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Anachronic Order: Difference between revisions
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This is very popular in [[Lit Fic]] and certain types of art film, along with any character who is [[Unstuck in Time]].
The simplest form of this, [[Simultaneous Arcs|covering the same time frame from different perspectives,]] is equivalent to a [[Rashomon Plot]]. One way of doing this is to have a "present" storyline going on as the "past" occasionally pops up and mixes things around, as a variation of [[How We Got Here]]. Or a character spends time using a [[Whole
According to [[The Other Wiki]], this is professionally known as "[[Non Linear Story|non-linear]]" style. Sometimes this is also referred to as [[Quentin Tarantino (Creator)|Quentinuity]].
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== Anime & Manga ==
* ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'':
** The novels aren't in chronological order. This was retained when the [[Animated Adaptation|anime]] was shown in Japan [[Mind Screw|in meta-random order]], and helpfully had Haruhi and Kyon arguing over the number of the next episode in the [["On the Next..."|previews]]. The English happens to put the episodes in chronological order, except for the first episode, but the special edition DVDs have the original order as well. The opinions about what order is "better" to watch differ. Notably, the series is paced with the anachronic order in mind, and climaxes halfway chronologically.
** The second season kicked off by inserting the new episodes into the rerun of the first season via chronological order (well, chronological except for the [[Time Travel]]). Thus, "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody", part of season 2, was inserted after the [[Baseball Episode]], "The Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi". The second season is thus [[Anachronic Order|not a sequel of the first season]].
* ''[[Boogiepop Phantom]]'' includes shifts in both timeframe and perspective.
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* A rare non-[[Mind Screw]] example: ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia (Manga)|Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' is a mainly yonkoma series about history that doesn't even attempt to be in chronological order. It may be World War II one strip, the Seven Years War the next, then at the height of the Roman Empire in the next. To really understand it one needs either to have paid attention in World History or be basically skilled at wiki-fu, but the anachronic order doesn't have much to do with that.
** The anime makes a bit more sense, since each episode is usually centred around a single time period. It's still pretty anachronistic, though.
* ''[[Ga Rei Zero]]'' starts off with a [[Non
* ''[[Twentieth Century Boys|20th Century Boys]]'' has five or so timelines interconnected and two more which take place in virtual reality.
* ''[[Billy Bat]]''. 1940s to {{spoiler|Biblical times to the 1950s to feudal Japan.}}
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* Chapters 24 and 25 of ''[[Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality (Fanfic)|Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality]]''.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' [[Fanfic]] ''[[The Joy of Battle (Fanfic)|The Joy of Battle: Historical Espionage Action]]'' is told non-linearly with scenes being placed next to one another because of their similarity and several story lines happening in different times. Yet... it all makes sense.
* Used in the [[Fan Fiction|fanfic]] ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero (Fanfic)|Kyon Big Damn Hero]]'', in [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|the Anachronic Order Explanation Arc]].
* As a nod to ''Hetalia,'' this is used throughout the ''[[Nineteen Eighty Three Doomsday Stories]].'' The time period jumps between 1983 and 2010, with a further jump to 2031.
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* Steven Brust's [[Dragaera]] novels about Vlad Taltos are written out of chronological order, with the original intention that they should each be able to stand alone. Some individual novels are told out of order. ''Jhereg'' alternates between two timelines, while ''Tiassa'' has three timelines that have whole books in between them. Brust wrote ''Tiassa'' with the specific intention of making it impossible to place the novels in chronological order.
* ''The Dispossessed'' by [[Ursula K Le Guin|Ursula K. Le Guin]] starts at the midpoint of the story, with the protagonist Shevek boarding a spaceship. The odd-numbered chapters follow Shevek from that point onwards, while the even-numbered chapters fill in his life before that point, in order, with the last even-numbered chapter covering the events just before chapter one. This structure reflects Shevek's calling as a theoretical physicist trying to reconcile his culture's contradictory sequential and cyclic views of time.
* The novels in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Revelation Space'' universe mostly do this to some degree--the catch is that, because of [
* A lot of big influential Hispanic writers were fond of using this one, probably ever since Julio Cortázar wrote his book ''Rayuela'', which has effectively two stories in one book: one which is found reading the book from front to back, another reading the book in the order given by the author. [[Gabriel Garcia Marquez]] also used the Anachronic Order in quite a bit of his stories.
* Seen in ''The Time Traveler's Wife''. It would be hard to make the scenes strictly chronological anyway, since the two protagonists are living them in different orders. (And Henry lives a number of them ''twice''.)
