Timelines

[sholio]

Here's an interesting meta-point to ponder. SGA went off the air in 2008 (woe!) -- well, early 2009, I guess. As the fandom lives on, eventually the show is going to recede farther into the past, especially with regards to pop culture and technology -- two things (especially the later) that tend to play a role in a lot of SGA fic.

Presumably anyone writing fic set in the early seasons of SG-1 already has to deal with this, since 1998 was an eon ago in science, technology and geek subculture -- no iPhones or Blackberries, no Facebook or Twitter, no Buffy or Firefly or New Who, no Google or Wikipedia, no human genome sequencing ...

Even 2004 was long enough ago now that anyone writing "Rising" tags is going to have to stop and ask themselves, "Did they have flash drives? What were cell phones like then?"

But on the other hand, the Stargate world isn't exactly our world, either. Aside from the obvious presence of Stargates and aliens, there are also little things like President Hayes ... it's almost our world, but not quite. So, while most people writing fic (including me) tend to be working off the assumption that they went to the Pegasus Galaxy in 2004 and fit the timeline around that, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way; there are few enough overt references to dates or ages in the show that it could just as easily exist in some kind of nebulous "now", where technology and pop culture references are updated according to whatever's current, in 2010 or ten years in the future.

I'm starting to realize that we're going to have to figure this out! Individual fans will probably resolve it in different ways (for one person, the nebulous "now" might work great; another might strip out any references to pop culture that specifically dates her story; another might meticulously research 2006 computer technology), but it's going to start coming up, and quite soon.

I'm curious if anyone else has thought about this? Thinky thoughts? I'm also curious how fanfic writers handle it when they work in fandoms which are already significantly dated, like "Starsky & Hutch" or "Man From Uncle" *looks at xparrot* ... do you research the era of the show? Do anachronisms like cell phones bother you, or does it only matter if the show is very specifically rooted in a particular historical time (like a Western)? Does this question come up a lot in older fandoms, or do most people tend to ignore it? I think it's interesting that, as many fandoms as I've wandered through, this is something I've never really thought about before -- I guess that most of my active fandoms have been set in very far-removed times and places, or have been for currently running shows in which my interest didn't really last beyond its cancellation, so it hasn't come up for me very much ...

Comments

[tipper-green.livejournal.com]

While I ponder how to answer this properly, I will say this--I read a story once that had a flashback to either Rodney or John's childhood (can't remember which it was, now), and the one thing I remember *clearly* is that the author used a cell phone in the story. I was so surprised, I actually stopped reading. It was such a glaring (and, honestly, stupid) mistake that I couldn't get over it. So, I guess, what I'm saying is, if the historical inaccuracy is glaring, like which I just described, it will completely ruin a story for me. A cell phone in the 80s is about as obvious a mistake to me as, say, having it in the old west (or, hell, the Avengers - hence Emma Peel as the icon).

Now, ten years, give or take, not a big deal (big difference between 2000 and now, but its still forgiveable), but once you're back a couple of decades, I think it is necessary that you do the research (if you don't already know the era), to get the tech right. I.e. if you choose to use a particular setting and time, it's worth it to make that setting real.

That being said, it's not hard with a show like SGA to stay within the time frame, because you'll just use the tech that's used on the show (the radios, the P90s, etc). As long as you stick to what you see, I think you're pretty safe.

Oh...one other thought, as someone who has written old west (and some other time periods), I will also say that, the farther away you get from the present, the more flexible readers become (unless they're real sticklers). So, in my M7 days, I mostly used "late 19th Century" tech. When you think that it was the time of the industrial revolution, of Edison and Tesla, and the advent of fast world-wide trade, that's pretty damn lazy of me. But the show was fast and loose with dates and times, so I could afford to be, and it doesn't really harm the story-telling to use, say, a Colt 45 instead of a Colt 1860 AP, even if its before 1872, because not many people would notice. (Not that I would--I'm anal, so I researched a lot, but I didn't need to. No one noticed. Hell, if other people made mistakes like that in their fics, I didn't notice either).

But if you're talking living memory, readers are a lot less forgiving.

Does that make sense?

[sholio]

I read a story once that had a flashback to either Rodney or John's childhood (can't remember which it was, now), and the one thing I remember *clearly* is that the author used a cell phone in the story. I was so surprised, I actually stopped reading. It was such a glaring (and, honestly, stupid) mistake that I couldn't get over it.

hahahaha, really? Um, wow. Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous ...

But it's only an error if you assume that John and Rodney were kids in the 80s, right? I mean, obviously they would have been if you count backwards from now (and if you take 2004 to be the date when "Rising" takes place). But twenty years from now, if the show doesn't remain fixed to a pre-determined set of dates, then they would have been kids in an era that had cell phones -- see what I mean? The question isn't really whether cell phones are anachronistic for the '80s, which they obviously are, but whether John and Rodney were and will always be 70s/80s kids.

I think you have a really good point about living memory vs. older settings, though -- as well as subtle vs. obvious anachronisms. Most of us who are in fandom today grew up in the 70s/80s/90s, so we know what it's supposed to look like and are correspondingly less tolerant of errors. I don't think I'd notice an anachronism in an Old West setting unless it was really blatant, though (and I get the impression that most people writing Westerns, at least modern ones, are setting them in a sort of generic late 19th century, too).

