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xaaraSo what, now just everybody does the "In Which" thing? I've never started a fad before, though, so it's interesting. Mob mentality and all. ;)
Okay, announcements:
1. I am going to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In great part because it's the least unaffordable place I got in, but also because I adore Madison and because it has one of the top-ranked schools of education in the US.
2. I am currently valedictorian of my class and therefore must make a speech at graduation. This is not a good thing, as I absolutely hate making speeches. I need solid, non-cliché ideas, people.
3. I've surrendered to the temptation and read just about everything there is to read about Battlestar Galactica, though I am sticking to the one-episode-a-week thing so I have plenty to obsess over until the new season starts.
4. High School baseball season has started and since I'm my school's designated fan (yes, fan, as in singular), I've been quite busy attending all the games. As it turns out, one of the parents of a player is a UW alum, so he entertains me with stories of his misspent youth when our team is losing too badly to watch.
And a short essay on the use of swear words in my fandoms, cut because of the use (only for academic purposes, of course) of copious amounts of language.
Frak That--Thoughts on Cursing in Fandom
I love the word fuck. It's an incredible word, really--you can use it as a verb (stop fucking around; just fuck him already), a noun (what a fuck), an interjection (fuck!), an intensifier (she's fucking stupid), and in a whole range of phrasal capacities ranging from "fuck off" to "fuck up." As a epithet, it's apt to every occasion, comparable to that ubiquitous little black dress. It is without question the most versatile expletive in the English language, and therefore when we seek to create universes outside our own, it's only natural that we try to create television-friendly words close enough in meaning to grant us even a fraction of its power. We almost always fall short in a variety of ways, as evidenced in three of my current fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica.
Buffy doesn't even attempt to push the limits, which is all right for the show--it is on broadcast television and therefore required to conform to certain standards. However, there are two distinct characteristics of the Buffy fandom that set it apart from most other TV fandoms: its British characters, and the prevalence of expletive use in its fanfiction. Let's be honest here, shall we? Spike has been in the United States at least since the mid-70s and probably before, if his reaction to returning to England in A Hole in the World is anything to judge by. Do we really think that Spike--chainsmoking, leather-wearing, DeSoto-driving, weapons-make-me-feel-manly Spike--isn't going to have picked up the word fuck somewhere in his travels? Of course he has, but the show can't, well, show that. So he curses with a full range of Britishisms, expresses himself with "bloody" and "bugger" (which, incidentally, is a sort of British--and inferior--version of "fuck"), and generally puts on an exterior that is US-friendly but would be bleeped for all it was worth in most of the English-speaking world.
The writers of Star Wars, especially those who wrote the books and comics, took a different, and less successful, tack. Instead of using curses in what is essentially a foreign language, they created curse words within the SW universe. This resulted in such banal and idiotic words as "sithspawned," "shavit," and "stang," all of which are clear substitutes and serve only to return the reader sharply into his own comfortable world of "fucking," "shit," and "damnit." In fact, SW curses are more likely to make us laugh then to intensify a scene. The use of mild swearing, such as "hell" and "damn" is generally well-executed; when SW gets into the hard stuff, it fails miserably.
Finally, we come to Battlestar Galactica, the only one of my fandoms that has created a convincing swear word: frak. Frak is a great word. It's close enough to "fuck" that its substitution for all instances in which "fuck" (or a varation thereof) would be used is believeable. It begins with a fricative f and ends in a plosive k, allowing anyone from a pilot to a civilian to scream it, breathe it, or laugh it. It doesn't involve the pronunciation of multiple conflicting syllables like those in "shavit" or "bloody." It works, and in the not-quite-foreign world of Battlestar Galactica, it gives us something to hang onto. I speak from long experience in saying that military members have some of the foulest mouths in the world, and I therefore find it gratifying that the writers of the show chose not to gloss over that, but rather to bring it into sharp focus.
People die. People die, and people lose card games, and people flunk tests. They run up against superior forces in battle, superior demons in the cemetery, and costumed men who fight them with physically impossible laser beams. As a result, they curse. It's something consistent throughout the range of world cultures, throughout thousands of languages. And unless you're going to tell me that the phrase "I am so fucking dead" didn't pass through Buffy's/Luke's/Kara's mind as he or she fought a goddess/was electrocuted/exchanged shots with the Cylons every 33 minutes for a week, then I think it's fair to say that we must extend the universality of expletives to the fandoms we all love.
Wow, that turned out a lot longer than I had planned. Agree? Disagree? I'd love to hear your opinion.
