Magpie meme

[beccaelizabeth]

Five unusual things I'd never have known about without writing fiction, fan or otherwise



Trying to find many details from 1975 is the latest. Am left looking up stuff like when the first prosecution involving security camera evidence was. And finding timelines for all kinds of music. And like a billion other details I'll mostly get wrong anyway.

Previously there was Highlander fandom, and therefore enough research to fake an in depth knowledge of swords, metallurgy, and martial arts of several countries in several eras. And also my still ongoing collection of news clippings on naked people with swords and decapitations. There are scarily many items in that file.
And also all the stuff about lightning strikes.

And of course the various bits of research aimed at figuring out precisely how illegal character A shagging character B in a particular time/place/way would be. Is amazing how much that has changed just in the last half century, let alone trying to figure attitudes from the last five thousand years.

For Sentinel and now BtVS there is knowledge of spirit animals, and also oddly knowledge on senses that overlapped with research on my own Asperger's syndrome.

And for Stargate, BtVS, and my own edification, I have learned much about many kinds of deities.



Okay, so is more than five. But I figure is interesting how each fandom has different but overlapping research needs.

Comments

[mogigraphia.livejournal.com]

Trying to find many details from 1975 is the latest. Am left looking up stuff like when the first prosecution involving security camera evidence was. And finding timelines for all kinds of music. And like a billion other details I'll mostly get wrong anyway.

The thing about this sort of recent historical detail is that you really don't need to be too anal. Good solid research, yes, but all the little fiddly details? The reason you can't find them out may well be that no one remembers! ;)

I mean, I lived through the seventies and remember them pretty well, but I certainly couldn't tell if you brought in security cameras a year or two early or whatever.

[beccaelizabeth]

The thing is I don't so much do the research to put it in the story. I end up doing the research because at some point in the writing of the story I get a question, and then it ends up being several hours later and I have new knowledge and no story.

Which is why my ability to get fic finished coincided with my ability to use my laptop and keep it unplugged in the other room ::)

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Pears Cyclopaedia for that year, or the one immediately following. I cannot describe how happy I was to find the 1989-90 edition in a charity shop just when I was despairing of getting certain details about 1988-89 spot-on.

Random rock biographies are also highly useful for odd little facts.

And (auto)biographies in general (esp people still living or recently dead) are great at providing evidence that people-not-my-friends get up to all the same daft things that my friends do (including the finding out your shag's name in very silly ways thing).

Gina

[beccaelizabeth]

Found a Pears Cyclopaedia for 76-77, which is right around when I'm writing and also for the year I was born. Have ordered it. It will likely join the many many many of books I skimmed once whilst in research mode, but hey, more knowledge, always of the good.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Excellent stuff. I have executrix to thank for a lot of my reference collection. She sends HUGE boxes of secondhand books across the Atlantic to me at random intervals. One day I have time to might read them.

Gina