[ariadne83]

Haha I had this problem with the current Rodney fic I'm writing. It starts out before he joins the Stargate program, and I wanted to have Jeannie give him a Babylon 5 set for Christmas, which required the dance of "Did they have DVDs back then?" Answer: no. The box set was released on VHS (oh the horror LOL)

[sholio]

It's kind of shocking to realize how recent all of this technology is, that we take for granted now! I remember when my roommate got a DVD player in about '99, along with a bunch of DVD movies, and we were all so very taken with it -- playing with the special features, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the scene selections! And now, video tapes seem so hopelessly outdated and difficult to use that it makes you wonder how we ever dealt with them. (Actually, for that matter, I've noticed lately that I'm finding DVDs clunky and limited compared to watching a movie or TV show on a computer. Ha. Technology marches on ...)

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I've actually been thinking about this a lot, recently. I've started to notice anachronisms even in SGA -- turns of phrase that are current or net-slang that they wouldn't know, use of google/wikipedia/youtube.

I think fandom in general is only starting to notice how incredibly rapid cultural (and language) change has been in the past decade. I don't know how older fandoms have dealt with it -- Starsky & Hutch, dueSouth, etc.

[sholio]

Noticing anachronisms in SGA fic is what you mean, right?

I haven't had any jump out at me lately. But, then, most of what I've been reading has been pretty straightforward action-adventure stuff, and it hasn't come up, I guess. I fully expect to start noticing them creeping in, though.

I think fandom in general is only starting to notice how incredibly rapid cultural (and language) change has been in the past decade. I don't know how older fandoms have dealt with it -- Starsky & Hutch, dueSouth, etc.

Based on the comment under yours, I gather that older fandoms (some, at least) have been aware of it for some time -- pretty much as soon as society and technology marches away from their canon! It's going to be interesting to see how SGA fandom deals with it.

[sgafan.livejournal.com]

Ha! great discussion :) I had the HARDEST time writing Emergency! fiction about 10 years ago, just because it was 70's medicine, culture and technology. Urk! I was a small child in the 70's. LOL

I think with SGA it is more of the "nebulous now" with updates as updates come. For example, now maybe expedition members do have iPods. But I think adding iPods doesn't change the story or the universe but rather brings it along with us. They still have laptops (though Oui! I was noticing how far laptop technology has come when I watched Rising recently. Old laptops! LOL) and other gear. Lots of it is timeless like the functionality of projectile weapons etc. Maybe Shep carries a newer gun, but he's still Shep and he's still who he is and he still uses that gun to kill Wraith. ;)

I think also Atlantis especially has the benefit of the Ancient tech that is woven into the fandom that I don't think we're in danger of surpassing in our real world any time soon. Having that as an strong established part of canon tends to keep the show current because background devices like wireless, flash drives, iPods and other "Earth tech" may change, but that tech is never surpassed so it keeps us grounded in the fandom we know.

I'm wondering if I'm making any sense... LOL

When I wrote Emergency, I talked to people that practiced medicine in that era, that knew the era and did my research as well. Yes, it did bother me to see things in fic that didn't belong there. ("yeah, that was invented ten years later" kinds of things) but with SGA unless you specifically say "this story takes place right after Rising" (and therefore the last half of 2004) it can be ambiguous. If you do set it, then either steer clear of the tech, be ambiguous about it, or make sure that the expedition members aren't carrying around a 5th generation 16GB Nano. ;)

This topic was discussed extensively in the Emergency fandom, at least with people I associated with and they even had webpages dedicated to the medical technology and culture of the times, etc to help. (bellbottoms, man! Bellbottoms! ;) )

I think SGA will be subject to that some, but has the benefit of Ancient tech, an alien city (and planets) and another galaxy. There's enough "ethereal" elements that its not as rigid as, for example, a show that takes place in Los Angeles County, California in the 1970's. :)

[sholio]

Thank you for the information -- that's fascinating, and exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about! I haven't actually seen "Emergency", but I expect that it could take place in any era -- that a hospital show wouldn't be specifically tied to the 1970s in the way that, say, MASH has to take place in the Korean War or it wouldn't be MASH. But the show did air in the '70s, so the fandom has kept it there, and does the research needed to keep it there, right? That's exactly what I'd wanted to know, and that's very fascinating that there was that much research infrastructure in the fandom for keeping it accurate.


I think SGA will be subject to that some, but has the benefit of Ancient tech, an alien city (and planets) and another galaxy. There's enough "ethereal" elements that its not as rigid as, for example, a show that takes place in Los Angeles County, California in the 1970's. :)

Yeah, that's true! And the technology as shown in the show is also cutting-edge enough that it ought to be awhile before it really starts looking dated -- the radios, the tablet computers and such, plus having it mixed in with ultra-fancy Ancient tech.

[parisindy.livejournal.com]

i am easily as in to SGA now as i was when it went bad at the end of season 3

and man the fic has still be totally awesome...

i found the same with Andromeda that the fans really made it their own, there was some facts that were used in so many fanfics i wasn't sure if they were canon or some fact the fans made up and ran with.

[sholio]

That's one thing that tends to happen with closed-canon shows -- fanon kinda running away with the fandom once there's no longer any new canon to straighten people out when they get tangled up ...

