[What Came Before]

For some reason I was thinking about time lines and them being disrupted. Say you disrupt one time line and The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series becomes an obscure, unknown work. It just didn't get printed, for one. So imagine in one time line someones a huge fan of Tolkien, gushing about it, in the other time line he doesn't know about it at all and as a adult you hand him one of the books that to him is some obscure unknown, he reads it and...doesn't think much of it. Certainly none of his friends gush about it.

I was thinking, could one say one trait of good writing is that irregardless of timeline, it will have the effect it has? I know, alternate time lines, what the heck? But regardless, the question...?

Maybe you'd say that the lord of the rings series would still have it's effect. It might be a harsh/missplaced example, but I wanted to touch on turbo fandom being non plussed in another time line. And so shear away a layer (or layers) there to the effect the book has.

[What Came Before]

I think LOTR series is a bad example. My reasoning is because I believe it is literally impossible to judge the book by whats inside at this point. Regardless of whether or not you like it, love it, hate it, whatever, some of your feelings and thoughts towards it have been, shall we say, conditioned. Though, maybe this is what makes it a good example... maybe that is your whole point and I totally messed that up. Hmmm, cant decide.

Anyway, good writing irregardless of timeline? I'd like to say sure, but I think anything taken out of context is hard to appreciate.  Einstein said everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing it was stupid.
I think that quote fits nicely into what I'm trying to say. That great is probably only relative to the here/now/current time. Great is a relative term, so when circumstances change so too then does the meaning.

[What Came Before]

A piece of writing that would be successful entirely regardless of historical context?

Not possible unless we, at the very least, allow for the work to be translated. English is the dominant language of literature today entirely due to historical events. Just as one example, change history so the Industrial Revolution started in France or Spain and the British Empire never happened and any work written in English is probably doomed to eternal obscurity.

[What Came Before]

If you consider an alternate timeline that was the same in every way except what/when books were published... then maybe they could still be great. But still only just maybe. I think context is just too important.

[What Came Before]

Well, you could dial back to when we were cavemen or even before humans existed as well, as a disproval.

What I'm suggesting is a way of looking past the gushing of certain people, they way they say this or that is the big thing, simply because in another time line, where the thing they refer to is obscure, if they were to read it (or watch it if it's a movie), they'd be non plussed.

To sheer away that level, towards works which even in a timeline where they are obscure, if the person read it, it'd provoke them still.

You can say the book or movie still relies on history. But not as much as one which banks on a gushing fan but which in an alternate time line would evoke no effect from that same person.

Too grand a claim? (Heh, though I'll take the charge of my raising alternate time lines as being too grand a thing to talk about - guilty as charged!    :mrgreen: )

[What Came Before]

As both Duskweaver and Wilshire highlighted, context seems everything in this case.

[What Came Before]

"But my son, you mean context."

"No, I mean more..."

I think there are certain jokes that both a caveman and a guy walking on the street next to you would both laugh at (most likely physical humour). These jokes are slightly less adherant to history. Less adherant to closer history, anyway.

Some things are beyond (short range) history. Beyond context.

[What Came Before]

If some things are, they escape me, as everything I know is contextual. Some things one man can know for sure, and the same thing another man can be abjectly opposed and against, entirely certain of its falsehood.

Even physical humor. I'd guess that someone who has lived a life of physical abuse at the hands of fathers, mothers, or relatives, would likely not find most physical humor funny.

Emotions, as much as thought, are conditioned by experience. And there never was an experience that wasn't in the past, apart of your own personal history. From history, from the darkness that comes before, we then derive our emotions. If you change what is in that Darkness, even if you don't know whats there, you change the emotions you experience.

[What Came Before]

Humour in history is actually a really good crux to focus on. Would ancient man have found Steve Martin's kinectic comedy funny, Callan? Would they have wondered at the strange creature who just can't seem to walk around? Or would they have wondered at all?

[Wilshire]

Digging through old posts, found this topic. I like the ideas brought up here, so bump.

To me, early man is little different than any other animal (or ape, whatever). Do our current close genetic cousins show similar tastes in comedy? Meaning, unpromted by a laugh track, would a video of 3 stooges be funny? I would think that they would appear as acts of violence, which are inherently not funny(?), rather than some kind of joke.