#half-face mcgee

If any of this sounds confusing to you it’s because the nature of time travel is that it doesn’t make any goddam sense. Once time travel is extant at some point in time the rest of time pretty much just turns into jelly. All of a sudden this rigid, structured, sequence of events can be molded and altered any which way by any bozo with a flux capacitor. It’s really stressful actually. But, just for you guys, in celebration of both our birthday and our 100th post Howtohero presents: 

#100 The Essential Guide to Time Travel!

Time Machine The first thing you need when you plan on zooming through the time stream is a time machine. Sure, there are plenty of ways to travel through time without a machine (running really fast, running really slow, magic, inborn metahuman abilities, freak lightning storms, certain types of birds {or certain types of Bat-Fish-Giant-Bird-Wing People}) but for the average person on the street, you’re going to need an actual time machine if you want to be able to practically ponder philosophical quandaries or cheat the lottery. Some of these time machines are nothing more than large portal generators and traveling through time is presented as no different from traveling through space. The only major difference is the color of the swirly vortex. Space vortexes are generally various shades of red or black while time portals are usually made up of an assortment purples or blues. Both kinds of portals though, make for very cool backdrops for Instagram photoshoots. Other time machines are more akin to vehicles (though usually they have more room inside) that the time traveler flies, drives or sails through the time stream in. When designing a time machine you’re going to want to make it look super mundane. I understand that your gut extinct will be to make it look super cool and flashy but that is dumb, you will get caught. Time machines should resemble things that would not look out of place in the era you plan on traveling to. Things like large shrubs or trees are pretty good templates, as they can commonly be seen in a variety of time periods and a variety of locales. Other common time machine templates include telephone booths, police boxes, and old cars, all of which are only practical for certain time periods. If you can get some kind of cloaking doohickey fitted onto your ship then you can pretty much make it look like whatever you want! Just make sure to remember where you’ve parked. Maybe write it down on your arm or something. If you forget where you’ve left your invisible time machine, you’ll be left stranded wherever you are unable to return home. Unless you’re stuck in the past in which case you can just wait until your home time comes around. You can also try etching a message into something you think your friends are likely to come across in the future/present. Then they can try to come get you. (Note: Most time travel navigation apps come with a “remember where I parked” feature so this may be a problem only for time travelers from time periods that still had to use time maps to get around, or time periods from after this whole apps fad faded away.) Other time machines come in the form of handheld devices or can be worn in some manner. Time machines that resemble watches are especially common. And there’s not really any reason for it beyond “haha watches are how you tell time!” Ok, I guess it could also be for easy carrying, access and disguise, but let’s be honest, it’s probably because “haha watches are how you tell time!”

Proper Time Travel Decorum When you arrive in a new time period do not run over to some random passerby and ask them what year it is really loudly. First of all, they can hear just fine, there’s no need to shout. Second of all, you should know what year it is, you’re the time traveler. Presumably you had a destination in mind. It’s not like when you disembark from a plane you run over to someone and start shaking them by the shoulders while asking what country you’re in. Third of all there are plenty of discrete ways of ascertaining when and where you are without announcing to the world that you’re a time traveler. Just pick up a newspaper or something. And if there are no newspapers in your time period, try looking it up online, or hey, maybe check the timometer on your time machine. Again, you should know where you traveled to. Generally, you want to keep the fact that you’re a time traveler on the DL (that’s “down low” for all you abbreviation junkies). If that news gets out you know a bunch of people you never met are going to ask you for time traveler favors. Or they might try to burn you at the stake. Or they might use that information to blackmail you into breaking into Hell and stealing a soul for them. So make sure you’re dressed appropriately and are aware of the relative current events and slang people are using. You should also come up with a fun codename for yourself. This doesn’t really have anything to do with hiding the fact that you’re a time traveler, it’s just a fun thing you can do. Try going for something subtle like Mr. Tyme or Dr. Timetravel or Clocky Clockerson. Something that will get a smirk out of people who are in the know but that won’t immediately out you to random civilians. If you’re planning on taking up permanent residence in another time period -for example, some people go back in time in order to become powerful superheroes or supervillains using their futuristic technology in lieu of actual powers- then you also want to not broadcast that. If you’re going to be a superhero in an earlier time period, then you need to keep both the fact that you’re a time traveler and your true identity a secret. If your enemies uncover that information, then they can defeat you simply by going after one of your ancestors and killing them. And by “defeat” I mean completely erase you from the timeline, which brings me to my next point…

