Jane Austen Fanfiction

This is going to be a bit of a rant inspired, in a small part, by an otherwise-excellent story called "An Ever Fixed Mark" by AMarguerite.  phyloxena gave me a link to it, for which I'm thankful, and now that I've read it -- and enjoyed it -- I do feel like ranting.

Here's what it's about:  the tendency of modern romance writers (both JAFF and non-JAFF) to transpose modern american styles of self-psychoanalysis (or general psychobabble) onto Regency times.  I know it's vague, and I'm struggling for how to express it, but I do know it when I read it in those books.  It's the kind of situations -- mostly conversations -- when two people discuss something emotional and psychological, and one of them helps the other to come to some emotional breakthrough or realization and "growth."  What makes it sound particularly modern to me is that all of that emotional self-realization is explicitly spelled out in the conversation, and the character goes through a change right there and then.  Sometimes it's not a single conversation, but, again, we have a character explicitly acknowledging this change to themselves.  Although acknowledging to themselves I can stand, but when it's multiple characters -- often the kind who in real regency life would not be even able to have a conversation together on such subjects -- have this kind of discussion, then it really grates on me. 

In fact I'm not convinced this is even something that's currently practiced in America in real life.  This is really more of a sitcom-style or a movie-style of a conversation.  Sure, these days friends admit to each other when they have a crush on someone or when they love someone, or when they are struggling with decisions, but it's very rare when they go through the "therapist" kind of conversations -- and I say that even having a practicing clinical psychologist as one of my best friends.  If I don't have those kind of conversations with her, and if I don't have them with my other close friends -- then I can't imagine who has those kind of conversations in reality.  I'm not trying to project my own experiences on the whole world, but.. it just strikes me as a bit fake.  And especially fake when it supposedly happens in Regency times.  I'd rather see "ok" in regency writing (no, obviously I don't want to see that, either) than this psychobabble.  And it's also interesting how often writers don't realize that most of that terminology and most of those ideas come from Freud and other 20th century psychologists and popular culture and would be completely impossible in Regency times. 

In fact I have a number of such anachronisms, which go beyond the use of an anachronistic terminology or event, and are more about common tropes seen in JAFF and other modern Regency romantic works (e.g. the way religion and religious people are perceived, the way "the Ton" is perceived and characterized, etc.). 

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