your local kelpie

so, like, when a character’s trapped in a time loop for long enough, they stop seeing their actions as having any consequences, because they don’t have any lasting impact on the world. they start seeing the world they live in like a speedrunner sees the video game they’ve been running. they start seeing the people around them like neutral objects that make noises and do things but don’t really matter. they’re toys to play with. and you can break them as many times as you want, in as many ways as you want, and then they fix themselves and it’s like nothing happened.

but still, most time loop stories end with the loop breaking and the character just… moving on. returning to normal life. but how could someone ever do that, really? after all that time, all those things you did? even if no one else will ever know about it, YOU will. you will know that you are a person who did those things. that will never not be true again.

Bill wasn’t in a time loop, but he has been alive for one trillion years. one trillion years is a REALLY LONG TIME. like, our universe has existed for 13.8 billion years. a trillion is 1,000 billions. in a trillion years, Bill could have lived from the beginning of our universe to right now about 72 times. who knows how many universes he’s lived from the beginning to the end of? not even to start on the galaxies, the planets, the PEOPLE in his life. i’m genuinely not doing the math on how many people Bill might have known in his life because i will get nauseous.

Bill is like Ama from the Through The Flash short story, but on a totally different level. how could you possibly internalize the idea that hurting people matters at ALL when you’ve lived through eternity a million times and watched everything you’ve ever done disappear into the abyss of time over and over? a trillion years. he likes killing people and he hates getting bored. how many new, creative ways of torturing and murdering people do you think somebody like Bill could dream up in a TRILLION YEARS?

and then this AU is like, welcome back to survival mode buddy! things matter again now! none of that crazy stuff you got used to doing is gonna fly anymore! also this is your last chance. fuck this up, and you’re dead forever. have fun!

i imagine for a while he’s just dead set on finding some kind of loophole. he can’t accept the idea of going back to caring about things again. he wants creative mode back and he’d gonna find the cheat code, dammit.

but then he makes friends with Mabel. and now suddenly, whether he wants it to or not, something in his life really, REALLY matters. he cares about this kid. this human kid who’s gonna live like 65 more years tops. and now he has, by his standards, an infinitesimally short time period to get his shit together and become somebody who can actually be a genuine friend to another person, despite all the terrible stuff he did, in the show and in the incomprehensible eternity that came before it. how is he gonna do that?? i don’t know. i’m still figuring it out. it’ll be fun!!!

but yeah, i was struck, hearing the summary of Ama’s conversation with her neighbor. it just fit, in my mind, with everything i’ve been thinking about. no matter how much he changes, Bill will never again be somebody who didn’t do terrible things. whether or not the effects of those things exist outside him anymore, they weren’t free of consequence. he is still the person who killed and tortured and exterminated billions of sentient people, even when he’s laughing at Mabel’s silly jokes or being terrible at video games. all he can do is keep moving forward.