[sheron]

Personally I much prefer fics which make no references to years or particular year-specific technology so that I can enjoy them as though it's in the now. Sure, there's a time and place for "historical" fiction, but in general -- and in particular in a fantasy or sci-fi universe -- it's very comfortable for me to "unknow" the dates these episodes aired and think of the canon as 'current'.

[sheron]

Also you can always imagine that the SG-1/SGA themselves are advanced in terms of technology because of scavanging. There's ample precedent in canon of SG-1 for how much alien technology they're holding back from the general population because they wouldn't be able to explain it away.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

This just came up over at fanficrants, amusingly (I mean, everything does, but this was this week). I was among those voting for keeping stories suited to stated show timelines if they're given, which they are in SG-1 and in SGA ... unless the author states that the timelines are shifted, which I'm perfectly fine with. Instant-AU isn't a problem if the author acknowledges it.

(The context of the discussion was anachronistic canons reacting to modern social or political events, so I used "Original Recipe Carson Beckett and Elizabeth Weir discussing Obama's health plan" and "Harry unable to bear attending fourth-year potions because he's just so distraught over Michael Jackson's death" as examples of subjects that would rudely eject me from a fic if the author didn't note the timeline wonkiness.)

So yeah, I vote on the time-accuracy side, and I like the comments above that point out there generally isn't much need to bring in anachronistic content anyway, given all the superior Ancient-and-other-advanced-society techs they can play with in this fandom.

[tipper-green.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link! I've been cracking up for the last ten minutes reading some of the posts on that site. I haven't been this amused since discovering Fanwank! LOL!

So far, my favorite has to be this one about the Zombie warning (http://community.livejournal.com/fanficrants/9325748.html). That's just classic.

If I had one thing about SGA that I thought was interesting, it was that they show itself generally avoided any kind of current event references. I suppose, that was done in order to provide a little bit of timelessness, which is sort of the other side of this coin: how to write to *avoid* being in the wrong timeframe....

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

It's not something I've particularly worried about, myself, since I don't like to get heavy on the technology (because I'm lazy like that). And pop culture references I try to be careful with, not because of time-period issues, but because too much pop-culture, IMO, can be obnoxious (I'm sorry, but I really don't think Sheppard would go around saying frak or frell in casual conversation or to substitute for a swear word, and it makes me grind my teeth in irritation when a writer has him say that).

I do pause when it comes to pop-references though, and whether or not a show might be on DVD (I had an issue with that in a story. I wanted John to give Rodney a special edition Star Trek DVD set, but had no idea if that existed, yet. I was rather paranoid about it since I didn't want to offend Trek fans. Or, more spefically, I didn't want Trek fans giving me grief about it).

Of course, as mentioned above, once we get into decades then we can talk. It drives me crazy when 2000 tech ends up in the 80s (in non-Dr who fic, that is;))

[sholio]

I think for the most part that you're probably not the only one; I doubt if it'll really come up that much for most writers (including me) because we're just not writing stories in which the timeline matters all that much. The show gives us the tech, and a lot of the pop culture references are built in already (we know Rodney likes Batman, and Sheppard reads comics; Teyla and Ronon's pop culture wouldn't be affected by what's happening on Earth in any case). I think it's going to be kind of insidious, though -- it'll creep in, in the form of slang, or common technology that we take for granted.

Luckily (for us as writers, anyway *g*) I don't think there have been any really big technology shifts between 2004 and 2010 ... not like the previous decade, anyhow. No one could have predicted in 1995 that ten years later, we'd have tiny, ubiquitous cell phones and Google. It doesn't seem like the last few years have seen much of that sort of thing, at least not in the areas that pertain to SGA. If they made some kind of huge medical breakthrough, say, or the military adopted a revolutionary new sort of weapon, that might put SGA writers in more of a dilemma as far as whether to stick to the canon timeline or use the new tech in a story (or, more of a danger I guess, put it in by accident without realizing that it was anachronistic for the time period).

[danceswithgary]

I tend to do a lot of research when I step outside canon, for example in an SGA AU set around SG-1's '48 Hours' I needed to look up whether Rodney would have a laptop and the specs, along with types of cell phones along with something as odd as a typewriter (character's preference). Car models, foods, restaurant chains, ATM's, CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, movies and television programs, sports teams and stadium names, and wireless modem availability were also fair game for research and that was just 2004. My obsession with research gets worse the farther back I go. :-)

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't happen to have that research in handy collected form, would you? ::looks around shiftily:: (If not, or if so but you aren't looking to share it, no worries. I'm just working on something for the 2002-2004 range, and while I plan to avoid as much of that as possible, I'm also a fan of pinpointing resources where possible ....)

[chaps1870.livejournal.com]

I started my fandom writing with an old western and I have to say that the writing was totally different from SGA. Like night and day. The writing was written for the times and even dialog was tricky sometimes. After writing SGA it would be different to get back into that old mindset. Because the show was set in the 1870's, I often had to research if something even existed yet. Something as simple as medicine and doctoring was time consuming to research. I learned alot about trains, stagecoaches and medicine of the times.

[sholio]

*nods* I have similar issues with writing in British fandoms (and actually, I don't know how British authors can write so seamlessly in American fandoms, because it's haaaaard).

