1. DLP Flash Christmas Competition + Writing Marathon 2024!

    Competition topic: Magical New Year!

    Marathon goal? Crank out words!

    Check the marathon thread or competition thread for details.

    Dismiss Notice
  2. Hi there, Guest

    Only registered users can really experience what DLP has to offer. Many forums are only accessible if you have an account. Why don't you register?
    Dismiss Notice
  3. Introducing for your Perusing Pleasure

    New Thread Thursday
    +
    Shit Post Sunday

    READ ME
    Dismiss Notice

Peggy Sue and all the bad side effects of it

Discussion in 'Fanfic Discussion' started by Andrela, Feb 11, 2017.

  1. Sorrows

    Sorrows Queen of the Flamingos Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2008
    Messages:
    2,986
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Edinburgh
    That's a pretty common trope, though (remember Buffy/Angel) ever notice how the older character always has to be inhumanly old, like 100+ instead of say 60, people would notice the squirk factor of a 16-year-old banging a 60-year-old even if they still got abs, but they get a pass if they are 220.

    But then most of that problem would be solved if they didn't insist on making the girl (it's almost always a girl) a 15-18-year-old teenager. Make her 20 or so and at least she's going into it as an adult.
     
  2. TallDarkStranger

    TallDarkStranger Fourth Year

    Joined:
    Dec 4, 2015
    Messages:
    131
    Location:
    Neverland
    High Score:
    0
    I'm mid 20s. When I talk to anyone less than 20 the inexperience shows. Anyone less than 18 is downright impossible for me to take seriously, and it's not for lack of trying - I've seen a lot more than they have, and have problems that usually dwarf theirs in terms of magnitude. Now as a 60yo->11yo around other 11yos?
    I'd die of boredom. All the things I'd wish I'd undo and mistakes I would want to not make, I'd probably never get that far because everything is so mundane. Nothing is at stake at that age. First crushes, trying to ace class tests and be better at lay-ups were high priorities.

    How much self improvement would you actually do?
     
  3. Eric Cartman

    Eric Cartman Muggle

    Joined:
    Apr 9, 2012
    Messages:
    2
    Andrela, what show are you referring to?
     
  4. Nuit

    Nuit Dark Lord

    Joined:
    Feb 14, 2010
    Messages:
    1,934
    Location:
    The Peach State
    Star vs. the Forces of Evil
     
  5. Andrela

    Andrela Plot Bunny DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Apr 19, 2012
    Messages:
    5,048
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Silesia
    Yeah, what NuitTombee said above.

    It's a pretty good show, I highly recommend it!
     
  6. Gene

    Gene Third Year

    Joined:
    Jan 11, 2014
    Messages:
    105
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Rama
    At the same time, you are bringing to life countless others, and since the topic has uncomfortable similarities to the philosophical ethics of abortion, it's only natural to try to shy away from it. What is the moral status of a not-yet-person, and all that.

    Similarly, whether Harry has killed his past self is actually a complex philosophical question of what the self actually is, and continuity of existence doesn't count as an answer.

    When you combine the two – with a positive answer to the first and another positive to the second – you get the possibility that we are, everyone of us, complicit in infinite genocide every second we make a decision. If, of course, you don't subscribe to absolute determinism bar quantum phenomena or the many worlds assumption.

    It's a loaded topic, is what I'm getting at, and is more applicable to a university course than any fanfiction. There's a reason most attempts to answer the question are so unsatisfying!
     
  7. Sorrows

    Sorrows Queen of the Flamingos Moderator

    Joined:
    Jun 17, 2008
    Messages:
    2,986
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Edinburgh
    That is true, but they are not not-yet people. They are born living breathing people that are then being unmade. Is it genocide? I guess that's debatable continually speaking they were technically never born. Yet they were born and were people, So if they were alive and now they are not, does that not mean they died?

    The absolute determinism point and abortion analogy works when you are speaking of linear time, but from Harry's personal perspective these are not potential people, they were actual people and children etc who would probably have opted to keep on living given the choice.

    The idea as to whether Harry is killing himself is as you say, tied to the complex notion of 'self' but I bet from the perspective of the child, everything that made him him up to that point, 11 or so years of memories, are subsequently being crushed out by the invasion of 20 or 30 or however many more memories. Now whether that means the younger personality 'dies' or simply gains new perspective is philosophical and older Harry would not be able to tell either way. From a linear perspective the child he was is certainly gone.

