I write this sitting in the bath...
Feb. 18th, 2009 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaletianSeriously. Oh yes. With my tiny, tiny shiny laptop teetering on top of the laundry basket. Laptops and wireless: they make the world a glorious place.
Anyway, I had some thinking to share, about history and how we understand it and stuff. This was, naturally, prompted by an SGA fic I just read: Written by the Victors, a superlative piece of fiction about Atlantis seceding from Earth, and historical interpretions of the same. It featured straightforward fictional prose about the events in question, combined with "secondary sources" from both sides of the schism. It was a brilliant read, and is actually one of my very most favourite fandom tropes, namely how events and characters will be viewed by history when anyone actually alive at the time is nothing but crumbled dust. I've seen Buffy fic that looked at this (and the Fray comic sort of touches on the idea), and Harry Potter as well, I seem to recall. Babylon 5 actually did it themselves, with the wonderful ep Deconstruction of Falling Stars. I've even written something similar myself in the Hornblower fandom.
And I love it. I love it so much I can't even express it, because they never KNOW. They never can, it's impossible. Seeing how characters in the future construe and interpret the past that we know is just so real, and I can't put this into words, though I've been thinking about it for a couple of days. Because this is how our understanding of the past works: we take the evidence, what we have it. We look at paper and buildings and art and laws made and unmade, and we cobble together what we think happened. And we can be right and we can be wrong, and we can't really know, because we weren't there. And people lie and are unreliable and it's so easy to misinterpret something.
And I love it when characters in the future come face to face with the figures of their history (everyone should read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liz_marcs' Living History [BtVS], because it's awesome), because their figures are creations of the collective imaginations of generations, and the present characters are real. I just... meh. I really don't have the words to say what I'm trying to say. Boo.
In other news, this whole 13-year-old boy fathering child / not fathering child / someone else / what-the-fuck-ever: NONE OF MY FUCKING BUSINESS. I DO NOT FUCKING CARE. WHY IS IT ALL OVER THE FUCKING NEWSPAPERS? HOW IS THIS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST? LEAVE THE KIDS AND THEIR FAMILIES TO SORT IT ALL OUT BECAUSE IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF US AND FOR FUCK'S SAKE STOP USING IT TO HERALD THE END (ONCE AGAIN) OF CIVILISED SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT.
Anyway, I had some thinking to share, about history and how we understand it and stuff. This was, naturally, prompted by an SGA fic I just read: Written by the Victors, a superlative piece of fiction about Atlantis seceding from Earth, and historical interpretions of the same. It featured straightforward fictional prose about the events in question, combined with "secondary sources" from both sides of the schism. It was a brilliant read, and is actually one of my very most favourite fandom tropes, namely how events and characters will be viewed by history when anyone actually alive at the time is nothing but crumbled dust. I've seen Buffy fic that looked at this (and the Fray comic sort of touches on the idea), and Harry Potter as well, I seem to recall. Babylon 5 actually did it themselves, with the wonderful ep Deconstruction of Falling Stars. I've even written something similar myself in the Hornblower fandom.
And I love it. I love it so much I can't even express it, because they never KNOW. They never can, it's impossible. Seeing how characters in the future construe and interpret the past that we know is just so real, and I can't put this into words, though I've been thinking about it for a couple of days. Because this is how our understanding of the past works: we take the evidence, what we have it. We look at paper and buildings and art and laws made and unmade, and we cobble together what we think happened. And we can be right and we can be wrong, and we can't really know, because we weren't there. And people lie and are unreliable and it's so easy to misinterpret something.
And I love it when characters in the future come face to face with the figures of their history (everyone should read
liz_marcs' Living History [BtVS], because it's awesome), because their figures are creations of the collective imaginations of generations, and the present characters are real. I just... meh. I really don't have the words to say what I'm trying to say. Boo.In other news, this whole 13-year-old boy fathering child / not fathering child / someone else / what-the-fuck-ever: NONE OF MY FUCKING BUSINESS. I DO NOT FUCKING CARE. WHY IS IT ALL OVER THE FUCKING NEWSPAPERS? HOW IS THIS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST? LEAVE THE KIDS AND THEIR FAMILIES TO SORT IT ALL OUT BECAUSE IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF US AND FOR FUCK'S SAKE STOP USING IT TO HERALD THE END (ONCE AGAIN) OF CIVILISED SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT.
