Historical inaccuracies in fiction

I posted this over at HSA and thought I’d post it here as well:

How much would you put up with in books or movies? I’ll tolerate a bit, but there are times so much is wrong and all they care about is having a good story, and that rather ruins it for me. For instance, a WWII movie where some of the uniforms used wouldn’t have been worn for another 15 years, where they have people in the OSS before it was even formed, where they have songs that weren’t even released yet being sung, etc. Or a Civil War movie where people aren’t acting appropriately for the time period, historical facts are all messed up, etc. When a movie is just full of things that were wrong/didn’t happen at the time, I get fed up and find it too hard to enjoy the movie.

With something like Pirates of the Caribbean, I can overlook it more. That was meant to have fantasy elements, so it’s not as bad, I don’t think. But when something is trying to be passed off as “a WWII movie” or something set during the Civil War or whatever, I think people should do what they can to make it as accurate as possible. Also with writing. I’ve seen people on a writing forum who basically don’t care if they get historical facts right. “So what if they didn’t wear crinolines for 20 more years? I want my characters wearing them and want it set in this era.”

So I thought I’d come ask all you about it and get y’all’s opinion on historical accuracy in fiction, though this post is quite a bit longer than I intended. Do you care if a film or book is historically accurate? Does it really matter all that much? Why or why not?

Jericho

I had never seen the show Jericho before, but my mom had seen part of it and liked it. So this week, we’ve been watching it online, and finished the last episode last night. Ah! I can’t believe that had canceled it at that point! Thankfully, due to a huge fan outcry and petitioning, CBS renewed the series. They made a seven-episode second season, and have yet to announce when it will air. Hopefully soon, and hopefully to be followed by more episodes. Anyway, if you haven’t seen the show before, I would highly recommend watching it on cbs.com. It’s awesome. One of the best shows ever.

It’s set in Jericho, Kansas, a small town where everyone knows everyone, everybody shops from the same little general store, and they rely on the crops from the farms on the outskirts. As people are going about their daily lives, they begin to see something is seriously wrong. Off in the distant sky. seemingly over Denver, there looms a giant mushroom cloud. Power goes out, all communication goes down, and they’re cut off from the rest of the world with no knowledge of what happened to Denver. Was it an accident? Was it attacked? If it was attacked, who did it and did they bomb anywhere else? Is the rest of the country still there? Was the radiation close enough to kill the citizens of Jericho? How will they all survive? What happened?

Superb acting and characters, especially Hawkins and the Greens, and the story is amazing. It’s something that’s so relevant, because we really wonder if and when something like this will happen. Seeing the news about New Orleans after Katrina gave us a glimpse of human nature after a disaster. Something of this magnitude would magnify that tremendously. The story is so real and possible that it’s a bit scary. Yet that realness and possibility is part of what makes it so intriguing. When will something of this magnitude happen, and what would it really be like? How would we respond? What would it take to survive? Seeing such things played out in the lives of these characters really draws a person into the show, and makes you wonder. It’s very clean as well, which is a rarity nowadays.

System restore…

While giving my hand a rest(I’m typing one-handedly), I’m going to back up my computer files to our external hard drive and do a system restore on my computer. That will include re-partitioning my hard drive and installing Ubuntu(a Linux distribution) to dual boot with Windows XP. I’ll be able to install the new version of Ubuntu then too! They released it last week, but due to their server lag and my computer issues and work I needed to do in Windows, I haven’t installed it yet.

Backing up my files shouldn’t take too long. Most of my pictures are backed up, except one or two smaller folders, because I’ve been backing them up pretty regularly. Most of my music is backed up already too, so this should go pretty quickly, I would think.

I’m about to watch Meet the Robinsons while working on all this. It looks good. Netflix is great about getting out new releases. If you have one at the top of your list, they ship it the day before it’s released so that you get it on the actual release date.

