[The Tyrant Lizard]

I recently read an interview with Joe Abercrombie, and he spoke strongly of his view of swearig in fantasy. He said he felt that using words invented to replace fuck and shit were stupid, and he didnt like the use of devine beings' body parts. (Hoods Balls I suppose.)

What Do you think?

I think as long as it sits with the character, and isnt used in the narative, then its fine. One of the first times I saw a swear word was in Dawn Thief, when the barbarian went 'Fuck' after he saw the dragon. I thought it sounded extremely stupid and out of place. Abercrombie's characters tho, wouldnt seem right without swearing the whole while.

There is also the illiusive C-word that people love to hate. When I read that in a fantasy book, and I think it fits in with the context, I think itas cool. I also think the author's got balls, even if he is a complete cunt

[Macros]

I agree to a certain extent that replacement swear words are silly, I understand the need, for example, in Battlestar galatica for frack, its prime time tv and so swearing is out.
If its making up swear words, like "bags" is just plain retarded, its like stubbing you toe and seeing a child about so shouting FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.......iddlesticks??
the kid knows what you were going to say anyway, so just yell it out to fuck.
The religion one I don't mind, for god's sake and jesus christ!!! would hardly sit well in an alternative universe, so improvising blasphemes around created gods is quite sensible.
But where it gets very irritating (I've had this duscussion with someon (ter?) before) is when they use regular swear words like fuck and shit, but only very rarely, the majourity of the swearing being made up or improvised blaspheming.
Erikson is culpable of this, the majority of his "swearing" is the improvised blaspheme but theres the occassional fuck thrown around (fucking dragon) which always strikes me as off, I mean, consider the majourity of your personal experience with swearing, the F, S and B get more usage than the JC (imo) so the excesive blaspheming with regards to minimal "swearing" swearing is discordant. The counter argument I suppose being in a world with some many gods that are active blaspheming could be considered a more edgy swearing form.

In a summary of my rambling:
Where no swearing is present, don't try and improv it (LotR doesn't have swearing falseto or otherwise and it gets by just fine)
DON'T make up retarded swear words like Bags or the much malinged mothers milk in a cup
If you do use the real our world swear words, use them, don't just throw in the very occasional one, it makes them look out of place, all or nothing my good man.

[stone monkey]

I think we were talking about this at the last Xmas meet in Manchester iirc.

I'm in the real world swearing camp myself; fantasy swearing, whilst in keeping with the whole ethos of world and culture building, strikes me as just not having quite the same effect on the reader as a good old-fashioned bit of Anglo-Saxon...

It also occurs to me that this is almost exactly the same issue as occurs when translations are made [into English] from languages that have different forms of address inbuilt (such as Japanese), where deliberately using the wrong form of address to someone is incredibly insulting. Because this kind of sublety is pretty much impossible to express efficiently in a literal translation then would-be translators find themselves almost forced into resorting to the potty-mouth option in order to show the shock value of such a conversational gambit.

[Cause]

Im of two minds. It comes down to in my opinion a few things. Namely the the world the authors skill and some thing I cant name but comes down to the reader. Take a song of ice and fire as an example. When I first started reading it and I learnt in the first chapter people had names like eddard and jon and richard I was taken aback. Those are real world names. Every use of them sent me realing back out of the fantasy world GRRM had created crashing back to reality. Than I realised in the world GRRM had created it was perfectly normal for people in westeros to have these names while dothraki have names like aggo and drago. Now I cant imagine eddard being called ish'ka'tra. That would just be stupid! Now what does this have to do with the swearing in fantasy. Its simple so long as the author gets you to accept his world, sucks you in and keeps you he has succeeded. For some novels like GRRM hearing Jaimes lannister say fuck shit and cunt is perfectly nattural. Hearing Zedd say baggs instantly destroyed the connection I had with the story because it come off so obviously as an attempt to say anything other than fuck. Hearing mat cauthon scream off blood and bloody ashes every five minutes seemed to fit him as a character and the world as a replacement for fuck. He comes from a small village, his culture holds that seeing a womens ankles is the equivalent to me spying on the females changing room at gym via webcam. Him saying fuck would have been the bags of Wot.

Its obviously not clear cut all I can conclude is that the author needs to decide if the swearing fits his characters or not, fits his world or not. A clear test I would suggest is if the character is something in place of fuck for no othher purpose than to avoid saying fuck than your better of saying fuck.

[Macros]

meh whilst I agree slighthly on the topic of mat being from a backward village place, what about the people from the scandalously clad women areas?
its not consistent with this theory to have a consistent swearablary through all the classes and regions. so mat should shut up or let rip with a good old "get out of my fucking hair women!"
(erikson dodges this bullet by having people curse by other gods, such as the errant in letharas)
Its still a silly swearage, jordan should have went down the tolkien route (like he did with mount dhoom, sorry ) and not bothered swearing.
Mat strikes me as the rogue of two rivers, surely he can come up with something more offensive than what an aes sedai has been known to mutter?

