Run Away! Run Away!

[emgeetrek]

Area 52, the Stargate Slash Archive.

I've had the "Recent Stories" page bookmarked for eons, and I check it often.  It's just been redesigned, and I do not have the words to express my horror.  How many more unnecessary, irrelevant, unreadable, color-challenged and distracting elements can they put on that page?

And if that weren't bad enough . . . a few notable entries aside, the sheer awfulness of most of what's shown up there lately is serious cause for despair.  The latest outrage, as framed by the most recent iteration of the page:  two different authors, one of whom has definitely been around long enough to know better, who have failed to grasp the notion that British English and American English are not the same, and that Americans do not wear singlets, or speak of their arse, or use biros.  (And there's no such thing as a "postrate gland"--yes, spelled the same way twice--but that's a different rant.)

I would give up on the site were it not for the fact that occasionally I do find a decent story there that doesn't show up in any other venue.

Topic for discussion, should you so choose:  is the story quality at Area 52 declining, or is it just that I'm getting pickier?

Comments

[emgeetrek.livejournal.com]

Eyes. Bleeding. The improved search function is nice, though . .. .

I think part of the decline is because some writers who used to post their stuff there ('cause it was the only slash game in town) now have LJ accounts, or their own websites, and just don't bother cross-posting anymore. So the crap-to-quality ratio is increasing.

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

No crossposting might explain it, yes - although crossposting has always made sense to me (largely because without advertising, no one would bother to read the damn things LOL).

I've been thinking about the 'singlet' thing since I commented, too, and the use of language. Just as an aside here, I'd find the use of that word jarring too, since to me, it's terribly old fashioned and just not particularly current any more, except in a way that sets a character's class, more than anything. But then, that's Brit society for ya ;-)

There's more than one can of worms here, I think. First off, the perennial argument - just how far should a non-US author go, in narrative, to write in US language. My preference, as writer and beta, is to go for the most nationality-neutral phrasing, the mid-Atlantic version, because there's no point in throwing any proportion of one's readers out of the story if it can be avoided. So I'll avoid 'whilst', which is more natural to me, for example. In the case of 'singlet', specifically - 'vest' would be more natural to me, which would confuse *you*, and 'tank top' might be more natural to *you*, which would confuse the hell out of *me* and also inspire undue hilarity (think Gumbies in Monty Python, or Jack in a jumper *g*). So I'd go for 'muscle shirt', which would make sense to both. But I don't know where other people would draw the line, or even where I would, necessarily.

But there's a wee trend I've noticed amongst some non-US writers, almost a defiance about the language they use, and refusal to change what comes most naturally to them. I don't know where it's arisen from - maybe from a period of intense criticism some years ago in fandom about native spelling and grammar usage, when it almost felt that non-US fans shouldn't be writing fic about a US show at all. Maybe too from the fact that non-US folks are very used to buying and reading printed material from the States and are used to reading over the differences, so they don't see why the reverse shouldn't be true. Maybe even connected with the rise in anti-US feeling, which seems to be increasingly prominent even over here :-( Whatever, I'm not endorsing it, just noticing it quite a bit more recently than previously.

Damn, this turned into a ramble! Stopping now.

[emgeetrek.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, the perennial argument. My feeling about it has always been that if I'm reading about American characters, in an American setting, I would like their dialogue to be American and, ideally, the narrative surrounding their dialogue as well. I can deal with non-American spellings like "colour" and "favour" and "grey"; for some reason they don't pull me out of the story. But words that Americans just don't use are so jarring that I have to work hard to get back into the story's flow. Jack in a "jumper" would be a classic example. Daniel using a "biro" would be another.

Similarly, if I am reading a story about English characters, I want those characters to be using British English, not the American equivalent. I want them to be referring to a car's "boot," and driving said car around a "roundabout," I want them to scratch their "arse" and not their "ass," and I want them to say "whilst" and not "while." If a word crops up that I don't understand, I'm happy to pick it up through context. "Jumper" doesn't throw me at all, if it's Adam Dalgliesh who's wearing it!

It's all part of evoking the time and place for me. I can understand a writer getting it wrong accidentally, but it infuriates me when a writer deliberately chooses to put her own American usage in the mouth of a non-American character, or her own non-American usage in the mouth of an American character. I had a very long and ugly discussion with one (I think Australian) writer about this, and nothing she said changed my mind, mainly because her argument was of the "I can do it whatever way I want, and I don't care that you don't like it" variety--with obscenity thrown in. :-()