High brow and low brow all in one convenient post

[deense]

Spending the evening watching more West Wing and reading linguistics blogs. Much better than last night which was spent trawling my way through West Wing and NCIS fic, the majority of which was DREADFUL. TOTALLY DREADFUL.

All the fic really made me do was wonder if these people had ever seen The West Wing OR NCIS. Oh, there was an NCIS/West Wing crossover in which Gibbs and CJ briefly dated (and yes, it was set post season 4). It's what started the reading of NCIS fic. andrealyn started the reading of the West Wing fic. With her fic. WHICH IS GOOD.



1. Josh should not refer to Sam as love. Constantly and in public.
2. They should not be the White House's OUT GAY COUPLE.
3. TOBY SHOULD NOT BE JEALOUS OF THIS FACT.
4. Josh should never 'rub Donna's sex'. Okay, in general, I'm all up for a bit of euphemism, but there should be no rubbing of anyone's sex. WTF PEOPLE?
5. Jed/Leo/Josh BDSM fic. SHOULD NOT EXIST
6. Sam should not hate Ainsley, and feel she simply wants to get between him and Josh, or steal him away from Josh.
7. Donna should not somehow morph into a simpering giggling uber-slut.

1. Okay, in the Tony/Gibbs relationship, Tony is NOT the dominant one.
2. Abby, please see point seven of the list above and apply it here.
3. Kate, please see point seven of the list above and apply it here.
4. Ziva, please see point seven of the list above and apply it here.
5. Gibbs does not hang out in swingers clubs.

In general?
There should be no crying out of 'you complete me'. Ever. Please expand this to include almost any other cliche such as these.
If you are writing an NC-17 fic involving BDSM, don't go on for three paragraphs about sub-space.
If you are writing fic based off existing works, please do your best to ensure that the characters you are writing about bear at least a passing resemblance to the ones in the work.


Now onto the topic of Linguistics blogs

The Language Log is a long time fave, especially this entry about Dan Brown as well as this one about about speakers s hearers, or a more recent response dealing with the assertion that feminist ideologues are ruining english. It runs the gamut of the academic to the everyday, the esoteric to the accessible. Often quite amusing, almost always very intelligent, there are a number of contributors, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Evolving English a blog about the evolution of our language. Now, you will likely discover that for all of my quirks I am not a language prescriptive. In fact, they drive me mad. I have grammatical and linguistic pet peeves, as does everyone, but I acknowledge that language shift is an ongoing process. I delight the study of it, even if sometimes some of the shifts make me want to hurt things. This post on corporate speak is interesting, as is the discussion about biscuit and cookie in BrEng

Linguistic Anthropology. My baby, my field of study. How I love thee and how I wish to go back to school for thee.

John Wells daily phonetics blog. Brilliant brilliant man. Don't always agree with him, but wow. Emeritus phonetics professor at University College London and whilst he's one of the 'old guard' of linguistics in some sense, you never could tell by how he writes. I love reading him, even if his simplified spelling ideas sometimes send me around the bend.

Lingformant which gathers linguistics articles and gives synopses of them.

Motivated Grammar. Claiming to be a fiercely anti-prescriptive blog, this amuses me, as he is a bit of a prescriptive himself. An amusing an interesting one though, so I'll forgive him. His discussion of further and farther is neat.

There are a few more I read, but these are some of the more consistent ones. I really don't know if anyone other than frogmajick and myself is going to care, but hey, I'm here, and it's my blog, and if I want to tell you about linguistic blogs, I will.

Now to bed, seeing as this post has taken me most of the night to type.

Comments

[butterflysteve.livejournal.com]

Gibbs does not hang out in swingers clubs.

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Srsly. Off to write this now. XD

[deensey.livejournal.com]

Sadly, it's already been written. *headdesk*

[butterflysteve.livejournal.com]

Oh Bad fanfic why are you so rubbish. I stopped trying to read NCIS fanfic aaaages ago. Kate always ends up with Tony and goes off to have babies, I'd like to see a fic where Tony stays home for a change. See how he likes diapers and poop.

[deensey.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, well the swinger club was gibbs and kate, so no babies anywhere around.

[trigeekgirl.livejournal.com]

Do not get me started on the atrocities writers commit upon my poor Abs. The simpering slut, the one who suddenly decides, having met a good man (*cough*Timmy*cough*), that she wants to stay home and raise babies and never do another bit of forensics ever again, the one who goes out and does truly stupid things that she has to be rescued from by the big strong man, etc.

They've never seen the show. They really haven't.

[frogmajick.livejournal.com]

Has she ever been a wilting flower?

[deensey.livejournal.com]

CONSTANTLY. That Abs, totally the wilting flower.

