'I'll Leave Lolita On Your Bed. ...The Book.'

[rionaleonhart]

Something I've been wondering: when I'm writing fanfiction involving American characters, does my Britishness show? I've been reading a bit of Merlin fanfiction and RPF recently, and much of it has been wonderful, and it's clear that the American writers make a great effort to use British terminology, but so often there's some tiny thing - 'principal' instead of 'headmaster/headmistress/head', 'subway' instead of 'tube', 'pants' used to mean trousers instead of underwear, 'airplane' instead of 'aeroplane' (it's illogical - we don't have 'aeroports', after all - but it's what we say!), a 'stick shift' instead of a manual car, 'purse' used to mean a bag, 'cell phone' instead of 'mobile phone' - that gives a writer away as American and pulls me out of the story a little. I don't mind American spellings in British fandoms (I would be a hypocrite if I did, because I cling desperately to my 'u's and '-ise's no matter what I'm writing (WHO SPELLS 'COSY' 'COZY'? 'Z' IS NOT A COSY LETTER, AMERICA. IT HAS SHARP EDGES)), but when a British character uses a word or phrase that that character simply wouldn't use I find it quite jarring.

I suppose I have a cultural-exposure advantage, as American television is more popular over here than British television is in America, but I don't understand half of what Dean Winchester says, so how can I be sure that I'm writing him accurately? I'm sure I forget to use 'gotten' on occasion when I'm writing from the point of view of an American character, and I've unthinkingly used 'leant' instead of 'leaned' and other '-t' participles in some of my older American-fandom fics (not such a problem now that I've started writing mostly in the present tense), and there are times when the possibility that a word isn't used in American English simply doesn't occur to me (is it true that you don't 'revise' for exams?). In my Supernatural fanfiction, is the fact that I am not American glaringly obvious?

Ah, writer's insecurity. Perhaps I should just use a cultural beta when I'm writing for American fandoms.


Speaking of giant mechanical spiders: I would very much like to see a Merlin and Avatar crossover. I think the tones of the two canons would mesh well. UTHER HAS OUTLAWED BENDING. MERLIN IS THE AVATAR.

Alternatively: everyone, perhaps including Merlin at first and certainly including Arthur himself, believes that Arthur is the Avatar, but in fact he is just a bloody good Earthbender. Merlin, travelling around with him in the Sokka role, comes to realise that he himself is, in fact, the Avatar. Whoops. He tries to conceal the fact that he has any bending skills at all, for, er, no doubt very good reasons. 'Protecting Arthur's ego' does not count as a good reason. I'm going to have to think about this. (They travel with Gwen and Morgana. Gwen is a Waterbender, Morgana a Firebender.)

THEIR MODE OF TRANSPORT IS A GIANT WINGED UNICORN.

POSSIBLY A GIANT SIX-LEGGED WINGED UNICORN.

YES.

I'm not sure of what to do with Gaius. He is not quite awesome enough to take the role of Iroh, and, besides, one cannot have an Iroh without a Zuko, and the only character of whom I can think to play Zuko to Gaius' Iroh is Merlin. Having Merlin striving to capture himself would probably be slightly too confusing.

I suppose Edwin could be Zuko. The question: would it be too silly and superficial to cast Edwin as Zuko purely because one half of his face is scarred? The answer: yes. Yes, it would.

(Perhaps Arthur could be a sort of blend of false-Avatar and Zuko, trying to get back into his father's good graces after he was banished for bending.

OR SOMETHING. I DON'T KNOW. ALL I KNOW IS THAT THE MERLIN AND AVATAR WORLDS NEED TO MEET.)

Comments

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

I too have been worrying about giveaway Britishisms in fic of late! It's taken me long enough to start using 'Mom' over 'Mum' and remembering Americans don't actually say 'trousers' very often, but yeah, it's very easy to worry about what you're overlooking.


is it true that you don't 'revise' for exams?

I discovered this some time ago! That phrase just doesn't seem to be used in America. I found it massively odd.

[rionaleonhart]

The trouble is that, whilst American television or books can indicate what Americans say, they can't tell us what they would not say under any circumstances. BECAUSE THEY DON'T SAY IT. Argh, linguistic differences. I mean, I love linguistic differences, because they completely fascinate me, but they are also hugely frustrating.

What on Earth do Americans do when an exam is approaching? Do they 'prepare'?

