but in my defense they could have looked it up (and, like, why didn't they)

[cimorene]

"But that's the COMPLETELY wrong period, it's AT LEAST two decades off! That hem? Those shoes? How could they be so sloppy knowing that nobody would be able to achieve suspension of disbelief unless—

"— Oh. Unless they... didn't have a firm grasp of historical clothing in the —th century by decade... which... is probably almost everybody. Right."

—Me, at least once per week, on historical fanart or fanfiction

Comments

[flamebyrd]

At a Worldcon panel with Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, one of them (I wish I could remember which - similarly, I have forgotten details of this anecdote) related the story of how she'd read a historical novel where somebody was eating rabbit, and had this instant "No! They didn't keep rabbits in that part of Europe in that century!" and then realised that she'd learned this from a paper she'd been proofreading, and that at that time, only she and maybe 3 other people in the world knew this fact. Since then, she said she's tried to be relaxed about historical errors in fiction.

That said, I recently read a time travel fic in which a character had gone back to the late 80s, and they went to buy a mobile phone so they could communicate easily with their love interest (cultural mistake for the era, in my opinion) and then bought 'one of those indestructible Nokias', which... Oh dear.

[cimorene]

OMG, this 80s Nokia brick anecdote made my day yesterday. Historical inaccuracy CAN be beautiful! 😂😂😂

[alexseanchai]

and sometimes people just don't care because ~Aesthetic beats ~Accuracy

would rather have both, personally, but yeah

[princessofgeeks]

I feel you. I have this about certain things, not clothes, and it is definitely grating. But then I've made some incredibly sloppy mistakes too.

[phosfate]

"They could not have had a romantic vacation in Prague because it was behind the fucking Iron Curtain."

[cimorene]

A surprisingly common class of error there. There's a harrassed travel agent adjacent to that metafictional watering hole where all the fictional characters meet up.