How am I supposed to read this?
14 Jan 2009 01:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouMore and more recently over the past year or two, there have been modern-setting stories (usually urban fantasy + humor/comedy) that incorporate pop culture. I have, somehow -- how, I don't know -- managed to inculcate a certain level of immunity to random Japanese like baka. I have also, somehow, managed to stifle the grimace down to a simple twinge when I see references to Sunnydale or Buffy or Anita or Lestat or any other mod-pop-cult iconage.
What I can not stomach is when authors use -- in dialogue, no less -- internet-based acronyms. Not because I don't know what DNF, or BFF, or OMG, or WTF means, but because I don't know how to read it. My brain suddenly splits into two separate voices.
Me: *translates* "Oh my god," she cried. *thinks* Wait, did she actually say, "oh em gee," or did she say "oh my god"? Which is it?
And then I just come to a complete halt, because I can't hear the story any more. I can only hear this bizarre disconnect over whether the character said the phrase that's the meaning of the acronym -- "oh my god" in this case -- or if the character actually said the acronym, in which case wouldn't one write it as "oh em gee"?
And do you know ANYONE on this planet who says "oh em gee!" without a wink-wink nudge-nudge delivery? I mean, the only times I've ever heard someone actually say "oh em gee!" they said it in an identical cadence and expression as "gag me with a spoon" or "totally tubular", same as "oh-snap!", or even "eleventy-one!". It's a verbal wink, if not accompanied outright by an actual wink. It's basically saying, this-is-a-JOKE because I'm using silly netspeak only used by twits! Haha, so clever am I!
However, I have never heard anyone spell out WTF: what would that be? Double-you-tee-eff? That's five syllables to say what you could've said in three. Whut, whut?
I would really like to enjoy this story, because the pace is quick and the characters amusing and the UST is hot but seriously lacking in emoistic overdrive, which is a nice change. And I've managed to get halfway through riding hard enough on the characterizations that I managed to whiz right past the automatic flinches every time I get yet another heavy-handed pop culture reference shoved at me.
But when I got to that single paragraph, I'm afraid my brain broke for at least five minutes. I actually came to a complete halt, and had to go do something else, anything else, to manage to forget that I had just spent at least three minutes trying to figure out how I was supposed to bloody well read that. My usual speedy pace was gone, smashed up on the altar of Way Too Much Freaking Acronym Usage In One Paragraph.
I don't even know how to characterize it, for that matter. It tells me nothing. If someone were to freak out at whatever this character saw, in an adorably dorky manner of freaking out, then this would have worked just as well:
I mean, the repetition still gives you the humor. It doesn't really tell me anything about the character (in a personalized sense) because that phrase, or a variant, is pretty widespread both as a phrase and as an utterance of shock. The characterization in this paragraph is relying solely on the description, which is fine in this case, because it's a short paragraph.
But if I'm supposed to 'hear' the character saying this, instead:
I still get the humor, and now I also have the strong suspicion that the character has the mental capacity of a toaster.
...Unless she's winking at the same time -- which means her overly dramatic reaction must be sarcasm, or self-mocking silliness, and neither fit in context of the following paragraphs.
Just doesn't work for me. All I end up thinking is: wow. Lazy writer, and what editor let her get away with that, or have people gotten so used to seeing the acronyms and thinking them, that they no longer hear them on the page anymore?
What I can not stomach is when authors use -- in dialogue, no less -- internet-based acronyms. Not because I don't know what DNF, or BFF, or OMG, or WTF means, but because I don't know how to read it. My brain suddenly splits into two separate voices.
“OMG.” She turned bright red. “OMG.” She covered her mouth. “OMG,” she said again, sort of muffled.
Me: *translates* "Oh my god," she cried. *thinks* Wait, did she actually say, "oh em gee," or did she say "oh my god"? Which is it?