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I know, right? Fortunately my beta for the latest thing I was writing didn't find anything to Yankpick, phew. (Considering I was writing from the POV of a FDNY firefighter from Brooklyn.)

[eva-kasumi.livejournal.com]

I revise for exams! =O And so do most of my friends! Would it socially inacceptable for me to speculate that perhaps this is because we go to rather prestigious college which perhaps has leanings towards the slightly more eloquent persuasion?

On the other hand, I was once informed, upon saying that I needed to revise for an exam, that "revise" is something one does to a paper because it implies reworking/editing of some for. So one cannot actually revise for an exam; one reviews.

In conclusion: I don't know?

[linakitten.livejournal.com]

Argh, Americanisms in British fandoms drive me NUTS. Especially in fantasy, oddly enough - I guess it's because Americanisms are so jarringly -American-.
I wonder if Britishisms annoy Americans as much?

[rionaleonhart]

I'm sure Britishism annoy Americans. I've certainly seen Americans commenting on the fact that British writers, here on an island the US could swallow whole forty-seven times, often can't comprehend the scale of the United States and get the amount of time it would take to get from one place to another dramatically wrong.

[dracothelizard.livejournal.com]

For most of my fanfic-writing I'm busier worrying about things like getting the language as a whole right rather than the Americanism/Britishism thing.

Of course, before Top Gear I never even really had a beta, and I was in American fandoms like Stargate SG-1, so I don't really know how Americanised/Britishised my SG-1 fics are in comparison to the Top Gear ones.

[rionaleonhart]

Wow, yes, writing natural-sounding dialogue for English-speaking characters, no matter what their origins, must be very difficult for non-native speakers. I'm very impressed by how well you manage it.

[amy-wolf.livejournal.com]

You're generally quite good at avoiding unintentional Britishisms. We don't revise, though. Where I'm from, mostly we study for exams. Also, while the word exam is used sometimes, it's far more common to call them tests. So we study for tests.

The main thing that stuck out was the pie thing (pie in the US generally meaning a dessert with a filling of fruit or something, and pie in the UK generally meaning meat pies), and that got sorted out. You've got a good eye for detail, which helps.

[rionaleonhart]

That is reassuring; thank you! (By which I mean 'you're generally quite good at avoiding unintentional Britishisms', not 'it's far more common to call them tests', which isn't reassuring at all. See, the thought that 'exam' might not be commonly used in America hadn't even crossed my mind. It's so easy to forget to think 'wait, could this be a word that isn't used over there?' (In England, 'test' implies something slightly less formal than an 'exam'.))

[timydamonkey.livejournal.com]

Personally I don't mind too much if people use Americanisms in British fandom or vice versa provided it's not in speech (seriously, very few people in Britain say "mom", guys). I suppose if it was some sort of interior monologue/first person fic it would bother me a bit too - a bit like if you wanted to do a first person POV of an intellectual character (let's take Hermione from Harry Potter) and then make them think things such as "oh my god, he's like totally hot!" It just doesn't suit the voice - using different words because of Americanisms/Britishisms also don't suit the voice.

But in description or whatever it doesn't really matter as long as people can follow along (so basically it's not being written in rhyming cockney slang :P).

Something not on the word choice front!

You can totally make somebody Zuko on account of a scarred face! If people can make Cloud a super saiyan because he has yellow spiky hair, ANYTHING to do with appearance is clearly justified!

[shark-hat.livejournal.com]

drop_the_u?

[rionaleonhart]

MY NEXT FIC IS GOING TO BE WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG.

Americanisms don't bother you in description for British fandoms? Hmm. You make a good point about the difference between character voice and narrative, but they do still bother me; if no character present would think of Character A's handbag as 'a purse', should the narrative really call it a purse? Also, third-person narrative is often still portraying the world through a character's eyes, even if it's filtered through non-first-person pronouns. andtimetravel (sorry to use my own writing as an example, but it was the first thing that came to mind) is written in the third person, but it is still entirely from Derren Brown's point of view, and American terms would jar.

[vzg.livejournal.com]

I am like you, but of course I made this mistake of saying so at fanficrants a few years back and other users (well, one specifically) insinuated that I was a mentally deficient non-reader or some such thing, because ALL FICTION EVER is written in a specific character's voice even if it is third-person. Apparently. I could understand just for the sake of it being uniform, but that made me want to find a heavy object and drop it on her head.

