Snowflake Challenge Day Three

[logans_girl2001]

Challenge #3

In your own space, Scream Into the Void. Get it all out. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I didn't think I had anything to rant about when it comes to fandom, and then I remembered the fic I'm currently reading.

Dear fic authors,

If you are writing for a fandom based in a country that you are not from, please have someone from that country read it to make sure you're using the correct slang.

For example: the fic I'm currently reading is in Teen Wolf fandom (which is based in a high school in California) and is obviously written by someone NOT from the US.

For those who do not know, in America we call our mothers 'Mom', not 'Mum'. It is very jarring to have an American teenager calling his/her mother 'Mum'.

Also, Americans call their gym shoes tennis shoes or sneakers (some call them gym shoes or basketball shoes, but they are usually older), not trainers. It's a 'sweater' not a 'jumper'. And American high school is ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades (also called freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years) so if your character is home schooled their freshman year, then joins their classmates for sophomore year, they will be the only one of their classmates to not know their way around because the rest of their class would have learned the layout of the school the previous year (unless they were also home schooled).

So, in closing, please dear fic authors, if you are not from America and are writing in a fandom set in America, have someone who speaks American English read it to check your slang and that you are not using any phrases that an American would not use.

Whew, who knew it would feel so good to rant about that?

Comments

[seleneheart]

I've said for years that we need some sort of repository where people can go for expert help on this sort of issue. Not just language, but other things like law, or geography. Especially when talking about places in the US and Canada - you can't just run somewhere for lunch and be back by dinner.

Or medicine, or science or . . .

[logans_girl2001]

I will google anything I don't know just to keep it as realistic as possible.

[brightly_lit]

Hear, hear! Especially when the show has been on the air for a long time and and is very American, so the ficcer has surely heard how the characters would actually say these things dozens of times, but they don't care about making them talk like the actual characters ...? Don't we all try to make the characters we write as in-character as possible? But they toss it to the wind. It baffles me.

[logans_girl2001]

Within this same fic, the author has the characters call Allison 'Ally'. The only characters to have their names shortened were Lydia (Stiles calls her 'Lyds' on occasion) and Derek (gets called 'Der'). But I do not recall anyone ever calling Derek 'Der-bear'.

[tjs_whatnot]

I sometimes hate this too, but then I remember that I am an American who learned to fic write in the Harry Potter fandom and hoo-boy was it rough there in the beginning.

So, I try to give people grace if I can see that they're trying, or that they're learning or that they care at all. The others I just call lazy and back right out.

❤️❤️

[nothingbutcowboyboots]

I know this is something I was very guilty of in my early fanfic days, but I learned, I googled, I spoke with Americans. I also used to offer to 'brit-beta' fics for people writing in British fandoms who didn't know the slang.