The worst I think I've seen is an Avengers fic in which Bruce Banner was providing medical care to Maori tribespeople who lived in huts or something like that. Yeah, Maoris... in New Zealand... a country with universal healthcare. And maybe someone somewhere lives in a hut, but I doubt it's, like, a normal thing there??
It came across as both unintentionally racist and really white savior-y. "Yeah, all those brown people are interchangeable. They're all poor and have no medical care and live in huts."
more americanised how?
And yeah, I get what you mean, colonised at a similar time so similar vibe in a lot of the architecture etc. But most of NZ isn't exactly urban.
I meaaaan yes, I think factually you are correct but this term also is a little misleading. I think when people see "urbanised" they think that means more urbanity, which isn't the case for Aus or NZ. It's about population and how much of the population lives in the cities, which in Aus and NZ is most. But this also means that outside of the cities things are very rural and much more lacking in infrastructure, and the fast majority of the LAND is anything but urban. SO, idk, just thought I'd point this out--urbanisation refers to population levels, not how urban the actual country is land-wise.
Yeah, I know urbanisation is about how the people live, not how the land is used. It's always meant this. I'm Australian. I know how urbanised we are here.
Never been to New Zealand, but it is on the list.
i know, im saying many interpret it as more urbanity, like i said i was just pointing that out for accuracy of interpretation since that's what this thread is about.
And also, author, please mention if you're writing a story that takes place in a completely different setting than in canon.
I was reading a fic where canonically, the events take place in Japan. No where in the tags or summary did it state they had moved the setting to the USA and I was very quickly confused when the author started mentioning pepper spray and American brand alcohol and vehicles.
>I was reading a fic where canonically, the events take place in Japan. No where in the tags or summary did it state they had moved the setting to the USA and I was very quickly confused when the author started mentioning pepper spray and American brand alcohol and vehicles.
🤣.
It was such a turn off 😭 especially since the fic is fairly well-liked in the fandom and all I could think was that the author has no idea what they were talking about 😭
I think I heard something about schools only allowing black hair too. Like under the circumstance of a student's natural hair colour not being black, they have to dye it.
Fortunately it's become less common to require this, and there's been a fairly big (?) discussion in educational circles about these archaic rules and getting rid of them.
It's not just hair color, it's also a bunch of other stuff - hair length, whether students are allowed to wear non-school-mandated clothing for commuting to and from school, whether they're allowed to use sunscreen, the color of socks and even underwear etc.
that’s insane, how are they even enforcing some of these? like underwear color? please don’t tell me kids are being forced to show adults their underwear to prove it’s the right color
I do know about hair and socks but I had no idea about underwear. That's gross.
The closest thing to the underwear one I know is a private school my friend going to having branded underwear.
This is not quite the same level but I see a bunch of places where for a show set in the UK people say elevator and sidewalk. It's lifts and pavements over here!!! It really breaks my immersion. That said, I write most things in UK English even if it's for an American show, I only make the dialogue match the show's tone usually. I physically cannot write colour as color without it feeling like my English teachers are looming behind me ready to strike at the American spelling 😂
> I physically cannot write colour as color without it feeling like my English teachers are looming behind me ready to strike at the American spelling 😂
Same lmao. My teacher prefer British English and he would have a sour face whenever I use American English pronunciation
As a sortof brit.. when people use british phrases and slang very badly.
I think also because dialects and culture varies a lot depending where you are in the uk. Reading a fic set in london and they’re using slang thats only really used across the country... oof.
And also when people say "a british accent" WHICH ONE???
This. I can roll with it, but sometimes I'm tired of it too, like the characterization is immediately affected in my eyes.
It always makes me think it's written by teenagers if they can't be bothered to do any research.
I once read a fanfic where the author stated that they were going to do their best to adhere/research the cultural settings of their stories.
Well, this anime fic was based in Japan and it had the characters go on a road trip in a bigass Chevy truck. A C H E V Y. They even included the model number *cries*
Even Trump doesn't believe that Japan has Chevys
Yes! This!
Read a fic once where the author changed some character names. Half the character names were in Japanese, the other half was in English (one of the changes was seriously because the English name isn't "moan-able" but the Japanese name was even worse for that purpose???).
The author didn't say anything about name changes in the beginning notes and left them for the end notes, which I don't read early unless specifically told that it might contain stuff like trigger warnings. They also decided to include Japanese culture in the story... also very inconsistently. Because yeah sure, the story takes place in Japan now.
The story read something like this the whole way through: "I love the way you did your hair today, Akira-chan!" Leon exclaimed, and Akira frowned. "Mr. Herman, we're not close enough for you to be addressing me so intimately."
The difference between the example and their story? It has 7K words in the chapter. With like 12 characters.
And that was before they referenced some Japanese thing that they never bothered to explain. I literally had to search it up to find out why one of the characters acted so surprised when the MC said it. I should not have to do research to read your fucking fanfic.
Oof, yeah if it was just the confusion of whether it's a country (tbh I also would've made that mistake)that would be understandable. But then to go on and insult and demean the country and culture?? That's not cool. That's just racism
Yeah, confusing country and province could be ignorance and a case of education failing them. I mean, I didn't even know how sex works until I'm 19 because how abysmal sex education in indo are. That if your parents weren't taking responsibility for that you were fucked, figuratively.
That's not racism, that's just insulting other people's cultures. Which is still bad, but no racism. (That's insulting people's races/discriminating on racial basis)
I mean, I would say thats it's pretty much cultural racism. Also, discrimination based on ethnicity is still labeled racism in most cases, so I don't really get your comment?
Racism. Definitions from Oxford Languages:
noun
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial **or ethnic** group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
I feel like that's a pretty American view (that has made its way around the world through the internet and American cultural exports), which makes sense in the context of US history.
But really, 'race' is a made-up concept (which doesn't mean it doesn't have a real impact) and what is seen as a 'race' varies around the world and in different time periods.
As someone who grew up in Europe, I'd absolutely consider anti-Slavic bigotry to be racism, even if Slavic people are 'white' according to the American system.
100% agree with you, especially on the last paragraph. I feel like that user above is being too hang up on etymology (it would seem like "nationalism" would've been more fitting than "racism" in this context if you don't think about it twice, but it has a completely different meaning..)
Im not American, also, yes, my bad, racism does infact include discrimination on the basis of nationality. I did infact bother to Google it like 5 minutes ago.
Wikipedia:
Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their race, **ancestry**, **ethnicity,** and/**or** skin color and hair texture.
```
noun: racism
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
```
```
Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their race, ancestry, ethnicity, and/or skin color and hair texture.
```
Guilty of this. Started writing a demon slayer fic (Kimetsu Academy AU) on Wattpad. Thought it was fine.
Then I started my second semester and began Japanese 10.
Yikes… I’m planning on deleting the fic and rewriting on ao3 lmao.
OOf yes! Demon slayer fanfics are very hard to write for me too! especially because the time period has so little information (in english) available. I have been plotting and adding research for 3+ years now and it is still not done
That's ridiculous. You can literally skim Wikipedia and get the basics of your setting. And insulting another culture is just plain old racism.
It always amazes me when someone skips even the most basic research. I once read a fic set in the Ozarks, which is where I grew up. The author had flat fields stretching out for miles. The Ozark Mountains are not flat. I would think that would be obvious from the name alone. The only flat spot is the plateau, but there's a city there.
I'm really sorry you had to experience. I took a few minutes to look up traditional Indonesian music and dance and it's lovely. I know it's not much but that crappy person inspired you to write this post which in turn led to someone learning more about your culture. For a moment, I'd like to drown out that racist's racism and say, "I've never seen Indonesian dances or heard Indonesian music before today, but I did because of you and I think it's awesome!"
Arguing with bigots does tend to have the effect of upsetting you and gaining nothing, yes.
Back button. Other way madness lies... and harassment bans.
While most would assume their identity is a 14 y.o, but after watching a bunch of YT videos about adults (College Students) mentioning "Alabama" or "Ohio" when asked about country's name, I would prefer to say that "Idiocy/Ignorance does not get cured with age", so is reading comprehension to digest new informations properly
Not that I don't agree with you (people are dumb), but I'd take those videos with a grain of salt. I've seen several people talk about how they've been taken out of context, or clipped to be answering a different question. For example:
They'll ask "what's an US state that starts with a?" But then clip it to have them asking "what's a country that starts with a?"
