I'd think long and hard about writing fanfic for any series set in the present day outside the UK. The one time I did it was only a very short humour piece, and djinanna was kind enough to American military-pick in the comments, for which I was most grateful.
For some reason I think I'd be more willing to write, say, Gone With The Wind fic because at least that way I'm not going to open up a nest of worms by misdescribing someone's everyday life. Well, I might piss off Civil War re-enactors, I suppose.
I was going to add 'but if I was writing Gone With The Wind fic and knew that someone on my friends list was a Civil War re-enactor, I'd probably be bothering them with questions throughout' but then I realised that the problem with this kind of thing isn't so much in the questions the foreign writer knows need asking, but the ones they don't know need asking. See about every fifth post on hp_britglish for details.
I don't think I've ever had anyone complaining about my stories being too British. (In this I think one of my trolls has missed a trick. Maybe her next persona could come from somewhere outside the UK?) A New Zealand reader did pick me up on a couple of things about Daisy, but since Daisy was a NZ character in the UK I was, again, very grateful for that.
There was one fic I read where the aim seemed to be to give the reader an experience not un-akin to that of going to the souvenir shop in a historic house and buying a thimble shaped like a thatched cottage and a novelty tea-towel, but the writer was American. I can see that it would be very annoying to have people assume that all fic set over here was intended for that purpose, though I don't think that's what blamebrampton is arguing.
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Date: 2008-12-18 11:51 am (UTC)For some reason I think I'd be more willing to write, say, Gone With The Wind fic because at least that way I'm not going to open up a nest of worms by misdescribing someone's everyday life. Well, I might piss off Civil War re-enactors, I suppose.
I was going to add 'but if I was writing Gone With The Wind fic and knew that someone on my friends list was a Civil War re-enactor, I'd probably be bothering them with questions throughout' but then I realised that the problem with this kind of thing isn't so much in the questions the foreign writer knows need asking, but the ones they don't know need asking. See about every fifth post on
I don't think I've ever had anyone complaining about my stories being too British. (In this I think one of my trolls has missed a trick. Maybe her next persona could come from somewhere outside the UK?) A New Zealand reader did pick me up on a couple of things about Daisy, but since Daisy was a NZ character in the UK I was, again, very grateful for that.
There was one fic I read where the aim seemed to be to give the reader an experience not un-akin to that of going to the souvenir shop in a historic house and buying a thimble shaped like a thatched cottage and a novelty tea-towel, but the writer was American. I can see that it would be very annoying to have people assume that all fic set over here was intended for that purpose, though I don't think that's what