[shark-hat.livejournal.com]

(Sorry, hit submit too soon, just wondering if you knew about the comm for furriners writing in USglish.)

[rionaleonhart]

Thank you! I've seen that community before, and it looks very useful, especially for cultural differences. I suppose a beta looking through the entire fic would be better for linguistic differences, though, because it's so easy to write a word without even thinking 'Wait, is this used in America? Should I ask drop_the_u?'

[bubbles-san.livejournal.com]

I've been studying British/American differences for a while now (so much so to the point that it has leaked into my speech, and people frequently as if I'm 'not from around here.') It's getting really easy to pick out whether a writer is British or American in an American or British fandom now.

Every writer has tells. Even if they're an expert, they'll give it away somehow.

I generally tend to put my mindset into that of the fandom I'm writing for, so that it becomes second nature; not just the regional language but the specific character's usage. In the Top Gear fandom, for example, I had to adapt my thinking to Jeremy, James, and Richard's voices, and in the Psych fandom I had to revert back to American, and then get to thinking in their voices. (Lassi was the trickiest, because he has a very formal, plice-men like tone.)

Regarding an above conversation, your pronnuciation of the letter z confuses me.

[rionaleonhart]

I think perhaps American terms in British fandoms bother me more than they might bother others because I am so utterly fascinated by American/British language differences and try to find out more about them at every opportunity. Then again, perhaps they would bother someone who doesn't know many American-British term differences more, because they would just be thinking 'Why does she have a wallet in her purse? That makes no sense', as opposed to 'oh, it must be the American "purse"'.

I don't know why we pronounce 'z' 'zed' when it's on its own. 'Zee' would rhyme with 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'g' and so on. It is a letterish sound! But pronounce it 'zed' we do.

[fireholly.livejournal.com]

TRUE STORY TIME

I played Solid Snake (American character from a Japanese fandom) in a horror-based RP for a year before anyone told me that the lightbulb-on-a-stick device people take with them in dark places isn't called a 'torch' to Americans.

By the time I'd found out, I had long since dropped the RP, and I only discovered I'd got it wrong when I found a friend of mine bitching me out in a fanficrants post ("Did you know that there was this one writer who kept making Solid Snake call it a 'torch', omg omg") and people were responding ("OMG THAT'S HORRIBLE, SHOULD STOP WRITING FOREVER, TOO BRITISH TO WRITE GOD DO YOUR RESEARCH GODDDDD") and I popped up and said "Um, thanks for noticing, but it'd be really nice if you'd have told me."

She said she was too shy to tell me.

So when I picked up at the RP again I made a big post in the OOC comm begging people to pick up on Britishisms in my writing, and I got a profound groan of 'no-one cares'.

WELL, I CARE. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN IF I'M NOT TAUGHT? I CAN'T MAGICALLY OSMOSE AN AMERICAN DICTIONARY INTO MY BRAIN BECAUSE I DON'T SPEAK TO AMERICANS IRL AND THE INTERNET HAS A WEIRD MIX OF SLANG FROM EVERY CULTURE EVER. I KNOW BRITS ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL SLIGHTLY ASHAMED OF BEING BRITISH ALL THE TIME, BUT WHEN I ASK TO CHECK 'IS THIS OKAY' IT'D BE NICE IF PEOPLE ACTUALLY RESPONDED WITH ANYTHING BESIDES CONTEMPT AAH AAAH AAAAAGH


...Um. I just had to get that out somehow.

Well, er, drop_the_u is a pretty nice comm, especially for setting issues. And if you find it useful, join the advice team in hp_britglish.

[fireholly.livejournal.com]

...And then someone else has already mentioned drop_the_u above me, making this whole post even more self-serving and whiny.

I'll just. Er. Go. Shall I?

[geekgirlofdoom.livejournal.com]

I use the word "pants" so often, even though I know better. I'm pretty good at assimilating myself with other words, but I cannot shake "pants" over "trousers." I think it's because you have to be approximately 97 years old to use the word "trousers" in America.

[rionaleonhart]

'Pants' is one of the things that most jars me when it's used with regard to British characters, in part because I always and for no good reason expect people to know it means something different in British English, possibly due to the entirely flawed logic that I QUICKLY LEARNT FROM AMERICAN TELEVISION THAT AMERICANS USE 'PANTS' TO MEAN TROUSERS, THEREFORE AMERICANS MUST KNOW THAT WE DO NOT. Also, of course, because 'pants' actually means something in British English; if a British character is eating 'Twizzlers', I'll have an 'er, probably not' reaction, but as 'Twizzlers' doesn't actually have a separate meaning over here I won't go 'HE'S EATING GLASS?' To me, 'leather pants' sound like very uncomfortable undergarments worn by persons of unusual sexual taste.

