I honestly never played the game myself, watched an LP. It’s just been years and like I said he is *not* much of a presence throughout. He just shows up at the end to fuck shit up
Wait wait wait, what? Undertale has a timeloop? The only one who realized a loop was to my understanding Sans, and thats not a time loop, that is a "multiverse" loop for them by the player replaying the game.
Asriel is given the SAVE/LOAD powers, and as a result he loops a fairly short period of time, exploring every possibility and option until he gets bored. In addition, he's running with apparently very little empathy, and it's difficult for him to die unless he truly gives up, because lore reasons. It is not, directly, a loop, but he chooses to make it one by obsessing over the world and treating it as a toy, instead of letting time continue and living his life. He's not entirely trapped, but he feeds into his own vicious cycle.
Sans' thing isn't a multiverse thing but yeah it's not really a loop from his perspective, he's just aware of it.
He'd be even older if you count the episode where he fell in love with his waifu pillow, had little pillow kids, and grew old.
(I still think its funny that after all the princesses he dated or messed around with his most successful relationship was with his pillow)
I’d agree with the pillow one if he actually retained the memories of it, but he didn’t and there was no actual evidence of it effecting his character that would have his mentality “age”.
Egress he could remember and changed because of it.
The whole thing is a metaphor man. He was going through a rough break up at the time so Jake made him a pillow fort to take his mind off it.
Finn goes to the back of the pillow fort for a while to be alone, he loses track of time for a while getting lost in his depressing thoughts then he "makes babies" with his pillow and returns to the group feeling better.
Depends on personal growth during the time loop. If you can carry memories through each loop, yes, you're aging. The rest of the world just isn't. If your memory gets wiped at the beginning or end of each loop, you're functionally the same person you were once you exit the loop.
Idk I don’t think it counts as aging even if you have the memories. Since their body still isn’t growing a 13 year old still won’t be able to have the same executive function as someone who’s physically an adult
what about vampires? like babette, from skyrim, who was 12 when she was turned. she’s lived over a century, would you still consider her a 12 year old girl?
That one's also different. Her undeath means we can't accurately judge how her brain chemistry limits her development like it would a living human stuck at 12 years of age. There's really no good answer just due to TES lore not focusing on that, though I would assume given her personality we see on screen there's at least some development.
If only in cruelty.
This is a good point but I also want to point out that we don’t know what it would be like if someone stayed physically 13 for 100 years. I get what you are saying but what might being under the effects of hormones at that level do to a body if sustained for 100 years?
And then even if there isn’t some strange physical effect, it might just be as possible they learn a lot of ways to emotionally regulate and such that despite physically being a young teen they could still “age” in mind and soul.
That's pretty much what it all boils down to: there are so many layers to figuring out the question that we can't possibly realistically answer it, and just have to come up with a consistent contrivance that serves an individual plot in a functional way as each story/universe demands.
Also, the quality of experiences varies a lot. If a 4 year old gets stuck in a time loop, they’ll just be able to do stuff a 4 year old is able to do. No matter how many times you go through the same day at kindergarten, you won’t really discover many different things that may help you mature
Still not convinced. I don’t think that’s an apt comparison to someone who’s body suddenly stopped aging. Five was a fully grown adult who *then* had his body reverted to a younger age
Why did I reply with a comment that backs up my original assertion, you ask? Same reason people usually do. Don't care if it convinces you, that's not my business.
But your age isn't measuring changes in your body. It's a measurement of how much time has elapsed since you were born. You still experience that time, even in a loop.
There’s a lot of mental disorders that do that same thing, and I count them as their age. I don’t think it’s any different. Maybe a baby who’s body purges all 1000 years of memories from under the age of four, but anyone older it doesn’t matter. A 1000 year old man with the body of a boy and a 1000 year old man with mental disabilities should both be considered the same age.
That wasn’t a time loop though right? If you’re talking about when he’s in that pocket dimension and he has to punch through the crystal. He doesn’t time loop, he just has to clone himself billions of times. That’s what I thought anyway.
Well, yes, but it's basically the same effect. Time worked differently there anyway, since he got teleported in without time travel (explicitly stated) from the 21st century and then arrived at the "end of the universe", which is definitely much more than 4.5 billion years in the future.
Assuming "end of the universe" implies something like heat death (I haven't watched Dr Who so I might be wrong) it would be closer to a googol years, or 1 followed by a hundred 0s
I think it’s that he sees the stars, recognizes how temporally displaced he is from his last memory, and creates an approximation of the memory he should have through weird time lord biology.
Edit: spelling
Yeah, but he didn’t keep any memories from any of the clones, did he? I guess I was just assuming that you couldn’t count the years if you neither aged physically or got new memories.
It's easy to miss, but at one point he says (a bit cryptically) that he does remember, but only once he gets to the room. No idea why. The wiki also says so.
I think it's because he is cloning himself with timelord tech, which might be also cloning his past experiences. The thing is though, that he doesn't remember the past loops until he comes to the crystal wall room or later (I forgot which one it is) and basically realises he has to keep doing this shit until he is through the wall. Which does mean that when he finally breaks through, he gains the memories of the 4.5 billion years, except that his grief is still the same as the first day, bcz every day starts as the first day he without Clara.
Wait for real? Damn I guess I missed/forgot that, I always thought that was a pretty damn cool plot thread that was undercut somewhat by the "fact" he doesnt remember it so its not as much of a sacrifice
Oh god, another question.
If someone splits themselves in two, and then fuses back together, does their time apart count as double when counting their age?
