Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Published year: 2003
Edition: Paperback
Language: English
Page: 528 pages
Let’s talk about my favorite things. Drama and book are two of my favorite things in the world. I consider them dearest to my heart. 😀 When I 'm meeting with the same drama addict, we start bubbling incoherently and squealing and giggling uncontrollably. Other people think we are crazy. Boo. Or when I'm in the middle of my novel reading, I’m suddenly screaming or smiling alone. They think I'm such an intellectual snob, book-worm weirdo because I seem reading everywhere, keep my head above the cloud, and my feet not touching the ground. I fool you guy 😝, I read fiction novel. Academic reading is better to be left alone in my private room. Misconception of me. Then they comment about how we can make a fuss about such trivial thing. Huh trivial things?? They are my precious, source of happiness! 😀 Where are they when I'm sad?? And who stand by me when I'm lonely?? I kid.
Sometime these two are meeting. This makes me glee. Sometimes watching a drama makes me want to read the novel or vice versa, reading a novel makes me want to watch the drama. I'm the person who think a drama/movie never beats the book source, hey I be the producer, the director, and picking my own actor to play my favorite character, although all is inside my head 😛 What’s not to love?? Reading and watching the live action is not a way to make the comparison (why bother to compare when you already know which one ends up the better one?), but the act watching and reading the same material just add the excitement.
So what is the connection between Tomorrow With You and my reading and watching habit? ☺ Probably the title won't evoke any memory, but the plot maybe will. Tomorrow With You tells story about a young married couple that the husband can time travel. In other words it tells a story about a time traveler's wife. Still not remind you something? 😀 I don't say that Tomorrow With You is a remake or adaptation from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Though the general theme is almost the same, but the plot is widely different. But at knowing there was a drama on the way, produced by TvN, starred by Shin Mina and Lee Ji-hoon, and I read at the forum there's a novel with similar theme, I was intrigued. Hey my love for book can't be underestimated. Off to read the novel I went.
I really had a high hope for both the drama and the novel. Both disappointed me. I imagined a heart wrecking romance, the love that cannot be, it is them against Fate and Time. Longing separation and sweetest reunion. It would be peppered with mysteries to keep intrigued and with underlying science fiction about physic quantum, fourth dimension, relativity theories ready to explore and give your brain some exercise. This theme has a big leverage to be worked on and shine.
With the dramaverse is saturated with time-traveler, in shape of people or signal with so many means of traveling from incense, subway, to tunnel, I'm, the watcher, who supervision all (lol) start to nippicking all of them. I'm going to supervision all of these time and place continuum offenders in case they are going too far and then hurt themselves. 😎
So what these two had done in violating time and place continuum? Let's see. The novel first. I probably rant more about the book than the drama. Since it is so overhype ridiculous. I think the biggest violation that has been done by The Time Traveler's Wife is its attempts to explain the mechanism of time travel. I still remember reading one of the reviewer like kind of saying Audrey Niffenegger is "Put new perspective in time travel". My imagination runs wild surely but Bruh what? So popular it got a movie adaptation which even is worse than the novel.
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Country: USA
Released year: 2009
Genre: Romance, Time travel, Adaptation
Source: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Director: Robert Schwentke
Actors: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams
Sometime these two are meeting. This makes me glee. Sometimes watching a drama makes me want to read the novel or vice versa, reading a novel makes me want to watch the drama. I'm the person who think a drama/movie never beats the book source, hey I be the producer, the director, and picking my own actor to play my favorite character, although all is inside my head 😛 What’s not to love?? Reading and watching the live action is not a way to make the comparison (why bother to compare when you already know which one ends up the better one?), but the act watching and reading the same material just add the excitement.
So what is the connection between Tomorrow With You and my reading and watching habit? ☺ Probably the title won't evoke any memory, but the plot maybe will. Tomorrow With You tells story about a young married couple that the husband can time travel. In other words it tells a story about a time traveler's wife. Still not remind you something? 😀 I don't say that Tomorrow With You is a remake or adaptation from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Though the general theme is almost the same, but the plot is widely different. But at knowing there was a drama on the way, produced by TvN, starred by Shin Mina and Lee Ji-hoon, and I read at the forum there's a novel with similar theme, I was intrigued. Hey my love for book can't be underestimated. Off to read the novel I went.
