(no subject)

[doyle]

Hmm. Looking through some old BBF discussion and I saw this comment by Gyrus (whose LJ handle I forget, sorry):

(For example, I recently read a fic in which something bad happens and Giles tries to tell Buffy that there was no way she could have anticipated it. She replies, "But I should've done!" That just looks weird to a Yank like me.)

I'm sure I'm guilty of using that myself. Why's it wrong? Should it be 'shoulda' instead of should've?

...any other glaring errors any of you have noticed non-Americans making? Because god knows I could go on for pages in obsessive Brit-picking of both Harry Potter fics and Buffy fics set in England (the language thing I get, but some of the cultural stuff, the 'my character's British so they've never heard of ___' : we do have pizzas and action movies and strange flavours of chips/crisps in Britain and Ireland, I promise you)

Comments

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

Really? ::files away:: It's little things like that that make me want to write nothing but Giles, Ethan, Spike and Wes, just to be safe ;-)

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Me too *g* Because while I can catch the easier stuff there has to be a ton that I miss.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I make tons of horrid linguistic errors when I write Giles. The differences can be *so* subtle. I remember an English beta letting me know that a character of Giles' class would never say "though" instead of "although," which was something I would never have thought about.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Yeep, I wouldn't have known that either!

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I probably wouldn't have noticed that...but,yes, she's right, I suppose. Though (heh) it's not a hard and fast rule, I don't think. I use both; but then I'm not posh ;-)

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Speaking of posh, does Ethan's accent change wildly between Dark Age and A New Man, or is that just me?

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

Never noticed; which way? Posh to less so, or the other way around? He sounds quite cultured to my Midland ears ::grin::.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

I thought he became posher, but it's been a while since I watched The Dark Age.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

Now I'll have to watch them again to see what I think. Bad Doyle! ;-))

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it... is Ethan only in those three episodes or am I forgetting something? Oh, of course, Band Candy. Still, it seems like he was in a lot more than four episodes.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

It does, doesn't it? Halloween, Dark Age, Band Candy and New Man; that was it, darn it.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

He would have been fantastic to get back in one of the later seasons, when Giles was lacking an arc of his own (I know during the big Giles-touching-nothing fakeout there were rumours that he was Ethan in a glamour, which could have been a cool storyline)

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I never heard that one! Oh, that would've been so much fun...