👻 #229 - Warnings from your future
Judgment Day is still possible.
Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they the shadows of things that may be only?
–Ebenezer Scrooge
Dudes. You guys are gonna go back in time! [….] Look, we know how you feel. We didn’t believe it either when we were you and we us said what we us are saying right now.
–Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Whether it’s a paranormal spirit, a time-displaced double, or a dream-like premonition, characters sometimes encounter visions of their potential future, urging them to take action.
While Scrooge’s visitations prompt him to be more charitable (and pay his employee enough to actually afford medical care for his child), sometimes the message is incomplete or confusing. In Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the titular heroes are convinced to travel through time to ace their history project so that their band can stay together. This is important, according to a representative of the future utopia, because their music is the key to world peace.
Most triumphant, indeed.
There’s just one problem: They don’t know any more about it than the vague idea that they play a song that unites the world. This issue comes back in Bill & Ted Face the Music, where years of confusion and disappointment from not fulfilling their promised destiny lead them down more eclectic musical paths.
Even in situations where things appear to be on an inevitable path, these confrontations and premonitions still offer characters room for choice. There may be some kind of destiny at play, but there’s more dramatic satisfaction from questioning the certainty.
In Looper, the setup works like this: Joe is a hitman for the mob. He shows up at a time and place, and a victim is sent back in time from the future for him to kill. When it’s time for him to be retired, his own future self is sent back to be killed with a final bonus payment.
The only problem for Joe is that his future self decides to run. Old Joe shows Joe a possible path for his future, since for him to exist, it needs to be simultaneously true that Joe both failed to kill his future self, and succeeded in killing his future self. Blogger qntm shares a deeper explanation of the fuzziness of Looper’s time travel.
When they confront each other, Old Joe knows that some things that happened to him may still happen to Young Joe in his future, but it’s also possible for Young Joe to change things that alter Old Joe’s life (like scarring his arm to give him a clue for where to meet and talk):
South Park shows a way to play with the premise as a comedy. In the episode “My Future Self n’ Me,” Stan’s parents hire an actor to pretend to be Stan from the future in order to scare him away from ever trying drugs or alcohol as a kid.
It’s playing at the same fuzzy ability to change the future as Looper, but without the same stakes, since it’s an absurdly obvious lie.
These heralds of the future sometimes aren’t even real, but a mental projection of a character. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke enters a cave to confront a creeping unease he feels:
This battle doesn’t actually happen. Luke doesn’t actually cut Vader’s head off to discover it’s his own face behind the mask. But the imagery plays into Luke’s fear of what he could become if he succumbs to the dark side of the Force, as well as setting up the reveal that Vader is Luke’s father.
These links build a sense of possible destiny for Return of the Jedi, where Emperor Palpatine tempts Luke to replace his father and become the Emperor’s new apprentice. But because of his training, his memory from the cave, and his own intuition about his father, Luke is able to resist the dark side and avoid what the Emperor sees as Luke’s destiny.
Visualizing a possible future doesn’t require time travel or supernatural influence. Mark Frauenfelder points to tactics used by The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, underlining their premise that to create the future, it needs to first be imagined. And Haemin Sunim, author of Love for Imperfect Things: How to accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection, speaks with James Shaheen in this podcast about helping people work past the negative futures they imagine for themselves.
👋 Are you new here?
Inneresting is a weekly newsletter about writing and things that are interesting to writers. Subscribe now to get more Inneresting things sent to your inbox.
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Elizabeth Haste shares a document that she drew up for her and her partner to have a focused conversation on the conditions trans people and their families would need to leave the United States for their health and safety.
What else is inneresting?
Ernie Smith explores a seemingly magical object of Millennial folklore: The Car Cassette Adaptor
Scott from NerdSync explains why Fred from the Mystery Gang wears an ascot.
Instead of your usual video yule log, why not loop these unsettling UK civil defense PSAs that were meant to air on repeat in the event of an imminent nuclear attack?
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
Are you enjoying this newsletter?
📧 Forward it to a friend and suggest they check it out.
🔗 Share a link to this post on social media.
🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art, or Bluesky @ccsont.bsky.social
Winter Break
Inneresting is taking a break next week, but will be back in the New Year!
All the best to you and yours from the Quote-Unquote Apps team.
Post-Credits Scene
Honestly the most accurate prediction AT&T made in these commercials was about the way technology eroded the boundaries between work and personal time.