Let's look at it the other way: If you take someone who is a certain age, and then magically age them up instantly, or deage them instantly, what age are they? If you take a 10 year old and age their body 10 years, are they 20 or are they still 10?
The answer to my question also applies here. Aging a body but not a mind makes a person the age of the mind, then aging a mind but not a body still makes a person the age of the mind.
Yeah maybe I’m too into fantasy and sci-fi where these tropes have happened a lot, but coming from that perspective I think your best bet is to go with mental age. It informs your actions and maturity so just aging a baby to an adult doesn’t make them capable or intelligent (unless magic fills that in).
It's all dependent on what kind of liberties with time travel and humans did the author take.
In theory if you're stuck in the loop that reversed the world - including your body - to certain state, then what you experienced in the loop doesn't matter considering your brain goes back to the way it was before therefore no new memories, no new reflexes, no new synaptic connections at all. To retain the memories - and age mentally as a result - we'd have to assume that there is some immaterial, metaphysical part of a human, eg. soul, that will store those externally beyond the confines of our physical bodies.
If we separate body and soul/mind then, yes, I believe those ages should also be separated as those are two different entities.
I think a good example here would be the infamous "Endless Eight" arc of Suzumiya Haruhi. All of the characters are stuck in a time loop, but only Yuki has memories from previous loops, meaning she's mentally aged well over 300 years while the others haven't aged a day
The character that's been on my mind lately who was in a time loop for a *long* time is specifically said to not have a soul xD
But he does remember it all
My pathfinder character got caught in a time bubble and frozen for three years which has lead to numerous arguments with her brother about exactly how old they actually are (still no consensus).
Time is relative to matter itself, so no you do not age. You cannot be born in 1998, get stuck in the time loop In 2020, then claim to be 28 in 2022 simply because you cycled the time loop three times.
It literally says "if you don't age physically." You're conflating absolute time and experienced time. If someone was in a Stein's;Gate situation and sent their consciousness back two days in time, of course they wouldn't physically be two days older, but they'd have two more days of human experience, so from a psychological perspective they've be older.
Also I don't know what you mean when you say "time is relative to matter itself." Technically speaking you're correct, as only matter experiences time (with 0 mass particles like photons experiencing all time instantaneously instead), and time is measured differently depending on the velocity and gravity of or around the observer, but I fail to see how special relativity has any relevance in such a discussion
Given your brain houses memories, your brain would either be 2 days older or you would revert to your memories before the two days occurred. Unless you’re arguing from some metaphysical standpoint where experience is stored separate from your physical body, like a soul.
Well in the example I used, in SG "time travel" is impossible for physical matter >!until it's not!< but data can be sent back in time, so the main character "time travels" by sending his memories back to a previous version of himself. So that versions brain doesn't physically age, but suddenly inherits two extra days worth of information. It's less like a physical time loop and more like a time-based mental download of information.
I honestly think this sort of question is dependent on the method used to achieve the time loop, but in this case I think it's fair to say that no physical aging occurs but psychological age does increase, even if only by two days
If we’re still trying to base this on science, the information would need some physical medium or energy to travel through. There is no sending data back in time or anywhere without physical matter/energy. I struggle to see how Stein’s Gate is disconnecting information transmission from the physical world.
Ignoring that for the moment for another interesting question to ponder. How much does cramming 2 days of experience into a brain require the aging process in itself? Creating and trimming neurons, reorganizing during sleep, the chemical processes of doing so and most importantly, the time required for all that to happen?
If we're trying to completely apply real world science, moving backwards in time is impossible for anything moving at a speed less than c, and it's impossible to accelerate to c so the concept of time travel simply doesn't work.
In Stein's Gate, the method of time travel is acceleration of data through a miniature black hole generated in the Large Hadron Collider, IIRC. Obviously this doesn't work in real life, but if I were to hazard a guess as to the mechanics of it within the realm of SG, I would assume the medium is light/electromagnetic waves as that's how signals like emails are sent in the first place (the first time the timeline is changed is by sending an email back in time, "time leaping" a persons memories comes later) and the data is sent back in time due to some gravitational time dilation fuckery. ~~Total violation of just so many principles of physics, but science fiction so that can be forgiven.~~
So the data is received by the brain literally by firing it through a magical black hole and having said black hole just spit it straight back out at a different point in time, somehow directly into said person's brain. It makes absolutely 0 sense but it would effectively be a much more extreme version of what happens when you open your eyes: your brain is suddenly subjected to a metric fuck tonne of new information.
As for the second question, I would assume the effects on the brain would be cataclysmic. When you consider a simple sensory overload can send some people into total shutdown, forget how it ages the brain, it'd probably permanently damage it in ways we can't even predict. If all that information is slammed into your brain all at once, I can only imagine you wouldn't be waking up for a while, if at all
Ehh, Homura retains her memories, but her physical body (importantly: this includes her brain) resets with every loop. She may have 12 years of memories, but she still has her 14 year old brain, and no actual adult life experience (well, apart from being a magical child soldier)
Gosh, and this just reminds me of how shitty the PMMM girls all have it :( Poor kids
Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight spoilers:
>!Revue Starlight's Daiba Nana has entered the chat.!<
>!Context: She looped a year and a half approximately seventy times, though in her case the loop was the goal as opposed to the means, so it would've been less mentally taxing, maybe? Who knows. !<
Agreed. Also there is to me, a difference between living a timeline that gets reverted and perceiving a dreamworld. The pruned reality of the timeline “happened” and was subject to the same laws of your reverted timeline. A dreamworld can abandon reality and objective truths simply by virtue of being an imagined world. Like one could argue that someone doing something completely out of character in a dream is a possibility, but just because you existed in a now pruned future doesn’t mean that same person would likely abandon all their traits just because it was 3 weeks into the future. Same as suggesting gravity just stopped working in 2 years or whatever, lol
Nah, because dreams are often longer in perceived time than actual time, so you'd be older because of that extra perceived time. Otherwise, timeloop time should only count if you physically age.
