Canadian and Fannish
Mar. 21st, 2011 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engSo. I'm Canadian, which is something made pretty obvious with the occasional posts about Canada. I'm also fannish. (This is primarily a fannish journal.) My being Canadian and my being fannish intertwine in interesting ways.
I'm fannish about Canada, especially Canadian politics. I read newspaper articles and make odd squeaking noises sometimes, get into capslocky discussions and make up little not-stories about the photos and their captions. I often treat politics like theatre. I've gone to political talks withsinesofinsanity and afterward ended up talking about, along with actual political issues, the speakers' regionalisms and Sir John A./Louis Riel hatesex!fic. I've requested (and gotten!) Canadian Politics RPF for yuletide, drawn Ignatieff/female!Rae fanart, and talked about ficcing anthropomorphic provinces. I get excited about public television and radio, Canadian content and institutions, and Canadian art. I have feelings about Justin Bieber*. Canadian culture fascinates me and it's something I bring my fannishness to.
Likewise, my being Canadian is something that shows up in my fannishness. I realised recently that all save one of the fandoms I've written for** have been British. Writing in British fandoms has a lot of appeal for me; I don't have to spell things "wrong". The one ficlet I've posted for an American fandom I had to beat the Canadian accent out of my characters and then later I realised that I had accidentally set it in Toronto.
There's a lot of translation and self-editing that happens. Climate is something that I've had to stop and think about writing - I stopped myself writing snow into that ficlet, remembering that my climate was not their climate (and then, yeah, I accidentally set it in Toronto). Generic street names are different in different countries, so are institutional names and names in general. There is, indeed, a whole set of differences that have little to do with language.
The language ones are some of my favorite differences, mind. It took me a while, reading bandom femslash, before I realised that the character I had been thinking of as "Lyn-zed" would not, actually, be pronouncing that letter "zed", and then, upon this realisation and in a fit of Canadian nationalism I continued reading her name that way, because "zee" is icky. I also used Canadian spelling in that American Idol ficlet*** - it was commentfic that I posted at something like 2h and I think it's just one word that that applies to, but I'm also pretty sure that I ran it through the spellchecker, so I was either running on automatic or feeling pretty ornery that night. (So that's an issue.)
New bits of language are exciting, though. I got to look up some new-to-me British slang last month and I feel like I'm pretty constantly learning American brand and chain names and new things in general. It's a lot of fun and it's neat to see the external knowledge that people bring to their canon when they write, be it regional or something relating to their profession or other interests that they have. Fandom is gloriously educational; it's excellent.
*Gordon Pinsent Reads Bieber is an amusing video.
**I don't write a lot of fic. I've posted fic for four different fandoms: 1 fic for Freewheel; 1 ficlet for American Idol; 1 fic for Coupling; 7 ficlets and 10 drabbles for Harry Potter. It's a pretty steep divide between British and American comparing the number of works or word count. (While there's a goodly chunk of British media available most foreign English media in Canada is American.)
***which, clearly- the Toronto AU, and after the oh, fuck me-type reaction I started working on something
I'm fannish about Canada, especially Canadian politics. I read newspaper articles and make odd squeaking noises sometimes, get into capslocky discussions and make up little not-stories about the photos and their captions. I often treat politics like theatre. I've gone to political talks with
sinesofinsanity and afterward ended up talking about, along with actual political issues, the speakers' regionalisms and Sir John A./Louis Riel hatesex!fic. I've requested (and gotten!) Canadian Politics RPF for yuletide, drawn Ignatieff/female!Rae fanart, and talked about ficcing anthropomorphic provinces. I get excited about public television and radio, Canadian content and institutions, and Canadian art. I have feelings about Justin Bieber*. Canadian culture fascinates me and it's something I bring my fannishness to.Likewise, my being Canadian is something that shows up in my fannishness. I realised recently that all save one of the fandoms I've written for** have been British. Writing in British fandoms has a lot of appeal for me; I don't have to spell things "wrong". The one ficlet I've posted for an American fandom I had to beat the Canadian accent out of my characters and then later I realised that I had accidentally set it in Toronto.
There's a lot of translation and self-editing that happens. Climate is something that I've had to stop and think about writing - I stopped myself writing snow into that ficlet, remembering that my climate was not their climate (and then, yeah, I accidentally set it in Toronto). Generic street names are different in different countries, so are institutional names and names in general. There is, indeed, a whole set of differences that have little to do with language.
The language ones are some of my favorite differences, mind. It took me a while, reading bandom femslash, before I realised that the character I had been thinking of as "Lyn-zed" would not, actually, be pronouncing that letter "zed", and then, upon this realisation and in a fit of Canadian nationalism I continued reading her name that way, because "zee" is icky. I also used Canadian spelling in that American Idol ficlet*** - it was commentfic that I posted at something like 2h and I think it's just one word that that applies to, but I'm also pretty sure that I ran it through the spellchecker, so I was either running on automatic or feeling pretty ornery that night. (So that's an issue.)
New bits of language are exciting, though. I got to look up some new-to-me British slang last month and I feel like I'm pretty constantly learning American brand and chain names and new things in general. It's a lot of fun and it's neat to see the external knowledge that people bring to their canon when they write, be it regional or something relating to their profession or other interests that they have. Fandom is gloriously educational; it's excellent.
*Gordon Pinsent Reads Bieber is an amusing video.
**I don't write a lot of fic. I've posted fic for four different fandoms: 1 fic for Freewheel; 1 ficlet for American Idol; 1 fic for Coupling; 7 ficlets and 10 drabbles for Harry Potter. It's a pretty steep divide between British and American comparing the number of works or word count. (While there's a goodly chunk of British media available most foreign English media in Canada is American.)
***which, clearly- the Toronto AU, and after the oh, fuck me-type reaction I started working on something
