Wow. Upon occasion, I read an entry in someone else's journal, and it's like I'm reading Latin or Arabic or something. Complete lack of comprehension. It's all full of acronyms and names, like I should know who all these people are and why they're important and how they all relate to each other and why in the world it should be meaningful when Aidan says blah blah blah to JoJo.

And I sit here, sort of shaking my head and squinting, and I wonder, "Has the world tilted on its axis? Is this actually supposed to make sense? Am I the only one with the gibberish in my brain?" I mean, this person is on my reading list ... I should have some idea what they're talking about, right?

And then I realize that it's some unnamed, mysterious fandom. The journal entry doesn't actually say what it's about, but it's assumed that the reader knows. It's sort of zen, in a weird way. Or maybe not. Maybe I just imagined the zen thing. I do that sometimes: imagining zen. It's very zen. Or maybe not.

Anyway, what I find particularly interesting about this phenomenon is that most people do this whole thing very differently when they're writing about real people. They either explain who the people are and how they relate to each other or they try to make it obvious from context. But it's as if fictional people simply require no explanation. Because obviously everyone watches "Who's the Salmon?" so there's obviously no reason to explain anything.

The world so often mystifies me.