I really had a high hope for both the drama and the novel. Both disappointed me. I imagined a heart wrecking romance, the love that cannot be, it is them against Fate and Time. Longing separation and sweetest reunion. It would be peppered with mysteries to keep intrigued and with underlying science fiction about physic quantum, fourth dimension, relativity theories ready to explore and give your brain some exercise. This theme has a big leverage to be worked on and shine.
With the dramaverse is saturated with time-traveler, in shape of people or signal with so many means of traveling from incense, subway, to tunnel, I'm, the watcher, who supervision all (lol) start to nippicking all of them. I'm going to supervision all of these time and place continuum offenders in case they are going too far and then hurt themselves. 😎
So what these two had done in violating time and place continuum? Let's see. The novel first. I probably rant more about the book than the drama. Since it is so overhype ridiculous. I think the biggest violation that has been done by The Time Traveler's Wife is its attempts to explain the mechanism of time travel. I still remember reading one of the reviewer like kind of saying Audrey Niffenegger is "Put new perspective in time travel". My imagination runs wild surely but Bruh what? So popular it got a movie adaptation which even is worse than the novel.
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Country: USA
Released year: 2009
Genre: Romance, Time travel, Adaptation
Source: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Director: Robert Schwentke
Actors: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams
The story in A Time Traveler’s wife begins when 40 something Henry DeTamble visiting toddler Clare Abshire in her own back yard. It is the first time for her to meet him, but it is several years after he married her. For her the meetings will stop temporarily when she hits eighteen years old and will start again two years later when she meets the 20 something Henry who has yet to meet her. For him the meeting starts when he is still five years old and stops only when he dies. 😛 Because time travel is a disease, he can't find the cure. 😂😂
I will not talk about the misery and love story of the couple, because that's not what capturing my attention and interest. Surely, the novel is doing it to its self. The whole novel seems to be superficial and pretentious. It is like a chop out from a lifestyle magazine, promoting who has the most stylish and lavish life style of all. Or who is the most cultured, intellectual, and artistic of all. That I'm sound so snarky right now? 😛😎
Let me explain it to you. The writer seems to project an image that she wants people perceive her to be in real life. Clare Abshire is a white girl with red thick, curly hair. She is an installation artist, not just an artist but successful artist, with some devoted followers who are ready to buy her art in every exhibition. She makes every struggling artist into shame. She is the last child from a rich southern American family. Her father and older brother are lawyers, oh also her grandfather. Her mother is stay home mother who likes to painting, writing poem, and gardening. And her sister, she plays cello. She lived in old vintage grand big house that her mother inherits from her father, or even grandfather. In her household, she got a nanny, a cooker, and a gardener. Maybe her family lineage can be looked up until her great, great, great, great, great grandparents.
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| The creepy and icky first meets. |
I will not talk about the misery and love story of the couple, because that's not what capturing my attention and interest. Surely, the novel is doing it to its self. The whole novel seems to be superficial and pretentious. It is like a chop out from a lifestyle magazine, promoting who has the most stylish and lavish life style of all. Or who is the most cultured, intellectual, and artistic of all. That I'm sound so snarky right now? 😛😎
Let me explain it to you. The writer seems to project an image that she wants people perceive her to be in real life. Clare Abshire is a white girl with red thick, curly hair. She is an installation artist, not just an artist but successful artist, with some devoted followers who are ready to buy her art in every exhibition. She makes every struggling artist into shame. She is the last child from a rich southern American family. Her father and older brother are lawyers, oh also her grandfather. Her mother is stay home mother who likes to painting, writing poem, and gardening. And her sister, she plays cello. She lived in old vintage grand big house that her mother inherits from her father, or even grandfather. In her household, she got a nanny, a cooker, and a gardener. Maybe her family lineage can be looked up until her great, great, great, great, great grandparents.