    #TimeTravelPhilosophy
     
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2017
  8. lozzamaniac

    lozzamaniac Squib

    Joined:
    May 18, 2016
    Messages:
    9
    High Score:
    0
    I don't think the argument of if you're killing a planet full of people is particularly valid. If I choose to have a cup of tea this morning and that directly results (somehow) in a child not being born, have I killed that child however inadvertently? Of course not. I realise there's a jump there but I view them as the same.

    As for the genre as a whole I'm not really a fan beyond the odd guilty pleasure read. I know if I (in my 20s) was transported back into my younger body there is no way I would be able to interact and put up with 11 year olds on a day to day basis. That isn't even me getting started on how everyone would view me as I doubt I would regress to standard 11 year old behavior. However often in these fanfictions the protagonist happily gets along with everybody whilst having perfect recall of all events. They show no frustration in dealing with a bunch of 11 year olds either.

    Don't get me wrong, these stories can be enjoyable but far too often then just revert back to 11 year old (mentally 50) Harry with a harem of 5 11-14 year old girls on his arm, wandlessly battling Voldemort with evil manipulative "Dumbles" spluttering in the background. Needless to say, it gets old fast.
     
  9. FriedIce

    FriedIce Seventh Year

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2013
    Messages:
    233
    How on earth would having tea one morning end up killing a child?
     
  10. Heather_Sinclair

    Heather_Sinclair Chief Warlock

    Joined:
    Jan 19, 2008
    Messages:
    1,526
    Location:
    The Eighth Circle of Hell
    Butterfly effect.

    Having that cup caused the supply to run lower by just enough to warrant buying another box at the store later. Which in turn caused the manager to order more tea from the supplier.

    The supplier uses manual labor to pick the tea leaves, and the person that picked them was called in early to meet demand. It rained that previous evening and hadn't had a chance to dry, but would have if he hadn't been called in early that morning. Eventually, he slipped on a wet floor and fell into a woodchipper... that just happened to be sitting there. :confused:

    :nyan:
     
  11. Agent

    Agent High Inquisitor DLP Supporter

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2016
    Messages:
    515
    High Score:
    0
    When I saw the title, I thought it was about the effect of Peggy SUe fics on the fandom itself.

    Let's address the age issue. If Harry absolutely wanted to be with Ginny, then I would assume that he'd do exactly what he did in the books. Have very little contact with her, ignore her existence and don't even be interested in her. Then, when she turns 16, make a move.

    The above is what happened in canon so I would assume Harry would just let events play out in regards to Ginny. That way, he can't be accused of grooming and 16 is the age of consent (Despite the squickiness of a 40 year old and 16 year old).

    I would assume that Harry would take on a more parental role to Hermione and Ron. Push Ron towards doing more in his school work, try to make Hermione less brash. He may think he's a friend but it would be more like an older brother.

    By the time Ginny is 16, he may realise that he doesn't even want to be with her and may just wait until she's more mature (Liek Mid 20s or something).

    As for the memories issue and if Harry stole the body of his younger self or if his younger self has memories of his older self, I believe Jbern's Harry dealt with the same issue in his story The Lie I've Lived. It was concluded that he was an amalgam of the two.

    There was also a Naruto fic whee Itachi had to constantly fight for control with his younger self for control of his body or something along those lines. I can't remember what the name was though.

    Also, due to paradoxes, in most cases Time Travel would be better described as travelling to an alternate universe.

    Say you travel back in time because Voldeort won. You go back, kill Voldemort but now your future self has no reason to go back in time in the first place and Voldemort wins so you go back in time and so on and so forth.

    This is why it is usually easier to just assume that the process of time travel just creates an alternate universe where everything is the same up to point of your arrival. Your old universe still exists somewhere out there in which case you have to deal with the moral issue of leaving everyone behind to face Voldemort's tyranny.
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2017
  12. Warlocke

    Warlocke Fourth Champion

    Joined:
    Sep 17, 2006
    Messages:
    3,051
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    The armpit of Ohio
    A lot of the moral quandaries involved in the Peggy Sue scenario become a moot point if the time traveler didn't choose to come back on their own.

    All those babies that will never be born? Not your choice, not your fault.
    All those marriages that might not happen? Not your choice, not your fault.
    All those friends whose lives will never play out in the exact same way as they originally did? Not your choice, not your fault.

    And once you're back in the past, there is absolutely nothing you can do to keep everything the same as it was before (if you think forgetting the current slang is an issue, try remembering what you did every second of every day), because that would be impossible; everything is going to change anyway, so you'd might as well do whatever you think is best.