[black-regalia.livejournal.com]

As a British-American, I often fall into an uncomfortable middle. I still pronounce 'schedule' and 'water' like a Brit, but I say 'y'all' as well. My accent tends to change based on who I'm listening to. Most of the time, Americans can't tell I'm British. So long as I don't say a specifically British sounding word(like schedule), my accent is typical American. But if my mom calls me up on the phone, and I hear her accent, I almost immediately switch to a British accent.

This was something I'd never really noticed until my roommate pointed it out.

We've been watching some of the new Who recently and apparently I've been stuck in British-accent for the last week.

It's funny, because ALL the things you listed above? I use the American versions of the words, because I've lived here for the last twenty years, and the first time I saw a cell phone was in America, and so I learned the American term for it. But at the same time, ALL my friends still point out all the Britishisms I use in speech(and usually playfully tease me for them). When I'm in Britain I'm seen as a complete American by all my relatives, but when I'm in America I'm seen as a Brit!

I can't win! Also, I can't give blood in America because I might have THE MAD COW OH NOEZ and I can't give blood in Britain because I might have THE WEST NILE DEAR GOD.

At least the British have the justification that the disease can be spread by blood, and it has killed more than like...a handful of people in the history of ever. But still. It's very irritating, especially because I have a rare bloodtype, and even though I'm perfectly healthy, no one wants my blood :(

[newbie1990.livejournal.com]

O HAI I HAVE NOT BEEN COMMENTING ON YOUR MERLIN ENTRIES BECAUSE I AM A LOSER, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN MAKING MY LIFE LATELY. I mean you! And Merlin! WHAT IS THERE NOT TO LIKE; IT IS BASICALLY AWESOME SQUARED.

ALSO, THERE IS NOTHING GAIUS IS NOT AWESOME ENOUGH FOR, WHAT. (Obviously it matters not that I have never seen SO MUCH AS HALF AN HOUR of Avatar.)

WHAT IS YOUR TITLE ALL ABOUT?

[rionaleonhart]

HOORAY IT IS A HANNAH.

NOBODY IS AS AWESOME AS IROH. NOT EVEN GAIUS. NOBODY. You need to watch Avatar! I think you might like it, because it is amazing and all the characters are amazing and IROH.

Er, the title is from a conversation I was having with my brother. I asked him whether he had read Lolita, he said he hadn't, and so I offered to lend him my copy, which resulted in a possibly-misinterpretable 'I'll leave Lolita on your bed', followed by a rather hasty '...the book'.

[the-funmonkey.livejournal.com]

UTHER HAS OUTLAWED BENDING. - THIS IS NEVER GETTING OLD. JUST SO YOU KNOW.

I'm so utterly unadapted to writing in American fandoms. I can do character voices fine, but my narrative voice is more British than Stephen Fry sitting in a bath of crumpets. I can't help myself.

[emmarrrrr.livejournal.com]

I can do character voices fine, but my narrative voice is more British than Stephen Fry sitting in a bath of crumpets. I can't help myself.

THIS IS ME, TOO. SO BAD.

This is mostly why I don't write fanfiction for anything anymore. Ever.

[rionaleonhart]

America is a lot bigger, but I think it actually has less regional variation than the UK, possibly because it hasn't had that long for the different regions to grow apart. Now that communication is so advanced and people from different states can converse with ease, it'll probably never become as dialectally diverse as us.

Do I have a point? I think I just felt like rambling about language. (When do I not?)

[(Anonymous)]

Gigantic fanboy says- so you can take a character into a crossover or a million miles ooc but if you turn their trousers into pants - you loose them? Are you sure?

[rionaleonhart]

When did I say a character being OOC wasn't a problem? I'd far rather have an otherwise true-to-canon British character calling trousers 'pants' than a British character saying things that character would never say with perfect British phrasing. You are making unfounded assumptions about my fanfiction tastes, Dad. I am shocked and offended.

I can't deny that I love implausible crossovers, though.

[saaski-moql.livejournal.com]

AHSFLKDJGHLSGHLSDG