marycatelli (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marycatelli) wrote2023-07-31 10:36 pm
marycatelli) wrote2023-07-31 10:36 pm
Entry tags:
themes and plot devices
There are plot devices that help with certain themes. Going back and changing history in time travel -- alternate universes from different decisions -- both lend themselves to themes about the importance (or if you choose, the unimportance) of decisions.
But both, if you think about them, have baggage.
The thing about time travel is that it raises ontological questions. Are you annihilating all the people who exist in the current timeline? With all their joys and miseries? Is that really better than the future they live in? And that goes for "setting right" the timeline to restore the original as well.
Or, on the other hand, does the time traveler create a new timeline? In which case the miserable future (the first or the replacement) still exists. You have, so to speak, arranged the escape of duplicates while leaving everyone still to suffer the same fate.
Universes that split on decisions are worse. Technically, if you think it through, it does not discuss the importance of decisions, or even their unimportance. It renders them meaningless. If you made the moral decision many times and good resulted, all that means is that you were the lucky half to get the good result. Out there, there are worlds where your unlucky duplicates made the other decision.
Their thematic use can often manage to leap over such issues. They are, after all, plot devices not reality. Some authors brush on such possibilities as that everyone born in a horrible future might be born in the future that replaces it, and manage to elide it. But be wary of accidentally brushing on such issues. They can derail themes.
But both, if you think about them, have baggage.
The thing about time travel is that it raises ontological questions. Are you annihilating all the people who exist in the current timeline? With all their joys and miseries? Is that really better than the future they live in? And that goes for "setting right" the timeline to restore the original as well.
Or, on the other hand, does the time traveler create a new timeline? In which case the miserable future (the first or the replacement) still exists. You have, so to speak, arranged the escape of duplicates while leaving everyone still to suffer the same fate.
Universes that split on decisions are worse. Technically, if you think it through, it does not discuss the importance of decisions, or even their unimportance. It renders them meaningless. If you made the moral decision many times and good resulted, all that means is that you were the lucky half to get the good result. Out there, there are worlds where your unlucky duplicates made the other decision.
Their thematic use can often manage to leap over such issues. They are, after all, plot devices not reality. Some authors brush on such possibilities as that everyone born in a horrible future might be born in the future that replaces it, and manage to elide it. But be wary of accidentally brushing on such issues. They can derail themes.