voice | un: w.west

[otherflash]

[ After a few hours of failing to fall asleep, Wally gets bored and decides to address the network at some point in the middle of the night. He can get oddly reflective when he's tired. ]

For curiosity's sake, what is everyone's thoughts on time travel? I suppose it's even possible some people here might have experience with it given we come from so many different worlds.

[ He stops to release a loud yawn, before continuing on. ]

I mean, if you knew something in your past was wrong, would you go back to change it and just deal with whatever the consequences are if you could do it? What if someone told you that by going back to save their son it would save thousands of lives?

[ If one was to get the feeling he has found himself in such situations in the past, then they would be correct. ]

Or, would you simply accept things for how they are and move forward no matter how hard that might be?

Comments

text, @jb.barnes

[anotheroldsoldier]

Doesn't time travel usually come with some risk of making things worse, though? In ways you can't always predict or understand. Not that I know much about this shit.

[But he might have thought about it. Not changing the past, but changing his future.]

[otherflash]

You seem to know enough. Even the most innocent of changes can have a monster impact on things in the future. At least that's been the result of the few cases I'm familiar with.

Though some people know how to keep the trickle down effect to a minimum. [ People like Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash. ]

[anotheroldsoldier]

The butterfly effect, or something like that. It's a pretty mainstream theory. I've never seen much time travel but the risk seems too high.

Yeah? How do they do that? It doesn't seem like something you could control.

un: j. whale

[jolting]

It depends on what you consider "time travel", doesn't it? Some people would say that just traveling around the world is a form of time travel because of the different time zones. There are also lands where time moves differently. Where it stops altogether or moves in an illogical pattern.

Though I'm just going to assume you mean the more popular concept of time travel. Even if it was possible to go backward in time, I personally wouldn't do it. If you're familiar with the concept of the multiverse, you can assure yourself that in one of them, your other self is living that life where that hypothetical son was saved.

[otherflash]

[ Yeah, hypothetical. All of this is hypothetical. ]

So you wouldn't feel any obligation to make things right if you could?

[jolting]

Like I said, versions exist where those choices were already made. Better to try making things right in the here and now than whatever happened in the past.

@ciscodelamancha | voice

[franciscoramon]

[ Well, this question sure reads a lot different, when you are Cisco and you know that Wally almost certainly has the ability to travel in time, if he's as fast as Barry was, and that it is a very real possibility that he's actually considering it. ]

It's a complicated question. I think it depends how far back you- I mean, this hypothetical person- is going. An hour, a day, even a week, just to change something small... that's just a quick do-over, even if the cumulative effects can be huge. But any further than that and you risk upsetting things in a major way. Rewriting the timeline completely, and changing everybody's lives, in huge and unpredictable ways. It's a big decision. Not one that anybody should take lightly.

[ Even when it was something as heartbreaking as saving his mother's life, Barry had agonized, for days, whether he could make the call to do something so dangerous and selfish. And in the end, he'd chosen not to - Cisco had never known how he found the strength to make that call. ]

Personally speaking, I think... forward is always the right way. Some things... they're just not meant to be messed with, you know?

private

[otherflash]

[ There isn't anything for Cisco to worry about as this really is just Wally being curious about what others would do if they had the ability. The Barry he knows did give into the temptation of saving his mother and he's well aware of all the chaos it caused even after his mentor had managed to "fix" the timeline. ]

I'm not planning on doing anything stupid, if that's what you're wondering. I know the risks are too great. Besides, last I knew the treadmill was gone.

[ Not that he needs the cosmic treadmill to time travel, but the device Barry created makes it easier for a speedster to navigate the time-stream so they end up precisely where they want, and more importantly, when they want. ]

But has your Barry ever considered it? Changing the past?

private from here on

[franciscoramon]

[ Had his concern been that obvious? Cisco had been trying to mask it, but evidently he hadn't done a very good job. Whoops. But he is undeniably grateful for the reassurance from Wally that he is not planning on altering the timeline. Cisco believes his word; Wally doesn't seem like the sort who would lie about that kind of thing. ]

You use a treadmill for it?

[ It's so ludicrous that Cisco immediately believes it. Probably more efficient than running through the particle accelerator, the way Barry did. And as soon as he thinks about Barry, Wally asks his question, as if reading his mind. Cisco sees no reason to lie, so he answers honestly: ]

He did change it, once. The first time he traveled into the past, it was by accident. He only went back a day, but he did things different, and stuff went down different than it had the first time.

[ Cisco hadn't died in the reset timeline, for one thing, but that's neither here nor there. ]

And he also thought about going back to save his mom. He was going to do it, in exchange for letting the Reverse Flash go. He ran back and everything. But... he changed his mind, and just said goodbye to her, instead.