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| The successful artist wifey |
Wait, no, I have not finished yet. That's some background from the heroine, for the hero Henry DeTamble. He is a librarian, working in some old prestigious library in Chicago. He surely knows to the point of expert, literature. He reads a lot. He is intelligent or knowledgeable. He speaks French fluently since he is the son of ‘famous’ opera singer and violinist plays in orchestra who is also famous since Clare’s father wants his other daughter to be Henry’s father student. Henry and Clare sometimes recite poems in French just to be romantically cool. Henry’s family was often traveling around Europe following his mother’s concert tour. Though both of his parents are musician, he is blind (music) note. But of course he still got an exquisite music taste. He and Clare frequently attend music concerts, band that, singer this. They also like to discuss about how great their music preference, named song this and that. In fact, Henry, in one time, take times to teach a boy about what a great music should be like, which of course, according to him. Blah. Oh yeah he is also quiet charming, and got the style also because he also got the build to begin with, runaway model like, tall and slender. Of course it is because he is an avid long distance runner. Kind like Haruki Murakami? 😏
If you think the characterization doesn't raise your eyebrows high enough. Try to read how the writer explains the reason behind the time travel. I really want to know other people's opinion with scientific background about this novel. So time travel here, in this novel, is treated as it is a disease, a psychiatric disease. It is just how the brain defense mechanism in coping traumatic life events. It is Henry’s way to cope losing his mother in young age in tragic accident in which he is also the eye-witness. He, somehow, felt guilty for he could not be there and save her since he was time-travelling himself.
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| From this POV: The traumatic past event, this novel deserves K drama adaptation. You know how prevalent it is K drama hero with some tragic childhood story for the sake wring our sympathy. It is not even funny. |
So other people got amnesiac, or loss of consciousness, or going through depression phase or psychotic attack, or PSTD, but Henry is so damn special, he got CDP (Crono-displaced Person). It is kind of disease that affects your brain and ingrains in your DNA. It is genetic and you can pass this disease to your children. The disease makes you time travelling, but leave you bare naked in the new time dimension. You can’t bring anything from future or the past or you might jinx it or cheat anybody else without the disease :P It leaves you to defend for yourself. Because it is kind of brain disease, it will relapse if the life becomes much stressful. And the disease will bring you back over and over again to the time and places that stress you the most. You know like obsessive compulsive things, it will circle around and around the things that bother you the most. So it is not ‘defense’ mechanism after all.
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| Defenseless |
Because it is a disease, so there must be a way to cure it or at least tame it so it won’t be frequently recurrence. So, big part of the novel tells the struggle of Henry-Clair couple to find the cure for this CPD. From taking anti-psychotic disease (Risperidone seems just recently invented in that time to replace the first anti-psychotic Haloperidol with the side effect that Henry hate it (but who doesn’t??) to doing genetic manipulation (find the defect genome and fix it). Nothing works. Sorry. This disease also becomes a problem for Clare when she wants to conceive Henry’s baby. She is going through many miscarriages.
The reason of miscarriage: The babies are time travelling in Clare’s womb, back and forth, the womb think they are some kind of foreign bodies that eventually triggers immune response hence the miscarriage. So the doctor in Henry – Clare’s realm, treat the miscarriage as an autoimmune disease like antiphospholipid syndrome with high dose of corticosteroid to suppress the immune system. Henry almost gives up on it. He can’t stand seeing Clare’s suffering. He got vasectomy. But before he comes clean about the procedure to Clare, she breaks the news that she got pregnant. The hint: The past Henry visiting the desperate Clare while the present-already-got-vasectomy Henry was not home. She couldn’t recognize him, understandable since he is the SAME person basically, and they made love. Viola! Baby! Please don’t roll your eyes!!
I always perceive that time travel is a physical phenomenon, so shifting my point of view to make it some kind of biological phenomenon takes an effort. But from what I have learn about science is that everything is possible, what difference is merely how high the probability of that thing to be happening in real life with considerable variables. So I won't put my foot in my mouth in the year of 3000, when eventually time travel is possible. Based on Niffenegger’s Theory of time travelling that makes it a biological phenomenon, just think about the year of 3000, no give it 5000, when the earth condition is so deteriorated that eventually affects human DNA sequence, some metilation stuff happening, and brings some kind of human evolution. So that human evolution is some ‘defense’ mechanism to escape deteriorated earth by time traveling to the earth version that human still can live in. Maybe the invention of time machine is not enough but it also requires some change in human body to stand the harsh of time travel. Perhaps human can hibernate? 😁 Can escape gravity? Or can live without oxygen? Can fly through the atmosphere? Can stand high temperature as hot as the sun? Can produce their own energy like a star? Can grow ears that can hear signal from different dimension? Can have eyes that can see through the divided dimensions? Can live without eat or drink? Can run faster than the time itself, so time becomes cease to matter?
