Post #2644356

2026-05-05 11:52 UTC

What I find fascinating about an older character PoV in spec fic is that an elderly character is both a fish out of and very much in the water at the same time: They've been around a while and have seen more of the world than a lot of younger characters, but the world they're so familiar with can also seem strange because so much has changed since their own youth. In that sense all older characters who have lived through rapid social and material change are science-fiction protagonists, like older people in the real world. This push and pull between the familiar and unfamiliar puts older characters in a unique situation as both worldbuilding vectors and as characters, and is particularly powerful when they're in protagonist roles able to act from that combination of familiarity and "otherworldly" disorientation. @writingbooks@fedigroups.social

Replies (3)

@ljwrites@writeout.ink 2026-05-05 12:07

Also mildly freaked out because modern Uganda & Tanzania share a border, yet 2,000 miles is more than 3 times the entire length of the Korean peninsula. Africa is truly on a different scale omg, people you have been lied to by Mercatur all your lives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH1bZ0F3zVU

Open ##2644357
@mgmarkel@universeodon.com 2026-05-05 16:18

@ljwrites@writeout.ink @writingbooks@fedigroups.social Interesting. How old is the author? As a woman of a certain age, I often cringe at the way older characters are depicted in realistic fiction by younger writers. Focus on weakness, vulnerability, loss.

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@jacobcoffin@writing.exchange 2026-05-09 12:07

@ljwrites@writeout.ink @writingbooks@fedigroups.social The book Murder in the Tool Library uses this perspective mechanism a bit. Some of the members of the Citizens Detective Society tasked with solving the titular crime are older folks who remember how things were done in the past and who are sometimes struck by how much things have changed. The bloodhound trainer Nakamura (a former police officer in the old world) especially brings this perspective to the story. It really is a very useful way to do worldbuilding

Open ##2644393