I wonder how much research of this type SGA is going to require in the future. We haven't had any seismic shifts in tech or pop culture -- that I've noticed -- but I'm sure we will, and I wonder if we'll find ourselves having increasing difficulty getting into the proper 2008 mindset in order to write the stories ...

[rheanna27.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts! I guess for me the main body of SGA canon is anchored roughly around the years 2005-08. I guess it helps that the characters have access to a level of technology which will continue to be far in advance of our contemporary technology for a very long time to come. The problem is more what happens when you want to write a story that breaks them out of their SGC/Atlantis bubble.

Cofax has been doing a rewatch of season 1 SG1 recently and commented in her reviews on some of the things that now look odd in the early eps, like a character saving a file on to a floppy disk, or Daniel Jackson making a presentation using an overhead projector. It's strange to think of people watching SGA re-runs in ten or fifteen years time and thinking it strange that the characters have to use (say) radios to talk to each other rather than, I don't know, the cochlear implants we'll all be using in 2025!

[sholio]

I guess part of what makes it disconcerting with the Stargateverse is that there are so many years of continuous canon, and things changing over that period of time. I get a wee bit of technology shock when I go back to older shows (whenever they show a newsroom, police station or something of that sort in a pre-80s show, I always get stuck on "OMG, *typewriters!*") but in SGA, we're getting that from the same canon that's also our "modern" show. I still find the MALPs remarkably outdated-looking, considering the Mars rover and such, but then if you consider the era in which they were designed ...

It would be interesting to use that technology change in a story! I know that it's a little startling for me to look back in time and remember the tech I used to use at my earlier jobs to do the same thing that we do with Mac G5's now. I can see Sam wandering around Atlantis circa season four going, "Oh my god, do you people know how I would've killed for some of this stuff back in '97?" (Actually, within the universe the pace of change is even greater, since they've adopted so much alien tech over the years, I guess ...)

I guess for me the main body of SGA canon is anchored roughly around the years 2005-08.

I think for me it is, too. I'm not sure if it's entirely rational, and I guess it'll remain to be seen (assuming I stay in the fandom that long) if the appearance of anachronisms is going to throw me off in the same way as little canon errors do, or if it'll just be something to cheerfully handwave.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

*points up at what rheanna27 said*

what really threw me last year where I was writing a Sentinel crossover with Supernatural for betagoddess was that it was set in 1996. I was writing Sentinel fic back in 1998/99 -- I remember it quite well. However, sitting in 2009 thinking 'Oh my, Blair's not going to be using Google? What the Hell was I using back then?' *wracks brains* Alta Vista and Netscape! 'Mobile phones, were they around? Didn't Blair have a big one with an aerial?’ How would John Winchester stay in touch with his sons when he was away on a case? Sam and Dean and Blair trying to decide which DVD VHS tape to watch Star Trek: Generations; Speed or Pulp Fiction.

It was fun and so interesting to put your headspace back ten/twelve years. I think that the five years of SGA starting history to 2008 isn’t as big as a disconnect, but give it another five years and it will require that – when were IPOD nanos first on the market? When did ‘Awesome’ become the word du jour?

[sholio]

Sentinel's a good example, because it's a relatively recent show that's still being actively written and fanned on, and yet -- things have changed a lot in 12-15 years! And that's definitely something I was wondering about -- how the fanwriters for those canons handle all the changes that have taken place, if they try to research the era and keep the show in the late '90s, or if Blair with a Blackberry (in a story that wasn't a futurefic) would be perfectly acceptable.

[roga.livejournal.com]

IA with what many others have said re: advanced technology in SGA. I think having current technology, references, and slag in SGA fic in general keeps it dynamic and alive, and that it's fun, and that the only times it might be jarring is if it were used in a specifically dated setting, in which I include both the first two or so seasons of the show, and the characters' childhoods, etc. (And I know they're not really specifically dated, but. Still jarring :-))

Meanwhile, two dead fandoms I occasionally dabble in are for example Sports Night and The West Wing. SN is from 1998; the seasons of TWW in which I'd read/write are from 1999-2002. And unless the fic is firmly set in canon, I think it's awesome to incorporate current events, or twitter, or I don't know, Adam Lambert (which you know I'm in favor of incorporating everywhere). It's not something you can do with, like, Life on Mars, but I think shows in which what draws you is almost entirely character dynamics and not a time-specific setting, are a lot more flexible to fan-change.

[sholio]

Yeah; I think it's something I'm currently struggling with because part of the appeal of SGA, for me, is that it's "now". Not only can you imagine that all of this is secretly happening OUT THERE RIGHT NOW, but the contemporary setting makes writing the fic and the character voices very easy for me -- which I realize probably only works because a) I'm American, as are most of the characters and Earth settings, and b) they're close in age to me, so we share a common pop-culture history. But, as a writer, I'm also kind of a canon-whore, and I've realized that I do think of the show as being set fairly firmly in the first decade of the 00's, which means that the contemporary appeal is going to be increasingly less relevant for me as the show goes from being something "now" to a nostalgia thing set at some point in my own past.