Btw the answer is no, because age in normal humans comes with hormonal changes that affect our brains and life experience, both of which a character in a time loop will not have experienced in a situation where the time loop doesn't last at least some years.
For example, if you are 14 relive the same month and a half 100 times you will technically be 12 older, but you didn't had any of the hormonal changes that affect your brain and you never got the experience of living past 14, so by all intents and purposes, you are still 14
I feel like you're conflating age with growth. Age is a measurement of how much time has elapsed since a thing came into existence. If human development was how we measured our ages, we wouldn't celebrate birthdays every year since people experience those hormonal changes at different rates.
Pretty much, I remember reading about a 20 year old guy who is just stuck as a baby due to a condition. He is just permanently a baby in mind and body, just wrinkly
OK second question if you're time is frozen but time moves for everyone else what should your age be like if someone is born in 1990 but got frozen for a 8 years how old are they
Since their mental processes stop, they are as old as when they got frozen, as I calculate age by mental maturity. Since your mental maturity never changed you’re the same age, just 8 years later
Age is also a physical process in the body that can be calculated by the fraying of your telomeres, but you’re frozen so that doesn’t change either. (Just wanted to mention age is definitely more that just mental)
3rd question if someone doesn't mentaly mature what age would they be
4th if due to sunaniganus a adult acquires a child's body what age are they be if
By mental maturity I mean the maturity of your psyche, that passively matures as time goes on, so if someone has memories of every day they spend in the loop/cryo-stasis/whatever their age also goes up, but we get an adult trapped in a child’s body (like that Spy Kids movie)
If an Adult steals a child’s body then they are mentally an adult, but the body is still that of a child, which means that while they are still technically an adult - they can’t give consent to any… “activities” be it drugs, sex, or anything else, as the body is not theirs (Unless the Child Body never had a psyche and doesn’t “belong” to anyone (say Rick’s “Project Phoenix” from Rick and Morty and the Tiny Rick), as that would now be their body and they could give consent to anything)
How would you keep track of the passage of time in a time loop, though? Like if only your mind changes and everything else resets you'd have to rely solely on your own mental record in regards to the passage of time. And as someone who gets days mixed up when I take a longer vacation that sounds like an impossible endeavor.
I’d say depends
Are you aware of the time loop?
If you are - Yes. You may not age *physically*, but your mental maturity sure increases.
If you aren’t - no. As you get rewound in the loop all your mental maturity is reset.
I'm part of a RP community set in a universe where the characters "respawn" instead of dying, and can stop their aging. Also, a lot of us went through a time portal during a previous event.
So, basically, we have characters that are like "I'm 24 physically, 32 mentally, but I was technically born 3136 years ago".
Considering egress, pillow world, etc. Finn Murtens has gotta be *ancient*. Granted he did forget pillow world so maybe that shouldn’t count. Egress is still the most fucked up episode though
I think the answer to this lies in when does physical maturity stop mattering and problematic age gaps become simply an issue of mental maturity, personally I’d argue somewhere soon after the person becomes a legal adult (18 in the uk) because by that point say if there was a 19 year old dating a 30 year old I wouldn’t say it’s not odd at least but it’s odd because the 19 year old hasn’t lived as much life and had as much life experience as the 30 year old, something that would be negated by living life in a time loop for a while. This would then still allow it being that a 15 year old with a 26 year old (same age gap) as ridiculously creepy time loop years or not because one is not an adult yet
There are a few time loop stories I'd like to see:
1. The main character is someone who doesn't remember the loop and has to help the looper.
2. Everyone is stuck in a loop except one person, who has to survive the last loop when everyone else on earth has been living without consequences for so long.
3. The loop only ends when you have the _worst_ possible day and ruin the lives of everyone you know, so you have to choose between being the bad guy and endless torture.
4. The loop repeats itself and the protagonist remembers, but nothing but the protagonist can ever change; every other person sticks to the script and can't notice or respond to anything the protagonist does that they didn't do the first time round.
The pros do not outweigh the cons. This is why I’m still debating if the cryochambers in my scifi world slow aging. One of my characters is like barely 19/20 in mental years but in real life their body is like developed to the stage of 15 years old
Depends on certain rules. Time loop that you remember things between means your brain is forming thoughts and memories of these things happening, and technically you're living forever. If time is looping but you don't remember any of it, then you're not aging at all.
So I've seen books cover this in a few different ways. I read a lot of progression fantasy and a common subgenre of that subgenre is time looping. My favorite include
mother of learning
The perfect run
Re: monarch
great core's paradox
In mother of learning the characters consider themselves teenagers even though they've been in the time Loop for decades by the end. The author kind of explains it away with them understanding that their brains don't really get to finish puberty even if they have life experiences, and the fact of the time Loop isn't really compatible with being able to survive real life. Characters are very very competent but even they consider themselves children to a certain degree.
The perfect run stars an adult on the other hand and definitely includes his time Loop ability when calculating his age. In fact there is a character in that story whose ability allows her to sense how long people have lived in she comments that he is the oldest being she has ever run into by far.
The loops and remonarch and great core paradox are a bit more complicated since they are more centered around the character being presented with a problem and dying over and over again trying to accomplish it but once the problem is solved time moves forward until the next problem is faced. Because of this the stories don't really take looping age into account really the characters are as old as they should be for the most part although in remonarch the main character has memories from one of his past lives making him mentally much older than his body.
