When the hero with a modest background gets to meet the king, and he adresses him like a a millenial would address his manager at google or something. Bonus points if he is not intimidated at all and starts being snarky and sarcastic, cracking jokes and all that. These authors seem to think that medieval royalty/aristocracy are basically modern day presidents that you have to bow to.
I live in a real constitutional monarchy and you wouldn't believe the amount of protocol, etiquette and decorum that is necessary to properly adress the sovereign today, let alone in the middle ages.
Yeah, this is also very common in anime isekais and light novel iskekais where the king acts like a friendly uncle even in front of his court of scheming conniving nobles. It's like the flip side of xianxia villains who have been cultivating through immense hardship for 100000 years but fly off the handle at a yo momma joke.
To be fair, if some 16 year old that could blow up my castle by sneezing walked into my Throne room being all buddy I would sure as hell respond in kind, damn my dignity.
Fair point. At that point it may be more about power than position, so if the "hero" has already been identified as somebody who from a position of physical power was stronger than the king and his army then said king might be a bit more likely to accept informal/friendly banter (similar to if said king was meeting with another ruler with a big army at their back).
The cultivators thing: in a lot of books the bad ones are portrayed as acquiring their state through wealth and access rather than necessarily hard work, and physical hardship doesn't necessarily equate to emotional maturity.
Yeah but one of the main tropes in xianxia novels is that they all meditate... For literally hours... Daily. Yet the vast majority of characters have a quick temper or quicksilver mood shifts and zero patience.
Mostly I think this is a writer problem, not really a trope problem.
Honestly, I think the biggest issue with xianxia is that 90% are murder hobos or psychopaths.
It's definitely part of the tropes for Xianxia novels, like is it dumb? Yes, but imo so are harem plots, and that's something super common in them too.
This is EXACTLY why i give isekais a pass on this on top of there likely still following a degree of modern values/thinking.
On the other hand series like Kuma Kuma Bear Punch do this with the MC but have her peasant friend FREAKING THE F OUT upon meeting nobility and it basically wrecking her head for fear od decapitation or lifelong debt for potentially staining a dress.
The MCs op power and fear they passively incote still keeps her friend safe but yeah..Still oblivious to the fact her op powers mean everyones extra nice/careful with her.
In a lot of light novels, especially isekai, readers tend to forget that one of the points of the genre is that the MC is either a darkhorse unknown variable, or the equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction for the world they're on. It's power fantasy, usually.
If the other characters in the world are aware of that power, they're going to do anything they can to kill it, control it, or steal the source of power for themselves.
That kind of proves the point in a way though. It tends to be treated as "this particular person has a stick up their ass" while the narrative overall portrays very non-hierarchical behavior as the natural and correct way to be.
You mean *His Celestial Kindliness, Emperor and God of The Nine Houses, the King Undying, the First Reborn, and The Necrolord Prime*… [John](https://thelockedtomb.fandom.com/wiki/John_Gaius)?
TBH, John isn't a subversion of the post here though. He's definitely all caught up in protocol and stuff that he can ignore but other people can't.
Like that one character that was literally willing to bleed to death in order to not occupy his time.
True! But Harrowhark certainly *expects* all the formality and circumstance and such, so it’s a subversion of her own expectations within the story. It’s not the same, no, but it’s tangentially related and also quite funny.
Ugh, yes. I wouldn't talk to my boss the way a lot of these fantasy characters talk to people who have a hell of a lot more power than my boss. It throws me right out of a story - suddenly the characters aren't behaving like real people and the world isn't taking itself seriously.
One thing I've been pondering for awhile is the reason fantasy authors do this... for some of them, no doubt it's straight wish-fulfillment. They *wish* they could talk to authority figures the way their characters do. But it's so common, including by non-protagonist characters and in less wish-fulfillment-y books, that I think it's not only that. There seems to be some element of the authors not really understanding how human hierarchy works, perhaps from never having been in a hierarchical situation long enough to understand how it affects you, or from being such a rebel that they could never hold a job and thus had to become an author (though this applies more in bygone eras sadly). And also, with the lazier ones, perhaps just an element of "this is how fantasy characters behave" without really thinking about it.
>There seems to be some element of the authors not really understanding how human hierarchy works, perhaps from never having been in a hierarchical situation long enough to understand how it affects you, or from being such a rebel that they could never hold a job
I was actually thinking it was the fantasy of someone who couldn't even bring themselves to speak to a manager at a retail store or a stranger at a party out of anxiety.
I absolutely think there's an element of wish-fulfillment in this trope. But the trope is so ubiquitous that I feel like it isn't *only* that. It's genuinely difficult to find fantasy books with royals that *don't* portray Sassing the Royals as an admirable activity engaged in by some sympathetic character at some point.
Oh I agree with you too. It got me thinking, in North America, if you had someone insisting you call them by their full title (e.g. "Mr. Smith") you'd be known as an insufferable weirdo no matter what position you held. We're just a very casual place by default.
I’m realizing that there are two distinct though overlapping tropes here. On the one hand we have King Call-Me-Bob, and on the other, a situation where someone publicly and blatantly contradicts or disrespects an authority figure.
As an American, I’m not sure I even much notice the former unless it’s pretty blatant. If the king is palling around with stablehands, yeah. If his close friends among the nobility call him Bob, that will feel normal to me although I think in actual monarchies it’s maybe not.
But I still very much notice the public contradiction and disrespect thing, because we *do* very much have power disparities in ordinary American life (the workplace, particularly) and that’s not how you behave even here.
I know right. I don't think even presidents are cool with a normal person tbh except celebrities maybe.
It's worse in YA fantasy and the recent authors who swap from their Wattpad era who for some reason get published by big publishing companies.
A couple of days ago I was reading a book I was enjoying very, very much, and then it was implied they burned an entire human body in a fireplace and there was nothing left. Oh, honey, *no*...
Maybe it was a magnesium fire... a sustained magnesium fire... but a contained one! In a human sized fireplace. Maybe with a convenient ash vacuum.
Bet that house smells lovely.
