fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2151 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2151 ⌋

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

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[Scrubs/How I Met Your Mother]

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[Aladdin]

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[Russian politics]

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[World of Warcraft]

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[Hetalia]

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[Community]

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[50 Shades of Grey/Betty]

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[Wreck-It Ralph]

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[American Horror Story]

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[Tom Hiddleston]

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[Young Avengers]

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[Saint Seiya Omega]

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[The Mysterious Cities of Gold]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 022 secrets from Secret Submission Post #307.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'll second these, though I might recommend staying away from her Frontier Magic series.

SA

Er, I should mention that the Frontier Magic is by Patrica C. Wrede

Are those her Victorian Magician ones? Because I kind of liked them.

If not, details on why I should avoid?

No, it's a series based in frontier America...Sort of. The series set in Victorean England is actually one of my favorite series.

As for why...It's something that doesn't bug everyone, but it's more to do with the world building in that series than anything else. The plot, and characters are wonderful but...Well. She messes with history, doesn't explain why what changed did [for example, she moved the civil war up about 30 years, and has the Ottoman Empire ruling what, historically, are the Spanish colonies at least in the Americas]. It wouldn't really be an issue, except that she refers to some of these events through out the book regularly.

She also has a habit in the series of changing the name of just about everything. For example, France reverts to being Gaul, and the British Empire ends up with Albion [and both *are* names that have been used for the places...centuries before this takes place, and not really common use from what I've seen.] Some don't even get that lucky, there's a state running around called Franklin, which I assume is Pennsylvania, but it's never actually stated *where* it is. Again, wouldn't be an issue except that it keeps getting referenced, and there are just enough places that don't get renamed that it's obvious it's supposed to be the US, but nothing really beyond that.

tl;dr: She changed a lot of things for the setting that don't really make sense beyond her doing it for 'THIS IS AN AU' reenforcement, and just makes things more confusing and distracting from the story.

I actually like that -- although I'd really love a map. :-)

Nope, no maps given. You're just sort of expected to ~know~, and get what things are when they just say the name in the text, no explanation given. Drives me crazy, and the history stuff drives the history nerd in me crazy [and kind of comes off like she *really* doesn't understand why the historical events she changes happened the way they did.]

ayrt

I've read the books. Possibly things were a bit easier for me because two of the big ones -- Mill City and Mammoth River -- came very easily to me, since Mill City was a nickname for St Paul/Minneapolis and from that, Mammoth River is pretty obviously the Mississippi. And a very large proportion of Western Hemisphere names have to be different, because no humans crossed the land bridge. (I still would like to know whether my impression of "Helvan Shores" as Connecticut is correct or not.) Columbus may actually have realized he wasn't in the Indies, hence Amerigo Vespucci not getting two huge land masses named after him for very little reason.

The history changes don't bother me much, either, because -- what history changes would there be, in a world where magic is recognized, institutionalized, used in agriculture and warfare? I get the impression that among other things, the technological imbalance between Europe and Asia has been pretty much equalized, so colonialism is playing out in a completely different way. Westward expansion in North America is constrained by the Wild Magic Stuff, so tensions might have blown up earlier, etc., etc., etc.

I don't know what the reasoning behind "Avropa" is, though. That irks me.

AYRT

It's not the changes themselves that bother me so much as the fact that she never gave a reason for them, particularly since most of them could have remained the same and had no real impact on the story itself. So it's more the *reasoning* [or, rather, lack there of] that bothers me. When you change history you really need to explain why it changed, and not just refer to things and expect people to catch on - particularly if your changing to names people may not even realize are connected to a certain place. [For example, I got that Mammoth River was the Mississippi, but I had no clue Mill City was a nickname for St. Paul - and I am from the US, so I imagine it's even worse for people who aren't.]

I'll admit, it does bug me that she completely erased the existence of an entire group of people, for multiple reasons, and it does so to a pretty great degree.

Also, and this is part of what I mean by randomly renaming things to other things it's been called, Avropa is the Azerbaijani word for 'Europe'.

I'm a little twitchy about the humanless-Western-Hemisphere, also. I keep going back and forth on how much it should bother me. I can't argue with it bothering you.

The rest of the history--eh. We're seeing glimpses of it through a naive narrator, who doesn't know a lot of history, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot more framework explaining what happened when and why, but it's not in the book because it doesn't belong in the book. I'd like it in the book, because I'll read any kind of history, but it's irrelevant to the main plot and not something the main character would think much about. (I'm pretty sure if I were writing a similar book, I would put the entire history in, and then someone would make me take it out.)

[ SECRET POST #2151 ]

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