hey this is the same anon who asked for fanfic advice! thank you that really helps!! just one more question, I've seen some people say not to incorporate terms like "hyung" because readers already assume that they aren't speaking English, so to include stuff like that it seems uneducated or something. I'm obviously white so I'm not sure if it does come off that way
I personally think it’s a personal choice.
I always assume the characters speak in which ever language the setting is in, unless otherwise stated or implied. If the fic is set in America, I will assume they speak English, if in Korea, I assume they are speaking Korean, in Hong Kong, I will assume Cantonese, etc…
I use Hyung in my writing. I mostly use it as a sense to show respect and the culture. Especially if the fic does take place in Korea.
Also the members use Hyung in their speech as well when addressing other membersie. YuGyeom calls all his members Hyung except for BamBam / JinYoung calls JB & Mark Hyung / YoungJae and BamBam use Hyung as well.
Jackson also uses Hyung as well -he uses it more with other sunbaes (like VIXX & JYP). Since he feels more comfortable with the members, he usually doesn’t use Hyung for JB nor Mark (this also applies to older people he’s friends with). Mark is the same as Jackson, he’s shown not using Hyung as often too, esp with friends.
But like I said before it is a personal choice. If you would like to use Korean words in your fics, go right ahead. There’s no one to state that you are wrong in doing so. (my personal opinion)
PS: This applies to Markson: Mark and Jackson are known to switch back and forth between Korean, Mandarin, and English; (especially when they want to say something they don’t want the other members to know), or nicknames (Mark calls Jackson “Ga Ga/Ka Ka” and Jackson’s nickname for Mark is “Marky-Pooh”
If you ever want to incorporate that into your writing (you may not want to since it’s a bit difficult to portray in writing) -but if you do, just keep in mind on how they would say something in the languages. (I would use italics, quotations or directly write “said in Chinese” or something like that =]
Hope you’ll have some fun in the writing process ^^ and make sure to submit your fics so we can rec them to our readers ^^