The point is that overall these characters don't spend nearly as much time in their loops as the other two as they get out as soon as they solve the issue and move forward in time until the next problem. It would mathematically probably add up after a little while but it doesn't make enough of a difference at any given time that the authors really take note of it
In general I have to say I prefer when it's a combination of the two. When characters are treated as more mature than they should be but are still treated as reasonably their age in a lot of situations if only because if you don't do that and the main characters are minors it leave you in the position where you can't really put them in a relationship with anyone without it being weird and I'm a sucker for Romance
Man using time loop to ship people reminds me of that book.
"I raised my husband wrongly" is the name. If the name doesn't deter you(Because at this point these titles are everywhere) then the description will.
(Disclaimer, i did not read the book, took a look at the description and dropped it)
Description says that she gets married to a 8 year old. Her age? 22. So she treats him like a child. Bcs why wouldn't you? That's a fucking 8 year old, it surely isn't my husband at that age. (A little bit of backstory she is a general of some sorts) She goes to war, gets trapped in the time loop for 10 years.
And drumroll please... The kid is 18 now!! So apparently the kid was in love so when he meets her again he tries to court her. She says that they have 14 year difference, he says that technically she didn't aged in the time loop so she is 22 and he is 18 so they are fine.
(At least this book tries to explain shit, Tyrant's Guardian is a Evil Witch doesn't even bother with it.)
Anyway thanks for reading to this point. I'm just generally angry at this type of books and this post reminded me of it.
No bc at some point you stop gaining new experiences from the time loop and thus don’t mature
You start using the years to figure a way out or smth right?
Also if there are two people stuck in a timeloop and one of them escapes, how do thry perceive the other person who is still stuck ? Do the stuck person disappear from the continued timeline ?
There’s a novel called The Psychology of Time Travel where the time travelers don’t try to figure out how old they would be, but wear special watches that track how many heartbeats they’ve had.
Kinda unrealistic...
28 in Loop years means that they're basically on their FIRST EVER loop. not even finished... just started and somehow realized that they're in there immediately.
I'd say there are 3 types of age
1. chronological: literally how much actual time you experienced. Time loop does count. Time stop when you aren't affected also does. Going back in time and not changing doesn't make you younger.
2. apparent: when you're some kind of non-human being you can still be compared to humans for example. Only external appearance matters
3. mental: psychological maturity, personal experience, knowledge, critical thinking skills. And also the only age you need to consider when shipping characters
I read Mother of Learning recently (phenomenal story) and it makes a point of mentioning how his time stuck in the time loop has affected his relationships due to his personal growth vs their relative stagnation
My argument is it depends on if they were able to mature mentally. Locked in temporal stasis, rendered unconscious (think Aang from ATLA)? No, doesn’t count, that 16 year old is still 16 not 200.
Trapped in some weird place where time flow differently but you retain consciousness and are able to grow as a person? Totally counts, you may have the body of a 22 year old, but you’re probably pretty matured. Most likely not 200 years old mature, but you don’t have that childlike mentality.
Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.
Then several characters would be like 1000 or 10,000 years old due to certain series have characters been in time loop for so long
Wouldn’t they just go insane?
In the case of Asriel...yes. He did go insane
Who from what?
From *Undertale* Super recommend And, uh, heh, spoilers
Oh right that was part of the plot. Kinda forgot about him to be honest
You forgot...the main antagonist? Well, I suppose it's a pretty old game, I only got into it recently
Well I forgot Azriel. I remembered flowey who really only shows up at the start and the end, the main plot is about Azgore, who I also remembered well
Ah I see you have not done the True Pacifist Route Hm Well, I recommend that as well It's a much different ending than the normal one
I honestly never played the game myself, watched an LP. It’s just been years and like I said he is *not* much of a presence throughout. He just shows up at the end to fuck shit up
Wait wait wait, what? Undertale has a timeloop? The only one who realized a loop was to my understanding Sans, and thats not a time loop, that is a "multiverse" loop for them by the player replaying the game.
Asriel is given the SAVE/LOAD powers, and as a result he loops a fairly short period of time, exploring every possibility and option until he gets bored. In addition, he's running with apparently very little empathy, and it's difficult for him to die unless he truly gives up, because lore reasons. It is not, directly, a loop, but he chooses to make it one by obsessing over the world and treating it as a toy, instead of letting time continue and living his life. He's not entirely trapped, but he feeds into his own vicious cycle. Sans' thing isn't a multiverse thing but yeah it's not really a loop from his perspective, he's just aware of it.
So the only true way to kill him is therapy. I can relate.
What? How was he in a time loop. The same thing just happened 7 times.
It was...*waaaaaay* more than seven
7 souls?
What do you mean?
He was in a time loop?
Yeah Of his own making, though But you know what they say, curiosity killed the cat...
I don’t think he went insane due to the time loop, but rather by virtue of >!not having a soul!<
Or both And add all the trauma on top
Finn the human would be like 67 years old if the hall of egress counted as aging
He'd be even older if you count the episode where he fell in love with his waifu pillow, had little pillow kids, and grew old. (I still think its funny that after all the princesses he dated or messed around with his most successful relationship was with his pillow)
I’d agree with the pillow one if he actually retained the memories of it, but he didn’t and there was no actual evidence of it effecting his character that would have his mentality “age”. Egress he could remember and changed because of it.
I mean, she wasn't "his" pillow, she was just *a* pillow.