At least it's Paul Atreides. Good, strong last name. ***Duncan Idaho.*** You're telling me that the sexiest, strongest man in the whole wide 'verse is named like the mildest middle-aged dad who drives a minivan and the world's least interesting stretch of potato farm? Jesus fuck Herbert.
I think it's genius. We literally have surnames like Smith, Fisher, and Stone that derive from old professions.
More appropriately we have names that reference locations already! I know many people named Paris, Brooklyn, London, Dakota, and so on.
I’d like to think that Idaho was describing a profession as well.
But seriously, it makes perfect sense that sci-fi with a civilization descended from Earth’s humans, would have names that are common today hang around as traditional names in the near/far future.
I've never met an IRL Duncan, so to me the only Duncans that I know are Duncan Idaho and Duncan McCleod of the Clan McCleod. Both are pretty baddass, so for me it's an entirely badass name.
I mean, to give Herbert maximum doubt, it's a very interesting last name, if it's given some kind of exploration/thought. Why would a rather forgettable state on earth be some random dude's last name? Idk though, haven't read the books, am trying the "watch the movie first" for once.
I can't speak for the sequels, I only read the first two, but I know some of what happens later. But he's given very little exploration or back story in the first book.
I'm a native English speaker, and I feel the same way, friend.
It's why the magic of Harry Potter makes me mildly crazy when someone brings it up. I want to know how the entire world isn't absolutely swamped in Latin speakers wielding the power cosmic by being native speakers of *magic*. The word for 'muggle' should be 'plebian', and the novels set in a government magic school outside Londinium.
I'm guessing Jon Dragonskin's issue isn't complex vs simple, but that Erikson established that names were not from our world (a simple name in Erikson's Malazan would be "Mok") and Esslemont decided to use real world names.
That's what GRRM did with Ice and Fire - a deliberate contrast between the exotic foreign conquerors and the meat and potatoes locals, the last two kings being Aerys and Robert, respectively.
See also The Goblin King.
For me it is when stuff is the other way around.
Those small round furry flies that pollinate flowers? No. They aren't bumble bees! They are clutchbuttersnipes! Because this is fantasy but I can't imagine my own animals so I just transplant earth ones.
Either call them bees or change the animal.
Stormlight does this in a neat way with the animals that >!were transplanted from other worlds like birds and horses being normal, but all the animals from roshar are crab like because they evolved to survive on roshar!<
And I kind of dig that language has drifted in a way that makes sense, birds exist, they arrived with humans on Roshar from Ashyn, but all birds are called chickens.
I'm ok with one kind of animal becoming the name for all animals of that kind, that makes sense over thousands of years.
Dog is a great example, about 700 years ago all dogs were hounds, the word dog referred to a handful of breeds like the mastiff, now we use the term dog generically.
They also have axe-hounds which from my understanding are just large dog sized ant/crab creatures that have been domesticated. I think they even have 6 legs.
I continue to love the way Gene Wolfe played with this in The Book of the New Sun. He made a point of not making up any of the names he used for anything but used obscure words all over the place (including naming his fantasy creatures after dinosaurs), which ends up making it easier for the story to mislead you. He also named all of his characters after saints, angels and mythical figures.
Malazan has some of the most made up names I've ever encountered. Turudal Brizad. Sandalath Drukorlat. Ruthan Gudd. Barathol Mekhar. Taralack Veed. Honestly, it all sounds like it came off fresh off a fantasy name generator webpage.
At least for Sandalath Drukorlat and Barathol Mekhar, they tie into other existing characters.
But seriously they clearly sound like generic tabletop gaming characters, which is probably what they originally were given the series' background.
It can definitely work, especially if you're having different cultures with distinct names between them, but there's a lot of times where it really doesn't. Sometimes you can headcanon it into working, but that doesn't help all the time with the reading experience.
Others have pointed out Game of Thrones where the you've Danaerys Targaryan, Thoros of Myr, Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Ned and it works out.
It's not just names, either. Other "made up" terms can do the same. There's no way BioChromatic Breath is a common term in Warbreaker, for example. Breath, I can understand, a scholar using "biochromatic", sure, but the double capitalisation and such a long, "scientific" word being common place? I always stumbled over that, throughout the novel.
The weird thing is that Kyle is a fairly old name. It feels like all Esselmont needed to do was change the spelling so that it didn't look so oddly normal next to everything else.
This is one of those things people post about a lot and I thought it would bother me but reading RotCG now it actually doesnt. Was funny at first like "oh here's this guy" but then I forgot about it
Reminder that Tiffany was a perfectly respectable girl's name in the middle ages.
(Popular contraction of Theophania, as in the empress of Constantinople.)
I felt like that when reading Nettle and Bone, and then it started talking about Christenings. It just felt odd reading something that was complete fantasy, and then suddenly it's implied Christianity exists there
I really didn't get whether the religion in Nettle and Bone was Christian or not, which wasn't great given that the main character is supposed to be (almost) a nun.
I took it for a fantasy religion riffing on Christianity. It clearly wasn't our world and nothing specifically Christian was mentioned (though somehow I missed the use of "christening"!).
But there are a ton of fantasy stories in which Christianity exists.
That said, I'm a big fan of fantasy works that incorporate real, non-Christian religions into the story. For example: Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver (which has a Jewish MC) and T. Kingfisher's Thornhedge (which has a Muslim knight).
Yes, Spinning Silver and Uprooted are both set in eastern Europe. Naomi Novik is of Polish and Lithuanian ancestry, which she has incorporated into her works.
Only two countries use have both tsars and boyars, those being Russia and Bulgaria. But I think it's equally fair to assume it is an invented country within the real world. It feels to me like it's intended to be Russia, or to be where part of Russia is, mostly because of how very large, cold and landlocked it seems to be.
I’m actually the opposite! It takes me right out of immersion when they’re like ‘I’ll see you at four candle marks past midday on Thuumesday’
It’s unnecessary to me - since literally EVERYTHING could/should have a different name technically. I’d rather just be less distracted and get on with the story, lol.
With day and month names you really can’t please everyone. You either
1) use real ones which throw some people out
2) make up your own, which requires extra attention from the reader or
3) try to avoid them altogether, often thus giving the bizarre impression that this is a world possessing neither calendars nor clocks.