Which isn't to say I'm disagreeing with you, really. :D I mean, the reason I posed the question is because I was curious how the rest of the fandom is responding, and I think that in a fandom where writing the characters as horseshoe crabs is relatively normal, having them play a video game that wasn't released until 2012 is probably not going to be that big of an issue. *g* (Plus, for a while at least -- and I imagine the same is true of TWW or whatnot -- unless you specifically say "This is set in season five" or whatever, the characters are young enough that they could be in the canon period, or in the post-canon period ... it doesn't really matter all that much.)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I don't think anything set in the real world is sufficiently divorced from the time it was made (if it was set in the time it was made) that it wouldn't throw me out to see anachronisms.

If someone writes an SGA AU, then I will accept a timeline that maps to the characters real ages or one that doesn't, but if you're writing canon SGA, it will definitely make me cranky if it doesn't line up right.

And yeah, that often means research. So what? Doesn't all writing require research? I don't think it's too much to ask for a little thought to be put into a story in order to avoid anachronisms.

[sholio]

Yeah, I think that as a writer, I lean strongly towards the "fixed timeline" end of things myself, although like you said, all bets are off in AUs, especially the total AU type.

As a reader ... I'm not really sure? I don't think it would be an automatic back-button thing if I was enjoying the fic otherwise. It hasn't really come up for me yet.

[leesa_perrie]

It's not something I've thought about! I know in one fic I had one of the Batman movies out before it should have been, but I explained in the A/Ns that I knew it wasn't out at that time and asked readers to pretend that it was - considering the fic AU to reality if need be!!

I guess it will become more of an issue as time passes and I will have to think about it at times. But I don't think I tend to get specific about Earth tech all that often, and because I'm not big on new tech myself, I probably wouldn't think to use iPods, Blackberries, iPhones etc!! Though I do need to watch myself re: Google and Wikipedia.

If I have made any mistakes, no one has pointed them out to me - but again, most of my back story ones tend to be generic, and I do know to avoid cell phones (I'm using the American term here, how unpatriotic of me!!! *g*) if set in 1980's.

I think if I read a fic that had something like that in it, it would throw me for a moment - and then I'd consider it AU to reality and hopefully be able to handle it. It would be better if the author had mentioned it being set in a different timeline, then it wouldn't throw me at all.

Hmm, I think I prefer timeline accuracy unless the author explains in his/her notes that it is set in a different timeline/universe - but only for recent shows! Historical accuracy isn't such a big thing for shows like Mag7 etc, so long as they seem to be about right. But then, I don't know a lot about historical settings and what was invented when (just a general sense of these things), so I'm not going to notice if that gun or term was actually around ten years later than when the fic is set - whereas with things set more recently, I might!

Actually, for SGA, my main concern when writing is to do with cultural and language differences between Canada, America etc and the UK (more specifically, England), where I live!! Now that can be very challenging at times - because I might stick to my UK spellings, but I want the characters to sound American etc and not English! I even have worries at times with Carson, as Scottish culture is not the same as English culture, and I've used a Scottish/English translator on more than one occasion!

Anyway, I hope this makes sense - I'm sort of working it out as I type!

[sholio]

Oh, I find Carson very hard to write because of his speech patterns -- and I don't, off the top of my head, know anyone in fandom who's Scottish that I can ask. (Though even I, with my minimal level of UK cultural awareness, have caught obvious errors in things that other people have written; it seems like a common thing with Carson is for writers to just throw in whatever UK slang they know, whether or not it's something that's remotely applicable -- obviously anyone from the British Isles, whatever their age or background, uses the same slang, right? *headdesk*)

I guess it will become more of an issue as time passes and I will have to think about it at times. But I don't think I tend to get specific about Earth tech all that often, and because I'm not big on new tech myself, I probably wouldn't think to use iPods, Blackberries, iPhones etc!! Though I do need to watch myself re: Google and Wikipedia.

*nods* Yeah, to some extent I think it'll be easy to avoid just by not name-dropping technology, for a while anyway. Since most of the fics that aren't AUs are set in another galaxy, it's not that difficult to avoid.

I do know to avoid cell phones (I'm using the American term here, how unpatriotic of me!!! *g*)

Oh, what do you call them usually? *is curious* (It's actually much more common for people to say "cell" than "cell phone" when they're talking about them, though they seem generally to write it out for whatever reason. Or maybe that's just me.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

You bet I researched for writing MUNCLE! In fact it's one of the sticking points for writing in the fandom at all, because I don't feel that comfortable keeping to the era, and yet yeah, the show is very much a product of its times, and fic that denies that feels off. In MUNCLE, there are a few AU series in the fandom that modernizes the canon (I believe there's one long one that involves the leads being cold-storaged to the future, Austin Powers-style) but for the most part people write in the era. For a lot of the fans it's not that difficult - a good chunk of the fandom watched the show when it first aired, and remember the times.

For me, though, yeah, research. The two biggest things I kept looking up were in medicine (hospitals, equipment, the like) and social/political details (DADT is a major theme in SGA slash fic now; writing MUNCLE slash is another ballgame - sodomy was still technically illegal in the '60s and there were arrests made...) Oddly, lack of cell phones isn't much of a problem, because MUNCLE had sci-fi-ish technology, including satellite radios that canonically worked anywhere.

[sholio]

Ah, yes, that's precisely the sort of thing I was wondering about! I guess with MUNCLE, the Cold War is such a big part of the whole tone and theme of the show that removing it would remove the core of the show. It'll be interesting to see how obviously, or not, SGA is a product of its era in 10 or 20 years -- I mean, you can kind of see it now, but not in the kind of sharp relief that you can view older shows that way.