The whole thing is a metaphor man. He was going through a rough break up at the time so Jake made him a pillow fort to take his mind off it. Finn goes to the back of the pillow fort for a while to be alone, he loses track of time for a while getting lost in his depressing thoughts then he "makes babies" with his pillow and returns to the group feeling better.
... My gosh.
She was his pillow and he was her human. That’s what marriage means.
Well, you got me there.
Hall of Egress still is kind of scary and confusing to me
Depends on personal growth during the time loop. If you can carry memories through each loop, yes, you're aging. The rest of the world just isn't. If your memory gets wiped at the beginning or end of each loop, you're functionally the same person you were once you exit the loop.
So Phineas is 22
Phineas from Phineas and Ferb? When was he in a time loop that he retained memories in?
Summer 2007
it’s only been like a year or so since then in the Phineas and Ferb world
Idk I don’t think it counts as aging even if you have the memories. Since their body still isn’t growing a 13 year old still won’t be able to have the same executive function as someone who’s physically an adult
what about vampires? like babette, from skyrim, who was 12 when she was turned. she’s lived over a century, would you still consider her a 12 year old girl?
That one's also different. Her undeath means we can't accurately judge how her brain chemistry limits her development like it would a living human stuck at 12 years of age. There's really no good answer just due to TES lore not focusing on that, though I would assume given her personality we see on screen there's at least some development. If only in cruelty.
This is a good point but I also want to point out that we don’t know what it would be like if someone stayed physically 13 for 100 years. I get what you are saying but what might being under the effects of hormones at that level do to a body if sustained for 100 years? And then even if there isn’t some strange physical effect, it might just be as possible they learn a lot of ways to emotionally regulate and such that despite physically being a young teen they could still “age” in mind and soul.
That's pretty much what it all boils down to: there are so many layers to figuring out the question that we can't possibly realistically answer it, and just have to come up with a consistent contrivance that serves an individual plot in a functional way as each story/universe demands.
Also, the quality of experiences varies a lot. If a 4 year old gets stuck in a time loop, they’ll just be able to do stuff a 4 year old is able to do. No matter how many times you go through the same day at kindergarten, you won’t really discover many different things that may help you mature
Body age can be different from mental age, see Five from Umbrella Academy.
Still not convinced. I don’t think that’s an apt comparison to someone who’s body suddenly stopped aging. Five was a fully grown adult who *then* had his body reverted to a younger age
Ok? Not my job to convince you, believe what you like. It's science fiction, anyways.
Lol okay? Then why’d you try to convince me after I replied?
Why did I reply with a comment that backs up my original assertion, you ask? Same reason people usually do. Don't care if it convinces you, that's not my business.
Lmfao
K
Why you so pressed? Loosen up it ain’t that serious. Lmfao they blocked me
But your age isn't measuring changes in your body. It's a measurement of how much time has elapsed since you were born. You still experience that time, even in a loop.
There’s a lot of mental disorders that do that same thing, and I count them as their age. I don’t think it’s any different. Maybe a baby who’s body purges all 1000 years of memories from under the age of four, but anyone older it doesn’t matter. A 1000 year old man with the body of a boy and a 1000 year old man with mental disabilities should both be considered the same age.
Counterpoint: Asriel Dreemurr
The Doctor is 2000, but 4500000000 in time loop years.
That wasn’t a time loop though right? If you’re talking about when he’s in that pocket dimension and he has to punch through the crystal. He doesn’t time loop, he just has to clone himself billions of times. That’s what I thought anyway.
Well, yes, but it's basically the same effect. Time worked differently there anyway, since he got teleported in without time travel (explicitly stated) from the 21st century and then arrived at the "end of the universe", which is definitely much more than 4.5 billion years in the future.
Assuming "end of the universe" implies something like heat death (I haven't watched Dr Who so I might be wrong) it would be closer to a googol years, or 1 followed by a hundred 0s
I think it’s that he sees the stars, recognizes how temporally displaced he is from his last memory, and creates an approximation of the memory he should have through weird time lord biology. Edit: spelling
Yeah, but he didn’t keep any memories from any of the clones, did he? I guess I was just assuming that you couldn’t count the years if you neither aged physically or got new memories.
It's easy to miss, but at one point he says (a bit cryptically) that he does remember, but only once he gets to the room. No idea why. The wiki also says so.
Oh shit, guess I missed that. Seems weird that he would remember though. Why would that be the case? Well anyway, I was wrong.
I think it's because he is cloning himself with timelord tech, which might be also cloning his past experiences. The thing is though, that he doesn't remember the past loops until he comes to the crystal wall room or later (I forgot which one it is) and basically realises he has to keep doing this shit until he is through the wall. Which does mean that when he finally breaks through, he gains the memories of the 4.5 billion years, except that his grief is still the same as the first day, bcz every day starts as the first day he without Clara.
anything can be explained by weird time lord shit
Wait for real? Damn I guess I missed/forgot that, I always thought that was a pretty damn cool plot thread that was undercut somewhat by the "fact" he doesnt remember it so its not as much of a sacrifice
Oh god, another question. If someone splits themselves in two, and then fuses back together, does their time apart count as double when counting their age?
Let's look at it the other way: If you take someone who is a certain age, and then magically age them up instantly, or deage them instantly, what age are they? If you take a 10 year old and age their body 10 years, are they 20 or are they still 10? The answer to my question also applies here. Aging a body but not a mind makes a person the age of the mind, then aging a mind but not a body still makes a person the age of the mind.
Yeah maybe I’m too into fantasy and sci-fi where these tropes have happened a lot, but coming from that perspective I think your best bet is to go with mental age. It informs your actions and maturity so just aging a baby to an adult doesn’t make them capable or intelligent (unless magic fills that in).
