Secret Project

[grav_ity]

Good morning, f-list!

I am about to embark on a SECRET PROJECT, and I am hoping you can help. I am looking for things you love about Time Travel, things you hate about Time Travel, things you see ALL THE TIME in Time Travel and things you wish you saw in Time Travel more often.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

ETA: I mean tropes. Is there an actual tropes page? There probably is...

Comments

[mrv3000.livejournal.com]

I don't like it when time travel defies logic. Just because a story is sci-fi doesn't mean it shouldn't make sense.

I also wish that people from the past wouldn't be portrayed as so bewildered and clueless when it comes to science. A lot of times people from the current time period have no problems rolling with strange and unusual things, but get someone from 1920 and it's OMG WITCHCRAFT. There seems to be a tendency to make people from the past kind of stupid.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

We're aiming for self-contained logic, but we're hoping to do a tiny bit of skewering, so there will be a tiny amount of un-logic. For science. ;)

I'm not sure yet if we're going to HAVE people from the past. But I don't believe in Primeval Stupidity in any form, no worries.

[shadadukal]

You could have asked an easier question.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Where would be the fun in that? :)

[shadadukal]

I was being ironic/sarcastic in case that wasn't clear. ;)

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I used the winkie icon! All is well.

[shadadukal]

It depends on whether we're talking about travel to the past or the future. For some reason, I feel like travelling to the future seems less possible. Also I feel like when you try to change the past, it sorta resist, though it's not impossible to do so.

What I love about time travel is the ability for someone from the present to explore a time that was and get to know it. So I guess it's important to do your research well.

I hate awkward things like your mom falling in love with you or some such.

I don't know whether I like the cyclical "we've already done it so nothing we do in the past matter" thing. Like in HP with the Time Turner. Don't get me wrong, it's well done and it works great for HP. But...

I prefer subtle alteration but yet the time line reasserts itself, because as I like to imagine, the past resents being changed. So imagine Moebius but without the middle part and the fucked up future. ;)

Also, why? Why are people going? Is it a freak accident? Reasons? Reactions of the travellers and the people they meet? The feelings?

Someone choosing to go live in a different time and stay there. I'm not sure I like that.

Okay, that's all I'm thinking about right now but feel free to poke me for more at any time.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

It's going to be ALL time travel. It's...a WIP. :)

[azarsuerte.livejournal.com]

Things I'd like to see more of: consistency. You can't have predestination paradoxes AND be able to change the past. Either you can change the past or you can't, but a lot of time travel tries to have their cake and eat it too and it drives me nuts, even in fandoms I enjoy (*cough* Doctor Who). *g*

I have more to say on this subject if you really want to hear it, but right now I gotta go to work. Maybe later? ;-)

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'd love to hear everything!

[irony-rocks.livejournal.com]

Thing I hate: how everything single little thing can be fixed at the end of a time traveling fic. There should be an upside and a downside. They don't necessarily have to equal, but there should be consequences. Unintended consequences. It's just logical.

Things I love: Hooking up with the "wrong version" of your boyfriend/girlfriend. It's a kink.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm no fan of the reset button! And messy romance would be FUN.

[faith-king.livejournal.com]

Being "there" for important moments that are special to history (or just to you). Like your dream of being in a movie theater the day ESB came out. I'd love to meet wee little Jane Austen playing in her yard as a child and wave hello, or catch a glimpse of JKR with her sleeping baby writing a manuscript on napkins and feeling All the Omniscient Warm Glowy Feelings.

This can work the opposite way too. Like randomly time traveling back a few years and finding out you landed on 9-10-01.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Um, the ESB thing is the fourth note I made...

:)

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Things I love that probably everybody else hates: time travel used to explore subtly different possibilities, as in the TNG episode "Cause and Effect" where the same chain of events occurs with slight differences until the crew figures out how to save themselves from blowing up real good. I like stories with multiple narrators telling the same events from different perspectives ("The Rashomon Job") for the same reason.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I love both of those things as well. But basically I love ALL time travel, as long as it is consistent.

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

OF COURSE THERE IS.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeTravelTropes

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we lost about an hour there, and finally staged an intervention.

[sholio]

People making stupid pop-culture mistakes in the past for cheap laughs is a particular peeve of mine (specifically, that thing where time travelers use modern slang and pop-culture references, or try to pay $10 for a hamburger, and other people look at them funny). A little of that goes a LOOOOONG way for me: yes, a few minor slip-ups are probably inevitable, but a reasonably intelligent person who's seen a few movies is going to be able to remember and/or figure out that short skirts are off limits in 1855, that Madonna hasn't been born yet and that things are cheaper in the past. I loved the way that "Life on Mars" (the UK version, not the US version) handled this issue, where Sam's culture-clash problems in the 1970s weren't due to accidentally saying "Cowabunga" but, rather, he kept stumbling over the endemic cultural aspects of the past that people don't usually think about -- people smoking all the time, interracial couples being shocking rather than ordinary, sexual harassment being considered funny rather than awful, and that kind of thing.

I also second mrv3000's comment about people from the past acting like idiots. Actually, in both these cases, for me I guess it comes down to not having your characters be stupid unless there's a valid plot reason for it.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I should definitely watch LoM as some point...

[m-nivalis.livejournal.com]

Yes you should! It's only 16 episodes. You have time for this. </ jedi mind tricks>

Have I convinced you yet?

I might possibly have FEELS on this particular trope.

[lanna-kitty.livejournal.com]

If we're talking about time-bubble stuff, don't do what Sanctuary did because that was dumb and defies logic for the sake of The Dramaz. Do what stargate did with the black hole planet. that was far, far more "correct".

