Tag Archives: online

Language Cosplay (语c)

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old undergraduate student studying linguistic at Cambridge. She was previously involved in Chinese online youth subcultures and participated in “语C” (language cosplay), a text-based role-playing community that originated from online forums and fandom culture in China. She also have a love in studying online subculture that often involves writing and the use of languages.

Text:

The informant describes 语C as a form of pure text-based role-playing where participants pretends they are a certain fictional characters and interact with others through written dialogue and narrative description. Rather than simply writing stories, participants actively perform as characters by imitating speech styles, emotional reactions, and behavior in real time.

She explains that the experience always felt like more than just writing. It felt like performing, closer to dramatic acting than literature. Within this community, there are also shared vocabularies and conventions that only insiders understand. For example, participants often refer to a piece of writing as “the play” (戏) instead of a “story.”

Analysis:

This practice demonstrates how digital subcultures can transform writing into a performative and collective activity rather than an individual literary act. 语C functions as a form of vernacular performance, where identity is constructed through continuous role-play and interaction rather than fixed authorship. The emphasis on embodying characters highlights the blurred boundary between writing and acting, showing how online communities can create hybrid forms of artistic expression.

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Text: “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”

Context: This is a term that is prolific among fanfiction circles, particularly on Archive of Our Own, which uses a content tagging system. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years.

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” is a tag used on Archive of Our Own. EK notes the tag’s negative reputation, however, its “correct” usage simply means to pay attention to the other tags on the work, because what is tagged is what will be present in the fic. This often is usd in fanfiction with potentially triggering or upsetting content, because the author wants to emphasize that the content is tagged, and it should not come as a surprise to any reader who chooses to read the piece.

This tag’s origin comes from an Arrested Development scene, where a character opens the fridge to see a paper bag labelled “dead dove: do not eat.” He opens the bag and, when he finds a dead dove inside, says “I don’t know what I expected.” It’s in this way that the tag is meant to say that the fic is going to contain what the tags denote, and the reader should not be surprised by the content.

Analysis: EK discusses the misinterpretation of this tag as having a “scary” reputation–that often, “dead dove” is a red flag for many readers in and of itself, without even looking at the rest of the tags. Because it is often used on works with potentially triggering or taboo content, the tag itself has taken on a taboo reputation. It’s interesting to me, however, that this has become the case for a practice that is essentially a public service–“dead dove” itself doesn’t mean anything scary or taboo, all it does is tell a reader to know what they’re getting themselves into. I also believe that “dead dove” as a tag is kind of a sweet custom, on a fandom’s part; it’s community care, in a way, looking out for others to make sure they won’t be upset by anything they read. It’s also a measure of protection, as online anonymity makes people quite comfortable yelling at fic authors in the comments for things that were clearly advertised in the tags or description of a fic.

No Beta, We Die Like [Blank]

Text: “No Beta We Die Like [Blank]”

Context: This is a term that is prolific among fanfiction circles, particularly on Archive of Our Own, which uses a content tagging system. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years. She explains the meaning of the phrase is that the fic has not been “beta read” by someone else–it has not been read or edited by another person aside from the author before being posted online. While the original form of the phrase is “No beta we die like men,” often the phrase is customized toward the fandom, with “men” being replaced by the name of a character who dies in the show. EK notes that it’s usually a particularly painful death, often a particularly beloved character who died, whose name is substituted in. She also notes that it’s not always solely a character name–in some instances, it’s “my sanity” or other references to the author’s real life, or other times a reference to a commentary about the show’s writing [ie. “we die like [character’s] characterization] or other aspects of the property.

The origin of this phrase comes from a picture of a bumper sticker that read “no airbags we die like men.”

Analysis: EK views this as a public service announcement on a fanfiction, sort of a disclaimer meant to explain any errors or “bad writing” found within the piece. I also view this as a kind of signifier of in-group status, recognizing that someone is a member of a fandom and was emotionally impacted by a character’s death–enough to bestow their name within the tag, almost as a badge of honor. This is a way to make light of any emotional turmoil brought on by a character’s death and find community in the emotional response to a piece of media, as most fandom is fixated on.

