{"id":132379,"date":"2016-12-18T15:36:45","date_gmt":"2016-12-18T22:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/18\/what-is-the-right-timeline.html"},"modified":"2016-12-18T15:36:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-18T22:36:45","slug":"what-is-the-right-timeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/18\/what-is-the-right-timeline.html","title":{"rendered":"What Is the "Right" Timeline?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ran across a fun quotation in +<\/span>Doyce Testerman<\/a><\/span>'s feed earlier today, <\/p>\n

"Destiny is for people who are too lazy to create alternate timelines."<\/i>
— Richard Stevens III, Diesel Sweeties,<\/i> webcomic (5 Oct 2011)
[http:\/\/www.dieselsweeties.com\/archive\/2907<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Which called to mind some thoughts on goings-on in the Berlantiverse of DC heroes on the CW this season. (Some spoilers for S2 of Legends of Tomorrow,<\/i> S3 of Flash<\/i> below)<\/p>\n

In both Flash<\/i> and, especially, Legends of Tomorrow<\/i> (but with a bit of splash-over onto _Green Arrow),- the question of changing the timeline has been a major plot point. <\/p>\n

Legends<\/i> has focused on it from Day One: the Time Masters were (ostensibly) trying to protect the true timeline, while Rip was gathering the gang to help change it just enough to save his family (and, incidentally, billions of others) from Vandal Savage.<\/p>\n

With the destruction of the Time Masters, the Legends crew have suddenly changed course. They're out to eliminate time anomalies — the results of changes to the timeline. Most of what they are detecting and correcting are the results of actions by Bad Guys — time pirates, Damien Darkh, etc. <\/p>\n

But some anomalies have been caused by the Good Guys. Some innocent advice to is younger self caused Professor Stein to discover that, hey presto, he now has an adult daughter.¹ And, after feeling horrified and repulsed, as realized that, wow, she's not an anomaly,<\/i> she's a person.<\/i><\/p>\n

Similarly in Flash,<\/i> the eponymous hero wrapped up last season making the poor judgment decision to go back and save his mother from Reverse Flash. This set up the "Flashpoint" time paradox, changing the timeline so that when Barry arrived back in the present (a bit of handwaving as to how all that worked), he discovered things were Really Different — and, in some cases, far worse. That led him to going back and undoing what he'd just done, but the future (Butterfly Effect style) was still<\/i> a bit different from the previous canon. This has led to recriminations and anger and drama (some of it overblown, some of it exacerbated by the Berlantiverse Mandate that Thou Shalt Lie To Thy Friends About Anything Important).<\/p>\n

The question is, what is an "alternate timeline," or an "anomaly" actually is. Who gets to define the baseline reality that needs to be defended — especially when everyone else considers that "normal"? Screwing around with time can lead to some better outcomes, some worse — but given that knowledge of such things is always very local and immediate (Barry didn't count the number of people who might have lived, or died, as a consequence of his Flashpoint actions; Prof. Stein didn't consider the lives that his "new" daughter might have touched — benefited or hurt — once she started existing.<\/p>\n

Some of this speculation probably also gelled from having watched a stage production of It's a Wonderful Life<\/i> this weekend; the play stacks the deck by basically having everyone<\/i> be more miserable because George Bailey never existed in the alternate timeline, but reality might be more nuanced. Maybe one of the people on that troop transport that was destroyed by a kamikaze<\/i> because George's brother never survived to become a fighter ace would have grown up to be the forefather of some 21st Century Hitler. Maybe the misery of Potterville led to an amazing civil rights leader in the 60s, or the 70s, or the 80s, someone whose future of bringing equal rights to populations today is now wiped out because George decided he wanted to live after all.<\/p>\n

Not only is making an objective determination of the benefit or drawback of a given alternate timeline difficult, but deciding if something is<\/i> an alternate timeline is impossible. Is what we are living in the primary timeline? How would we (or the Legends, or the Flash) know? Who's to say that a 1930s speedster or a 29th Century time traveler didn't already screw things up ("Wait, Franz Ferdinand got killed<\/i> here, instead of the failed assassination leading to a history of rapprochement between first the ethnic groups of the Balkins, then Europe, then the whole world?") or fix things ("Wait, John Glenn actually made it back to Earth, rather than his fiery crash leading to the Soviet domination of space and, then, the whole world?")?<\/p>\n