And yeah, it was the late 1950s, wasn't it, when Turing was sentenced to chemical castration for sodomy and killed himself? It's got to create a whole new atmosphere for slash to write it in that kind of setting ...

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

(in from mecurtin's link.

Some anachronisms bother me -- some because I know them well, and others because they demonstrate a lack of imagination on the part of the author. Part of that depends on when the story is set -- past or future.

There's a Star Trek story I *love*, which I think was written in the mid-90s (certainly no later than the late 1990s, when I read it). There's some medical stuff in it -- a depressed character taking a daily pill, for example -- that feels horriby oldskool in the Trek universe (the story is set a few decades after DS9). I think the author just didn't think about it, and used his late-20th-century knowledge of the treatment of depression without examining it. Part of why it sticks out is that much of the rest of the story is very imaginative and future-appropriate.

[sholio]

Some anachronisms bother me -- some because I know them well, and others because they demonstrate a lack of imagination on the part of the author. Part of that depends on when the story is set -- past or future.

*nods* Yeah, typically that's how it reads to me too. Some things are obscure enough that a person couldn't be expected to know them unless they were doing deep research, but a lot of times it feels like the author isn't even bothering to try to get inside the heads of the characters or putting in the work to faithfully recreate their milieu. Like the cell-phones-in-the-80s example that was cited above ... really, that's just sloppy!

[nacbrie.livejournal.com]

I think that SGA canon should, in general terms, be kept with the show timeline if it's to be dated at all, but that's just to keep it canonically accurate - if I was writing, say, an AU where they all work for a pharmaceutical company (niggling in the back of the mind at the mo), I wouldn't have any problem with them discussing the impact of the healthcare bill or talking on iPhones. With whole-universe AUs, you're already changing the scenery of the story (they're farmers, or dolphin handlers, or in this case medicinal chemists), so what difference does a minor timeline shift make? As long as you establish your timeline (so as not to unexpectedly throw people), I don't see very much wrong with that.

[sholio]

Oh yeah, I definitely think it's a very different situation with a total AU versus a story that's trying to fit in canon. (I guess some people might be jarred even in a total AU if the show's mid-2000-decade setting is part of the whole thing for them, but I doubt if there are too many people like that ...)

[dreamingoctober.livejournal.com]

Fascinating discussion! The nice thing is that keeping SGA to timeline can easily be done with just a little bit of poking around on Google, because people are documenting everything these days, from tech to pop culture to politics. For anyone concerned with anachronisms, it's not hard to research technology/medicine/pop culture/etc./whatever from 2004-present. Even some slang phrases can be traced to their origins.

Writing, say, M*A*S*H fic - that's a whole different kettle of fish! I watch M*A*S*H today, and there are pop culture references in the show that I don't get and have to look up - I can't even imagine writing fic for it!

Your question also made me think of X-Files fic. The X-Files is a show straddles two eras - pre-internet and post-internet - at a time when technology was developing at warp speed. Scully accesses the Internet for the first time ever somewhere in the middle of S1, I think, with an adorable command line and a dial-up modem. Also, cell phones - the size of laptops in the early seasons!! Not to mention that laptops weren't even an option until much, much later. I would imagine that fic writers who want to write for the earlier eras of this show live in a special circle of hell.

My point, I think, is that since it's so easy to research the SGA timespan, and the internet is going to still be here ten years from now to do this research, I prefer fic that keeps to the timeline. That's strictly for canon fic - AU fic can get a pass depending on what it is. For SGA, a few clicks in Wikipedia can give you a timeline to just about any technology; a quick google search or a cautious trip to the Urban Dictionary will tell you whether or not a phrase was probably in use. And also, our characters are older, so they probably wouldn't use the latest internet vernacular... Rodney might, but John might not, and Keller, who is younger, might have different pop culture references altogether... I do think it needs to be considered when writing fic. I DON'T think it needs to be obsessed over to the point where a writer will devote more time to research than writing.

There's also the angle that because the SGC is so heavily populated with scientists and tech, they have access to all the latest tech before it hits the mainstream market. So I think writers can fudge just a little bit with anachronistic tech. Video games, not so much. If writers are going to reference specific, real-world video games, they need to match up the timeline to the game releases. :D

Speaking of DADT... I cannot wait for it to be abolished because the flood of SGA fic will be UNSTOPPABLE in the following weeks. (Obviously, I don't want to mention political reasons for abolishing DADT in your journal, so please don't think I'm being flippant about it!) I bet even people who have moved on to other fandoms will come back and write a piece or two, since DADT has been so heavily referenced in SGA fandom.

[sholio]

Writing, say, M*A*S*H fic - that's a whole different kettle of fish! I watch M*A*S*H today, and there are pop culture references in the show that I don't get and have to look up - I can't even imagine writing fic for it!

Heh ... you know, in some ways I think it might almost be easier to write M*A*S*H than a canon set closer to the present day, because at least that way you know you have to do a ton of research! As opposed to something set in 1990, say, where it's really easy to assume that you know "how things are" with cars or brands of appliance or Coke flavors or whatnot, and then getting tripped up by something simple.

