Game: Omnipotent Power Mimicry Journal

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Well, you can't exactly prove the nonexistence of alternate timelines, so it's quite possible they exist, as far as we know.

I mean, after all, that's how abilities like Psychic Strategy become relevant. No need to totally discount the idea.

[WonderDrow]

I wasn't discounting other ideas about timetravel.  I read and watched enough sci-fi to like them all.  It was merely about adding an different viewpoint on the theory of time travel.
It's you who seem to discount my idea.

But ok, I know you are a guy who keeps an open mind about things that are not 100% sure.  
While someone like me stopped looking for the polka dotted elephant.

[Smackgiver]

So then, using that theory, if you acquire time traveling powers in 2014 and go back to, say 1994, will your time traveling powers disappear, leaving you in the past?

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Who said I was believing in any polka-dotted elephant, or boogeyman, or fairy or invisible pink unicorn or anything like that?

I said we have no way of disproving the theory of alternate universes, timelines, etc.

Whatever you or I personally believe, though, is obviously up to each of us.

[WonderDrow]

Smackgiver wrote

So then, using that theory, if you acquire time traveling powers in 2014 and go back to, say 1994, will your time traveling powers disappear, leaving you in the past?

That depends.  

Suppose you have a device that can only send you back in time, and it travels with you.
Then you can use it again, but it would only send you further back in time.

Moving through time doesn't have to be in both directions to be called time travel.

And if you have a device that can send you to the past and the future?
Then better hope it can make that travel with you.

[WonderDrow]

Shadowulf1 (Wulf) wrote

 Who said I was believing in any polka-dotted elephant, or boogeyman, or fairy or invisible pink unicorn or anything like that?

I bet you can't prove that there's no invisible pink unicorn !

[Smackgiver]

Actually,  I was thinking more along the lines of an ability, like Enhanced Teleportation.  So say, for instance, you encountered an event (found a genie's lamp, bequeathed the ability by space aliens, whatever) that allowed you to acquire Enhanced Teleportation on Feb 1, 2014.  You then proceed to right a past wrong on May 13th, 2007.  Since you went back in time and changed the past, has your future been overwritten, the one where you acquired the power, thereby preventing you from keeping it?

[WonderDrow]

The future will be overwritten.

But as long you don't interfere with your other self, it probably won't change much.
The lamp would still be found and used by your other self.

In fact, it would be best if you do stop your other self from using the genie lamp.
Or time would be reset again when he uses it. There is a huge risk of an infinite time loop.

If you wanted you could even go back to the past and kill your mother before she gave birth to you.
There is no risk of disappearing like in the "Back To The Future" movie serie.
You would simply never encounter yourself as a child.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 And I can't, so you win that bet.

Precisely my point.

Until I have the ability to perceive in all wavelengths and bands of light, and can travel to any and all planets, and search out every inch of everywhere, I have no right to totally rule out very much of anything.

And so, I guess my JournalPower of the day would be Room-to-TARDIS. Get the tech to travel through time and space, and then I get to confirm or deny my own silly, ill-founded beliefs for myself, and not always taking what somebody else tells me about the universe.

Find aliens or not, find alternate timelines/universes/realities or not, it really doesn't matter so much to me. At least, not for the sake of being wrong or right to somebody else.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

But, there would have to be some connection still tethering you to the space-time continuum. Some reason you would still exist, without creating a paradox.

If you go back in time, and affect the past, then the only way it wouldn't harm the future is if there was another path to branch off into, within which your actions would change one timeline, and leave the other timeline unaffected.

It seems as though your conclusion agrees with the thought of an alternate timeline (never encountering yourself as a child, if you kill your mother in the past before she has you), but somehow you conclude the nonexistence of alternate timelines from the same idea.

[WonderDrow]

That's the beauty about the Time Tape Recorder Theory.  
It has less paradoxes than the other theories about Time Travel.

There is only 1 timeline.  And 1 recorder head.
The connection the timetraveler has is with the new time that's been written on the tape.
The memories about the time spend in the overwritten time don't even have to vanish.

The problem I have with the Multiple Timelines Theory is that it would be like taking a complete copy of the entire universe with each new time travel.
And if there's a time loop that would create an infinite number of universes only separated by it's timeline.
Something tells me that this would be a much bigger problem for the space-time continuum.

[Whd]

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[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Well, a time loop is sort of a big issue, regardless of which theory you take.

Anywho, to each his own. I can't really say I care one way or the other. I'd be satisfied with the ability to Time Travel at all.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Seems like you're quite the Multitasker.

[Smackgiver]

For today's OPM journal entry, I would select Artistic Manipulation and use it to beef up my drawing/painting skills.  I would then take the day off from work, purchase some art supplies, and spend the next 12 hours doing nothing but drawing, sketching, and/or painting whatever I like.

Make up my own super character with the coolest costume/uniform ever seen by human eyes.

Actually, that brings to mind another question - what is the coolest costume/uniform you've ever seen for a super or sci-fi character?  Doesn't have to be worn by a current hero/villain.  It could be on an obscure fan art site that someone just cooked up.

[Smackgiver]

I like that power you just linked, Wulf.  I may have to put that on my gottagetit list.

BTW - I'm looking for a specific ability on the SPL, but I've not had any luck in finding it.  Multitask seems to be the closest to it, but I'd still like to see one on there.  The gist of it is this - you can partition your consciousness into multiple versions of you within your noodle.  It's just a mental state that allows you to perform multiple mental tasks at once... not a physical duplication.

Does this sound like a power with which you've familiar on SPL?  If not, I'm gonna consider submitting one when I get some free time.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 No, I don't recall such an ability having been made.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

*crowd begins chanting*

"Make it! Make it! Make it! Make it!..."

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Oh, I honestly don't know if I could think of one off the top of my head.

I really like the costumes for:

Moon Knight

Doctor Doom

Mysterio

Harley Quinn

Poison Ivy

The Creeper

Blizzard

Not to mention, 1st Man and Penumbra, by Andy Smith. It's a shame I never got to see either hero in action (they're pretty obscure, so nobody seems to have made any fan art of them, or posted any panels online), but he used them and some other original characters of his as models within his art instruction book, and they look like awesome characters.

If the right people had Appearance Switcher, they could make for excellent cosplays.

[Smackgiver]

I'll give the SPL a proper double-check first, but if I can't find what I'm looking for, I'll definitely submit one.  I'm kinda ripping off the idea from Bruce Cordell's psionic power, Schism, in the 3.0/3.5 D&D Psionic Handbook, but it begs to be reproduced here, if it hasn't been already.