Parla Inglese?

[blamebrampton]

frantic_mice  pushed me in the direction of 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.
 

Finally, HAPPY BIRTHDAY 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.

Comments

[emansil-08.livejournal.com]

I always love entries like this, if for no other reason than to read the comments. The degree of passion felt by others in things that concern me not at all makes for some interesting debates in my own brain.

As I recently did my own entry )http://emansil-08.livejournal.com/6943.html ) about fics and what makes them awesome in my mind I won't go into detail on that again.

But generally speaking if I've found myself lost in a story, I generally fail to notice certain shall we say irregularities. Part of that may be as an American it would not cause me any degree of consternation to read the word mom, or color, or to have the boys emoting all over the place. It's what I'm used to and therefore I don't even see it. Where as for those of you who are not American reading a fic where Teddy Lupin sat down to a breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy would have you non Americans running for the closest sick up receptacle. For me as an American-especially a southern American it just made me really hungry. It was only later in retrospect that I thought-WTF Sausage Biscuits?? (And yes I'm 99 percent sure I read this in a fic,unless my dreams are much more lucid than I'd ever realized.) However the point remains I kept reading the fic, and if I remember correctly I found it quite acceptable.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is on occassions you've got to send your inner editor out for some much needed coffee or drinks or even an overnight shag. And learn to love a fic for the content not the context.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you about the being lost in a story effect. Hollycomb is a good example of that for me; I should hate her stuff, it's full of typos, it's overly emotional, it's All About the Angst. But there is a strength and freshness in her writing that means I jut don't care.

Sausage biscuits would probably be stretching a friendship, though. And is it wrong that I immediately thought you were making a comment on the euphemisms for penis thread?

Alas, my inner editor is also my outer editor, and I can;t turn her off, but I can still read overly American fics if they're good. I'm just then filled with the urge to make friends with the authors and offer to Britpick. Which I hose down by reminding myself how far behind I am with everything already ;-)