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blamebrampton) wrote2009-01-17 10:57 pm
Parla Inglese?
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frantic_mice pushed me in the direction of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
fanficrants (which I can see lasting another week on my watch list, if that). One of the more interesting of the many rants was from someone who, in essence, said 'Look, we live in a globalised age, is it really the case that reading American spellings in a fic set in the UK and vice-versa is worth making that much of a fuss about?'And I have to agree. I can easily overlook gotten and alright if no one over the age of 20 cries and if people only talk about their deepest feelings when they are in extremis. But for some, including a long list of commenters, there are certain Americanisms that are like a dictionary to the 43rd President of the USA and have them running at first sight.
I can somewhat sympathise, because I can find it very hard to read when characters start acting American, talking at great length about their emotions and so on. While I adore my American friends, my closest ones know that they will receive one brief hug on meeting and departure, and I will probably never tell them any of my deepest feelings. Which is not because I don't love them, but because deepest feelings are only for personal perusal so that no innocent souls will become aware of the full extent of my inner lunacy.
But for spelling and so on ... well, I regularly read books and magazines published in America and sometimes set in the UK or elsewhere in the English speaking world, and I cope with them. In fact, the YA novel I just finished changed spellings depending on whether scenes were set in New York or Sydney and it read as very very odd indeed (though it's a good novel). Dealing with such spelling anomalies is commonplace: most of you do the same.
I do like a good Britpick for things like truck/lorry, stall/cubicle, Christmas eggnog/three bottles of decent whisky and hiding in the stables, and were I writing fic set in the US, I would make certain that my characters said Dude and asked for the check. However, my authorial voice would still sound like me, which I believe is appropriate. Wodehouse and Conan Doyle both have long sections of novels (Psmith, Journalist and The Valley of Fear respectively) set in the US where they follow this rule, and these were great successes on both sides of the Atlantic.
All of which is my lengthy way of saying, I can cope perfectly well if you're an American and you write alright, color and aluminum. But if you could hold off on having the lads say 'I love you so much, sweetie, that sometimes I just want to cry'*, I would take it as a personal favour.
suonguyen !*If you have actually written a fic that contains this line, obviously it worked well in the incredibly clever context you created for it.
no subject
But the gist of it was that I totally understand real British people not wanting to read fics where British characters are acting overly American (not to mention missing the basics of British speaking. That would make even me cringe), but I think it's better to try and get the basics right and have them acting like at least real human beings and not risk turning them into caricatures of British people.
Because just like you I could understand a British person using "colour" and "theatre" in a fic about Americans, but I don't think I could stand if they spent the whole time saying "Dude" and eating pizza and saying "I love you so much I could cry", because we're really not all like that.
no subject
I quite agree with your point that:
And I must say that I was exaggerating for comedic effect. Though there are some fic writers out there who seem to have trained on soap operas. I would like to see them sent off to read Twain and watch The West Wing.