Slash! Parry! Dodge!
May. 17th, 2006 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyThe Mirador, Chapter 2: 14,874 words
Entirely new words: 3,730. Felix is a prima donna. But we knew that already.
That's a very long sex scene.
o.O
otoh, I finally got a chance to show Mélusine's sexual underworld in action, and I have invented more terminology in the past three days ...
I tried to use "sadism," I really did. And "masochism." But the moss trolls kept tapping me on the shoulder and saying Urr? politely. Because the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch just don't exist in this world, and I know it. You can only be bothered by the Moss-Troll Problem if you know the etymology of the dubious word, or if you know the connotations you will be invoking. "Top" and "bottom" aren't necessarily anachronistic--they're bluntly descriptive enough that parallel evolution seems not unreasonable--but they have cultural context, and their cultural context is not Felix's cultural context. It's the same reason I use "molly" instead of "gay." Because you have to be careful about what you allow your reader to assume they know. You can't invite words in if they won't check their baggage at the door.
Entirely new words: 3,730. Felix is a prima donna. But we knew that already.
That's a very long sex scene.
o.O
otoh, I finally got a chance to show Mélusine's sexual underworld in action, and I have invented more terminology in the past three days ...
I tried to use "sadism," I really did. And "masochism." But the moss trolls kept tapping me on the shoulder and saying Urr? politely. Because the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch just don't exist in this world, and I know it. You can only be bothered by the Moss-Troll Problem if you know the etymology of the dubious word, or if you know the connotations you will be invoking. "Top" and "bottom" aren't necessarily anachronistic--they're bluntly descriptive enough that parallel evolution seems not unreasonable--but they have cultural context, and their cultural context is not Felix's cultural context. It's the same reason I use "molly" instead of "gay." Because you have to be careful about what you allow your reader to assume they know. You can't invite words in if they won't check their baggage at the door.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-17 11:49 pm (UTC)o_O
Date: 2006-05-18 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 04:32 am (UTC)Anachronistic words
Date: 2006-05-18 05:17 am (UTC)Then there's alcoholic drinks. Once, a martini was half and half gin and vermouth. Now it might not contain either
no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 01:55 pm (UTC)I remember reading a book by one of the Australian fantasy writers now reaching a US audience, and while I'm not a natural book-thrower (too many librarians and school teachers in the family, I guess) it almost achieved flight when, after a Great Magical Disaster (in a pre-industrial culture, complete with theocracy), the narrating character blithered away over her concern that the survivors would be so psychologically damaged (in those words, those very modern words) that they might never recover. Not "they might lose the will to live", "they might give up hope", not "they might turn their faces to the wall and die". No. They might be too psychologically damaged to recover.
*wipes foam from lips*
I haven't been able to read anything else she's written. She might get better. But I howled like a dog locked out in the rain from the awful.
So yeah, thanks for the tarquins and mollies and so on. Because you're not taking me on a trip through 21st-century America with dragons and funny clothes.