not quite a lost zebra day
6105 / 50000
Another 2k down, which Sam mostly spent thinking Ed may be attractive, but he's a tosser. Problem was I got distracted midpoint by going off to read a good third of In the City of the Seven Walls* (you know you've read something a few times too many when you're scrolling through for the exact point of the story you want to read it from, muttering 'nope, too early, so-and-so hasn't died yet') and all of With Six You Get Eggroll**. Which is kinda counterproductive to writing. Though at least when I went 'oh shit, stop reading City of the Seven Walls, it's 1:30am and you have to write and it's depressing you. This is not conducive to writing witty banter.', checking my word count it turned out I'd nearly passed the 2k mark and only had to write a couple more sentences to finish off the scene.
Pondering what percentage of slang that you pick up is on purpose/conscious and what is unconscious. I know I started using 'owt' because I liked it. And why do all the people who dismiss or pooh-pooh slang miss the fact that slang or dialect words often describe a specific concept that the original word doesn't quite encompass? (for the best example, see the English language and all the Norman French we incorporated - the French words translate as very similar, but because of the specific situation they came to be used in, came to mean slightly different things - or sometimes quite different in the case of mouton - just means 'sheep' in french, but due to it being used by the upper classes who only came into contact with sheep when it was on the plate, it became the word for the meat. Also see 'formal' speech.)
*Giant, complex, highly depressing SGA AU where Rodney and John get taken as slaves for two years and the repercussions of when they finally escape. Warning : not fun, and explores precisely all the ways that kind of thing fucks you up and how the military would deal.
**If you're a Due South fan and haven't read this, you fail. RayK and Fraser adopted a passel of kids sort-of-by-accident. It's a Speranza fic, which should provide you with all the info you need.