Dear Fanfic Writers
(*blows dust off LJ*) OMG SPIDER IS POSTING, IS IT THE APOCALYPSE? (*checks watch*) Nope. But maybe this'll get me back in the habit.
AAAAAAnyway...
Dear Fanfic Writers:
I'm writing this because I've been reading lots of Supernatural wee!chesters fic, which in canon would take place in the 1980s. But it applies to anyone who writes fic set in the recent past.
I'm an old fart, I know. A lot of people in fandom these days are young enough to be my grandchildren. A lot of you write fanfic, and I love you for it. But when you write, you have to remember that the world was not always as you know it now. Even just a few decades back, things were very different. If you're going to write about the 1970s and 1980s, or even early 1990s, you have to do a bit of rethinking. Maybe even research and digging. But don't worry, I'm here to help you.
Kids, gather 'round and listen to Spider Grandmother's tales of long ago.
1) People did not drink bottled water.
The only bottled waters available were Perrier and Evian, and the only people who drank those were pretentious assholes. The Winchesters would be appalled at people who wasted money on water. It's more expensive, ounce for ounce, than gasoline. People also didn't carry their own water bottles. They drank a glass of water from the tap. They drank things like canned soda when they were on the road. If you asked for a bottled water at a store or a bar you'd be laughed out of the joint.
2) THERE WERE NO MOBILE PHONES. THIS IS WHAT A CELL PHONE LOOKED LIKE:
Even in the 1990s, the only people I knew who had cell phones were drug dealers. Dean could not call Sam while he was in the car. Sam could not pick up unless he was by a landline. People used pay phones. It was easy to be completely unreachable.
3) Speaking of the Impala, seat belts and car seats were optional in the USA until relatively recently. And there were no shoulder-cross seat belts, only lap belts, which were hardly ever used. When I was a baby, my mom held me on her lap in the front seat. My sister and I climbed all over the back seat freely; we even climbed from the back into the front seat, while the car was in motion. My parents said, "Sit down or we're turning this car around!" but that was all. We also rode in the back of the station wagon (there were no minivans), laughing with glee as we slid around on the curves. A 1967 Chevy may have had lap belts, but likely they were buried so deep in the seat cushions they were unreachable.
4) THERE WAS NO INTERNET. THERE WERE NO LAPTOPS. THIS IS WHAT A COMPUTER LOOKED LIKE.
That big black rectangle with the little red light is a floppy disk drive. It was called "floppy" because it was. It was 5.25 inches square. It held 140 kilobytes, equal to 0.13671875 megabytes or 0.000133514404296875 GB. There were no hard drives. The Apple Macintosh was introduced in 1984. It was an amazing, world-changing piece of technology because you didn't have to be a programmer to use it.
It still didn't have a hard drive.
5) The moms in my neighborhood (middle-class, white, suburban) would let the kids out to play and not expect us back until dinner. In the summer, we were then allowed back outside until the streetlights came on. We regularly were sent to neighborhood stores on our bikes to pick up milk etc. I realize I had a rather apple-pie childhood (at least on the surface), but kids were not shepherded around in cars or have their entire day planned with organized activities.
6) Condom use was not universal by any means. This was a time when the worst diseases you could get from sex were curable with penicillin. Or maybe you got herpes - that was a big deal. AIDS awareness didn't hit the mainstream until the early 1980s, but the general public figured if they weren't gay, an intravenous drug user, or Haitian (look it up!), it wasn't their problem. I attended a rather prestigious USA university in 1981 (yes, that is how old I am), and as a member of the gay students' organization we were part of the pilot study on AIDS transmission. It was 100% death sentence, and we lost an entire generation of gay men to the disease. (Look it up, it's horrifying.) Nobody cared until straight white people started getting it. So hardly anyone used condoms.
6) Speaking of sex, it was easier then -- remember, we were coming out of the 1970s when swingers and sex parties had reached the suburbs. Roe vs Wade was finally put in place and a woman's right to choose was unassailable. It was more acceptable to get an abortion than be an "unwed mother". That was a horrible stigma. It remained so well into the 1990s. Google "Dan Quayle Murphy Brown speech."
7) People smoked. There were non-smoking sections in restaurants, but you had to ask to be seated there. You could smoke on trains and airplanes. You could smoke in bars. You could smoke in hotel rooms unless you asked for a non-smoking room, which were not always available. You did not have to go outside in the rain or snow or cold; most people would have considered it horridly rude for a host to ask a guest to go outside to smoke. Most offices allowed smoking at the desks. Smoking was the norm. Full stop.
There are so many other things that I could tell you about, but this is what comes immediately to mind when I read fanfic. And please, don't take this as me hating on you. I love you. I love your fic and I want you to write more -- I just want to help you make your fic the best it could possibly be.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiderine.dreamwidth.org/563206.html. There are
comments over there. I've disabled LJ's Facebook and Twitter cross-posting idiocy as much as I can, but if you're especially concerned, feel free to comment there.
