Lifetime Fic Bingo: 2018

[tinturtle]

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It's 2018. Drake is on the radio. Here in the USA, the year's top film is Black Panther. New terms coined include: deepfake.

For 2018, I read five fics: one Man from U.N.C.L.E., one Professionals, and three Sherlock Holmes. There seems to have been a lot of Holmes fic lately.

Comments

[dancingpony]

I didn’t realize the term “deepfake” was quite so old. Not that 2018 is the distant past, but it seems longer.

[tinturtle]

Some words are older than one expects and some are much newer.

[fiorenza_a]

The term 'meme' can be traced back to the 19th century...

[fiorenza_a]

I might have read Smoke and Mirrors by ci5mates - but I'm so rubbish with titles, I may be thinking of something else entirely. I miss seeing ci5mates on Lj.

I was quite intrigued by this observation: the amount of slang included in the dialog...sometimes felt overdone, and it didn't match the way the characters talk in canon. (Possibly the author felt that the amount of slang in canon is artificially low.)

I hadn't ever thought about an author trying to compensate for a perceived lack of slang in canon. To be fair, at the time the show was aired people in real life weren't talking in slang - it was more of a colourful and innate smattering of terms - not all Cockney in origin - in more generally standard English. And neither of the lads actually hail from London, so it would be learned idiom picked up from working there. (The lads' real-life accents are identifiably from outside London to any native London ear.)

Actual Cockney is on the wane - and has been for a couple or three generations - exacerbated by the 'slum' clearance programme after the

[tinturtle]

Something that probably is artificially absent from Bodie and Doyle's canon speech is profanity. Some fanfic adds that back in while other fanfic does not.

It's been that way all my life, but the outsize cultural influence of the United States always feels very strange to me. That our racial history would eclipse that of another country in the minds of the people who live there is a particularly strange manifestation of the phenomenon.

[fiorenza_a]

The absence of profanity is true - although there are occasions in the show where it's heavily implied. The beginning of a word mouthed before the actor turns away - or the camera cuts away.

Although, at the time the show was aired profanity was still considered very low speech. You still don't hear it in professional settings. So it's not unrealistic that the lads might mutter under their breath rather than say a word aloud amongst certain audiences. And British English has a vast array of colouful euphemisms to disguise bad language - and to describe genitalia, which often becomes profanity. Apparently, foreign doctors have to be given a heads up on our wonderful world of bodily euphemisms. I did hear a (possibly apocryphal) tale that some wag was driving round - I think Texas - with a number plate that read 'bollocks' and got away with it for some while before a more internationalist minded official realised what it meant and ordered the driver to change it.

There's always been cultural cross-over but I think the arrival of the

[fiorenza_a]

When the G.I.s left - leaving behind a legacy of antebellum racism and a fascination with Americana - television brought 'Americanisms' into our culture. Script writers loved the cop 'buddy' shows - so even though there's never been a concept of 'buddy policing' in the UK - some UK cop shows still have British coppers talking about their 'partner'. It's hard to overstate just how dull, grey and war weary we were in the years after the war. We went from WWI into the Great Depression, then WWII, followed by a long legacy of rationing that didn't end until the fifties. Ordinary people's lives were really unglamorous - it gave rise to the 'kitchen sink dramas' which were all about how dull and grey and nihilistic ordinary life was. But all we saw in the American shows was plenty - the land of milk and honey.

There's a lot of rubbish talked about the 'swinging sixities' - but it only swung for about six people standing in Carnaby Street. The rest of the country was still living a very grey existence. What really changed things for

[sc_fossil]

I'm enjoying your posts about fic and pop culture. It's fun. Cheers!

[tinturtle]

Thank you for reading and commenting.