dancing gets her higher than anything else she knows
This is one of those posts I'd have probably made on Saturday if technology hadn't been messing with me, and it's something I thought about all weekend, so I just need to get it out.
Reading is a funny thing, and reading fanfic is even stranger, because most of us already have a range of characterization we'll accept - the boundaries for some are more fluid than others - X would never do THAT, but Y might under certain circumstances. A ALWAYS belongs with B, but I can see D with C or E, depending. Etc.
But aside from the big huge things that make me click or not click (or click out when they appear), there are smaller, mostly throwaway details, that can cause me to have kneejerk reaction of the bad sort, where I am just completely jarred out of the story and end up clicking out.
These are tiny details that are usually meant to provide texture or depth or characterization, and sometimes, authors get them wrong, and depending what it is, there is often no recovering from it for me.
I was reading a story once where the characters were at a major league baseball game, and a player came to bat. The author had used a real player, and real teams, which I would normally applaud, because I dig verisimilitude, but she had the PITCHER come to bat in an AMERICAN LEAGUE GAME. And I was just like, "this person is setting her whole story around a baseball game, and either doesn't know that X is a pitcher, or doesn't know that, except for very extreme circumstances (or during interleague play), pitchers don't bat in the American League."
I stopped reading and closed the story.
It only takes a minute or two to Google the players you are planning to use, to make sure you have their positions correct, etc.
There was another story I saw recently, that had the characters discussing music. Both characters are supposed to have a decent knowledge of the subject, and the author named both the song and the album that they were discussing, and that would have been awesome, except the chosen song does not appear on the mentioned album. I mean, this is something both characters would have known, which I knew without even looking up, a mistake which, again, a couple of seconds to look up the track listing would have avoided.
I realize a lot of people don't care about this stuff. And when it comes to stuff I don't know, obviously, I don't care, because I don't know. But when it is something that I do know, and more importantly, something that the characters would know, it invariably throws me out of the story. It makes me think the writer doesn't know what she's talking about. If I can't trust the writer to know what the characters know (to know more, really), that's a problem for me, as a reader. (This is one of the major reasons I have a problem with some of the things the SPN writers choose to have Dean not know - e.g., he namechecks Ozzie and Harriet but doesn't know who Dick Van Dyke is? In the same episode? Seriously?)
I mean, I will be the first to admit that a lot of the research I do is surface-level at best (research is dangerous because you start out looking to confirm that one niggling detail about nixies and three hours later you look up blurry and shocked from an article about transsexual midget prostitutes in Dubai or something), but when it's something the characters are well-versed in, if I feel like I don't know anything about it, I feel like I can't write it well. I am always asea when I have to deal with Dean talking about cars. I mean, I look stuff up, I ask my dad, who knows a thing or two, etc. but because it's not really my knowledge, I am always sort of easing over it and hoping nobody can tell (much the same way I write places I'm unfamiliar with - I make a lot of shit up and mention a couple of actual facts and hope I haven't gotten it too wrong; otoh, it does make me crazy when people screw up places I know, especially NYC, and that goes for professionally produced fiction/movies/tv shows as well).
But, like, if I am having characters go to a movie, and the story is set in a specific time frame, I check to see what movies were released that year. If I mention a town or city, I check to see if they have an IHOP or a Denny's or whatever if I'm going to mention that (just FYI: NYC has no Denny's; upstate, yes, NYC, no; I don't know why), just because it would bother me if they didn't and I discovered it later (or had it pointed out to me in comments).
Again, I realize some people don't care about this, but these kinds of things nag at me, even when the story is otherwise decently written.
Also, tangentially related, Britishisms in stories about American-based sources also throw me right out. I realize that the rhythm is always going to be a little off - god knows, my LJ name for a while was "relentlessly American diction," which is a quote from a review of some of my HP fic. *snerk* I didn't always have stuff Britpicked, but I made sure to use lift and flat and jumper correctly (and I won't even tell you how often I had to have the usage of 'pull' explained to me), and British slang has never felt really comfortable to me (except for wanker *snerk*), but I tried to use it appropriately.
Which is a really long way of saying that Sam and Dean pop the hood or the trunk (not the bonnet or boot); they use flashlights, not torches; and they certainly do not wear jumpers.
I'm less likely to back out of a story rife with Britishisms (unless they infect the dialogue in addition to the narration), but if I'm reccing a story, I will note their presence.
