| Role/Occupation Time Traveler |
| Total Entries 52 |
| Representative Rip Van Winkle |
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Good old Time Travel. Everyone’s favorite plot device used to “Set Right What Once Went Wrong”, or the opposite (“Make Wrong What Once Went Right”) if you’re a bad guy. Even without that, however, there’s a lot you can do with time travel: see your parents when they were younger, avert some personal disaster that led to your life going off the rails, give your younger self advice on how to avoid an embarrassing situation, have better time management, et cetera. “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” According to this character, a lot. Just as how often it’s depicted as a great tool to fix mistakes in media, time travel can be just as easily shown to be a significant danger to a character’s mental and psychological health, especially if “Failure Is the Only Option” or there’s some other caveat that makes traveling through time dangerous. The reasons why the time traveler became tragic could vary… Also, keep in mind that just because the trope’s name is Tragic Time Traveler doesn’t mean that their story needs to end in a tragedy. In fact, it’s perfectly possible for the traveler to get their happy ending despite all the hardship. They just need to go through further hardship to achieve it… Expect this character to come from a “Bad Future”, or even a “Bad Present”, giving them more reason to travel through time in order to try and change the timeline. If the traveler suffers so much that they end up cracking, this can lead to a “Despair Event Horizon” or even a “Heel–Face Turn”. Alternately, they may end up so frustrated they’ll turn into a “Time-Traveling Jerkass… ~ Tragic Time Traveler – TV Tropes
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