My Characters Speak Out

Jade: Guys, I’m worried about SpakKadi. She hasn’t published anything in weeks!

Artemis: I believe the word you are looking for is "days". It's barely been two weeks yet.

Jade: Still, anything more than a week is unusual, don’t you think? Plus, she's starting to get phone calls from people to make sure she's still alive.

Jo: You do realize that SpakKadi is merely the online representation of an actual person who has a job to go to and bills to pay and an apartment to clean and a job to go to-

Jade: You said job already.

Jo: She’s been working overtime.

Destiny: Anyway, we’re just characters in the fictional universe she’s been building since she was a kid. What can we do?

Jade: Encourage her to pursue some of her ideas for posts.

Artemis: Have you seen her ideas lately? The bananas she thought she left at the grocery store but ended up finding in the freezer? The bad day that peaked with someone eating her half-eaten chocolate cake out of the fridge at work? Come on!

Jade: Those were funny… Well, the cake one was. Who eats someone else’s half-eaten cake?

Destiny: Behold the power of chocolate. And free food. Maybe it was a Freegan.

Kitalia: I’m sorely disappointed that she didn’t comment on the explosion at Scaled Composites that killed three people.

Jo: Especially since the main stream media seems more interested in drunk astronauts than scientists and engineers dying for the cause of human space travel.

Artemis: That’s because the only people who know what Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne are and care that it happened also recognize the risks involved. Meanwhile, even a 2-year-old knows what an astronaut is. And there’s nothing like shattering a 2-year-old’s world view by telling them that astronauts have human failings.

Jade: What about the Avatar stuff she found? The fanfic about the theoretical conversation between the writers as they were writing season 2’s finale was funny. As was the Star Wars trailer for season 3. Book 2: Earth really was The Empire Strikes Back. But I'm sure lots of people are hoping Book 3: Fire doesn't have Ewoks.

Marcus: Hmmm. Two people will care about that stuff, and one of them doesn’t need to be re-introduced to the crack that is fanfiction. Next.

Jade: Thoughts on Harry Potter Seven?

Trevor: Harry Potter Goes Camping.

Artemis: Harry Potter’s Serenity.

Destiny: Love conquers all.

Jo: Or deux ex machina conquers all.

Marcus: Harry Potter and the Rise of Neville Longbottom.

Kitalia: Don’t mess with Mrs. Weasley. But we knew that already.

Jade: Harry Potter and the Flawed Life of Albus Dumbledore

Daniel Matthews: Snape wins!

Artemis: No one asked you, Draco.

Daniel Matthews: Oh, come on. Draco?

Artemis: You’re right. Peter Petigrew.

Daniel Matthews: Hey!

Jade: Moving on before things get violent…

Apollo: Mrow.

Artemis: I liked LOLCats, too.

Jade: There’s an interesting linguistic pattern there.

Destiny: I liked this one.

Jo: And this one.

Jeff: And this one hit the nail on the head.

…

Jade: You know, maybe we could convince SpakKadi to go back to fiction. I miss our stories.

Artemis: Except she’s working on The Kidnapping. That’s not fun.

Destiny: But certainly pivotal. You wouldn’t have Apollo. And I wouldn’t have my seizures.

Marcus: I’d rather hear about how I met you guys.

Jo: And how he proposed. *blushing*

Kitalia: How about Artemis’ origin story? Or mine? She’s got some of the key points, but nothing’s fleshed out.

Trevor: I think she’s practically forgotten that I exist. Hello! Jo’s cousin, here! I exist! Well, as much as one can exist in SpakKadi’s universe. Which, given some of her stories…

Jade: Oh! I think she should rework “Wrong Number” with a longer timeline. I know it’s a one off, but it’s truly creepy.

Ariel: I like.

Ari: I don’t.

Jade: Hush, you two. Anyway, that may be enough for now. She hasn’t had enough caffeine today to do my personality justice. And we're starting to get to in-jokes that are in-jokes among us. Which means no-one but SpakKadi will get them. Good night, everybody!

The Language of Online Gaming

In an attempt to exchange one time-wasting habit that gets my mind off work when I'm home for another, I've been playing online flash games lately. It's more intellectually stimulating than watching television, but still manages to require less thought than actually thinking. For a while, I played the Daily Show's Most Important Trivia Game Ever. Now I'm into Spades online. These games come with chatrooms that allow the players to talk to each other. Now, there are certain phrases that people tend to type repeatedly, and as happens with things that are oft repeated, they get shorten. Typical online abbreviations, like "LOL", are used, of course. But many abbreviations are unique to game playing and even specific games. For instance, at the start of a game, you might see this:

Player 1: gla
Player 2: gl
Player 3: gle
Player 4: gla/p

The last one only applies to spades or other games where you play with a partner. If you think about it for a second, even if you've never seen the abbreviations before, you might be able to figure out from the context that they mean "good luck, all", "good luck", "good luck, everyone" and "good luck, all/partner". At the end of a game, you will see similar exchanges of "gg"(good game), "gga" (good game, all), and the like.

But in spades, particularly, my chat screen fills with exchanges whose transcript would make no sense to a casual reader. Consider a typical game exchange:

Player 2: gjp
Player 4: ty, u2
Player 1: glnp
Player 3: *crosses fingers*
Player 3: gcp
Player 1: nnp
Player 4: xjp
Player 1: sry, p
Player 3: np
Player 3: nbp
Player 1: :)
Player 2: gln
Player 2: gga
Player 3 : xga
Player 1 : gg
Player 4: gg, rematch?

At first glance, it's utter gibberish. In fact, it's probably utter gibberish at second glance without the game as context. The first exchange between player 1 and 2 comes after they win a hand ("good job, partner", "thank you. you, too"). Player 3 then decides to bid nil, so their partner says "good luck with the nil, partner". After the nil succeeds, player 3 thanks their partner ("good cover, partner") and player 1 congratulates them ("nice nil, partner"). And so on. An "x" generally indicates "excellent", so any "g" that represents "good" could be replaced with an "x" during a particularly good hand or game.

It always happens that groups will create a new lexicon within a pre-existing language to fit their circumstances. Once you expand out some of the acronyms above, they still don't make sense unless you know how to play spades. So we have the collision of one special lexicon (terms unique to spades) with another(terms unique to online chat) to form another, yet more specialized lexicon (terms unique to online spades). Or you could see it as the spades lexicon colliding with the unique linguistic structure of online chat. Either way, you get farther and farther away from the parent language of English and the ability of outsiders to under WTH is going on.