Saturday, 11 April 2015

prepare4trouble: (undead)
You know what's weird? I've always tried to write my stories in US English based on the assumption that most people reading them (in fandoms of American stuff, at least) will by American. But I was looking at my fan fiction.net stats just now and I realized that most of my Lost Boys readers seem to be in England. I've noticed quite a few writers are English too, and have been since I entered the fandom, it's always been that way, so that does make sense. But why would that be? Compared to America, England is a tiny place, so it seems statistically improbable that the majority of fans of this American movie are from here.

Doesn't matter though. I've gotten so used to writing in US English that it looks weird when I write in British English, and all my settings on my computer autocorrect it to US anyway, even when I'm writing something like this in Safari, so it'd be a faff to change it. And the choice of language kind of has to be American anyway. I think it might seem jarring for the narration to be in one and the characters speaking in another.

E.g.
He opened the wardrobe. "Your closet is empty," he said.
Edgar turned on the cold tap and jumped back in horror. "Sam, why the fuck is there blood coming out of the faucet?!"

Or something like that. It sounds like some Americans have come to England and are experiencing a language clash. It's best to get into the habit of one and stick to it. I do worry about messing up though, like I'm fairly sure the things I write sound correct and natural, but it;s all from watching TV and picking up on the way people speak and the words they tend to use. One time I spent about an hour trying to work out why cupboard (as in a small cupboard in the kitchen) didn't sound right and what I should use instead. I settled on cabinet eventually.

Anyway, the point of all this is that if I ever do get around to writing something original, it's probably not going to be set in California, and I wonder if I'm going to have trouble switching languages.

Anyhoo, that's my random rambling for the night.
prepare4trouble: (edgar)
[Error: unknown template qotd]I'm not sure why everyone thinks these two franchises are comparable. One is a series of (so far) six movies, the other consists of five TV series three of which ran fro seven seasons each, one for three seasons and one for four, as well as a total of twelve movies. Yeah, they are both science fiction, and they both have a lot of fans, they both have books series based on them and a whole load of fanworks, but they are not an either or thing.

When DS9 was out at around the same time as Babylon five, that was understandable. I mean, both series set on space stations at least. But asking people which is better out of Star Trek and Star Wars is like asking them to compare Twilight and Daybreakers. What? They both have vampires in them. Well, sort of.

Having said all that though, I'm a trekkie through and through. I like Star Wars, but I didn't grow up with it like I did Star Trek. I got hooked on reruns of the original series on Sky 1 when I was at primary school, and obsessively recorded every single one on video, then I moved through the series one by one as they came out, I went to a Star Trek fan group every month where we watched the new episodes that hadn't been shown in England yet, and I had a subscription to a Star Trek magazine. Back then, Star Wars was just something I watched once when my parents rented it...

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