fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4063 ]

[ SECRET POST #4063 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4063 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I mean, you could still visit.

It's probably a slightly incorrect estimation of the past to assume that all human societies before the present had shoot-on-sight orders for anyone who was non-white or non-religious or didn't fit into 1950s heterosexuality. And it probably lends more validity and "naturalness" to those categories than they really deserve to assume so.

Yeah, it would be shitty to live in. And I don't want to erase that reality, but at the same time, most of the past would have been significantly worse than the present for anyone to live in to start with, even before you get into the historical injustices and oppression perpetrated against racial, sexual, and religious differences.

There is more to surviving in a different time period than "shoot on sight" and its a bit insulting to reduce it down to that.

Sure, I could go to historic China and pass myself off as a cishet loyal Confucian servant in terms of appearance. Except I live in the US and English is my main language. I don't speak Chinese. I'm not familiar with the traditional customs.

Good luck me.

Where do you propose I go in the past that's any better than the present?

Oh, well if you only want to visit cultures you already belong to then yeah, time travel might not be for you. I don't think I that's a race / orientation thing, tho. I'm a straight white male *Lightening strike* and I don't think I would thrive in just about any of the historic periods of time where straight white men did rule. I think the whole "You can time travel" hypothetical comes with the expectation that communication barriers don't exist.

I feel like I might be trying to convince you to play a game you don't want to play. Like trying to play volleyball with Edward Scissor Hands. You're game is more "Lets see how many beach balls I can pop"

Magical communication barriers being broken, or my physical appearance morphing to fit into the society I visit, would change the question entirely for me.

If I don't have to visibly be an "other" then there are certainly places I'd visit. However, historically speaking, I'm not in a good group to be touring around without those magical changes.

I do hope your wallowing in misery is making you happy. I'm being a dick, but I'm not just being a dick, I really hope your attitude is the right thing for you personally. Cause to me, living like everything is about what a victim I am, and even supposedly fun hypotheticals are only opportunities to lament you fate would be more of a hell than anything the actual world could do to me. If it's right for you, go with God, but if it's not making you happy I really hope you find something that does.

What? I'm pointing out that I can't go back in history without changing it to most places and famous historic events because my outward appearance, the language I speak, and various other traits have only begun to "be a thing" in modern day.

This is not a woe is me I'm oppressed forever complaint. I like where I am and I have hope for the future. I just wouldn't go back in the past.

I hope you find happiness too?

Sorry, I know it was a bit reductive, but I don't think that your post wasn't reductive either, so, you know, fair enough I guess. And the language barrier is a problem, sure, but not an insurmountable one, and it's not like a language barrier doesn't exist today if you're a tourist.

I'm definitely not trying to argue that the past was better than the present. I don't think that's true. And I'm not trying to frame the conversation around where you could survive. What I'm asking is where you'd like to *visit*.

The thing is you said we can't change history. A surprise Chinese person appearing in the middle of a lot of famous historic non-Asia-centric civilizations would change history by existing and being taken note of. That already limits it.

If I get to be invisible or pass as a local with local currency and no language barrier, there are places I'd want to experience, but it couldn't be "me" doing so without breaking your rules, even in different clothing. :\

A surprise Chinese person appearing in the middle of a lot of famous historic non-Asia-centric civilizations would change history by existing and being taken note of. That already limits it.

Please feel free to assume that the not-changing-history aspect is part of the mechanism of the time travel somehow, not a constraint on your actions.

As for the rest, fair enough, I'm not disputing that there are logistical challenges to the thing. But I'd still be curious about what places you'd want to experience!

NAYRT, but if not changing history is somehow built in rather than requiring restraint, I’m gonna set up a “punch Hitler in the face” booth and make bank and take lots of pictures.

Listen, you do you.

I approve of this idea.

I'd like to note that I'm not saying straight white religious people magically fit in everywhere! Sorry if it sounded like I was. Obviously they'd be limited too, in that they couldn't go visit like, ancient China or Egypt without sticking out, without a magic invisibility barrier.

