The Disambiguation Thread

[sholio]

This followed from a conversation with with_apostrophe, who pointed out (very aptly) that American fic writers don't tend to consider people from other countries when they throw cultural references into their stories. I was trying to figure out how to annotate mine in a way that wouldn't be obtrusive or annoying, and also trying to figure out just what needed to be annotated. What's obscure and what's well-known? Eventually I came up with this instead.

Here is where you post questions about my stories. It can be a reference that you didn't get, or something plotwise that didn't make sense, or why I made a particular story decision, or, heck, somewhere that I screwed up on technology or medicine or grammar. Remember:

- There are no stupid questions (no matter what Rodney McKay might claim).

- Questions that are critical of my stories are fine. I wouldn't have posted this thread if I minded being asked about something.

Ready ... set ... ask!

(Note: The word disambiguation is snurched from Wikipedia.)

Comments

[sholio]

Woops, missed this the first time around...

all I know about the Fab Four comes from Atlantis and various discussions in fandom about it!

The Fab Four are the Beatles, right? But aren't they British to begin with?

[leesa_perrie]

Yeah, yeah, I meant the Fantastic Four (I think) - you know, Thing, Torch, Mr Fantastic and the other one.

Now it's turn for me to *head-deak*.

Ow.

[sholio]

*laughs* Okay, that makes SO much more sense now!

Pop culture references are always kind of a hit-or-miss thing anyway. I know there are a lot of them that I don't get. And they're incredibly generational too -- people obviously are most likely to get references from their teenage/early adulthood.

[leesa_perrie]

Very true - though it's amazing how many things from my teenage/adulthood are American, especially the TV shows! A Team, Dukes of Hazzard, Man from UNCLE, Batman, Logan's Run (more my childhood, and I mean the show NOT that dreadful film!), Starsky and Hutch, Space 1999, Battlestar Galactica (original), Buck Rogers, even Dallas (*shame* - Hey, how about bringing Carson back like Bobby Ewing? Erm, okay, let's NOT!!) and a spoof soap opera called Soap (does anyone else remember that one?)

And no, I've never like the original series of Star Trek, though Next Gen was cool at the time (don't think I could stand it now though, too eighties!) Voyager is my fav of the Star Trek shows.

There were some British ones like Blake's 7 (which I can't stand now!), Doctor Who (of course!), The Avengers, Dempsey and Makepeace - but definitely more American than British that I remember off hand. Says something about Britain at that time (and to some extent even today), doesn't it? I suspect there were a lot of other British things I watched at the time, but funny how it's mainly the American shows that stand out!

Oh well, more rambling, and a bit off topic at that! I think it's the inner-Rodney (or geek) coming out!!

[beckiezra.livejournal.com]

Oh poor Invisible Woman, forgotten once again...

[leesa_perrie]

Ah, so that's the other one! See, never read the comic or seen the film, and it's been a few weeks since I saw First Strike on you tube (and MGM complained to you tube and all the stargate eps and lots of the music vids are gone now. Oh well.)

I thought I was doing well to remember that many of them!!!