Okay, I feel better now.
***
Reading is a funny thing, and reading fanfic is even stranger, because most of us already have a range of characterization we'll accept - the boundaries for some are more fluid than others - X would never do THAT, but Y might under certain circumstances. A ALWAYS belongs with B, but I can see D with C or E, depending. Etc.
But aside from the big huge things that make me click or not click (or click out when they appear), there are smaller, mostly throwaway details, that can cause me to have kneejerk reaction of the bad sort, where I am just completely jarred out of the story and end up clicking out.
These are tiny details that are usually meant to provide texture or depth or characterization, and sometimes, authors get them wrong, and depending what it is, there is often no recovering from it for me.
I was reading a story once where the characters were at a major league baseball game, and a player came to bat. The author had used a real player, and real teams, which I would normally applaud, because I dig verisimilitude, but she had the PITCHER come to bat in an AMERICAN LEAGUE GAME. And I was just like, "this person is setting her whole story around a baseball game, and either doesn't know that X is a pitcher, or doesn't know that, except for very extreme circumstances (or during interleague play), pitchers don't bat in the American League."
I stopped reading and closed the story.
It only takes a minute or two to Google the players you are planning to use, to make sure you have their positions correct, etc.
There was another story I saw recently, that had the characters discussing music. Both characters are supposed to have a decent knowledge of the subject, and the author named both the song and the album that they were discussing, and that would have been awesome, except the chosen song does not appear on the mentioned album. I mean, this is something both characters would have known, which I knew without even looking up, a mistake which, again, a couple of seconds to look up the track listing would have avoided.
I realize a lot of people don't care about this stuff. And when it comes to stuff I don't know, obviously, I don't care, because I don't know. But when it is something that I do know, and more importantly, something that the characters would know, it invariably throws me out of the story. It makes me think the writer doesn't know what she's talking about. If I can't trust the writer to know what the characters know (to know more, really), that's a problem for me, as a reader. (This is one of the major reasons I have a problem with some of the things the SPN writers choose to have Dean not know - e.g., he namechecks Ozzie and Harriet but doesn't know who Dick Van Dyke is? In the same episode? Seriously?)
I mean, I will be the first to admit that a lot of the research I do is surface-level at best (research is dangerous because you start out looking to confirm that one niggling detail about nixies and three hours later you look up blurry and shocked from an article about transsexual midget prostitutes in Dubai or something), but when it's something the characters are well-versed in, if I feel like I don't know anything about it, I feel like I can't write it well. I am always asea when I have to deal with Dean talking about cars. I mean, I look stuff up, I ask my dad, who knows a thing or two, etc. but because it's not really my knowledge, I am always sort of easing over it and hoping nobody can tell (much the same way I write places I'm unfamiliar with - I make a lot of shit up and mention a couple of actual facts and hope I haven't gotten it too wrong; otoh, it does make me crazy when people screw up places I know, especially NYC, and that goes for professionally produced fiction/movies/tv shows as well).
But, like, if I am having characters go to a movie, and the story is set in a specific time frame, I check to see what movies were released that year. If I mention a town or city, I check to see if they have an IHOP or a Denny's or whatever if I'm going to mention that (just FYI: NYC has no Denny's; upstate, yes, NYC, no; I don't know why), just because it would bother me if they didn't and I discovered it later (or had it pointed out to me in comments).
Again, I realize some people don't care about this, but these kinds of things nag at me, even when the story is otherwise decently written.
Also, tangentially related, Britishisms in stories about American-based sources also throw me right out. I realize that the rhythm is always going to be a little off - god knows, my LJ name for a while was "relentlessly American diction," which is a quote from a review of some of my HP fic. *snerk* I didn't always have stuff Britpicked, but I made sure to use lift and flat and jumper correctly (and I won't even tell you how often I had to have the usage of 'pull' explained to me), and British slang has never felt really comfortable to me (except for wanker *snerk*), but I tried to use it appropriately.
Which is a really long way of saying that Sam and Dean pop the hood or the trunk (not the bonnet or boot); they use flashlights, not torches; and they certainly do not wear jumpers.
I'm less likely to back out of a story rife with Britishisms (unless they infect the dialogue in addition to the narration), but if I'm reccing a story, I will note their presence.
Okay, I feel better now.
***