[ SECRET POST #4123 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4123 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 17 secrets from Secret Submission Post #590.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://imgur.com/kWN57us.png

[mrs_don_draper]

I get that. Things like that just take you right out of the story. :/

[(Anonymous)]

I know the feeling. Some times they're such obvious things too, like that one fic where the Harry Potter characters were celebrating Thanksgiving. Might have them celebrating Independence Day, while we're at it.

It also happens the other way around, such as one Teen Wolf fic I read where all the characters kept using the metric system. It should have made things easier for me, but it only pulled me out of the story.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh no, I feel you. I've read so many Harry Potter stories where people go buy "candy" at Honeydukes and it bothers me a LOT. Then again, I can't help but talk about "trousers" when I write fanfic set in America, so it goes both ways.

[osidiano]

Oh, the healthcare one would have made me nope out, for sure. I find that jarring military or police details always get me, too, like weird numbers of personnel in a unit or the wrong ranks. They're not that tough to look up if you're dealing with a US or UK based fandom. :S

[(Anonymous)]

LOL, yeah. Mistakes like that make me laugh, but I can see how they'd get old fast. It's that irritating combination of being very US-centric and being too lazy to do even minimal research or get a Brit-picker.

[maximumhusky]

This is my first time hearing the term Brit-picker, and I love it.

[(Anonymous)]

You say that like it's only US authors who do it. A lot of ficcers don't bother to do even minimal research or get a local to look things over when they're writing fic set in another country, because clearly things the world over are just like home.

[(Anonymous)]

Same. But even still I'll take those sorts of errors over the kind of errors I encounter in anime and videogame fandoms where it's clear the author hasn't looked at a book in their life and probably didn't pass english class. I've seen people use - in place of ", people who don't know what a paragraph break is, and worse. Ugh... instant back out

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed on the paragraph breaks. I'm never going to bother with a big wall of text.

I do tend to give dialogues written with dashes instead of quotation marks a pass because that's the way it's done in my mother language, even if I always use quotation marks when writing fic in English.

[maximumhusky]

I think - used instead of " might be more forgivable in my eyes due to the fact that it's an appropriate way of demarking dialogue in other countries. I was irritated at first, but came to understand what was going on.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh man, it's annoying in fics, but it's even worse in published books. Why bother setting your book in London if you're not gonna do at least a few minutes of research on the differences between British and American English?

[(Anonymous)]

I've never seen a gun shop in any US shopping mall, either. A strip mall somewhere, sure, but not an indoor mall.

[nightscale]

Awww, I honestly find these mistakes amusing and kind of cute tbh. Certainly not anything that makes me annoyed or angry.

And I can't make fun because I know if I was dealing with fic that had travel-time in the US in it I'd probably fuck that up because I don't always quite comprehend just how large the US is.

[(Anonymous)]

Brit-pickers are the absolute worst. It was so liberating when I moved out of a Brit-centric fandom to an American one.

[tabaqui]

Oh, man - lame. That's like - basic research and/or basic canon knowledge. I won't read that, either.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes that kind of thing pulls me out, but sometimes it's just kind of quirky and cute. It probably depends on the type of story. Like, if it's something suspenseful or super dramatic, then the characters "driving all night" to get from Boston to Denver is going to throw me off. But if it's something fluffy, that's more of an "aww, bless" moment.

[(Anonymous)]

As far as I'm aware, we don't have gun shops in malls here in the US either though. STRIP malls, yeah, but that's an entirely different animal. Possibly you could find hunting rifles (or crossbows) at a sporting goods store at a mall, but that'd be a lot different than waltzing into the mall and seeing a "Guns R Us" sign right there between the Hot Topic and the Bath and Body Works.

Factual errors can be annoying.

[(Anonymous)]

But basic canon errors bug me more, I think. I know hair color can be much more subjective than what I thought it was, but it annoys me when it's really wrong. And I can understand having trouble distinguishing among blue or green or gray eyes, but if you call them blue when they are very obviously brown, I'm going to wonder if you've ever seen the show. As for height, if you make someone much shorter or much taller, unless there's a good explanation, I'm not reading.

[fishnchips]

With the raccoons though, it could be entirely possible depending on the era/time it takes place in. Just because they're not native to a country doesn't mean they can't infest something once introduced. That's kinda what invasive species do. Grey squirrels are not native to the UK either and look at their numbers.

But I get what you mean - I also think it's annoying when authors don't bother to do even the tiniest amount of research. Like when they write high schools for Japanese fandoms like their typical US high schools.

But glaring grammatical errors are pretty annoying as well for me.

[cakemage]

It doesn't just happen in regular fanfic either, but in professionally published fanfic as well. Back when I was trying to get over my fear of zombies and gore by reading Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (spoiler: it didn't work, also the book sucked), I was thrown out of the story by (among other things) the fact that the Bennet sisters all fought with katanas, despite the fact that it was repeatedly stated that they trained in China and used Chinese combat styles. Also, apparently the author didn't know that chipmunks don't live in England. Really though, those are relatively minor complaints compared to everything else that was wrong with the book.

[(Anonymous)]

I see this way worse with people not from Japan trying to write about Japan, but it's probably just what fandoms you're in.

[ayebydan]

Yep. I still can't picture HP fics right. Harry walking about in his swag new pants and I'm like '....he....isn't...going to....get dressed to go get his second wand now he knows Dumbles has been stealing his money and Molly's being paid off and XYZ trope?' XD

Now I can mostly ignore it but it can be jarring.

[(Anonymous)]

I understand 100%. I've been there. Several times.

[(Anonymous)]

I totally get this. If the author can't take the time to do some simple research, then I'm not going to waste my time reading.