Paradoxes When traveling through time you need to avoid causing any paradoxes at all costs. Some general rules for avoiding paradoxes are as follows:

Don’t sleep with anybody: Time travel makes people super fertile so you’re pretty much guaranteed to end up siring a time travel baby. These babies are almost always going to cause some pretty major paradoxes no matter which time period you place them in. Also, an astounding number of time travelers end up having sex with one of their ancestors. Making them their own ancestor. Which is a paradox. And also probably not great for the genepool. So let’s try to keep time stream excursions business only.

Don’t kill anybody: If you kill someone in the past you could irreversibly alter the future to the point where a paradox is formed. Some time traveling bounty hunters are equipped with special scanners that can determine a person’s significance to the time stream. If you have one of those then I guess you can kill someone if they don’t matter to the rest of time. But don’t tell them that that’s why you’re allowed to kill them! That’s a super disheartening thing to hear.

Don’t interact with yourself: Interacting with yourself is the easiest and quickest way to cause a paradox. Our interactions with the people around us always affect who we are as people so of course an interaction with yourself from a different time is going to have profound effects on your past and future. Obviously you should never go back in time to try to change your own past. You’re almost definitely going to make things worst for yourself. Our old pal Half-Face McGee tried it once, to save the other half of his face, and when he came back to his home time period he discovered that he was now No-Face McGee. Which is worse. He had to go back in time like eighteen different times to fix that mess. This rule is also especially important to keep in mind if a past version of yourself travels to the future and wants to talk to you. You need to avoid them at all costs. You should never meet your past self. They might think you’re lame or a jerk and resolve never to become like you. Which in all honesty might be great for them (past you) they’ve probably learned an important lesson about friendship and love or something. They’ll go back to their time and change their ways and everyone will be happier for it. Everyone except for you! The grumpy future version of you! Who will now cease to exist. So just never meet yourself. It’s just a headache waiting to happen. 

Paradoxes are the best way to get yourself wiped from existence, so it’s best to avoid that. Thankfully, the time travel vacation industry (which allows patrons to spend a relaxing couple of days in the time period of their choice, though honestly, their aim isn’t great and a lot of people accidentally end up on the Titanic or in inside Tyrannosaurus stomachs) has actually developed a clever workaround to the whole paradox issue. Paradox-locks, or Paralox™ as some goon in marketing came up with, allow a time traveler to travel back in time without the possibility of irreparably messing with the timeline. When a time traveler travels using paradox-locks they can do whatever they like and anything that results from it will have already been destined to happen. But be warned you might end up accidentally becoming responsible for something you hate. Like you’ll accidentally compose that annoying commercial jingle you’ve always hated. Or perhaps you’ll be the one who gave your fiancé that stupid hat that inspired him to become a hat-themed vigilante as a child. Or maybe the massive influx of accidental time travelers will cause the Titanic to sink... Only you haven’t really caused anything, these things had all already happened before you went back in time. It’s like a perfectly closed loop. All novice time travelers should travel with paradox locks their first few times. They’re like time travel training wheels. Remove them only when you know how to carefully manipulate time without erasing anybody from existence or shattering the whole shebang.

