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03/19/2002 Entry: "It's Called A 'Word'!"

Okay, I have some new fanfiction rants. And, apparently, italics tags to spare. Bear with me. Warning: ranty and opinionated!

You see this? You see it?! It's called a 'word'! It's free! You may use a hundred, a thousand, or a fucking million of them, and no one's going to charge you for it!
All it costs you is time and hard drive space and bandwidth and possibly two more sheets of paper to add descriptions of decent length! To add action scenes that read like action and not like a teenaged girl saying, 'okay, so this happened and then this happened'!
A handful of completely free vocabulary grants your fic mood and timing and characterization. If you don't care enough about your fic to spend a single hour of your life tuning its sound, why do you write?

You see this? You see it?! It's called a 'word'! But of course you knew that, there are approximately five thousand excess words currently dripping from your fic like a gallon of maple syrup on two pancakes!
I'm so happy that you have a large vocabulary! But there's really no need to use every single word that you like in every fic! You're young, you're prolific, you're talented, surely you can write another fic later to use some of the other ones? You shove your large vocabulary in my face with such vehemence -- are you compensating for something?
You probably have some wonderful ideas in there somewhere, but I can't find them! You've drowned them! They're dead! In some alternate more enlightened universe that's a crime, you know! Murder of an innocent idea! Criminal misuse of adjectives!

You see this? You see it?! It's called a 'word'! Not a 'wodr', you idiot! Use your spellchecker! That's what it's there for!

You see this? You see it?! It's called a 'word'! If you persist in calling it an 'ichigo', you pompous little 'otaku' who doesn't speak more than thirty words of Japanese, I will hunt you down and drop my copy of the OED on your head!
English is a precise and complex language, and one which can be used beautifully and poetically! If you cannot write with precision and beauty in English, Japanese cannot save you or your fic!
Ten Japanese buzzwords do nothing to add to the 'mood' or 'verisimilitude' of your fic, because you are not Japanese, you do not think like a Japanese person, you do not act like a Japanese person, and you never will!
Replace the Japanese words with their English equivalents, because no matter what you think there are equivalents, get rid of the stupid 'glossary' at the end of your fic, and learn to use your native tongue instead of trying to impress people with your misused Japanese terms! 'Koibito' means 'dear one' but 'koi' means 'goldfish', for the love of Pete!

*gasp*gasp*wheeze*pant* Okay. I'm calm. I'm calm.

Replies: add your comment: currently 21 comments

THANK YOU!!! I've been thinking the same thing!! Part of why I've been stuck with the fics I've been writing the last couple of weeks.

See, I know my grammer and spelling and diction and whatnot suck, so I dont subject it to others but on rare occasions. If more fanfic writers were like me and more self consious, we'd prolly have less bad fic in the world, or on FF.net at least....

*runs and hides*

Posted by ComeOnBunny @ 03/20/2002 01:17 AM EST

Okay, so THAT'S what "Koi" means. I see it in abundance in 'fics that involve two gay male bishounen. Usually kitsunes that look absolutely nothing like the figure of myth.

You know what I'd love to see die? Besides Songfics? Dialogues. The newest fad in the Megaman fandom is to write fanfics like this:

Zero: "x,Sigma came bak!"
X: "ok Zero,i'll use mi Kamehameha!"

And so on until you reach the shocking "TOO BE CONTINUED ... MAYBE" at the end. Thrillsville!

Posted by Red Draco @ 03/20/2002 01:19 AM EST

Bunny: I have no shame at all. None. Obviously.

Red: Yeah, as far as I can tell, the 'koi' thing was birthed in Gundam Wing fandom, when some fangirl shortened 'koibito' to 'koi' and then a bunch of other fangirls who didn't know any better picked it up. And it spread out from there like a disease or something. Ew. Still, the idea of Heero calling Duo his goldfish has some appeal. Bloop.

Ooh, you don't like dialogue fics? Gracious, stay out of my parody section, then... la la la...

Posted by Mooncalf @ 03/20/2002 05:46 AM EST

Actually... "koi" does mean love. But it also means goldfish.

Also, it means... 'Thick', 'strong', 'dark', and 'deep'. As in words you'd use to describe coffee. But, hey, three totally different kanji. So if Heero were using kanji, we'd know what he meant. Until then...

Posted by OFWhit @ 03/20/2002 10:43 AM EST

Hrm. Unfortunately, the bad fics are always going to be there. We can only hope that the author's improve.

Of course, THAT'S not going to happen until someone smacks the authors in the head with exactly what they're doing wrong.

Or if fandoms finally develop taste.

Take your pick. Both are pretty implausible. ;^_^

Posted by Kristi @ 03/20/2002 11:54 AM EST

Whit -- I thought it meant "love" as in, love-the-noun-for-an-emotion, not love-the-mostly-English-term-of-affection?

Not that I'd really know either way, since the extent of my knowledge comes from the cute mermaid pun about Touga and Utena the Shadow Play Girls do, but...

Posted by s00z @ 03/20/2002 11:58 AM EST

*points wildly at the above comments* See? See?! That's why you shouldn't use fangirl Japanese! Because you'll fall on your face and hurt yourself just like I did!

Posted by Mooncalf @ 03/20/2002 04:07 PM EST

[rolls around laughing]

Wonderful rant! If I might add one thing: the language issue not limited to Japanese. I'm sure we've all seen German and French and Italian and soforth similarly mutilated. Whenever one dumb writer screws with an unfamiliar language, God stabs an angel. Or something.

That was beautiful, Moonie. I wish it were legal to clone you.

Posted by Lex @ 03/20/2002 04:22 PM EST

Moo, you manage to rant so brilliantly about the idiocies that surround us. Yay!