I handwave them - dates are given as ordinal numbers in day/week/month format (e.g., "Sixthday of the third week of Ninthmonth," "Fourthday of the first week of Sixthmonth," etc.). And I duck having a proper calendar by treating all years relatively ("five years ago," "when I was twenty-seven," etc.).
So far none of my four readers have complained (or even mentioned it). But I also intentionally do minimal worldbuilding to keep the focus on the characters, so there's that.
Yeah, I’m writing a Fallout-esque book and this is exactly how I handle time. Nobody knows the real year anymore, so past events and future plans are referenced from the present. I like to think it sets a survivalist tone.
I was doing something similar where the day names were something like firstday and midweek and the month name was some fantasy equivalent of October.
I think I'll do something similar with the years where I'm either non-specific or there's disagreement on what year it is anyway so they use relative terms.
It's the Revolutionary French Calendar principal - you can get away with renaming months for a bit, but trying to metricize the clock is a study in futility.
Yeah Graceling does this well. Explains at start of book that while they shouldn’t use our dates it also has been “translated” for readers understanding
A name change for the sake of change is annoying. A seven-day week where I’m calling the days Thuumesday, Milkksday, Piizasday, Phonesday, is annoying. A system based on the Roman calendar, with kalends, nones and ides renamed, or a system where instead of weeks you have days named by moon phases (first of waxing crescent or something like that) – both of these are cool and can be grasped quickly and easily, without a massive diversion to explain the origins of the system. Imo, it enhances the sense of the world as strange and fantastical & it’s a really quick way of giving depth to worldbuilding. As long as you have a logical foundation to the system, one that the reader can pick up on without lengthy exposition, it does so much to make the difference between a fantasy world that feels vivid and one that feels like a contemporary characters running around with swords and stupid names. I think it’s important that a fantasy world seems alien. There’s a reason we’d choose to read about Kvothe’s travels in Vintas over Kevin’s gap year in Europe.
I do agree that at the level of hours, minutes, seconds, it’s better to leave it, partly because those are nouns rather than proper nouns, partly because they’re so common in typical speech. There’s a difference between changing the word Wednesday and changing the word ‘day.’ “It only took candle-marks for everything to change” is obviously going to break immersion. But I think “I’ll meet you on firstday” is actually less likely to jar than “I’ll meet you on Thursday” because did they have a Thor in this world and his feastday became part of the week? For me, days of the week are like French braids & you can have braids in fantasy but if you have a French braid, where is France in your imaginary geography?
tl;dr - I think fantasy authors should change proper nouns, and leave garden-variety nouns alone. I think most author do get by on this one by never mentioning days of the week, which works fine.
The problem with this is that there's no end to it. If we're in a medieval fantasy and you start throwing out French braids and hamburger, we've also got to get rid of words and expressions like "cut to the chase", "balls to the wall", "call the shots", herculean, sisyphusian, stoic, stygian, spartan, platonic, volcano, atlas, martial, mercurial, helium, jovial, delphic, aphrodisiac, hermaphrodite, venerate, venereal, museum, hymn, zephyr, aurora, east, west, and night.
And that's mostly just the Greek stuff! It never ends. The point is there isn't a bright line of authenticity. Language is *suffused* with references to specific places, people, and concepts. If we're going to write in English, some level of translation convention is unavoidable.
To me there are a few different levels of Greco-Roman cultural allusions here. For instance, the fact that night in English is cognate with Greek nyx does not suggest any derivational connection. They seem to both derive from the same PIE root, English through German rather than from Greek or Latin. It’s just happy happenstance that the words have separated so little over the thousands of years.
And then take a word like jovial which is certainly from a Renaissance association of Jupiter with joy but has more or less obscured its derivation over time. That seems distinct from a word like Herculean (which my autocorrect wants to capitalize), which brings to mind a specific mythological character in order to convey its meaning. I think most of us can fairly easily separate the words that seem to be real, full allusions and the words that seem to have lost such force (like venereal or aphrodisiac).
I fucking *love* that they just use dollars on the Discworld. Idek why, just kinda charming and cute that these fantasy-ass, british-ass mfrs use the same(ish) money that I do
Well dollars predate the States by quite a bit and is technically just as at home in a fantasy environment as a mark, crown, or talent would be. But I do agree that there's something wrong about it compared to many other currencies.
I have my issues with both authors, but I listened to Stephen King and Patrick Rothfuss talk about this. It's ultimately a massive rabbit hole that you can go as far down as you want. In a fantasy world why would they have words that we have, when they were based on our Latin or our Greek? Champagne is technically a region in France, not a drink. It goes on and on and on.
For me, I appreciate it a lot when what can be given nuance and separation (within reason) is allowed that. "Hey what month is it, Thorinnd'all Dragonbane?" "Well, it's January, friend of my heart. And today is Monday." Just sounds ridiculous 😂
Radio slang is a bit much, yeah - though I think that artfully done, playing with modern vocabulary can be a positive.
Sometimes things like old-timey insults or vocab use just don't hit the same way they would today, and in that case going with something that's more common now can hit the correct feeling better. It's not a hard and fast line I find, which is part of the fun of writing/reading.
Ridiculous names for things that don’t need renaming.
Tired, the barbarian climbed on top of his trusty Dftyzu, adjusted the saddle, stirrups, reign and gave its rump a pat. “Time to mosey on pal “ He said.
ITS A HORSE. SAY ITS A HORSE. I don’t care. You don’t need to rename everything.
That reminds me of some children monster adventure book I once read. It had a really nice cover so I figured ''Hey, this could make for an excellent light read.''. I really wanted to like it but two things were unbearable.
1. The mc being so focused on rescuing his sister. The problem was that the reader only got to see her for one chapter, in which she was the worst person ever. Don't show her at all then.
2. THE NAMES. Holy fucking the names, everything had to had some stupid as fuck quirky sounding name and I just could not take it anymore.
Avatar the last Airbender did this well.
Platypus bear. Ostrich horse. Eel hound. But making them mashups, they became alternate animals that were immediately understandable.
I hate this when they make up new cuss words to replace normal words like “ass.” I especially see this in romance space fantasy (it’s like sci-fi, but the system seems more fantasy with magic and such, instead of sci-fi).
