Talk:Time Travel

I wonder if this page needs... subpages? more detail? something? I find myself dissatisfied with it and I made some relatively minor edits but it feels like it needs much more but also like there's no room for it. I notice that Groundhog day time travel has its own page, and I suppose I could start working on a mental timetravel/peggy sue page, but I do wonder if there's a particular reason that the groundhog/timeloop information is on another page instead of here. I was also looking at Time Travel (The Hobbit) which has a very nice "Use in Fanworks" section and is nicely detailed. Major questions:

1. Right now the page is written to assume that physical time travel is the default and other kinds of time travel are "subgenres" of physical time travel. Should that change?
2. Should the subtropes have more in-depth sections on this page, or their own separate pages? (or some combination thereof?)
3. Should we encourage more fandom-specific pages like the Hobbit page and keep the discussion of time travel usage here very fandom-non-specific? (can we talk about the use of these tropes in fan works without talking about specific fandoms? is that why the article is so short now? Alternate Universes pulls in specific fandom examples.)
4. Could we expand on the history of time travel in print zines? Would that make the page even more western-centric than it already is? (and by "we" I mostly mean "someone else" although there were some reviews and summaries I'd have liked to include but didn't feel I had room for)
5. Should the examples be split up by subtrope? (Possibly currently we don't have enough of each, but I'm sure we could raid TV tropes for more)

So, this is just my personal opinion, but: if a page topic is particularly broad (i.e., it's pan-fandom, or it's just a Really Big Thing, or there are lots of variations/subtypes/etc.), then I think it's good to create a robust general page with lots of internal links to related pages. (For something like Time Travel, there might eventually be enough pages to merit a subcategory just for time travel trope pages.) Fandom examples are good, and certainly necessary on a page like this - but if there's a particular fandom that has a lot of fandom-specific time travel trope stuff going on, that might make sense as its own page - and then we include a short paragraph on the general Time Travel page, with the internal link for more information. It's a tricky balance, to include enough illustrative information on a general page without getting too bogged down in fandom-specific content. This is only an issue, though, if there's enough fandom-specific or trope-variant-specific content to "justify" a separate page being created...which is a largely subjective concern. Our more experienced editors can speak to this better than I can.

In terms of this page's architecture, there are certainly lots of different ways to do it...personally, I'd suggest something like:

• History

(general info about the trope, usage in canon source texts/scifi, etc.)

• In Print Zines
• Online

• Types of Time Travel

• (subgenres of time travel, with fandom examples)

• Fandoms With Lots of Time Travel (needs better wording, but hopefully you know what I mean!)

• (specific fandoms with significant time travel trope presence, perhaps with super prominent fandom examples - I'd think most examples would be best includd under types of time travel, but maybe if there's a Big fic in particular fandom, or a particularly influential one, etc.)

If a particular type of time travel or time-travel-heavy fandom already has its own page, or warrants its own page, then just a short paragraph with an internal link would suffice. (Also, some fics may warrant their own page, too!) I like the idea of splitting up examples by subtrope, and I think it would be great to see multiple subsections under history. If you have an idea for something like that, but you don't have the content/personal knowledge/time/etc. to populate it, you can always add the (sub)section title and leave a note on the article talk page. It's often really helpful to see an "outline" of a page, because it makes it more manageable, in a sense, to add chunks of information. - Fandomgeographies (talk) 13:28, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Man if there's one thing I'm good at, luckily, it's outlining! That all makes a lot of sense. I'll see what I can do to expand the page or at least rearrange it so there's more room for expansion. I do think many fandoms would benefit from having their own specific time travel trope page (Harry Potter and Naruto both come to mind) and hopefully by setting up this page better I'll make the creation of that type of page both easier and more obviously a Thing.

- Hoopla (talk) 14:26, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I think that that's a little better. I removed the examples below because I couldn't sort them quickly and we had a lot of examples already. -Hoopla (talk) 02:27, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

It's looking great! :) - Fandomgeographies (talk) 14:47, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Examples (unsorted)

• Buffyverse: Negative Space by orphan_account. Sometimes when you help the hopeless, you have to start at home.
• Merlin: Long Shadow by valderys. Arthur/Merlin. Merlin thought he had problems when he was only Arthur's manservant, and trying to hide his magic. Now he doesn't have to hide any more, but as King by right of conquest he wishes things were that easy. Rulership is a lonely business, and it actually hurts more to imagine what Arthur might have done in his place - but Merlin does it anyway. They had a destiny. Merlin refuses to let it go.
• Teen Wolf: Name by Corpium, Peter/Stiles, When Stiles goes back in time to save Paige and stop Gerard, he doesn't expect Peter Hale.

Transmigration?

Currently the Mental Time Travel section of this page has a "Main article" template pointing to Transmigration. I don't think that really belongs there. I suppose Peggy Sue time travel is technically a type of transmigration, but I don't think I've ever seen it described that way, and in my experience the term "transmigration" far more frequently refers to Isekai-style transmigration into other worlds, which rarely has much to do with time travel. If nobody objects, I'd like to remove that template. -- Malcontent (talk) 05:29, 16 November 2023 (UTC)