Speaking of DADT... I cannot wait for it to be abolished because the flood of SGA fic will be UNSTOPPABLE in the following weeks. (Obviously, I don't want to mention political reasons for abolishing DADT in your journal, so please don't think I'm being flippant about it!) I bet even people who have moved on to other fandoms will come back and write a piece or two, since DADT has been so heavily referenced in SGA fandom.

LOL ... I don't mind you getting political -- I don't really talk much about politics in my journal, usually, but that's a pretty big issue on my political landscape ... well, not DADT specifically, but LGBTQ rights in general. But yeah, within the strictly fanfic-writing subculture, I think that the abolition of DADT would create tidal waves in SGA fic -- it's such a huge issue in pretty much all Stargateverse slash of whatever pairing.

Though someone pointed out at some point that we really don't know one way or the other whether the Stargateverse has DADT. They have a different president, after all, and since it's not quite our world, that gives writers quite a bit of leeway to assume different political situations if it becomes necessary for a fic. So if they do repeal DADT (*fingers crossed*), writers wouldn't necessarily have to decide in writing every fic whether it was set before the repeal or after. Stargate's USA could just as easily have repealed it in 2002 or 2006, or never had it to begin with.

[tikatu.livejournal.com]

Here from fandomnews

This is a fascinating discussion. I'm not familiar with Stargate (well, at least not very), but I find a lot of the issues discussed resonate with me and the problems found in writing my fandom, Thunderbirds.

We have a show made in the mid-60s that's supposed to take place 60-100 years in the future from that time, depending on which timeline you favor. And it has clunky reel-to-reel tape recorders, computers as big as a room, and a typewriter you can dictate to. Things that were either one or two steps above what the technology was at that time. One of the characters was supposed to have been the first man on the moon... which happened a heck of a lot sooner than the show's creators though it would!

Writers have to not only take into consideration what technology is NOW, but try to extrapolate to the future. It's not easy, and probably the reason why so many writers prefer to write stories set in the characters' past, because that can be made up out of the whole cloth, and it can incorporate today's technology (again, depending on what timeline you use).

Really interesting discussion here! I've enjoyed reading the responses.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

We have a show made in the mid-60s that's supposed to take place 60-100 years in the future from that time, depending on which timeline you favor. And it has clunky reel-to-reel tape recorders, computers as big as a room, and a typewriter you can dictate to. Things that were either one or two steps above what the technology was at that time. One of the characters was supposed to have been the first man on the moon... which happened a heck of a lot sooner than the show's creators though it would!

This just reminds me of Classic Doctor Who looping itself in the 80s, which was when the First Doctor visited and stopped the invasion of the Cybermen. THAT was interesting.

[sherrold.livejournal.com]

The very first fan story I wrote (thankfully now lost!) was written in 1989, but set in 1980 -- and I was amazed at the time how much had changed. At one point they break into someone's house, and I spent hours figuring out which consumer appliances they would and wouldn't have had, from less than a decade earlier, of a time I had lived through as an adult. I was amazed how hard it was.

One of the things I still love about X-Files, is that it was on TV during the cellphone transition, so literally every season, their cellphones got smaller than the year before, until the last season, they basically look like they did for the next decade until the iPhone. Fans had fun with that in stories at the time, while doubtlessly missing plenty of other technology changes that were happening in that decade...

[sholio]

Heh, it's fun reading people's reminiscences about shows from different eras! Technology changed so fast in the '90s, and the interesting thing about that decade for me is that I watched little TV during it; I was going to school and working, and I pretty much didn't watch any TV from about '94 to 2000 (with a couple exceptions, like SG1, but very little). So I lived through that transitional period but missed how the media dealt with it.

[(Anonymous)]

lurker here, via metafandom

Speaking personally, I don't think there is such a thing as a "nebulous now" for television and film fandoms (for books, yes, but not for tv). I find that the clothes, the hairstyles (especially the clothes and hairstyles), the cars, the presence or absence of mobile phones (let alone what they look like and can do: there's a wide continuum between car phones and browsing the internet on your cell), etc always date the show/film to a specific point in time. So despite SG1's occasional oddities (is the American presidential election in 2002?), it takes place from about the late 90s to the mid-00s and anachronisms like iphones will definitely throw me. (Otoh, SG1 covers a decade or so: look at how Carter's civilian wardrobe changes. What's an anachronism in a fanfic set in an early season isn't necessarily an anachronism in a season 9 or 10 fic. The X-Files and Harry Potter likewise cover a longish period of time.)

As for pop culture references, they tend to be not only anachronistic but out of character, and ime should be avoided for 4 out of 5 characters. And the characters that do make such references won't make the same ones a fangirl in 2010 will. John Crichton is from the "near future," but the "near future" of 1999 and the (many) things he says about pop culture reflect that.

Otoh, I do think there is such a thing as the "nebulous past." When is Pirates of the Caribbean set? Or a Western? Age of Sail fandoms are bound by the Napoleonic Wars, but the canons themselves have a couple anachronisms. And they're incredibly accurate compared to some sources. Xena's a historical fantasy, as are many historical romances. More importantly, there were plenty of fans who can remember the year 2000. Not so many can remember 1800. I think anachronisms are more of a problem in fanfic set in modern day or recent past fandoms.

-Beth

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

The X-Files and Harry Potter likewise cover a longish period of time.

