Deep Thoughts: Fandom trope or kink you love and why
Squee challenge continues with post #3!
Fandom Trope I Love & Why
Time Travel
Probably the easiest & hardest post ever. Easiest because my favourite trope is Time Travel. Always is. Any fandom, any TV show, any movie, any book, any song, anything ... time travel involved? I usually love it.
Hardest part? Trying to figure out why I love it. So here is a list (a highly slightly unorganized list).
1. The outsider perspective: time travel, in any direction, creates a dialogue for social and cultural discussion through the use of an outsider's perspective. Suddenly the world can be examined and re-evaluated by some one who is new to the customs and traditions of the time. An outsider's perspective, in most cases it is usually the time traveler, brings an ability to address a deep social commentary on the time being visited, and the original time they come from. This commentary could be as small as trying to heat water for a bath or using a microwave for the first time. In other cases the commentary could tackle larger social issues such as age, race, sex and gender.
2. The fate vs free will debate: time travel usually goes one of two ways. Either fate precedes over us all and going back in time won't affect anything because you can't change the past OR you need to be careful because so much as a sneeze and the future is completely wiped out (those obviously being the extremes). There are no hard and fast rules to time travel, but it is always fascinating to see how people interpret this debate into their works.
3. What-Ifs: Time travel also gives the chance to take canon and ask what if? Like, I've had this notion stuck in my head, would it not be fascinating and heartbreaking if someone from far into the future was stuck in Camelot and let slip that Arthur would die soon. What would happen? How would Merlin react? How would Arthur react? Would it change how things happened or would everything play out the same way? I have a fascination with thinking "if they had known what would happen" and I love any fic that deals with that question.
4. At the end ... it's the freedom. Time travel allows a freedom to explore and challenge characters, writers, and audiences with dynamic (and sometimes confusing) story lines. And it does this in an open way. The only limitations to time travel stories are the writer's imagination. Therefore, as a trope, it offers a huge range of material which, usually brings with it a social commentary, destiny, character exploration and/or what-if scenarios ... what is there not to love?
~ Or of course it could be that as a Historian I spend so much time in both the present and the past that I find it fascinating to think of actually meeting the people I study and work every day with the artifacts from ... which ever ~