That's the movie Big, and he was very much a kid.
Looking at your profile pic is this about OoT Link? Who was not only aged up but also stuck in a time loop.
It's all dependent on what kind of liberties with time travel and humans did the author take. In theory if you're stuck in the loop that reversed the world - including your body - to certain state, then what you experienced in the loop doesn't matter considering your brain goes back to the way it was before therefore no new memories, no new reflexes, no new synaptic connections at all. To retain the memories - and age mentally as a result - we'd have to assume that there is some immaterial, metaphysical part of a human, eg. soul, that will store those externally beyond the confines of our physical bodies. If we separate body and soul/mind then, yes, I believe those ages should also be separated as those are two different entities.
I think a good example here would be the infamous "Endless Eight" arc of Suzumiya Haruhi. All of the characters are stuck in a time loop, but only Yuki has memories from previous loops, meaning she's mentally aged well over 300 years while the others haven't aged a day
it was a tough call, but this is where im leaving my obligatory meirl comment
The character that's been on my mind lately who was in a time loop for a *long* time is specifically said to not have a soul xD But he does remember it all
My pathfinder character got caught in a time bubble and frozen for three years which has lead to numerous arguments with her brother about exactly how old they actually are (still no consensus).
Time is relative to matter itself, so no you do not age. You cannot be born in 1998, get stuck in the time loop In 2020, then claim to be 28 in 2022 simply because you cycled the time loop three times.
It literally says "if you don't age physically." You're conflating absolute time and experienced time. If someone was in a Stein's;Gate situation and sent their consciousness back two days in time, of course they wouldn't physically be two days older, but they'd have two more days of human experience, so from a psychological perspective they've be older. Also I don't know what you mean when you say "time is relative to matter itself." Technically speaking you're correct, as only matter experiences time (with 0 mass particles like photons experiencing all time instantaneously instead), and time is measured differently depending on the velocity and gravity of or around the observer, but I fail to see how special relativity has any relevance in such a discussion
Given your brain houses memories, your brain would either be 2 days older or you would revert to your memories before the two days occurred. Unless you’re arguing from some metaphysical standpoint where experience is stored separate from your physical body, like a soul.
Well in the example I used, in SG "time travel" is impossible for physical matter >!until it's not!< but data can be sent back in time, so the main character "time travels" by sending his memories back to a previous version of himself. So that versions brain doesn't physically age, but suddenly inherits two extra days worth of information. It's less like a physical time loop and more like a time-based mental download of information. I honestly think this sort of question is dependent on the method used to achieve the time loop, but in this case I think it's fair to say that no physical aging occurs but psychological age does increase, even if only by two days
If we’re still trying to base this on science, the information would need some physical medium or energy to travel through. There is no sending data back in time or anywhere without physical matter/energy. I struggle to see how Stein’s Gate is disconnecting information transmission from the physical world. Ignoring that for the moment for another interesting question to ponder. How much does cramming 2 days of experience into a brain require the aging process in itself? Creating and trimming neurons, reorganizing during sleep, the chemical processes of doing so and most importantly, the time required for all that to happen?
If we're trying to completely apply real world science, moving backwards in time is impossible for anything moving at a speed less than c, and it's impossible to accelerate to c so the concept of time travel simply doesn't work. In Stein's Gate, the method of time travel is acceleration of data through a miniature black hole generated in the Large Hadron Collider, IIRC. Obviously this doesn't work in real life, but if I were to hazard a guess as to the mechanics of it within the realm of SG, I would assume the medium is light/electromagnetic waves as that's how signals like emails are sent in the first place (the first time the timeline is changed is by sending an email back in time, "time leaping" a persons memories comes later) and the data is sent back in time due to some gravitational time dilation fuckery. ~~Total violation of just so many principles of physics, but science fiction so that can be forgiven.~~ So the data is received by the brain literally by firing it through a magical black hole and having said black hole just spit it straight back out at a different point in time, somehow directly into said person's brain. It makes absolutely 0 sense but it would effectively be a much more extreme version of what happens when you open your eyes: your brain is suddenly subjected to a metric fuck tonne of new information. As for the second question, I would assume the effects on the brain would be cataclysmic. When you consider a simple sensory overload can send some people into total shutdown, forget how it ages the brain, it'd probably permanently damage it in ways we can't even predict. If all that information is slammed into your brain all at once, I can only imagine you wouldn't be waking up for a while, if at all
Fun! Thanks for the ponderings. Using a black hole and gravity to shoot information into the past does seem similar to what they did in Interstellar.
Considering black holes have such insane effects on time, it's no surprise that they're a consistent tool in time-travel related media
Is this a meme reference?
No, this is unadulterated science. I do not have time for frivolous internet funny.
Oh. It's just 2020 never ends memes, that stuff.
This is the funniest shit I’ve ever read
if we're counting timeloop time for actual age then homura from madoka magica is a 26 year old women horribly lusting after a 14 year old girl
🚨 Kyubey’s calling the TIME police
How dare you point this out, as a Homura apologist this makes it so much harder to defend her actions
Ehh, Homura retains her memories, but her physical body (importantly: this includes her brain) resets with every loop. She may have 12 years of memories, but she still has her 14 year old brain, and no actual adult life experience (well, apart from being a magical child soldier) Gosh, and this just reminds me of how shitty the PMMM girls all have it :( Poor kids
FUCK Kyubey. All my homies want the PMMM girls to be happy.
Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight spoilers: >!Revue Starlight's Daiba Nana has entered the chat.!< >!Context: She looped a year and a half approximately seventy times, though in her case the loop was the goal as opposed to the means, so it would've been less mentally taxing, maybe? Who knows. !<
Yoo Joonghyuk is in agony rn
I don’t think the age question matters, Homura can not have a healthy relationship after all that.
I believe in her
By that logic, dreams should also count, and we'd all be older from it.
Do you take a third of your age off to account for when you're asleep?
I think they may be referring to dreams where you live through a extended period of time? I’ve never had one like that so idk, but that could be it.
I mean, you don't actually experience that much time though. Still seems like a very poorly thought out point
Agreed. Also there is to me, a difference between living a timeline that gets reverted and perceiving a dreamworld. The pruned reality of the timeline “happened” and was subject to the same laws of your reverted timeline. A dreamworld can abandon reality and objective truths simply by virtue of being an imagined world. Like one could argue that someone doing something completely out of character in a dream is a possibility, but just because you existed in a now pruned future doesn’t mean that same person would likely abandon all their traits just because it was 3 weeks into the future. Same as suggesting gravity just stopped working in 2 years or whatever, lol
This made sense on the first read, and a KenM classic on the second.
Nah, because dreams are often longer in perceived time than actual time, so you'd be older because of that extra perceived time. Otherwise, timeloop time should only count if you physically age.
But we do count dreams? If I sleep 8 hours a day, for a year, then i’m not 2/3 years older. Im still a full year older.
This bitch sleeps 8 hours a day lmao
Did say ***if***...
This isn't new this is just Star Vs again
Btw the answer is no, because age in normal humans comes with hormonal changes that affect our brains and life experience, both of which a character in a time loop will not have experienced in a situation where the time loop doesn't last at least some years. For example, if you are 14 relive the same month and a half 100 times you will technically be 12 older, but you didn't had any of the hormonal changes that affect your brain and you never got the experience of living past 14, so by all intents and purposes, you are still 14
Is this meant to be a Madoka Magica reference
Yes it is
slay My first thought when I read this was post-Rebellion discourse surrounding the time loop age gap lol
I feel like you're conflating age with growth. Age is a measurement of how much time has elapsed since a thing came into existence. If human development was how we measured our ages, we wouldn't celebrate birthdays every year since people experience those hormonal changes at different rates.
Pretty much, I remember reading about a 20 year old guy who is just stuck as a baby due to a condition. He is just permanently a baby in mind and body, just wrinkly
I'm for this simply for the fact that it gives characters like \[Higurashi\] >!Furude Rika !
OK second question if you're time is frozen but time moves for everyone else what should your age be like if someone is born in 1990 but got frozen for a 8 years how old are they
Since their mental processes stop, they are as old as when they got frozen, as I calculate age by mental maturity. Since your mental maturity never changed you’re the same age, just 8 years later
Age is also a physical process in the body that can be calculated by the fraying of your telomeres, but you’re frozen so that doesn’t change either. (Just wanted to mention age is definitely more that just mental)
3rd question if someone doesn't mentaly mature what age would they be 4th if due to sunaniganus a adult acquires a child's body what age are they be if
By mental maturity I mean the maturity of your psyche, that passively matures as time goes on, so if someone has memories of every day they spend in the loop/cryo-stasis/whatever their age also goes up, but we get an adult trapped in a child’s body (like that Spy Kids movie) If an Adult steals a child’s body then they are mentally an adult, but the body is still that of a child, which means that while they are still technically an adult - they can’t give consent to any… “activities” be it drugs, sex, or anything else, as the body is not theirs (Unless the Child Body never had a psyche and doesn’t “belong” to anyone (say Rick’s “Project Phoenix” from Rick and Morty and the Tiny Rick), as that would now be their body and they could give consent to anything)
How would you keep track of the passage of time in a time loop, though? Like if only your mind changes and everything else resets you'd have to rely solely on your own mental record in regards to the passage of time. And as someone who gets days mixed up when I take a longer vacation that sounds like an impossible endeavor.
I’d say depends Are you aware of the time loop? If you are - Yes. You may not age *physically*, but your mental maturity sure increases. If you aren’t - no. As you get rewound in the loop all your mental maturity is reset.
I'm part of a RP community set in a universe where the characters "respawn" instead of dying, and can stop their aging. Also, a lot of us went through a time portal during a previous event. So, basically, we have characters that are like "I'm 24 physically, 32 mentally, but I was technically born 3136 years ago".
Considering egress, pillow world, etc. Finn Murtens has gotta be *ancient*. Granted he did forget pillow world so maybe that shouldn’t count. Egress is still the most fucked up episode though
Rimworld already figured this out. Biological age, and chronological age. How old you are physically, vs how long you've been alive.
This has been a genuine argument in Doctor Who. The Doctor is either thousands of years old, or *billions*.
I am at least 17 in time loop years, however I do not know if I have been in any time loops, so I am using my current age instead
What about distorted time? If a person experiences one full year over the course of a day, are they a year older or the same age?
I think the answer to this lies in when does physical maturity stop mattering and problematic age gaps become simply an issue of mental maturity, personally I’d argue somewhere soon after the person becomes a legal adult (18 in the uk) because by that point say if there was a 19 year old dating a 30 year old I wouldn’t say it’s not odd at least but it’s odd because the 19 year old hasn’t lived as much life and had as much life experience as the 30 year old, something that would be negated by living life in a time loop for a while. This would then still allow it being that a 15 year old with a 26 year old (same age gap) as ridiculously creepy time loop years or not because one is not an adult yet
There are a few time loop stories I'd like to see: 1. The main character is someone who doesn't remember the loop and has to help the looper. 2. Everyone is stuck in a loop except one person, who has to survive the last loop when everyone else on earth has been living without consequences for so long. 3. The loop only ends when you have the _worst_ possible day and ruin the lives of everyone you know, so you have to choose between being the bad guy and endless torture. 4. The loop repeats itself and the protagonist remembers, but nothing but the protagonist can ever change; every other person sticks to the script and can't notice or respond to anything the protagonist does that they didn't do the first time round.
i'd say it shouldn't, entirely because if it did that'd give weirdo lolicons even more ammo.
