Character Guides and Chronodynamics
2 months ago
So people are actually reading those character guides, huh?
Some of them contain information that I may consider out of date now. As I learn more, the past gradually gets adjusted. Canonicity is not yet constrained by facts.
Once a certain new someone enters the picture, I have a feeling the past will change even more. But even before that, I need to figure out how "altering the past" actually works, in-universe. Because, you know, things that happened in the past... already happened. You can't have a narrative flow without a transferrable notion of "now", and time travel has a tendency to ruin that.
The cheapest and easiest solution is a multiverse, and the cheapest multiverse is the "every possible history is real" variety. Those setups are depressing, however, because they destroy the significance of the characters' actions. If the bad guy is fated to win in x% of the timelines, what's the point of defeating him? Why save the world when doing so is effectively the same as moving out of a bad neighborhood?
You could have the bad guy be a Kang the Conquerer type, acting laterally—trying to make all the neighborhoods bad neighborhoods—but that doesn't pass the sniff test. Why would a character do that? After gaining access to presumably an infinity of universes, anyone halfway relatable would be bound to find something more interesting to be and do than play God.
But even so, that doesn't change the fact that there is a type of multiverse, because Henry and Luke inhabit a different branch of it.
One thought I've been playing with: what if the multiverse didn't exist before Emmet & co. began mucking with time? What if our cast's actions have been bringing timelines into being somehow?
That still leaves the central question: "before" what? Things have either happened or they haven't, unless there's some sort of exterior perspective that's decoupled from time entirely.
It would appear we have a Box of Mysteries. What's in the box, I wonder?
Could it be that the box's entire purpose is to house a little chunk of that before? That if you happened to crack it open and peer inside, you'd catch a glimpse of what's pulling the strings?
One detail that I think won't change is that Emmet did get booted out of the picture eventually, and Sully in fact did carry on his research... in the process discovering that there's far more to time than simply past, present and future.
Some of them contain information that I may consider out of date now. As I learn more, the past gradually gets adjusted. Canonicity is not yet constrained by facts.
Once a certain new someone enters the picture, I have a feeling the past will change even more. But even before that, I need to figure out how "altering the past" actually works, in-universe. Because, you know, things that happened in the past... already happened. You can't have a narrative flow without a transferrable notion of "now", and time travel has a tendency to ruin that.
The cheapest and easiest solution is a multiverse, and the cheapest multiverse is the "every possible history is real" variety. Those setups are depressing, however, because they destroy the significance of the characters' actions. If the bad guy is fated to win in x% of the timelines, what's the point of defeating him? Why save the world when doing so is effectively the same as moving out of a bad neighborhood?
You could have the bad guy be a Kang the Conquerer type, acting laterally—trying to make all the neighborhoods bad neighborhoods—but that doesn't pass the sniff test. Why would a character do that? After gaining access to presumably an infinity of universes, anyone halfway relatable would be bound to find something more interesting to be and do than play God.
But even so, that doesn't change the fact that there is a type of multiverse, because Henry and Luke inhabit a different branch of it.
One thought I've been playing with: what if the multiverse didn't exist before Emmet & co. began mucking with time? What if our cast's actions have been bringing timelines into being somehow?
That still leaves the central question: "before" what? Things have either happened or they haven't, unless there's some sort of exterior perspective that's decoupled from time entirely.
It would appear we have a Box of Mysteries. What's in the box, I wonder?
Could it be that the box's entire purpose is to house a little chunk of that before? That if you happened to crack it open and peer inside, you'd catch a glimpse of what's pulling the strings?
One detail that I think won't change is that Emmet did get booted out of the picture eventually, and Sully in fact did carry on his research... in the process discovering that there's far more to time than simply past, present and future.
So, some sort of multiverse exists, but it's (relatively) sparse and disconnected. Only rarely can crossover happen, and if timelines themselves are self-aware they may counter or amplify crossover-related changes for reasons mortal protagonists could only guess at.