You must think it's very odd of me
Nov. 30th, 2015 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiIn a bout of insomnia last night, I finally started reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which is living up to its hype (decidedly unlike another book I'll write about this week, if I find the time).
But I'm annoyed by one small thing, a personal pet peeve of mine when I read fantasy.
In this second world fantasy, we see people referred to as "sodomites*."
(ETA: We see the word used by the country that invades Baru's and destroys their way of life; its use is never to actually condemn the act from an authorial or reading perspective.)
Look, I get that all second-world fantasy is essentially run through a very good** magical version of Google Translate. No one in this book, or on Middle Earth, or in the Star Wars movies, is speaking English. I get that. But there are certain English words -- either eponyms like "maverick" and "mesmerize" or mythology-derived ones like "Achilles tendon" and, yes, "sodomy" -- that jump out at me. I realize that there are a ton of words in these categories, and not all of them stand out even to really good writers (even I'll overlook "shrapnel"). But when they stand out, they have a habit of throwing me out of the work. Since almost all second-world fantasies also give us a flavor of the native language as well, it seems like a great opportunity to coin some new words.
This is entirely my own pet peeve, and it's not realistic to expect authors to change (although there is a natural limit -- don't you dare put a Bowie knife into your fantasy, and I'll side-eye you if you can't refer to a hairstyle by any name other than sideburns). Unless an author is explicitly making a linguistic statement (the Ancillary series, for example), getting things in "plain" English is fine***. It's just something that for some reason I notice.
The other, even less rational, issue I have? I keep seeing "Baru," and expanding it to "badtz maru" for some reason, and now I want a book about The Traitor Badtz Maru, in which we see the entire Sanrio empire taken down.
Anyway, the book's great so far.
*This happens in chapter 1; if you're the sort of person who will complain about spoilers when talking about the first three percent of a work, you're probably not reading the right LJ.
**or not-so-good, if you're talking about someone like John C Wright.
***And yes, not taking an explicit linguistic stand is also a stand. I get it.
But I'm annoyed by one small thing, a personal pet peeve of mine when I read fantasy.
In this second world fantasy, we see people referred to as "sodomites*."
(ETA: We see the word used by the country that invades Baru's and destroys their way of life; its use is never to actually condemn the act from an authorial or reading perspective.)
Look, I get that all second-world fantasy is essentially run through a very good** magical version of Google Translate. No one in this book, or on Middle Earth, or in the Star Wars movies, is speaking English. I get that. But there are certain English words -- either eponyms like "maverick" and "mesmerize" or mythology-derived ones like "Achilles tendon" and, yes, "sodomy" -- that jump out at me. I realize that there are a ton of words in these categories, and not all of them stand out even to really good writers (even I'll overlook "shrapnel"). But when they stand out, they have a habit of throwing me out of the work. Since almost all second-world fantasies also give us a flavor of the native language as well, it seems like a great opportunity to coin some new words.
This is entirely my own pet peeve, and it's not realistic to expect authors to change (although there is a natural limit -- don't you dare put a Bowie knife into your fantasy, and I'll side-eye you if you can't refer to a hairstyle by any name other than sideburns). Unless an author is explicitly making a linguistic statement (the Ancillary series, for example), getting things in "plain" English is fine***. It's just something that for some reason I notice.
The other, even less rational, issue I have? I keep seeing "Baru," and expanding it to "badtz maru" for some reason, and now I want a book about The Traitor Badtz Maru, in which we see the entire Sanrio empire taken down.
Anyway, the book's great so far.
*This happens in chapter 1; if you're the sort of person who will complain about spoilers when talking about the first three percent of a work, you're probably not reading the right LJ.
**or not-so-good, if you're talking about someone like John C Wright.
***And yes, not taking an explicit linguistic stand is also a stand. I get it.