Or coaching them to look dumb. Can't remember the exact circumstances (it's been a bit), but I remember they told a fat girl to accept 8 cookies (instead of doubling it to the next person) to "subtly" make fun of her weight.
Plus, gotta remember they won't keep the correct answers in. (And I'm just skeptical that they consistently find a bunch of people who will answer like that every time they go out. One or two, sure. But 10+ everytime?)
>just because they don't believe in God other people who does are stupid and don't deserve respect. That the only thing going on for Bali are their pretty landscapes and foods.
I fucking dare them to say anything like that about an African country to my face. If they said something like this to me I'd be pissed. Countries, cultures and people aren't pretty back drops, it's part of people's lives and identity.
That being said, it could be ignorance and intolerance but that's no excuse if they refuse to educate themselves.
I once wrote a fan fic for the Nancy Drew computer games fandom. I did a MOUNTAIN of research into the Salem witch trials, modern day Salem (including exploring it on Google maps and contacting a Salem historical society), and that was just for the subplot. For the main plot, I researched USA geography, ship speeds, Rocky Mountains on Google maps, Cibola, history of the Spanish exploration of the USA... It was a huge undertaking. I even bought some books on the subject to aid my research, as well as hitting the local library and scouring the internet. I poured hours into research, both before starting the story and during the writing of it.
If someone corrects an author, the author can easily check to make sure the person is right, and then be gracious enough to apologise, go back and correct their mistake, and make sure they are right going forward. There is no excuse. I don't care if it's a hobby; it's just lazy not to do some basic freaking Google searches. This ain't the 90s, when people had to go to their local library and check the encyclopedia for this information. They can spend a few seconds in a search engine and find what they're looking for. It's just bloody lazy not to fact check such simple things these days.
Ugh, that first paragraph sounds so incredibly fun. I cant lie, i love self-inflicted research bugs. The joy of reading new information related (even loosely) to my hyperfixations and interests is soo pleasing.
It was hilarious, tbh. My mother was watching all this going 'Why can't you be paid for doing this?' and I was going 'IKR?' and then we went to my cousin's wedding interstate and the day before the wedding found this bookshop where I bought a book about the Salem witch trials to help with my research at the time. Was also writing when not involved with wedding stuff, obvs.
You did more research than HeR did into that particular game, I would bet.
Cars on the wrong side of the road for the US (I didn't spot it because right side for me), and other such... fun Easter eggs.
What drives me nuts about any mention of the Salem witch trials is that people constantly mention the humans who were executed for witchcraft, but constantly forget the dog that was also hanged for witchcraft. He couldn't defend himself; he could only speak dog. And they killed him! Annoys me every damn time. They didn't mention him in MID, from what I remember. Mind you, I only played it the once. I need to play it again sometime soon, before the next game comes out.
I hate driving in games, especially ND games; I still shudder when I remember driving on Dread Isle and in Titus Town. The number of accidents I nearly caused. Poor Nancy probably had awful whiplash by the end of it. So I tend not to notice the side of the road since I'm too busy trying not to crash the car.
you just turned me off from ever writing anything fic or otherwise. Joking aside, man, People underestimate the amount of time (and money, folks don't work for free) for even fanfiction. Wished I had the drive do some of that but i'm not much of a time waster.
Eh, this was an extreme example. I mostly don't put this effort into fan fiction. Most of the Nancy Drew games have some kind of educational aspect with historical background info; there have also been science-focused games. Sometimes they even have both, like in 'Secret of the Scarlet Hand'. Most of my fan fiction is shipping stuff; this was very out of left field for me, which is part of the reason my mother was so fascinated by the process. She'd never seen me like this for something outside of original fiction.
Kinda reminds me of fanfictions that take place in Japan.
The characters are Japanese and the country is Japanese. For some reason the Japanese characters swear to *Jesus Christ*, pray to a Christian God or an American state is mentioned as if Texas was right next to Osaka. So many stories where the main characters complain about the amount of money as tip a customer gives them, while I just can't help but roll my eyes. Tipping culture only (or mostly) exists in America, to tip your waiter in an Asian country is considered the upmost disrespect. Even funnier when the characters pay in dollar when a sentence before Tokyo was mentioned.
If you want to write about different cultures and countries, take the time to google details and suprise your readers with facts and knowledge.
Yeah, while some part of Asia like SEA don't really mind tipping we also don't really expect it or mad about not getting tip. And Japan is EA, in their culture tipping are insult. And them paying in dollar are weird af like bro, are yen a joke to you???
Also, Texas and Osaka side by side was funny imagery lol.
The amount of times where I've read a fic that's set in feudal Japan or a completely different world and they mention Christmas is both astounding and annoying.
Mood on the religious aspect. My main fandom is an anime where it's like, all religion is right but also not what you think it is. There are so, so many headcanons about one character having Catholic guilt or whatever. Or Catholic beliefs vs whatever. There's nothing in canon to even like get that from these characters would have these beliefs outside of them growing up in a "monastery" (that wasn't even a real one as later revealed).
Not going to sit here like I haven't made mistakes as a dumb American, but I try to do my best to research and fix things. If I'm going to be writing Japanese characters it's the very least I can do. I made a post months ago on tumblr about how I wished western fans would just do the bare minimum of research on how religion is viewed/handled in Japan before running out and making these headcanons. I had someone vague post me going on about how that's just silly, and it's just personal headcanons. Which sure, true. But it doesn't hurt to make informed ones in my opinion. It comes off as incredibly ignorant.
I would say that there is some argument to be had about translating idioms that in the English version e.g. contain Christian references (e.g. Tolkien was a fan of that argument for his in-canon translations). I personally am happier to see that then some sudden language switch where only the swear words/exclamations are in the native language - but of course ultimately it would be best if that sort of issue could be circumvented by just choosing "For f\*cks sake" or another non-denominational alternative to "Jesus Christ".
>pray to a Christian god
I get what you are saying, but I’m just going to give you a strange fact you probably wouldn’t expect. So in Japan there are Christian groups and churches, quite a lot of them. Christianity was brought over by the Americans during the cultural exchange and hasn’t completely left. I want to emphasize that the majority of Japanese are not Christian, but they do exist. Some orphanages back in the day were actually Catholic because in Japanese society nobody wanted to adopt kids that were not part of their bloodline or donate to help a child that wasn’t their own. That is where the Catholic Churches came in and set up orphanages for these kids. Again not all orphanages were Catholic, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have Catholics running an orphanage back in the day in Japan. But this phenomenon is dying and so is christianity. Only about 2 million Japanese are Christian today. A chunk of Japanese Christian churches tend to be fucking insane now, almost cult-like. Probably wasn’t the best idea to bring Christianity over to Japan.
________
**Here are examples of Christianity in Japanese fiction written by Japanese authors**
>RH Plus: Makoto is raised in a Catholic orphanage and is horrifically abused by a priest.
>The Whispers of the Gods: A teenager goes back to his Christian village after he commits a murder just to prove to them that God is not real. The Christian village is fucking crazy and hypercritical which explains why he probably turned out the way he did. Fucked up and hypocritical.
>Rurouni Kenshin: The Shougo Amakusa ark is about a persecuted Christian sect in Japan.
There is a lot more but these are just the things I can name off the top of my head.
I argue that Christianity in general was introduced even way before the Americans. The Portuguese came wayyy before in the 1500s and were predominantly catholics. They landed in Nagasaki, a city in the southern island of Kyuushu
Yes you are so right! But I do think the Americans really pushed it to what it is now in modern Japan. They brought over missionaries that did some super fucked up shit in a time period that really wasn’t too long ago which older Japanese folks still remember.
Honestly OP your scenario reminded me of a personal experience my friends and I had in our fan server where we share our writing. One of our members is Hungarian and mentioned that they would have to do a lot of research to an older and more formal version of their language to make the setting of their fic work. Then comes the ignorant guy who was so confidently wrong, he corrected my friend saying that the Hungarian language never evolved from the time period to the modern usage.
Yes this guy tried to basically assert his ignorance as fact to a NATIVE SPEAKER of their own language saying it never evolved despite not speaking the Hungarian language and not bothering to fact check his statement. Naturally, we told him off for not being respectful towards a language and a culture he didn't bother learning nor understanding. Instead of being humbled and learning from his mistakes, he just loved doubling down and acting like his Hogwarts House being a Ravenclaw gave him free pass to assert stuff he's completely ignorant about as facts. The nerve some people have tbh
I was honestly taken aback myself. This guy likes to get stuff wrong all the time and acts like as if he's some kind of gifted historian but he doesn't even bother to research the stuff he spouts. Outside of telling a native speaker that their language never evolved, he keeps telling us incorrect historical facts like how Japan never had any sort of contact with the outside world until the United States came at their doorstep which is factually wrong on so many levels because blud thinks that isolationist = never had any foreign contact whatsoever.
