Picky much?
Jan. 27th, 2007 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmagrant01I was looking through some posts on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanficrants for sheer entertainment this morning, because it's kind of fun to see what people in multiple fandoms like to complain about. Much of it isn't dependent on the fandom at all, which is interesting. Some of it makes me want to roll my eyes, and then there are posts that make me go o_0.
A British reader read a fic by an American author, and thought the fic was wonderful in nearly every way -- it had great dialogue and characterization, was clearly well-researched, and was even Brit-picked. But then the entire reading experience was ruined for her by an instance of the word "gotten".
Requisite stuff: Yes, "gotten" is the correct past participle for the verb "to get" in standard American English. Yes, it disappeared from British English a long time ago, despite the fact that other past participles of the same form, like "forgotten", did not. (Though some Brits do claim to hear "gotten" used in conversation.) Yes, many speakers of non-American English think it sounds weird. And yes, it's something that the vast majority of Americans do not know is a difference, and why would they? Hell, I didn't know until a month ago that Brits don't say "silverware" or "foyer", and I've actually spent several years trying to make the language in my fics more British. This, even though I strongly disagree that a good HP fic has to sound like it was written by a Brit.
My point is not to bring up the whole language issue again, but the fact that the presence of a single word was enough to ruin an otherwise great fic for this particular reader. Don't get me wrong -- you can be as picky as you want about reading fic, and we all have our pet peeves. If I read more than a handful of euphemisms like "blond Slytherin" in a fic, it has to be a pretty intriguing story to keep me from hitting the back button. But I really can't imagine loving everything about a fic and then having it "ruined" for me by a couple of euphemisms. Of course, people who use euphemisms tend to have other writing issues as well, so it's kind of hard for me to imagine a fic where that would be the only thing that would bother me.
There's always going to be something, though. No one's writing style is going to please everyone, and that's okay. But one word? And it pissed her off so much she went over to that comm to rant about it? Fannish entitlement issues, I'm thinking.
fanficrants for sheer entertainment this morning, because it's kind of fun to see what people in multiple fandoms like to complain about. Much of it isn't dependent on the fandom at all, which is interesting. Some of it makes me want to roll my eyes, and then there are posts that make me go o_0. A British reader read a fic by an American author, and thought the fic was wonderful in nearly every way -- it had great dialogue and characterization, was clearly well-researched, and was even Brit-picked. But then the entire reading experience was ruined for her by an instance of the word "gotten".
Requisite stuff: Yes, "gotten" is the correct past participle for the verb "to get" in standard American English. Yes, it disappeared from British English a long time ago, despite the fact that other past participles of the same form, like "forgotten", did not. (Though some Brits do claim to hear "gotten" used in conversation.) Yes, many speakers of non-American English think it sounds weird. And yes, it's something that the vast majority of Americans do not know is a difference, and why would they? Hell, I didn't know until a month ago that Brits don't say "silverware" or "foyer", and I've actually spent several years trying to make the language in my fics more British. This, even though I strongly disagree that a good HP fic has to sound like it was written by a Brit.
My point is not to bring up the whole language issue again, but the fact that the presence of a single word was enough to ruin an otherwise great fic for this particular reader. Don't get me wrong -- you can be as picky as you want about reading fic, and we all have our pet peeves. If I read more than a handful of euphemisms like "blond Slytherin" in a fic, it has to be a pretty intriguing story to keep me from hitting the back button. But I really can't imagine loving everything about a fic and then having it "ruined" for me by a couple of euphemisms. Of course, people who use euphemisms tend to have other writing issues as well, so it's kind of hard for me to imagine a fic where that would be the only thing that would bother me.
There's always going to be something, though. No one's writing style is going to please everyone, and that's okay. But one word? And it pissed her off so much she went over to that comm to rant about it? Fannish entitlement issues, I'm thinking.
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Date: 2007-01-27 07:24 pm (UTC)See what I mean? The differences are really quite nuanced.
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Date: 2007-01-27 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-27 09:19 pm (UTC)