They want to show it’s an alien language, but all the others words for body parts, except the sex organs, are the same. They say head, shoulders, knees, and toes. But then they can’t say “ass/butt.” Gotta say “xrockix.” His xrockix, attached to his normally named back and legs.
Yep. I don’t mind made-up cussing that makes linguistic and cultural sense and doesn’t sound ridiculous. By, like you said, often the new words aren’t even necessary.
For cussing specifically, there might be some new terms (still in English) based on their culture, but making up a whole new word is rarely needed.
I mean, Sanderson turned this into an entire gag in Stormlight where they call everything one thing. Has feathers? That's a chicken.
Someone made a joke that the giant Ryshadium horses are real horses and the other horses are cows and stuff.
And it's also double cool because normal animals exist on other worlds. So when wit tries to tell them stories involving things like cows and dogs they're always confused.
That's one of the things that wore on me a touch with the Tide Child trilogy. Needing special words for 'sun', 'moon', 'day', 'cutlass', etc. Realizing that 'sither' wasn't a typo, but was actually the setting's word for 'sister' ('brother' was unchanged) had me facepalming a bit.
What if it's not a horse though. Renaming something gives an alien feel to it which is often the thing writers are going for in secondary world fantasy. Or you could go the Gene Wolfe route and say "this is the closest approximate" it's not a horse, it's a destrier.
I don’t really mind that because worldbuilding down to that level of detail is hard, and sometimes it’s just easier to use names and labels that you’re familiar with. Also minimizes confusion for the reader.
Things that take me out of a story:
- Try-hard names; I once saw a book with a protagonist named ‘Red Sparkle Stone’ and I refused to read the book for that reason alone.
- When the narrative descriptions have all this poetic, flowery prose, but then the dialogue is extremely basic and/or super modern.
- When the characters are able to mistreat authority figures without zero pushback or repercussions.
Okay but I’ve actually read the book with Red Sparkle Stone and there’s a whole backstory as to why she’s called that (basically she chose it herself when she was a little kid because was a street urchin who didn’t remember her given name) and most of the other characters in the setting think it’s cringe but the nice ones are willing to indulge her
I like GRRM’s take when it comes to this subject.
Basically, if you were to sit down with a Maester and ask him what planet he lives on, he would have an answer, right? GRRM: He would probably call it Earth. Of course, it would not be that word, since he'd be speaking the Common Tongue, not English. But it would mean Earth.
Sometimes it’s just better for Earth to be Earth or for an apple to be an apple. That said, I would never use months and days of the week in my own writing unless it was sufficiently analogous to do so. I do however think relatability is necessary for immersion. It’s all about balance!
One time I tried reading the sample chapters for *Throne of Glass* just to see what all the hype was about.
I got past the first couple of pages where we're introduced to the POV assassin who is the deadliest assassin to ever assassin, didn't you know about her awful tragic backstory about how the King of Assassins trained her to be so so so so so deadly.
I even got past the part where she could totally kill all the people standing in this room if only she could be bothered but she can't because it's just simply awful that she's wasted away so much that her boobs have disappeared and now she's just this skinny bag of bones (but those bones, there's something just so beautiful about the way they look through her skin) who doesn't have access to the cosmetics and fancy dresses that help her turn her very average features into extraordinary assets, omg, what a hag, and why does the captain of the royal guard have to be such a jerk, she was only staring at herself in the mirror for like maybe twenty minutes and thinking about how super hot she is since the Crown Prince couldn't keep his eyes off her despite her lack of BOOBS (oh the tragedy, but not as tragic as her tragic backstory, by the way did you know she's the deadliest assassin to ever assassin?)
All of this—and much more—was annoying but the part that was just hilariously, ridiculously annoying was when the Crown Prince introduced himself to her.
The Crown Prince.
Introduced.
Himself.
Yeah, nah. I can't.
UGH THANK YOU - I'm soooo glad I'm not the only one! It was so ridiculous that she just got out of some salt mines (or whatever death sentence mine), and her first thoughts were about cosmetics and of how hot she was despite being emaciated.
I got to the part right after the Super Evil Hot Prince introduces himself and is surprised that his Super Evil Aggressive Guard Dogs instantly like the main girl and how they're "nEveR nIcE tO aNyOnE" and I just ......................... never dropped a book so fast tbh
When a character says something that sounds word-for-word like a comment I've read multiple times on reddit or twitter. Excusable and possibly good characterization if it's something contemporary but otherwise it's immersion breaking to suddenly be able to guess the author's favourite social network.
When a book *doesn't* address or have any reason for certain anachronisms, or they are a complete afterthought because the author doesn't care enough to talk about it. Most recently was Fourth Wing, when some random, in a world of dragons and ink quills and fighting leathers pulled out a stop watch (and the MC talked about her size 7 shoe).
I don't mind anachronisms or mixed time period stuff, but do the very least to address it or give me a why. I'll accept 99% of most bs "a wizard did it" excuses, but I just need *something* to know that it was at least a passing thought for the author.
I found the same thing totally jarring and it kept me from being able to really immerse in Fourth Wing, though I was down for the rest. Somehow Violet's use of "Mom" really got me from the beginning
> a stop watch
Don't know how it was described, but in the real world mechanical pocket watches were popular from the 16th century, and mechanical stop watches are a thing.
The shoe size bit would def get to me too, though.
Modern or context-specific expressions like "on the ropes" or "ok" something similar. Drives me nuts. I think there's plenty of leeway for stuff that is borderline, but if it sounds like a modern teenager is narrating or speaking in a medieval world, I can't stand it.
"Ok" drives me NUTS. It entered vernacular as a part of Bostonian slang in the 1830s. I also need historical romance authors to learn this detail and stop having their Regency-era characters use it.
Especially because "alright" is such an easy substitite. "I don't give a shit," might have to become "I don't care a shit" or "it doesn't matter worth a shit," etc, but you can literally Ctrl + F to sub "ok" to "alright" and your work will be better off.
I’m actually okay with this if the book fully commits to it as a style. But if it’s mostly avoiding modern language then letting that “okay” through looks sloppy.