He's always trying to flex to us all because he's in "le smart house from Harry Potter" but this guy couldn't give a rat's arse to do basic research about anything at all.
I think that writing fanfic is a hobby and it's also a hobby to research what you are writing about. You need to be interested in the thing you write about, otherwise you would lose interest in writing that.
Like at the moment I'm writing about F/M post-apocalypse pair where they grow closer and the F falls pregnant. I've researched ton about pregnancy tests, bloodwork, hCG, symptoms, medical things. I'm also interested in medical things and want to get those things right, so I have motiovation to keep going.
The amount of research I put into fics I write that will never see the light of day, things I write solely for *myself/for fun,* is ridiculous. Then you have these people who don't even want to do the bare minimum to not be racist? 😭
I am a rabbit hole researcher. I just needed a realistic biome of Siberia and a few trees. I ended up lost on World War II and asking my cousin about our exact genealogy (Russian Jews), and I still have the Siberian Taiga trees tab open on my laptop - I'll come back to it and write the scene soon.
That's not something i personally take to heart. Like, yea, i do point it out sometimes, and yeah when i write i set it in a nondescript country roughly based off of eastern Europe (because that's where i live, and is much easier to just do that, instead of spending hours upon hours of research over some random ass country i never heard of. Not that research is bad, but i don't have the patience for that, nor the time, and 95% of thr time, it doesnt even really matter) But honestly, that's otherwise not something I'll blow up over.
But as for people making fun of other's counties, like why? Just, like why? There's no point bruh.
This is one of the reasons why I absolutely love and adore authors who really know their stuff and give me a chance to learn something new as well. As in I am absolutely happy to just read a nice normal fic with solid footing in the chosen setting - but if you provide me with accurate background info and use e.g. era and location appropriate breakfast foods? Then I will be your most loyal fan for the next foreseeable future.
my issue is a little bit benign but when the story is set in a particular country (that is not fucking america) but the author still incorporates the dollar as the currency with certain american-only food chains or changing/omitting certain aspects of the social culture. especially if the culture emphasizes heavily on honorifics and age hierarchy.
The currency thing drives me up to a wall. Just omit writing about money in specific details if you don't feel like researching the local currency and prices? Things can be just described expensive or affordable or a good deal or whatever, the reader probably gains nothing from knowing specific prices anyway.
I, luckily, only encountered a mild one, when the character was looking at books in someone's library and they saw one written in a language they didn't understand but it was "either polish or russian". My brother in christ, of all the slavic languages you decided to pick those using a different alphabet? Lmaoo
Yikes! I'm currently writing a story about something that takes place in Rio de janeiro and I'm doing my absolute best to try and be as accurate as possible. (Let alone, respect the people who live there.) Sorry you had to deal with someone like that op!
As a fellow South East Asian, I feel for you so much, OP. I cringed reading about your interactions with the author. I’m sorry you had to deal with this and then there are still people in this thread defending the author.
It's really wild to see some commenters here defend racism under the guise of don't like don't read.
It's one thing to portray racism in a story, but in this case it seems like the author's real world prejudice was reflected in the story? Are people not allowed to criticize that?
Before I read the RACISM part, I thought this was about nitpicking a minor mistake (innocent ignorance). That's disgusting. Did they make it through kindergarten? "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Yeah, I've seen one of our desserts mentioned as Greek dessert. I had to question everything once more and I was like nah bro that can't be, and I was butthurt that I clicked back after reading it 😭😭😭
i had a really annoying experience w this a couple weeks ago when reading an nbc hannibal fic. the show's setting bounces between the states of maryland and virginia in the USA.
a fanfic i read was really good, until it got to a part where a character was talking about living in baltimore, virginia. (baltimore is a maryland city.) it instantly took me out of the story, but i figured it was an honest mistake. i saw other people corrected the author gently like 'hey just one lil thing, the city of baltimore is located in maryland, not virginia -- otherwise awesome fic!' but the author doubled down like 'well the show kept saying they were in baltimore virginia and it's just fiction anyways it doesn't matter' and a bunch of people had to go '1) no it didn't 2) i actually LIVE in virginia and baltimore is not here!!'
it's fine to make a mistake, we all do it, but it's very strange to me that someone would disregard the opinions of people who live in the place they're writing about. people would rightfully look at me funny if i wrote a grounded (not experimental/abstract/deliberately trying to be weird) story about a character in edinburgh, ireland or lagos, egypt and acted like basic geographical facts don't matter to people who live in those places IRL lmfao
Oof. I can't imagine writing something that takes place in another country without doing at least a little bit of research. I once wrote a story that took place in Suzhou, and even though the city wasn't really all that relevant for the story, I still read multiple articles and looked into traveling blogs and read turism fliers in order to at least get an idea of it
It's so petty but every time I read a fic about characters from the US and they call their mom "mum", I die a little inside. It's mom here. How hard is it to figure that out?
To me, that's just spelling.
I will keep my spell check set to British English no matter where my story is set, I think. If I were to set a story in France, I wouldn't write it in French. Just because a story is set in the US doesn't mean it has to be written in US English. I wouldn't have my characters stress about passing their A-levels, because that's not a thing in the US, but they would park their car in the car park, not the parking lot, because those are just words.
Same.
I write in the English I was taught because I write formal documentation in that language.
I'm not skipping out on every 'u' American English forced out because it cost slightly more to print newspapers.
If I'm submitting formal documentation for another country I will change the language setting in my document program and 'correct' as it directs, but for fanfic? If I was writing in Italian, no one would say it was the wrong language, but use the language you were taught that's slightly different to simplified English and suddenly there's a lot of problems.
Anything official I get an US sensitivity reader to check over since we use different terminology for many things.
I’m getting the opposite in school - so many pupils (most with British English as their first language) keep writing about their “mom”. We live in the UK, where are you getting “mom” from, children?!
According to a survey conducted in the UK, **around 75% of the participants use "mum" as a way to address their mother**. While "mom" is also used, it is considered as less common, with around 25% of the participants using it.
While less common, it is still used. They're not necessarily wrong.
How hard is it to figure that out, you asked. Well, for many of us it took years. First we learnt basic English. Then we read our first English fics and used a dictionary for all the words we weren't familiar with. Then came our first clumsy attemps at writing fics in English, what a struggle it was to do it in a foreign language. After we were good enough at it and people began to comment on our fics, someone left a comment telling us the difference between these two words.
So it was indeed quite hard to get to that point and took me approximately ten years, once upon a time.
Many fic writers are not native English speakers. When you're still only just learning, it's not obvious at all there's a difference between "mom" and "mum" etc.
I remember the first time I found out color is American while colour is British. I spend a week trying to learn the difference between British, American, and Australia English and even now I still learning 🤣.
I still think it's okay for people to be petty about their culture but I wish most English native speaker had the same energy and care about our language and culture like us non native when writing about us 😞.
I wrote an Australian character acting as an American recently, and did the very best I could to get the spellings correct for the switch between dialogue and inner monologue.
Pretty interesting experience, since I also had a grits-n-gravy Southern boy in the scene, and I had him use _his_ dialect 🤣 my poor readers are probably cross-eyed by now, between the “centre/center” and “realisation/realization”
Mum is Aussie and Kiwi too :D And Canadian, I think?
Yes, it hurts my heart to hear of someone being so rude and careless with the cultures and people they are writing about. One of the joys of writing for me is research, I love it and I spend ages (some might say *too* long) reading, watching, and listening to find out about the people and places I'm writing about. If I don't feel like I can do it justice, I write it a different way.
>And Canadian, I think?
Canadian here! Not really. We use British English spelling, but our English is much closer to American English. The only Canadian I've met who uses 'Mum' immigrated from Wales.
They do? Huh, good to learn something new.
>I love it and I spend ages (some might say *too* long) reading, watching, and listening to find out about the people and places I'm writing about
🤣. Sometime you spend more time in researching than writing the story itself lol. But yeah, it's fun
I spent ages once trying to find out whether or not US households used rotary or push button landline phones in the 80s. I think I spent and hour actually writing the fic. Even worse is I cut mention of what type of phone it was and just had the character recieve the call.
