The Ramblings of Elyse

It has been awhile since my last post, over a year I know. I'm sure it hasn't bothered too many since I did declare I was never writing again. Just how life goes.

Though, I make bold declarations and I followed through somewhat, but every now and then my desire to write overrides many things, upto and including common sense.

However, I have a specific topic to write about today and as a result it made my title much easier to create, which a small but powerful win, if you are me and since quite frankly am me I grant a massive huzzah!

I have a fair few obsessive tendencies and one of these obsessive tendencies involves the Harry Potter Books and the Harry Potter movies namely that for each Harry Potter movie I have read all the books before going to see it. For each movie. I also read each book in the series when a new one came out, as a result I am quite familiar with them, but that is merely back-story, so the most recent has been released. I'm told it will make me angry as a purist of the books or namely as a Neville in the 7th book fan. So new movie means it is time for Elyse's re-read of the book. I have just finished the Prisoner of Azkaban, which I completely forgot that would not be resolved at all if it wasn't for Hermione, adding further proof on how Hermione is the actual hero of the Harry Potter books. Thus is comes to the point of time travel.

Time Travel in fiction, which is a stupid thing to write because Time Travel doesn't exist NOT in fiction, but whatever, Time travel is an interesting thing.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione and Harry use the Time Turner to go back three hours to save Sirius and Buckbeak.
However, it is established that when the first go through the time that the things that their future selves cause are happening then. So, technically they aren't changing anything but merely making sure what happened actually happened.
In the world of Harry Potter, they do not change the past. They make the past.
It can be easy to skip how McNair, who is the executioner of Buckbeak, throws down the axe into the wood in frustration up finding out that Buckbeak has escaped and can't fulfill his bloodlust for the day, but when it is first mentioned in the first go through time, Hermione hears the sound followed by Hagrid crying, which also happens in the second part of time, that the orders of the ministry have been fulfilled.
The bigger example of this is and the bigger example of the Time Travel Paradox is that Harry saves himself from the Dementors with his patronus. Harry of the first time sees himself, though he thinks it is father at the time before he passes out. Then when we get to future Harry when they are hiding, Harry is all excited that is going to see his dad until the crucial moment he remembers he looks like his dad and say himself.
So, basically with this,  Future Harry doesn't think of saving himself until he realises what he actually saw himself saving himself.
I actually deleted that sentence because it didn't look right, but it is.

Does this mean that it was always going to happen?
Can you actually change the past? The past by definition has already happened, that is what makes it the past but if the past has already happened because for the time traveler it is their present, but it is also the present for the present.

This is the problem with time travel!
You can't change the past because the past is the past and by changing something are you actually changing something or just make your past what it was in the first place or essentially what is meant to be?
Is time travel just a massive deus ex machina?
That time travel itself is what set into motion what?
But time travel it creates this feedback loop and that if you've already changed the past, you haven't changed it at all because it is what it already is.
And if you do change the past, then you have changed the future, and if you change it back far enough, you could wipe out your entire life and if you don't exist in the future then how can you exist in the past?
Or is it the moment that you change a single act you start a different reality and that for every decision each outcome creates a different reality and if you change the reality can you go back?
Which creates far more trouble for the time travel that goes into the future.

Then again, with Back to the Future and how the future changes. It has the side effects of once Marty McFly gets back, the people he knows are not the same people he know. Sure they have the same names and look the same, but they are not the same people.  Experience has a large influence on the type of people we are. People can change by the experiences they have had.
So, when the future does change, how are all the same people there?
There are ways of which things have changed, like his parents not getting together or having different kids because they got together at different times. What does that do to protagonist Marty?

Time Travel stories raise too many questions.
It is making my head hurt.
Much like a real feedback loop.