Pre-Meta Post, and a call to my Canadian Flisters!

[paraka]

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY xdigital_kittyx! I hope you've had a great day! :D

In other news, I think it rained blueberries when I wasn't looking. Seriously.
When I left work today there were blueish/purple spots all over the ground and on people's cars. And some of them had what looked like the skin bit of the berry. I have no idea WTF happened :-/

In other, other news, I've been talking a lot lately with paradise_city. We seem to spend a lot of time having... "deep" meta conversations (so what if some of them involve how hot Colby is...).
One of the things that we were talking about was some of the wank that has gone on in fandom, like the race wank from earlier this year, or the more recent thing about yuletide being anti-semitic, and how a lot of this could be avoided if people took the time to explain what bothers them in fandom to other people. My most common complaint is how fandom represents Canadians (which is funny, since they don't much :P). In the interest of not being all talk and no walk, I've been thinking about making a post about it. Post about what it means to me to be Canadian, and how we're unique. Talk about how I see Canadians represented in fandom, and fanfic, and how people get us right/wrong.

Saying all that though, I mostly just whine about it because it's something I can relate to and not because I have rage issues against fandom associated with it, so in the interest of not being boring, I'd like to ask the people on my flist for help.

So, what kind of representations of Canadians have you seen that strike you as off, or make you angry or roll your eyes? And particular trends, stereotypes?

Hell, even if you're not Canadian, feel free to add your input. Things that you used to think, but now know to be untrue (what do you know, it's *not* always winter up here), or things you still think to be true (and they might be!)
If you have any questions about Canada that you've wanted answered but didn't know how to ask, fire away. I promise not to be offended!

I think it'd be especially interesting to hear from people who are in the due South fandom, since that show was stereotypes personified.

I'll start off by screening comments, in case anyone is shy but will probably unscreen them as I go, depending on the content.

Comments

[ana-grrl.livejournal.com]

I can't really think of any representations off the top of my head that annoy me, but there are couple of things that point to a lack of research that can irritate me when I come across them:

- The tendency to use 'college' instead of 'university'. It drives me nuts. Rodney McKay did not go to college, and he wouldn't think of university as college!

- 'The good Canadian beer' as Labatts Blue or Molson Canadian. ARGH. This is not the good stuff! It's the swill!

- I sometimes see this weird 'Canadians say 'about' as 'a-boot'. Maybe in some parts of Canada, I don't know (I can't claim to be a linguistic expert here), but in my daily life, I've never heard that (although, again, I'm just familiar with a selection of Canada). But seeing it again and again gets old. Although this is not just a fandom-specific complaint.

[paraka]

- The tendency to use 'college' instead of 'university'. It drives me nuts. Rodney McKay did not go to college, and he wouldn't think of university as college!
Yes! There is a difference!

- 'The good Canadian beer' as Labatts Blue or Molson Canadian. ARGH. This is not the good stuff! It's the swill!
Now that's not actually something I would have known (I don't drink beer). What would you consider good Canadian beer?

- I sometimes see this weird 'Canadians say 'about' as 'a-boot'. Maybe in some parts of Canada, I don't know (I can't claim to be a linguistic expert here), but in my daily life, I've never heard that (although, again, I'm just familiar with a selection of Canada). But seeing it again and again gets old. Although this is not just a fandom-specific complaint.
The accent thing is actually what first made me feel... I don't know, misrepresented. On an SGA Yahoo group I'm a member of, someone started a conversation about Canadian accents, and I was like WTF? Canadians don't have accents. I mean sure, if you're in the Atlantic provinces, they have a bit of a lilt, and Quebec is it's own ballgame, but for the most part, the average Canadian doesn't really speak any differently than the "American" accent that is used on TV (I know that the US has a boat load of regional accents, but the "American Accent" that is considered mainstream and again, the one used on TV doesn't sound really any different than a Canadian accent).

I thought that maybe I just didn't listen closely enough, but it looks like I'm not the only one to think so.

[ana-grrl.livejournal.com]

What would you consider good Canadian beer?

Creemore Springs. Steamwhistle. Some microbrews!

The accent thing is actually what first made me feel... I don't know, misrepresented.

I just hate the talking about the 'aboot' thing. This makes me particularly annoyed in the SGA context, where Rodney's pronunciation (other than the 'Zed' thing) doesn't sound different to me than John's, Ronon's and most other American actor's.

[paraka]

I just hate the talking about the 'aboot' thing. This makes me particularly annoyed in the SGA context, where Rodney's pronunciation (other than the 'Zed' thing) doesn't sound different to me than John's, Ronon's and most other American actor's.
As I said so someone else, I generally only see people talk about Rodney's accent, never really the others. In season 1, Joe was the only American in the main cast, now there's Jason too, but you never hear anyone mention Elizabeth's accent, and Carter actually made a joke about how Canadian Rodney and his sister sounded, even though Amanda is Canadian too.

[ana-grrl.livejournal.com]

Carter actually made a joke about how Canadian Rodney and his sister sounded, even though Amanda is Canadian too.

Yeah, that annoyed me.

[paraka]

It more made me roll my eyes, which is surprising, because I find I get irrationally pissed off when it comes to people talking about Canadian accents....

Also, did you hear the news that the government is thinking about bringing ParticipAction back? :P