I was assuming realistic language barriers exist and you remain the same physical appearance, which limited me to basically nowhere, lol. With those taken away, lots of places!

In no particular order: France on the Western front of WWII, Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Stalingrad during the Battle of Stalingrad, the French Revolution, the day Alexander the Great died just to see what killed him for real, the American Frontier during 1800s, the Roman Republic when Sulla took over Rome

But #1: Black Thursday, 1929

Oops, I meant WWI not WWII.

That's interesting! So it seems like you're really interested in like... disasters and calamities and really momentous things. I would definitely be interested in seeing some of those things - especially the French Revolution would be fascinating, and also Sulla - but it's not the first place that my mind goes to, you know?

I am! I'd love to spectate those things as a ghost like in FPS games after you die.

Contrary to what Wako thinks, I find it somewhat uplifting comparing it to today. Definitely the world has a whole has become a less violent and oppressive place, though pockets of terribleness exist. It's nowhere near the same scale.

You think Chinese people never left China? There's been trade between Europe and China for like, thousands of years. Traveling merchants and all, for one. Sure, a remote village might be surprised to see a Chinese person, but a metropolitan area could feasibly have a few people of Chinese descent just living there.

NAYRT

Trade between places doesn't necessarily mean that there was direct contact between people from those places. So, like, when you're talking about China and Europe, trade between those two places was generally facilitated by extraordinarily dense and well-developed trade networks and intermediaries and middlemen (eg the silk road), more than by direct interchange by specific individual merchants.

I'm not saying that there were never people from China in medieval Europe - there's a few records of people who did it, and of course there's no way of saying with certainty that others didn't do it. But it certainly would have been very exceptional, even taking into account the real links between Chinese and European societies in the period.

DA

Right. A lot of people have the misconception that the Silk Road was a trail that people used from one end to the other, when it was more of a distribution network where goods went from node to node to node with each node being a city. And the further out from your origin you went, the less people spoke your language. It had to go through all the intermediary languages in between, and people at both ends weren't able to understand each other.

I don’t speak Chinese today and I’m not familiar with the local customs. I’ve visited China several times.

I would need to do more research and preparation if I travel to another time, but if we’re going to be talking about time travel like it’s Tourism Extreme Edition anyway then I see no reason why survival on a visit is such a big deal.

Not going to touch on the original discussion but this is a bad argument. Of course traveling today where the world has become much more globalized and people are more familiar with other countries and races is possible. Everyone travels everywhere these days outside of a few dangerous and hostile areas. Compared to even 20 years ago which is barely the past, getting around is much easier with mobile phones, online translation services, internet, and digital banking. We take all that for granted now.

I don't speak Chinese either and while I might visit China today, I wouldn't be successful visiting there anytime out of "modern day," and if you're going to stick to modern day, why time travel?

NAYRT but people did manage to travel before the modern day. It's a thing that did happen. It was much less easy than the present day, and it would help a lot if you could figure out some kind of interpreter or guide type situation (if there's no Magical Language Button in the time travel machine), but it's also definitely not impossible. It depends a lot on the period and place.

As a time traveler, you have such a great advantage when choosing to go to the past. You know, since it already happened. Depending on where you choose to go, you could potentially do so much research on the time and place, to say nothing of the superior scientific knowledge you already possess as a modern person going into the past. It’s less “off into the unknown” than even pre-modern travelers had to deal with, and even they managed to get around just fine.

You get to choose. That’s the key. If I say I want to spend one day wandering the streets of Rome at the height of the empire, you think I’m just going to do that without figuring out exactly how I should look and behave so as not to attract trouble? I would no more do that than I would go off to a foreign country today without any preparation. Yes, travel comes with risk, always: that’s why you plan and keep your wits about you. To be all “oh no, I only speak English and I don’t understand these strange customs, I’m definitely going to die” is rather pathetic.

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[ SECRET POST #4063 ]

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