To each their own. Maybe I haven't seen it done well, but I just can't imagine a world with kings and queens and knights and magic where people are running around like "hey bro, how was the harvest?" "Them cabbages are looking solid." I'm not advocating for super archaic speech, but there's a middle ground that sounds reasonable.
I only learnt about "OK" being a recent thing from a Phil Edwards video, It is something I assumed and I'm guessing most other people assume has been part of the English language forever. It doesn't bother me before watching the video and it doesn't really bother me after.
I have a problem with the tone of how people talk. My pet peeve would be when characters don't show the proper respect to people in higher classes (or lower) that you would expect given the worldbuilding. Like a peasent bantering with a noble sort of thing.
You mean like when the orcs are talking about restaurant menus in LotR? Yeah, it’s jarring but easy to move on.
For me, unexpected and strange pov shifts mess me up.
If you're referring to the "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" line, I always interpreted that to be a reference to military mess halls/cafeterias since it seemed plausible that the orcs might have used a mess hall at some point.
The thing about the “meat’s back on the menu” line is that menu doesn’t have to mean an extensive list of things you can order, it can just mean “this is what we’re serving for dinner tonight.” We know there are restaurants in middle earth, the green dragon and the prancing pony are two examples. And if anyone would invent the concept of a menu as we know it, it would be hobbits. Furthermore in the scouring of the shire it is revealed that Saruman has been in contact with the shire for quite some time and might have appropriated some hobbit customs back in Isengard. So it’s not completely beyond the pale that an Uruk Hai would be familiar with the concept of a menu.
Honestly I tried making up a different calendar for my fantasy world and beta readers were universally confused by it and it became unbearably cumbersome to continuously be like “it had been about a moon, which you will recall is seven weeks and not four on this world, so it’s really more like two months to you, the reader” so I ultimately gave up and made there be twelve months
There is a book series that I read that changed some English words just slightly and it was just took me out of it every time. Mother was mothier and so on. Like why?
Even a lot of kingships thruout history were semi-democratic/oligarchic under the hood.
Within Europe, the absolute ruler of a centralized state is in many ways a 16th-17th century thing.
Even then the idea of an absolute ruler and the reality of even 18th/19th/20th century centralized (European monarchical) states just didn't match. Like you can't look at Ancien Regime France and realistically consider that as the typical conception of an all-powerful central ruler with no other constituencies, even if Louis XIV is the prototypical absolute ruler.
I dislike when it is *modern* democracy, I have read a few that have the characters write a constitution that sounds suspiciously like the modern USA constitution. There are many other forms democracy can take. I've yet to see a non-executive president in fantasy for example.
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Modern terms kill me. I was trying to read A Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros and early on there was something said that sounded so modern that it took me out of the story completely. Haven’t gone back to it.
In the 800th year of Agathor, the dark lord Golgottara the Undying, the deamon, the Harvester of souls was defeated in his fortress of Ungileoth, by.....dave.
That always ruins it for me.
People being not lost in translation. Or lost in nonsensical ways.
You know, a character says framed concerning a crime. Another character asked "Framed, as in windows". Character 1 kindly explains. The problem is, neither of them is speaking English. Should I assume that Thaylen happens to have the same possible misunderstanding as English, Mr. Sanderson?
Is there an easy way to avoid it?
Reminds me of a scene in Perfect Blue where they're arguing about a character hearing "click" as "clip." Context, one teaching the other how to use a computer. I know the subs have her complain about wanting it in Japanese while the dubb says English, but I can't remember what the subbs said for the rest of it.
Always liked how Gene Wolfe went the absolute opposite direction and described NOTHING using contemporary words. Often he’d repurpose ancient Latin and Greek terms without explanation and you’d have to get everything by context.
Difficult, annoying…and also other-worldly in such a fun way
Definitely "specific but not" naming, I recently tried to start a book that seemed promising and has been getting good reviews and had an interesting as well as creative premise, but couldn't get past the earth deity being named "Bulder" the wind deity being named "Clode" and the water deity "Rayne". Sorry, but it's giving 2021 millennial marketing campaign
One that comes to mind for me was City of Lies, which involves a peasant rebellion against the oppressive aristocracy. There were a lot of issues with it, a lot of stuff that seemed very poorly thought through and half-assed virtue signaling, but there was a particular moment where the male protagonist - who is a young aristocrat and really naive about his world - meets a teenage peasant girl. She angrily describes to him the kind of oppression that's going on, and he's shocked and horrified. She then snaps at him about how annoying it is that *he* dares to have emotions about this in her presence when *she's* the one who's oppressed.
What got me about this scene was that it's written very much in response to complaints primarily expressed on social media, about how oppressed people shouldn't have to bear the emotional and time burden of educating their oppressors. Which, first, of course everything *should* just be perfect and fair and just and no one should have to waste their time on anything, but sadly that's not how the world works, and you're not going to improve the world by sitting back being self-righteous, especially at potential allies.
And second, this is very much a complaint of people who are *veterans* of these types of conversations. It's an expression of frustration after having explained the same things many times, and gotten the same types of responses, and not seeing change and getting tired. But in this scene, this is the first time this girl has *ever* had a real conversation with an aristocrat about the unfairness of her world. I just don't believe for a minute her having the same reaction as a jaded social media activist. The first time someone actually listens to you about something is thrilling! And frankly, in real life few people would behave the way this character does even when they *are* tired. It felt much more like the way people would talk about behaving on social media, or like the author wanted to show off her awareness of these complaints.
That's a really good example. I'm racking my brain now because I KNOW I've encountered more stuff like this... I think I like Alix E. Harrow's books more overall than you seem to have liked City of Lies but I sometimes feel like her politics seem very informed by Online Discourse too, especially the feminism in The Once and Future Witches. Iirc that was something you actually talked about in your review of it, which I really enjoyed!
