blamebrampton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blamebrampton) wrote2008-08-26 11:07 pm
blamebrampton) wrote2008-08-26 11:07 pm
Time after time
Before I embark on today's chatter, anyone who has an interest in next-generation HP fic should go and read Cal's post here. It's a brilliant new plan that should be supported! And I'm not telling you about it, go and read!
Now onto a little thinky bit. It's not a rant, more a tip. I've been going back over some of the AS/S fest stories I missed, slowly slowly. And something that's occurred to me is that pretty much all of my favourite stories had a real sense of time to them.
The Epilogue to DH is set in 2017. That's eight years in the future. Eight years does not sound like a ong time, but it is. Think about what life was like in 2000: I bet most of you had never heard of Osama bin Laden, the iPod was still on the drawing board, Windows 2000 was cutting-edge and Hillary Clinton was having a year of political successes. Eight years from now, things will have changed just as much.
Now it can be hard to play speculation, believe me that I know this to be true! So I understand why some people choose not to go there. But for stories set in classic HP era, or even Marauders era, why do some people not think back 10 or 20 years to what life was like, what people wore, and how people spoke?
Note that it's some. There are people out there who do an amazing job of researching or remembering their eras. For the rest, the internet is your friend. Vintage television series are easily come by (takes a brief mental pause for visions of a wave of Professionals-inspired H/D, decides that would be quite funny, moves on), and everyone has novels from the 1990s, '80s and '70s on their bookshelves. Embrace them.
And, there's no gentle way to say this, try and research what was happening in Britain at the time. It's not what was happening in America. Well, except for the fact that Reagan and Thatcher were both making us all very nervous indeed.
Now onto a little thinky bit. It's not a rant, more a tip. I've been going back over some of the AS/S fest stories I missed, slowly slowly. And something that's occurred to me is that pretty much all of my favourite stories had a real sense of time to them.
The Epilogue to DH is set in 2017. That's eight years in the future. Eight years does not sound like a ong time, but it is. Think about what life was like in 2000: I bet most of you had never heard of Osama bin Laden, the iPod was still on the drawing board, Windows 2000 was cutting-edge and Hillary Clinton was having a year of political successes. Eight years from now, things will have changed just as much.
Now it can be hard to play speculation, believe me that I know this to be true! So I understand why some people choose not to go there. But for stories set in classic HP era, or even Marauders era, why do some people not think back 10 or 20 years to what life was like, what people wore, and how people spoke?
Note that it's some. There are people out there who do an amazing job of researching or remembering their eras. For the rest, the internet is your friend. Vintage television series are easily come by (takes a brief mental pause for visions of a wave of Professionals-inspired H/D, decides that would be quite funny, moves on), and everyone has novels from the 1990s, '80s and '70s on their bookshelves. Embrace them.
And, there's no gentle way to say this, try and research what was happening in Britain at the time. It's not what was happening in America. Well, except for the fact that Reagan and Thatcher were both making us all very nervous indeed.
no subject
How can one research what the Wizarding world was like 10 years ago or how it will be in 10 year's time? Whatever the era described in a story, it'll still take place in an imaginary world. We have no way (in canon anyway) to know what progress would bring n the future or how it evolved in the past. Some might even argue that the notion of progress is alien to the wizarding world, which is all about tradition and immobilism....
That said, I think my own story does a pretty good job avoiding the traps you mention but, still, I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
no subject
And I'm not sure that canon really does show an immobile world at all, there's an awful lot of change given in the seven years of the books, and more hinted at in the background. Hmmm, perhaps you could actually chart trends from within, might be time for another reread!
no subject
I think the root of this discussion is that, for me, wizarding world and Muggle world are quite separate, so there is in my mind very little overlap between how young wizards and young Muggles talk for instance... and I don't think a walkman or an iPod have any reason to appear in the Potterverse. One could argue they could be brought into Hogwarts by Muggle-borns, but in my mind, that would be forbidden by the Headmaster, who wouldn't want to deal with recycling batteries or wiring Hogwarts with electricity (there is probably a word for that in English, but I don't know it :)
no subject
I think that having things from the past in the wizarding world is quite fine and natural, but have read quite a lot of stories in recent months where there are anachronisms from the future, coming from the writer's time, not the time the story is set. And this always causes me difficulty as a reader. It happens quite a lot in normal publishing, too.