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** Elric is particularly prone to anachronic crossovers with other Eternal Champion incarnations; and they other incarnations are more likely to recall him, than he is to recall them. It's strongly implied that Elric is, if not the first incarnation of the Champion (that appears to be Erekose) at least the earliest in "real-world" chronology.
* The [[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]] novel ''Imzadi'' combines multiple nested flashbacks with time travel, then lampshades it with section titles, starting with "The End" and progressing at random.
* In the infamous ''[[
* The main story of ''[[Illuminatus]]'' takes place in a pretty linear fashion, across a few months in [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|the spring of 197X]], but takes detours along the way to a few years in the future, ancient [[Atlantis]], and everywhere in between.
* ''A River Runs Through It'' by Norman Maclean is a elegiac mishmash of memories, one scene leading to another by the way they are connected in the narrator's mind, not in chronological order. It's a deft rendering of how memory works in reality, but it makes for tough reading until you understand the trick. [[A River Runs Through It|The movie]] chose not to try to replicate the effect, perhaps wisely.
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* ''[[A Prayer for Owen Meany]]'' is in chronological order of chapter topics, but the lengthy digressions can go years forward or backward in the timeline. At times the author seems to expect the reader to be confused, providing the same information over again when it's necessary to understand two different events.
* ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series does this out of necessity in order to cover the journeys of its [[Loads and Loads of Characters|many characters]], most of whom are in different places at any given time. While a given event is never shown twice, it is not uncommon to have a character do something in one book, to have another character react to that event several books later. And occasionally you'll see people reacting to something secondhand, to have a chapter come along later from the point of view of someone who was there, describing the event as it happened. Book Ten, ''Crossroads of Twilight'', takes place almost entirely over the span of time covered by Book Nine, ''Winter's Heart''.
* The ''[[
* ''Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe'' works this way. Often, there will be a present-day chapter in which Ninnie tells a story, as she knows it, then a chapter with the entire story.
* This trope and [[Neologism|Neologisms]] are the reason why many people give up to the Brazilian you-must-read-book ''[[The Devil to Pay In The Backlands]]'', in which the first person narrator tells his own history in the way it comes to mind, and justifies himself, because "to tell anything right and straight, it must be a thing of little value".
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* The [[Power Rangers]] metaseries' order, by season goes something like this. [[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers|1992, 1993, 1994, 1995]], [[Power Rangers ZEO|1996]], [[Power Rangers Turbo|1997]], [[Power Rangers in Space|1998]], [[Power Rangers Lost Galaxy|1999]], [[Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue|2000]], [[Power Rangers Time Force|2001]](with four of the rangers, the technology, villains, and story originating in the year 3000), [[Power Rangers Wild Force|2002]], [[Power Rangers Ninja Storm|2003]], [[Power Rangers Dino Thunder|2004]], and... [[Power Rangers SPD|2025]]? Then back to normal [[Power Rangers Mystic Force|2006]], [[Power Rangers Operation Overdrive|2007]], and [[Power Rangers Jungle Fury|2008]]. The [[Power Rangers RPM|seventeenth season]] is set, er, ''some time between 2028 and 2096''. It seems likely that [[Power Rangers Samurai|the 2011 season]] will be set in the present day.
* ''[[Kamen Rider Kiva]]'' keeps switching from 2008 to 1986.
* The [[
** Another Moffat episode, "The Big Bang" features the Doctor travelling back in time through his personal timeline three times. The [[Cold Opening]] is also set several minutes (from the audience's perspective, really it's {{spoiler|1900 years}} after the opening titles. Similar cold openings occurred in "The Girl in the Fireplace", "Love & Monsters" and "Silence in the Library".
** We see River Song as {{spoiler|a month-old baby}} in her fifth appearance, "A Good Man Goes to War" (2011), and dying in her first appearance "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" (2008). In simple terms, her timeline is opposite to the Doctor's. Except when it isn't. {{spoiler|In fact, "The Impossible Astronaut" has three Rivers at once, with one of them witnessing the other's actions, which is seen from the other River's POV in "The Wedding of River Song"}}.
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== Radio ==
* The ''[[
** ''Flip-Flop'' can be heard in either order because the cliffhanger at the end of the White Disc leads into the start of the Black Disc, and the cliffhanger at the end of the Black Disc leads into the start of the White Disc. It is ''bizarre'' because there are two {{spoiler|Doctors, two Mels, two of (almost) everyone else, and two overlapping timelines with bidirectional time travel in each}} which makes unravelling the order of events a mindblowing exercise.
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[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:Anachronic Order]]
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