Comparative numbers.

[mrissa]

Defective Yeti generally amuses me, but there was one line of this post that really caught my eye: I'm not one to overly romanticize the past -- I like living in a world with more flavors of ice cream than strains of smallpox.

Yah. That.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's good. I frequently complain about people's idealized visions/versions of the past.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For any year before, say, 1900, when people ask, "What do you think you'd have been, if you'd been born in [year]?", my top three answers are, "1. Dead. 2. A farmer's wife. 3. A dead farmer's wife."

[pameladean]

The Fourth Street Fantasy Convention once had a panel about how writers felt they would fare in their own fictional worlds. Suzy McKee Charnas was on it, and so was I, and I was initially terrified to be on a panel with her. She was very witty and pleasant before the panel started, however, so when the moderator asked us to start at the end, where I was, and answer the question, "What would you be in your fantasy world?" I took off my glasses and said, "Dead." She decided that that was her answer, too. Luckily, this did not derail the panel.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When I was doing the five-question interview meme, someone asked me what speculative writer I'd want to have in control of the plot of my life from here on out. And I admit that what I thought was, "Pamela already likes me; maybe Pamela would be nice to me. .... No, not from the evidence at hand, she wouldn't!"

In the worlds of my novels, working forward from time of finishing each? Clueless, clueless (same world as the first clueless), jailed, about where I am now, dead, clueless, and again a repeat clueless.

That's me, not you.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

For any year before whenever penicillin became available in small-town Iowa, my only answer would be "dead."

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

For any year before, say, 1900, when people ask, "What do you think you'd have been, if you'd been born in [year]?", my top three answers are, "1. Dead. 2. A farmer's wife. 3. A dead farmer's wife."

Oooh yes, so me too. Someone did the family tree on my father's side and the women are pretty much all farmer's wives, and they're the ones who survived to have children. I have vague memories of needing antibiotics several times as a child, so the "dead" angle is covered pretty well too.

I do have a great-great aunt who was one of the first photographers in that part of Denmark, and her photographs are now valuable documentation of early twentieth century life there. But my great-grandfather strongly disapproved of his sister's bohemian lifestyle, and she didn't have children, so the genes aren't even in my favour here.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I don't mean to imply that women did nothing interesting before 1900. Just that the odds were against it, statistically, and that a lot of the factors that played into who got to do interesting stuff were not based on the person's personality or capabilities.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't think you were implying remotely that women didn't do interesting things. But I am very conscious of how many of my ancestors (male and female) were ordinary country folk, totally unremarkable historically. I agree very strongly that who got to do interesting stuff didn't have to do with personality and capabilities.

And I just find it so cool that a relative of mine managed buck-the-system-feminism (An unmarried woman opening a photography business, and keeping chickens as pets?). I'm not sure I could have.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In the 1920s, my Gran was a flapper and a scandal. I adored my Gran even before I knew that -- by the time I was born, businesswomen, people who married divorced people, and short-haired women in trousers were all normal, so it didn't occur to me that Gran had done anything out of the ordinary until I was older.