#bang paths

this actually has to do with how the internet worked in the earliest days of its existence! it was this thing called "bang paths." there's an old post about it that has since been deleted but still exists in the wayback machine (thank you fanlore.)

basically, bang paths were a very early form of email addresses that would let you differentiate people who worked in different departments or places. the differentiating qualifier would go before an exclamation point, then their name would go after the exclamation point, so instead of sending your message to "Sarah" you would send it to "accounting!Sarah" (or whatever the abbreviation was for accounting.)

fandom appropriated it and now uses it for the exact same purpose—differentiation and clarification.

If I say "I prefer book Jacob," you might understand what I'm saying, but there's still a degree of ambiguity. This is especially true as the qualifiers get more weird and fanon-specific: "I hate when people write leather pants Draco."

using a bang path lets everyone know that I'm talking about what Fanlore calls a "trait!character relationship" between the two words. in other words, a specific interpretation or version of the character. it can denote a specific canon version, like in your example (movie!Jacob, or you can get even more specific: eclipse!Jacob) or it can denote a (usually different from canon)

career (professor!Bellamy)

gender (girl!Hiccup/fem!Hiccup)

sexuality (asexual!Merlin)

race (Black!Bella)

popular fanon interpretation (dad!Bilbo)

AU (coffeshop!Kagome)

or other quality (top!Aziraphale, dark!Harry)

I also frequently see it used to talk about different specific fic versions of characters—"perdition!Alice is different from politics!Alice."