The Repetition Of Repetition

The issue with any statement along the lines of "a good time loop narrative should be about-" is that it assumes time loops are about anything at all. Naturally, I'm going to counter this by making my own equally subjective assumptions and stating them like facts, because that's what's fun about it. A time loop narrative is whatever you, as the author, would like it to be. It's a storytelling device, it's a neat trope, it's a starting point on a road to anywhere. So here are some ideas!

A good time loop narrative should be about decision making; the necessity of making a choice, and the knowledge that your choice will not matter. It should reinforce how inescapable your situation is - you cannot get out, you can't change this sequence of events, you can't alter fate - and how much you want to change it. A good time loop narrative should be watching a car crash without a phone on you. You can't call for help, but you can't leave to find it either, you are culpable for this tragedy no matter what action or inaction you pick. A good time loop narrative can make you feel like an addict; haunted by the thought that you had a hundred different changes to get off this path, and despairing at how nothing you did or do could have stopped this. Think 'Kentucky Route Zero.' Think of the awful, inevitable uselessness of realising you as the player and as Conway both can't stop him from drinking. A good time loop narrative is like the morning after a friend dies. When you wake up with a sudden urgency, a conviction, and lapse back into numbness once you grasp that there is nothing left for you to do. A good time loop narrative should be a canary in a coal mine, removed from its mine. Taken - with love, such love for something meant to be so temporary - to safety aboveground by the miners. It should be kept in that cycle of near-horror and salvation not out of malice, but by the inability to stand by and see it end, trapped by how it is freed. It should be so small and so lovely.

Now, all of this is really nothing at all, because a time loop is actually about one thing only: a long car journey with somebody you know too well to keep wishing you knew them less, yet too little to guess that they feel the same about you. I hope this helps :3.