fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6872 ]

[ SECRET POST #6872 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6872 ⌋

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I'm reading 'The Dead Take the A Train,' which I'll admit I already have mixed feelings about. I've come across a paragraph that probably shouldn't be irritating enough to take me out of the book, but, well, it has. Here it is:

Julie twirled glass noodles around her fork. Years ago, a friend had explained to her that the ubiquity of chopsticks in Southeast Asian-American restaurants was a lie, a concession to racist presumptions. White people expected chopsticks everywhere, so the proprietors made sure to have a surfeit of cheap wooden eating sticks. No reason to argue cultural accuracy when pad thai was verging on too exotic for the clientele. Since then, Julie had gone with what felt natural: in this case, a solitary fork.

Why is this bothering me so much? Well, while it's true that most Thai food is eaten with a spoon and fork, noodles are the exception. Glass noodles often are eaten with chopsticks. And that means that I can't really figure out what the authors were trying to do with this passage. Are they telling us something about the character, or is this an attempt at cultural sensitivity that missed the mark in an ironic way? I suspect it's the latter based on the overall tone of the book, which is making me ruminate in what I acknowledge is a very silly way.

In any case, what are some things that have taken you out of a story, whether silly or not-so-silly?

Modern language that doesn't fit in the particular fandom. Nicknames being used by characters that don't sound like they'd actually use them. Villains being entirely fluffy in ways that don't feel in character.

Basically anything that feels OOC.

AYRT

I definitely feel that. OOC stuff in fic drives me up the wall.

Villains being entirely fluffy in ways that don't feel in character.

That's especially annoying! On one level, I get why it happens -- it's psychologically satisfying to defang the bad guy. But at the same time...the bad guy is the bad guy! Leave him that way!

Yup. Like, villains can be complex and multi-faceted. But if the evil just flat out isn't there, it isn't the same character. Then again, by the same token, sometimes villains lose the complexity in fics and are just props to make other characters sympathetic and are just pure evil with no nuance. And I don't love that either.

Things like that, where it feels like the author is awkwardly trying to make some point and clumsily presents it as characterization. I think I mind it less when it’s in first person. I’m fine with a character directly telling me some fact they learned or opinion they have.

I'm bilingual and nothing takes me out of a story faster than seeing incorrect phrases in my native language unless it's a plot point (like a character learning the language or something). You can tell the author just fed an English sentence into Google Translate and didn't bother to double-check it with a native speaker.

Your example bothers me because it sounded like the author wanted to cram in a little piece of trivia they learned or unload a pet peeve and it's hard to imagine that it flows smoothly within the larger context. It's clumsy, and feels artificial. That alone would take me out of the story, too.

In addition to that, there's a layer of attempted cultural superiority in there. SE Asia is an enormous region, with many cultures. My family is from SEA, and we would not eat an Asian style noodle dish with a fork. If the author wants this character to do so without looking foolish, then this seems like a really clumsy way to do it. Just have the character eat with a fork and nobody cares, like they do IRL. No need to spin it as they're ackshully more sophisticated than the other white people around them.

As for other things that take me out of a story:

* anachronistic speech in a historical context.
* adults acting like children, usually for cutesy reasons or woobie reasons. It's not that I don't believe a grown man who is otherwise capable can't have a breakdown, but it's not likely to look the way it's often portrayed in fanfic where they're acting like a helpless toddler and being treated like a helpless toddler by their love interest.
* heavy handed messages, even if I agree with the message - it's just sloppy writing. Very few authors can write with a messagey intent and not have it sound preachy or like propaganda instead of a good story.
* calling eyes "orbs"... just... no.

What an odd paragraph.

phone numbers starting with 555
the character having the exact same birthday as the actor (shows up a lot in fanfic). I don't mind the same birth year though.

That sort of reminds me of a scene in a book I read where the characters were at a Japanese restaurant and arguing over the merit of calling edamame, "edamame" instead of "soybeans." One of them said it was pretentious to call them that when there's a word for them in English, and the other said in Japanese cooking we call them edamame out of respect for Japanese culture.

Both are wrong and that might have been the point, but it was hard to tell because I came away with the feeling we were supposed to side with the one who thought it was pretentious and to see her as a victim of a classist microaggression. I don't think the author knows that even in the Japanese language, the word for soybean, generic, is not "edamame" and you only use that word if you're talking about the thing that tends to be steamed and eaten out of the pod.

That sure did take me out of the story because I put down the book, distracted by how wrong they were, even if it was intentional to a degree.

Yeah, I'd call them edamame in the context of a restaurant because to me, that means specifically soybeans that are boiled/steamed and served in the pod, not just the plant. It'd be weird to go to a Japanese restaurant see "soybeans" on the menu. But then the Japanese restaurants I go to tend to use the Japanese names for most dishes, so you don't see "wheat noodles in hot broth" or "raw fish sliced thinly and served on an oval-shaped ball of short-grained rice".

mmmmmmmmmm soba....

anyway yeah I have the same problem and it annoys me because it pops up a lot in books set in non-european fantasy settings while literally never in castles-and-swords-and-dragons-and-princess european settings. it always comes off feeling like it's a white author trying to justify why they're writing in this setting when I'm like, I don't care if you have the right word for that type of noodle, write a compelling story with good characters.

What a silly scene.

It would've been hilarious if the person defending calling it edamame would have said something like, "is it pretentious to call a hamburger a hamburger? Should we call it 'smooshed beef with condiments on a bun?'"

Anachronistic words and expressions. My special pet peeve is the word "okay" in (medieval-ish) historical and fantasy settings. I don't know why this in particular bothers me so much but it takes me straight out.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #6872 ]

Things that take you out of the story

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da

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