[polishgenius]

I like Erikson's made-up swearing, but mostly because 'Hood' works as something to swear with, in my head.
It has to have a ring to it, if it's made up. Frak sounds bloody stupid to my ears, but gorram sounds fine.

A mixture is usually best though. Blasphemy in a fantasy world will almost always be improvised for the simple reason outlined by Macros, but other swearing should, unless you've got a really good reason or are damn certain that it works, be real. So writers like Erikson and Mieville who mix it up (Although in opposing proportions) are the ones I think do best out of it.

[Salt-Man Z]

I feel Erikson has been leaning to heavily on "real world" cursing with the last few books (compared with the first 4 books or so) to the point where it takes me out of the story. I've been a big fan of the in-universe curses all along: "Hood's breath!" "Fener's hoof!" etc.

Made-up swearing that bugs me? Star Wars. "Fierfek" and "kriffing". I'm serious. Blargh.

[Cougar]

Ok I've made this point before but I can't be bothered finding it so here goes:

When you are reading a fantasy novel they aren't speaking English right, so suspending disbelief you are reading a translation into English of a language that exists only in the authours mind if at all ( I don't believe that Erikson has any concept of the different contemporary languages of the Malazan world) older languages (generally represented in italics) are not translated, presumably to reflect the fact that few of the characters understand them and that they sound out of place in normal speak (for an example see Eleint language as used by Crone at the end of GotM)

So when they swear it's got to be in English; an invented swear word is totally at odds with what the authour is doing (unless the swearword is Eleint or Jaghut), hence I didn't mind 'Fucking Dragon'. As for blaspheming you might consider that it is somewhat worse to take a gods name in vain when you know they are real, not only that you might meet one on a street corner! Moreover, would you want to abuse Feners name when his acolytes might cut you to bits. That means blaspheming is far more serious. Jesus Christ or my God don't seem bad to us cos the inquisition or the parsih preist aren't around to have you executed, you could be stoned 2000 years ago for using the name of god and some muslims would still want your head if you drew mohamed.

[caladanbrood]

Meh, what I don't like with Erikson's is the inconsistancy. He clearly tried not use proper swearwords to originally, but at some point obviously just gave up. It's a shame.

[Cougar]

caladanbrood, on Nov 19 2008, 10:54 PM, said:

Meh, what I don't like with Erikson's is the inconsistancy. He clearly tried not use proper swearwords to originally, but at some point obviously just gave up. It's a shame.

Well that is a fair call, he even used Hell a couple of times in GotM before he changed it to Abyss.

[teholbeddict]

Cougar, on Nov 19 2008, 05:08 PM, said:

caladanbrood, on Nov 19 2008, 10:54 PM, said:

Meh, what I don't like with Erikson's is the inconsistancy. He clearly tried not use proper swearwords to originally, but at some point obviously just gave up. It's a shame.

Well that is a fair call, he even used Hell a couple of times in GotM before he changed it to Abyss.

I agree I was all for it when the swearing/cursing in the name of the gods appeard initially in the series. It made sense as the gods are such an integral part of the story, but common place curses started to appear it took away from the credibility of it all. I will say that ICE had some good uses of the gods/realms for swearing in ROTCG.

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

My opinion is that using english curse words in a fantasy novel is akin to using modern slang - since that what most curse words are. I would rather it be avoided altogether. Abercrombie is entitled to his opinion, but the shear amount of times he uses modern curses is one of the main reasons I stopped reading his books. My suspension of disbelief was lost very quickly.

Made up words can be fine or can fail miserably.

In a setting where the gods are prevelant, I think religion based cursing works best as it both gets the point across and makes sense for the setting.

[Cougar]

Gwynn ap Nudd, on Nov 20 2008, 02:05 AM, said:

My opinion is that using english curse words in a fantasy novel is akin to using modern slang - since that what most curse words are.

Well that'd only true to a certain extent and if you extend your logic then it doesn't make sense at all.

First up lots of swear words are good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon and have long historical roots, however the antiquity/modernity of the language used is utterly irrelevant. There are obvious reasons for this:

1. The characters are not speaking English; the words you are reading are a translation

2. The time period represented in the world may be analogous with a given time period in earth history but it is by no means contemporaneous, so saying a word is too modern has no merit or logic.

3. Following on from this argument, should a period roughly aligned technologically with the middle ages use an analogous form of English for authenticity, should, say Bakker's books read like the Canterbury Tales? - obviously, no. Do you restrict what words can be used because they are modern words - no of course not, you are describing something to a modern audience. Whilst genuine colloquial slang may not be acceptable (you wouldn't expect Mat Cauthon to scream 'do-one you chav tosspiece' at a grey man) words like 'fuck' 'c*nt' etc are part of the English dictionary as much as any other part of the language and in many cases are far older than some modern descriptive words, the use of which wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Really I'm asking why we should ringfence cursing as off limits just because it is offensive.

