Young and Full of Fluff

This comment is probably so late you forgot posting it... but I think the move to try to make things "timeless" is probably also in reaction to the trend for commercial and bestselling fic to drop brand names liek woah. I didn't have a real sense of this until proofreading books that had lists of brand names that went on for pages and pages and pages. Some authors seem to think it makes things "hip" to tell you that the girl is wearing Manola Blahniks (sp?) for women's fiction, or the exact caliber and make of the gun for men's fiction. So I can see someone trying to not do that as deliberate attempt to not tie themselves to a particular moment in time. But I think to push it too far in the other direction means that you've removed the influences that shape characters. And as I said, removing distinguishing features and assuming what's left is universal is essentially saying that the author believes their (usually white, male, American) experience is universal. Literature gets to universal truths, but not as a result of a lack of specific setting. "Of Mice and Men" has universal truths, but it's very much about itinerant farm workers during the Depression.