Lit It's not a toilet, it's a 'fresher: Star Wars and immersion.

My brother and I both love "kark." I admit that "kriff" feels a bit awkward, and "stang" sounds like a slang word, and a childish one at that, not a straight-up curse, so it's pretty silly when Ben says "Daaaaad! Mom says we're not supposed to say stang!" Sithspit and Sithspawn don't bother me, and I personally love "Emperor's Black Bones." And then of course there are Mando'a language, where every other word seems to be a curse–but since that's another language it doesn't bother me. "Shavit" just rocks, though, no doubt about it.

 

That's about it. Many of these "IU-swears" feel like the characters are saying "dang", not really cursing.
(Then again I feel that words have power, especially curse words, so when they are used too much they lose that power. And one of my favorite kids' cartoons has characters shouting equivalents of "darn" so deep from the heart that it feels like a precision F-strike, so it's the thought that counts)

 

I don't mind most of these expressions, and in a nostalgic way I even like "stang" -- reminds me of good old WEG times.
One thing this thread reminded me of is Karen Traviss' massive use of Mando'a terms in the Republic Commando series -- because whatever else is wrong with those books, this element sort of worked really well for me. And this is coming from someone who is generally very skeptical where fictional languages in storytelling are concerned. I wouldn't mind more Star Wars authors doing that, like they did with Huttese in Legacy vol.1.

The only Starwarsy word I can remember really jarring me was when some character, asked if they had found any clues, said "Nothing duracrete yet", or something to that effect. [Hissa]Because, you know, concrete in "nothing concrete" doesn't have anything to do with concrete-the-substance besides being a homonym.[/Hissa] ...Though thinking about it, that one might have been fan fiction. It's hard to tell sometimes these days

 

The thing is, I prefer to keep major cussing out of Star Wars. There were no four-letter words or b-words in the movies, so they don't need to carry into EU. When Han calls Nil Spaar a "son of a -----" it takes me out of it, because that word shouldn't exist in Star Wars. Same when Zeerid Korr curses out Vrath Xizor or Khedryn Faal swears the Jedi clones' ears off–where did those words come from, again?

 

We're told Luke owned a dog once, in the A New Hope novelization.

Though it might have been a more alien one- perhaps an "akk dog".

The Darth Bane books, inevitably, "alienify" that kind of swear- with Bane's father calling him a "son of a Kath hound"

 

Dog are among the Earth animals that exist in the GFFA

 

There are just as many variations on the *son of a ___* expletive as there are on the F-word. Looking at the Wook, we have bantha, barve, gun, mynock, murglak, ruskakk, Sith harlot, slorth, sow, and tairn. Sith harlot and murglak are both great, just the right balance between corn and verbal punch to make them seem like "real" expletives. KotOR 2 brought us the latter, and The Swarm War brought us the former.

 

Both of these are good enough for me. There's no reason to use words like that (I mean the real one) in Star Wars. And certainly no four-letter words–thank the Force we haven't gone that far yet.

 

Something that I have been thinking about is that a perfect word for a group of jedis are a unfortune (like a group of ravens can be called a constable, an unkindness, or a conspiracy) because if something needs more than two jedi to be taken care of in something unfortunate, and a group of sith should be called a murder (like a murder of crows)

 

Surely the collective word for Sith would be Backstab or Backstabbing?

 

Backstoke, apparently: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_War_The_Third_Gathers:_The_Backstroke_of_the_West

 

I think that a group of Dark side acolytes is a Backstabbing

 

Oh, this thread is not about Ewan and the worst toilet in Scotland

 

Sadly not:

 

Is there a dictionary for the slang and terms used in Star Wars so you can look them up?

I don't get it

 

That confused me too. I wonder if he means china as in the fancy dishes and not the nation.

 

I've used http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_phrases_and_slang#top when writing fanfic

 

Thanks

 

Actually, jizz is a euphemism for...

 

Not in Star War, there it is the name of an upbeat, swinging genre of music. Named after the instrument jizz, that was the main instrument in jizz music

 

No, it's not jazz-like. It's jazz. . John Williams is a great composer, but he certainly hasn't invented any genres.

I'm not trying to claim that it should be called jazz in the GFFA. Frankly, I'd be perfectly fine if the genre was called something else entirely, something that actually sounded unfamiliar. But "jizz" is pathetically uncreative. Even if it wasn't an unpleasant euphemism, it would still do nothing but draw attention to its own laziness. Jeff_Ferguson made a good comparison with "clissical". It's practically a big red card that someone wasn't trying, and makes the universe feel more artificial.

Frankly, I'd love to learn more about the music of the GFFA, but something tells me we'd just get thinly disguised parallels of existing genres. Which I'd be fine with; I don't have any trouble at all believing heavy metal exists in the GFFA, but please don't change nothing about it, name it heavy duracrete and call it a day. Worldbuilding is a craft of its own, and it only takes one misplaced brick to bring the entire thing down.

Note of interest: I was going to include a line once again bringing up that everyone has different things that will drag them out of a story, and was uncomfortably close to typing "I guess Jizz is my hot chocolate". Then the profound levels of wrong about that statement hit me, and I suddenly needed a shower.

Well, he certainly was immersed.

 

You must have missed part of ESB then. "Your Tauntaun will freeze before you hit the first marker!" "Then I'll see you in Hell!"

 

I don't think "lightweight" curse words need to be banned from Star Wars all together. Like I mentioned, I do truly feel they made Scoundrels a slightly better book. The scoundrels actually got to sound like, well, scoundrels without having to resort to kriffs and karks (love the sound of that, by the way). I think that's one thing that, to this day, throws me off about the smuggler scenes in the Thrawn trilogy; the smugglers sound like stuffy suits, not criminals. Suave and charismatic works for Talon Karrde, but I definitely feel it should be the exception rather than the norm when it comes to the more smelly members of the underworld.

 

I most have missed that comparison. When/were do Jeff_Ferguson do that?

I think jizz have more or less the same structure as charleston jazz but is played with somewhat different instruments. On the heavy metal thing; were I come from we call the metal genre hård rock, hard rock, and if for example the equivalence of heavy metal was developed from the jango stile of music I have no problem with it being called hard jango.

Do you have any example were you feel that the word builder have succeed in creating a good Science-Fiction music or a new genre?

Then I say it: "I guess Jizz is instantdeath's hot chocolate".

Personally, Jango is my cop of tea

 

This is probably taking OCD to a whole new level, but a Star Wars dictionary as a internal reference for authors to consult wouldn't be a bad idea. The issues brought up in this topicis along with continuity errors and inconsistant characterization are at the very least annoyances when it comes to making Star Wars believable, only contiuity ever gets attention (and they still often drop the ball in that respect). I would be funny to see someone makes sense out of the inconsistent mess.