Writing the past: pre-series SPN fic as historical fiction
Hey, I'm embroiderama, and when I pitched the idea of this discussion to fleshflutter she was nice enough to ask me to write it up and post it. For those who don't know me, I've been writing in the Supernatural fandom for a bit over four years now. Among other things, I've written quite a few pre-series gen and het (John/Mary and Sam/Jess) stories. I'm sure that I've made some mistakes along the way, but I do try to be very mindful of the time period I'm writing in and the differences between then and now. In a sense, anything that's set in the past is historical fiction, even if it's five years ago rather than five hundred years ago.
The purpose of this post is not to point out any specific stories that may have contained major anachronisms or to make anybody feel bad about anything they may have written. What I see is the potential for plot elements that have been unused or under-used in the fandom. I hope that this post and the discussion that [I hope] follows will give people ideas and plot-bunnies and all manner of happy things.
I'm mainly going to talk about things that relate to communication. I suspect that medicine--things that we take for granted now that were't available in the 80's or 90's--would be a great topic to talk about as well, but I don't know enough to discuss it myself. Please do comment if you want to talk about anachronisms you've noticed related to that or any other sphere of life.
I've read quite a few stories in which the Winchester boys had cell phones in the early 90's. Yes, cell phones were on the market, but I would take a lot of convincing to make me believe that even John Winchester would have a cell phone at that point. They were bulky and expensive, and pre-paid plans were not available. Also, the rural/small-town areas the Winchesters tend to stay in wouldn't likely have had good service.
I know that at this point most kids over the age of ten have their own phones, and I know that cell phones penetrated the market much more quickly in some other countries, but my experience in the early 90's was that mostly only people with high-power jobs had cell phones. It's canon that Dean had his own cell phone by his senior year of high school in 1997, but I imagine it was a fairly new thing.
So, how did the Winchesters communicate before cell phones? I suspect they would have used a combination of pagers, motel room phones, pay phones, calling cards, and answering services. For anybody too young to remember, a pager was a small electronic device usually worn on the belt or in the pocket. To page somebody, you would call the pager number and then dial the number you were calling from. Some people had other numeric codes they'd put at the end of the phone number--like 911 for an emergency. Alphanumeric pagers were eventually available.
Like, say, John has a pager. Dean has a pager once he's old enough to be off on his own. Sam maybe but probably not when he was little. Dean and Sam are staying in a a motel room while John's on a hunt, so when Dean needs to talk to John he calls from the motel phone or a pay phone. If it's a long distance number, he probably uses a pre-paid calling card because motels would charge an arm and a leg for long distance calling, and the pay phone would require a bunch of change otherwise. He leaves the motel room number and eventually John gets the page and calls Dean back. If, say, the boys are staying in an apartment or cabin with no phone, Dean would have to leave the number of a pay phone and then hang out by the pay phone hoping for a call back.
Luckily, there were a LOT more pay phones--in motel and convenience store parking lots, inside diners, on random street corners and alongside roads. And pagers and pager service were relatively cheap and easily available. In the late 80's and very early 90's, though, both wearing a pager and hanging around pay phones was often seeing as an activity common to drug dealers. So, being seen with a pager might have given Dean a bad reputation in, say, middle school.
When other people--say Bobby or Pastor Jim or other contacts--needed to give John non-urgent information over the phone, John might have had an electronic answering service, like voice mail, that people could call and leave messages and then John would call and check for messages periodically.
Another thing I haven't seen explored is the transfer of data pre-internet. We know that in the 70's hunters had to mail information to each other, but in the 80's and 90's they most likely would have faxed information back and forth. I imagine that Bobby and Pastor Jim had fax machines and small photocopiers in order to get book pages into faxable form. John could have gone to a copier store or maybe a public library (or, later, the motel office) to receive the faxes.