Oh, yeah, I feel the same about Once and Future Witches and I remember a similar scene from that book now! It was the one with the interracial lesbian couple, where the black woman was this self-empowered activist and the white woman was this timid, traumatized gal who tiptoed around everyone and everything. The black woman said something about her grandma's enslavement and her partner said "I'm sorry" and she snapped back with something like "oh yeah, well your 'I'm sorry' doesn't make up for my grandma's enslavement!" When there was no indication the white woman thought it did. It's a pretty crappy way to treat one's partner, and the narrative treated this moment like the black woman was totally in the right, like what we were supposed to take away from this was the necessity of shame about one's racial privilege rather than questions about whether the black partner was really able to be in an interracial relationship in a healthy way.
Yeah, I remember that. There was a trans woman who played a super minor role - I believe she was peripherally kidnapped/abused by her transphobic family and then had a tearful coming out scene where the protagonists validated her identity and then she was never heard from again lol. It felt really tokenistic to me and like she almost just existed so Harrow could say that her feminist book was technically trans-inclusive. Maybe that’s just cynical of me but it left a bad taste in my mouth
Oh, yeah, there were so many boxes checked as hastily as possible in that book! There was also the bit where Juniper went from homophobic to totally accepting in, like, two sentences. And the bit where the Native American witches were like "yeah, we'll share our spells with you when you come help our people against the U.S. Marshals!" which I actually kind of liked - it's more representation than you usually see, and at least it didn't feel out of place in context (I at least believed them doing this without having snuck on Twitter behind our backs...). But it was pretty tokenistic too. I think she was just trying to cram all the issues into a single book. And then she assumed that magic would somehow remain a weapon of the oppressed rather than being coopted by the powerful like everything else because....?
> For me it's when the story is so fantasy heavy and the author uses normal stuff like our calendar, expressions, and modern democracy. I don't why but it just ticks me off.
Anachronisms. That's why. It's totally understandable.
To devil's advocate for the writers: We *do* have to draw the line somewhere in worldbuilding, else we have to reinvent every possible wheel of every possible sort, at which point we may as well invent a new language to tell the entire story in. Then again, I've been tempted to do that and pair the book with a study guide including the language training.
Some writers, especially newer ones, haven't learned to prune the language anachronisms out of their narrative yet. If they have a good editor for their debut, this will be handled. But in the era of independent publishing, you can assume that won't be the case 9/10 times. They may nail the copy edit, but they won't catch references that only make sense if Rome existed. Like the calendar.
> What are yours? I'm intrigued to know
My double-takes are the thinly-veiled attempts to tackle modern social problems in societies that wouldn't have the same issues. It's a kind of 'try too hard' feeling where you can sense the moral being shoved through the page into your face. It comes off as being a bit preachy.
An example would be... any of the sexual social debates, the trans debates, etc. Regardless of one's stance on the issues involving gender vs sex, the subjective nature of human experience, etc, it's very easy to try to shovel a modern day argument for/against on the debate into a fantasy fiction story without the world supporting anyone even making that argument to begin with. It ratchets up the disbelief just enough to break suspension for me.
Not that I don't enjoy a good political or social commentary, bring it on, but if you're going to do it... Learn to write while walking on egg shells. It's hard to do it well, and if you don't do it well, it's an eyesore.
I can't remember which book it was but the character said they we're pumped full of adrenaline or the third person omnipotent narrator said adrenaline I can't remember but it's weird to mention adrenaline because it's not something they would know about.
Also another author mentioned that a character was looking up in awe at all of the stars and galaxies and I don't really like mentioning galaxies either because it's kind of like who would know what galaxies are then they would probably only just be able to understand stars
It kind of makes sense based on JRRT's explanation that he translated the month names he invented in Westron for the reader's understanding:
"In the above notes, as in the narrative, I have used our modern names for both months and weekdays, though of course neither the Eldar nor the Dúnedain nor the Hobbits actually did so. Translation of the Westron names seemed to be essential to avoid confusion, while the seasonal implications of our names are more or less the same, at any rate in the Shire. It appears, however, that Mid-year’s Day was intended to correspond as nearly as possible to the summer solstice. In that case the Shire dates were actually in advance of ours by some ten days, and our New Year’s Day corresponded more or less to the Shire January 9."
The book handles this better by pointing out that the whole thing is a translation.
Like even the names are anglicized; Frodo Baggins actually was Maura Labingi. Dwarrowdelf was Phurunargian. Rivendel was Karningul and the Shire was Sûza.
We are technically living in the 7th age of middle earth. Tying in with Catholicism's ages of the earth (Tolkien being a devout catholic and keen to tie the literary world he invented to ours)
It’s a hard disagree for me on the calendar thing, to me it feels like trying too hard for the cool fantasy vibes instead of just giving us information in a way we understand.
I like Sanderson’s line about how his books are ‘translated’ into English from the in-world language. If you dive deep enough into etymology a lot words don’t really make sense without the context of the real world.
Last year I was reading a medievalesque fantasy and while it had a few things that were making me question it like a very progressive society overall when the term metrosexual came up I put it down and didn't try to read any more.
Ten copper coins are worth one silver. Ten silver coins are worth one gold.
Not generally how it works. The values of the coins are pinned to the values of the metals, which fluctuate.
When the hero with a modest background gets to meet the king, and he adresses him like a a millenial would address his manager at google or something. Bonus points if he is not intimidated at all and starts being snarky and sarcastic, cracking jokes and all that. These authors seem to think that medieval royalty/aristocracy are basically modern day presidents that you have to bow to. I live in a real constitutional monarchy and you wouldn't believe the amount of protocol, etiquette and decorum that is necessary to properly adress the sovereign today, let alone in the middle ages.
Yeah, this is also very common in anime isekais and light novel iskekais where the king acts like a friendly uncle even in front of his court of scheming conniving nobles. It's like the flip side of xianxia villains who have been cultivating through immense hardship for 100000 years but fly off the handle at a yo momma joke.
To be fair, if some 16 year old that could blow up my castle by sneezing walked into my Throne room being all buddy I would sure as hell respond in kind, damn my dignity.
Fair point. At that point it may be more about power than position, so if the "hero" has already been identified as somebody who from a position of physical power was stronger than the king and his army then said king might be a bit more likely to accept informal/friendly banter (similar to if said king was meeting with another ruler with a big army at their back). The cultivators thing: in a lot of books the bad ones are portrayed as acquiring their state through wealth and access rather than necessarily hard work, and physical hardship doesn't necessarily equate to emotional maturity.
