#britpick

DOCTOR John Watson

Quite a few fanfic authors deal with John's return to the UK from Afghanistan by having him switch from being a trauma surgeon to another specialism - be it general practitioner (GP as Mofftiss did) or working in an A&E department. Being a canon writer as much as possible, I do write him as being a GP in my later stories.

You may find it interesting to note that this is not as simple as it is often made out to be.

First of all, he would not be allowed by the General Medical Council to retain his licence as a surgeon; the periodic spasm of his dominant hand (due to PTSD) would disqualify him. Mofftiss were beding the rules horribly when they put him in Sarah's GP surgery.

In fact, to keep his medical licence he would need to re-train into another specialism.

To move from being a trauma surgeon to being a general practitioner would involve getting a CCT (Certificate of Completion of Training) in General Practice. It typically takes three years of full time training (so no leaping off to do cases with Sherlock whenever he called). Some credit may have been given (there are two different pathways; the Accreditation of Transferable Capabilities (ATC) or the Portfolio Pathway) which could cut a bit of time from that, but not much. He'd also have to pass the Membership of the Royal College of General Practitioners (MRCGP) exam. All of the above would take tuition fees, offset only slightly by whatever clinical hours he could get, ideally in a GP surgery- but they don't tend to hire a lot of salaried junior doctors. GPs are independent of the NHS and own their own practices (see another of my medical Britpicks on GPs)

To move from no longer being able to serve as a trauma surgeon to an A&E consultant would take a serious amount of re-training, too.

Doctors with specialized training in surgery, acute medicine, anaesthetics, or intensive care still have to complete higher specialty training in emergency medicine, which usually takes around 3-4 years, including completing the FRCEM (Fellowship of the College of Emergency Medicine) exams. And then there are specialised courses after that - TLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support), APLS (Advanced Paediatric Life Support), and Trauma Team Essentials Course (TTEC).

All of that takes tuition fees and time. So realistically, it wasn't an option for John as portrayed in the broadcast series.

All that said, it could be possible that he was starting the training before TRF, and completed it during Sherlock's time away, if you make that last three years. He might well have been in the final phase of training - working in-house at a surgery where he met Mary. That works a bit better than the idea of him as a GP locum in series one and two.

Is anyone interested in britpicking a Ted Lasso fic? Right now the first of three chapters needs britpicking -- 16K words. (If it matters, it's Roy/Jamie/Keeley.)

I was setting up the post in my draft folder, but I accidentally click on publish now in the middle of my editing/fixing the chart since I wasn't finish working on it. I did notice there were a couple of mistakes, such as mixing up the words and/or meaning in the wrong category. At that point too many people were reblogging it and it was too late for me to delete the entire thing.

I don't know if you're referring to that or the list in general. If its the list itself, I did say to please keep in mind that the words and slang could've changed through out the years and it also depends on the area. Maybe for you something you've always known as has never been called by anything else, but for someone else they've always known it by another name. So don't be too quick to declare something as wrong.

A good example of this was when I discovered that a couple of states in America do call the water/drinking fountain a bubbler. There are even articles online by credible sources about it if you don't believe me.

This chart is suppose to be a starting point. I truly hope that when people actually begin the work on their stories that they take the time to do the research. After all, you can’t write a accurate American or British character if you don’t research exactly where they’re from because each location will have their own slang and terminology. And that’s not even taking into account of the characters’ identity, culture, ancestry, religion and social hierarchy because those too factor into how a character speaks.

For example in Texas they have their own lingo. Using ain't, a contraction for “am not”, “is not”, “has not”, and “have not”. Y’all, a contraction of “you all” and even all y’all for “all of you” when referring to a large group of people. Instead of saying maybe Texans at times will say “might could”, skeeters instead of “mosquitos”, over yonder instead of “over there“, pitch a hissy fit instead of saying to “throw a tantrum”, and so on.

It also wouldn’t be surprising if you were to travel to the other southern states and find that they too have their own local jargon. It’s the same way in the UK, which is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So trying to compile a list of all UK’s slang and terminology is difficult because there’s always going to be more than one answer depending on who you’re talking to.

For example someone from west of Scotland will say wean (young child) or even wee yin (little one), but someone from the east coast of Scotland and in North England will say bairns (child) instead.

In South West England (specifically in Wiltshire), they would call a child “babber”, while in Southern England a child is often referred to as a “nipper” or “nippers” when talking about more than one. Apparently, other British words for a child can also be “sprog” and “moppet”.

While in America, a child could be referred to as a “kid” (also ”kiddo; kiddie”), “small fry”, “squirt”, “munchkin”, “young'un”, “ankle-biter”, “pipsqueak” or sometimes as a “rugrat”. It depends on the location (and sometimes even on the person) because a word for something that you’re familiar with could be completely different in another state or it may not be as commonly used by everyone else.