Breaking Time Every couple of days a time traveler irreparably damages time. That’s a fun little statistic we had our interns crunch the numbers for (we don’t have interns, please stop sending us job applications). “Breaking time” is the catch all term for any catastrophic damage a time traveler causes to time and it includes (but is not limited to): creating alternate universes as a result of branched timelines, creating aberrations or anachronisms across time and accidentally causing an apocalypse. Then there’s stuff like trapping yourself in a time loop or accidentally causing time to reverse itself, both of which are more accurately described as spraining time and can easily be reversed by a more experienced time traveler. Breaking time can be caused by even the simplest action on the part of an unwitting chrononaut so you always need to be super careful. The tiniest action can cause a crazy ripple effect all across time and space and completely alter your world. It’s something scientists I like to call the “Butterfly Effect” because the example I always give is that if you punch a butterfly in the face in the past when you eventually journey back to the future that very same butterfly will be there only now it will be called Evil Butterfly and it will take a preschool hostage [I don’t think that’s how it goes]. If you’ve found that you’ve accidentally broken time (great going by the way, I just love this barren hellscape that we all live in now) we’re going to help you fix it. If you’re smart you’ve taken a copy of this blog, or at the very least this post on time travel, with you when you traveled through time. So even if you’ve broken time so badly that I haven’t written it, it should remain unaffected. You and the things you have on your person or in your time machine will remain unaffected by the shattering of the time stream for a short period of time. See, like we said before, once time travel enters the picture time becomes kind of… gooey? It can be changed and sculpted and this mean it can take a bit before it solidifies into any given shape, even if that shape is a bunch of broken apocalyptic shards. So for a brief time you’ll be able to remember everything from your old timeline. You can also remember what you did to break time and when you did it. This is about the only time you’re allowed to go and interact with yourself during these excursions. You need to go back to before you decided to unleash a time demon or have a gun fight in the time stream and stop yourself from doing it. This will definitely cause a paradox but that’s ok, that’s just where we’re at now. You need to weaponize that paradox and use it to undo whatever you did and set the timeline back. This will probably cause you to be erased from the timeline but the past you will survive and not make the mistake that caused time to splinter or implode which will save quintillions of lives. So that’s something.

Oversight Due to the massive amounts of time travelers mucking about through the past, present and future at any given time there needs to be some kind of oversight (uch lame). Some type of council or parliament (an alarming number of time travelers are British; I don’t know why that is. Personally, I think most of them are faking it because they like the accent,) of scientists, historians and time masters should be formed to monitor time travelers and intervene if anything sketchy is going down. A group of watchmen so to speak. There should also be a special time-police division set up and run by this council. These agents of time can be sent to different time periods to collect future tech that was left behind or erase people’s memories of things they shouldn’t have seen. They can also track down and capture rogue time travelers intent on going back in time to become rules of the universe or to kill a superhero in their infancy. This organization should operate outside of the constraints of time by setting up shop within the time stream itself. Just beware that there are other creatures and characters who reside their too and whom you’ll need to make arrangements with for a peaceful coexistence. There are old-timey robots and temporal-phantoms and more British people??? My god did the British Empire set up a colony in the temporal zone??? What’s going on here?

[Disclaimer Potential side effects of time travel include but are not by any means limited to: disjointed and disorganized syntax, backwards walking, visions of alternate timelines, rapid aging, rapid deaging, speaking a different language, new memories, missing memories, being your own grandparent, exploding head syndrome, blinking out of existence every Groundhogs Day, having only six days in a week, being able to taste sounds, extreme sweating, emotional trauma, incontinence, déjà vu, Presque vu, jamais vu, déjà vu, sleep apnea, the bubonic plague, velociraptor flu, extreme nostalgia, the uncontrollable urge to burst into song and heart failure. Time travel is not for the faint of heart or the megalomaniacal. Pregnant people, amnesiacs and infants are advised against time travel. Please consult with a medical professional and ask them if time travel is right for you.]

Some heroes are highly sought after by multiple teams and don’t have to engage in any almost-villain-like scheming and scamming. Which is great. If you’re going to be a hero, you should always strive to do things in ways that don’t require any almost-villain-like scheming and scamming. These guys are essentially showered with invitations from the most glamorous superhero teams on the planet and beyond. Sometimes even teams from other universes will pop in to try to snag them. Sometimes teams will travel through time from the future just to invite them onto their team. These guys are so beloved. It’s gross. They’re taken out to fancy meals, taken to intergalactic sporting events, even given a company invisible jet to fly around for a bit. But then how does one finally choose a team to join?

Well the first thing you have to decide is whether you even really want to join a team at all. When you join a team you’re submitting yourself to play by somebody else’s rules (some teams have rules like “any weird rocks you find on the ground are automatically the property of the whole team” and that’s not a rule I can get behind). You’re suddenly on somebody else’s schedule and other people are depending on you to hold up your end of the deal. It’s kind of like a group project for school. If you don’t do what you’re supposed to do the whole group will fail except in this case the whole group failing really means that the whole world is destroyed. So if you’re not willing or able to function as a member of a team it’s probably best that you don’t join one for a while.

If you do decide to join a team you have to take a careful look at each team that’s extending an invitation. Some important questions to ask of yourself and of the teams are as follows.