If we're talking about actual one person going thought time:

why yes, yes there is a tropes page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeTravel


MLP did it right and it was *funny*
Futurama also did it right with their skew on the grandfather paradox - also for the lulz.

Terra nova: did it alllll wrong because they didn't show a lick of common sense about any of it and made me look askance and go "really?".
a) if you go back 20 million years to an era with no electricity, it's probably a DUMB idea to give all your people (and the penal colony that went with them) ELECTRIC GUNS. Duh. You have people smart enough to build time travel devices but the lack of batteries is an issue on your /weapons/? OY WITH THE POODLES. it's called Gunpowder and it's worked for centuries. look it up on future!Wikipedia.

b) If you are going back in time before a WORLD ALTERING CATASTROPHIC EXTINCTION EVENT, even if you're there many thousands of years before it happens, please hang a lantern on that sucker. afaik, they left that as a problem for their future-past selves and didn't even really mention it. which makes me allll the facepalmy because they essentially, to save their own reality, sent them back into an effectively doomed past.

One thing they DID do right, was pick if time travel creates an alternative timeline or not. In this case it did and so some of their sins can be forgiven. (It still doesn't excuse how they're going to a doomed era. Human presence on Earth in one of the epocs of the dinosaurs isn't going to stop the KT event, just sayin - they'll have to deal with it)

I generally dislike Stable time loops when they're played for Angst.

Twilight Sparkle, proving she is best time-travelling pony, did it right. It was funny!

I cannot stand doomed fatalistic things. The prime contemporary example being the time traveller's wife. Dear god, I hate that book something fierce.

Mostly because all the interesting bits are just side fluff and the real reason for the novel is to make you feel shitty when it all goes to hell. I hate angst. I hate when fun expansive things are corralled into limited doomed melodramatic angstfests. If I wanted that, I'd watch Lifetime.

The Girl in the Fireplace is very much in this same vein, but because it's only an hour it's not so belabored in it's angsty-mc-angsterness, and it's pretty much guaranteed that something awful is going to happen because it's Dr. Who (so, also, not a surprise) - so it isn't quite the train wreck in slow motion. I can watch that one for the art of the writing easily, couldn't effing STAND tTTW.

Also, the butterfly effect was a horrible movie, don't do that.


Groundhog day style time travel things are often fun and amusing. (Actually, someone recced one of these with PONIES to be like a year ago. I should hunt it down because it was really good)

I have a soft spot for Excellent Adventures and yankees in king arthur's court. Time Cops could be done well but I'd have to see the details. I also have a kink for interventions from the future.

the upcoming movie Loopers just looks nonsensical.

uhm I have to run to work so
tl;dr

Biggest thing to do that is Right: Consistency.

Re: I might possibly have FEELS on this particular trope.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Aside from Twilight Sparkle, the best time travel I've ever seen is STILL the various examples on Warehouse 13.

Re: I might possibly have FEELS on this particular trope.

[lanna-kitty.livejournal.com]

SG1s 1969 wasn't bad as an example. They played it realistic-ish "we can't alter things. we're going to law low and try to get out of here". the biggest annoyance I had was they walk through the gate and on the other side, it's not there.

their paired episodes 2010 and 2001(er.. I think those were the episode titles) were fairly decent too in terms of "not being dumb", even if I kinda hate them.

WH13's are solid, fun and /awesome/. <3 they're some of the very best in this genre. (oh god... wh13.. so so SO much awesome)

how much do I LOVE HG for being all "Artie... you used time travel. Trust me I know. I'm an authority.... and had something of an unfortunate obsession really. anyway I have your number on this one.... and I told the boss!" *Ker-Mrs.Frederick!*

treks are........ ehnnnnn. I am less than thrilled with them tbh. they're on the low end of the scale.

Re: I might possibly have FEELS on this particular trope.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

how much do I LOVE HG for being all "Artie... you used time travel. Trust me I know. I'm an authority.... and had something of an unfortunate obsession really. anyway I have your number on this one.... and I told the boss!" *Ker-Mrs.Frederick!*

It is possible that this is on my short list of GREATEST THINGS OF ALL TIME.

I actually didn't mind the Sanctuary time travel, but only because I guessed how it really worked, ignored the season while Helen pretended it worked differently, and then was happy that my fanfic came true. :)

(But yeah, not the best time travel I've ever seen.)

Re: I might possibly have FEELS on this particular trope.

[lanna-kitty.livejournal.com]

Eh? the re-live life thing was fine. it was the time bubble that was just WRONG.

Re: I might possibly have FEELS on this particular trope.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I'd FORGOTTEN about the Bubble! You're right, it was awful and stupid and BROKE THE LAWS OF EVERYTHING.

[grey-wonderer.livejournal.com]

I like the possibilities it opens up. I find the chain of events very interesting where one tiny thing can change everything. (You buy the last copy of a novel in a book store causing someone to have to travel across town for it and on the way there they are involved in an accident and someone important to you in your time is never born.)
I like the personal events best. When the characters wind up somewhere back in time that has meaning for them rather than for history.
I like the chances it offers for surprise meetings or even chances to say something you wish you'd said and didn't.

I love the fact that there are so many layers with which to work, the character's present time, the character's past, the entire past, the future, etc.

Having said that, I do prefer that they travel back in time rather than ahead. I always enjoy the back in time thing far more than if they move forward and find out what stocks they should have purchased, who is still alive in the future, etc. I like it when they go back to correct something in the past or just to visit a past event and then return to their own time changed by what happened.

Also, I don't like it to get too confusing as in multiple time lines and in this one Bob is alive, in this one Bob was never born, in this one Bob was born but he died, in this one Bob is twins, in this one Bob is missing...too much of a good thing.