![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotI was thinking about (obsessing over) my feelings on death, life, time, history last night, and it occurred to me that probably the reason I got into history in the first place is that I started having this anxiety when I was little. Because if you think that much about how quickly time moves, it's natural to be interested in history.
The local Delhi paper or some kind of newsletter published a picture of my stepfather, his father, my step-brother, and his son, Wyatt, with the caption that Wyatt is the 9th generation of the family in that area, the first moving there in the late 18th century. Which blows my mind, because that means that if Will had had a similar picture taken when he was a newborn (in the ... mid 1920s, I think?), the great-grandfather in that would have been the original Gideon's grandson.
I don't know what I'm trying to say. I think most people tend to feel unconsciously that the past wasn't really real, that it's a setting for fiction - and when watching or reading a piece of historical fiction, that gets applied to it (so you wonder more about where they're going than about what happened to them before), which is why I always wish historical pieces would include decent flashbacks to remind the audience that it just keeps going back and back, the past always influencing the present, no matter when the present is. You know what would be interesting? A series where each progressive book was set further back in time, following the generation back. It would be an interesting exercise in characterization, for one thing; instead of naturally aging characters, you'd write them as fully-formed older adults and extrapolate what they would have been like when younger.
I realize this sounds like I'm high. It's just nightblogging - in the morning!
The local Delhi paper or some kind of newsletter published a picture of my stepfather, his father, my step-brother, and his son, Wyatt, with the caption that Wyatt is the 9th generation of the family in that area, the first moving there in the late 18th century. Which blows my mind, because that means that if Will had had a similar picture taken when he was a newborn (in the ... mid 1920s, I think?), the great-grandfather in that would have been the original Gideon's grandson.
I don't know what I'm trying to say. I think most people tend to feel unconsciously that the past wasn't really real, that it's a setting for fiction - and when watching or reading a piece of historical fiction, that gets applied to it (so you wonder more about where they're going than about what happened to them before), which is why I always wish historical pieces would include decent flashbacks to remind the audience that it just keeps going back and back, the past always influencing the present, no matter when the present is. You know what would be interesting? A series where each progressive book was set further back in time, following the generation back. It would be an interesting exercise in characterization, for one thing; instead of naturally aging characters, you'd write them as fully-formed older adults and extrapolate what they would have been like when younger.
I realize this sounds like I'm high. It's just nightblogging - in the morning!
