Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 3680953" data-attributes="member: 32740">When you talk about this subject you've got two competing drives.  On one hand, because it's a fantasy world, you don't want everything that's said, and the WAY it's said, to be ported directly over from MODERN English.  So it's not surprising that we would want to hear both older and entirely newly fabricated words.On the other hand, because WE LIVE in a modern English world older words that might have been used for cursing just DO NOT have the same impact as they once might have.  Language changes, and not just by aging but also from place to place.  You can use words in Britain that have solid impact and are recognized as "cursing" to one degree or another that have no connotations whatsoever in America.  And, what Shakespeare might have thought of as a vulgar curse no longer sounds to OUR modern ears as anything REMOTELY like a vulgar curse because we just don't talk like he did and haven't for HUNDREDS of years.You get a similar problem if you're making up NEW curses and vulgarities - they don't hold the same impact as s... d... and f... do for us even if you want them to for your characters.  Points made about fantasy being percieved as a childrens genre are certainly not to be discounted though I think it's less of a factor than the above.Tarantino relies a LOT on the f-word but at least its usage "fits" the characters who use it most.  I think when you introduce curses and vulgarities into your fiction you've got several avenues to take but it's all a matter of choosing the least of the perceived evils.  Go with modern curses and you risk breaking the verisimilitude, but the curses retain their modern impacts.  Go with old curses and you hold on tighter to verisimilitude but the curses actually sound weak because of age.  Go with entirely new fabricated curses and you can actually build greater verisimilitude but have to work hard to build and retain a frame of reference for them.I think Firefly/Serenity had an excellent approach that was well-implemented, using something like "gorram" as a slurred and future-ised version of g...d..n, new slang like "shiny", and of course using Chinese phrases liberally throughout where most viewers had absolutely no knowledge of the exact translation but it was ALWAYS clear and emotionally impactful based on the context it was being used in.</blockquote>

Verification