DPP: Fandom Lexicon

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Greetings and salutations, 'shipper nation! This is Amy, known on your internets as ninjamonkey73, and I'm driving the DPP bus this week. Sit back and enjoy the ride...

After yesterday's psychology discussion, today's is complete crack. There are a lot of insider terms we all throw around here in the fandom. Words of obvious and not-so-obvious origin that might be confusing to the n00bs (newbies - I was one a few months ago), so let's talk about the terms and definitions of what makes a fandom unique.

There are a few categories I can think of that these sorts of things might fall under. Show related, fanfiction related (can include non-BSG-specific terms), internet-speak, etc.


Show related
My all-time favorite term I learned when I joined the fandom has to be Leegasm. To illustrate:



Fanfiction related
I didn't know what RPF was until I came to the K/L 'shipper nation. Real Person Fiction? Wha? There are these things on the mainstream internet? Fascinating... :) I know that isn't specific to us, but I learned it here.

What things has being active in the fandom here on LJ forced you to look up? Or just confused you? We abbreviate episode titles (KLGI, EoJ, etc), the 'ship itself (K/L), we call each other "bb" and put actions like hugs in "*"s. We talk in code - the secret language of brain twins.

What's in YOUR 'shipper lexicon?

Comments

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Well, there are many words I had to look up. Most of them have already been mentioned (things like "Wilco" or "Roger that"). I still get find some acronyms confusing. But I still haven't figured out what a flist is.

[bookmarmf.livejournal.com]

I believe "flist" stands for "Friends list"

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Thanks.;D

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

flist = LJ Friend list :)

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It makes sense. I thought it might be fic list.:O

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

It's funny which military and aviation terms filtered out of movies and into my daily lexicon and which ones didn't ~ I had no idea what "wilco" was, but I've heard "roger" for years and knew what it meant, but never looked up how the phrase originated. The same went for "mayday mayday mayday," I always knew it was a distress signal but never looked up the history to see what the word actually stood for.

Thanks to you, I have now looked both of them up (and also 10-4, which was another longstanding mystery radio term), and I feel much better :) It's fun to pick these things up.

I know you know this already, but in case anyone else is curious, "Roger" apparently comes from a radio alphabet, in wide use in the military since WWII, that represented letters with full words to prevent garbled or confused communication ~ it might be hard to distinguish the word "V" from "C" over the radio, but it's easy to distinguish "Victor" from "Charlie." "Roger" was the standard word for the letter "R," and "R" meant "Received," as in "your message has been received." Sheesh. Complicated logic.

That radio alphabet is also why the Viet Cong were nicknamed "Charlie" during the Vietnam War (a shortening of "Victor Charlie" which is how sightings of the enemy were reported by radio), in case anyone else out there had ever been confused by that.

"Mayday" was not origined by the military but by a civilian aviation coordinator in London, who was asked to come up with a phrase that would be easily recognizable to pilots and deck crew in any emergency. Since a lot of London's traffic involved communication with French pilots and crews, the word "mayday" was chosen, which resembles the French phrase "venez m'aider," or "come help me." The standard form is to repeat the word three times to make it clear you are signaling an emergency, not responding to one.

I am totally prepared for my next game of Trivial Pursuit.

[damao2010.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I didn't know all that. I just looked up what they meant not their origin. But I find all this so interesting. I did go after information about things like military ranks and the difference between enlisted personel and noncommissioned officers and commissioned officers. I even looked up War College. And that is something curious. From what I remember, I didn't think Lee would have gone there - he would have been too young for that.