The Reading Room
Feb. 20th, 2009 09:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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ci5hqThe question of procedure…
I think a mixture of new posts, by those who feel inclined to write something, and comments to those posts would be good. Subject to mods complaining about their community being overrun by posts on a single fic, that is.
Let’s see how it works, and thanks to those who’ve already started in comment form.
As a starter for ten, going back to the fascinating discussion about sex (obviously) here at CI5hq a few days ago, I wondered what people thought about the sex scene here, well the bedroom part of it at least, being sort of summarised in Doyle’s recollection. Too summary or still evocative?
"Then let's go do everything we can think of" does it for me, I must say.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 11:13 pm (UTC)Also, and I think even more to the point, to me it's less of a discussion and more of a dialogue if readers just comment in response to the single rec that has been posted.
I agree there needs to be a rec to begin with though.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 11:25 pm (UTC)Well, it depends how things are encouraged, I think... I mean, by that token, surely you're going to end up with lots of smaller dialogues in lots of different places, with people maybe commenting once or twice, but then not wanting to repeat themselves in lots of different posts... Whereas in a single post people would read each other's comments, and jump in where they fancied?
Mmm, but what if someone felt like writing quite a lot, e.g., about other fics this one reminds them of, and/or going off on a different tangent?
You can do that in a single thread too - in fact people do it alot. And it means that people coming into the discussion can read all the different viewpoints in one place...
Just my tuppence...
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Date: 2009-02-21 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-21 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-21 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-21 02:24 pm (UTC)Your idea of a few people writing a review is an interesting one and it would definitely help to promote the discussion of Pros fic, but I've got a feeling it might lead to a certain amount of repetition or some people missing things completely, but you as imply it *is* early days yet.
In the meantime I thought I'd bung something else in to give you food for thought! It's just an idea, but I'd thought I'd show you an example of a very long discussion which took place here at this site and which seemed to work well, despite its length. I don't know if you're familiar with Kate Maclean's, Redemption but it's a very big read, open to loads of interpretations and hence inspired a lot of traffic with some people writing *a lot*, but the fact that it was centralised seemed to serve the discussion well (it went over into 5 or 6 parts) and one could follow it fairly easily:
http://community.livejournal.com/ci5hq/35323.html
Just a thought.
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Date: 2009-02-21 05:32 pm (UTC)I hope I'm not repeating what everyone else has said, as well...
The plot is a pretty standard one - lads undercover at a gay club. I think Alexandra might be quite an early writer though? In which case the plot wouldn't have been quite so 'standard' when she wrote it!
It is nicely written and the banter is spot on most of the time. I particularly liked the scene in Cowley's office, and that the boys didn't go straight to bed afterwards. The ending was appropriate for the main thrust of the plot, that Doyle wanted more than just sex and so did Bodie.
But... (you knew there was going to be a but, didn't you? *g*)
Would Bodie and Doyle really get drunk while they were on duty? They are - excuse the pun - professional agents, and supposed to be good at their jobs. Surely they wouldn't be knocking back spirits quite that quickly - and even if Doyle was doing so for the reasons given in the story, I can't see Bodie encouraging him! (and from a purely biological point of view, if Doyle had had all that alcohol, would he have even been capable of getting a hard on on the dance floor?)
And - would Doyle, who we all know is a stroppy git at times, really accept Bodie's 'testing' of him without a flicker of resentment or annoyance or something!
Those are minor points, admittedly, and I didn't think of them till afterwards. However, what did strike me straight away - in fact I winced and had to stop reading for a moment - was the Americanisms. On the very first page we get 'gotten'. Argh! Then there's repeated references to 'whiskey' - ok, they could be drinking Southern Comfort rather than malt whisky in the club, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be Scotch.
And finally, we get 'I reckon' from Doyle instead of 'I think' and 'Guess so'... *scream* from Bodie...
Now, don't get me wrong - I've read considerably worse, with references to fire hydrants and sidewalks and so on, but I think that because the rest of the story is so well written and because most of the time she has the boys' speech patterns right, these odd Americanisms here and there stand out all the more. And I'm afraid it's one of my particular twitches - sorry!
But I did enjoy it on the whole - more the second time round because I knew the Americanisms were there and could therefore ignore them a bit. It's a fun, light-hearted piece.
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Date: 2009-02-21 11:03 pm (UTC)Really impressed with the comments/short essays too.
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Date: 2009-02-21 11:19 pm (UTC)Re Alexandra being an 'early' writer (1996 is the date of the fanzine edition, apparently), there was some promising but ultimately inconclusive discussion about different approaches to Bodie/Doyle past and present in comments to my previous post. Would reward further study.
RE Americanism, I am usually the most jingoistic type concerning language, but actually I don't mind authors writing in their own idiom *for descriptive or narrative purposes*. For instance, 'color' for 'colour' and even 'gotten'. In other words, it seems overly prescriptive to ask an American writer to pretend to be British in every aspect of their writing. Obviously, dialogue and character's inner voice and (more subjectively) material objects need to be canon/authentic.
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Date: 2009-02-22 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 05:45 am (UTC)http://community.livejournal.com/ci5hq/79119.html
I gather the next week's fic will be chosen on a Tuesday with an actual discussion post (or 2 or more if they get long, as this one has) starting on the Thursday.
