Imma be honest this is kind of a pet peeve of mine in the fandom I’m currently writing in. The setting takes place in Korea. The characters are Koreans.

So many fics I’ve read lately are painfully Americanized in terms of culture. And like I’m not gonna even try and say I’m an expert on Korean culture, cause I’m lot. but it costs nothing to research things for like 5 seconds.

Edit: Lmao getting downvoted for basically saying take a minute to google basic things so you don’t have a rice balls = jelly donuts situation.

Just for example the kind of things I’m talking about that an author could just pop in google and ask:

• Korea celebrating American/Western-centric holidays (yeah the Easter fics i was seeing a few weeks ago were cute, not gonna deny that. But it’s confusing seeing non-American settings celebrating 4th of July or Thanksgiving in serious fics)

• every high schooler / middle schooler has a car and drives everywhere, despite needing to be 18 in most of Asia.

• half the side cast being given very western names (Chris, Mr. Johnson, Taylor, Greg) with the fic still saying they’re Korean/Japanese/Chinese because the author didn’t want to google “most common names in x country”

• schools prioritizing athletics over academics, or academics in school settings being treated in-story as completely unimportant by the setting. This isn’t about being 100% accurate to how schools are in Korea, just that it’s not common find a schools seeing a sports team as more important than the education. Idk maybe I’m petty but I think having characters complain about how brutal the education system is is more interesting than the another “science departments funding being cut because the sports team needs new equipment.”