(no subject)

[skygiants]

So I just finished Nicole Kornher-Stace's Archivist Wasp, which I had told myself going in was almost certainly not going to be a book which had anything to do with actual archives, and indeed about this I was correct: this is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which Archivist is a ritual title for a teen girl priestess/sacrifice who hunts ghosts and records observations about them in various notebooks which are never seen by anyone until she is killed by the next Archivist-to-be in ritual combat.

(Wistfully, I asked the book: but do the notebooks have metadata even? An index? A finding aid? No, apparently just twenty notebooks of disconnected jotted observations. FIELD RESEARCHER WASP.)

Anyway the actual plot of the book isn't even about the notebooks, it's about our Archivist heroine making a deal with a particularly coherent ghost to go to the underworld and find the ghost of his former partner from a time pre(?)-(or during(?))-apocalypse when they were the last surviving human experiments from a terrible superweapon facility. All of which is fine if a little disconnected, and it takes quite a long while for the journey to wend back into relevant non-underworld plot developments for Wasp, but if you enjoy stories about traumatized human weapons reluctantly bonding with each other under stressed-out questing circumstances and don't mind a fair degree of bleakness this might be your jam.

However, I can't stop thinking about the hilarious co-opting of my job title to mean 'tragic ghost hunter.' There are a lot of archivists in fiction whose day-to-day work bears very little resemblance to my own, because not many people actually care about what archivists do and definitely nobody cares about what digital archivists do (except the people who wrote Rogue One, who understood PERFECTLY, thank you Star Wars franchise) but this is probably the most dramatic example. Which is fine! Words can mean anything in the post-apocalypse! It's just also ... very distracting ......

What about you guys? Tell me about the fictional character with the same job title as you whose job least resembles yours!

Comments

[monanotlisa]

I love your reviews, you tragic ghost hunter, you.

[skygiants]

I would NEVER earn my MA in tragic ghost hunting a la Kornher-Stace. They have to fight ritual combat three times a year! I would trip on my own tragic ghost-hunter sword and be dead in one.

[genarti]

...I feel 100% SURE that there are nonsense "sure uh I guess we could call that translation if you really want?!?" translators kicking around sff, but heck if I can think of any right now. Uhh.

(Actual translation and especially interpreting in sff, of course, being mostly handled by handwavium in the form of magic/universal translators/convenient field effects, about which I am dubious as a translator and "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I mean it's often handy!" as a writer and reader and viewer.)

Anyway in conclusion I am proud if confused to be dating a tragic ghost hunter and I have all kinds of new questions about what you folks get up to in your 9-5 ghost hunter workdays at the office.

[vass]

Translator? That means you're one of the confusing alien-human hybrids in the Radch books, right?

[antisoppist]

We have been replaced by Babelfish or instant computerised translation.

There's Barbara Wilson's detective Cassandra Reilly. I appreciated the bit in Gaudi Afternoon where she hadn't read the rambling magical realism South American novel before translating it and was boggled by the unfolding plot. However, I am not convinced that you can fund a globe-trotting mystery-solving lifestyle from translating Spanish novels, or that you can wander off to Barcelona with your novel and maintain a freelance translation career without having any other jobs on the go or any contact with any other clients. But I suppose it was before e-mail...

[skygiants]

Nothing good or fun, if one takes this book as a guide!

[wakuchan]

I mean, I'm a librarian. So many strange interpretations of what the job is (extra hate to the shows that still have public libraries as silent rooms with mean shushing librarians), I guess weirdest is probably The Librarians where librarians are also kinda treasure hunters? Not nearly as fun as tragic ghost hunting.

[melannen]

SO MANY sf librarians whose job is "keep people from accessing information." So many. (There is even one written by somebody who worked at the same public library as me!)

[luzula]

I'm a mathematician. I guess the strangest thing about mathematicians in books/movies/TV is that they are all autistic, or schizophrenic, or go mad in some unspecified way when they contemplate pi. Not actually the case with actual mathematicians!

Slight tangent: A Russian colleague once told me that during communism in the USSR, there were propaganda movies with female mathematicians or physicists as heroes, to encourage women to go into science. Would love to see one of those movies!

Oh, and also: is there fic about the archivists on Scarif?

[landofnowhere]

I'm also a mathematician! You're right about the whole mental illness thing.

I was going to go with Hari Seldon from the Foundation series as mathematician whose job is least like mine -- I'm entirely unclear as to why his job title is "Professor of Mathematics" when he is clearly a mathematical social scientist (the prequel makes it clear that's what he's been doing from a young age), and he should at a minimum have a joint appointment with some other department.

I mean, really, what would it be like to have Hari Seldon as your calculus prof? "Today we are going to study dynamical systems. Here's a toy model of the evolution of the Galactic Empire. As you can see, it's doomed."

[sovay]

but if you enjoy stories about traumatized human weapons reluctantly bonding with each other under stressed-out questing circumstances and don't mind a fair degree of bleakness this might be your jam.

I loved this novel precisely because it is a katabatic road trip with fucked-up ghosts. I read it half in a bookstore and half in a library and refuse to feel like I missed the point of bookstores and libraries just because I brought my own copy in with me. (It was a day with a lot of waiting.)

[kore]

it is a katabatic road trip with fucked-up ghosts

Definitely sold!

[kore]

if you enjoy stories about traumatized human weapons reluctantly bonding with each other under stressed-out questing circumstances and don't mind a fair degree of bleakness this might be your jam

....oooh, sold.

