Is chronokinesis even a plausible concept?

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TL;DR: the concept of time itself is a very human ideology that might not even apply to the universe, thus making chronokinesis an extremely abstract ability similar to umbrakinesis, in fact, even more abstract to a point where it just would not work.

Wow, I haven’t written one of these essays in a hot minute, but anyways here we go. The topic of this essay is about a very popular superpower in the media, time manipulation. The ability to fast forward, rewind, travel to the past or future, even stop time itself is a very common concept explored by countless amounts of stories and many notable characters/objects come into mind when thinking about it: the Delorean, Dio brando, even the flash to an extent. The idea of time however, is rather artificial, and I’ve come to talk about if time even exists as a tangible thing in the universe, or just humans making an abstract concept and giving it a name.

According to Albert Einstein and many other physicists, time is not real. Well, it’s not something that exists objectively. It’s not a fundamental. So this means that chronokinesis as a whole is based on a very human and very hypothetical concept that describes the way things happen in the universe.

This also implies that things such as the past and the future wouldn’t exist either. The universe is in a state of constant change. Some physicists say you would need to travel infinitely fast to go to the past, but that’s obviously impossible and chronokinesis users aren’t normally “fast”. (well, the flash is, but he is such a ridiculously bullshit character that I’ll make an essay on superspeed another time). So this means that things like the delorean and the police box could not possibly actually work.

Now what is chronokinesis actually controlling? I’m not sure, unlike umbrakinesis in which I had some possible theory that matched the profile of it well, chronokinesis is a very, very abstract concept, perhaps too abstract for me to even give it a plausible explanation. Now this doesn’t mean the idea of the power is bad per say, there’s many “hypothetical” concept powers out there, like spirit manipulation, demon/angel mimicry, etc etc, but I guess chronokinesis is one of those things that can only exist because of the rules that the universe it works in sets for it, and in general, would sadly be impossible.

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you take that the frick back rn

also very cool post :+1:

I guess with the Flash it’s the most plausible since he doesn’t really “manipulate” time, he just speeds up his body/brain to the point that he’s moving so fast it appears that he’s slowed or stopped time entirely. I guess it’s the most plausible “form” of chronokinesis IMO.

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bruh you know a character is badly written when they have to resort to the good old “dumbing down” (flash from the TV show)

(darkstalker should come into mind, bro had the epitome of poorly written powers and he was made into an arrogant idiot to compensate for them.)

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tbf i hear in the comics he’s actually really smart but just gets realistically countered by his villian’s powers generally

so i think the flash himself is a good character but it’s just a bad adaptation/depiction of him

for real though

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I mean controlling or manipulating time is an interesting concept in theory, but yeah I personally don’t feel like it’d work in most scenarios (unless you just ignore how time works irl)

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Such is the beauty of fiction

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Sakuya Izayoi (Izayoi Sakuya) is the Chief Maid who serves Remilia Scarlet, the head of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She is the only human living in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She has an ability to manipulate time.

She is also able to manipulate space, and can narrow or lengthen it: she made the Scarlet Devil Mansion, which was originally spacious, even more abundantly spacious, and furthermore just like this she cleans alone. ZUN also said that “Manipulation of Time” is synonymous with “Manipulation of Space”.

According to Sakuya, her ability to stop time is actually her moving at extremely high speeds with no mass, and she commented that she lacks the ability to stop the progression of someone else’s time.

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