forgotten highlight of 2017: season 4 of sherlock was literally so bad that the fans that somehow still existed were completely convinced it was intentionally bad and there was gonna be a secret fourth episode that fixed everything
We have a saying, my people. Don’t kill if you can wound, don’t wound if you can subdue, don’t subdue if you can pacify, and don’t raise your hand at all until you’ve first extended it. — Wonder Woman (Vol. 3) #25
so i just googled the phrase “toeing out of his shoes” to make sure it was an actual thing
and the results were:
it’s all fanfiction
which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic
idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick
i wish i knew more about linguistics so i could actually talk about it in an intelligent manner, but yeah i thought that was kinda cool
Ha! Love it!
One of my fave authors from ages ago used the phrase “a little helplessly” (like “he reached his arms out, a little helplessly”) in EVERY fic she wrote. She never pointed it out—there just came a point where I noticed it like an Easter egg. So I literally *just* wrote it into my in-progress fic this weekend as an homage only I would notice. ❤
To me it’s still the quintessential “two dudes doing each other” phrase.
I think different fic communities develop different phrases too! You can (usually) date a mid 00s lj fic (or someone who came of age in that style) by the way questions are posed and answered in the narration, e.g. “And Patrick? Is not okay with this.” and by the way sex scenes are peppered with “and, yeah.” I remember one Frerard fic that did this so much that it became grating, but overall I loved the lj style because it sounded so much like how real people talk.
Another classic phrase: wondering how far down the _ goes. I’ve seen it mostly with freckles, but also with scars, tattoos, and on one memorable occasion, body glitter at a club. Often paired with the realization during sexy times that “yeah, the __ went all they way down.” I’ve seen this SO much in fic and never anywhere else
whoa, i remember reading lj fics with all of those phrases! i also remember a similar thing in teen wolf fics in particular – they often say “and derek was covered in dirt, which. fantastic.” like using “which” as a sentence-ender or at least like sprinkling it throughout the story in ways published books just don’t.
LINGUISTICS!!!! COMMUNITIES CREATING PHRASES AND SLANG AND SHAPING LANGUAGE IN NEW WAYS!!!!!!!
I love this. Though I don’t think of myself as fantastic writer, by any means, I know the way I write was shaped more by fanfiction and than actual novels.
I think so much of it has to do with how fanfiction is written in a way that feels real. conversations carry in a way that doesn’t feel forced and is like actual interactions. Thoughts stop in the middle of sentences.
The coherency isn’t lost, it just marries itself to the reader in a different way. A way that shapes that reader/writer and I find that so beautiful.
FASCINATING
and it poses an intellectual question of whether the value we assign to fanfic conversational prose would translate at all to someone who reads predominantly contemporary literature. as writers who grew up on the internet find their way into publishing houses, what does this mean for the future of contemporary literature? how much bleed over will there be?
we’ve already seen this phenomenon begin with hot garbage like 50 shades, and the mainstream public took to its shitty overuse of conversational prose like it was a refreshing drink of water. what will this mean for more wide-reaching fiction?
I’m sure someone could start researching this even now, with writers like Rainbow Rowell and Naomi Novik who have roots in fandom. (If anyone does this project please tell me!) It would be interesting to compare, say, a corpus of a writer’s fanfic with their published fiction (and maybe with a body of their nonfiction, such as their tweets or emails), using the types of author-identification techniques that were used to determine that J.K. Rowling was Robert Galbraith.
In an earlier discussion, Is French fanfic more like written or spoken French?, people mentioned that French fanfic is a bit more literary than one might expect (it generally uses the written-only tense called the passé simple, rather than the spoken-only tense called the passé composé). So it’s not clear to what extent the same would hold for English fic as well – is it just a couple phrases, like “toeing out of his shoes”? Are the google results influenced by the fact that most published books aren’t available in full text online? Or is there broader stuff going on? Sounds like a good thesis project for someone!
Toeing out of one’s shoes may be a fanfic trend, but toeing them off is in the Oxford English Dictionary:
[Image description: A screencap of the Oxford Dictionary’s web page for the word “toe.” The first definition for the verb “to toe” is [with object and usually with adverbial] push, touch, or kick with one’s toe: ‘he toed off his shoes and flexed his feet.’ ]
How it mutated from common usage “toed off” to fanfic usage “toed out” is a mystery that has been lost to time, but I felt like pointing out that it’s not something fanficcers invented out of whole cloth.
@deadcatwithaflamethrower This seems like the sort of discourse you’d be happy to jump in on…thoughts?
Well…the internet has sped up the evolution of language and word definitions and useage at a pace where linguists are basically screaming “WAIT WAIT WE CAN’T KEEP UP WITH THIS SHIT WHAT THE HELL GUYYYYYSSSSSSS–”
Take yes and yeah.
Yea. Yeh. Yas. Yis. Those last two? Those are very, very new, and yet they are EVERYWHERE. Before global communication, new terminology didn’t spread that fast.
It’s fucking awesome.
