black_sluggard | Wtf: On Research!fail, Retcons, and Unexpected Squicks (Reply)

So, I recently had to go back and change a single line in Interlude 7 of Black Edelweiss. Spoiler warnings for that fic where applicable.

Why? Well, at the heart of it, the answer is because I'm anal retentive and as much as I love tossing in obscure details from canon or history, it grates like sand in my teeth when I learn that something I had in a story doesn't work/is inaccurate.

If it's just a bit of canon that winds up Jossed I can usually shrug it off if the story is already completed, but if it's a work in progress I like to see if there's a way I can integrate that stuff still. However, if the detail in question is a historical one... That really friggin' bugs me. And since the coffin isn't closed on Black Edelweiss (nor does it look like it will be for a while), I feel corrections are still fair game.

The line in question is this one right here :

He had never spent a week not talking to his father for refusing to let him join the Boy Scouts with his friends—though the reality that potentially lay behind that memory turned his stomach.

Now, when I was writing this interlude, I kind of had a feeling there was something wrong with this line. And by wrong, I mean more than dangling the disturbing idea of Hitler Youth!Ryan (brrrr). Because the thing about the Third Reich was that it took it's propagandizing pretty seriously, and it just didn't ring true that someone could just opt out of sending their kids to Nazi brainwashing camp.

And I've since been reminded (accidentally, believe it or not, through a chance glimpse at a stranger's random internet conversation) that, no, membership in the Hitler Youth was kinda mandatory.

Now, you might ask then... Why even include the line if I was unsure of it? Why not do the research when you usually have a few dozen tabs of some wiki or another open when you write your fics anyway? I've since looked at it and you know what I think the answer is?

...

I really, really wanted to specifically deny Ryan/Reichardt having been a member of the Hitler-Jugend. It's creepy. It creeps me out. The whole idea of the Hitler Youth creeps me out so much I don't even want to see the wikipedia page. Now, this is patently ridiculous when I've spent hours reading detailed wikibits about 9-11, the Dresden bombing, the SS—friggin' Auschwitz for chrissakes—all in the pursuit of writing the very same fic. And you know what?

I don't think of myself as having a lot of squicks. I mean...zombie porn. Cannibalism. Vivisection. And...hell, my alien fic hasn't even gotten warmed up yet as far as all the kinds of wrong it contains. Still, the fact remains: Creepy.

Hitler children = Squick

Who knew?

So in the interests of maintaining historical accuracy in my sprawling epic of time travel and superpowers (pfft) I have changed that line. Even if it means Hitler Youth!Ryan is now a canon part of the Zeitgeist AU (again, brrrr). Aaaand I am now totally sharing Ryan's nausea.

So...yeah.