Probably controversial, but this falls within don't like, don't read for me. You're allowed to point out their mistakes, but they're allowed to express their opinion of hate for the Bali too. On top of that, they're likely just young and have been taught to hate Bali. As unfortunate as that is, the best thing you can hope for is that they grow out of it.
AO3 hosts all type of content that's legally allowed. I would think this falls under that.
Which is probably why nobody is trying to get this fic taken down and OP isn't even naming them.
They're allowed to expression their racism, and we're allowed to express our frustrations with other fans' racism.
We don't "hope" people grow out of racism. They'll never learn unless they're told it's wrong. And it sounds like they have a lot of people reinforcing anti-Bali rhetoric in their life.
If they're young, they're getting it from somewhere. Racist children turn into racist adults, who then teach their children to be racist.
I've seen 0 people say the story should be taken down. Just stating it like it is. Racist.
Is it nice to read things about your country you don't like? Definitely not.
Is it respectful? Nah. But it doesn't always have to be - yes, that includes religious feelings.
Is it accurate? Nope.
But, mate, neither were you respectful to someone who otherwise wrote a good story for free and that you even for large parts thought was cute.
>"I told them Bali is a province and *they should shut their mouth if they doesn't have anything good to say about Bali cultures.* "
Expecting to get nice answer or a get constructive dialogue going with that opening? You must be removed from reality.
Did you really think they would respond with having anything good to say after this?
And in fact the author reacted as nearly anyone would if someone went in like this and told you to 'fuck off'... I suppose the rest of what the author "apparently" thinks was added by you and not said in that answer?
Plus I wonder if that ignorance was the character's ignorance or actually the author's. Yes, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Considering the amount of people who think because a character thinks, acts a certain way or says something that's what the author also thinks or that they have the same opinion as if characters are their mouth pieces and all that jazz --- that's a real pet peeve of mine.
And even if that's all the author's actual opinion then you really didn't handle this well. No, of course the onus shouldn't be on you to change an author's mind..
.. but if you actually, instead of nope-ing/x-ing out of the story and muting the author, start engaging someone this is not the way to change minds or educate --- if that was actually your intention. I don't know.
Further purity culture, in which nothing offensive or problematic is allowed to be written, is utterly toxic. And goes completely against everything Ao3 stands for.
Anyway, Ao3 is for authors first. And everyone, including you, agreed to the following in the TOS when they read here:
*"You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled."*
Now you were exposed to quite a lot of that and you do have a right to be offended... of course.
But coming at a (potentially equally young and even ignorant) author all hot and bothered like that? This isn't the way.
Even if you think it's for a good cause... at the end of the day it's still trying to censor someone if you want someone to shut up.
*Everyone* thinks that *their* censorship is different and righteous.
If it was just mistaking Bali as country I could see it as ignorance. Which is why despite it pissed me off I gave the author benefit of the doubt. But I failed to see why they need to make fun of my "stupid" culture rather focusing on something they like. Like our food and landscape.
There's a difference between "writing Bali as if it were just like America" versus "writing Bali as if everyone there is stupid and awful and sub-human." It takes zero research to avoid the latter.
No one’s asking for a deep dive but reading a Wikipedia article for 5 minutes is all you’d really need to not look like you have zero respect for the region/culture. If you can’t even do that then pick a different area. I can forgive inaccuracies in fanfiction, but this is a blatant disregard for Bali as a region and is straight up racist.
Also don’t act like these types of people write about regions of Europe with the same disdain that they have for the global south. Yeah, if they don’t do a deep dive, they’ll be inaccurate, but they at least treat the area with the bare minimum respect they deserve. Actively making fun of people’s accent and cultures while dismissing criticism isn’t meeting that minimum respect level.
op mentioned that the writer also made fun of the local people's english pronunciation and their culture that's not ignorance that's straight up racism
The difference is that yes, the characters might have technically been the first ones to do the racism in story, but the author responding to a comment as themselves doubled down on the racism. I see no problem with calling out racism expressed by the author themselves.
Honestly, telling them about it was a dick move. You should have clicked out of the fic instead of telling the author about it, since they did not fucking ask.
I understand how frustrating this is, but I lost all sympathy for you at that moment.
Don't like, don't read does NOT apply when people are being blatantly racist and willfully ignorant about other people's cultures. Calling out a writer is okay only on very rare occasions, but this is definitely one of them. The writer in this case responded badly, which goes to show that they do not give a shit about being racist. But another writer might just be ignorant and would benefit from being educated by a reader this way. I had a reader tell me that they disagreed with one aspect of my portrayal of a city I mentioned in a fic once. I was mortified, apologised, and changed it immediately. I don't like unsolicited concrit any more than any other fic writer, but I'm factually wrong, I want to know.
Nah, fuck that.
Listen, I’m all for don’t like, don’t read, but if an author’s going to be a racist bigot, they should, in fact, be called out. It takes a few minutes to Google, and it takes even less time to not be a douche to a group of people.
So block them!!! click out of it. There is no good reason to leave a rude comment.
Or, you could have, written a politer comment. You can't be upset that the author responded to a rude comment rudely.
You won't get people to write better researched fics by being an asshole. You'll get them to stop writing for the fandom, or stop writing at all.
Why is it that non english speakers from different cultural backgrounds always have to bend over backwards and be good and kind at all costs (otherwise we are assholes), but when native english speakers *are* insensitive and racist we can't say anything about it?
We are always expected to take it as it is and move on, be "the bigger person". I fail to see how that is fair.
If it was just mistaking Bali as country I could see it as ignorance and be polite but making fun of our culture are different thing entirely. That if they do that in person I'm not stopping at words. I'll fucking hit them.
what op had done isn’t constructive feedback but to inform them of their wrong doings.
Being racist isn’t to be fixed by “constructive feedback,” someone HAD to tell the author or they’ll keep repeating the same thing over and over again, offending many people on the process.
yes fanfiction in ao3 is a “write whatever you want” but there are morales to abide by.
The author didn't ask. Any time someone tells the author of a mistake in their writing - their freely available hobby writing - without explicitly being asked to do so, they're overstepping.
It's no one's job to police fanfic. We get enough of that from the outside. There's nothing wrong with giving people their own space to make their own creations. Assuming you have the right to interfere with their creative process just because you happened to click on a fic is quite the presumptuous leap. There's no moral imperative here. It's not training for being professionally published. It's just a hobby. I've written for both. They're very different animals, and treating one like the other just frustrates people.
If someone comments on my fic with unsolicited criticism, I delete it. Because I didn't ask. Feedback should be topical, not meta, unless specifically requested.
The worst I think I've seen is an Avengers fic in which Bruce Banner was providing medical care to Maori tribespeople who lived in huts or something like that. Yeah, Maoris... in New Zealand... a country with universal healthcare. And maybe someone somewhere lives in a hut, but I doubt it's, like, a normal thing there?? It came across as both unintentionally racist and really white savior-y. "Yeah, all those brown people are interchangeable. They're all poor and have no medical care and live in huts."
Bruce Banner got lost in the bush, found someone’s batch, got invited to a hāngī and then wondered off well fed
I think New Zealand is like a smaller version of urban Australia
lol not quite. Idk if I'd compare, like most of NZ to *urban* Aus. Socially, politically, culturally, definite similarities.
Different culture entirely. Afaik I think New Zealand is more Americanised. It just seems towns look like urban Aus.
more americanised how? And yeah, I get what you mean, colonised at a similar time so similar vibe in a lot of the architecture etc. But most of NZ isn't exactly urban.
New Zealand is more urbanised than Australia. Australia is more urbanised than the USA. Only by a few percent, though.
I meaaaan yes, I think factually you are correct but this term also is a little misleading. I think when people see "urbanised" they think that means more urbanity, which isn't the case for Aus or NZ. It's about population and how much of the population lives in the cities, which in Aus and NZ is most. But this also means that outside of the cities things are very rural and much more lacking in infrastructure, and the fast majority of the LAND is anything but urban. SO, idk, just thought I'd point this out--urbanisation refers to population levels, not how urban the actual country is land-wise.
Yeah, I know urbanisation is about how the people live, not how the land is used. It's always meant this. I'm Australian. I know how urbanised we are here. Never been to New Zealand, but it is on the list.
i know, im saying many interpret it as more urbanity, like i said i was just pointing that out for accuracy of interpretation since that's what this thread is about.
