[ SECRET POST #2955 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2955 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 014 secrets from Secret Submission Post #422.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. http://i.imgur.com/ROodjIs.png

[(Anonymous)]

I'd imagine "Dear Mavis" might be a bit of a mood-killer even for those who aren't immediately reminded of something else.

(What are these things?)

[(Anonymous)]

[OP] The top image is the logo for the eponymous magic guild in the manga/anime Fairy Tail [sic]. The guild's founder was called Mavis; she still hangs around as a sort of patron ghost.

The bottom image is the album cover for Attack of the Grey Lantern, released in the late 90s by a band called Mansun (who, I'd guess, were probably pretty much unknown outside the UK...). Several of the songs' (very daft) lyrics mention someone called Mavis:
http://www.lemec.net/mansunly.html
...really, it's hard to take anything seriously once you've got 'Stripper Vicar' or 'Egg Shaped Fred' stuck on repeat in your brain while reading.

[were_lemur]

I'm not in the fandom, but I've been in fandoms where similar verbal substitutions have been used ("Oh my Force!" Obi-Wan exclaimed) and they generally seem jarring, even without odd associations that make them extra-amusing.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I guess it can depend on how it's done. If it's a phrase that's genuinely used often in canon, then fair enough. But usually it seems to be something that will appear maybe once or twice EVER in the original source - then fanfic authors hear it and go, "Aha, a nifty turn of phrase that I can use to make my dialogue seem more in character!", and jam it in about six times per chapter.

I remember a lot of Harry Potter fics with constant pseudo-cursing that revolved around Merlin. And then there were a handful of other, far sillier ones, where everyone (even the Muggle-borns) would always swear by "the goddess" - because they do magic so OF COURSE they're automatically Wiccan! (even though there is absolutely no evidence of this in the books and a fair amount of circumstantial evidence against it.)

[(Anonymous)]

I for one will never see "Mavis" and not think "Beacon Teaches Typing".

[(Anonymous)]

Same here!

Transcript

[(Anonymous)]

Image: the logo for the magic guild in the manga/anime Fairy Tail and the album cover for Mansun’s “Attack of the Grey Lantern.” [OP posted the full explanation in the second comment]

Text: Many authors for this [Fairy Tail] fandom have latched pretty hard onto the idea of characters swearing by Mavis - “Dear Mavis!”, “Mavis knows…” (as roughly equivalent to “Dear God!”, “God knows…”) and so forth.

Every time, my mind jumps to this [Attack of the Grey Lantern], and I sit cackling like an idiot for a few minutes. Which is fun, but often a mood-killer for the fic I was reading.

[(Anonymous)]

! I love that album. I haven't listened to it in a long ass time. Thank you OP.

[(Anonymous)]

[OP] You're welcome! \o/ It was an awesome album indeed.

[maldeluxx]

I really like that album (though it's the only one from them that I like *runs*) <3

[(Anonymous)]

[OP] My favourite individual songs were on Six (also the best cover art :D I had a six-foot-high poster of it on my bedroom wall). But Grey Lantern is overall the better album IMO - more cohesive, more dynamic, and generally less pretentious (despite the whole 'started to be a concept album then decided it couldn't be bothered' thing).

[maldeluxx]

I think the later albums do have some good songs; I've burned them on my compilation CDs (I think). Grey Lantern has great cover art... I would want a poster of it :)

[lb_lee]

I just can't take it seriously because Mavis sounds like someone's great-aunt.

--M/Rogan

[(Anonymous)]

Well, in-canon, she was a woman who lived a hundred or so years before the main story, and was an authority figure to some of the older surviving characters. So... she's kind of vaguely great-auntish. (Though she's always appeared as a ghost of herself as a child, and it's implied she may have died young.)

What bugs me about this more is that Mavis wasn't the kind of person who you'd swear by. She was a very intelligent mage, and founded a guild that the main characters belong to, but not a major religious or even political figure. It'd be sort of like... I don't know, a baseball player saying, 'Oh my Doubleday!' habitually. It just sounds wrong.

[lb_lee]

Now I'm enjoying imagining what swears would sound like if they were all named for well-known historical figures.

"Oh my Stan Lee!"

"You're out of your MLKin' mind!"

"GEORGE WASHING-DAMMIT!"

--Rogan