HP is one of the worst offenders in this area, though. It's set from 1991-1997; very often, the fiction was written as set in the year the books came out. (So, for example, a lot of OOTP fiction is set in 2003, even though the book takes place in 1995.)

[penknife.livejournal.com]

Anachronisms bother me like crazy (except in a fandom like Pirates of the Caribbean, where you can't date the canon to start with because it's such a wild mix of periods, and even then, I tend to pick a year and handwave everything in canon that doesn't fit.) For SG-1 and SGA, unless it's a total AU, I definitely want to see some attempt to get technology, clothes, and pop culture right for the year a story's supposed to be set.

[sholio]

It's never, or rarely, come up for me in SGA because I've been writing concurrently with the run of the show, for several years now. I've rarely written stories set in the show's past; I've always been working with the current season or some vague "... not right now but soon" incarnation of it. Now that the canon is closed, all of a sudden I'm finding myself looking at the timeline much more closely than I'd been doing before!

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Do anachronisms like cell phones bother you, or does it only matter if the show is very specifically rooted in a particular historical time (like a Western)?

I consider anything set more than 20 years ago to essentially be a de facto historical fandom (even if it's, you know, set in the 1980 during a time period I remember, like Ashes to Ashes or Watchmen), and I expect it to either be set in the canon time period, or, if not, for the writer to have an author's note saying something like "this is a modern setting AU."

Without a note saying that the anachronisms are an intentional choice on the writer's part ("I'm setting this fic roughly now rather than in 1989, because [reason]," or "I've updated the tech the characters are using" or something along those lines), I'm going to put the presence of things like cell phones down to sloppiness a la the infamous "Ipods at Hogwarts" trend in bad HP fic (unless they're specifically those giant, clunky early mobile phones that were the size of a brick, which I'd actually kind of love to see in a Real Ghostbusters fic or something).

I've occasionally seen people try to avoid say, grounding Man From Uncle fic in the 1960s, with the result that you can't tell if the fic is supposed to be set in the 60s or the 90s, and it always feels off to me, because the Cold War itself is so significant to, well, the entire genre of Cold War era spy fiction that I the reader want to know if I'm supposed to be imagining it going on in the background or not -- because if the author was thinking of the present day when she wrote Ilya and Napoleon's adventures in said fic, that makes a difference.

Hmmm... one exception I'll make is for comics-based fic, because Marvel and DC have a sliding, telescoping timeline in canon -- various Marvel characters that got their start during the 1960s are also simultaneously still in their 20s or 30s and in-canon haven't been superheroes for more than about 10-15 years. With comics fic, I kind of expect it to all be written present day or backdated from the present day (like, a flashback to Spiderman's highschool days would be a flashback to about 1999/2000) the way the same story would be if it happened in canon, and would expect author's notes not for updating the setting, but for fic that deliberately didn't do so and ignored canon timeline retcons (like, say, a fic that still had Captain America being pulled out of the ice in the 1960s and was set in the 60s or 70s rather than having him be pulled out "about a decade ago" and being set now).*


*Captain America, as of present canon, was on ice for the entire duration of the Cold War and missed it completely, despite all the canon storylines that involve him running around during the cold war, because Marvel time is fluid and self-retconning like that. Which is something I think it would be really interesting to look at in fic -- so much of modern politics and culture are influenced by the Cold War, and Steve Rogers in current canon has only read/been told about it and never experienced it.

[sholio]

You know, Marvel/DC timelines are about the most perfect example I can think of to illustrate what I was trying to get at with the idea of "infinitely shifting timelines" rather than a canon being firmly grounded in one particular time period. The characters themselves are somewhat divorced from a specific time -- of course, canon keeps trying to "fix" it with retcons and reboots and such, but I agree with you that I'd expect writers to use the modern day rather than try to set the fic back in the 50s/60s/70s (unless they were doing it on purpose, for effect). And while this does bring up timeline inconsistencies -- like the Cap thing you mentioned, or most of the characters being too young to have experienced events they canonically lived through -- they're basically just handwaved. (I don't read much Marvel/DC fic, but what else can you DO but handwave it.)

Whereas Watchmen, say, is very firmly grounded in a particular time period -- even the movie kept it there. It's a product of the cold war, and the switch from 50s-style superheroes to 70s-style superheroes, the shift from 60s optimism to 80s nihilism -- even if you updated the cultural references (swap Nixon for Bush, or whatnot), it doesn't really map over in the same way.

What I'm wondering is to what extent most TV shows are more like the Marvel/DC example or the Watchmen example. I tend to default to keeping it in the canon time period, myself, and it looks like most fan writers do likewise. (And now, suddenly, I'm wildly curious how the Buffy comics handle it, and how this influences the fandom -- do the comics use contemporary tech and slang, even though the characters ought to be several years too young for it? *ponders*)

[jouissant.livejournal.com]

My main fandom right now is Star Trek XI, and one thing that's thrown me in a few fics so far is kind of the opposite of what you're talking about in that it's contemporary pop-culture references dropped into a universe 300 years in the future. I mean, most of us do not listen to 18th century chamber music or whatever, so why assume that Jim Kirk listens to, say, Bob Dylan?

[sandoz-iscariot.livejournal.com]

so why assume that Jim Kirk listens to, say, Bob Dylan?

For the same reason he listens to the Beastie Boys? (though that REALLY threw me out of the movie.)