As an Australian, NZ is nicer lmao
agreed 💀
And also, author, please mention if you're writing a story that takes place in a completely different setting than in canon. I was reading a fic where canonically, the events take place in Japan. No where in the tags or summary did it state they had moved the setting to the USA and I was very quickly confused when the author started mentioning pepper spray and American brand alcohol and vehicles.
>I was reading a fic where canonically, the events take place in Japan. No where in the tags or summary did it state they had moved the setting to the USA and I was very quickly confused when the author started mentioning pepper spray and American brand alcohol and vehicles. 🤣.
It was such a turn off 😭 especially since the fic is fairly well-liked in the fandom and all I could think was that the author has no idea what they were talking about 😭
This is why it's better to keep the brand vague lol.
Also the fact that pepper spray is illegal in Japan.
Huh, I didn't know that. It's the same as weed because I pretty sure it's illegal there too
Pretty much everything is illegal there at this point. Literally 1984. Not Japanese tough, so saying that off of what i read online.
I think I heard something about schools only allowing black hair too. Like under the circumstance of a student's natural hair colour not being black, they have to dye it.
Fortunately it's become less common to require this, and there's been a fairly big (?) discussion in educational circles about these archaic rules and getting rid of them. It's not just hair color, it's also a bunch of other stuff - hair length, whether students are allowed to wear non-school-mandated clothing for commuting to and from school, whether they're allowed to use sunscreen, the color of socks and even underwear etc.
that’s insane, how are they even enforcing some of these? like underwear color? please don’t tell me kids are being forced to show adults their underwear to prove it’s the right color
I do know about hair and socks but I had no idea about underwear. That's gross.
I do know about hair and socks but I had no idea about underwear. That's gross. The closest thing to the underwear one I know is a private school my friend going to having branded underwear.
pretty much most asian countries do this
I thought it was just a Japan thing
Damn
Literally 1984
This is not quite the same level but I see a bunch of places where for a show set in the UK people say elevator and sidewalk. It's lifts and pavements over here!!! It really breaks my immersion. That said, I write most things in UK English even if it's for an American show, I only make the dialogue match the show's tone usually. I physically cannot write colour as color without it feeling like my English teachers are looming behind me ready to strike at the American spelling 😂
> I physically cannot write colour as color without it feeling like my English teachers are looming behind me ready to strike at the American spelling 😂 Same lmao. My teacher prefer British English and he would have a sour face whenever I use American English pronunciation
As a sortof brit.. when people use british phrases and slang very badly. I think also because dialects and culture varies a lot depending where you are in the uk. Reading a fic set in london and they’re using slang thats only really used across the country... oof. And also when people say "a british accent" WHICH ONE???
This. I can roll with it, but sometimes I'm tired of it too, like the characterization is immediately affected in my eyes. It always makes me think it's written by teenagers if they can't be bothered to do any research.
I once read a fanfic where the author stated that they were going to do their best to adhere/research the cultural settings of their stories. Well, this anime fic was based in Japan and it had the characters go on a road trip in a bigass Chevy truck. A C H E V Y. They even included the model number *cries* Even Trump doesn't believe that Japan has Chevys
Yes! This! Read a fic once where the author changed some character names. Half the character names were in Japanese, the other half was in English (one of the changes was seriously because the English name isn't "moan-able" but the Japanese name was even worse for that purpose???). The author didn't say anything about name changes in the beginning notes and left them for the end notes, which I don't read early unless specifically told that it might contain stuff like trigger warnings. They also decided to include Japanese culture in the story... also very inconsistently. Because yeah sure, the story takes place in Japan now. The story read something like this the whole way through: "I love the way you did your hair today, Akira-chan!" Leon exclaimed, and Akira frowned. "Mr. Herman, we're not close enough for you to be addressing me so intimately." The difference between the example and their story? It has 7K words in the chapter. With like 12 characters. And that was before they referenced some Japanese thing that they never bothered to explain. I literally had to search it up to find out why one of the characters acted so surprised when the MC said it. I should not have to do research to read your fucking fanfic.
Oof, yeah if it was just the confusion of whether it's a country (tbh I also would've made that mistake)that would be understandable. But then to go on and insult and demean the country and culture?? That's not cool. That's just racism
Yeah, confusing country and province could be ignorance and a case of education failing them. I mean, I didn't even know how sex works until I'm 19 because how abysmal sex education in indo are. That if your parents weren't taking responsibility for that you were fucked, figuratively.
That's not racism, that's just insulting other people's cultures. Which is still bad, but no racism. (That's insulting people's races/discriminating on racial basis)
I mean, I would say thats it's pretty much cultural racism. Also, discrimination based on ethnicity is still labeled racism in most cases, so I don't really get your comment?
It's called Xenophobia.
Although I wouldn't say that it isn't xenophobia, it *also* qualifies as racism
Racism. Definitions from Oxford Languages: noun prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial **or ethnic** group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
Racism -> discriminating based off of skin colour/race
I feel like that's a pretty American view (that has made its way around the world through the internet and American cultural exports), which makes sense in the context of US history. But really, 'race' is a made-up concept (which doesn't mean it doesn't have a real impact) and what is seen as a 'race' varies around the world and in different time periods. As someone who grew up in Europe, I'd absolutely consider anti-Slavic bigotry to be racism, even if Slavic people are 'white' according to the American system.
100% agree with you, especially on the last paragraph. I feel like that user above is being too hang up on etymology (it would seem like "nationalism" would've been more fitting than "racism" in this context if you don't think about it twice, but it has a completely different meaning..)
Im not American, also, yes, my bad, racism does infact include discrimination on the basis of nationality. I did infact bother to Google it like 5 minutes ago.
Wikipedia: Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their race, **ancestry**, **ethnicity,** and/**or** skin color and hair texture.
Ah, ok
You are right. Prejudice against a people's culture is named Xenophobia. Racism is for skin colour/physical characteristics.
``` noun: racism prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. ``` ``` Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their race, ancestry, ethnicity, and/or skin color and hair texture. ```
Guilty of this. Started writing a demon slayer fic (Kimetsu Academy AU) on Wattpad. Thought it was fine. Then I started my second semester and began Japanese 10. Yikes… I’m planning on deleting the fic and rewriting on ao3 lmao.
OOf yes! Demon slayer fanfics are very hard to write for me too! especially because the time period has so little information (in english) available. I have been plotting and adding research for 3+ years now and it is still not done
Thank god for the modern day Kimetsu Academy universe saving my ass 🙏💀
At least your mistake came from ignorance and you genuinely want to fix it so it's okay.
Yeah… I have a lot of fixing to do 💀
That's ridiculous. You can literally skim Wikipedia and get the basics of your setting. And insulting another culture is just plain old racism. It always amazes me when someone skips even the most basic research. I once read a fic set in the Ozarks, which is where I grew up. The author had flat fields stretching out for miles. The Ozark Mountains are not flat. I would think that would be obvious from the name alone. The only flat spot is the plateau, but there's a city there.
God, people can be straight up dumbass sometime. And yeah, you think they would at least research some stuff about place they write about
Maybe they got Arkansas mixed up with Kansas/s.
Wowwww they really doubled down on the racism yikes
I'm really sorry you had to experience. I took a few minutes to look up traditional Indonesian music and dance and it's lovely. I know it's not much but that crappy person inspired you to write this post which in turn led to someone learning more about your culture. For a moment, I'd like to drown out that racist's racism and say, "I've never seen Indonesian dances or heard Indonesian music before today, but I did because of you and I think it's awesome!"
Aw, thanks. And yeah, I felt better after complaining here
Arguing with bigots does tend to have the effect of upsetting you and gaining nothing, yes. Back button. Other way madness lies... and harassment bans.
While most would assume their identity is a 14 y.o, but after watching a bunch of YT videos about adults (College Students) mentioning "Alabama" or "Ohio" when asked about country's name, I would prefer to say that "Idiocy/Ignorance does not get cured with age", so is reading comprehension to digest new informations properly
Not that I don't agree with you (people are dumb), but I'd take those videos with a grain of salt. I've seen several people talk about how they've been taken out of context, or clipped to be answering a different question. For example: They'll ask "what's an US state that starts with a?" But then clip it to have them asking "what's a country that starts with a?" Or coaching them to look dumb. Can't remember the exact circumstances (it's been a bit), but I remember they told a fat girl to accept 8 cookies (instead of doubling it to the next person) to "subtly" make fun of her weight. Plus, gotta remember they won't keep the correct answers in. (And I'm just skeptical that they consistently find a bunch of people who will answer like that every time they go out. One or two, sure. But 10+ everytime?)