Posted by Felicity @ 03/20/2002 05:32 PM EST

Angel-stabbing sounds like a metaphor for... uh... something involve nasal tissue, I'm sure.

Posted by Suze @ 03/20/2002 05:36 PM EST

All "literature" has its buzzwords. A few years ago in the scientific literature, the word "moiety" became a buzzword. Seeing as this word means one of two equal parts, or one of two approximately equal components, or one part of a division of something into two components, one wonders what it was doing in the scientific literature, where the writings are supposed to have precise meanings. Another word which became very popular was "paradigm" which simply means that something is an ideal example. I guess it made some authors feel like they were being more "scientific".

Posted by Father Moon @ 03/20/2002 09:39 PM EST

You know, Love Deep Goldfish would be a great name for a fanart site...or a blog.

Why did someone have to mention the word "paradigm"? Oh, no, now I'm having Econ 1101 flashbacks. Make it stop!

Posted by Meril @ 03/21/2002 12:25 AM EST

"Koi". One of the worst puns in Ranma 1/2. =p

We all know koi are inbred, but really pretty carp.

"Koi" in the sense of love is more of a one-sided crush, as opposed to "ai" which is reciprocated.

It still makes no sense using in the middle of an English-language fic, unless your character speaks Japanese throughout the damn thing in the first place. Then again, there are so many fangirls applying the word "yaoi" to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, which is entirely too ludicrous to waste further wordage on.

Posted by Carlos @ 03/21/2002 11:36 AM EST

LOL!!

Thank you for posting this, Moon. I just wish that ALL fanfic writers would read this and PRACTICE what is preaches!! Uugghh...
I do get tired of seeing al over the internet, not just in fanfics (I speak merely outside of fanfics because I don't really read them), of people substituting Japanese words for English words or equivalents, and what they are saying is basically all in English. Either write in fucking Japanese or DON'T. It's apparently not TOO hard for you to switch back and forth. Oh, wait, you probably only know like, 6 words, don't you? Well, then talk in fucking English and stop kidding yourself, and others. Yeesh....
I hope people will not hate me for using this example, but people really do this in regards to Dragon Ball items. Like people EVERYWHERE say "Saiya-jinn", or "Super Saiya-jinn", or "Namek-sei-jinn". Just fucking say "Saiyan" and "Namekian", okay? It is the same Goddamn thing. What, you think it makes you "sound" more Japanese or "sophisticated" or "higer-up" when you mix what few Japanese words you know with English words? News for you, bub, it don't. If you are speaking English entirely, then use the English words. If you are speaking Japanese, then yes, you have to use the Japanese words. But mixing them is not that impressive, and it serves no purpose to me.
Thank you for ranting about this, Moon. It's all so true.
MegaMan fanfics???
.........
Hi, Bunny!! ^_^

Posted by Wolf @ 03/21/2002 05:24 PM EST

On the subject of Heero calling Duo his "goldfish".....am i the only one who thinks thats about as funny as "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"?

Posted by Cloud @ 03/21/2002 08:39 PM EST

Every time some writer abuses an unfamiliar language, God beats an angel to death with a dictionary.

Please. Think of the dictionaries.

Posted by Ed @ 03/22/2002 02:08 AM EST

Now, see, Ed, my brain did an automatic reference back to the original line, backflipped into a pun, and presented me with one of the most bizarre mental images I've had in at least an hour.

Think of the dictionaries, indeed.

Posted by Arielle @ 03/23/2002 12:48 AM EST

Peh, didn't you guys know that mixing japanese words spelled out in english letters was cool???/

/me being an idiot

Posted by Shinji @ 03/23/2002 01:09 AM EST

True, fangirl Japanese is annoying to people with even a basic knowledge of Japanese. And true, koi sounds idiotic as a term of address. (So is 'koibito' idiotic as a term of address. So is 'imooto', for that matter, and that usage probably bugs me even more.) But then again-- most people haven't had the experience of being in a Japanese conveni and buying a 'juushii sand' (juicy sandwich to you, because it has lettuce and tomatoes) that bears the label 'Let's pure! Let's fresh!' They've never had 'rare cake' in a coffeshop. (Yes, rare and layer read the same in katakana. They don't in English.) They've never bought a 'commutation ticket' at the train station. (We don't *have* trains, let alone commuter passes.) Viewed from another perspective, fangirl Japanese is just a long overdue revenge for the daily low-key Japlish of Japan. Murder our language, by god, and we'll murder yours. Me, I think it promotes international understanding, or at least a *very* satisfying evening-up of scores.

Posted by mjj @ 03/23/2002 02:25 PM EST

But if fangirl Japanese is excused by Japlish/Engrish, then...

We should all start inserting random cutesy phrases of Tagalog and Malay to excuse Southeast Asian "Friendly English" and Taglish!

On second thought ... GAH.

Posted by Carlos @ 03/23/2002 06:14 PM EST

Forgive me, Mater Luna Bova, for I have sinned. I have used Japanese words in my fics (generally in thoughts and dialogue or when there wasn't an English equivalent that the standard American would UNDERSTAND, such as /on/). But wait! You have been pretentious as well! Hah! Just see your Shortest Pretentious Vagrant Story Fanfic Ever! It is pretentious! Hah! Mayhap I am not so bad.

I am GOING to get a blog. I want a blog. I will name my blog Koi Koi Koi (love deep goldfish). Not that anyone cares. I can't stand fics with no grammar. I can't stand to see lack of grammar. Or spelling. It IS a word, not a wodr! Hee! Gratia, Mater Luna Bova!
Oops... I sin again, Mater Luna Bova. This time 'tis Latin...

Posted by Nagia @ 04/05/2002 04:53 PM EST