Some clickbait article I saw on Facebook decreed, "Magneto Being in the Holocaust No Longer Makes Sense!" And I have to agree. I mean, do the math: the concentration camps were liberated in 1945, so really for Magneto to have any memory of them, he'd have to have been born in at least 1940 or so. Which would mean that in 2022, he'd be over 80 years old!
You can say he's a mutant and doesn't age normally and all that stuff, but really the problem is that time keeps going forward and sometimes origin stories have to move with them. While the Holocaust origin does give Magneto a reason to hate and distrust "normal" humans, there have unfortunately been plenty of other similar events in history. For example, the genocide in Bosnia and Serbia in the 90s. That would provide the same motivation for the character while not having to make him a senior citizen. Or you could have his grandparents in the Holocaust to still reference it and give him motivation without him actually having to be there.
But I suppose some people would complain the writers are being anti-Semitic or trying to "erase" the Holocaust when really it's just a practical matter.
When I'm writing stories, sometimes I have to stop and do the math on what used to be far more current events. It's surprising sometimes to realize that for instance anyone who was alive during 9/11 is over 20 years old now. For that matter, now that it's 2022, everyone born in 2000 is old enough to drink now. And anyone who would have actually fought in World War II would be over 90 years old now. And anyone who would have actually fought in the Vietnam War would be over 65 years old by now.
Does it matter? It does in some circumstances. In the 80s and 90s if a character was a veteran it was World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. But now there are a lot fewer WWII and Korea vets and even those in Vietnam are senior citizens. And sadly the war in Afghanistan lasted so long that you could have someone in his 50s be a veteran of that war.
Another thing that I have to watch for are the pop culture references. I mean if your story is set in 2022 and your character is 18 years old, you really can't have them loving the Beatles or Rolling Stones like if you were writing a similar story in 1972. Maybe the character does like retro music, but usually you'd want to find someone more current. The unfortunate thing is that can create anachronisms later on, like some older stories of mine will reference Hannah Montana or One Direction or shit like that that's gone by the wayside since the early 2010s. Some things are still more universal like The Simpsons, Star Wars, or yes even the Beatles and Rolling Stones.
Time keeps moving forward and things you might take for granted--like Magneto being in the Holocaust--start to get less and less practical with each passing day.
2 comments:
Sometimes I wonder if they just don't even try to be careful with things like this because they don't think people are going to notice. We writers realize a lot more than the general public. However, this time someone noticed, and it ended up on Facebook. Maybe someone learned a lesson.
About Magneto there was a particular story in the 80s were his body is cloned and/or deaged, so even if technically he's 80, his body is that of a man in his 40s or something like that.
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