Sheppard's Law
http://trickster.org/speranza/cesper/Sheppardslaw.html

"Murphy's law," John blurted. He knew he should be afraid, but he just felt numb. "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong: they're just waiting for something to kill me."

"Weird? You don't know what weird is. Weird is being in a-- with the-- and the crazy alien--" He stopped, incoherent, hands flailing. "And then your best friend is twelve, and you're his piano teacher. That--now, you're talking weird!"

John Sheppard, January 5, 1967—December 20, 1973, Beloved Son

"Weird? You don't know what weird is. Weird is being in a-- with the-- and the crazy alien--" He stopped, incoherent, hands flailing. "And then your best friend is twelve, and you're his piano teacher. That--now, you're talking weird!" [SGA, McKay/Sheppard, 34,472 words]

I almost missed this!

Quantum Leap, SGA style: When aliens punish John by disrupting his timeline, Rodney has to travel back in time (over and over) in order to save his life (over and over). Forty years of John in 40,000 words.

Author's Note: This is the story of...John Sheppard's whole life, and it takes about forty years to tell. *facepalm* No, seriously; I apparently need to keep building John up from scratch. This was actually really hard to write, and I wouldn't have gotten through it without lim and astolat and julad and Terri. (Actual beta convo: julad: OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU HAVE TO WRITE SUCH COMPLICATED STORIES) Anyway, I hope you like it. John & Rodney, ILU. P.S.: This is my formal apology to Pru for totally failing at underaged sex. :::: "What?! Oh, yes, they're dead, because that's what I do, I run around killing people, I--wait, no, no, no, no, no," the man said, waving his phaser wildly as John skittered another few steps back. "I was being ironic! Oh my God, you're five, you don't know what irony is! Irony is like--kidding for adults!" John zeroed in on the important point. "I'm ten," he corrected

Author's Note: This is the story of...John Sheppard's whole life, and it takes about forty years to tell.

"No, but--" Rodney protested, "if you're you, and you've always been you, you're the human equivalent of a quantum superposition! We're back to Schrödinger's cat; inside the box, anything's possible: it's only outside that things settle back into rational, measurable determinacy. So inside the box, the cat is gay and not gay at the same time--"

just in case you happen to go back in time and want to be awesome

So you've gone back in time with just a gun, a few clips and your pants. What now? This is what. [Topatoco via Buzzfeed - Thanks Audrius!]

Just in case. :)

what happens when and what you need(ed) to know/discover when

This is pretty awesome. It's a plain-English explanation of what rules should have to apply to any literary use of time travel, given what we know about space-time. "Time travel isn’t magic; it may or may not be allowed by the laws of physics — we don’t know them well enough to be sure — but we do know enough to say that if time travel were possible, certain rules would have to be obeyed." I was, of course, reading these rules and thinking of LOST, which, by my count, seems to play by all the rules expect maybe number three (but, in their defense, if you don't have some visual cue to the audience that time travel just happened, how would they ever know? I understand that it would happen in the real world, but you kind of need the flashing light as a storytelling device). Great read.

0. There are no paradoxes. 1. Traveling into the future is easy. 2. Traveling into the past is hard — but maybe not impossible. 3. Traveling through time is like traveling through space. 4. Things that travel together, age together. 5. Black holes are not time machines. 6. If something happened, it happened. 7. There is no meta-time. 8. You can’t travel back to before the time machine was built. 9. Unless you go to a parallel universe. 10. And even then, your old universe is still there.

Like Rule 0.

I love how smart everyone wants to act in the comments.

time travel RPG game? this is very interesting

World's first meta-time strategy game

Hazardous Software's Achron, meta-time strategy game: a real-time strategy game with freeform time travel, where players and units can jump to and play at different times simultaneously and independently.

time travel game

the world's first meta-time strategy game, a real-time strategy game where players and units can jump to and play at different times simultaneously and independently