A case in point ...

[blamebrampton]

So, there we were, having a chat on a friend's LJ about the differences between the US and the UK for purposes of a self-Britpicking list, with participants from both sides of the pond and beyond and frequent diversions into baiting and comedy from all sides, and apparently it has become a source of Flocked Drama.

Consider the argument very carefully: At least one American is very upset that British people prefer to be depicted in accurate ways.

And if you can't see why that's a bit dodgy, replace the word British with any other nationality.

I don't want to overstate the case, because really, it doesn't culturally oppress us the way that some other cultures have been oppressed by this sort of thing, since we don't deeply care and we had an Empire first. And while the original source of the complaint is a preference, it's certainly not a sine qua non, and we read heaps of stuff that gets us wrong, and some of it is good and some is crap, and really, at the end of the day we still pronounce and spell aluminium in ways that are scientifically logical, which in itself is enough. But, honestly ...

Interestingly, one of my points of difference was a tendency to soap-opera-like over-reactions in fiction. Clearly I drew the line too narrowly.

AND I left off the fact that it the entire United States has been the subject of mass-brainwashing to accept caffeinated flavoured beverages as coffee. Though I see Starbucks has dropped the word from their logo, truth in advertising at last!

Comments

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Er no I'm not winning your argument for you. You put forward their wealth as being grounds for supposing sophistication, and I dispute that. It depends whether you look at the books or the films, but... big walking stick wand, all that slytherin bling, snakes coming out of his ears, white peacocks as opposed to bog standard, what peacocks, oh I just happen to have some peacocks lying around the place, they really aren't all that special... all reeks of nouveuax riche wannabe.

Not to mention, from book canon, that the Manor is called Malfoy Manor. Manors aren't traditionally named after their owner, the owner is named after it - Lord X of Y. It suggests a change of hands and a renaming happened at some point in the recent past.

I like writing Lucius as sophisticated, but really, I don't think it's justified by canon, and more generally the most an English person can legitimately aspire to is eccentricity.

Women may have secondary roles, though I don't agree. But even a secondary role is more than would be explained by an bringing in the C17th where women couldn't hold public office at all unless it was waiting lady to the Queen. And it's clear from the backstory / world building that witches have been able to hold such positions for a very very long time.

All things are possible if you can justify it as deriving from canon or some parallel with history. The difficulty is that the historical lens through which people view canon is so often derived from regency romances (and the least accurate ones at that). Theme park England. You can get the situation where the cues are wrong for both modern English culture and Historical English culture.

It still comes back to the point that I wear a horsehair wig.

Judges wear full bottomed wigs, and open the court sessions by carrying a posy to ward off the plague.

The Lord Mayor of London goes to see the Queen every year at the Royal Courts of Justice and tenders his fealty, picking up a blessing from the Dean of Westminster on the way, accompanied by representatives of the Twelve Great Livery companies. And he's done that since 1535. And then he goes home to oversee one of the great financial centres of the world with clever bastards selling derivatives and futures over computer screens to the rest of the world. The past and present coexist.

You may feel frustrated by people talking about the pitfalls of Americans writing HPfic... The original discussion was never intended to be prescriptive though, just illustrate some differences in approach and ideas. It could also free people from worrying about the arcana of English culture, because no one outside the UK is ever going to get the nuances of the class system, and nor should they be expected to. That would be ridiculous.

But imagine how frustrated I feel when someone tells me that an artefact of the Modern British World inexorably means that a society is backwards in some way.

If you want mobile phones for wizards, why not? You can sell it as a byproduct of an enthusiasm for all things muggleborn after the war, part of pretending that people didn't believe all that nonsense about stealing magic, honestly they didn't, why look at how fashionable this pretty fellytone is don't look too closely at what I did in the war children.

I don't see it as working with magic, but conversely I don't see it being ruled out if you have the right backstory and worldbuilding to justify it.