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enthusiastickWelcome to the first ever edition of Because Its Wednesday, a new feature here at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pooka_madness's journal that I can't promise I'll do weekly or, in point of fact, ever again.
See, the thing is, I'm fast becoming a total Websnark spoonfed. I think the folks over there are just swell, and I read them every day and I truly deeply appreciate what they do. And from the two authors working over at Websnark I get different things. I depend upon Eric for analysis that is sharp and insightful, that speaks to webcomics as a medium or otherwise really cuts to the heart of a thing and lays bare what was before unseen. But his sense of humor, well. That's sometimes a little more nerdy, a little more forgiving, generally a little broader than mine.
For the funny, I generally turn to Wednesday White.
Some of the things Wednesday White has written for Websnark made me literally laugh out loud. And laugh hard. Her two snarks on Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, for example, had me rolling in the aisles, crying, before I had ever even seen the series. This is the kind of funny she brings, the kind that's biting and true whether or not you actually know what she's talking about. Its snarky, is what it is. And I like that.
I was almost going to elaborate on the two PGSM pieces, but really they speak for themselves and nothing I can say would add value to the content. So instead, as I was trawling the archives, I pulled up a more analytical snark she had written. Wednesday's analytical snarks are generally a little tougher than Eric's, a little less transparent to the casual reader. Its a stylistic difference, as much as anything. Her thoughts are generally every bit as interesting as those of her colleague, but they sometimes require a little bit more unpacking to really understand. To really feel as though I get them, I usually have to read more than once. Sometimes I have to read more than once just to have any idea what she's even talking about.
From the start, however, I knew what this one snark was about. She boils it down to a question concerning dialogue, whether or not dialogue reads naturally. The pertinent analysis, she asserts, is not whether or not you think people talk a certain way but whether or not you can conceive of them talking that way. And in the process she talks about affectation, and the acquisition of neologisms.
I do this all the time.
Sometimes -- OK, most of the time -- its a conscious thing. I read something, or hear something on television or in a movie, or in conversation with a friend, and I think, "Heh. I like that." And then I assimilate it into my speech pattern, and if pressed can usually point to its origin. I don't always decide to start using it myself, but I'm usually at least aware that I have. Like many fans of Firefly, for example, I've found myself using "shiny" without ever even thinking about it. "Shiny," in my opinion, was an aphorism waiting to happen. Its was syncretized into the geek lexicon downright seamlessly.
And other times I find myself using something I've acquired at a totally inappropriate moment, when the listener in my conversation won't have any idea what I'm talking about. In certain extreme cases its as if I am speaking a whole other language. Case in point: I have to consciously stop myself from using "disco" as a synonym for "perfect" all the damn time. Because unless you are a serious Pulp Fiction fan and catch my particular inflection, you're unlikely to connect it to Uma Thurman in any way, and then it just becomes some random sound I blurted like a crazy person. And while I like my affectations (maybe too much -- I'd kind of love to just be Jeffrey Rowland or John Allison, at least insofar as my speech patterns are concerned) I have no desire to become actively incomprehensible.
Does anyone else have this problem? I know everyone has in-jokes, shared references that only make sense to a particular group of people in a "you had to be there" kind of way. But does anyone else out there reading this have verbal constructions that you use, if only in your own head, that no one else would understand? Or what about neologisms that lots of people might understand, only you don't use them because you're somehow ashamed of their source?
pooka_madness's journal that I can't promise I'll do weekly or, in point of fact, ever again.See, the thing is, I'm fast becoming a total Websnark spoonfed. I think the folks over there are just swell, and I read them every day and I truly deeply appreciate what they do. And from the two authors working over at Websnark I get different things. I depend upon Eric for analysis that is sharp and insightful, that speaks to webcomics as a medium or otherwise really cuts to the heart of a thing and lays bare what was before unseen. But his sense of humor, well. That's sometimes a little more nerdy, a little more forgiving, generally a little broader than mine.
For the funny, I generally turn to Wednesday White.
Some of the things Wednesday White has written for Websnark made me literally laugh out loud. And laugh hard. Her two snarks on Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, for example, had me rolling in the aisles, crying, before I had ever even seen the series. This is the kind of funny she brings, the kind that's biting and true whether or not you actually know what she's talking about. Its snarky, is what it is. And I like that.
I was almost going to elaborate on the two PGSM pieces, but really they speak for themselves and nothing I can say would add value to the content. So instead, as I was trawling the archives, I pulled up a more analytical snark she had written. Wednesday's analytical snarks are generally a little tougher than Eric's, a little less transparent to the casual reader. Its a stylistic difference, as much as anything. Her thoughts are generally every bit as interesting as those of her colleague, but they sometimes require a little bit more unpacking to really understand. To really feel as though I get them, I usually have to read more than once. Sometimes I have to read more than once just to have any idea what she's even talking about.
From the start, however, I knew what this one snark was about. She boils it down to a question concerning dialogue, whether or not dialogue reads naturally. The pertinent analysis, she asserts, is not whether or not you think people talk a certain way but whether or not you can conceive of them talking that way. And in the process she talks about affectation, and the acquisition of neologisms.
I do this all the time.
Sometimes -- OK, most of the time -- its a conscious thing. I read something, or hear something on television or in a movie, or in conversation with a friend, and I think, "Heh. I like that." And then I assimilate it into my speech pattern, and if pressed can usually point to its origin. I don't always decide to start using it myself, but I'm usually at least aware that I have. Like many fans of Firefly, for example, I've found myself using "shiny" without ever even thinking about it. "Shiny," in my opinion, was an aphorism waiting to happen. Its was syncretized into the geek lexicon downright seamlessly.
And other times I find myself using something I've acquired at a totally inappropriate moment, when the listener in my conversation won't have any idea what I'm talking about. In certain extreme cases its as if I am speaking a whole other language. Case in point: I have to consciously stop myself from using "disco" as a synonym for "perfect" all the damn time. Because unless you are a serious Pulp Fiction fan and catch my particular inflection, you're unlikely to connect it to Uma Thurman in any way, and then it just becomes some random sound I blurted like a crazy person. And while I like my affectations (maybe too much -- I'd kind of love to just be Jeffrey Rowland or John Allison, at least insofar as my speech patterns are concerned) I have no desire to become actively incomprehensible.
Does anyone else have this problem? I know everyone has in-jokes, shared references that only make sense to a particular group of people in a "you had to be there" kind of way. But does anyone else out there reading this have verbal constructions that you use, if only in your own head, that no one else would understand? Or what about neologisms that lots of people might understand, only you don't use them because you're somehow ashamed of their source?