See whatever ideas I have been sprouted out above, I’m still trapped in assumption that time travel is some kind a physical phenomenon, am I? The idea of time travel is a physical phenomenon is like ingrained in human’s mind like the DNA itself. To change it into something that it is not is like to deny that us are human at all. It requires bending the time and space continuum. It requires breaking the wall that separate dimension of all ‘possible worlds’. It requires huge amount of energy, complicated calculation, and immaculate planning. It requires breaking all the binds that bound us to this thing called time and this dimension that we live in. Perhaps if we finally can detect the anti-matter (or anti-time?) that’s the time we can find a way to other dimension that its time only just start turning. Can we also call that ‘time travel’? Perhaps all we need is not ‘time travel’ but ‘dimension travel’.
So back to A Time Traveler’s Wife, what I don’t like the most is how the writer is just skirting everything on the surface. I meant if she wanted to change the point of view of time travel to see it as a biological phenomenon instead of something physical, I’m fine with it. I meant go ahead, go crazy, amused me with your idea. But the way she just plastering all the biological facts as a part of time travel mechanism is laughable at best. It seems the writer didn't do the research while writing them. I have this theory that the writer is too lazy (or I want to say not comprehend but I believe she is smart enough 😄) to do research in the possibility behind time travel from physical point of view so she is going to bypass it from biological perspective.
I don't know about the others, but more than the fact she, the writer, has been regurgitating all of non-sensible biology facts to explain time travel mechanisms, what bother me the most is how Henry DeTamble can interact, meet, touch, even teach and communicate with the other Henry DeTamble without making any ripple in time and place continuum. So there can be two Henrry(ies) in one dimension, possible world. That doesn't make sense to me. She even goes further when the still living Henry from the past visiting the possible world in which the Henry DeTamble whom belong to that world has already dead. I mean how there are two of you? How there are two of the same entity? How can two living thing can be dead and alive at the same time? I thought every one of us, every one of you is special, and there is only one you belonged to this world. You are the main character in your own story. It is only you who live the live you’re living so you have to make the best for it. I'm the one who believe this kind of idea. So if someone is messing with that idea, she/he is messing with me. And that won't end well. Ha, ha, ha.
I want to make analogy that she is as Mr. Schrodinger, while Henry DeTambel is Mr. Schrodinger’s beloved cat. If you don’t familiar with Schrodinger and his cat as reference he is an Austrian physicist who tried to explain the mechanism of quantum theory. So he makes an imaginary experiment or thought experiment by putting imaginary cat inside a box together with some radioactive material. So we as the observer are asked by Mr. Schrodinger whether the cat is dead or alive at the time being? Well according to him, the answer is depending whether the radioactive substance is already decayed or still emitting. Before Mr. Schrodinger and us, the observer, open the box, the cat is in superposition situation, it is alive and dead at the same time. Confused? So do I 😃
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| The most cultured, artistic, intellect family. |
I always perceive that time travel is a physical phenomenon, so shifting my point of view to make it some kind of biological phenomenon takes an effort. But from what I have learn about science is that everything is possible, what difference is merely how high the probability of that thing to be happening in real life with considerable variables. So I won't put my foot in my mouth in the year of 3000, when eventually time travel is possible. Based on Niffenegger’s Theory of time travelling that makes it a biological phenomenon, just think about the year of 3000, no give it 5000, when the earth condition is so deteriorated that eventually affects human DNA sequence, some metilation stuff happening, and brings some kind of human evolution. So that human evolution is some ‘defense’ mechanism to escape deteriorated earth by time traveling to the earth version that human still can live in. Maybe the invention of time machine is not enough but it also requires some change in human body to stand the harsh of time travel. Perhaps human can hibernate? 😁 Can escape gravity? Or can live without oxygen? Can fly through the atmosphere? Can stand high temperature as hot as the sun? Can produce their own energy like a star? Can grow ears that can hear signal from different dimension? Can have eyes that can see through the divided dimensions? Can live without eat or drink? Can run faster than the time itself, so time becomes cease to matter?