[ It had been a brave, horrible decision that Barry had had to make, but Cisco admired him for it, fiercely. It hadn't been enough, to give him the edge over the Reverse Flash, but it had been the right call. The damage it had done to Barry's psyche, though... Cisco had seen that, in the months after the singularity. He'd been haunted by it, by watching her die all over again. Cisco feels a pang of guilt, then. He had wanted to be able to fix that sadness, to heal Barry, with friendship and jokes and his company. But it had been no good. ]

private video » @LOKIOFASGARD

[ikols]

Time-travel is one of those "damned if you do and don't" scenarios. My future-self came back in time to murder me, I can't say I appreciated the
convoluted effort it took.

private video

[otherflash]

[ Loki is greeted to the sight of Wally, his red hair a bit disheveled from his failed attempt at sleep, sitting on a couch with a box of pizza that has a few slices left resting in his lap. ]

That's... wow. The closest I can get to that is there's this guy from my far future who appears to have made it his life's goal to get rid of me for reasons I still don't quite understand.

[ikols]

[ Wally is way comfier than Loki, who has Billy asleep on his chest as he strokes his boyfriend's hair. It's the dead of night and the godling doesn't need as much rest as his mortal witch. ]

He just wants you dead because it'd be better for him, right? Lot of that going around, it seems. My future-self, let's call him the King, wanted to destroy my mind. Twist it to resemble the insanity of his, since I was apparently not on the same path.

voice; @b.potts

[tutee]

I've never traveled to my own personal past. I'm pretty sure there's rules against it.

[ The Doctor's rules, more than anything. ]

But I've been to the past, and the future. Making small changes doesn't really affect the timeline. Time just seems to work its way around them.

[otherflash]

If there's not, there should be. I don't think anything good can come from it.

[ When his mentor Barry Allen went back to prevent something in his past that was caused by another time traveler, it still changed their present beyond belief. ]

What exactly do you consider a small change to be, if you don't mind me asking?

[tutee]

Well, let's see... This one time I went to a Frost Fair, on the Thames in 1814. Initially, I thought it'd be like the movie The Butterfly Effect, where if I did one tiny thing wrong, I could erase myself from existence, or something. But it wasn't like that at all.

We-- my friend and I-- we stopped this businessman who was taking advantage of this giant fish creature in the Thames, and we set it free. When we went back to 2017, there was nothing changed from that.

@trueheir Voice || private

[sonofab]

First, before you agree with anything, you stop and think about how trustworthy your information source is.

[Because if this is what he's pretty sure this is about than rule 1 of being a Titan? Don't trust Deathstroke.]

Second, don't do it.

private

[otherflash]

Even if I was someone who would consider doing it, I know better than to make deals with killers.

[ Too bad it was a lesson his younger cousin hadn't learned yet. Speaking of which, Wally still isn't sure how things played out with Deathstroke after the Titan teams found him. ]

I don't need the details, but is it safe to say we avoided disaster?

text; gypsygirl

[likeacoupon]

That's making my brain hurt.
Why worry about all this when you can't do that? Unless you can, but that opens up a lot of other questions I have for you.

[otherflash]

Can't a guy just be curious? But I will admit I know a few people back home capable of it in theory.

[ One of the names on that list of people would be his own. ]

text; @altin

[bringbackgold]

I wouldn't. I think something would have had to have been really wrong to try.

[otherflash]

It's certainly not something someone should do just for anything simply because they can.

But what if the world as you know it was on the verge of ending? What if someone died sooner than they were supposed to?

text; @sweetdreames

[personifications]

In my experience, willing the past to change never makes it better.

[ In the ways he can understand time travel that are not a load of shit, in any case. ]

[otherflash]

That seems to be the consensus.

Does that mean you have actual experience with time travel?

voice | un: d.pavus

[tevinteraltus]

[Time travel got his attention. He knows something of it, yes, and well, it's Not Good.]

And what if they were wrong? I...knew a man who wanted to change the past. We even figured out how to get there, but the passage of time lays down thick chords that, when disturbed, yield unimaginable consequences. What if, say, saving those thousands doomed millions elsewhere?

Who's to say his death was wrong? Who's to say those thousands weren't destined for death? We aren't meant to write fates or decide their validity. Our own vision is too finite. I'd recommend leaving such things to the divine and sticking to bemoaning their choices.

private

[otherflash]

[ Wally doesn't disagree with any of that. While Grant Wilson's death was certainly tragic, it was something that happened through the normal course of events and should stay that way even if he wishes he could have done something about it. ]

That's what I told the father. That he needed to accept it happened and move forward because going back could impact things in ways he couldn't even imagine. Needless to say, he didn't exactly agree after I said I wouldn't help him.

[ Which resulted in the father giving him a big speech about how his speed powers were wasted on him. Of course, he doesn't put much stock in what Slade Wilson, who is an unrepentant killer among other things, has to say. ]

I know I made the right choice there. But I guess the 'what if' of it all is still on my mind.