I'm hoping that this will be the ultimate lesson of Legends of Tomorrow<\/i> in this (and future) seasons — not some sort of hopeless mission to maintain a hypothetical baseline, regardless of the costs, but a recognition that it's all<\/i> real — and, yeah, that trying to change time intentionally has lots of unintended consequences, good and bad, but that you can't let that paralyze you into thinking this is the best of all possible worlds and that we don't dare interfere with it on a micro or macro level. <\/p>\n

Because, really, everyone<\/i> screws around with the timeline, just by our impact on the world. We're all time travelers. Most of us don't have any choice about where we're going, but we all have an opportunity to change the future.<\/p>\n

—-<\/del><\/p>\n

¹ Stein is somehow convinced that this is due to his own meddling, not due to the Flashpoint shenanigans. How he is convinced of this never seems clear to me.<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n
\n<\/a>\u00a0\n<\/div>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ran across a fun quotation in +Doyce Testerman's feed earlier today, "Destiny is for people who are too lazy to create alternate timelines."— Richard Stevens III, Diesel Sweeties, webcomic (5 Oct 2011)[http:\/\/www.dieselsweeties.com\/archive\/2907] Which called to mind some thoughts on goings-on in the Berlantiverse of DC heroes on the CW this season. (Some spoilers for S2 … Continue reading “What Is the "Right" Timeline?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plusposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Time+Machine+-+faster.gifimgmax=660.gif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":130659,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/14\/alas-no-more-regular-snart-snark-on-legends-of-tomorrow.html","url_meta":{"origin":132379,"position":0},"title":"Alas, no more regular Snart snark on "Legends of Tomorrow"","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 14-May-16 4:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I read some other articles about this last night (after we watched the episode in question), as Wentworth Miller -- by far the most enjoyable cast member on DC's Legends of Tomorrow -- bows out from the series as a regular, but with a contract that lets him appear on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51108,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/14\/and-a-first-look-at-dcs-legends-of-tomorrow.html","url_meta":{"origin":132379,"position":1},"title":"And a first look at "DC's Legends of Tomorrow"","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 14-May-15 12:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Aside from being the clumsiest title in the world ...Okay, it looks like it'll be fun, in a kind of goofy way. More \"Flash\" in tone than \"Arrow.\" What we see here are mainly fisticuffs and quips; hopefully there will be some decent drama to go with.Vandal Savage is a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50552,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/07\/dc-and-cw-go-super-person-crazy.html","url_meta":{"origin":132379,"position":2},"title":"DC and CW go Super-Person Crazy","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-May-15 3:01pm","format":false,"excerpt":"But in a good way. I hope.Following up on Arrow and The Flash, we will now have DC's Legends of Tomorrow (which managed to beat out Marvel's Agents of SHIELD as an awkward title), which will feature an array of super--heroes and super-villains, rounded up by time-hopping Rip Hunter to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131454,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/08\/booster-gold.html","url_meta":{"origin":132379,"position":3},"title":"Booster Gold!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 8-Sep-16 5:47am","format":false,"excerpt":"I, for one, am more than happy to see Booster Gold get, not just a TV series, but an actual feature film. While Greg Berlanti says the film won't connect to the DCEU, that doesn't mean it isn't connected. Conversely, Booster would potentially fit right into the small-screen Berlantiverse on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131033,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/09\/if-we-cant-have-more-captain-jack-ill-settle-for-more-malcolm-merlyn.html","url_meta":{"origin":132379,"position":4},"title":"If we can't have more Captain Jack, I'll settle for more Malcolm Merlyn","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 9-Jul-16 4:50am","format":false,"excerpt":"John Barrowman gets a cross-CW-DC-hero contract. Excellent.Actually, this (like the Wentworth Miller \/ Captain Cold contract) is pretty clever. It's a lot easier to have villains cross-over between Arrow \/ Flash \/ Legends of Tomorrow (and, maybe, Supergirl?) than heroes. The latter always makes for weird imbalances and interference with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":129536,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/22\/liking-legends-of-tomorrow.html","url_meta":{"origin":132379,"position":5},"title":"Liking "Legends of Tomorrow"","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 22-Jan-16 12:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"There was actually a fair amount to like about the CW's new DC hero series, the Flash\/Arrow spin-off Legends of Tomorrow -- if nothing else that it cleans out both series of some decent characters that were cluttering up the core storylines.As a run-down:Rip Hunter - Okay, he's new, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/dcs-legends-of-tomorrow.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/dcs-legends-of-tomorrow.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/dcs-legends-of-tomorrow.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}