Star Trek- there be spoilers

[Rapscallion]

TOS!Kirk had a father he looked up to and admired. Reboot!Kirk had a stepdad who he thought so little of that at 9 he stole his antique car and deliberately drove it off a cliff.

Awesome, wasn't it?

They're not the same person - just have the same name.

Enough similarities, though, and by the end of the second movie he's been moulded by circumstances more towards the Kirk of the old series. It's a far younger Kirk we're dealing with. No need for a bad wig yet.

Rapscallion

[HYHYBT]

TOS!Kirk had a father he looked up to and admired. Reboot!Kirk had a stepdad who he thought so little of that at 9 he stole his antique car and deliberately drove it off a cliff.

All right... this is off topic and all, but it seems like as good a place to ask as any. Why do people write that sort of thing with an exclamation point between the words? Why that specific symbol, out of all the possibilities including a simple space? (Please note that "because that's the way it's done" isn't really an answer at all.)

[Kheldarson]

All right... this is off topic and all, but it seems like as good a place to ask as any. Why do people write that sort of thing with an exclamation point between the words? Why that specific symbol, out of all the possibilities including a simple space? (Please note that "because that's the way it's done" isn't really an answer at all.)

Because it's the way it's done :P

It developed from fanfic, I believe (it's where I see it the most so...). It denotes major differences or themes on the character. So if you're writing a dark fic, you might write Dark!Harry as a warning to your audience. Or if you're being silly, you might write Fluffy!Harry instead.

Can't tell you when it started (cause it wasn't on FFN back when I first joined that site) but it has really become a thing in the past decade or so.

[SongsOfDragons]

It's possibly also the adapted use of the exclamation mark for this purpose. Seeing that what I would generally use for something like sorting files is /, and that has a different meaning in fanfic all together. It's a symbol that's as tall as any letter and so doesn't leave any weird spaces like , ; . or ' would, and/or would not be misinterpreted as a name.