Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-25744472-20200104191106/@comment-4783583-20200124184242

Ban fem penta for it isn't and there are seven main types of time travel and if a writer actually thinks through to which kind he is uses it will all make sense, sadly most of these *cough* JK *cough* don't do this.

--these are the main types of time travel--

1 Alternate Timeline

You can travel to the past and change things there but it will only change that present, your future is still your future and either your future or the past has become an alternate timeline. Creating alternate timelines might have some very messy and dangerous results. This is what we see happen in Dragonball Z.

2 Alternate Earth

You can only travel to the past of another earth not to that of your own. This is what happens in Terra Nova.

3 Whatever happened, happened or self-consistent time travel

You can’t change anything everything is predetermined, if you are meant to time travel and if you do things in the past or future you were always meant to do it. There is no course correcting history. This is what happens in Lost and appeared to be the case in Harry Potter book 3 and was blatantly the case in the movie.

4 Nothing is fixed or new/changed history.

This is the exact opposite of number three, you can change everything, the butterfly effect happens, meaning you step on a bug in the past and suddenly your entire future has vanished. People can change the past, people can even become unborn (vanish from the present) or become none-born (be added to the present being born in an alternate present where originally they didn’t exist). This is the case Timeless and off course the cursed book, I mean Harry Potter the Cursed Child.

5 Time Loops

You are stuck in a period of time and you get to do that period of time over and over again. Nothing you do changes anything, the time period will repeat itself. Sometime you can’t even kill yourself, other times your wounds do carry over. This is off course the case in Groundhog Day but another example is the best TV Series ever made Day Break.

6 Time Dilation

You travel in space at a significant speed travelling faster than the speed of the present of the planet you left and when you stop travelling, years or hours might have passed for you while decades or centuries might have passed for the planet you left behind. This is the case in Planet of the Apes and Enders Game.

7 Only the future can be changed

You can travel to the past to observe it or only partially interact with it, but you can’t change anything however you can also see the future and make active choices from your present to change it. For the future you saw is just one possible future, all futures could happen but your choices make a particular future happen or not. This is the case in A Christmas Carol.