I hate time travel as a plot device.

[nuintari@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

I hate time travel as a plot device. Especially dystopian, alternative plotlines. Quite simply, you know damn well they are going to put the timeline back again. There is always a character who knows the current reality isn't right, that a better one can exist in its place. The end result is the same, the original timeline is restored, all the characters lose all knowledge of anything and everything that has transpired, and the series continues on as if it never happened. There is no actual plot advancement, and more importantly absolutely no suspense.

Just my two cents. Time travel is a crutch for shitty storytelling. Best thing about BSG75 aside from Edward James Olmos's bad self? ZERO TIME TRAVEL!

[guyjantic@infosec.exchange]

@nuintari I agree for many stories. For others, time travel is the means to tell a story that can't be told, otherwise. Of all the time travel mechanisms in SFF I think Connie Willis' is my favorite: The time continuum is what it is, and you are a part of it. No alternate universes. And things are the way they are now because of all the events that could have ever affected every moment in history. So if you try to time travel to the past and change something that will have a ripple effect into your current present, it won't work because the timeline is not shaped that way. Perhaps you are part of the timeline in a way like "this person tried to make money by investing in the Bank of England in the 1700s and, weirdly, their time machine dropped them in the middle of the Atlantic and they were never seen again." So time travel becomes useful only for academics trying to learn esoteric things from the past that will never change the present/future.