AAAAAAnyway...
Dear Fanfic Writers:
I'm writing this because I've been reading lots of Supernatural wee!chesters fic, which in canon would take place in the 1980s. But it applies to anyone who writes fic set in the recent past.
I'm an old fart, I know. A lot of people in fandom these days are young enough to be my grandchildren. A lot of you write fanfic, and I love you for it. But when you write, you have to remember that the world was not always as you know it now. Even just a few decades back, things were very different. If you're going to write about the 1970s and 1980s, or even early 1990s, you have to do a bit of rethinking. Maybe even research and digging. But don't worry, I'm here to help you.
Kids, gather 'round and listen to Spider Grandmother's tales of long ago.
1) People did not drink bottled water.
The only bottled waters available were Perrier and Evian, and the only people who drank those were pretentious assholes. The Winchesters would be appalled at people who wasted money on water. It's more expensive, ounce for ounce, than gasoline. People also didn't carry their own water bottles. They drank a glass of water from the tap. They drank things like canned soda when they were on the road. If you asked for a bottled water at a store or a bar you'd be laughed out of the joint.
2) THERE WERE NO MOBILE PHONES. THIS IS WHAT A CELL PHONE LOOKED LIKE:
Even in the 1990s, the only people I knew who had cell phones were drug dealers. Dean could not call Sam while he was in the car. Sam could not pick up unless he was by a landline. People used pay phones. It was easy to be completely unreachable.
3) Speaking of the Impala, seat belts and car seats were optional in the USA until relatively recently. And there were no shoulder-cross seat belts, only lap belts, which were hardly ever used. When I was a baby, my mom held me on her lap in the front seat. My sister and I climbed all over the back seat freely; we even climbed from the back into the front seat, while the car was in motion. My parents said, "Sit down or we're turning this car around!" but that was all. We also rode in the back of the station wagon (there were no minivans), laughing with glee as we slid around on the curves. A 1967 Chevy may have had lap belts, but likely they were buried so deep in the seat cushions they were unreachable.
4) THERE WAS NO INTERNET. THERE WERE NO LAPTOPS. THIS IS WHAT A COMPUTER LOOKED LIKE.
That big black rectangle with the little red light is a floppy disk drive. It was called "floppy" because it was. It was 5.25 inches square. It held 140 kilobytes, equal to 0.13671875 megabytes or 0.000133514404296875 GB. There were no hard drives. The Apple Macintosh was introduced in 1984. It was an amazing, world-changing piece of technology because you didn't have to be a programmer to use it.
Click to viewIt still didn't have a hard drive.
5) The moms in my neighborhood (middle-class, white, suburban) would let the kids out to play and not expect us back until dinner. In the summer, we were then allowed back outside until the streetlights came on. We regularly were sent to neighborhood stores on our bikes to pick up milk etc. I realize I had a rather apple-pie childhood (at least on the surface), but kids were not shepherded around in cars or have their entire day planned with organized activities.
6) Condom use was not universal by any means. This was a time when the worst diseases you could get from sex were curable with penicillin. Or maybe you got herpes - that was a big deal. AIDS awareness didn't hit the mainstream until the early 1980s, but the general public figured if they weren't gay, an intravenous drug user, or Haitian (look it up!), it wasn't their problem. I attended a rather prestigious USA university in 1981 (yes, that is how old I am), and as a member of the gay students' organization we were part of the pilot study on AIDS transmission. It was 100% death sentence, and we lost an entire generation of gay men to the disease. (Look it up, it's horrifying.) Nobody cared until straight white people started getting it. So hardly anyone used condoms.
6) Speaking of sex, it was easier then -- remember, we were coming out of the 1970s when swingers and sex parties had reached the suburbs. Roe vs Wade was finally put in place and a woman's right to choose was unassailable. It was more acceptable to get an abortion than be an "unwed mother". That was a horrible stigma. It remained so well into the 1990s. Google "Dan Quayle Murphy Brown speech."
7) People smoked. There were non-smoking sections in restaurants, but you had to ask to be seated there. You could smoke on trains and airplanes. You could smoke in bars. You could smoke in hotel rooms unless you asked for a non-smoking room, which were not always available. You did not have to go outside in the rain or snow or cold; most people would have considered it horridly rude for a host to ask a guest to go outside to smoke. Most offices allowed smoking at the desks. Smoking was the norm. Full stop.
There are so many other things that I could tell you about, but this is what comes immediately to mind when I read fanfic. And please, don't take this as me hating on you. I love you. I love your fic and I want you to write more -- I just want to help you make your fic the best it could possibly be.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiderine.dreamwidth.org/563206.html. There are
comments over there. I've disabled LJ's Facebook and Twitter cross-posting idiocy as much as I can, but if you're especially concerned, feel free to comment there.