Rational!Harry describes a character similar to the base except persistently Rational, for whatever reason. Rational-Harry describes a Harry which is rational, but it’s nonstandard usage and might confuse a few people (Is his name “Rational-Harry”? Do I have to call him that in-universe to differentiate him from Empirical-Harry and Oblate-Spheroiod-Harry?). Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he’s rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.
Anyway, adj!noun is a compound with a well-defined purpose within a fandom: to describe how a character differs from canon. It’s an understood notation, and the convention, so everyone uses it to prevent misunderstandings. Outside of fandom things, using it signals casualness and fandom-savviness to those in fandom culture, and those who aren’t familiar with fandom culture can understand it and don’t notice the in-joke.
Yes. I used it in an earlier version of this post reflexively, without even thinking about the connection to fanfics. My thinking was just ‘this is clearer than subscript notation, and is a useful and commonplace LW shibboleth’.
Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he’s rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.
Yes, that’s why I favor the hyphen (in response to shminux above).
Rational!Harry describes a character similar to the base except persistently Rational, for whatever reason. Rational-Harry describes a Harry which is rational, but it’s nonstandard usage and might confuse a few people (Is his name “Rational-Harry”? Do I have to call him that in-universe to differentiate him from Empirical-Harry and Oblate-Spheroiod-Harry?). Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he’s rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.
Anyway, adj!noun is a compound with a well-defined purpose within a fandom: to describe how a character differs from canon. It’s an understood notation, and the convention, so everyone uses it to prevent misunderstandings. Outside of fandom things, using it signals casualness and fandom-savviness to those in fandom culture, and those who aren’t familiar with fandom culture can understand it and don’t notice the in-joke.
I always figured it was like the scope resolution operator (“::”) in C++, but in some weird functional language that AI people liked.
Yes. I used it in an earlier version of this post reflexively, without even thinking about the connection to fanfics. My thinking was just ‘this is clearer than subscript notation, and is a useful and commonplace LW shibboleth’.
Yes, that’s why I favor the hyphen (in response to shminux above).