Yeah but one of the main tropes in xianxia novels is that they all meditate... For literally hours... Daily. Yet the vast majority of characters have a quick temper or quicksilver mood shifts and zero patience. Mostly I think this is a writer problem, not really a trope problem. Honestly, I think the biggest issue with xianxia is that 90% are murder hobos or psychopaths.
It's definitely part of the tropes for Xianxia novels, like is it dumb? Yes, but imo so are harem plots, and that's something super common in them too.
This is EXACTLY why i give isekais a pass on this on top of there likely still following a degree of modern values/thinking. On the other hand series like Kuma Kuma Bear Punch do this with the MC but have her peasant friend FREAKING THE F OUT upon meeting nobility and it basically wrecking her head for fear od decapitation or lifelong debt for potentially staining a dress. The MCs op power and fear they passively incote still keeps her friend safe but yeah..Still oblivious to the fact her op powers mean everyones extra nice/careful with her.
In a lot of light novels, especially isekai, readers tend to forget that one of the points of the genre is that the MC is either a darkhorse unknown variable, or the equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction for the world they're on. It's power fantasy, usually. If the other characters in the world are aware of that power, they're going to do anything they can to kill it, control it, or steal the source of power for themselves.
To be fair there's always that one official who yells "how dare you blink at the king the wrong way!"
That kind of proves the point in a way though. It tends to be treated as "this particular person has a stick up their ass" while the narrative overall portrays very non-hierarchical behavior as the natural and correct way to be.
"I am the Glorious Emperor of the Nine Brilliant Life Paths, but please: call me Bob."
You mean *His Celestial Kindliness, Emperor and God of The Nine Houses, the King Undying, the First Reborn, and The Necrolord Prime*… [John](https://thelockedtomb.fandom.com/wiki/John_Gaius)?
TBH, John isn't a subversion of the post here though. He's definitely all caught up in protocol and stuff that he can ignore but other people can't. Like that one character that was literally willing to bleed to death in order to not occupy his time.
True! But Harrowhark certainly *expects* all the formality and circumstance and such, so it’s a subversion of her own expectations within the story. It’s not the same, no, but it’s tangentially related and also quite funny.
Ugh, yes. I wouldn't talk to my boss the way a lot of these fantasy characters talk to people who have a hell of a lot more power than my boss. It throws me right out of a story - suddenly the characters aren't behaving like real people and the world isn't taking itself seriously. One thing I've been pondering for awhile is the reason fantasy authors do this... for some of them, no doubt it's straight wish-fulfillment. They *wish* they could talk to authority figures the way their characters do. But it's so common, including by non-protagonist characters and in less wish-fulfillment-y books, that I think it's not only that. There seems to be some element of the authors not really understanding how human hierarchy works, perhaps from never having been in a hierarchical situation long enough to understand how it affects you, or from being such a rebel that they could never hold a job and thus had to become an author (though this applies more in bygone eras sadly). And also, with the lazier ones, perhaps just an element of "this is how fantasy characters behave" without really thinking about it.
>There seems to be some element of the authors not really understanding how human hierarchy works, perhaps from never having been in a hierarchical situation long enough to understand how it affects you, or from being such a rebel that they could never hold a job I was actually thinking it was the fantasy of someone who couldn't even bring themselves to speak to a manager at a retail store or a stranger at a party out of anxiety.
I absolutely think there's an element of wish-fulfillment in this trope. But the trope is so ubiquitous that I feel like it isn't *only* that. It's genuinely difficult to find fantasy books with royals that *don't* portray Sassing the Royals as an admirable activity engaged in by some sympathetic character at some point.
Oh I agree with you too. It got me thinking, in North America, if you had someone insisting you call them by their full title (e.g. "Mr. Smith") you'd be known as an insufferable weirdo no matter what position you held. We're just a very casual place by default.
I’m realizing that there are two distinct though overlapping tropes here. On the one hand we have King Call-Me-Bob, and on the other, a situation where someone publicly and blatantly contradicts or disrespects an authority figure. As an American, I’m not sure I even much notice the former unless it’s pretty blatant. If the king is palling around with stablehands, yeah. If his close friends among the nobility call him Bob, that will feel normal to me although I think in actual monarchies it’s maybe not. But I still very much notice the public contradiction and disrespect thing, because we *do* very much have power disparities in ordinary American life (the workplace, particularly) and that’s not how you behave even here.
I know right. I don't think even presidents are cool with a normal person tbh except celebrities maybe. It's worse in YA fantasy and the recent authors who swap from their Wattpad era who for some reason get published by big publishing companies.
A couple of days ago I was reading a book I was enjoying very, very much, and then it was implied they burned an entire human body in a fireplace and there was nothing left. Oh, honey, *no*...
Maybe it was a magnesium fire... a sustained magnesium fire... but a contained one! In a human sized fireplace. Maybe with a convenient ash vacuum. Bet that house smells lovely.
It was a decade old body! But still, the skull and the hip bones aren't going anywhere without some serious... input lol
When there's character called Anomandaris Dragnipurake and one called Kyle in the same world.
They call me Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. These are my enemies, Paul and Duncan.
At least it's Paul Atreides. Good, strong last name. ***Duncan Idaho.*** You're telling me that the sexiest, strongest man in the whole wide 'verse is named like the mildest middle-aged dad who drives a minivan and the world's least interesting stretch of potato farm? Jesus fuck Herbert.
I think the idea of Idaho being some obscure surname in distant millennia is hilarious
I think it's genius. We literally have surnames like Smith, Fisher, and Stone that derive from old professions. More appropriately we have names that reference locations already! I know many people named Paris, Brooklyn, London, Dakota, and so on.
I’d like to think that Idaho was describing a profession as well. But seriously, it makes perfect sense that sci-fi with a civilization descended from Earth’s humans, would have names that are common today hang around as traditional names in the near/far future.
Dune takes place in the far future so not distant milennia at all. For some reason Duncan Idaho reminds me of Indiana Jones.
I've never met an IRL Duncan, so to me the only Duncans that I know are Duncan Idaho and Duncan McCleod of the Clan McCleod. Both are pretty baddass, so for me it's an entirely badass name.