Other recs and discussions will no doubt continue to be posted to the comm separately.
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Date: 2009-02-22 05:04 pm (UTC)No, me neither - at least, I accept that they are perfectly justified in using their own idiom in such cases as it is 'their' voice.
However, where it is fairly clear that it is the thoughts or internal narrative of one of the characters, or it occurs in their speech, then I really don't like it. Bodie and Doyle (and Cowley) would never say 'gotten', or 'is all', or 'I guess' or even 'I reckon' - unless they were, say, pretending to be cowboys a la Bodie in that ep that had Ramos in (sorry, I am lousy at remembering episode titles!)
And as I said above, I noticed it all the more in this story because the vast majority of the time Alexandra has got it 'right'.
All in all, this is a good question for discussion - how important is it to get the Brit-speak right, not just in terms of Americanisms but also making sure the slang is right for the time? How much does it affect the reader's enjoyment, how disruptive do people find it, or do they not notice it at all?
Of course, this might already have been discussed elsewhere on lj - if so, does anyone know where?
Answers on a postcard...
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 05:15 pm (UTC)And hi to blkandwhtcat (waves), hope you like 'Dance While You Can' and that you can find time to join in even some times.
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Date: 2009-02-22 05:23 pm (UTC)I thought this thread was a bit lacking in posts - sorry, J!
Do you want me to move it over to the proper thread?
Reckon!
Date: 2009-02-22 07:55 pm (UTC)Okay, I'm an ignorant American (who does happen to know something about linguistics, if that's relevant), but I've heard "reckon" used a lot more by UK English speakers, which stuck out because I would never ever use "reckon." I associate it with uneducated (maybe), rural, poor US Southern speakers, or people mocking them. It just doesn't get *used* here except in that dialect. Really.
This interview (http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2002-12/a-2002-12-27-5-1.cfm) agrees with me. And I do remember it, because it always strikes me as very weird when I hear UK English speakers saying "reckon" in all seriousness. So I'll go out on a limb and say that the use of "reckon" is supposed to be in character, and not an Americanism slipped in.
I swear I've heard them say it on Pros, even! Which I noticed, because I thought it was weird, because we don't say it here! Searching the Hatstand transcripts reveals something like forty-eight uses of "reckon." (I reckon, d'you reckon?, the fake American one, yes, but a whole lot more.) Both B and D say it, but it does seem to be Doyle more, and also whole bunch of other people who are not pretending to be American. I can copy out the search results, if you like.
(I also found one Britpicking site telling me "is all" was totally okay and one saying it absolutely wasn't. Which I kind of expect, actually. I mean, unless we're working from dialect surveys, people are naturally going to assume no one could say things any differently than they do, right? And people can only really advise based on their own dialect.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:12 pm (UTC)Re: Reckon!
Date: 2009-02-22 09:42 pm (UTC)I will put my foot down on "is all" though. I mean, it may be still in use in some areas, but then, so is "gotten" - and neither of those terms or phrases or whatever are in general use. I'm pretty sure B & D just say "that's all" - if they say anything!
I would have thought that most British people in the '70s - and to a large extent even now - use a general vocabulary which everyone understands, but the words are pronounced with a local accent shading them. (as in the difference between the way 'grass' is pronounced in various parts of the country).
If they are in their local area then local dialect words will also creep in. In the Midlands 'food' is called 'snap', for instance, while in Leeds I've heard it called 'scran'. An alley is called a 'ginnel' in Liverpool and a 'jitty' in Leicester, but if a local is speaking to someone from outside the area those words will often be dropped for the one in 'general' use, i.e. 'alley' in this case. Bodie has what I've heard called a 'plastic Scouse' accent, i.e. Birkenhead, but he doesn't use any of the many dialect words that would have been in general use in his home town - neither does Doyle.
For instance, according to my mate Dee,(a Scouser) the word 'gotten' is still in use in some areas of Liverpool, but is only ever used in conversations between the locals.
And then, of course, British Received Pronunciation, as used by the BBC (and often by ITV as well - at least by their newsreaders) has had a huge influence on the way we speak.
This is a really fun discussion! Which Brit-speak site was it that gave you 'is all'? I'd love to know whereabouts in the country that's in use!
Re: Reckon!
Date: 2009-02-23 02:38 pm (UTC)In the 1950 and 60s when they were lads, in the north-west of England at least, 'American' meant fashionable, wealthy, aspirational etc.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 02:41 pm (UTC)Next week I think we've now agreed all to comment to one post.
Re: Reckon!
Date: 2009-02-24 04:02 pm (UTC)In the 1950 and 60s when they were lads, in the north-west of England at least, 'American' meant fashionable, wealthy, aspirational etc.
This is my take. Americanisms crept in because they would be considered more hip (just as Americans in the 60s started using Britishism because of the Beatles, Stones, etc.).
My take is if it's used in the source material, it's valid -- regardless of second-guessing how or why it crept in. Not that it isn't fun to argue inconsistencies in the eps.
Re: Reckon!
Date: 2009-02-24 05:47 pm (UTC)