    For every story where (let's say) Harry chose to go back in time, either because he came up with a way to do it or was given the chance by a divine being or what have you, there is a story where Harry is told by a divine being that he has no choice but to go back and "do it right this time" or he simply wakes up in the early 90s without a single clue as to why it happened.
     
  13. Gene

    Gene Third Year

    Joined:
    Jan 11, 2014
    Messages:
    105
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Rama
    I mean, if you divorce your idea of causality from rigid adherence to the flow of time, there's nothing fundamentally incoherent about that kind of time travel.

    The challenging part is when you try to retain the future elements, at which point it's time to catalogue the exact effects that have appeared in the past via the traveler: that is to say, in the instantaneous moment of arrival, the change in the effects of light, assuming you don't involve faster than light events. All that needs to be retained for time travel in such an event is that something with effectively similar optical properties on a minimal timescale be sent back from some future. To put it in a simpler fashion: why should it be a human that returns instead of a 3D model?

    Edit: This is directed two posts above.
     
  14. Tasoli

    Tasoli Minister of Magic

    Joined:
    Dec 22, 2008
    Messages:
    1,242
    Location:
    Behind the keyboard
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2017
  15. Warlocke

    Warlocke Fourth Champion

    Joined:
    Sep 17, 2006
    Messages:
    3,051
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    The armpit of Ohio
  16. TheTycat

    TheTycat Third Year

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2016
    Messages:
    81
    High Score:
    0
    Approaching the moral quandary of time travel from Harry's perspective like a theoretical or philosophical question doesn't make sense.

    The notion of self isn't very nebulous in HP universe. Harry knows that souls aren't static, and souls exist independently of the body. It's not a far leap for Harry to believe a person's self is their soul. Because of that, his younger personality isn't a person, it's just an immature expression of himself.

    Whether he's erasing people becomes a question of whether souls can be erased. IIRC wizards have made mistakes with time travel and erased themselves and others. It's entirely possible that the Department of Mysteries or a similar organization has looked into this question and determined whether souls can be erased.

    It seems like Harry can find the answers to these problems prior to time traveling, or rationalize it all away with the belief that souls can't be destroyed.
     
  17. vlad

    vlad Banned ~ Prestige ~

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2007
    Messages:
    678
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Georgia, SSR
    High Score:
    2000
    I've always figured that nine times out of then the time traveller would just go raving mad. Incredibly lonely. Incredibly lonely while surrounded by people that were facsimiles of people you loved. And if the time traveller is actually trying to change anything... well as others have said, good luck remembering (or even ever realizing) that X happened because of a, b, and c.

    Time Travel!Harry should go through 1st and 2nd year fumbling up but doing okay. He saves Hermione again (whew!) saves the stone, teachers think he is a model student, and he even gets one or two over that f**** Snape... and then in 3rd year he instinctively 'saves' Draco from Buckbeak because at the time he's thinking 'oh shit, Hagrid gonna get in trouble.' And he never alienates Hermione at Christmas... and then end result is Sirius dies.

    Take it from there. I'd read the shit out of that.
     
  18. Wildfeather

    Wildfeather The Nidokaiser ~ Prestige ~

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2007
    Messages:
    353
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Florida
    High Score:
    2,011
    Your conclusion does not follow from your fact pattern here Vlad. Without Harry losing the map to Lupin (thus allowing Snape to see that Sirus is on the grounds and Lupin is colluding with him) Sirus just kidnaps Scabbers with Crookshanks help and actually kills Pettigrew. Given that the murder takes place in Hogsmeade (where the dementors are not) Sirus is never in any danger of being killed except if Pettigrew got the jump on him again (unlikely). That's assuming Harry never figures out a way to... you know, reveal the person who lives in the same dorm room with him for 3 years before this point.
     
  19. vlad

    vlad Banned ~ Prestige ~

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2007
    Messages:
    678
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Georgia, SSR
    High Score:
    2000
    Well sure, there's that.

    But otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the timeline?
     
  20. Robbery

    Robbery Squib

    Joined:
    Feb 24, 2017
    Messages:
    11
    High Score:
    0
    What about muscle memory? Travelling back in time to a tiny body from an older one, both with differing muscle tones, body proportions and such. It would be a miracle if 11 year old Harry with 50 year old brain managed to get out of the cupboard properly, much less do complex wand movements.
     
Loading...