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Question: is the story where the protagonist goes back to an earlier point in their life and relives their life, 'fixing' it with the knowledge of how events fell out the first time a uniquely fannish one?
It seems especially popular as a fanfic story in long-running, slightly soapy serials, but I'm pretty sure there are at least five or six Ranma 1/2 fic with this plot.
I'm aware of Groundhog Day, of course, but I think that's a different story, about becoming in an expert in the tiny field of 'that one, super fucked-up day' and leveraging that, rather than 'oh boy we made a lot of dumb decisions when we were young, and didn't know each other' which I think is the fannish story.
ETA: I'm quoting
kiezh's comment in part, because I think they do a better job than I do at describing the phenom I'm interested in: I do think the narrative you're talking about is an essentially fannish one, not because of the time travel (which people have mentioned a lot of examples of), but because of the on-going tension with "how things really went" in the reader's mind. Like a well-written alternate reality fic, it's NOT the same as original fic, because it's always playing against canon. Original stories about time travel tend to focus on key events, and also have to convince us that those events are important; "reliving canon" stories rely on us to supply the significance, and are likely to spend a lot of time on how day-to-day life and individual relationships are different this time.
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It seems especially popular as a fanfic story in long-running, slightly soapy serials, but I'm pretty sure there are at least five or six Ranma 1/2 fic with this plot.
I'm aware of Groundhog Day, of course, but I think that's a different story, about becoming in an expert in the tiny field of 'that one, super fucked-up day' and leveraging that, rather than 'oh boy we made a lot of dumb decisions when we were young, and didn't know each other' which I think is the fannish story.
ETA: I'm quoting
kiezh's comment in part, because I think they do a better job than I do at describing the phenom I'm interested in: I do think the narrative you're talking about is an essentially fannish one, not because of the time travel (which people have mentioned a lot of examples of), but because of the on-going tension with "how things really went" in the reader's mind. Like a well-written alternate reality fic, it's NOT the same as original fic, because it's always playing against canon. Original stories about time travel tend to focus on key events, and also have to convince us that those events are important; "reliving canon" stories rely on us to supply the significance, and are likely to spend a lot of time on how day-to-day life and individual relationships are different this time.
This post also on dreamwidth (
comments)