On behalf of my nation of fic writers, I apologise

Feb 15, 2008 00:39

Seriously. Torchwood attracts fic writers like flies to honey, because it's pretty and there's text and aliens and explosions and leaves bunnies littered *everywhere ( Read more... )

writing, fandom

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Comments 10

derryderrydown February 15 2008, 01:09:28 UTC
Oh, god, yes. I'm exactly the same.

And it even shows in things like interpretation of the characters. I mean, I linked to that post somebody made a while back, discussing the fact that Jack is an American in a WWII uniform and how that reads as trustworthy to Americans and untrustworthy to Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, etc.

I wonder if my love of John Winchester is another of those things? Because I expect fathers to be emotionally distant and demanding.

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randomeliza February 15 2008, 01:20:47 UTC
I think you mean most of the time. *cough* Some Americans, after all, know their Briticisms as well as any Brit.

Conversely, with American fandoms (particularly Supernatural) I can usually tell a British writer within the first paragraph, and sometimes it's so jarring that a fic that gets recced from here to Cleveland makes me cringe to the point I can't read it.

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burntcopper February 15 2008, 09:49:51 UTC
oh yeah, but it's the majority of them. Even some of the ones I love and adore who do so much effort to get the Briticisms right, there's normally just that one turn of phrase that makes you go ...So not native. hence why I'm now worrying about how bad my american fandom stuff is. on the other hand, I do normally write the British characters in them.

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petronelle February 15 2008, 02:09:18 UTC
This is why I love and venerate the people who will read something over for me and make sure it doesn't make British readers have fits.

I'll do the same for them in reverse, of course, and American-check what I can. For some reason the use of perfect tenses -- had done, rather than did -- gets me as much as "lift" for "elevator." I suspect this means I am a linguistic canary.

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derryderrydown February 15 2008, 02:19:04 UTC
And I will always be grateful to you for the amount of American-checking you did for my DCU stories. *g*

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delle February 15 2008, 06:11:44 UTC
I know that cookie = biscuit, right? but what do you Brits call your cellphones?

(it IS amazing that we speak the same language and yet we don't speak the same language. at. all.)

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derryderrydown February 15 2008, 09:42:37 UTC
Mobile phones.

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burntcopper February 15 2008, 09:43:35 UTC
yep. 'cookie' is a very specific term used for the biscuits with chocolate chips in them.

Cellphones = mobiles.

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grondfic February 15 2008, 08:27:19 UTC
It's worse when films get made out of Brit books with no care whatsoever for the background; and the child-hero gets transformed into an American too. (Yup, I'm talking The Dark is Rising here). You're supposed to PAY MONEY to see it, too (no WAY!)

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