Oh my god I can’t believe this post came back around! Because this:
people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic
I found it in a non-fic setting!! Specifically, Dan Simmons’ 1989 (Hugo award winning!) novel Hyperion, which I’ve lately read and noticed it in, because of this post and wondering if it was ever used in non-fic settings. And it has been. At least by Dan Simmons.
thranduil sleeps calmer knowing even if his son married a dwarf at least he married The Supermodel dwarf and singlehandedly crushed the hopes of single dwarves and dwarrowdams everywhere
this is my headcanon and you will never take it from me.
listen, just Listen for a second, okay.
Gimli Gloinul is from the line of Durin okay, he’s from the line of KINGS, his bloodline stands up against Legolas’ perfectly, if the elves and dwarves got their shit together for a hot second they would be like “YES, PERFECT, A DIPLOMATIC MARRIAGE TO BIND OUR HOUSES TOGETHER AND NEVER SHALL THE TWAIN THROW ONE ANOTHER TO DRAGONS…again.” because you have a king’s son and a king’s nephew which, well, I love Dain but he’s not an EREBOR KING and GIMLI IS FROM THE FAMILY OF EREBOR KINGS.
And Gimli acts like he’s from the line of Erebor kings, too, okay, he’s a diplomat and a warrior and a nobleman, he’s the sort of person who SAYS things like ‘faithless is he who says fairwell when the road darkens’ and stares down Elrond Peredhil in his own home when his strength and faith are questioned. And he’s the kind of person who swears his allegiance to people he barely knows because it’s Right and Good and Gimli knows it.
And Thorin Oakenshield was handsome, and his sister the lady Dis is beautiful, and Gimli’s cousins Fili and Kili were fine young dwarrows, and Gimli’s mother is a great beauty.
Basically my point here is that Gimli, proud strong gimli with his firebeard hair and bold laugh and mithril tongue and clever fingers, broke the hearts of everyone in Erebor and not a few people outside of Erebor when he married a goddamn elf. Like. Not even Arwen Undomiel (WHO MARRIED A GODDAMN HUMAN, it’s been a weird couple of years in Middle-Earth, everyone wonders strongly if they’ve been drinking too much). Like he’s not even marrying a great beauty of the elves, Legolas isn’t ugly by elvish standards but also he’s nothing particularly special, and he’s not a great diplomat, and he’s BARELY a king’s son because everyone knows that Mirkwood elves are…a little odd. Legolas is a big cheerful hunter who sings songs he doesn’t remember all of, who chatters to trees and has no sense of the right thing to say even if he’s developed enough self-preservation to know the wrong thing to say, and FOR THE LOVE OF MAHAL HE FIGHTS WITH A BOW.
“GIMLI” Gloin bellows “YOU TURNED DOWN THIRTY-TWO SUITORS FROM FINE DWARVISH LINES FOR THIS”
“Ignore him, amrâlime, he’ll get over it” Gimli says in amusement as he beckons Legolas over to his forge, where he’s carefully smithing mithril-inlaid gold marriage clasps that will grip fine elvish hair. It’s too hot in the forge to wear shirts, if you’re working. Every dwarf in twenty feet stops what they’re doing to watch Gimli’s biceps flex as he holds up a jewel for Legolas’ inspection.
“YOU COULD HAVE HAD A HAREM” Gloin wails from down the hall.
#a headcanon I never knew I needed until this very moment
I love the art but now I love the headcanon just as much
So one day a dwarf is talking to a human and finally realizes that when humans say woman, they generally mean “person who is theoretically capable of childbirth” because for whatever reason, humans assign social expectations based genital differences. (What a fucked up culture, the dwarf thinks.) But hey, better communication! So the next time the dwarf introduces theirself, they say, oh, by the way, I am what you call a “woman.”
And the trade negotiations just stop. They just stop cold. The tall people insist on speaking to the man, they insist on talking to the lady dwarf about all sorts of irrelevant bullshit, like recipes and childrearing and perfume
so the dwarf goes back home, enraged
and is like “BTW guess what happened, we’re all just going to be men forever now as far as the tall ones are concerned”
and everyone is justly horrified at this barbarism but they all agree to do whatever it takes to squeeze those tall bastards for all the resources they are worth
and the dwarves get surlier, and the trade agreements less generous
and the tall people are all “what a miserable and greedy race”
but really they’re just still nursing a grudge about how goddamn backwards and sexist the tall people are
because their best negotiator, one of their sacred cave people, got snubbed the instant she said she was capable of childbirth – and a mortal insult like that can never be forgiven
Just as an additional thought, we hear that women dwarves generally stay within the mountain and are a protected, guarded subset of the dwarves. There’s not many of them, so there’s an implication that women dwarves are too precious to be allowed out.
But what if this too is a mistranslation? What if the dwarves were talking to the Men and when asked “where are all your women?” they hit a wall. They whisper amongst themselves, and eventually come back with a question, “What’s a woman?” The Men are incredulous.
“Why, the members of your race that bear children, of course!“
More dwarven whispering.
They reach the conclusion that Men mean dwarves who are currently pregnant. Well! Of course those dwarves are currently safe within the mountain, well cared for and generally loathe to travel until the child is born. The Men take this to mean that all dwarven women are discouraged from traveling, and that their primary purpose is childbearing. Dwarves find this a satisfactory outcome, especially with the way Men treat their women, and so even when the misunderstanding becomes clear to them they never correct it.
myblog 