(no subject)

[landofspaceandrainbows]

 On ghost-causing doomed timelines:

• Benedict: “I’m personally not aware of a single timeline in which this codpiece packing moron dies.” -> foreshadowed in the Ministrife, or something he threw in after people seized on that?
• blastyoboots: ohhhh, I see what you mean
• blastyoboots: so the timelines… faded out?  instead of having the members specifically killed, causing ghosts?
• blastyoboots: like the Scratch does?
• Benedict: that is strange, actually
• Benedict: do all offshoot timelines die? is there a time limit on ghostifying?
• blastyoboots: yeah
• blastyoboots: apparently, if this adds up
• blastyoboots: because, remember the timeline Davesprite hailed from?
• Benedict: yeah, him and rose lasted a pretty long time
• Benedict: maybe the timelines don’t decay, it’s just everyone in them is doomed?
• Benedict: but if gamzee… can’t die, or whatever the heck is going on
• Benedict: then it wouldn’t matter?
• blastyoboots: no, what I meant is
• blastyoboots: remember that it lasted until *Dave went back*, and then immediately faded out from dream!Rose’s perspective?
• blastyoboots: there’s your time limit
• blastyoboots: it lasts until it no longer has physical relevance to the alpha
• Benedict: hm
• Benedict: so… would that mean that every gamzee has physical relevance to the alpha?
• Benedict: or, wait, no
• blastyoboots: it just means that every Gamzee survived until Aradia went back
• Benedict: and then there were no ghosts, just… fading out
• blastyoboots: mhmm
• Benedict: so doomed ghosts are only from people who die while in a doomed timeline, and if you’re not dead in time, like gamzee, you just
• Benedict: cease to exist, or something
• Benedict: …that would be a really disturbing fic- gamzee trying to kill himself before the timeline ended, and finding himself unable to
• Benedict: come to think of it, this explains why we’ve seen so few ghosts of the beta kids
• Benedict: dave created far fewer doomed time clones than aradia did
• Benedict: and it’s why we haven’t seen any doomed alpha kids- they don’t have a time player, or at least they won’t until dave shows up, and so their doomed timelines are immediately irrelevant
• Benedict: unless they did one of those “Bargain with the Beast” things
• Benedict: i’d say we can extrapolate from this that damara created a similarly large number of doomed copies of herself during the beforus session, but we haven’t seen any direct evidence of that
• blastyoboots: you didn’t realize that only Dave’s explicit doomed timelines resulted in ghosts :?
• Benedict: i’d noticed it, but until the ministrife we hadn’t seen such large quantities of doomed selves in one place
• Benedict: i figured the population statistics from caliborn enter were from there being more trolls than kids

Emphasis added.  Seems it’s quite possibly true that you have to die before a doomed timeline fades out, or you don’t get a ghost?

Lemme check what Scratch and Rose said earlier…

TT: It reminds me of when Dave and I were trapped in the doomed timeline, and he left to change the past. 
TT: The timeline ceased to exist, along with my dream self, who in a way became merged with my dream self of this timeline. I kept some of her memories. 
TT: Is the situation similar? 
Similar, but more severe. 
Since this timeline will undergo such a violent upheaval, such a merger of memory cannot happen. 
You will be resigned to absolute oblivion. 
Unless you can discover a way to preserve yourselves. 

…Huh.  Seems like it could indeed be the case!  That’s one mystery solved.

2012-11-21