I’ve been consuming quite a few time travel stories recently – it’s not that I’ve been seeking them out on purpose; it’s just turned out that way. So once I had that insight earlier, I thought that hey, so I know what I’m gonna write about now. Time travel!
Speaking of time travel, one of my favourite Chinese dramas that I watched quite a few times, 神话 or The Myth, used that. In fact, it portrayed two storylines from past and present times unfolding alongside each other (basically alternating between them). One might be more familiar with the movie of the same name which Jackie Chan acted in. Well, he directed this drama and it’s about basically the same thing, just much more fleshed out. To be honest, I found the story unfolding in ancient times much more appealing than the ‘musty old modern day’ but that’s just my preference.
In The Myth, the characters who have travelled back in time are simply unable to change the flow of events – rather, they find that they are a part of and contribute to them. In some time travel stories, time machines are not a thing. The protagonist is somehow or other transported to the past, and rather than being an outsider, sticking their noses where they do not belong, they find themselves really creating history as a historical figure who ‘was them all along’. This is a really cool plot device, I feel. Did a lame short story on this before.
In an isekai web novel I have been following, there has similarly been a latest time travel arc. The protagonist travelled back 1000 years in the past to defeat the Demon King and stuff like that, some pretty standard stuff. The thing is that one of those characters that was previously introduced in the present timeline also existed 1000 years ago, and it is revealed that he saved her and she idolised him. One can only imagine having to wait a thousand years for somebody before pretending to ‘nonchalantly’ run into them, unable to reveal anything. Also, the protagonist once went to her house to look for her and saw a coffin there. Well, maybe she slept in a coffin like a vampire or something? Who knows? Open it at your own peril! Anyway basically, the last chapter revealed that the MC was magically sealed in ice for the last thousand years because there was no other way to return! And to think that had he opened that coffin, it was his own sleeping face that he would have seen…again, that’s some seriously cool stuff there. Gotta love foreshadowing. Wrote said arc just for that scene – author.
Just a few days back, I rewatched the Back to the Future series with my parents. I watched it back in secondary school, where the exam periods were so liberating because I didn’t have to go to school. I basically had the same thought process watching the series this time as I did then. The story has its flaws and is not that awesome, but it’s more or less acceptable and fresh, I guess. First of all, I simply cannot empathise with the MC who gets provoked easily by people. Still, my mother says such people exist in real life, so whatever. Next, I felt the cause-effect in the story to be a bit ‘kiddy-like’ in nature. Essentially, the butterfly effect states that one mere flap of a butterfly’s wings here potentially can cause a storm someplace far off (or something like that, if I remember correctly). I have the feeling that some simple, innocuous movement in the past could change the future like crazy. Meanwhile, in the aforementioned series, your small actions mean nothing so long as you achieve the big goals, and this feels a bit arbitrary to me (I think there’s a theory that time smoothens itself out and converges towards the original, but…). Thus, I think I could call the series good for the flashiness but lacking in the thought-out aspect. The plot armour was SO strong in that one, it felt contrived.
Then there are also multiple stories where people go through countless iterations of the same time period – stuck in a loop, desperately attempting to save someone, etcetera. Hey, like technically, isn’t ReZero a time travel story? I guess so… Oh, recently, I had a brainwave watching something. It all clicked as my intuition told me: It’s time travel! And so it was (the moment was when this black-haired Homura in Madoka told her friend – I could care less what happens to you. It’s because of what you mean to her that I have to try to help you!). Anyway, there is a similarity between the two anime, which is that someone relives the same period so many times, struggling against fate. Hmm, I guess that mainstream Stein’s Gate is one too. Basically, I feel that unless it’s comedy, the singular best thing about ‘time travel loops’ is being able to emotionally invest in the characters such that their struggles become yours, actually mean something to you. In other words, it’s more or less what I like to derive from fiction – just with a specific plot device.
And that’s basically all I can remember about time travel stories offhand! Maybe I would like to write one someday, but that’s all for now!