It's a similar problem I have with names; all names in fantasy should be written pretty much phonetically, there is absolutely no need for accents, umlauts and circumflexes in names when the people who are speaking in the novel are actually not speaking English and pressumably not using the latin alphabet, it is nothing more than an affectation designed to deliver some kind of pseudo-authentic impression and it's super-anoying when you try to discuss it with other people.

This post has been edited by Cougar: 20 November 2008 - 08:42 AM

[Use Of Weapons]

Re: swearing -- my favourite bit of fantasy swearing is actually Jordan's 'Peace!' as used by the Bordermen. (Plus, I thought it was hilarious that Uno tried to control his language around Nynaeve.) But he is also the author of my least favourite: 'blood and bloody buttered onions', which Elayne memorises as being particularly flavoursome.

I like the oaths in Wu, they fit. There should be a combination of religious and scatological swearing, IMO -- the two form the roots of pretty much all swear words and intensifiers in English. We also, in English, derive a number of exclamatory words (some now obsolete) from religious roots, such as 'strewth' (God's truth).

[polishgenius]

Cougar, on Nov 20 2008, 08:39 AM, said:

Gwynn ap Nudd, on Nov 20 2008, 02:05 AM, said:

My opinion is that using english curse words in a fantasy novel is akin to using modern slang - since that what most curse words are.

Well that'd only true to a certain extent and if you extend your logic then it doesn't make sense at all.

First up lots of swear words are good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon and have long historical roots, however the antiquity/modernity of the language used is utterly irrelevant. There are obvious reasons for this:

1. The characters are not speaking English; the words you are reading are a translation

2. The time period represented in the world may be analogous with a given time period in earth history but it is by no means contemporaneous, so saying a word is too modern has no merit or logic.

3. Following on from this argument, should a period roughly aligned technologically with the middle ages use an analogous form of English for authenticity, should, say Bakker's books read like the Canterbury Tales? - obviously, no. Do you restrict what words can be used because they are modern words - no of course not, you are describing something to a modern audience. Whilst genuine colloquial slang may not be acceptable (you wouldn't expect Mat Cauthon to scream 'do-one you chav tosspiece' at a grey man) words like 'fuck' 'c*nt' etc are part of the English dictionary as much as any other part of the language and in many cases are far older than some modern descriptive words, the use of which wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Really I'm asking why we should ringfence cursing as off limits just because it is offensive.

It's a similar problem I have with names; all names in fantasy should be written pretty much phonetically, there is absolutely no need for accents, umlauts and circumflexes in names when the people who are speaking in the novel are actually not speaking English and pressumably not using the latin alphabet, it is nothing more than an affectation designed to deliver some kind of pseudo-authentic impression and it's super-anoying when you try to discuss it with other people.

I've got to agree with the historical swearing thing. People seem under the impression that people in olden times didn't swear, but the word fuck probably goes back to Viking times at least and Chaucer used 'queynte'. It's not as if they're new inventions.

[stone monkey]

polishgenius, on Nov 20 2008, 01:30 PM, said:

I've got to agree with the historical swearing thing. People seem under the impression that people in olden times didn't swear, but the word fuck probably goes back to Viking times at least and Chaucer used 'queynte'. It's not as if they're new inventions.

When Chaucer used it, it wasn't swearing, just the usual word used to refer to that particular part of the female anatomy. A version of the word also pops up in Henry V iirc, although it is treated as being a rude word then...

I kinda disagree with Cougar about accents and the like; I mean, if you look in a dictionary you'll see accents and emphasis marks and diaereses all over the place. So I feel that if an author wants to guide the reader towards a preferred pronunciation of a made up word then that's his or her prerogative. That said, I, and diverse others mind you, still feel that SE is wrong on the pronunciation of "Tiste."

[The Tyrant Lizard]

Cougar, on Nov 20 2008, 08:39 AM, said:

(you wouldn't expect Mat Cauthon to scream 'do-one you chav tosspiece' at a grey man)

But it would be puking funny... (I used puking from A Quest for Lost Heroes, just to sty on topic - one of Gemmel's worse less good ideas, I fear.)

[Cougar]

stone monkey, on Nov 20 2008, 04:08 PM, said:

mind you, still feel that SE is wrong on the pronunciation of "Tiste."

Oh god that's so true there is no way that any fanasy race should have a name so similar to Testes.

[Salt-Man Z]

Wait, so how does SE think "Tiste" should be pronounced?

[Cougar]

He pronounces it Tie(as in neck tie) st (as in station).

I was making a joke on those who pronouce it tiss (like kiss) tee