect it'll be easier to like Mandated Paul once we know for sure that original timeline Paul continues to exist (though afterwards he probably won't be in the story for very long, at least for now).
 
Was the prior Trapper all MandatePaul or was there a Brainac, Malthusian, a future-alt-past Savage, a whatever, etc., depending on the timeline changes?

Or noone knows because checking facts of missing -presumably having run out of energy to sustain themselves, dissipated back into the main trunk, unless another Trapper used their dissipating energy to fuel another alternate timelineohwhattheheck- alternate timelines is like reading old comics pre-retcon?
 
Mr Zoat said:
"IT WON'T WORK!" He takes a step back, then turns around, gesticulating with both arms. "Time WILL NOT SUSTAIN your future! The ONLY THING that hat could come up with was some kinda crazy guess-"

"That's not-"

"-about taking you-"

"-what they told me."

"-out of time. And of course they didn't tell you, you're an Orange Lantern." He pulls out a scroll bearing Jade's seal. "Here."

I hesitate for a moment, then take it from him and open it.

"Hello? Is there someone else in here?"

Oh… This was really the best we could..?

I feel Truggs pat me on the right shoulder as I stare at the letter. "The hat thought it was the only chance you got."

"I just…" Well. What is there to say? "I suppose there really isn't any choice. It was just… Wishful thinking."

Truggs shrugs. "I don't know you, but the other guy was a real terrier when it came to things like this. If you're him-."

"Hello?" Mr Lao comes around the corner and spots us. He starts slightly, but I can practically see the moment he decides that men who have been buried alive can't be choosers. "Were you part of the digging team?"

Temporal aperture detected.

"Mr Lao, I'm very sorry." I attach a filament to Mr Truggs and transition us both to Savage's time portal.

"Who-?"

Disintegrate.

The orange energy bolt hits him in the centre of his chest and spreads outwards, destroying every cell of his body as it does so. That won't guarantee that he's dead permanently, but if throwing him into the sun worked for my Savage I imagine that it will work for now.

The Truggs and I walk through the portal.

Ring, time and date?

19th October
09:12 GMT -6

"You are not Savage."

Truggs immediately goes over to the machine's control system and begins pressing buttons. I just look up at the purple robed figure staring down at me.

"I'm not."

"He failed, then. Just as I remember it."

"You've probably cost me everything. Even if this was the only way…"

"It was." The figure reaches into his robes and pulls out a duplicate-. No, the same scroll as the one I'm still carrying. "And I assure you, I hate it just as much as you do." Then he pushes back his hood and I'm not surprised by who I see. "I suppose we're our own worst enemy." He looks away from me. "Mister Truggs, you'll need the chronal suspension system."
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so let me try and parse this. This whole thing with the hat has been an attempt to preserve that universe, not by saving it but by saving pols memories of it when he turns back into POL in the main universe. and timetrapper pol has been doing all of this to....what, try and bring that universe back, by wiping out the legion of superheroes timeline, and having savage try and take over the world. Congratulations zoat, you have officially made this as confusing and convoluted as an actual dc crossover event. Seriously congratulations
 
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Indophenol said:
It seems as if I'm the only person who actually LIKES time travel plots, provided they're done well. This one was done well from a logical consistency standpoint, which is the most important thing, but fear as to the continued existence of the better, original timeline Paul made it hard to appreciate at times. I suspect it'll be easier to like Mandated Paul once we know for sure that original timeline Paul continues to exist (though afterwards he probably won't be in the story for very long, at least for now).
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I too like time travel when done well. But I think our requirements for well differs.

I think time travel gets interesting when it follows a logical model (in addition to being a good story of course) preferably one wherein you can't make any changes that would cause yourself not to go back. So no frigging alternative timelines that get erased.


The DC model is really not that different from saying the last two episodes were mostly fever dreams and somehow something escaped from said dream if you want some remaining consequence.
 
Indophenol said:
It seems as if I'm the only person who actually LIKES time travel plots, provided they're done well. This one was done well from a logical consistency standpoint, which is the most important thing, but fear as to the continued existence of the better, original timeline Paul made it hard to appreciate at times. I suspect it'll be easier to like Mandated Paul once we know for sure that original timeline Paul continues to exist (though afterwards he probably won't be in the story for very long, at least for now).
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I like them, but that doesn't mean I can't be confused by them, when changing history is involved.
 
I'm ninety-nine percent sure I understand the time travel oddities going on up to this point, but I've got to ask: would purple-cloaked Paul's lines make just as much sense if his words showed Orange Enlightenment? Obviously the question of that scroll's origins would be complicated, buuuut the idea that "our" Paul sent a copy of himself into this Asia-centric timeline...
...as part of a gamble to restore the timelines Savage was screwing with...
...and this reveal, with orange quotes, was a cliffhanger indicating that "our" Paul is about to be deleted from time/permanently stuck at the end of time as this cloaked figure,
AND THEN
the story would continue with this Asia-timeline-Paul taking over after this arc (along with some implanted memories from "our" Paul)... My jaw would have dropped. It would have also been an excellent comparison point between Paul and Grayven since now they'd both have personality-bleed troubles.

Time travel is hard to talk about, don't mind my rambles.
 
Crimson Doom said:
It's probably important to note that major changes to the timeline require a lot of energy to sustain, and once the energy runs out, time tends to try to snap back to what it was before people started meddling with it. The amount of energy required is, apparently, ridiculously prohibitive.
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So does this mean impulse's change to the timeline would have been eventually reversed because the devastation and enslavement of the earth by the reach was pretty much a big event? Cause I can just see that happening.
 
And that, Folks, is why the Guardians put the Three-Lantern-Lockout on Time Travel on the Green Lantern power Rings.
Being a mostly sensible sort, if a bit more Mad Sciencey than Most Guardians, and having the example of Bloody Krona to avoid emulating, I assume Hinon was sensible enough to enact something similar with Pauls' Orange Power Rings, though it's possible the Larfleeze Ring doesn't have it and the SI simply didn't realise, or couldn't work out how to use it (since No AI means he'd have to work out how to Want it to Work...Manually, as it were)
 
Cheap Orange Knofe said:
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I can't. I just can't.

What the hell is happening?
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They sent mandate paul to the past to stop savage after he caused the change so that mandate timeline is preserved but Savage is stopped. Once in the past, Truggs pointed out the timeline would collapse anyways because it lacked a power source to keep the changes going and that the only alternative the guardians could come up with was to take mandate Paul out of time, presumably so that he replaced Savage as the time trapper (by stopping Savage in the past before he became the time trapper and then get Paul out of time instead of him). Mandate Paul, now the time trapper, would then pretend to be Savage and send Savage to the past so as to keep the loop that caused the whole sequence of events stable (since if Savage didn't go to the past, they wouldn't try to stop him and Savage would become the time trapper instead of Paul causing the whole sequence to repeat forever).

Now, when Mandate Paul got to the past, Truggs gave him a scroll from Jade explaining the situation (they didn't explain it before because as an OL he is driven by avarice and the plan means he loses everything) and one of the following two things happened: Either the guardians decided that there was no way to keep the timeline from collapsing and planned for him to cut the problem at the bud and return things to the original timeline tokeep the universe from collapsing or Mandate Paul decided that was the best course of action since the alternative was to have him exiled forever. Either way, that led to Mandate Paul to kill savage before he made his change, destroying the mandate timeline in the process, then use Savages portal to meet Trapper Paul, who just confirmed he did the same thing when he was still Mandate Paul and before he was the time trapper and are now getting ready for the return of the OTL.
 
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