And then I just come to a complete halt, because I can't hear the story any more. I can only hear this bizarre disconnect over whether the character said the phrase that's the meaning of the acronym -- "oh my god" in this case -- or if the character actually said the acronym, in which case wouldn't one write it as "oh em gee"?
And do you know ANYONE on this planet who says "oh em gee!" without a wink-wink nudge-nudge delivery? I mean, the only times I've ever heard someone actually say "oh em gee!" they said it in an identical cadence and expression as "gag me with a spoon" or "totally tubular", same as "oh-snap!", or even "eleventy-one!". It's a verbal wink, if not accompanied outright by an actual wink. It's basically saying, this-is-a-JOKE because I'm using silly netspeak only used by twits! Haha, so clever am I!
However, I have never heard anyone spell out WTF: what would that be? Double-you-tee-eff? That's five syllables to say what you could've said in three. Whut, whut?
I would really like to enjoy this story, because the pace is quick and the characters amusing and the UST is hot but seriously lacking in emoistic overdrive, which is a nice change. And I've managed to get halfway through riding hard enough on the characterizations that I managed to whiz right past the automatic flinches every time I get yet another heavy-handed pop culture reference shoved at me.
But when I got to that single paragraph, I'm afraid my brain broke for at least five minutes. I actually came to a complete halt, and had to go do something else, anything else, to manage to forget that I had just spent at least three minutes trying to figure out how I was supposed to bloody well read that. My usual speedy pace was gone, smashed up on the altar of Way Too Much Freaking Acronym Usage In One Paragraph.
I don't even know how to characterize it, for that matter. It tells me nothing. If someone were to freak out at whatever this character saw, in an adorably dorky manner of freaking out, then this would have worked just as well:
“Oh my god.” She turned bright red. “Oh my god.” She covered her mouth. “Oh my god,” she said again, sort of muffled.
I mean, the repetition still gives you the humor. It doesn't really tell me anything about the character (in a personalized sense) because that phrase, or a variant, is pretty widespread both as a phrase and as an utterance of shock. The characterization in this paragraph is relying solely on the description, which is fine in this case, because it's a short paragraph.
But if I'm supposed to 'hear' the character saying this, instead:
“Oh-em-gee.” She turned bright red. “Oh-em-gee.” She covered her mouth. “Oh-em-gee,” she said again, sort of muffled.
I still get the humor, and now I also have the strong suspicion that the character has the mental capacity of a toaster.
...Unless she's winking at the same time -- which means her overly dramatic reaction must be sarcasm, or self-mocking silliness, and neither fit in context of the following paragraphs.
Just doesn't work for me. All I end up thinking is: wow. Lazy writer, and what editor let her get away with that, or have people gotten so used to seeing the acronyms and thinking them, that they no longer hear them on the page anymore?
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Date: 14 Jan 2009 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2009 06:53 pm (UTC)Which again caused slight breakage for me, because I have no idea how that might sound. Is that 'o' long, or short? Why does it sound like there's a dipthong, when I say it?
This would be where the verbatim speech element is just a little too verbatim for the published world, just like trying to mimic accent just makes for a mess on the page. We just don't all 'hear' sounds the same way, and if an author's going to muddle about in pop-culture, the least s/he could do is push the edges and come up with something legible and characterizing without also tripping me up mid-story.
no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2009 07:04 pm (UTC)I agree, though, in writing if your characters are going to use net-speak in their actual speech you have to use a phonetic spelling, not just the acronym letters. There's actually a good example of this in today's "Real Life Comics". http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/090114.html At this point there's no standard spelling, but somehow I get the feeling we're not many years away from that.
no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2009 07:15 pm (UTC)But you're right, we're moving towards a generalized sense of spelling, but even in some military/govt acronym-using stories, I see characters spelling out acronyms like "NDU" as "En-dee-you" while other acronyms are not spelled out, like "POTUS" (poe-tuss) to indicate where an acronym has become a kind of word in its own right. ZOMG may move towards that, but it's not an easily legible one, still.