Gloss!
So I warped through various Googlings attempting to recollect a word that turned out to be “chibi” I’d found by way of a vague, ill-remembered Google-stumble (Gumble?) a week or so ago. That one had bounced me all unlooked-for into the Urban Dictionary, which is thoroughly untrustworthy (since anyone can post any definition of any word they like, and there’s far more posters than people doling out whuffie to the good ones and picking the pockets of the bad, and so you’ve got everything from obvious ringers to inexplicable inside jokes to self-aggrandizing posts from the best! Quake! Player! Ever!) and logy and slow as molasses and yet—like any pile of fecal matter—incredibly fertile ground, full of oddball turns of phrase and bits of slang to be tumbled and spun (“quallo,” “decency timeline,” “mella ned,” as for instances). Handle with care, but do handle.
But the Urban Dictionary is much too unwieldy to reverse-engineer, so I finally tumbled to “chibi” at this glossary of fanfic terms, which I’ve promptly bookmarked: it’s a wide-ranging sampling from the more active, participatory end of fandom (what fandom? Any fandom), and it’s full of tantalizing snapshots and unexpected trends, and though learning that “babyfic” is a notable subgenre of the Mulder Scully Married school is perhaps a bit too much information, how can one resist such scintillating terms as “schmoop” and “Barbieshippers” and “plotbunnies” and “bifauxnen,” or how “uffish” takes on a sheen from “unnamed fiction” which in turn once slipped out sideways from the Reading Gaol? —Though it seems odd that the rather useful pairing of “seme” and “uke” have been left out; luckily, they’re found in this rather more specialized glossary of slash fiction terms.
On my way there, though, I stumbled into this tantalizing-seeming list of online dictionaries, glossaries, and encyclopedias. Unfortunately, it’s crippled by link rot; almost all the best-looking links have long since 404ed. But there’s still this handy glossary of rhetorical terms (apparently, it’s hendiadys I’m fond of), and the inexplicable frisson of getting a Skynet 404 when you go looking for an Anne of Green Gables Encyclopedia on a whim (maybe you had to be there), and this instantly bookmarked dictionary of terms in use in bookbinding and book conservation.
—Which, I’ve just discovered, has been available from Glossarist.com all along, which site I’ve had over yonder in the linchinography, and obviously have not spent enough time browsing.
Anyway. “Chibi.” What was it I needed that for, again?
(Why, yes. I am procrastinating something. However could you tell?)
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Oddly, I was just thinking of researching slash because someone asked on neilgaiman.com about how he felt about slash, and especially himself in real slash.
(Not to mention that someone else was talking about slasher movies in another facet of my friends list.)
Well, if the "chibi" you were looking for is the Japanese one, it's best translation to English is "peewee" (meaning "shrimp" or "runt"). Although most cases in which I've run into it, it's used sarcastically to name fat kids. Amazing what crosses culture lines sometimes.
"Chibi" in anime/manga refers (so the little daughter tells me) to a particular style of drawing people, with exaggerated littleness. See "http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20021108.html#20021110" for two extremely amateur examples. I vaguely recall that in one episode of "Oh, My Goddess" we meet chibi versions of the goddesses for some reason.
Yeah, it's the David Chess sense I'm after; what was frustrating was remembering the concept (Japanese term used in anime for neotonic doodlings) and not remembering the word itself and, as sort of noted en passant, trying to come up with the Google search that would enlighten me. ("young + anime + slang" resulting in rather more noise than signal, you see.)
Oy, those "Apple" definitions. Many written by whinging Linux users, you know, the people who expect babies to appear as fully-formed humans from the womb, capable of doing differential calculus, installing spam filters, and rebuilding civilization from scratch as soon as the umbilical's cut. :) I'd recommend a few for deletion, but then they'd notice what browser I was using...