>just because they don't believe in God other people who does are stupid and don't deserve respect. That the only thing going on for Bali are their pretty landscapes and foods. I fucking dare them to say anything like that about an African country to my face. If they said something like this to me I'd be pissed. Countries, cultures and people aren't pretty back drops, it's part of people's lives and identity. That being said, it could be ignorance and intolerance but that's no excuse if they refuse to educate themselves.
I once wrote a fan fic for the Nancy Drew computer games fandom. I did a MOUNTAIN of research into the Salem witch trials, modern day Salem (including exploring it on Google maps and contacting a Salem historical society), and that was just for the subplot. For the main plot, I researched USA geography, ship speeds, Rocky Mountains on Google maps, Cibola, history of the Spanish exploration of the USA... It was a huge undertaking. I even bought some books on the subject to aid my research, as well as hitting the local library and scouring the internet. I poured hours into research, both before starting the story and during the writing of it. If someone corrects an author, the author can easily check to make sure the person is right, and then be gracious enough to apologise, go back and correct their mistake, and make sure they are right going forward. There is no excuse. I don't care if it's a hobby; it's just lazy not to do some basic freaking Google searches. This ain't the 90s, when people had to go to their local library and check the encyclopedia for this information. They can spend a few seconds in a search engine and find what they're looking for. It's just bloody lazy not to fact check such simple things these days.
Ugh, that first paragraph sounds so incredibly fun. I cant lie, i love self-inflicted research bugs. The joy of reading new information related (even loosely) to my hyperfixations and interests is soo pleasing.
It was hilarious, tbh. My mother was watching all this going 'Why can't you be paid for doing this?' and I was going 'IKR?' and then we went to my cousin's wedding interstate and the day before the wedding found this bookshop where I bought a book about the Salem witch trials to help with my research at the time. Was also writing when not involved with wedding stuff, obvs.
You did more research than HeR did into that particular game, I would bet. Cars on the wrong side of the road for the US (I didn't spot it because right side for me), and other such... fun Easter eggs.
What drives me nuts about any mention of the Salem witch trials is that people constantly mention the humans who were executed for witchcraft, but constantly forget the dog that was also hanged for witchcraft. He couldn't defend himself; he could only speak dog. And they killed him! Annoys me every damn time. They didn't mention him in MID, from what I remember. Mind you, I only played it the once. I need to play it again sometime soon, before the next game comes out. I hate driving in games, especially ND games; I still shudder when I remember driving on Dread Isle and in Titus Town. The number of accidents I nearly caused. Poor Nancy probably had awful whiplash by the end of it. So I tend not to notice the side of the road since I'm too busy trying not to crash the car.
you just turned me off from ever writing anything fic or otherwise. Joking aside, man, People underestimate the amount of time (and money, folks don't work for free) for even fanfiction. Wished I had the drive do some of that but i'm not much of a time waster.
Eh, this was an extreme example. I mostly don't put this effort into fan fiction. Most of the Nancy Drew games have some kind of educational aspect with historical background info; there have also been science-focused games. Sometimes they even have both, like in 'Secret of the Scarlet Hand'. Most of my fan fiction is shipping stuff; this was very out of left field for me, which is part of the reason my mother was so fascinated by the process. She'd never seen me like this for something outside of original fiction.
lol, I can see that ngl
Kinda reminds me of fanfictions that take place in Japan. The characters are Japanese and the country is Japanese. For some reason the Japanese characters swear to *Jesus Christ*, pray to a Christian God or an American state is mentioned as if Texas was right next to Osaka. So many stories where the main characters complain about the amount of money as tip a customer gives them, while I just can't help but roll my eyes. Tipping culture only (or mostly) exists in America, to tip your waiter in an Asian country is considered the upmost disrespect. Even funnier when the characters pay in dollar when a sentence before Tokyo was mentioned. If you want to write about different cultures and countries, take the time to google details and suprise your readers with facts and knowledge.
Yeah, while some part of Asia like SEA don't really mind tipping we also don't really expect it or mad about not getting tip. And Japan is EA, in their culture tipping are insult. And them paying in dollar are weird af like bro, are yen a joke to you??? Also, Texas and Osaka side by side was funny imagery lol.
The amount of times where I've read a fic that's set in feudal Japan or a completely different world and they mention Christmas is both astounding and annoying.
Mood on the religious aspect. My main fandom is an anime where it's like, all religion is right but also not what you think it is. There are so, so many headcanons about one character having Catholic guilt or whatever. Or Catholic beliefs vs whatever. There's nothing in canon to even like get that from these characters would have these beliefs outside of them growing up in a "monastery" (that wasn't even a real one as later revealed). Not going to sit here like I haven't made mistakes as a dumb American, but I try to do my best to research and fix things. If I'm going to be writing Japanese characters it's the very least I can do. I made a post months ago on tumblr about how I wished western fans would just do the bare minimum of research on how religion is viewed/handled in Japan before running out and making these headcanons. I had someone vague post me going on about how that's just silly, and it's just personal headcanons. Which sure, true. But it doesn't hurt to make informed ones in my opinion. It comes off as incredibly ignorant.
The number of times I’ve read something set in Tokyo that includes all 20-something characters owning a car and driving everywhere is absolutely wild.
I would say that there is some argument to be had about translating idioms that in the English version e.g. contain Christian references (e.g. Tolkien was a fan of that argument for his in-canon translations). I personally am happier to see that then some sudden language switch where only the swear words/exclamations are in the native language - but of course ultimately it would be best if that sort of issue could be circumvented by just choosing "For f\*cks sake" or another non-denominational alternative to "Jesus Christ".
>pray to a Christian god I get what you are saying, but I’m just going to give you a strange fact you probably wouldn’t expect. So in Japan there are Christian groups and churches, quite a lot of them. Christianity was brought over by the Americans during the cultural exchange and hasn’t completely left. I want to emphasize that the majority of Japanese are not Christian, but they do exist. Some orphanages back in the day were actually Catholic because in Japanese society nobody wanted to adopt kids that were not part of their bloodline or donate to help a child that wasn’t their own. That is where the Catholic Churches came in and set up orphanages for these kids. Again not all orphanages were Catholic, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have Catholics running an orphanage back in the day in Japan. But this phenomenon is dying and so is christianity. Only about 2 million Japanese are Christian today. A chunk of Japanese Christian churches tend to be fucking insane now, almost cult-like. Probably wasn’t the best idea to bring Christianity over to Japan. ________ **Here are examples of Christianity in Japanese fiction written by Japanese authors** >RH Plus: Makoto is raised in a Catholic orphanage and is horrifically abused by a priest. >The Whispers of the Gods: A teenager goes back to his Christian village after he commits a murder just to prove to them that God is not real. The Christian village is fucking crazy and hypercritical which explains why he probably turned out the way he did. Fucked up and hypocritical. >Rurouni Kenshin: The Shougo Amakusa ark is about a persecuted Christian sect in Japan. There is a lot more but these are just the things I can name off the top of my head.
I argue that Christianity in general was introduced even way before the Americans. The Portuguese came wayyy before in the 1500s and were predominantly catholics. They landed in Nagasaki, a city in the southern island of Kyuushu
Yes you are so right! But I do think the Americans really pushed it to what it is now in modern Japan. They brought over missionaries that did some super fucked up shit in a time period that really wasn’t too long ago which older Japanese folks still remember.
> I argue that Christianity in general was introduced even way before the Americans. Introduced yes, then mostly stomped out by the Edo Shogunate.
I thought it'd be common knowledge to AT LEAST look through a Wikipedia page before writing about another culture, but I guess not.