Cinderelly…

This really cracks me up:

I’ve watched various Disney songs in other languages before, and I love hearing how the different languages sound, but those little mouse voices singing Hebrew…I just find it hilarious.

Fall!

The weather is absolutely gorgeous! It finally actually feels like fall here! It’s 60 degrees and pretty windy, and just loverly. Wonderful weather.

I should be resting my hand instead of typing. I had some stuff to finish up on the computer, but now that I’ve finished that, I need to give my hand a break from typing for a couple of days, hard as that may be. I’ve been having a lot of problems with a pinched nerve or something, hurting in my back, and down into my shoulder, wrist, and hand. It started up when I spent a couple of hours sitting on the living room floor with my laptop last week, apparently working at an angle my hand didn’t like. Now it’s hard to type much or use my hand on the computer. I’m sick too, with chest congestion/bronchitisy-type stuff. I’m not sure how all this is going to affect my novel-writing, because I haven’t done as much prep work as I hoped to due to being sick and having this hand problem, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to type enough by next week to start on my writing. I’m going to try though, and keep researching and planning, and I plan on at least giving it a try, whether or not I get it all done in a month.

Oh well. The beautiful weather has me cheerful! Weather like this always cheers me up.

Pictures

Here are a few pictures I took this week. If you click on them, you can see larger versions.

That last one reminds me of something from Narnia. Maybe if I could crawl through the fence, I’d find myself in another world.

Victor Borge

I’ve been watching clips of Victor Borge on YouTube. Some of them are amazing, and some are hilarious, so I thought I’d post a couple.

This first one is just after he finished conducting a concert and was asked for an encore. He’s improvising with a song he’s heard before, but never actually played. It’s brilliant.

Then this “musical phonetic punctuation” with Dean Martin is hilarious:

Old Katy

Last week, we went to part of the older section of our town, Old Katy, and I took some pictures. Two of the houses are open for touring the first weekend of every month, so I’m hoping to go next month and get some pictures inside as well.

Pictures

Then here’s one I edited a bit in Photoshop:

You can see a bigger version here.

I’m trying to sign up for a Flickr account so I can upload more pictures there, but it wants me to sign up with Yahoo first, and Yahoo is giving me a ton of trouble at the moment.

NaNoWriMo

As the month of October rolls around, aspiring writers from around the world scurry to come up with plots, characters, settings, research, time, and everything else required for a good story. The frenzy grows as November creeps nearer, with excitement, dread, and anticipation going in waves over each participant. What is the ensuing panic for, you wonder? NaNoWriMo! NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, takes place every November. The objective is to write a novel in one month, starting no sooner than November 1, and ending before the stroke of midnight that signals the end of the month. The novel must be at least 50,000 words in length, and may be longer. Anyone who completes a novel of the appropriate length is considered a winner.

I attempted to write a novel last November, but didn’t get very far. I’ve thought about it since and come up with a few reasons(besides my procrastination and indecision). I never came up with enough story beforehand and characters I cared enough about, so I didn’t have enough to write about and didn’t stay motivated enough. I think I need to do a lot more planning beforehand this time if I’m going to make it through this. I don’t have much of a story worked up yet, but I’m currently considering a WWII-era story set on the American homefront. It would be about the life of a family while the father is off a war. I don’t have much more than that yet though, so I need to get to planning! I’m determined to write more than I did last year, and I want very much to finish. I’ll post updates on my progress here, both while planning and doing the actual writing. Hopefully that will help me keep motivated!

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to my new blog! I’ve been saying for months that I wanted to start a new one on our domain, but between my indecision and procrastination, it’s taken me quite a while to actually get around to making it. But here it is! Finally! I’m still tweaking a few things and collecting links and blogs to add, but for the most part, it’s finished. I edited the “About” page so there’s actually a bit about me there, and I’ll be adding another page soon as well.

I’ll try to write a more substantial entry soon, but I wanted to go ahead and put up an introductory post. I want to start giving the link out to people and would rather them have more to look at than the default “Hello World” post that WordPress uses.