One Angry Monkey

There’s one key issue which dungeon-masters everywhere seem unable to agree on — the use of profanity in fantasy novels. For some reason people like to think of medieval society as this pristine environment where the innocent inhabitants are unsullied by the concept of swearing, let alone the reality of it.

Uh. WTF?

This has to be influenced, at least in part, by Lord of the Rings. Tolkein created this world where people just didn’t seem to swear. Hell, some of them randomly burst out into cheerful, life-affirming song whether you wanted them to or not. And to some extent that was a valid approach. I mean, come on. Gandalf stands defiant before the balrog. He raises his staff above his head then then slams it down, screaming, “Get fucked!” It would detract a little from the mood.

There were places where it may have been more fitting. If I, like Frodo, had some little freak bite my finger off, I’d be swearing at it even as it fell to its death in a pit of lava. Later on, as I lay dying on the side of Mount Doom, I’d probably turn to my faithful companion and say, “Jeez, we’re kind of fucked now aren’t we?” Yeah, I’d make a bad hobbit.

I am human though, so I might be a bit more qualified to comment on the siege of Minas Tirith. Huge orc army coming. Elephants (oliphaunts, whatever) with big spiky things attached to their already spiky tusks stomping along, decimating all the little horse riders who keep coming for whatever reason. “Fuck that,” I’d say, and find myself a softer target. I’m in the city. Chunks of stone the size of the elephants’ heads are raining down on me. “Oh, shit.” Apparently I’m not a good human either. What can you do?

People seem to have developed this unrealistic idea of what people spoke like in the past. The reality is, our current profanities are some of the oldest words in our language. Society has developed this pathological fear of swearing and the political-correctness revolution has only made matters worse. There are so many words we just can’t use these days. It’s now the f-word (or f-bomb if you’re American and have a yearning to make yourself sound like a complete and utter dipshit to the rest of the world), the other f-word, the n-word, the s-word, the b-word and the c-word. There are more than that of course but I’m getting tired of typing *-word.

Funnier still are the people who just kind of jumble up the letters. I saw a sentence including the word cnut. At first I assumed it was a typo. Apparently not. Apparently swapping 2 letters makes a word acceptable to the puritanical censors out there. Fair enough. But I’m calling people who p-word me off sea-nuts from now on.

The whole idea is ridiculous. Singling out fantasy as the one genre where swearing should never happen? Why not censor everyone, I say. Someone should go and tell Stephen King not to use swear words in his books. Sell tickets — I think that’d be a conversation worth watching.

Making a blanket rule that swearing shouldn’t be used at all in a particular genre is just not realistic. I’ll take my swearing out if artists who focus on fantasy images stop drawing female elf-warriors in revealing armour with their tits half popping out, how’s that?

What a fucking lot of bullshit.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.