Time travel

[krait]

Welp. More than a month ago, I said I wanted to post about some tropes I enjoy, and asked for prompts. schneefink suggested time travel.

It turns out... I don't actually have a lot of thoughts about time travel. :D I'm not drawn to time-traveling plots in canons. Ficwise, I could only think of a handful of stories I've enjoyed that used the trope, and my primary enjoyment wasn't the time travel itself, but the tropes that sometimes accompany it.

Mainly, time travel is a great vehicle for identity porn, or setting up pairings that would otherwise be impossible in canon. :D

Edit: dancing_serpent mentioned the Fish Out of Water trope, and that's definitely a trope I love, as well! I can't think of any time-travel stories where this is co-starring trope, except perhaps H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, but I'd love suggestions.



Anyway, have some fic recs

In My End is My Beginning by Lilith Sedai. The first time-travel fic I really remember reading! A nice blend of the two reasons for time-travel tropes: identity porn (because Obi-Wan can't reveal that he knows Qui-Gon), and smut (featuring adult!Obi-Wan and knight!Qui-Gon). :D

This time travel threesomes Yuri on Ice Yuuri/Victor series by seventhstar. I'm not sure what I enjoyed more, the porn or the little hints about how time travel is a regular phenomenon in this world. More AUs like this, please?

To Memory Now I Can't Recall MCU Bucky/Steve fic by Etharei - excellent weaving of actions and timestreams, which can be tricky.

If the bad time are coming let 'em come MCU Bucky/Steve by Suzukiblu. Winter Soldier does the time-travelling, runs into tiny!Steve.

Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square MCU Bucky/Steve fic by Speranza - The Avengers find a time portal. Steve jumps right in. This proves to be a dumber move than jumping out of a plane without a parachute, and the team has to go in and find him and get him out to undo the damage he's done to the present day.

It's Not Nostalgia by Zekkass - MCU Bucky/big!Steve/little!Steve threesome porn.

All that You Need to Say Nirvana in Fire Jingyan/Mei Changsu fic by Kitsunealyc. Jingyan travels years into the past in a desperate attempt to cure Mei Changsu's mysterious illness. Identity porn abounds, as Jingyan has to pretend he doesn't know Mei Changsu, while Lin Shu pretends he doesn't know Jingyan.



If you have a favourite time-travel fic or canon, please share!

Comments

[dancing_serpent]

Time travel is one of my most favourite things, for various different reasons. I love the fish-out-of-water stuff, alternative versions of events, the potential for fix-its or for making things happen in the first place, the identity stuff, and so on.

I love time loops, I love the self-fulfilling causality stuff (my current fandom has this as part of canon, which makes me very happy), and when someone tries to rec me things, "it has time travel" is a very good incentive for me to give it a try. *g*

It doesn't even matter if the time travel is the main plot device like in Timeless, or if it's just something that happens in one episode like in Earth: Final Conflict.

[krait]

I hadn't thought about the fish-out-of-water trope, but that's definitely one that I like and which time travel can supply. I edited the post to add it in. :D

Is the self-fulfilling causality canon the Guardian drama? :D I have enough people on my flist who are into it that I've picked up a lot by osmosis. :D I do like it when a creator neatly wraps up both temporal ends of a time-travel plot, and tying them together certainly does that.

Time loops are... my absolute least favourite time-travel trope, probably; to be honest, I walked out of Groundhog Day when my family was watching it, and I've still never seen the whole thing.

[dancing_serpent]

Yep, you're spot on with Guardian. In the present SW meets ZYL, the man he fell in love with ten thousand years ago. SW treats him in a way that makes ZYL fall in love with SW, too. Then ZYL travels ten thousand years into the past and meets this super adorable younger version of SW, and treats him in a way that makes SW fall in love with ZYL in the first place. What I love most about this is that it's teasered right from episode one onwards, throughout the series, until the time travel finally happens close towards the ending. No, bam, surprise time travel to fill out the plot holes (not that there aren't any plot holes in this show, but that's another thing). *g*

Groundhog Day had an interesting premise, but I didn't like Bill Murray's character much. Apart from being mostly unlikeable, he dithered around without doing anything productive for far too long. The same type of loop works so much better in Edge of Tomorrow, and Tom Cruise's character deals with this situation a lot cleverer. Of course, he has help from the super-awesome Rita, The Angel of Verdun (Emily Blunt), who brings him up to shape.

[schneefink]

Huh, thinking about it, I'm more interested in time travel in fic than in canon... And yeah, I too love time travel stories when/because they often combine many tropes that I love: canon-divergence, secret identities, being secretly competent, there's often a lot of angst; also, you can have pairings/relationships not/as easily possible in the original timeline, and depending on how far you go back you can also have culture clashes... Lots of great possibilities :)

Thanks for the recs! I'll try to make a list of my favorites.

[krait]

I definitely find it more tolerable in fic than in canon! Ultimately it's just a delivery vehicle for the tropes I really love, more than a trope I love in itself. But sometimes when it delivers, it really delivers! :D