Ep 52 of The Letters Page discussion - Time Travel Settings

We have Tim Cosing News?

Note to Christopher and Adam.  The person asking about the America’s Greatest Legacy piece in relation to Silver Gulch has to do with the unlock conditions for that variant.   The unlock requires you face Ambuscade in Silver Gulch without any Legacy on the team and all heroes below 10 health.  So is there a story related to that unlock.  

Sounds like a question to ask for the Editor's Note

It was already asked they just thought it was some Weekly one shot MigrantP put together.  

I just want to know how many times Argent Adept has dealt with these types of time travel shenanigans to prompt the face he makes at that Gila Monster. That kinda "Damn, not this crap agin" face.

That reminds me I had been kind of tempted to write in a letter for this episode that was basically "This isn't actually a question, I just wanted to say that Temporal Event has always been one of the funniest cards in the game for me."

Not just Argent's dejected staring contest with the lizard and the implied "FML" tone to the flavor text, but also Wraith's slapstick-y bug-eyed expression while plopping out of the portal upside down, it all just makes me giggle every time.

I made sure to ask a followup question about that supposed Baron Blade offspring. I know there's gotta be some peeps who want to know!

Also, didn't Christopher design the unlock conditions? I guess there's a lot on his plate.

"That would be good but I think you're having a stroke." LMAO!

This episode was particularly funny for me, but I really enjoy it when C&A get silly. Also...

I KNEW IT!!! While re-listening to the Baron Blade episode recently I noticed that Christopher was being super cagey when answering the question about Baron Blade having a child, and I made a mental note that there was definitely more there.

On a related note, I can't help but thinking that Baron Blade would actually be a not-horrible dad. I can totally picture him tucking a child into bed, checking the closet and under the bed to make sure there are no heroes hiding there, and then saying " Sleep tight my little genius, Daddy's going to go kill some heroes now." (Though I guess that depends on whether we're talking about the Mist Storm or Sentinels Comics timelines).

He probably tells fantastically bombastic and hammy bedtime stories.

Not too much that really piqued my interest(Other than the chance for Disperation stories in the Time Cataclysm), but I'm glad we covered them to get some more details and such on these settings.

I got this response from Christopher on reddit

Brings up more questions than it answers though for sure.  

Where are Sentinels/GTG/Christopher things on reddit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/sentinelsmultiverse/

Thanks!  Now I can waste much more of my time!

I was pretty disappointed by this episode.  Even though C&A acknowledged that there was a "main story" to be told in Silver Gulch, they decided not to tell it, other than some vagueness about the heroes messing things up while trying to leave.

These settings are now also established as a third way heroes can truly travel through time (the way La Capitan and Chrono-Ranger do) and not just across realities (as Visionary and Omnitron-X did).  And, what's more, this way seems... pretty easy?  The heroes seem to frequently "fall into" Silver Gulch 1883 and, within an issue or two, find their way back.  And then at least once, they're able to deliberately return to 1883--and not just the year, but with some precision to allow them to prevent themselves from altering the timeline in the first place.

And the questions about the Final Wasteland being a paradox led to some gibberish answers.  When Jim eliminates the Chupacabra in the present, their descendants are erased from the Final Wasteland.  But when he eliminates so many monsters that the Final Wasteland won't even happen, he still returns to it, presumably with at least some of its monsters still in residence.  I'm guessing that the idea is that small changes change the future of the current timeline, but big ones (or cumulative ones?) cause the timeline to fork.  But this means that Chrono-Ranger travels in time sometimes, and travels across realities sometimes... it's very confusing.

I get the impression that C&A lose themselves when trying to explain how all this works in their heads, and we don't get satisfying answers because they don't totally have a grasp of it either.

I think they said that CR originates and travels through the 'Main' timeline, but his 'base' and CON are in an alternate reality's Final Wasteland. They verify what kinds of beasties they'd need to target from the location of their 'base', and CR goes and eliminates the decendents of those monsters in the 'Main' line. So he's not preventing the Final Wasteland that he 'lives in', but he's stopping it from happening in the timeline that our main story takes place.

At least that's how I interperated it all. I'm usually right there with Adam when it comes to headaches caused by time-travel...

Edit: As for Silver Gultch, I'm guessing they're either saving that one for a future episode OR there just wasn't too much to go over in that one particular story.

I hope it's the former though, because if that's the case then there's at least an episode's worth of story-time in there. :)

I liked the episode but I think on whole the settings episodes jut suffer from the fact there is no major storyline behind them.   They add flavor to a conflict that is occurring but don’t have their own story themselves.  

Regarding Chrono-Ranger, Con, and the Final Wasteland, here’s my take on it based on what C&A said in the episode (and previously).

1. Chrono-Ranger is taken from the main timeline to the Final Wasteland.
2. The Final Wasteland is the distant future of the main timeline. (i.e. Chrono-Ranger, Con, and the Final Wasteland are all, originally, part of the main timeline.)
3. Con sends Chrono-Ranger back in time, within the same reality/timeline.
4. Because of Chrono-Ranger’s actions, the Final Wasteland “divorces itself” from the main timeline.
5. At this “point”, the Final Wasteland ceases to be the future of the main timeline.

So the Final Wasteland was originally the future of the main timeline (and thus would have been part of the same reality), but because of Chrono-Ranger’s actions it becomes divorced from the main timeline and is no longer the future.

What exactly happens to the Final Wasteland is unclear.  After all, since Chrono-Ranger succeeded, the Final Wasteland should no longer exist.  C&A talked about it getting “farther away” (or “more distant” or something like that), and also mentioned that one of the reasons Chrono-Ranger got lost in space and time was because he had altered the future from which he came.  I take all of this to mean that the Final Wasteland neither is nor becomes a separate reality… instead, it becomes some odd partial remnant of a no-longer-existent future of the main timeline.  Perhaps it still “exists” only because Con is there and due to the paradoxes caused by time travel within one reality.  But I imagine it, if anything, slowly fading away and eventually ceasing to be entirely.  I do not think that it branches off and becomes its own reality.

That make any sense?

I have a headache.

Paraphrasing:

Yep!

I think any time travel where you can change the past to change your future is at best confusing and at worst doesn't make any sense at all. However it can be highly entertaining if you don't think about it too hard.

And C&A can always blame any inconsistencies on the Sentinels Comics editing team.

I really loved that they took the time to fill out the rules of time travel and clarify so much! It was also cool getting my question answered but the best was the Idea of the Spawn of Baron Blade! 

What i learned pretty much boils down to "Don't travel through time unless you have a boat or a robot friend."