Where is the team stationed? If the team is stationed far away such as in the middle of Antarctica or a moon, that might disrupt your secret identity life. You’ll have to be able to explain away long absences and why you never seem to have any cellphone reception. Some teams are located in really nice, in-demand spots like Hawaii (though if you’re going to join a team just for the Hawaii location you should know that superheroes in Hawaii are America’s first defense against any giant kaiju monsters that escape from Japan). If you not thrilled about having such a long commute, try seeing if there are any superhero teams located closer to home (you will have more luck finding a superhero team in your town if you live in an especially crime-ridden city or if your city is frequently invaded by aliens and nobody knows why). 

Does the team have teleporter access? This ties in to the issue above, if a team has teleporters then the commute is no longer a problem. Plus, you can probably use them even when you’re not working which is a sick perk. Just make sure that you remember that your entire body needs to be within the teleport chamber before you hit the teleport button for the machine to function properly. Always remember that. You don’t want to end up like Half-Face McGee.

Do you have any friends on the team? Now, obviously you shouldn’t pick your team solely based on where all your friends are. Sometimes what’s right for your friend isn’t necessarily what’s right for you. Still, having a friend with you can make joining a team a little less scary and a friend is often somebody who you’ve already fought alongside and have good chemistry with. This is a huge asset because it will make both of you more effective in the field. You can probably even use this to convince whichever team to extend an invitation to one of your friends as well.

How many Omega Class Threats has this team antagonized? Omega Class Threats are the planet eaters and the alien warlords and the time traveling conquerors and such, the bad guys who trigger major worldwide team-ups and who even the regular bad guys think are a bit much. Often these bad guys will remember who caused their downfall and when they come back they’ll be specifically gunning for those people. So you’re going to want to avoid joining any teams with a history of pissing off Omega Classers (or as I like to call them, Omegsters), that’s just opening yourself up to major risk.

Does this team provide room for growth? Obviously you’re going to be entering this team on the ground floor. You’ll be the rookie, people will call you things like “newbie’ or “the kid” or just straight up get your name wrong (sometimes people will even do this on purpose to put you in your place, rude). But all of that will be worth it if you can eventually climb up the ranks of the team until you become a respected member and even a trainer or mentor for newer, younger members. You’ll have to look at each team’s roster history to see which teams provide opportunities for promotion and which teams have a low turnover of administrative staff. (And which teams have a high mortality rate for leaders.)

Is the team actually secretly a bunch of supervillains who are only disguised as heroes as part of some sort of nefarious plot? Some superhero teams are actually fronts for evil organizations who seek only to cause chaos and harm to an unsuspecting populace. You’ll need to make sure the team you’re joining is not one of these. Or, if you discover that they are, you can go undercover and become a superhero pretending to be a supervillain pretending to be a superhero and then destroy the evil team from within. A good way to check if a team is actually full of secret supervillains is to tell a funny joke at your interview. One that’s sure to make everybody laugh. You can always tell if somebody is a supervillain by their laugh.

Is there a documentary crew that follows around all the members of the team hoping to catch them in candid moments? If so, you’d better start working on those snappy one liners. And you should definitely practice deflecting questions during talking head interviews. A lot of superhero knowledge is either classified or shouldn’t be revealed to the public in a talking head interview for a college film class assignment.

Does the team do random drug tests? Some superheroes use steroids, super-serums, spinach or other performance enhancing drugs in order to perform feats of heroism (remember, you can’t spell “hey there’s a superhero in here who’s ready to save the day” without “heroin”). It’s important to know a team’s policy towards these kinds of heroes before joining up. (See we could’ve just said “superheroine” but we don’t go for the easy jokes here at Howtohero. We’re real dedicated over here. You’re goddamn welcome!)

Will one of the people on the team devise a convoluted way to kill you in case you ever turn evil? Some teams have a resident dude whose job is to plan for every single possible scenario and these guys love coming up with incredibly over the top ways to kill their teammates. You should try to avoid joining these teams. Because what if that guy turns evil? Then he (or she!) just gets to kill you? That seems unfair. Or what if their plans get stolen? Then anybody just gets to kill you? Or what if you decide to become evil one day? Now somebody just gets to kill you??? Nah, best to avoid all that.