The Brit-picking debate, yet again!

[emmagrant01]

devon_may has posted a little rant about Americanisms in fic. I've posted my thoughts on this issue before, but I generally try very hard to have my British characters sound as British as possible. It's not because I worry that people won't read my fic or will flame me if I don't; it's about making my fic as good as it can be. If my characters are supposed to be British, I'd like that to be believable. Devon has recently Brit-picked something for me, and she did a fabulous job. I have great respect for her as a person and as a writer.

I know there are people out there who disagree that Brit-picking is necessary, though. *looks meaningfully at flist* I think Devon is open to debate, but I'm going to suggest people who disagree with the whole Brit-picking thing post your honest feelings about the issue here. Rant at me! You know you want to! ;-) Do it anonymously, if you want.

ETA: Finally! Someone disagrees, and in an extremely intelligent way.

Comments

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Sure, you can have "entertaining" stories that have made no effort towards fitting into JKR's characterisation, but you can't call it Harry Potter.

Of course you can.

I come out of the Star Wars fandom, where we play fast and loose with canon all the time. I admire HP fandom for its openness to a variety of pairings. In TPM it's 95% Qui/Obi, which gets rather old IMO. But I cannot comprehend HP's obsession with canon - and the claim that fanfic is properly about exploring canon.

In SW, people have taken the archetypal idea of Qui/Obi and made them into Sith lords, ancient Egyptians, even cats. Some of the stories are almost unrecognizable as being inspired by "The Phantom Menace." But they *are* still fanfic. It might not be the kind of fanfic I want to read, but it's still fanfic.

Authors (and readers) come with a wide range of interests and ideas. But just because someone isn't writing the kind of fanfic I want to read doesn't mean that their writing is not fanfic, or is not good.

I say again, not all HP fanfic writers *want* to write a story that is accurately British. Indeed, I'd suggest that Americans (and other non-Brits) are poorly suited to explore the Britishness of Harry Potter. If someone wants to explore the dynamic of the relationship among the trio, or how the final duel between Voldemort and Harry will play out, or what would have happened if Harry had been sorted into Slytherin, or what if the whole story had been set in ancient China - that is their right as a writer.

And regarding your statement about criticism below, there is a difference between criticism and personal taste. If you don't want to read a story in which Hogwarts is transported to ancient China, that's a matter of personal taste. The story, however, should be judged on its own merit, not on the basis of whether its the kind of fanfic you think it should be.

Likewise, a story that doesn't take the Britishness of HP to heart should still be judged on its own merits as a story. You don't have to like it. But your dislike of it is based on taste, not on criticism. It would be like me saying, "Well, the problem with 'Star Wars' is that it had robots in it, and I hate robots."

When it comes to fanfic, it is the vision of the fanfic author that is paramount, not the vision of the source text author.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I, too, come from the SW fanfic, so I can see how you would think like this; but there's a major difference between SW and HP - the StarWarsverse does not exist. (Repeat after me: does-not-exist.) So you can build up a lot of things from it; derive them from available canon as much or as little as you want; have protagonists speak like punk rockers or classical British actors etc. (What constitutes canon in SW is itself open to discussion: the OT? All 5 available movies? The EU?) Whereas HP is firmly part of an entire national and literary tradition (Britain, the school story) which you ignore at the cost of eviscerating the very fabric of the entire construction. (And JKR certainly weaves our consciousness of it throughout her stories.) Sure, you can take Hogwarts to China or to outer space, and it may be very well-written indeed; but HP fanfic it will scarcely be.

Plus, let's take this argument by the other end, and I promise to go and eat crow if you manage to convince me. Can you recommend any non-Bbrit-proofed, decently-written AU HP story that you feel is recognisably Harry Potter, even if it's set in a high school in Peoria, a Maya temple, the Roman empire or the court of Louis B. Mayer Louis XIV?

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

the StarWarsverse does not exist.

Neither does the HarryPotterverse.

Can you recommend any non-Bbrit-proofed, decently-written AU HP story that you feel is recognisably Harry Potter, even if it's set in a high school in Peoria, a Maya temple, the Roman empire or the court of Louis B. Mayer Louis XIV?


No, I can't. I haven't read that much HP fanfic.

But the basis for my argument doesn't rest on the existence of a fic that I can point to. And after all, even if I did know of a fic that would qualify, it does not at all follow that you would like it.

Rather, my point is about what fan fiction is. Fan fiction is about a fan being intrigued by someone else's creation and doing her own take on it, no matter how close she sticks to the original or how far she departs from it. Fan fiction is about the fan's imagination, not the source text author's. In fact, a lot of fan fiction is written because the fan doesn't like the author's take on the situation.

Let's look at this from another perspective. What if someone wrote an HP story yet did not employ any magic in it? Would you say that is not real HP fanfic? What if someone wrote a story made up solely of their own original characters, yet it was set in the same Hogwarts environment? What if someone wrote a story about Beauxbatons and made no mention of Hogwarts at all? What if someone wrote a story all about the Dursleys, with no reference to the magical world?

What is the essential ingredient to qualify as an HP fanfic? Magic? Great Britain? Hogwarts? Harry Potter?

The imagination can take us many, many places. What intrigues another writer about the HPverse may not intrigue you. That's fine. But it doesn't mean that what they're writing isn't fanfic, nor does it mean that what they're writing is therefore badly written.

And that brings us back to Brit-picking, because implicit behind the argument I so often see is that the presence of Americanisms BY DEFINITION means a story is badly written and that the writer did not care or was lazy. That a story can only truly be called HP fanfic if it is sufficiently British (though the standards of qualification are *always* left vague.) I do not believe that is a legitimate argument to make.

What is fan fiction, anyway?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I'm a bit disturbed by the idea of defining fan fiction so narrowly! Fan fiction is by its very nature subversive, and eludes definition. I thought I'd take a look on the nest and see what other folks have said.

Dr. Merlin's guide to fan fiction (http://missy.reimer.com/library/guide.html) says: "Fan fiction, very simply, is the genre of stories, poetry, novels, filk songs, and top ten lists written by fans of a particular series, be it television, literary, or what have you. If you've ever written a story about something you like, involving characters created by someone else with a legal right to them, you've written fan fiction."

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction) says: "Fan fiction (commonly abbreviated to "fanfic") is fiction written by people who enjoy a film, novel, television show or other dramatic or literary work, using the characters and situations developed in it and developing new plots in which to use these characters."

I need to go dig up my copy of Jenkins, but I'm pretty sure he gives a very loose definition as well. The whole point of writing fan fiction, for some of us, is to be subversive, to recastthese characters in ways that we want to see them. Slash, in particular, is about re-imagining the source text. JKR doesn't get to define it, *I* don't get to define it -- we, as a community of creative people, collectively contribute to it and thus define what fan fiction is. It's anything we want it to be, ultimatety!

Okay, I think I'll shut up now... :-P