#Idk what tw I should add comment if there’s somth

[nomsfaultau]

First ask since the daily ask ended hehe

If you had to make fault into a time loop story, what time period would you choose for each character and how would it go?

Clarification. You get to choose a time period (ex. Hour, day, couple of days, event, week) that each character has to repeat for over and over until they get out of it somehow. You get to choose from everything that has happened in the character's lives so far, whether it be in text or just living in your head. For clarification the character from that point in time has to repeat it, not the current character getting teleported into the past. And you can choose the rest of the circumstances for the characters, how the time loop works, how to break it, etc etc.

I just got this idea spontaneously and got curious. (Psssttt I was watching a In stars and time video essay)

Technically the amnestic arc is reverse ground hog day for Phil lmao. 

Anyway I thought the 1st part worked best for this ask considering it has a very defined start (Tubbo captured) and end (they escape). Since we don’t see anyone but clingy duo during that time, and because Tommy has limited capabilities, I elected to shove the time loop on Tubbo given information gathering and ability to effect things outside their cell. So the moment Tubbo is carried outside, they wake up smoke drowsy and half dead in their cell. Or say a month, since otherwise it could be years or lifetimes between the loop restarting given difficulties escaping. 

Tubbo naturally assumes the way to get out is to escape without anyone being killed. This is their chance to do it right. So simple things like asking the Farmer for permission to eat the potatoes to prevent a slaughter. At least…until armed with hind sight Tubbo is able to realize that’s The Blade. And they still have that trauma from losing their legs even if it’s now been undone, are terrified of The Blade above all else. It’s going to be many many loops before they can properly talk to him, and maybe could eventually have an easier time getting to bond with him, particularly with the lack of intense pain and the investigation done into trying to figure out how to prevent attacks. Cause just have Tommy Collect them before hand or it’s fine. Or they’ll have Rhodes adopt Jasmine it probably counts and would be permanent. Now. This would have to be a topic I handle very delicately, since the ‘magical un-do button’ on injury/disability is a very ableist trope, one which I haven’t always handled with grace. Things like erasing disabled representation at the very least, and at most catastrophic could imply things like ‘in the GOOD timeline Tubbo isn’t disabled because they did everything right this time’ which is pretty icky to me for the implying disability as a punishment/intolerable outcome angle. Idk how I’d try to go about it though. 

Also they’d try to get to Tommy as soon as possible. Small problem on that front: Tommy will not leave his cell unless compelled through the sirenic properties of an invitation to join the Hive. And Tubbo is hella traumatized from Rosalind, so that probably wouldn’t happen for a loop or two. But they need Tommy so so badly. Repeatedly asking Tommy and waiting for that rejection is probably painful as hell, but probably more in the cringe way as time goes on. Since originally Tubbo did it very much out of survival desperation and changeling instinct, which is embarrassing to reenact. 

Tubbo would also like immediately try to figure out the deal with UnCollection. Maybe not necessarily like trying to stop it since they think Philza is awful (though not terrified of him like they are post amnestic arc which won’t happen until time loop is broken) and Tommy is better off without him. But when Phil is like immediately ‘what no I would never’ and then Tommy is UnCollected anyway and he doesn’t know what’s happening, then they’d do investigated the 2-4th loops and figure out it was Foundation plot. While still shaded by murder from the Hallway and escape, they’d begin to find him a very useful source of information and strategy. Plus he is like. An actual source of good mental health advice unlike Tommy, and starts feeling like an emotional support unlike Tommy who is more like clinging onto a fellow drowning person. Might actually come out of it neutral to pro Philza. 

The real question is…does ALL of Tubbo remember? Because presumably you’d want Rhodes and Jasmine aware of what happened, and all the bees to be on the same page. Which leads me to believe that Rosalind would still be part of the hivemind. A separate body, somewhat, but still Tubbo. Which could mean that both Tubbo could take control of Rosalind’s body, and she could take control of theirs. Potentially? But they definitely can communicate telepathically. 

Because I like that death march for both of them, of knowing this ends in her brutal death, of knowing this ends in the shattering of their morals. They can’t ever fully undo it, the mistake irreversible, a permanent stain that both have to live with. The horror of Tubbos’ biggest regret born from survivalistic terror, having to ask if they’d make that choice again and again without the pressure of panic. A conscious and controlled choice to destroy someone, not driven by instinct and desperation.