Okay, announcements:
1. I am going to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In great part because it's the least unaffordable place I got in, but also because I adore Madison and because it has one of the top-ranked schools of education in the US.
2. I am currently valedictorian of my class and therefore must make a speech at graduation. This is not a good thing, as I absolutely hate making speeches. I need solid, non-cliché ideas, people.
3. I've surrendered to the temptation and read just about everything there is to read about Battlestar Galactica, though I am sticking to the one-episode-a-week thing so I have plenty to obsess over until the new season starts.
4. High School baseball season has started and since I'm my school's designated fan (yes, fan, as in singular), I've been quite busy attending all the games. As it turns out, one of the parents of a player is a UW alum, so he entertains me with stories of his misspent youth when our team is losing too badly to watch.
And a short essay on the use of swear words in my fandoms, cut because of the use (only for academic purposes, of course) of copious amounts of language.
Frak That--Thoughts on Cursing in Fandom
I love the word fuck. It's an incredible word, really--you can use it as a verb (stop fucking around; just fuck him already), a noun (what a fuck), an interjection (fuck!), an intensifier (she's fucking stupid), and in a whole range of phrasal capacities ranging from "fuck off" to "fuck up." As a epithet, it's apt to every occasion, comparable to that ubiquitous little black dress. It is without question the most versatile expletive in the English language, and therefore when we seek to create universes outside our own, it's only natural that we try to create television-friendly words close enough in meaning to grant us even a fraction of its power. We almost always fall short in a variety of ways, as evidenced in three of my current fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica.
Buffy doesn't even attempt to push the limits, which is all right for the show--it is on broadcast television and therefore required to conform to certain standards. However, there are two distinct characteristics of the Buffy fandom that set it apart from most other TV fandoms: its British characters, and the prevalence of expletive use in its fanfiction. Let's be honest here, shall we? Spike has been in the United States at least since the mid-70s and probably before, if his reaction to returning to England in A Hole in the World is anything to judge by. Do we really think that Spike--chainsmoking, leather-wearing, DeSoto-driving, weapons-make-me-feel-manly Spike--isn't going to have picked up the word fuck somewhere in his travels? Of course he has, but the show can't, well, show that. So he curses with a full range of Britishisms, expresses himself with "bloody" and "bugger" (which, incidentally, is a sort of British--and inferior--version of "fuck"), and generally puts on an exterior that is US-friendly but would be bleeped for all it was worth in most of the English-speaking world.
The writers of Star Wars, especially those who wrote the books and comics, took a different, and less successful, tack. Instead of using curses in what is essentially a foreign language, they created curse words within the SW universe. This resulted in such banal and idiotic words as "sithspawned," "shavit," and "stang," all of which are clear substitutes and serve only to return the reader sharply into his own comfortable world of "fucking," "shit," and "damnit." In fact, SW curses are more likely to make us laugh then to intensify a scene. The use of mild swearing, such as "hell" and "damn" is generally well-executed; when SW gets into the hard stuff, it fails miserably.
Finally, we come to Battlestar Galactica, the only one of my fandoms that has created a convincing swear word: frak. Frak is a great word. It's close enough to "fuck" that its substitution for all instances in which "fuck" (or a varation thereof) would be used is believeable. It begins with a fricative f and ends in a plosive k, allowing anyone from a pilot to a civilian to scream it, breathe it, or laugh it. It doesn't involve the pronunciation of multiple conflicting syllables like those in "shavit" or "bloody." It works, and in the not-quite-foreign world of Battlestar Galactica, it gives us something to hang onto. I speak from long experience in saying that military members have some of the foulest mouths in the world, and I therefore find it gratifying that the writers of the show chose not to gloss over that, but rather to bring it into sharp focus.
People die. People die, and people lose card games, and people flunk tests. They run up against superior forces in battle, superior demons in the cemetery, and costumed men who fight them with physically impossible laser beams. As a result, they curse. It's something consistent throughout the range of world cultures, throughout thousands of languages. And unless you're going to tell me that the phrase "I am so fucking dead" didn't pass through Buffy's/Luke's/Kara's mind as he or she fought a goddess/was electrocuted/exchanged shots with the Cylons every 33 minutes for a week, then I think it's fair to say that we must extend the universality of expletives to the fandoms we all love.
Wow, that turned out a lot longer than I had planned. Agree? Disagree? I'd love to hear your opinion.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-13 07:42 pm (UTC)Then again, my language tends to be rather on the non cursing side anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-13 07:47 pm (UTC)And I actually don't curse all that much either--I'm more of an "Oh crap!" person. I just think curse words are interesting for their versatility.