I tend to dislike narrative works that heavily rely on the manipulation of time because I never fully understand that world’s time manipulation in a consistent way. I do not believe time travel should be inherently treated like a scientific phenomenon as it commonly is in games and similar media. I enjoy time travel the most when it does occur as some non-explained mechanic for plot progression or convenience. Time travel is something so nonsensical in my mind that it might as well abide by whatever laws govern a particular fiction world’s magic system.
With that being said, a lot of fictional works do treat it like some consistent action or event that physicists can figure out with enough time and resources. Once it is determined to follow a certain ruleset, my grievances with time travel begin to rise. Too often will systems make arbitrary decisions about what can work or should be avoided once time travel occurs. In one case, going back in time makes a diverging path in possibilities that did not exist before (Like in Steins Gate). In another case, going back in time was an event already predestined to happen so it does not matter how they got to that point or what happens after, because it all happens in the same loop (See the movie Arrival). Sometimes, media freely go back and forth between these different forms all in the same context with some extra rules and limitations thrown in.
It is confusing to look for a consistent way in which this time travel mechanic is woven into the narrative, so I often burn myself out trying to find explanations for how this type of thing occurred rather than immersing myself in the story that happens around the time travel. Time loop games in which one person redoes things as they require seem to avoid this complication for me, though. One of the first reasons for this is that in these games, the theory of the time travel is not given a significant theoretical logic, or even explained at all. Another reason that comes up soon after is that a single character or entity is typically affected by the loop, and the loop spans a very discernable chunk of time (like a single day or the events leading up to a specific situation). This contains the events being done in the past to only affect settings that the characters are immediately involved in, rather than affecting major plot points far into the future. With the way time loops typically follow these standards, I am pleased to indulge in the stories that time loops are enhancing, rather than get caught up in all the blurry details that set up the time altered situation in the first place.
I agree with this 10000000%. I’m someone who gets very frustrated when authors try to come up with in-depth excuses for surrealism and it’s like, oh my god it’s surrealism, and it feels like the author is wasting precious time by trying to make an explanation that doesn’t even make sense in the long run. Of course, I may be biased toward more realistic media because of this (and as I’ve mentioned in blog posts before, I sometimes find that I can’t get into a lot of sci-fi and fantasy for the same reason–the author feeling like they need to explain why things work rather than getting to what the story is actually about), so I really do just like to see narratives that take surreal elements and tie them into things in order to create an interesting narrative rather than just focusing on the mechanic itself. Also more of an excuse to not explain myself in my writing, haha.
I think there are things that I identify with in your post but also disagree with some parts. I think that if an author or creator decides to implement time travel into whatever work they’re producing, it should be with a narrative or thematic purpose which isn’t completely contrived. I agree that, when these mechanics are implemented and seemingly only exist either to exist or to cover for plot contrivances, it is incredibly annoying and/or shallow. But when the mechanics of time travel are central to the story itself, and are not covering for some detriment within the story, I think these rules can serve a greater purpose of making us think about time in different ways. For instance, the movie “Primer” (2004) uses its specific mechanic of time travel to deal with the various implications of time travel being discovered in modern day. How time travel functions as a scientific concept in this movie is crucial both to the plot and this theme, as without a specific “scientific” explanation of how time travel works, we would be unable to understand the plot and how the creators have set up a view of time within the movie.