The mark of good writing is that you are angry at the characters for the decisions they make, not the writers for having the characters make those decisions
Why do fantasy novels always use the phrases “coup d’etat” or “coup de grace?“ From my understanding, “coup” has several origins, but coup d’etat and coup de grace are strictly french. Why would you use those in high fantasy novels? It bothers me. I’m reading and invested in the story, then theres a random french phase. It’s like if I was talking to someone in Spain, and said something in Tolkien Elvish. They wouldn’t understand. That’s not a language that (naturally) exists. It just throws me out of the story.
French phrases like that don’t have an English equivalent so that’s why they show up in fantasy books. I can’t really get into the details of the language but sometimes, it’s just about suspending disbelief.
My thought is at some point you have to suspend your disbelief and/or realize at some point or another you have to stop worrying about whether a thing could realistically exist in a different universe than our own. Like, at some point, you just have to let things be.
I do think it’s easier, though, in books where despite the book being in English (or whatever else), the characters aren’t actually ever speaking the language the book is written in. Like in The Kingkiller Chronicle and The Lord of the Rings, English is never /actually/ spoken, it’s a fictional language. So “coup d’etat” is a word used in English and would therefore be used in the writing, but within the book the characters are using some other word.
And, if it makes it easier for suspending disbelief, maybe the characters in that type of fantasy never actually use the word, it’s just the way it’s written. Of course, it’s still more likely that there’s a maximum amount of realism that can be obtained when creating a new world when it comes to the use of language, but still.
Also, if French can’t be used, why should English? Why should anything? English, or any Earth language, can’t really exist in a world without.. Earth as we know it, basically.
Most writers don’t create fully developed languages for their books, so therefore words that shouldn’t exist in whatever imaginary world has to be used so that the story can actually get written.
Hey full offense but can we stop acting like canon is some horrible story line that never gets its own characters right and accept that it’s canon that gave us the characters we love in the first place and appreciate that the writers aren’t getting their own characters wrong and fanon infact changes them to fit into headcanons and fics so we can all shut up and stop calling writers not conforming to fanon ideologies ‘bad writing’
Article 13 doesn’t apply to the AO3 because it’s a non-profit entity, and that is why y’all gotta stop putting your ko-fi and Patreon links on your AO3 posts. They can only protect fanworks as long as they’re not associated with fanworks being paid for.
“All that talk about the power of friendship,” the antagonist murmured, as they circled the protagonist. “And it never even occurred to you that perhaps your enemies might have friends too, did it? How arrogant a thing, you are…”
ifesbob 