[skygiants]

LOTS of sad ghosts!

[nevanna]

This reminds me a little bit of the Librarians TV show, which, while a lot of fun, features characters whose work overlaps only slightly with the library profession as I understand it.

[skygiants]

I was not under the impression that it overlapped at all! My understanding has been that the entire point of the Librarians on the TV show is to stop people accessing their stacks.

[mific]

For me, the “I don’t think so!” example is Kate Heightmeyer in Stargate Atlantis, who chats pleasantly with people in her office with a superb view, on cream coloured couches, and uses hypnosis as a major intervention. And who doesn’t ever seem to see people with actual mental illness or have to fill in a million time-wasting forms.

[skygiants]

Literally the only people I can ever remember having to fill out paperwork on television are the cops on Brooklyn 99!

[seekingferret]

The number one anti-engineer in media for me is Holtzmann in Ghostbusters, but that might be because I'm a dude and according to Holtzmann, safety lights are for dudes. But seriously, a huge chunk of my job is figuring out how to make sure I'm meeting safety codes and a huge chunk of Holtzmann's job is operating unshielded nuclear reactors in back alleys.

[skygiants]

Ah, Holtzmann. So dreamy, so dangerous to be within a one-mile radius of!

[aquamirage]

I have the absolute best response to this everyone else can go home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7k9Gvx-XjM

[skygiants]

loooool I think the only one on par with this is the social worker on Twitter who answered 'Cobra Bubbles.'

[sophia_sol]

the executive assistants I see in fiction are either very powerful with total control over their boss who couldn't do anything without them, or basically just secretaries. Neither of which matches my experience particularly well... (Part receptionist, part doing whatever jobs my boss needs done, part providing a different perspective to my boss when we disagree about what the right decision for something is (aka arguing with my boss). I probably win the arguments about a third of the time.)

I mean I WISH I could be Donna from Suits based on what I know about her from fanfic, but that's really never going to happen.

[skygiants]

I don't know anything about Suits but I'm gonna guess that Donna falls into Category 1 of the two you mentioned? :D

[littlerhymes]

No metadata AND the plot isn't even about the notebooks? FALSE ADVERTISING.

[skygiants]

EXTREMELY FALSE. And nobody gets to access the notebooks, either!

[alias_sqbr]

According to New Game all professional game devs are cute 18-25 year old women who spend their work days having adorable femslashy shenanigans, which has definitely not been my experience.

[skygiants]

WOULD THAT IT WERE TRUE.

[thistleingrey]

If anyone even knows of fiction featuring a software tester, hook me up, pls.

[rmc28]

I'm a senior software developer. It involves a lot more meetings - especially with testing! - and a lot less "genius hacking" than any fictional representation I've ever seen.

Also too much fixing other people's code has given me a strong dislike of "clever" code as opposed to straightforward and readable.

[sholio]

You know, you'd THINK fiction writer is one of those professions that stands a much higher-than-usual chance of being depicted accurately, and it probably is compared to, say, assassins, but still - if I had a buck for every character whose first novel makes them wildly rich and famous, I could probably retire ...

[skygiants]

I saw a musical once which was kicked off by an aspiring novelist being ready to throw it all in after receiving ONE (1) rejection letter for an UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPT and I spent the next twenty minutes laughing.

[vivien]

The teachers I've seen/read are always way more relaxed than I ever felt. And they usually have, like, nice apartments and cars. LOL.

[skygiants]

A friend once wrote a novel-length kindergarten teacher bodyguard fic that 100% leaned into the exhaustion, long hours, and constant contagious illnesses and it was ... so refreshing ......

[melita66]

I'm a coordinate system and transformation specialist so...maybe Satoshi Lono in McIntyre's Starfarers except he's described a geographer IIRC but seems to be functioning as a remote sensing specialist. Other than that maybe someone from Steerswoman series or season 1 of Tremontane where maps and world revolves around the sun have bearing on the plot.

[skygiants]

All the Steerswoman stuff is so good and so surprisingly accurate -- there's that one bit in the last Steerswoman book where William is like 'ugh I don't want to use the GUI, I'm just gonna pull up the command line' but in wizard code and I was like 'this is the most accurate use of technological tools and programming I've ever seen in a book and it's in a pseudo-fantasy novel.'

[cofax7]

I've never seen an environmental planner in any visual media at all. Every once in a while you get a biologist or geologist, or someone like the EPA guy in the original Ghostbusters, but that's it.

Which I guess I don't mind, since it's mostly accessing online databases of endangered species, historic buildings, and contaminated sites, and then writing up permit applications. Hardly the stuff of drama.

[skygiants]

I feel like there must be a cozy mystery series that revolves around environmental planning. It seems like the sort of thing that would really lend itself to a series full of punny titles and murders of unpleasant people in Important Locations...

[larryhammer]

I don't think I've ever met a depiction of a technical writer in fiction ...

[skygiants]

I feel sure that I have encountered at least one but feel equally sure that their job was totally irrelevant to the story. I wish I could remember where!

[starlady]

Job title inaccuracy notwithstanding, I loved this book so hard.

Probably the most inaccurate job title vs actual job in fiction is Owen Deathstalker from the Simon R. Greene books. He calls himself a "historian" but really he's just a whiny rich recluse who unwillingly starts a side hustle in galactic revolution and fated prophecy fulfillment.

[skygiants]

With a name like Owen Deathstalker it's really a shame that he didn't actually get his Ph.D.; Professor Deathstalker sounds like he would be a great addition to any university faculty.