hd_writers | A quick checklist against recurring errors.

^^YES! Just... yes.

It can't, I think, hurt to bang on abt this from time to time.

Interesting facts and I'm sure very useful for those of us who are writing Harry Potter fics in the UK set outside the wizarding world. Of course these hints will only apply to people living in or referencing the Muggle world, as things in the wizarding world have their own set of rules and come from a culture influenced by but not identical to real world Britain.

The question of its extent is vexed, and I gather, to some, vexing. I do rather think that our fellow writers have nous enough to see and use such analogies as suggest themselves, e.g., 'X is a Muggle-born living nr Hebden Bridge, and doesn't support, say, Appleby, but rather, being a Lesbian - I did mention hebden Bridge, I think - the Harpies': that sort of thing.

It can be very vexing to me as I'm a dinosaur who comes to HP fanfic hoping to recognise the setting from the books. And I'd rather see writers putting the effort into getting the wizarding world to resemble canon than getting ulcers over which cricket team it's likely Ron would support. (Being a pureblood obsessed with Quidditch, I doubt he'd know anything about Cricket, fwiw.)

I'd like to think that most fandomers would have the wherewithal to make the analogies! I really would.

And the analogies do come in particularly usefully when, I think, writing the post-War. (Wars change societies, and change those who fought in them or survived them. And indeed, they have been known to provoke the survivors to change the society further, as witness various khaki elections, the Coupon Election and Homes Fit for Heroes, and the 1945 Labour victory under dear old Clem. Certainly I cannot - given their canonical characterisation - imagine Hermione and Harry and Dean Thomas and Justin Finch-Fletchley, say, flush with victory and applauded by all, wearing, for a minute longer than they can spare for rebuilding elementary infrastructure, the Secrecy Regime, unelected government, no division between policing and a Riot-Act-era militia, and all the rest of that balls.)

Although the wizarding world had been through at least one war previously and emerged without changing beyond recognition. There will be change, of course, but I very much doubt that the change would equal the wizarding world becoming a replicate of the Muggle world, especially given the real world has all sorts of political problems of its own.

That space for extrapolation, experimentation, speculation, and interpretation (so long as, I suspect we shd both say, it derives from a Sherlockian / Irregular's approach to the source canon).

Yep, it is, although I'm not familiar with the concept of "Sherlockian/Irregular" approach to source canon.

I think we differ in that in my mind the freedom to imagine the wizarding world as changing over time also extends to a writer's freedom to write the details of British life in the future however they see fit along the same lines. It seems odd to insist upon one thing while ignoring the other.

You know, I shall be fifty in nine months, and although a good deal has changed in my lifetime, a good deal, actually, hasn't, particularly at levels beneath the merest superficialities of society and manners. I, actually, don't see quotidian details changing radically in the next fifty years. Then again, I suppose that view to be informed by my own, historian's habit, and the approach of the Sherlockian - Baker Street Irregular, in American - to fandom (feigning the truth of the canon - the very usage is Sherlockian in derivation - and reasoning from it to such conclusions, as, famously, Baring-Gould's w/r/t Moriarty's background, Holmes' father, and so on.

Hey, I'll be 44 on my next birthday and I've lived in the UK for almost fifteen years. From my perspective, it's changed immeasurably during that time, the encroachment of American culture and globalisation in general the cause of much of it.

I feel the rate of change in the wizarding world would be relatively slow, however. It's a very, very old culture that had remained separate from the Muggle world for centuries. I don't think a handful of teenagers, however heroic and lauded, are going to radically change it into an unrecognisable place. It would change, but slowly and in its own way, rather than a way that mirrors the real British world. The Wizengamot is not Parliament, Quidditch is not cricket, although they may have been created as social satires of such.

It'd be damned boring if everyone thought the same thing, after all.

I rather think that absent wars and insurrections, the pace of change IS slow; as to the form that that change shd take, I think it supportable in canon to argue either way, although it doesn't do to be too dug-in abt this sort of thing, really. It's these differing views and tastes and what not that make fandom interesting, isn't it - although we've strayed rather far here from where we began.

Oh, I agree completely. We should all feel free to write however we like, stressing whichever specific aspects of the world/story/characters/culture about which we're writing we like.

For example, choosing to follow Tottenham's match, wh is now under way, even when tempted by the empyrean of Potterish speculation - wh I must now do.

Britpicking raises more questions than it answers, for a thinking American. As opposed to a teenager, I mean: I guess (reckon, suppose) I've figured out (worked out) the difference between "arse" and "ass", but then, I read.

Y'all need more parties and dances, though. If we accept that there will be no graduation ball at Hogwarts (no graduation -- students just sort of slink off into the World) could you throw us a bone? A monthly tea-dance? Something?

We just go to clubs and pubs... and get completely pissed.

Tea-dance? Surely not.

Where do the girls get to wear pretty dresses? When do the boys get to agonize over asking girls on dates (do you guys "date"?) How do young teenagers meet and socialize in parent-approved fashion?

Give us a break, or all those Draco/Hermione "Marriage Law" stories will be All Your Fault.

Haven't had tea dances or inter-school dances (boys school socialises with girls school with teachers looking on disapprovingly - very much a cattle market) since the 1970s.

But given that the Wizarding World is 50 years behind the times I suppose you can get away with all those marriage law fics.

Brits Do Not Date.

Given the period I suspect that James' eventual proposition to Lily was along the lines of "Get your coat, luv. You've pulled."

Usually teen romance consists of asking the other out then kissing behind the bus stop and hanging out with mates together round the park or at each others houses.

Older people tend to just meet in clubs and end up either going home together or meet each other in a similar situation.

... has not fallen under the sway of leaver's balls.

Wouldn't that depend on the leaver?

(sorry.)

... pick up immediately when they've been fed a line that sets up the anticipated joke. Well done.

I'm a great fan of Brit picking in HP fandom, but I do sometimes cringe when I read posts about it by other Brits who seem intent in perpetuating the stereotypes other nations have of us Brits! There's a far greater crossover of popular culture with young people nowadays that I think us older fandomers tend to forget.

That said, there are some useful points in this!!

Being vy nearly fifty years in age, I freely confess to not being much apprised of what Yoof are playing at nowadays. I apologise for any stereotyping: out of curiosity, what was it?

A quick checklist against recurring errors.

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I'm greatly obliged.

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We agree, I rather think, that the influence exists, as you say.

Re: We agree, I rather think, that the influence exists, as you say.

One does hope.

Re: One does hope.

Well, that is the thing abt fanfiction, isn't it.

Re: Well, that is the thing abt fanfiction, isn't it.

Ah.

Re: Ah.

Isn't it fun - these various views, I mean.

Re: Isn't it fun - these various views, I mean.

Oh, quite.

{Yank Brains Explode...}

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My school, for obvious reasons...

Re: My school, for obvious reasons...

You see: clever Americans...

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You're vy kind; I'm greatly obliged.