>>149474856
>Time travel stories are incredibly difficult if you want to establish a consistent narrative.
No. Fuck that bullshit. Time travel stories are incredibly simple if you don't get fancy with them. Writers are just fucking idiots that want to do their own thing rather than go with one of the 3 simple, self-consistent, time travel systems. You can do fancier fucking shit, but they almost always fuck it up trying.

You want consistent time travel you either have it so
>A time traveler going back to the past can't change the past because it's a stable time loop and they already traveled to the past in the first place
>A time traveler going back to the past completely overwrites the timeline with one where they appeared in the past with no way to get back to a familiar future, potentially including the time traveler coexisting with their past self if they don't possess them or prevent their birth or see them dead
or
>A time traveler going back to the past forks the timeline with one where they appeared in the past with the only way to travel to their old timeline now being interdimensional travel to some point when or after they left.

It's just that fucking simple but every fucking time writers fuck it up.