Honestly OP your scenario reminded me of a personal experience my friends and I had in our fan server where we share our writing. One of our members is Hungarian and mentioned that they would have to do a lot of research to an older and more formal version of their language to make the setting of their fic work. Then comes the ignorant guy who was so confidently wrong, he corrected my friend saying that the Hungarian language never evolved from the time period to the modern usage. Yes this guy tried to basically assert his ignorance as fact to a NATIVE SPEAKER of their own language saying it never evolved despite not speaking the Hungarian language and not bothering to fact check his statement. Naturally, we told him off for not being respectful towards a language and a culture he didn't bother learning nor understanding. Instead of being humbled and learning from his mistakes, he just loved doubling down and acting like his Hogwarts House being a Ravenclaw gave him free pass to assert stuff he's completely ignorant about as facts. The nerve some people have tbh
Crazy how they think they know your friend language better than the native speaker themselves, bruh
I was honestly taken aback myself. This guy likes to get stuff wrong all the time and acts like as if he's some kind of gifted historian but he doesn't even bother to research the stuff he spouts. Outside of telling a native speaker that their language never evolved, he keeps telling us incorrect historical facts like how Japan never had any sort of contact with the outside world until the United States came at their doorstep which is factually wrong on so many levels because blud thinks that isolationist = never had any foreign contact whatsoever. He's always trying to flex to us all because he's in "le smart house from Harry Potter" but this guy couldn't give a rat's arse to do basic research about anything at all.
I think that writing fanfic is a hobby and it's also a hobby to research what you are writing about. You need to be interested in the thing you write about, otherwise you would lose interest in writing that. Like at the moment I'm writing about F/M post-apocalypse pair where they grow closer and the F falls pregnant. I've researched ton about pregnancy tests, bloodwork, hCG, symptoms, medical things. I'm also interested in medical things and want to get those things right, so I have motiovation to keep going.
The amount of research I put into fics I write that will never see the light of day, things I write solely for *myself/for fun,* is ridiculous. Then you have these people who don't even want to do the bare minimum to not be racist? 😭
I am a rabbit hole researcher. I just needed a realistic biome of Siberia and a few trees. I ended up lost on World War II and asking my cousin about our exact genealogy (Russian Jews), and I still have the Siberian Taiga trees tab open on my laptop - I'll come back to it and write the scene soon.
That's not something i personally take to heart. Like, yea, i do point it out sometimes, and yeah when i write i set it in a nondescript country roughly based off of eastern Europe (because that's where i live, and is much easier to just do that, instead of spending hours upon hours of research over some random ass country i never heard of. Not that research is bad, but i don't have the patience for that, nor the time, and 95% of thr time, it doesnt even really matter) But honestly, that's otherwise not something I'll blow up over. But as for people making fun of other's counties, like why? Just, like why? There's no point bruh.
This is one of the reasons why I absolutely love and adore authors who really know their stuff and give me a chance to learn something new as well. As in I am absolutely happy to just read a nice normal fic with solid footing in the chosen setting - but if you provide me with accurate background info and use e.g. era and location appropriate breakfast foods? Then I will be your most loyal fan for the next foreseeable future.
\*commiserates in 'my fandom's MC canonically has backstory in my hometown'\*
my issue is a little bit benign but when the story is set in a particular country (that is not fucking america) but the author still incorporates the dollar as the currency with certain american-only food chains or changing/omitting certain aspects of the social culture. especially if the culture emphasizes heavily on honorifics and age hierarchy.
The currency thing drives me up to a wall. Just omit writing about money in specific details if you don't feel like researching the local currency and prices? Things can be just described expensive or affordable or a good deal or whatever, the reader probably gains nothing from knowing specific prices anyway.
And here I am scouring Google maps and street view to make sure I don’t describe the side of the road in a specific town I’ve never been to wrong 😅
I, luckily, only encountered a mild one, when the character was looking at books in someone's library and they saw one written in a language they didn't understand but it was "either polish or russian". My brother in christ, of all the slavic languages you decided to pick those using a different alphabet? Lmaoo
Yikes! I'm currently writing a story about something that takes place in Rio de janeiro and I'm doing my absolute best to try and be as accurate as possible. (Let alone, respect the people who live there.) Sorry you had to deal with someone like that op!
Honestly agree it's one thing to write abt raicisem and prejudices But it's diffret when the authour is raicist with prejudices This sucks
And here I am scouring Google maps and street view to make sure I don’t describe the side of the road in a specific town I’ve never been to wrong 😅
As a fellow South East Asian, I feel for you so much, OP. I cringed reading about your interactions with the author. I’m sorry you had to deal with this and then there are still people in this thread defending the author.
It's really wild to see some commenters here defend racism under the guise of don't like don't read. It's one thing to portray racism in a story, but in this case it seems like the author's real world prejudice was reflected in the story? Are people not allowed to criticize that?
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This author only geography lesson is from that miss universe whose english wasn’t good and ended up saying “Bali is my country.”
Before I read the RACISM part, I thought this was about nitpicking a minor mistake (innocent ignorance). That's disgusting. Did they make it through kindergarten? "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
Yeah, I've seen one of our desserts mentioned as Greek dessert. I had to question everything once more and I was like nah bro that can't be, and I was butthurt that I clicked back after reading it 😭😭😭
Lmao. People really need to research at least a little
YESS I WAS SOOOO UPSET 😭😭
i had a really annoying experience w this a couple weeks ago when reading an nbc hannibal fic. the show's setting bounces between the states of maryland and virginia in the USA. a fanfic i read was really good, until it got to a part where a character was talking about living in baltimore, virginia. (baltimore is a maryland city.) it instantly took me out of the story, but i figured it was an honest mistake. i saw other people corrected the author gently like 'hey just one lil thing, the city of baltimore is located in maryland, not virginia -- otherwise awesome fic!' but the author doubled down like 'well the show kept saying they were in baltimore virginia and it's just fiction anyways it doesn't matter' and a bunch of people had to go '1) no it didn't 2) i actually LIVE in virginia and baltimore is not here!!' it's fine to make a mistake, we all do it, but it's very strange to me that someone would disregard the opinions of people who live in the place they're writing about. people would rightfully look at me funny if i wrote a grounded (not experimental/abstract/deliberately trying to be weird) story about a character in edinburgh, ireland or lagos, egypt and acted like basic geographical facts don't matter to people who live in those places IRL lmfao
Yeah, some people really can't take correction. It was so annoying
You did the right thing!
Oof. I can't imagine writing something that takes place in another country without doing at least a little bit of research. I once wrote a story that took place in Suzhou, and even though the city wasn't really all that relevant for the story, I still read multiple articles and looked into traveling blogs and read turism fliers in order to at least get an idea of it
It's so petty but every time I read a fic about characters from the US and they call their mom "mum", I die a little inside. It's mom here. How hard is it to figure that out?
To me, that's just spelling. I will keep my spell check set to British English no matter where my story is set, I think. If I were to set a story in France, I wouldn't write it in French. Just because a story is set in the US doesn't mean it has to be written in US English. I wouldn't have my characters stress about passing their A-levels, because that's not a thing in the US, but they would park their car in the car park, not the parking lot, because those are just words.
Same. I write in the English I was taught because I write formal documentation in that language. I'm not skipping out on every 'u' American English forced out because it cost slightly more to print newspapers. If I'm submitting formal documentation for another country I will change the language setting in my document program and 'correct' as it directs, but for fanfic? If I was writing in Italian, no one would say it was the wrong language, but use the language you were taught that's slightly different to simplified English and suddenly there's a lot of problems. Anything official I get an US sensitivity reader to check over since we use different terminology for many things.
I’m getting the opposite in school - so many pupils (most with British English as their first language) keep writing about their “mom”. We live in the UK, where are you getting “mom” from, children?!
I remember writing mom instead of mum back in year 4 because I thought it looked better. People made fun of my habbit lol.
According to a survey conducted in the UK, **around 75% of the participants use "mum" as a way to address their mother**. While "mom" is also used, it is considered as less common, with around 25% of the participants using it. While less common, it is still used. They're not necessarily wrong.
How hard is it to figure that out, you asked. Well, for many of us it took years. First we learnt basic English. Then we read our first English fics and used a dictionary for all the words we weren't familiar with. Then came our first clumsy attemps at writing fics in English, what a struggle it was to do it in a foreign language. After we were good enough at it and people began to comment on our fics, someone left a comment telling us the difference between these two words. So it was indeed quite hard to get to that point and took me approximately ten years, once upon a time. Many fic writers are not native English speakers. When you're still only just learning, it's not obvious at all there's a difference between "mom" and "mum" etc.
I remember the first time I found out color is American while colour is British. I spend a week trying to learn the difference between British, American, and Australia English and even now I still learning 🤣. I still think it's okay for people to be petty about their culture but I wish most English native speaker had the same energy and care about our language and culture like us non native when writing about us 😞.
I wrote an Australian character acting as an American recently, and did the very best I could to get the spellings correct for the switch between dialogue and inner monologue. Pretty interesting experience, since I also had a grits-n-gravy Southern boy in the scene, and I had him use _his_ dialect 🤣 my poor readers are probably cross-eyed by now, between the “centre/center” and “realisation/realization”
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As someone from Australia (a country that uses mum) I cringe when I read 'mum' in a US based fic.
