It shouldn't be something to look down on, no. Nonetheless, there are many, many more AU stories than there are OW, and if the characters travel well, and the stories themselves travel well, then there must be something about the setting that stops people writing in it.
OW fiction (generally speaking, not just in M7) is a genre with a few outstanding works, and a reputation for cliched, formulaic works churned out rather like Harlequin romances. Possibly that works against it -- a kind of literary snobbery.
Alternatively, it's something to do with the mismatch of cultures. Modern US sensibilities seem to run to far more puritanical levels than the OW was -- I'm not saying that the whole world was more open minded a century ago, absolutely not. Merely that what was acceptable in terms of behaviour, attitudes towards the sanctity of life, and the dignity of man especially of those other than white Europeans speaking good, American accented English; attitudes towards cleanliness; the modern attitudes towards mechanical solutions rather than livestock (the range from finding horse drawn buggies outlandishly old-fashioned, to the willingness to eat meat as long as you don't have to catch and kill it yourself, or see it at any stage between 'cute' and 'cooked'. there is a whole world of differences that I doubt people really want to get into. Whether that's because they are anxious they will get it wrong, or because they aren't interested, or simply because they don't like the thought of having heroes who ride around on horses shooting, swearing and drinking; well, i don't know.
I know I was unwilling to write in the OW until someone assured me, quite definitely, that what I was writing in that setting worked fine for her as an American, for whom this was endemic to the culture. That reluctance, honestly, was about not wanting to get it wrong -- a kind of intellectual snobbery on my part, I suppose.
So when I agree that there is an element of snobbery in it, I am not merely making sweeping generalisations.*g* I am making personal observations and transforming them without benefit of anything more than statistics into sweeping generalisations.
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carisma_sensei
no subject
Date: 2004-10-15 10:13 am (UTC)OW fiction (generally speaking, not just in M7) is a genre with a few outstanding works, and a reputation for cliched, formulaic works churned out rather like Harlequin romances. Possibly that works against it -- a kind of literary snobbery.
Alternatively, it's something to do with the mismatch of cultures. Modern US sensibilities seem to run to far more puritanical levels than the OW was -- I'm not saying that the whole world was more open minded a century ago, absolutely not. Merely that what was acceptable in terms of behaviour, attitudes towards the sanctity of life, and the dignity of man especially of those other than white Europeans speaking good, American accented English; attitudes towards cleanliness; the modern attitudes towards mechanical solutions rather than livestock (the range from finding horse drawn buggies outlandishly old-fashioned, to the willingness to eat meat as long as you don't have to catch and kill it yourself, or see it at any stage between 'cute' and 'cooked'. there is a whole world of differences that I doubt people really want to get into. Whether that's because they are anxious they will get it wrong, or because they aren't interested, or simply because they don't like the thought of having heroes who ride around on horses shooting, swearing and drinking; well, i don't know.
I know I was unwilling to write in the OW until someone assured me, quite definitely, that what I was writing in that setting worked fine for her as an American, for whom this was endemic to the culture. That reluctance, honestly, was about not wanting to get it wrong -- a kind of intellectual snobbery on my part, I suppose.
So when I agree that there is an element of snobbery in it, I am not merely making sweeping generalisations.*g* I am making personal observations and transforming them without benefit of anything more than statistics into sweeping generalisations.