See whatever ideas I have been sprouted out above, I’m still trapped in assumption that time travel is some kind a physical phenomenon, am I? The idea of time travel is a physical phenomenon is like ingrained in human’s mind like the DNA itself. To change it into something that it is not is like to deny that us are human at all. It requires bending the time and space continuum. It requires breaking the wall that separate dimension of all ‘possible worlds’. It requires huge amount of energy, complicated calculation, and immaculate planning. It requires breaking all the binds that bound us to this thing called time and this dimension that we live in. Perhaps if we finally can detect the anti-matter (or anti-time?) that’s the time we can find a way to other dimension that its time only just start turning. Can we also call that ‘time travel’? Perhaps all we need is not ‘time travel’ but ‘dimension travel’.
So back to A Time Traveler’s Wife, what I don’t like the most is how the writer is just skirting everything on the surface. I meant if she wanted to change the point of view of time travel to see it as a biological phenomenon instead of something physical, I’m fine with it. I meant go ahead, go crazy, amused me with your idea. But the way she just plastering all the biological facts as a part of time travel mechanism is laughable at best. It seems the writer didn't do the research while writing them. I have this theory that the writer is too lazy (or I want to say not comprehend but I believe she is smart enough 😄) to do research in the possibility behind time travel from physical point of view so she is going to bypass it from biological perspective.
I don't know about the others, but more than the fact she, the writer, has been regurgitating all of non-sensible biology facts to explain time travel mechanisms, what bother me the most is how Henry DeTamble can interact, meet, touch, even teach and communicate with the other Henry DeTamble without making any ripple in time and place continuum. So there can be two Henrry(ies) in one dimension, possible world. That doesn't make sense to me. She even goes further when the still living Henry from the past visiting the possible world in which the Henry DeTamble whom belong to that world has already dead. I mean how there are two of you? How there are two of the same entity? How can two living thing can be dead and alive at the same time? I thought every one of us, every one of you is special, and there is only one you belonged to this world. You are the main character in your own story. It is only you who live the live you’re living so you have to make the best for it. I'm the one who believe this kind of idea. So if someone is messing with that idea, she/he is messing with me. And that won't end well. Ha, ha, ha.
I want to make analogy that she is as Mr. Schrodinger, while Henry DeTambel is Mr. Schrodinger’s beloved cat. If you don’t familiar with Schrodinger and his cat as reference he is an Austrian physicist who tried to explain the mechanism of quantum theory. So he makes an imaginary experiment or thought experiment by putting imaginary cat inside a box together with some radioactive material. So we as the observer are asked by Mr. Schrodinger whether the cat is dead or alive at the time being? Well according to him, the answer is depending whether the radioactive substance is already decayed or still emitting. Before Mr. Schrodinger and us, the observer, open the box, the cat is in superposition situation, it is alive and dead at the same time. Confused? So do I 😃
If you keep reading the history of Mr. Schrodinger, you will find out that he even actually gave up in trying to explain quantum physic and its superposition implication and then he moved on to new shiniest thing, genetic biology. He said goodbye to quantum physic by saying: "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it." Ha, ha, ha. So that is what Niffenegger did. She followed the step of Mr. Schrodinger, tried to shift paradigm of time travel from a physical POV to biological POV. Mr. Schrodinger got his cat, Mrs. Niffenegger got her Henry DeTamble.
You know what; I have better idea how to explain time travel possibility which is by “magical’ point of view. Ha, ha, ha. Everything is magical until you learn and understand scientific law behind it, no? 😉 I think Mrs. Niffenegger should learn from K dramas how to explain, no cross that, to write engaging time travel story. Don’t push something obstinately if you meet a problem, but try to work around it. If science is not something you good at, try to highlight something you excel at. Better than focusing on the mechanism of time-travel with scientific fact that you don’t really understand, try to focus the story on like building excellent imaginary world, its intricate rules and its implication, physically and emotionally, if the rules are crossed.
Title: Tomorrow With You
Country: South Korea
Released year: 2017
Episode: 16 episodes
Genre: Romance drama, time travel
Actors: Shin Min-ah, Lee Ji-hoon
So now we have crossed the border from book to drama-verse. I can take several example of K drama with time-travel as the source of their story. For one the drama that has close resemblance with the novel which is Tomorrow With You. At first hearing about this drama being produced, I was excited because the producing team casted Lee Ji-hoon and Shin Min-ah both actors whom I like and they just had projects that are great and I like them, Signal and Oh My Venus. And another reason why I was excited was that the drama has time travel element. What I like about time travel story that there must be some element of fantasy or science fiction in it, so it won’t be all just about romance or some case procedural drama. I hadn’t read The Time Traveler’s Wife at that time. But everyone on the tread was buzzing about how the drama has some similarity with the novel. They also commented about how great the novel is, if you can pass the icky point about the how Henry visits the young, barely legal Clare. And after how great Signal turned out, I want to put my hands on every drama that has time travel premise, well I can’t help it.
