Hey all,
I know I haven't posted anything in a while, but that is simply because I haven't had anything that I was working on that I could post about. But today, Raven of the Wood and I were talking and I have a new book idea that I am starting to work on. The only problem is, I have no clue what I am doing!

The main idea is that a girl accidentally travels back in time to Robin Hood's era and accidentally kills the Abbess who is supposed to kill Robin. When she gets back to the 21st century, she realizes what she has done and goes back to fix everything. But the problem is that she doesn't want to fix it because she would be, essentially, killing Robin Hood by putting everything back into it's place.

Some issues that I am having with this is:
1. Should you be allowed to travel back in your own timeline? And if so, how should one go about writing about that?
2. Would she actually be murdering him?
3. The whole - if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, you wouldn't exist but if you didn't exist you couldn't go back and kill him in the first place - paradox that confuses me to bits. (I want her to be a descendant of someone that she accidentally kills or changes his/her life course dramatically.)

If anyone has any sort of answer to these bothersome questions and concerns, please feel free to share your brain!

1. It is theoretically possible to travel back and forth along one's time line, but it should not be done. Much speculation has been done about this. The most accepted theory I think, is that an alternate reality would be formed and something catastrophic would be done.

2. Well, no. She would in fact be righting things that were wrong.

3. Let me try and find contact information for a professional.

The future affects the past is how I think it should be put.

For the third one, that's where there is no answer to the question. We can't know until we've time traveled.

Your paradox is well known. I would use the very well known Parallel Universes (PUs) model to resolve this. Just go onto youtube and watch some of the vids about PUs, the multiverse, time travel etc.

3. If she's Robin Hood's descendant, the point in the story you're talking about wouldn't affect her existence.

2. It would depend on how badly messed up the future was. Maybe she decides that it's better that way, or that it's not worth Robin Hood's life. Or maybe, (I'm guessing this is what you're thinking,) it's something that has to be done and she has to go through the emotional and moral turmoil of actually being an accomplice to his death. It could be really fun.

1. Depends on which book you're writing.

Time travel (backwards, at least) is ridiculously complicated... because it is impossible, as such.

Navigating sideways through parallel universes is not technically true time travel, and creates a whole slew of other difficulties.

Time travelling, of course, happens all the time (pun intended). We travel forwards, though, not backward. Unfortunately, just travelling forwards is boring. So we want to go backwards.

The problem is that for us to actually travel backwards, we would need to transport ourselves backwards. Which violates a very important and very basic law of physics: an object cannot be in two places at the same time.

See, when you die, for example, the molecules that make up you go into the dirt, which might eventually go into a tree, and possibly into a fruit, eventually into another person. Odd, when you come to think about it.

So if you go back in time, the molecules that make you up already exist (law of conservation of energy, another important law)... in another place. Therefore breaking a fundamental law of physics.

Which is probably why it doesn't happen in real life.

That is why any talk about 'how time travel works' and whatnot is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. It doesn't work.

Therefore... have fun! Ignore the rules and play with it anyways.

Just throw in a bit of 'reasoning' to it to satisfy those people who think they know about time travel.

I'm a huge fan of time as an unalterable stream so here's my thought. She goes back in time and kills someone. Maybe, things still played out the same, or everyone just thought the Abbess killed him but were wrong.

Just a thought, it really messes with everything so disregard this post if it's too confusing for the story.

The time travel paradoxes can be simply alleviated by wielding some logic:
First, time travel must be defined in a way that we can all know what we are talking about and in such a way that the Great Ugi Machu does not pre-destroy us all.
There are two ways to look at it: either the matter that makes your body is brought back in time and space or it is not. If it is not that stinks because then you haven't really gone anywhere, your body is gone, and you are either dead or a floating consciousness wishing it hadn't been so foolish as to go through the portal.
So let us assume that space and time run together as physicists theorize. This means that the precise atoms and molecules of your body are taken and planted in the old situation, in this case, something about the Abbess and Robin Hood. The funny part is that you are still you. You still remember last Christmas as though it was three days ago. The trouble is that that hasn't happened yet.
So now you are probably in the middle of an open space and can recall exactly what you set out to do. You may now do it. NOTE: The future has been scrapped! It only exists in your mind. Cause and effect will now dictate just like they always have. So suppose you make some sort of disruption such that you never would have been born. No problem. Your body and your consciousness are here already.
Look at it this way. You go to sleep in the real world in the present day. You dream that you woke up and that president of your dream college called you personally to offer to pay you to come to his college and to pay all your tuition, room and board, and they will throw in a 72" TV. This all just happened in your consciousness.
You wake up. Now here we have to think in the analogy. Waking up is like going back in time. It inserts you to a situation where you can recall something that hasn't happened yet. Another way of stating that sentence is that it never happened.
So you have woke up. Nothing you do will make that dream go away even though it happened in the future and the powers-that-be have determined that that college is not giving you a scholarship. You still remember that they did. Now that you are back in the past, your future is open to re-determination. If you died in the dream it doesn't matter because you are back here where it "will never happen."
How's that?
By the way, great video Sir Emeth.

...I am also confused... I can not help you with this, sorry!

I recently wrote up a monster post on time travel on the Sci-Fi side. *digs up link*

Here it is: My Time Theory

I'm sure I made some mistakes in my reasoning, but it seems like it mostly works for me.

Time travel is something that I find very complicated and delicate. If you have read A Sound of Thunder you know what I'm talking about. It's a short story that really emphasizes the ripple effect and has it's own theory of time travel and that whole paradox business... Though I hardly understand it. Hope that helps!