Let's talk about the Earth 2020 setting!

[joshuazelinsky]

 Lots of people like to write fanfiction in the Earth 2020 setting. This is understandable. The setting is really popular, and it gets updated yearly. (Although why they feel a need to change the setting name each year I don't fully understand.)

People can write all sorts of things in the setting and take for granted that readers know the setting basics. If someone writes fanfic for say Harry Potter in contrast, interest will be much more narrow to people who are Harry Potter fans. Even major figures who haven't been around in the Earth 2020 setting for years are well known; pretty much everyone knows about major characters like Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, or Margaret Thatcher.

And the characters are so complicated and nuanced. That's part of how one gets such detailed arguments over setting minutia, like just how should fans think of Winston Churchill. Should they be happy for his roll in defeating one of the major villains in setting, or should fans dislike him for his actions surrounding India? Similarly, did the USSR really try to beat the US to the moon or not? What great questions for fans to discuss.

Of course, lots of people write all sorts of things to try to fix the setting. Apparently a lot of people don't like the lack of an explicit magic system in Earth 2020, and people have handled that in all sorts of different ways. In the last few years, post-apocalyptic or dystopian Young Adult variants of the Earth 2020 have become really popular, imagining the setting jumping ahead a few years as it takes a grimmer and darker tone.

But given all of this, one thing remains puzzling. No one almost ever says they are writing fanfic in this setting. Sure, they'll skip a hundred years in the setting, and imagine the Earth 2020 setting with advanced spaceships or faster than light travel (something the series authors seem to really not like in the main canon), but they don't even label it as Earth 2020 fanfic. Similarly, people write all sorts of romances or novels set in the Earth 2020 setting focusing on their own minor characters they have introduced. But they don't credit the setting pretty much ever.

Let's do better in the future. Be open and honest when we're writing in the Earth 2020 setting. Hi, I'm Joshua Zelinsky, and I've written Earth 2020 fanfic.

Comments

[sorcyress]

I ought to write more fix-it fics for Earth2020! It just feels...so grinding and depressing like all the time! I really thought when the introduced the new villain a few years back, he'd be defeated in like half a season. Instead he just keeps holding on, no matter what!

[joshuazelinsky]

E had a nearly identical reaction to this idea.