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| Their first cute meeting |
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| His tragic event. |
Both husbands eventually use their time-travel ability gift to get personal advantage (winning a lottery) although they are adamant to not use it until they meet their wife. Ha, ha, ha Oh wifey. In both of the stories, the time-travel discordant couple eventually is living off the time travel ability to cover some life expense. The two wives are somehow artist, though one in the drama is a struggling artist and one in the novel is successful one. Both of them is the same unbelievable ones, ha, ha, ha.
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| The 'struggling' artist wifey. |
Of course there’s a period of separation in which the wife has to wait anxiously without knowing whether the husband will be coming home or not. This period of separation seem inevitable in time travel drama/novel, right? There’s one too in Tunnel in which the wife also has to wait when the husband time travelling. It is hard to be the one who stays, no? 😁 Why the wife cannot go to where the husband goes? 😆
Perhaps the point that both writers want to show is that Love is time durable. Love is one that can beat unbending thing called Time, or one that can escape time and place continuum. The time travel is one that brought both of time traveler to see their future wives. Regardless the intention at the beginning, this foreseeable future is one that both of them (be able to) pursue their wife at the present time. Although at the end both husbands fall in love with their wives for real.
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| Somehow I wish he keeps the pretense a little bit longer, then struggles to deny his feeling until he can't help it anymore and learns to eat his words in hard way. like every other K drama hero out there. |
And time travelers have to have friends to share their magical ability, or they may go crazy. I think I may check myself to a psychiatrist first to have a full psychiatric evaluation if I think I have experienced time travel, just to make sure if I’m just being delusional. But in the both stories the main character just except their ability like it is natural. But what even more mind bogging is their friends, what a cool friend they have. It is not just their wife who knows their time travel secret but a bunch of people without no one ever think they are crazy or… you know tell Medias about that?? Can you imagine what shocking news is it when you read a big, flashing head-line: "Mystery of the time is revealed; now people can time travel."
Is it all their similarities? Both of them are underwhelming? Ha, ha, ha. Perhaps I may miss something else, but now we move on to the dissimilarity. The good point for the drama or dramas in general is that how they escape the time travel mechanisms trap. It is with not making that time travel mechanism as the vital point of the story. All these stories need are an establish rules how to time travel, by subway, through tunnel, via radio signal, incense burning, you name it. All is possible for mean of time travel. They don’t try to look smart, they try to look fantastical. Lol. I may not read and watch too many sci-fi genre since it is not my favorite, but if you find one that successfully adding believable science element on the story, you can recommend it to me.
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| On the way to |
For Tomorrow With You, the husband time travel via subway from Seoul station to Namyeong station. It is interesting that he can only time travel to the future, and go back to the present time. It actually makes this time travel thing not so complicated. He can’t go back to the past and fix the things he wants which would eventually mess things up like every other time travel story ever told you about. But what if it is the reason the story didn’t have enough pulling? Hmm… At first he can’t choose what time in the future, he will arrive via the subway. But as the time goes and more time travel experience he can choose the time in the future he will arrive. Picking the time in the future seems require some skill and energy.
There's another way to escape that time travel trap is by looking forward. Don't look back, fiddle with the past. Ha, ha, ha. This also what dramas usually do in handling time travel theme. They usually put more concern in the purpose of time travel than have fixation in searching the reason why the time traveler can time travel on the first place. In Tomorrow With You the purpose of the time travel is to save himself at first then to save his wife at the end. There's also Nine that use time travel incense sticks to fix his childhood life. Or Tunnel or Signal that uses time travel to solve unresolved serial killer case. The Time Traveler’s Wife novel mean while beside it is obstinate enough to explain the time travel mechanism, the time travel itself doesn't have any special purpose. Let me repeat it again, time travel needs huge amount of energy, men with purpose can summon that energy if you don't know it yet 😁.