I know that some people out there, or some people's parents, were early adopters of technology, carting around humongous brick-sized cell phones in 1991, but does anybody see John Winchester as an early adopter? I see him as the kind of guy who preferred to be away when he was away, not tethered to technology. Sam, OTOH, may have yearned for it but would've had no means to get it back then. I think that keeping these, and other, historical issues in mind could help writers to create new stories with new complications that will be awesome to read.
So, what am I leaving out? Agree or disagree, discussion is very much welcome.
The purpose of this post is not to point out any specific stories that may have contained major anachronisms or to make anybody feel bad about anything they may have written. What I see is the potential for plot elements that have been unused or under-used in the fandom. I hope that this post and the discussion that [I hope] follows will give people ideas and plot-bunnies and all manner of happy things.
I'm mainly going to talk about things that relate to communication. I suspect that medicine--things that we take for granted now that were't available in the 80's or 90's--would be a great topic to talk about as well, but I don't know enough to discuss it myself. Please do comment if you want to talk about anachronisms you've noticed related to that or any other sphere of life.
I've read quite a few stories in which the Winchester boys had cell phones in the early 90's. Yes, cell phones were on the market, but I would take a lot of convincing to make me believe that even John Winchester would have a cell phone at that point. They were bulky and expensive, and pre-paid plans were not available. Also, the rural/small-town areas the Winchesters tend to stay in wouldn't likely have had good service.
I know that at this point most kids over the age of ten have their own phones, and I know that cell phones penetrated the market much more quickly in some other countries, but my experience in the early 90's was that mostly only people with high-power jobs had cell phones. It's canon that Dean had his own cell phone by his senior year of high school in 1997, but I imagine it was a fairly new thing.
So, how did the Winchesters communicate before cell phones? I suspect they would have used a combination of pagers, motel room phones, pay phones, calling cards, and answering services. For anybody too young to remember, a pager was a small electronic device usually worn on the belt or in the pocket. To page somebody, you would call the pager number and then dial the number you were calling from. Some people had other numeric codes they'd put at the end of the phone number--like 911 for an emergency. Alphanumeric pagers were eventually available.
Like, say, John has a pager. Dean has a pager once he's old enough to be off on his own. Sam maybe but probably not when he was little. Dean and Sam are staying in a a motel room while John's on a hunt, so when Dean needs to talk to John he calls from the motel phone or a pay phone. If it's a long distance number, he probably uses a pre-paid calling card because motels would charge an arm and a leg for long distance calling, and the pay phone would require a bunch of change otherwise. He leaves the motel room number and eventually John gets the page and calls Dean back. If, say, the boys are staying in an apartment or cabin with no phone, Dean would have to leave the number of a pay phone and then hang out by the pay phone hoping for a call back.
Luckily, there were a LOT more pay phones--in motel and convenience store parking lots, inside diners, on random street corners and alongside roads. And pagers and pager service were relatively cheap and easily available. In the late 80's and very early 90's, though, both wearing a pager and hanging around pay phones was often seeing as an activity common to drug dealers. So, being seen with a pager might have given Dean a bad reputation in, say, middle school.
When other people--say Bobby or Pastor Jim or other contacts--needed to give John non-urgent information over the phone, John might have had an electronic answering service, like voice mail, that people could call and leave messages and then John would call and check for messages periodically.
Another thing I haven't seen explored is the transfer of data pre-internet. We know that in the 70's hunters had to mail information to each other, but in the 80's and 90's they most likely would have faxed information back and forth. I imagine that Bobby and Pastor Jim had fax machines and small photocopiers in order to get book pages into faxable form. John could have gone to a copier store or maybe a public library (or, later, the motel office) to receive the faxes.
I know that some people out there, or some people's parents, were early adopters of technology, carting around humongous brick-sized cell phones in 1991, but does anybody see John Winchester as an early adopter? I see him as the kind of guy who preferred to be away when he was away, not tethered to technology. Sam, OTOH, may have yearned for it but would've had no means to get it back then. I think that keeping these, and other, historical issues in mind could help writers to create new stories with new complications that will be awesome to read.
So, what am I leaving out? Agree or disagree, discussion is very much welcome.