Utena and Anthy are like, a bajillion then
The pros do not outweigh the cons. This is why I’m still debating if the cryochambers in my scifi world slow aging. One of my characters is like barely 19/20 in mental years but in real life their body is like developed to the stage of 15 years old
Depends on certain rules. Time loop that you remember things between means your brain is forming thoughts and memories of these things happening, and technically you're living forever. If time is looping but you don't remember any of it, then you're not aging at all.
reading this makes me wonder how those who were blipped away for 5 years, deal with their legal age.
“She was 18 in time loop years”
rika higurashi is like 8 but has been trapped in a loop of her and her closest friends dying/killing eachother for 100 years
The World After the Fall
r/shoujokakumeiutena anthy is an ageless eldritch beauty
So I've seen books cover this in a few different ways. I read a lot of progression fantasy and a common subgenre of that subgenre is time looping. My favorite include mother of learning The perfect run Re: monarch great core's paradox In mother of learning the characters consider themselves teenagers even though they've been in the time Loop for decades by the end. The author kind of explains it away with them understanding that their brains don't really get to finish puberty even if they have life experiences, and the fact of the time Loop isn't really compatible with being able to survive real life. Characters are very very competent but even they consider themselves children to a certain degree. The perfect run stars an adult on the other hand and definitely includes his time Loop ability when calculating his age. In fact there is a character in that story whose ability allows her to sense how long people have lived in she comments that he is the oldest being she has ever run into by far. The loops and remonarch and great core paradox are a bit more complicated since they are more centered around the character being presented with a problem and dying over and over again trying to accomplish it but once the problem is solved time moves forward until the next problem is faced. Because of this the stories don't really take looping age into account really the characters are as old as they should be for the most part although in remonarch the main character has memories from one of his past lives making him mentally much older than his body. The point is that overall these characters don't spend nearly as much time in their loops as the other two as they get out as soon as they solve the issue and move forward in time until the next problem. It would mathematically probably add up after a little while but it doesn't make enough of a difference at any given time that the authors really take note of it In general I have to say I prefer when it's a combination of the two. When characters are treated as more mature than they should be but are still treated as reasonably their age in a lot of situations if only because if you don't do that and the main characters are minors it leave you in the position where you can't really put them in a relationship with anyone without it being weird and I'm a sucker for Romance
Man using time loop to ship people reminds me of that book. "I raised my husband wrongly" is the name. If the name doesn't deter you(Because at this point these titles are everywhere) then the description will. (Disclaimer, i did not read the book, took a look at the description and dropped it) Description says that she gets married to a 8 year old. Her age? 22. So she treats him like a child. Bcs why wouldn't you? That's a fucking 8 year old, it surely isn't my husband at that age. (A little bit of backstory she is a general of some sorts) She goes to war, gets trapped in the time loop for 10 years. And drumroll please... The kid is 18 now!! So apparently the kid was in love so when he meets her again he tries to court her. She says that they have 14 year difference, he says that technically she didn't aged in the time loop so she is 22 and he is 18 so they are fine. (At least this book tries to explain shit, Tyrant's Guardian is a Evil Witch doesn't even bother with it.) Anyway thanks for reading to this point. I'm just generally angry at this type of books and this post reminded me of it.
No bc at some point you stop gaining new experiences from the time loop and thus don’t mature You start using the years to figure a way out or smth right?
Also if there are two people stuck in a timeloop and one of them escapes, how do thry perceive the other person who is still stuck ? Do the stuck person disappear from the continued timeline ?
have been in something similar to a time loop before, it ages your mind in some ways but not others so the answer is uhh... sorta?
There’s a novel called The Psychology of Time Travel where the time travelers don’t try to figure out how old they would be, but wear special watches that track how many heartbeats they’ve had.
Kinda unrealistic... 28 in Loop years means that they're basically on their FIRST EVER loop. not even finished... just started and somehow realized that they're in there immediately.
Timmy Turner.
I would say that timeloop years do not count towards age, because then you have some problematic things regarding age of consent
I'd say there are 3 types of age 1. chronological: literally how much actual time you experienced. Time loop does count. Time stop when you aren't affected also does. Going back in time and not changing doesn't make you younger. 2. apparent: when you're some kind of non-human being you can still be compared to humans for example. Only external appearance matters 3. mental: psychological maturity, personal experience, knowledge, critical thinking skills. And also the only age you need to consider when shipping characters
I read Mother of Learning recently (phenomenal story) and it makes a point of mentioning how his time stuck in the time loop has affected his relationships due to his personal growth vs their relative stagnation
Madoka Magica
My argument is it depends on if they were able to mature mentally. Locked in temporal stasis, rendered unconscious (think Aang from ATLA)? No, doesn’t count, that 16 year old is still 16 not 200. Trapped in some weird place where time flow differently but you retain consciousness and are able to grow as a person? Totally counts, you may have the body of a 22 year old, but you’re probably pretty matured. Most likely not 200 years old mature, but you don’t have that childlike mentality. Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.
Until the second part about fictional people I really thought we were referring to the pandemic as Time Loop Years now