This is *such* a good point. A lot of conversation in RL veer off on such strange tangents when the meanings are so radically different. I too never really thought about the underlying assumptions going on there in somebody else's brain when I said, "OMFGD it's all going on the compost heap, every last bit of it! Gaaah, begone foul fiend!" Far from announcing that you could shovel anything you liked at people and you would henceforth be publishing any old crap, it means precisely the *opposite*. Somehow, I always took language like this to mean that you cared a very great deal about it, enough to hold it to stiff standards that it really wasn't meeting. Well, you might say it to a fellow writer in an extremely low-key, hip, offhand way, but it doesn't mean you won't be thrashing the thing into shape until all hours of the night. "Well, gotta go rewrite this crap" made me laugh a lot.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-04-05 02:22 am (UTC)A lot of conversation in RL veer off on such strange tangents when the meanings are so radically different.
I too never really thought about the underlying assumptions going on there in somebody else's brain when I said, "OMFGD it's all going on the compost heap, every last bit of it! Gaaah, begone foul fiend!"
Far from announcing that you could shovel anything you liked at people and you would henceforth be publishing any old crap, it means precisely the *opposite*.
Somehow, I always took language like this to mean that you cared a very great deal about it, enough to hold it to stiff standards that it really wasn't meeting.
Well, you might say it to a fellow writer in an extremely low-key, hip, offhand way, but it doesn't mean you won't be thrashing the thing into shape until all hours of the night.
"Well, gotta go rewrite this crap" made me laugh a lot.