Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Referring to different instances of the same character in time travel

The Magic 2.0 series by Scott Meyer has this situation with a core character (so it's not a passing situation). The narrator and the characters identify the two as Brit the Elder and Brit the Youn...

posted 5y ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:25:16Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46537
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T12:25:16Z (about 5 years ago)
The _Magic 2.0_ series by Scott Meyer has this situation with a core character (so it's not a passing situation). The narrator _and the characters_ identify the two as Brit the Elder and Brit the Younger. When more time-travel shenanigans happen, we also encounter Brit the Even Elder and Brit the Much Younger, which doesn't seem sustainable but these are shorter scenes.

An alternative to these kinds of sequential references is "place of origin" references, if that's meaningful to you. If you have a time-traveler from way in the future visiting a modern-day character, they might be New York Bob and Alpha Centauri Bob or, more ominously, Last-Days Bob and Post-Cataclysm Bob. Any reference that readers and all involved characters will (come to) understand and that is _durable_ works.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-07-10T15:06:04Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 8