Dad Read

One of the things you do as you are writing -- and especially as you are editing -- is to try to read through the text as if you were coming at it fresh. Or coming at it with certain assumptions.

I read through about half of it assuming I was dad. He decided life was too short to get distracted by smart phones and social media and all that rot and I can't say he is wrong.

Heck, I'm not exactly up on all that myself, but I was trying to write from the experience of a younger person who is extremely comfortable in the digital world. It's built in to the concept. Penny is a YouTube personality and that is a key part of the plot.

Heck, one of her badass moments is when she says she's going to update her Facebook page (it makes sense in context). And, yes, I know Facebook is way, way old school. That's actually part of the setup for that moment.

So that's the first hurdle. Chapter One, Penny is making a video for her YouTube channel, courtesy of her Patreon supporters. In later scenes she uses the GPS and map app (yes, she talks of apps) to figure out where she is, does some Internet searches on her iPhone using her cellular data plan (complaining all along about how much it was going to end up costing), and even buys train tickets via the Deutsche Bahn site. Oh, and there are selfie sticks all over the Acropolis.

When the plot started rolling, she was in conversation with a would-be influencer whose channel started with unboxing videos (and mentions Fyre Festival in connection with him), and an Internet bad boy who basically rides on online notoriety (a familiar character to even those of us who don't spend a lot of time on Social Media). He also has a lot of sock puppets. And PewDiePie gets name-dropped.

He does in fact have some friends in the nastier corners of the Internet; the chans, Something Awful, even some MGTOWs. She describes a couple of web sites that haven't been blocked in her location in terms of their landing page, and on one of them discovers an (from the context, animated) GIF. She also comments on how damage to one's brand on the internet can be damaging in the real world, and that's not even counting direct financial damage like a DOS attack. Oddly enough, she never mentioned doxxing. Or Twitter. Although she does make a mention of Russian Hackers.

Way back in Chapter Three there was already a text conversation, with emoticons off her phone and an "eleventy!!!" from her. That same person later gets hold of video taken from a streaming HD camera. And that same person has been responsible for updating Penny's Facebook status as she is completely uninterested in that platform.

So that's the online and social media world. There's also a brief mention of Wikipedia, I think, but that's it for that. I had originally intended that a key photograph was already in the cloud and thus couldn't be destroyed with the phone, but it never came up.

I mentioned a number of posts back how I am tired of the stock hero character who keeps making snarky pop-culture references. I particularly wanted to assume this is an abnormal person who just doesn't get around to mentioning games that much. Because otherwise it would be coming up all the time, especially when I got into action sequences.

I couldn't stop myself completely, though. In Germany she mentions both Wicker Man and The Blues Brothers, specifically in the context of Illinois Nazis. And of course there are numerous references to Indiana Jones (the same kind of blindness is also at work in that, for some reason, nobody in her world seems to have heard of Lara Croft. Otherwise every single conversation she had, the moment she mentioned she was an archaeologist the other person would be making a comment on the size of her guns. Or lack.)

Oh, right. And a name-drop of Topkapi, and oblique references to Marathon Man, Rocky IV, From Russia with Love, Ghostbusters, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series) and Hogan's Heroes. And an unattributed quote from Labyrinth and a very subtle reference to The Pirates of the Caribbean as well as paraphrased quote from and oblique reference to The Shining. There's even a quote from 1984.

It probably goes with the territory that Zorba the Greek comes up by name, and 300, BBC's Troy, the 1970's Iphigenia and even Never on Sunday are referenced.

As for games, she describes a figure painted on the outside of a ride at Oktoberfest as looking like Master Chief, during the chase in Venice she makes a throwaway comment about Ezio Auditore, and after the lagoon water has done a number on her stomach she comments she normally has the constitution of The Wasteland Wanderer. She name-drops Doom, Ơblivion horse armor, and makes reference to a "fetch quest."

So there's not that many references Dad won't get. The problem is going to be more understanding the online social world, how someone can make a living being a personality, how the fortunes of a YouTube celebrity can change in a moment. Also, how data connects people to such an extent that looking up bus schedules or opening maps or even keeping track of phone numbers is hardly a thing.