Hi, lovely Tumblr peeps. I’m finishing up a one-shot with Dorian and Maevaris that I featured for a WIP Wednesday last week. Unfortunately, while Dorian and Mae are English, I am... welp, not. So, I need someone’s help to Britpick.

The whole thing is about 4.8k words, but most of the stuff that need to be Britpicked would be dialogues between Dor and Mae. So, I don’t think it will take too much time out of your day. If anyone could help, I would be so grateful.

If you’re interested, please DM me and we can discuss how to go about it.

When he finally felt the warmth of Louis’ lips against his own, Harry felt the air shift between them, the atmosphere even heavier, and the weight of it against his chest made it hard to focus on anything but his best friend before him. He shifted forward, pushing his lips just slightly against Louis’ and that was all that was needed for Louis to kiss him thoroughly, parting his lips with his own. 

Harry reached a hand to Louis’ arm. He could feel the tremble of desire coursing between them and widened the space with a part of his knees. Louis filled it, tenderly pressing his body against Harry’s. A soft whimper escaped him when Louis stopped kissing him, and Harry lay back against the bed, his eyes still closed from the intensity of the barely there kiss, but it was enough, for now. 

“Harry,” Louis said, speaking what he had before, and he opened his eyes to see everything in Louis’ eyes as he stared down at him. 

He gave a short nod to let him know it was okay, and when Louis kissed him again, he wasn’t holding back. He felt everything so quickly, and Harry could only whine in response, lost in the feelings of it all. Louis slid a hand into his hair, tugging his hair as his friend pressed into Harry’s body, no longer hovering. He kissed him fully and completely, a dart of his tongue against Harry’s as a signal he wanted more. 

This was everything Harry had always wanted, but he hadn’t found a way to respond accordingly, still lost in the thought that Louis wanted him. He lifted a knee, curling it around Louis’ hip, and Louis brought his hand down, gripping Harry’s thigh. He tugged him closer, and Harry kissed him with fervor, taking everything back, kissing and gripping Louis’ shoulder, overwhelmed most perfectly. 

The taste of Louis was overpowering as Harry took everything from Louis, a hand sliding into his hair. He gasped when Louis moved his mouth along Harry’s throat, kissing and licking the skin. Harry’s head fell back, soft moans falling from his lips when Louis found his collarbone, and the scrape of his teeth against Harry’s skin told him he was doing it, marking him, claiming as his own. 

“Fuck, Louis,” Harry finally spoke, his voice light and airy as he clung to the other. He kept tugging him closer and closer as though it was possible. It was so heated, and everything swirled within him. He knew he was getting past the point of no return when Louis would genuinely feel how much he wanted this, wanted him.

~~

Hopefully this is helpful to someone.

Basically at some point in the last decade or so, geezer seems to have entered american english (it may have been there before, but I don’t remember seeing it online until fairly recently). That fine, English is a magpie language and we’re all stealing from one another all the time, all words are fair game.

The thing is though, the american use of geezer and the british use of geezer are somewhat different. Similar enough that americans probably don’t notice it, but different enough that it’s jarring for english readers when it’s used in the american context in a story set in the uk or starring british characters.

So geezer in american english seems to mean old man - the uses i’ve seen for it could all be reasonably swapped out for ‘old boy’ and the meaning would remain basically the same. There may be more cultural nuance to it than that that I’m not getting, but old is definitely implied.

Geezer in british english is almost always used with a degree of self-conciousness - it’s one of those words that you make a concious decision to use, like gibous or quizling - unless the speaker is a londoner (and even then probably only if they’re a cockney - someone born ‘within the sound of bow bells’ or close enough to mary-le-bow church in the east end of london to hear its bells ring). It also has no connotations of age, except that you wouldn’t use it for a child. It’s basically completely interchangable with ‘bloke’ (or if you’re feeling posh, chap). You can add descriptors to it, old geezer means more or less what it does in american english, diamond geezer is a compliment usually but not always related to someone being seen as generous, but you can add anything to it. French geezer, posh geezer, blond geezer... It really does just means man.

It’s also almost exclusively working class - Sherlock Holmes or John Watson, to pick an example where I’ve seen it used a couple of times, would absolutely never use it unless they were playing a character, but Lestrade might at a pinch. Eggsy Unwin on the other hand, to pick the other fandom where i see it used in the american context a lot, definitely would use it.

I couldn’t find any active communities that had beta readers so I figure may as well post it myself. I’m looking for beta readers for my Scrooge/Duckworth fic WIP Til Death Do Us Part Is Quitter’s Talk 

In particular I’d love to work with someone who is Scottish, or with a better knowledge of Scotland than I have - but a regular beta is fine too.