Technically, this gets into the slightly nebulous territory of if Rosalind is even part of the Foundation at the start of the loop, since her first day of (interacting with the anomalies at least) is a week after Tubbo is captured. From what I can tell she joined willingly as opposed to the more standard ‘oh you’ve been traumatized by an anomaly hire time’ approach. This could mean she simply…never steps foot in the Foundation again. Walks away from Omelas as it were. For a couple loops that’s what she does at least, but Tubbos’ line of what happens to us if all the good people leave? would haunt her uncontrollably, as would their determination to rescue everyone plus constant appeals to her. Rosalind would willingly return to the Foundation and begin helping under the promise that Tubbo won’t kill her.

And I can’t imagine the look on Tubbos’ face when they realize they could have survived the beheading. That Rosalind didn’t have to die. Cycle after cycle of cutting off pieces of themselves over and over, pushing themselves to last long enough to make it to the reset no matter what they have to sacrifice. The long term effects would be so unique. Do they stop using their left hand if it’s gone more often than not? Does the phantom pain remain even if the limb is still there? 

It’s poking around in information she shouldn’t be that gets Rosalind Keter duty with Tubbo, and early loop investigations would keep this part consistent as they try to build info. With better handling of Lawrence, Clingy Duo and Rosalind escape. Only for Tubbo to wake up again in the cell. 

Okay. So now they start trying to figure out how to get The Blade, Wilbur, Philza, Skeppy, Halo, and Charlie out without murder. Hella complicated but they could get very clever between small bees infiltrating everywhere seeing everything moving stuff around and having a Foundation employee working with them. They have a month and literally all the time in the world to figure it out. And then they get everyone out and wake up in the cell again. 

They get intensive about it. Running over schemes over and over because they and Rosalind can get obsessive about planning, and could get really perfectionist  with it. Could get to the point where they find a way to get everyone in the Foundation out. Probably convince Philza to help with it if they explain the ‘Tommy Collected us and it’s a time loop’ since he does have enough control to fight without deaths. Now he would be planning to come back later and raze it but they’d never find out because after years of loops and they finally break every single anomaly out and they. Wake. Up. In that cell again. Do it all again and Tubbo stays, Tubbo chooses to never step foot out even when everyone else is free because Tubbo above all places the collective above the individual.

Because my partner in crime decided Tubbos’ win condition: every last Foundation worker is dead. 

My partner in crime insisted that at some point in eternity Tubbo would start killing people, but believe me I wrote an entire play about the whole time loop serial killer thing and it takes a certain set of character flaws to get there. Tubbos’ flaws are literally exactly what it takes to not become a time loop serial killer. They are stubborn, and determined, and murder is what stuck them in the time loop in the first place by their logic. This is the chance to absolve their guilt if only they can get it right. The whole ‘fleeting pointlessness of human lives that are eventually replaced/reset’ doesn’t work with Tubbo because they’re literally made of bees that live a month, indistinguishable multitudes. The lives cannot lose value to Tubbo, ESPECIALLY as they get to know each one so painfully intimately. 

Tubbo never escapes the time loop. They can’t. Tubbo is self sacrificial to a fault and cares far more for the collective over an individual freedom. And so much like in that original loop so long ago, they fall into disassociations and escapism, each loop fading into one another, indistinguishable fog blurring everything into nothing. 

Cool Anyways we decided if The Blade was in a time loop only the voices would know, and The Blade would be freaked out after a couple hundred loops where the voices gather enough cohesion to just fully speak in unison complex precognitive sentences. They straight up unionize in order to escape the time loop and The Blood God becomes obsessed with replicating that cohesion bc man loves the power of team work. Very much giving infinite monkeys type writers situation. We tried to make Philza’s win condition literally just not torturing Webb to death for one single loop but he’d wait however many loops it took for the Collected Covenant reparation period to pass before he started enacting hellish revenge, so Webb would live the first few times and it wouldn’t work. Also if Tommy was in Tubbos’ time loop he deffo would find a way to kill everyone and hate himself about it. Like he straight up tells subsumed Rosalind to her face she’s lucky she was dealing with Tubbo cause he would’ve just murdered her.