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| One time travels to save himself, one time travels to save his wife. |
Another story, another time travel law of the universe. While in The Time Traveler's Wife the novel. The writer insists that when time travelling, a time traveler cannot bring anything with him whatsoever. The writer reason that bring anything with him will make disturbance in the time and place continuum. Lol like you don't do that, when you do time travel at the first place. But I can see her point. Try to read Timeline by Michael Crichton so you know what I meant 😆 In Tomorrow With You, the time traveler husband can get anything from the future to bring back home. There's one time he brings the IT future instant ramyeon to the present time and his unknowingly wife posts it to her micro blogging in the present as her favorite ramyeon. I just want to say "poor the ramyeon company”, she steals their thunder.
As I said before one of the things that bothered me in the novel is the present time Henry can interact with future or past Henry. In Tomorrow With You, the time traveler from the present and the future can't meet or interact with each other. If they do, they will annihilate each other. Or if any of Yoo So-jun (the name of time traveler in Tomorrow With You) dies while time-travelling, all the other Yoo So-jun(s) also dies. One of my favorite Tomorrow With You law of the universe.
Finally, I keep thinking why these stories, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Tomorrow With You, can become so underwhelming when they have such a great premise from which they can toss and turn into a heart tugging story. It can be the brainchild from sci-fi father and romance mother. This got me thinking maybe because in these two, Time lord is too kind hearted, to be bent and manipulated. Ha, ha, ha. I meant they choose Time travel as their main theme, but they left the Time lord, in the back burner. They picked the wrong guy to mess with, and that guy is pissed.
In The Time Traveler’s Wife, the main source of problem is how to treat this time travel disease. I have enough rant over how superficial the novel is, so I rest the case here. In Tomorrow With You, they put the responsibility of creating problems in jealous colleagues of the Time Traveler husband. This really got me confused, for I think he is a minor character but why somehow he became the center of attention all of sudden in later episode?
As I can remember all the time travelling themed dramas that I have watched (Signal, Nine: Nine Time Travels, Operation Proposal), all of them consider Time, as unbeatable antagonist. Although cheating over Time is not the time traveler main purpose of time travelling, there’s nothing that the time traveler can do without making Time lashing out to make condition back to equilibrium. The greater change he does, the bigger Time’s comeuppance occurs. I think Time lord is the reason why time travel genre is so thrilling. You race against the Time itself, you want to see the result of every change you made faster, leave you no time to think (and monitor) all the uncontrolled variables that brings you the unexpected result. Even the recent finished Tunnel, the lack of time comeuppance made the 16th episode of the drama felt more like an additional episode than final episode. It even sent me shiver down my spine watching all the changes that Kwang-ho brought to the past because he had already known the future. Alas it didn’t happen
All and all, I still find time-travel themed story is intriguing. In the recent years, it becomes new genre favorite of mine along with it becomes new trending theme of drama. Because it is intriguing to me why people are so obsessed to control and cheat the Time, which it is the most unbending, the most just, and the most relentless thing in the world, by time travel. I’m really curious about the psychology aspect why this theme becomes so popular. Why people opt to choose the hardest one to change (time and space continuum) than to choose the easier ones like changing their point of view on time itself, or making planning about the future? Believe me you can’t change the past but you can always plan the future. I’m even curious why China government banned the time travel themed drama. I read somewhere it is because time travel promotes "promotes feudalism, superstition, fatalism, and reincarnation." Uhm okay. I think time-travel is good for flexing our imagination muscle about future. Ha, ha, ha.
I may be successfully lured to watch the drama or read the story every single time. I think the only popular time-travel themed K drama that I have not watched is Queen In-hyun’s Man. I may pick it up again after I abandoned it at 4/5 episode 4/5 years ago. I’m watching Duel right now that comes from the same writer of Queen In-hyun’s Man. Unlike the unfavorable reception of the drama by public, I find the story itself is intricate enough to keep me tune in every episode. I like it better than Circle to be honest. I probably will also watch Manhole: Wonderland’s Feel starred by Jaejoong that also has time travel theme. Though the premise sounds like Operation Proposal which is….. *mixedfeeling* Should we time-travel to know if it is worth 16 hour of watching? 😬 Uhmm, NO thank you….
Title: Queen In-hyun's Man
Country: South Korea
Released year: 2012
Episode: 16 episodes
Genre: Romance drama, Time travel
Actors: Yoo In-na, Ji Hyun-woo
I think I'm going to watch and hopefully finish this drama. Manhole has not had promotional poster, yet. It will follow Seven Day Queen in August, 2017.
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