[deensey.livejournal.com]

the one who suddenly decides, having met a good man (*cough*Timmy*cough*), that she wants to stay home and raise babies and never do another bit of forensics ever again

Oh fic writers, how you fail us all. Truly and completely.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Warning. If you don't have a sense of humour, stop reading. There are some overtly sexist comments below, designed to draw electric glares from one of my three favourite sisters and wry smiles from readers with said sense of humour.

Feminist ideologues insist on using "they", do they? The nerve of them!

If that had been an article about hir (a word, that despite my also non-prescriptive views of language (and taking queue from our dear mother, for once I'm claiming that you did get this from me) drives me bat-shit insane, since "they" and "their" already comes without any assumption of gender, and plural/singular issues are immediately evident in context).

Actually, there is a glaring error in the lingua franca of our (post-post-)Modern times: There's no plural male-specific pronoun that we can then treat as a gender-neutral pronoun.

Oh. Closing thoughts. That's a lot of high-brow web-pages for a girl to be reading. Are you sure you have your husband's permission?

(Scampers off to hide behind a hummock, or perhaps a hassock).

Doug.

[deensey.livejournal.com]

Oh man, hir drives me batty, as does 'herstory' or any variation of that. History comes from histos people, look it up.

Ahahaha, so I get the good things from you now too? (this is a good thing, right?)

That's a lot of high-brow web-pages for a girl to be reading. Are you sure you have your husband's permission?

Sadly, no, I did not. I should go back to cooking and cleaning now.

[moonborn.livejournal.com]

*grins at the thought of enraged deense screeching at the monitor every time she blogs about Splodge*
The thought of writing about my baby as a multitude - or at a remove, as implied by 'they' - makes no sense to me. Hir I can get, and understand the development of, though I prefer to use he/she in spoken format, rather than hir as in the written (fairy and I also use he and she depending upon how we feel at the time - it's funny to watch people think they've caught us out "revealing" Splodge's gender by accident).
Zie is the one that really blows my mind - wtf did THAT come from?!


I like the examples of "he" as a "gender neutral" pronoun in the linked article. :)

[deensey.livejournal.com]

Hee, see, I really could care less if people use he/she or any combo, I just get angry when they try and assert there is no singular gender neutral pronoun. They is, and has been for a very long time, just that.

Hir, you will never get me to agree to that, as the etymology that it bases its development on is wrong. Oh so wrong.

Zie??? wtf.

[trashtastika.livejournal.com]

"Word rage", and "typographical psychopaths " - bwahahaha :) I studied linguistics at uni but can't say I've ever followed up on it.

[deensey.livejournal.com]

I loved that article. In fact, i know some of those people, and those phrases are very appropriate in the end.

Heh, it's one of my pet loves, and I have books and things floating about that I'm usually halfway through. I go in phases I find, but sometimes I just need to share.

[andrealyn]

I've many a Josh/Sam rec in my memories if you're looking for the good stuff!

[deensey.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, awesome! I shall go and look. :D

I need a good Josh/Sam icon.

[plausive.livejournal.com]

Okay, in the Tony/Gibbs relationship, Tony is NOT the dominant one.

Yeah, I'm so going off to write bumbling dom!Tony/bitchy sub!Gibbs fic. Like RIGHT NOW. 'Cause that needs to happen, if only for the lulz. Tony would be on top for all of five min before Gibbs headsmacked him and told him he was doing it wrong. XD

Also, I made something AWESOME earlier, but you logged off before I could share. D:

[deensey.livejournal.com]

BWahahahaha, SEE THAT WOULD BE FUNNY.

OH NO! I FAIL!

[plausive.livejournal.com]

The tiny leather hat made it even harder than usual to take Tony seriously, and though Gibbs was naked, he didn't look impressed or intimidated by his leather clad and whip carrying lead agent. In fact, he looked bored.

"On your knees, Boss," Tony grinned, looking both cocky and thrilled to be in control all at once. He'd been shocked when Gibbs had agreed to play along. So shocked in fact, that it had taken nearly five minutes before it had registered, sending him flying out of bed and off into his closet to change.

Gibbs either didn't hear the order or didn't care, seeing as how he was still standing there, staring at Tony's tiny hat.

"I said... on your knees," Tony tried again, sounding a little less sure that time.

Gibbs just blinked.

"...Please?" the younger man tried, the tiny hat sliding out of place on his head, leaving it crooked.

A moment later and Gibbs was on him, knocking him to the floor, forcing his hands up over his head and pinning him down. "You're an idiot," he said simply, holding both of Tony's wrists in one hand so he could smack him upside the head.

"Now roll over and give me that whip DiNozzo."

>_>;; *whistles innocently*

And yes! You fail. D: Remind me to show you what you missed later.

[deensey.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's all types of amusing, as well as making me think all types of hot. ILU.

[plausive.livejournal.com]

<33

well, cause you know it has to get sexeh after that. And what's hotter than a tiny hat?

[deensey.livejournal.com]

GOOFY TINY HAT. I love it.