cadavre exquis @anonymaliar - Tumblr Blog

kosmogrl

get in loser we’re gonna try again despite it all

simena

EDWARD ROBERT HUGHES (detail)

n-rdlys

a little soviet space race propaganda inspired design for @opal-apparition’s gorgeous fic apogee

special mention to Alexei Leonov and the random Canadian & Russian astronauts whose spacesuits i looked at for this i <3 insignias and workwear and yaoi

opal-apparition-deactivated2026

It’s like you literally plucked this out of my head and polished it into the most perfect thing ever! I love these so much, especially their uniforms and Ilya’s EVA suit!!!

maliusaidh

#corpus

lelif

on survival

-// @aridante // @orivu // @buzzkillgirls // ? // ? // richard siken// @cemeterything // moomin, tove jansson// @disenchanted-killjoy // isn't that enough, shawn mendes// @ prettytheyswag on twitter// @ coletyumuch on twitter// ? // ? // bird by bird, anne lamott// undertale// @strawberrycircuits

#corpus

christslamb

jhholtzmann-deactivated20190111

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

hannahrhen-deactivated20181219

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. <3

To me it’s still the quintessential “two dudes doing each other” phrase.

simplydalektable

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

jhholtzmann-deactivated20190111

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!!!!!!!

reliand

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.

kinneas

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?

QUESTIONS!

a-deadletter

@wasureneba @allthingslinguistic

allthingslinguistic

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.

One thing that we do know is that written English has gotten less formal over the past few centuries, and in particular that the word “the” has gotten much less frequent over time.

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!

See also: the gay fanfiction pronoun problem, ship names, and the rest of my fanguistics tag.

xo-queenievee-xo

This is super cool ngl

thesaltofcarthage

“Fanguistics” my English major heart just exploded

vaspider

It’s fascinating to me the way that some of these phrases entered my speech and writing, not from fanfic, but from being in text RP communities for 30 years. (Yes, I’ve been RPing online since 1992. Hush.)

softness-and-shattering

Curious also how much of these stylings would be taken out by a traditional editor, if we’re comparing fanfic to traditional publishing.

This is just fascinating, I love it. Its like those specific friend group or family in-jokes and meaningful phrases but spread a bit wider in fanfic.

vaspider

Dunno. @thebibliosphere leaves a lot of my turns of phrase in when she edits my stuff.

thebibliosphere

Fandom lexicon and style have become more accepted in the mainstream over the last few years thanks to the rise in fandom writers turning pro. (and the built-in audiences publishers are more than happy to take money from.)

I dare say some bigger publishing houses won’t allow it if they’ve got a strict house style–the one I worked for used to, but from what I’ve read of some of their more recent stuff they’ve softened those rules over the last decade.

Good thing too, if you ask me. It always felt draconian to tell people they couldn’t use perfectly legible turns of phrase because it was “too fandomy.” But then again, I grew up with fandom, so I’ve always been biased :p

dduane

“Fanguistics.” :)

tunglo

I remember a huge wanky thread one time - probably at fail_fandomanon - with so much vitriolic hatred for toeing off shoes and carding through hair that I sometimes go out of my way to include the phrases to stick a couple of metaphorical fingers up to some anons who annoyed me literal years ago. Sometimes you’ve just got to embrace your pettiness!

countesspetofi

As a traditional editor, if I noticed the author using a particular strange turn of phase repeatedly, to the point where it was distracting, I would certainly point it out and ask them to consider whether it was intentional or not. But I wouldn’t peremptorily remove it.

#fanguistics

asystolle

The Princess Bride (1987) dir. Rob Reiner Cinematography by Adrian Biddle

Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.

#princess bride

raylangivins

flowerytale

Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980

thoodleoo

reading a letter that pliny wrote to his wife calpurnia while she was away from home and on its face it's very sweet (he talks about walking to her room out of habit and then remembering she's not there and how he feels like he's a jilted lover) but also it's extremely funny to imagine a guy getting paraclausithyron'd in his own house

thoodleoo

"feeling as though i had been refused admittance" buddy you live here

tearfulangel

i love biting the bullet. i love opening a can of worms. i love putting all my eggs in one basket. i love burying the hatchet. i love crying over spilt milk. i love letting the cat out of the bag. i love wanting to have my cake and eat it too. i love counting my chickens before they’ve hatched. i love making my bed and laying in it. i love putting the cart before the horse. i love burning the candle at both ends. i love calling a spade a spade. i love the bottom of the barrel.