Words words words words...

[osprey_archer]

21,000 words.

I came up with a way to avoid the Horrible Escape Scene. I hate escape scenes; almost always they make the bad guys look like total doofuses (doofi?). It's hard to fear a villain who leaves unnecessarily large air vents in all his prison cells, and doesn't even use them to pipe in poison gas or ninjas.

Also, I've been going back and forth on the word "kvetch." I'm almost positive some people will dislike its use in a fantasy novel, although really, why? Presumably the speakers of fantasy languages steal words from foreigners. It's one thing to object to an expression that's anachronistic (put a sock in it, in a world without phonographs), or obviously refers to an Earth person (Machiavellian, though I can't let it go without pain), but objecting to words because they have a less-than-purely-Anglo-Saxon etymology seems silly.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Put kvetch in! If your beta readers object, you can always take it out again.

Ah, doofus--a masculine noun, for sure.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

When I was in sixth grade, a friend and I wrote a story with a villain named Doofus. The only justification I can offer is that even at the time, we knew it was silly.

[longlegs21.livejournal.com]

Hmm..."kvetch" does sound somehow out of place to me. (Granted, I don't know what your fantasy setting is.) Maybe it's because "kvetch" is a relatively new addition to the English language, so its etymology stands out too much?

I don't know if I'm explaining myself very well here. :-/

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

No, I understand the reasoning. And even if kvetch had been used as an English word for hundreds of years, "kv" is obviously not a native English phoneme. It would stand out in any setting.

Also, I think having a Yiddish-inflected fantasy setting would be pretty awesome. I keep meaning to read The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but somehow it just doesn't happen...

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

If they kvetch about it, you can give them a virtual bitchslap.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

TRUE. Always a comforting possibility.

[enemyfrigate.livejournal.com]

In a fantasy world, presumably the people wouldn't actually be speaking English at all, but Vejezelbrox or something. So everything can be considered to be in translation, yes?

Go ahead and use kvetch. If it bothers you later, you'll find some way to get the sense across in a different way.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Presumably. Although honestly, thinking about translations makes me wonder who translated it and why and who wrote it down in the first place and...

Sometimes it's best not to push on the illusion too hard. O.o