Mysterious!notation?

[dvandom]

Okay, I keep seeing the "modifier!thing" construction in LJ posts. Since it's not part of any formal logical language I remember from Logic class in college, I'm guessing it's from a coding language. I asked razorsmile about it, but he didn't know either, just picked it up as a meme.

Can someone satisfy my curiosity on this?

Comments

[gary-williams.livejournal.com]

The "modifier!thing" usage you mentioned may have originated in fanfiction.

Read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark#Fandom

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

In programming != means not, such as Megatron != Autobot.

In fandom it's kind of an adjective-prefix, I usually see it in places like crazy!Gaeta or crazy!Robin.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that comes from the ~ notation used in logic, but things like crazy!Gaeta clearly doesn't mean "crazy not-Gaeta". Hence asking. :)

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

It's never made much sense to me, but I tended to accept it better after spending a couple of months reading Flea++ (http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Seeker)

[not-croaker.livejournal.com]

It may just be a separator, or it may have originally been intended to apply to the modifer as an actual exclamation point.

crazy!Baltar thus becomes CRAZY! Baltar.