LOL. Fair enough.
What pet peeves do you have about trek books?
- Thread starter Garm Bel Iblis
- Start date
Yet if you take the "fear" and power out of these words they become meaningless.
Who ever said that they didn't? I'm sure they were farting all the time. I can totally picture Kirk sitting in the center seat, lifting a leg slightly, and letting one go. He'd try to make sure it was done as stealthly as possible, but he'd never be able to sneak it past Spock.
Can't you just see Spock raising his head from his Science console and raising an eyebrow and this follows:
"...Captain. I'm detecting rising levels of methane gas on the bridge. Should we signal a general evacuation?"
"...uh..no Mr. Spock. That's fine."
"but Captain, with methane levels as high as they are..."
"I said it's just fine, god dammit!"
"...of course sir."
You're being too literal. I'm not saying that she meant that statement to apply to this particular discussion. I'm saying an analogous principle applies. The words are intrinsically harmless; only the attitudes held by the people who use them or the people who react to them are good or bad.
Different cultures perceive profanity differently. What's obscene to one generation can be considered harmless to another. Heck, it's not just generations. Many of my fellow novelists, particularly the New Yorkers, use curse words far more casually than I ever would. It's just part of everyday speech for them. Closer to home, I once heard a person on the bus making casual and frequent use of a profanity whose literal meaning is quite hideous, entailing incestuous relations with one's mother, but he was using it without any emotion, anger, or meaning of any kind; in his particular idiom, it was merely a neutral speech particle, sometimes a pronoun, sometimes a verbal pause the equivalent of "like" or "y'know" in some people's speech. And he elided it to the point that it sounded more like "m'fuh" than anything else. It was totally devoid of meaning or impact to him. And yet when he did want to express strong emotion, the curse he used was, "What the hell?!" So it's not the words, it's the cultural value ascribed to them.
I think you mean "out of place." "Out of sorts" means depressed or irritable, particularly due to mild illness or the like.
And of course we don't see them curse on TV because it's on TV. We don't see the cops on Law & Order peppering their speech with F-words, but does that mean you believe that real New Yorkers don't use that word at all? For that matter, do you assume there are no bathrooms on the Enterprise just because they don't show it?
Anyway, ENT is supposed to be closer to our world. I can buy that the culture of the 23rd or 24th century doesn't embrace profanity to the same degree that ours does; as I said, the usage and abundance of profanity varies depending on the culture and era. But this was in an ENT novel, in a series whose whole point is to depict a future that's more familiar and closer to our own. So I don't see the problem.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Oh my turn! I want one of my pet peeves analyzed to death!
Um, Ok, lemme see. Oh yeah. I think the way of using a lot of apostrophes to make an alien name sound alien is old and tired.
Um, Ok, lemme see. Oh yeah. I think the way of using a lot of apostrophes to make an alien name sound alien is old and tired.
Some would argue that to describe a society as "more mature" is profoundly ethnocentric, and that it's not at all hard to see where someone from another society might be deeply insulted by the implication that his/her society isn't "mature."
My biggest pet peeve is the "small universe" stuff, like sets of main characters who aren't otherwise connected running into one another more often than seems likely in a setting of interstellar size. I recognize, though, that how often is too often is a pretty subjective question, and even though it's my pet peeve, I can't exactly say how much is too much.
Okay, that's it. I'm going to write a story about an all-human team led by Chief O'Brien and with team members named D'Angelo, L'Engle, N'Dour, 'Isma'il, and U'ilani. And maybe I'll throw in a !Keya while I'm at it.
"Hi, I'm Bob. That's short for R'Ober't"
You laugh, but...
I recently participated in the October fan fiction challege. I had never had any interest in fanfic, but the challenge was to produce something in collaboration with another BBSer, and Thor Damar cajolled me into working with him. It was hard but a lot of fun.
Anyway, one of our characters was a young Cardassian journalist who we eventually named Skrain Macet. But until we decided what to call him, for weeks he was known simply as "Bob."
Which cracked me up every single time - every. single. time. - I used it. We had to change it since we figured that if it cracked up me and Thor, it might very well crack up more normal people as well, and this was not supposed to be a humorous piece. This is why we also rejected a Cardassianized version of "Bob" - Thor did come up with one ("R'Bert," or something like that), but that cracked us up, too. So "Bob" had to go, alas.
But I really, really, really kind of wanted to call him Bob. Really.
Sorry - I got diverted there.
There is a problem with trying to make names too exotic, too, and this is a peeve of mine. If they're so weird looking that I can't even imagine how they might be pronounced, I find it really hard to remember them, and that's a problem, particularly if you're a mere reader trying to keep track of several alien characters. The thing to remember is that there are only so many syllables available, so I would like it if writers take care to not make a name exotic looking just to make it exotic looking. There is no shame in a name that looks only slightly exotic.
Last edited:
But there are plenty of human names that look very exotic and complicated to Western eyes. How do you pronounce Aztec deity names like Chalchiuhtlicue or Qiuhcoatl? Or the Chinese name Qu Qiubai? Or the Welsh village of Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll? How about the Los Angeles County Coroner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran? It would be silly to give all aliens simplistic names like Mala and Rogar and Zob when there's such a great diversity of names right here on our own planet.
it's the aliens with an apostrophe e'v'e'r'y g'o'd'd'a'm'n letter than annoy me. Chaka in Titan's real name is fine. so's Sti'atch or L'ken or K'nor. it's when it's a string of letter with an apostrophe between each that i roll my eyes...
What do you call an aquatic alien with no arms or legs (or fins)?
Bob.
Thank you, please tip your waitresses.
I really have no problem with the exotic alien names as long as we get a shorter easier to read nickname with it, like Chaka for K'chak'!'op. At least when they do that then you can always just think of them as the easy name. As for the use of them in general, it really doesn't bother me since it does make things alittle more interesting. I know some people prefer simple names like Smith or Jones, but IMO those kind of names get boring after a while.
