Is it normal to hate time-travel fiction paradoxes?

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I really hate time-travel paradoxes. For example, when a character goes back in time and dramatically changes the future. It creates a paradox that makes the plot impossible to occur. If you go back in time and change the future so that an event won't take place, then that event WON'T take place in the future, meaning that the future version of you would have no reason to go back in time and change anything. But then because you don't go back in time, the event WOULD take place, meaning you would HAVE to back in time, and so on and so on.

Another one that I hate just as much is the "meet your future self" paradox (also known as the "scientist's invention" paradox), where a future version of you appears before you and gives you some valuable information that will make you succeed in the future in some way, and then in the future you have to go back in time to tell your past self this information so that your past self will know about it and keep the timeline intact. This means that the "information" would have no original source (you told yourself and learnt it from yourself). It's an impossible situation and it irritates me.

I forgive "Back to the Future" because it's an 80s comedy classic (the first one at least), but it seems that these paradoxes are still being made by people who clearly don't understand why they are completely illogical. I think the best example of a modern film that's infested with paradoxes is "Meet The Robinsons". The way in which the entire storyline is re-written by the end of the film, making it so nothing that occurs earlier in the film can take place, is utterly nonsensical and ruins everything.

So is it normal to be annoyed be these paradoxes? I hate them so much that I could scream. If it's a little kid using them, it's fine because they're young. But it greatly annoys me when a person old enough to understand logic incorporates an impossible time-travel situation into a story or a film, especially the two mentioned above. And it gets even worse with the worst of the worst, the "kill your mother so you were never born" plot. Anyone who writes a story like that without noticing a paradox there needs their head checked.

Voting Results
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Based on 43 votes (26 yes)
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Comments ( 9 )
  • 69
    10 years ago

    hahahaha it's like i was reading my own thoughts. thanks for wording it

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    • 69
      10 years ago

      aw i wish there had been a greater discussion/comments on this post

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  • bananaface
    10 years ago

    I find them confusing. I watched the first 2 series of Misfits recently, and that involves confusing time travel stuff. When I was watching it, it made me think, and the more I thought about it, the more it broke my brain. I just can't really wrap my head around it without going in circles.

    I understand your frustration, although I'm just more confused by it, rather than annoyed or angry.

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    • BLAh81
      10 years ago

      Feel the same way.

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  • regisphilbin
    9 years ago

    normal. too many science fiction stories are based on time travel.

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  • NormalIsOverratedBeANinja
    10 years ago

    Thank you! You can't be your own dad, people. You just can't. No.

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  • [Old Memory]
    10 years ago

    If time travel were to occur it would create multiple timelines so these stories are not that unrealistic.
    If I went back in time and killed me as a kid the present that I came from would remain unchanged. However I would create a new future where I had died. If I returned to the future I would either go to the one I came from, where nothing was different, or I would go to the one where I had died in the past but I could live on as the version of me from timeline A and never return to the original timeline. Time travel is only possible if it creates multiple realities.

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  • ThatsWhatWeDeerDo
    10 years ago

    Doc.tor.Whoooooooooooooooo<3

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  • iEatZombies_
    10 years ago

    Sometimes people should just accept ignorance. Why get angry at all of the people who don't want to listen? That's time that could be spent with the many people who do want to listen.

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