Song lyrics as Fanfiction titles

Text: Song lyrics are often used as fanfiction titles on Archive Of Our Own.

Context: Archive of Our Own (Ao3) is a fanfiction site popular in the modern day. EK is a college student in Southern California who has been active in fandom spaces and fanfiction culture for a number of years. She describes the common practice of using song lyrics to title fanfictions because, as she says, “titles are hard, and songs are cool.” She notes that it is common to see this on “one-shots,” or single-chapter fanfics, but if this is found in a multi-chapter fic, she also describes the practice of using different lines from a song for each chapter title, as it applies to the content and characters. EK also mentions the genre of YouTube videos that compile these lyric titles, editing them together to create a kind of “lyric video” made entirely out of Ao3 screenshots.

Analysis: I view this as another form of texual poaching, as Henry Jenkins identifies in his studies on fan practice in Textual Poachers. This is the nature of “transformative work,” as fanfiction has often been called–here, different forms of copyrighted IP are brought together in a fanwork, used for new, explorative creative purposes. This, combined with the age-old tradition of fan playlists, as well as fanfiction often being populated by young writers who struggle with finding titles for their work, gives way to this fan practice. This also acts a kind of signalling to others within the same in-groups as the author–people who recognize the title are able to recognize that the author likes the same music and stories as they do, therefore creating a trust and connection between audience and author.

Gamer Folk Speech

Nationality: American
Age: 15
Occupation: Student
Residence: Lancaster, CA
Performance Date: May 2, 2021
Primary Language: English

Context:

My informant, AW, is my 15-year-old brother. He is heavily involved in multiple online gaming communities that exist on Discord and other social platforms and revolve around multiplayer online games such as Valorant and Overwatch. This piece was collected during an informal interview at home when I asked him to share something unique to the gaming community. I refer to myself at SW in the text.

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Main Text:

AW: “Whenever someone is doing really or someone just made a crazy play or an insane play or something like that, um, people would say like you’re popping off or you’re cracked or… um I mean this ones fairly normal but you’re insane or something like that. And people have taken that super far… instead of saying you’re insane people will literally say like ‘you’re absolutely bonkers. You’re mentally unstable.’ Meaning that you did something insane and stuff like that. So yea there’s a lot of terminology like that, that every gamer will understand.”

SW: “Where do you learn it?”

AW: “Um… literally just from talking to people a lot of social cues, a lot of – how I guess you would learn language. It’s just… you don’t ever ask you just kinda know eventually.”

SW: “Why is it important?”

AW: “Cuz every gamer knows it and every gamer says it. It’s… a lot more acceptable to say ‘you’re insane’ or ‘you’re cracked’ than it is to say ‘wow that was a really good play, good rally. That was… that was a good effort. You, you played that very smart.’ Like no one ever says that you say ‘dude you’re insane you’re cracked.’ Or, or you simply just say ‘sheeeeesh.’”

SW: “Which means what?”

AW: “It can mean a lot of things. But in the gaming culture specifically, it’s just a surprised reaction or a… an admiration of something. Like if someone just did something insane you’d go ‘sheeeeeeesh bro.’ Or like… or if someone does something like, super sus, if you know what that means, that’s another word that – yea if someone does that you’d just go ‘sheeeeeesh bro. Sheeeesh.’ It really can be used for anything, it has so many meanings it’s just like, an exclamation. 

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Analysis:

One of my favorite parts of the internet is how quickly folk speech spreads and how some sayings are universal while others only exist within a very specific group. I think the main purpose is to distinguish members of the group from outsiders. As AW mentioned, these phrases are picked up naturally as you spend more time in the community, so it becomes a way to tell how long someone has been in the community. In the gaming community, it’s probably especially important to form a group identity since most people have ever met each other face to face. Gaming folk speech seems to be largely focused on making things more hyperbolic, which might reflect the group culture of being more energetic and dramatic in both your manner of speech and your actions. This probably happens because you can’t rely on body language in these conversations, so you must come up with standardized ways to verbally express emotions of excitement or congratulations that might otherwise be expressed simply through a cheer or a high five.