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: 15 Jan 2009 05:22 am (UTC)Some of those are regional, I'm sure, like UGA (University of Georgia) getting the nickname of "Ugga" rather than "you-gee-ay". And I can't think of the example right now, but I know at least two or three common acronyms have one group that insists it's spelled-out, and another that speaks it -- hrm, I seem to recall SAC (Strategic Air Command) may have gotten that, with some AF folks calling it "sack" and others saying "ess-ay-see".
Netspeak isn't honestly that much worse than military-speak (although laborious to read by dint of unfamiliarity), if we're just talking about the fact that it's a lot of capital letters. It's the fact that there's no standard that tells me how I read/hear it that really reveals that netspeak just hasn't reached the required maturity level (that is, familiarity level within our linguistics mashup) to be used without some kind of explication on the author's part.
Which is sad, really, because it did enough damage to my enjoyment of the story such that when I started hitting significant complaints about plotting and characterization, that I was already dismayed/annoyed enough as it was about the stylistic issues. Pity.