Moments of Permanence - One tiny thing that's annoying Sami today, on what is not actually a good day

From: sqbr Date: May 20th, 2009 09:49 am (UTC) (Link)

In the same way that you can't decide that slash should now be called Angular Fucking, or whatever

Sure you can, people come up with new terms all the time. You just have to accept that other people may not embrace it :) (Which is to say: I agree with you)

I've seen a couple of posts like yours but not the original offending statements and I must admit find it hard to fathom from what I've heard. I mean I can understand saying "I don't like the term 'fen'" (I must admit it rubs me the wrong way) but how does "I don't like your slang" count as a counterargument?

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From: sami Date: May 21st, 2009 03:27 am (UTC) (Link)

People may use some new terms, but... it's still slash, you know? It's been slash since the 70s, just... deal.

And: IT DOESN'T.

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From: sqbr Date: May 22nd, 2009 04:25 am (UTC) (Link)

I started to reply but it turned into a tl;dr screed on My Opinions About Slang And Semantics.

I'll go add it to my long "list of things to post about one day" instead :)

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From: sami Date: May 22nd, 2009 12:48 pm (UTC) (Link)

>.>

I don't know if you've noticed, but DW has really long comment length limits.

<.

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From: sqbr Date: May 24th, 2009 01:17 am (UTC) (Link)

Heh. It's more I realised that what I was writing really was a post and needs to simmer a little longer and then be written with more attention than I give comments.

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From: acrimonyastraea Date: May 20th, 2009 11:48 am (UTC) (Link)

YES! I had no idea the use of "fen" was that old. I already thought people complaining about it look like idiots, but now it just looks pathetic.

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From: sami Date: May 21st, 2009 03:28 am (UTC) (Link)

Indeed. I'm trying not to get all KIDS THESE DAYS about it, but... seriously! Kids these days. *sigh*

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From: lanning Date: May 20th, 2009 01:24 pm (UTC) (Link)

Well, color me confused. I haven't read any of the brouhaha, but for the life of me, I can't imagine why anyone would find "fen" offensive. (Or why someone entering a community for the first time would think it appropriate to dictate to members of several decades' standing what their vocabularies should include, but that's my own issue. *g*)

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From: sami Date: May 21st, 2009 03:33 am (UTC) (Link)

The primary complaint seems to be that it's "stupid" or "bad grammar".

Both, of course, are incorrect.

The advantage of majoring in both history and linguistics is that there are few arguments that take place in my spheres of interest where I don't know how to Bring the References. I try not to be appallingly smug, but it's hard not to feel a little bit smug when an argument goes like this:

Me: "You're wrong about this."
Them: "Prove it."
Me: "Okay."
Them: "..."

Because, in all but the rarest cases, you win internet arguments when the other side slinks off without replying. That's what happened with the first phase of RaceFail this year - the bad people stopped trying to argue, and sure, some of them tried to spin that as censorship by the Big Mean P(o)C Brigade, but the fact is, the terms of reference have shifted a little. Because we won.

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From: lanning Date: May 21st, 2009 03:03 pm (UTC) (Link)

Yes, you did. And theirs was such pitiful slinking, too. ;) And personally, I have no problem with smugness in a good cause. Good work! \0/

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From: lady_ganesh Date: May 21st, 2009 02:27 pm (UTC) (Link)

Most of the people I've noticed complaining are trying very hard to derail.

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From: elspethdixon Date: May 20th, 2009 02:42 pm (UTC) (Link)

"Fen" has distinct meaning from "fans". It means not just people who enjoy and appreciate a given thing; it means people who are fans of sf/f and are active and involved in fandom

*nods* I don't see why some people dislike the word so much. I mean, if their objection was "I think it sounds silly. I also refuse to use the word 'filk' or any pairing portmanteau and I view ironic use of LOLcat speak as an abominations," I would be able to grok that, but so far as I can tell it's a specific objection to the word "fen," not to made-up words in general.

People seem to associate it with being a batshit crazy fan, whereas I always associated it with being a fan who comes from the old school cons & zines tradition, and not with any particular degree of crazy.

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From: sami Date: May 21st, 2009 02:26 am (UTC) (Link)

A lot of the complaints I've seen have been more along "it's BAD GRAMMAR" lines, which... really not, you know?

I am a bit variable on fannish language variations. Grok is actually one of my favourites, despite the serious flaws in the book it comes from, but pairing portmanteaus give me a small but distinct hive. Fortunately, they've yet to be prevalent in a fandom I was really into.

The thing I really don't understand at all is this drive people have to try and dictate the terms on whcih fandom operates. That doesn't work, not with fandom, not with any (sub)culture. Linguistically or in any other sense.

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From: smillaraaq.livejournal.com Date: May 21st, 2009 06:36 pm (UTC) (Link)

Of course, Saiyuki has its own arcane numerical shorthand, which avoids the portmanteaus but replaces them with regularly-scheduled befuddled n00b "HALP HALP WHAT DOES ALL THIS MATH STUFF MEAN?" posts from folks who don't know it all comes down to bad Japanese puns...

I must admit that I kind of like the linguistic playfulness of some of the portmanteau namesmoosh shipname patterns, but I *love* the numerical coding because unlike the portmanteaus, / or + or x conventions, it can also be used to indicate in convenient shorthand "I like to see these two characters together and DO NOT CARE WHICH ONE IS ON TOP". One of my biggest peeves with slash or yaoi fandoms is the tendency of some writers and fans to treat top/bottom seme/uke roles as cast in stone to the point where it almost feels like badly-done het, so I really like being able to say "switchiness OK here" by just typing three measly characters.