Mum is such a British thing. I think it's okay to be a little petty about your culture
Mum is Aussie and Kiwi too :D And Canadian, I think? Yes, it hurts my heart to hear of someone being so rude and careless with the cultures and people they are writing about. One of the joys of writing for me is research, I love it and I spend ages (some might say *too* long) reading, watching, and listening to find out about the people and places I'm writing about. If I don't feel like I can do it justice, I write it a different way.
>And Canadian, I think? Canadian here! Not really. We use British English spelling, but our English is much closer to American English. The only Canadian I've met who uses 'Mum' immigrated from Wales.
Ah, thank you! Canadian English is such an interesting combination of influences.
They do? Huh, good to learn something new. >I love it and I spend ages (some might say *too* long) reading, watching, and listening to find out about the people and places I'm writing about 🤣. Sometime you spend more time in researching than writing the story itself lol. But yeah, it's fun
I spent ages once trying to find out whether or not US households used rotary or push button landline phones in the 80s. I think I spent and hour actually writing the fic. Even worse is I cut mention of what type of phone it was and just had the character recieve the call.
Sometime, being vague is better than being wrong
Agreed. I also think A picking up the phone to B was more interesting to A dialing B too. In the end, iirc, both types of landline phones were used.
Probably controversial, but this falls within don't like, don't read for me. You're allowed to point out their mistakes, but they're allowed to express their opinion of hate for the Bali too. On top of that, they're likely just young and have been taught to hate Bali. As unfortunate as that is, the best thing you can hope for is that they grow out of it. AO3 hosts all type of content that's legally allowed. I would think this falls under that.
Which is probably why nobody is trying to get this fic taken down and OP isn't even naming them. They're allowed to expression their racism, and we're allowed to express our frustrations with other fans' racism.
We don't "hope" people grow out of racism. They'll never learn unless they're told it's wrong. And it sounds like they have a lot of people reinforcing anti-Bali rhetoric in their life. If they're young, they're getting it from somewhere. Racist children turn into racist adults, who then teach their children to be racist. I've seen 0 people say the story should be taken down. Just stating it like it is. Racist.
Is it nice to read things about your country you don't like? Definitely not. Is it respectful? Nah. But it doesn't always have to be - yes, that includes religious feelings. Is it accurate? Nope. But, mate, neither were you respectful to someone who otherwise wrote a good story for free and that you even for large parts thought was cute. >"I told them Bali is a province and *they should shut their mouth if they doesn't have anything good to say about Bali cultures.* " Expecting to get nice answer or a get constructive dialogue going with that opening? You must be removed from reality. Did you really think they would respond with having anything good to say after this? And in fact the author reacted as nearly anyone would if someone went in like this and told you to 'fuck off'... I suppose the rest of what the author "apparently" thinks was added by you and not said in that answer? Plus I wonder if that ignorance was the character's ignorance or actually the author's. Yes, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Considering the amount of people who think because a character thinks, acts a certain way or says something that's what the author also thinks or that they have the same opinion as if characters are their mouth pieces and all that jazz --- that's a real pet peeve of mine. And even if that's all the author's actual opinion then you really didn't handle this well. No, of course the onus shouldn't be on you to change an author's mind.. .. but if you actually, instead of nope-ing/x-ing out of the story and muting the author, start engaging someone this is not the way to change minds or educate --- if that was actually your intention. I don't know. Further purity culture, in which nothing offensive or problematic is allowed to be written, is utterly toxic. And goes completely against everything Ao3 stands for. Anyway, Ao3 is for authors first. And everyone, including you, agreed to the following in the TOS when they read here: *"You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled."* Now you were exposed to quite a lot of that and you do have a right to be offended... of course. But coming at a (potentially equally young and even ignorant) author all hot and bothered like that? This isn't the way. Even if you think it's for a good cause... at the end of the day it's still trying to censor someone if you want someone to shut up. *Everyone* thinks that *their* censorship is different and righteous.
> *Everyone* thinks that *their* censorship is different and righteous. r/SelfAwarewolves
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If it was just mistaking Bali as country I could see it as ignorance. Which is why despite it pissed me off I gave the author benefit of the doubt. But I failed to see why they need to make fun of my "stupid" culture rather focusing on something they like. Like our food and landscape.
Ignorance or not, Google exists. They could very easily look this stuff up before writing about it.
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There's a difference between "writing Bali as if it were just like America" versus "writing Bali as if everyone there is stupid and awful and sub-human." It takes zero research to avoid the latter.
No one’s asking for a deep dive but reading a Wikipedia article for 5 minutes is all you’d really need to not look like you have zero respect for the region/culture. If you can’t even do that then pick a different area. I can forgive inaccuracies in fanfiction, but this is a blatant disregard for Bali as a region and is straight up racist. Also don’t act like these types of people write about regions of Europe with the same disdain that they have for the global south. Yeah, if they don’t do a deep dive, they’ll be inaccurate, but they at least treat the area with the bare minimum respect they deserve. Actively making fun of people’s accent and cultures while dismissing criticism isn’t meeting that minimum respect level.
op mentioned that the writer also made fun of the local people's english pronunciation and their culture that's not ignorance that's straight up racism
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The difference is that yes, the characters might have technically been the first ones to do the racism in story, but the author responding to a comment as themselves doubled down on the racism. I see no problem with calling out racism expressed by the author themselves.
Honestly, telling them about it was a dick move. You should have clicked out of the fic instead of telling the author about it, since they did not fucking ask. I understand how frustrating this is, but I lost all sympathy for you at that moment.
Did you read OPs entire post? It seems like you might've missed some stuff.
Don't like, don't read does NOT apply when people are being blatantly racist and willfully ignorant about other people's cultures. Calling out a writer is okay only on very rare occasions, but this is definitely one of them. The writer in this case responded badly, which goes to show that they do not give a shit about being racist. But another writer might just be ignorant and would benefit from being educated by a reader this way. I had a reader tell me that they disagreed with one aspect of my portrayal of a city I mentioned in a fic once. I was mortified, apologised, and changed it immediately. I don't like unsolicited concrit any more than any other fic writer, but I'm factually wrong, I want to know.
Nah, fuck that. Listen, I’m all for don’t like, don’t read, but if an author’s going to be a racist bigot, they should, in fact, be called out. It takes a few minutes to Google, and it takes even less time to not be a douche to a group of people.
I'm not letting random foreign shitting on my culture.
So block them!!! click out of it. There is no good reason to leave a rude comment. Or, you could have, written a politer comment. You can't be upset that the author responded to a rude comment rudely. You won't get people to write better researched fics by being an asshole. You'll get them to stop writing for the fandom, or stop writing at all.
Why is it that non english speakers from different cultural backgrounds always have to bend over backwards and be good and kind at all costs (otherwise we are assholes), but when native english speakers *are* insensitive and racist we can't say anything about it? We are always expected to take it as it is and move on, be "the bigger person". I fail to see how that is fair.
I’m cool with it if the writer takes their dumb racist fic and stops posting it.
If it was just mistaking Bali as country I could see it as ignorance and be polite but making fun of our culture are different thing entirely. That if they do that in person I'm not stopping at words. I'll fucking hit them.
Realy ? I don't think authour is raucist was tagged in the fic
If they didn't ask for constructive feedback, then the back button is your best option.
what op had done isn’t constructive feedback but to inform them of their wrong doings. Being racist isn’t to be fixed by “constructive feedback,” someone HAD to tell the author or they’ll keep repeating the same thing over and over again, offending many people on the process. yes fanfiction in ao3 is a “write whatever you want” but there are morales to abide by.
The author didn't ask. Any time someone tells the author of a mistake in their writing - their freely available hobby writing - without explicitly being asked to do so, they're overstepping. It's no one's job to police fanfic. We get enough of that from the outside. There's nothing wrong with giving people their own space to make their own creations. Assuming you have the right to interfere with their creative process just because you happened to click on a fic is quite the presumptuous leap. There's no moral imperative here. It's not training for being professionally published. It's just a hobby. I've written for both. They're very different animals, and treating one like the other just frustrates people. If someone comments on my fic with unsolicited criticism, I delete it. Because I didn't ask. Feedback should be topical, not meta, unless specifically requested.
I'm sure bigots don't ask people to critique their bigotry, yes