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From: sami Date: May 22nd, 2009 12:49 pm (UTC) (Link)

...

Numerical shorthand?

How does that work?

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From: elspethdixon Date: May 22nd, 2009 08:04 pm (UTC) (Link)

I don't remember which Saiyuki character is which number, but in Gundam Wing fandom, every Gundam pilot and most of the other major characters has a number that identifies them for pairing purposes, usually one based on their names (a lot of Gundam Wing characters -- Duo, Quatre, Zechs, Noin, and Treize are some of the more obvious ones -- are named after numbers).

So Heero/Duo, for example, is written 1x2 (Heero as seme), 2x1 (Duo as seme), or 1x2x1 (I defy your seme/uke rules and have them switch off!). Zech/Treize is 6x13, 13x6, or 6x13x6. And so on.

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From: smillaraaq.livejournal.com Date: May 22nd, 2009 08:35 pm (UTC) (Link)

Oh my, you haven't seen that around? It's all over the place on the comms and fansites, English-speaking and Japanese alike; you'll even see it on the covers of lots of doujinshi. It started in the Japanese fandom because it's based on the characters' names incorporating number kanji as part of the reading (Sanzo, Hakkai) or else including phonemes that are homonyms for numbers in Japanese or English (Gojyo, Goku, Tenpou) -- none of the others have widely-used numbers, and Kenren is usually "K", or sometimes "Ken" for the rhyme with "Ten"...ad some of the Japanese sites that use "K" will use "T" for Tenpou to keep the abbreviations matching, but I've never seen anyone in the English-speaking fandom use "KT" as a pairing abbreviation, it's usually something like "10K" or occasionally "TenKen". (For the other guys, Sanzo=3, Hakkai=8, Gojyo=5 and Goku=9 -- flemmings explains it pretty nicely in the comments here: http://community.livejournal.com/saiyuki/760917.html ...amusingly enough, there's also a digression on the history of "fen" as a plural there, too!)

Japanese fans usually write the number-shorthand pairings either smooshed together directly or else separated with an "x", just like the yaoi name x name convention, with the first name/number being the seme: so you'll see Japanese fanart sites or doujinshi with things labeled 5 x 8, or 39. Western fans seem to lean more strongly towards writing the pairings as numbersmoosh rather than equations, which is probably where the triple-number convention for "this pairing in any permutation" arose -- the unspoken rule seems to be that the larger number goes in the middle, so that shorthand gets written like 353, 585, 393, 898, etc.; there's no comparable shorthand for the Gaiden boys, not even Kenren/Tenpou, so folks just muddle along there. Threesomes and more can also be indicated with this, although at that point folks usually give up on trying to read any significance in the number order; when someone who doesn't have an abbreviation gets involved it's often written as established-pairing-number/name or + name or x name, like 10K/Goujun. On the rare occasions where someone is doing some arcanely complicated sort of threesome with clones or shikigami duplicates or such of one of the guys, that may also be indicated with the usual triple-number thing and a note that the abbreviation is to be read literally for once.

...now aren't you sorry you asked? ^_~

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From: elf Date: May 20th, 2009 03:49 pm (UTC) (Link)

I love the word "fen." It covers "non-mundanes," a category that's easy to understand but hard to define. I also love filk, and there may be a connection; songs that mention "men" are easy to filk into songs about "fen." (That might even be part of the origin--"fen" as a label may not have caught on until it was the perfect rhyme in many songs.)

However, I think I'm going to promote the the use of the term "Angular Fucking."

"This is a Kirk and Spock Angular Fucking story."
"I don't like Ron Weasley Angular Fucking."
"Chan Angular Fucking should be banned."
"FemmeAngularFucking is teh hawt!"

Yeah. We need more FAF.

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From: sami Date: May 21st, 2009 03:34 am (UTC) (Link)

*snickers*

See, for me, that's totally got to be a specific kink, involving weird positions, possibly using special equipment and/or zero gravity.

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From: hildy Date: May 20th, 2009 04:04 pm (UTC) (Link)

In summary: shut the fuck up.

Here's my hope that they do as you say.

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From: mmoa_writes Date: May 21st, 2009 04:59 pm (UTC) (Link)

In summary: shut the fuck up.

But they can't because they have an alternative (which always = important. See, logic!) opinion to the zeitegeist which of course means it's better (because they're the ones saying it) and sets them apart as maverick leaders of delusiotopia/wtvr.

Don't you see?


No, me neither.

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From: sami Date: May 22nd, 2009 12:50 pm (UTC) (Link)

That totally comes under "see above re: stfu". Just because you disagree with people doesn't mean you're right, dammit.

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From: smillaraaq.livejournal.com Date: May 21st, 2009 10:12 pm (UTC) (Link)

"Fen" has been in use since before a lot of you were born. I can state categorically that it has been in use since the 60s; it may be older.

It's documented back to the early 1940s -- http://www.fanac.org/Fannish_Reference_Works/Fancyclopedia/Fancyclopedia_I/m.html#9; and I'd imagine it might well have been in circulation for a few years before reaching the point where it was subject to being voted on at a convention. So yeah, this one's really almost as old as (organized Anglophone Western SF) fandom itself.

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From: sami Date: May 22nd, 2009 12:50 pm (UTC) (Link)

... I may lose months to that link, fyi

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