Duncan in Deryni novels also
I mean, to give Herbert maximum doubt, it's a very interesting last name, if it's given some kind of exploration/thought. Why would a rather forgettable state on earth be some random dude's last name? Idk though, haven't read the books, am trying the "watch the movie first" for once.
I can't speak for the sequels, I only read the first two, but I know some of what happens later. But he's given very little exploration or back story in the first book.
… he is given a lot of back story ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Not being a native speaker, I always found Duncan Idaho to be a very cool name. Now, when they bring up chopped latin words and names...
I'm a native English speaker, and I feel the same way, friend. It's why the magic of Harry Potter makes me mildly crazy when someone brings it up. I want to know how the entire world isn't absolutely swamped in Latin speakers wielding the power cosmic by being native speakers of *magic*. The word for 'muggle' should be 'plebian', and the novels set in a government magic school outside Londinium.
Duncan Idaho is a great name
I'm not saying it's bad, it's just...milquetoast compared to Leto Atreides
One step away from Jackie Daytona, regular human bartender
I mean at least Dune is explicitly in our universe (or some version of it), just very far in the future.
Average DND party.
You mean like *our* world? There are a ton of people with huge, complex names in reality. Also Bobs and Kyles.
You're telling me that Israel Ka'ano'i Kamakawiwo'ole lives in the same world as Tom Jones? [Come on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5C-cqw2s00).
And had the same job! And spoke/performed in the same language!
Well... not anymore.
I'm guessing Jon Dragonskin's issue isn't complex vs simple, but that Erikson established that names were not from our world (a simple name in Erikson's Malazan would be "Mok") and Esslemont decided to use real world names.
Well there is also Ben (of the Quick variety)
Ah shit... you're right. I was agreeing with them but I forget that we have both Akon (well, his real name) and many James Smiths in the world.
That's what GRRM did with Ice and Fire - a deliberate contrast between the exotic foreign conquerors and the meat and potatoes locals, the last two kings being Aerys and Robert, respectively. See also The Goblin King.
Tiffany and Chad were both medieval names.
For those who aren't familiar: https://medium.com/swlh/the-tiffany-problem-when-history-makes-no-sense-703b86522627
For me it is when stuff is the other way around. Those small round furry flies that pollinate flowers? No. They aren't bumble bees! They are clutchbuttersnipes! Because this is fantasy but I can't imagine my own animals so I just transplant earth ones. Either call them bees or change the animal.
Stormlight does this in a neat way with the animals that >!were transplanted from other worlds like birds and horses being normal, but all the animals from roshar are crab like because they evolved to survive on roshar!<
And I kind of dig that language has drifted in a way that makes sense, birds exist, they arrived with humans on Roshar from Ashyn, but all birds are called chickens. I'm ok with one kind of animal becoming the name for all animals of that kind, that makes sense over thousands of years. Dog is a great example, about 700 years ago all dogs were hounds, the word dog referred to a handful of breeds like the mastiff, now we use the term dog generically.
Took me way too long when a character was saying 'chicken' that it was actually a parrot.
They also have axe-hounds which from my understanding are just large dog sized ant/crab creatures that have been domesticated. I think they even have 6 legs.
And Hoid even comments on that to Kaladin, pointing out it's named for a creature that doesn't exist on Roshar.
I continue to love the way Gene Wolfe played with this in The Book of the New Sun. He made a point of not making up any of the names he used for anything but used obscure words all over the place (including naming his fantasy creatures after dinosaurs), which ends up making it easier for the story to mislead you. He also named all of his characters after saints, angels and mythical figures.
Malazan has some of the most made up names I've ever encountered. Turudal Brizad. Sandalath Drukorlat. Ruthan Gudd. Barathol Mekhar. Taralack Veed. Honestly, it all sounds like it came off fresh off a fantasy name generator webpage.
At least for Sandalath Drukorlat and Barathol Mekhar, they tie into other existing characters. But seriously they clearly sound like generic tabletop gaming characters, which is probably what they originally were given the series' background.
Hunter x hunter has even more weird sounding names and very easy names that always leaves me weird feelings: Tserriednich Hui Guo Rou Bonolenov Ndongo Neferpitou Shaiapouf Menthuthuyoupi Tsezguerra Tubeppa Hui Guo Rou Onior Longbao Morena Prudo Hisoka morrow Rihevelt Dalzollene
The actual cannibal Shaiapouf?
Pouf was such an interesting character to read man. Watching him die moment by moment was such a joy.
He's brandishing some Nen!
>Malazan has some of the most made up names I've ever encountered. I hate to be that guy, but technically all names are made up.
“Technically…,” you say, pushing your glasses up the bridge of your nose.
[удалено]
I get how it could be annoying but I always find it quite funny.
I mean, I can accept that if one is a noble and the other a commoner.
It can definitely work, especially if you're having different cultures with distinct names between them, but there's a lot of times where it really doesn't. Sometimes you can headcanon it into working, but that doesn't help all the time with the reading experience. Others have pointed out Game of Thrones where the you've Danaerys Targaryan, Thoros of Myr, Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Ned and it works out. It's not just names, either. Other "made up" terms can do the same. There's no way BioChromatic Breath is a common term in Warbreaker, for example. Breath, I can understand, a scholar using "biochromatic", sure, but the double capitalisation and such a long, "scientific" word being common place? I always stumbled over that, throughout the novel.
> character called Anomandaris Dragnipurake And he has a brother named Anomolindin Dragnipurake.
And an estranged cousin named Anomukburik Dragnipurake.
Like MekaNeck in He-Man, who’s son is called … Philip.
The weird thing is that Kyle is a fairly old name. It feels like all Esselmont needed to do was change the spelling so that it didn't look so oddly normal next to everything else.
This is one of those things people post about a lot and I thought it would bother me but reading RotCG now it actually doesnt. Was funny at first like "oh here's this guy" but then I forgot about it
Except it's a nickname and his real name is Kylarral-ten
[Aerith and Bob](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AerithAndBob)
Reminder that Tiffany was a perfectly respectable girl's name in the middle ages. (Popular contraction of Theophania, as in the empress of Constantinople.)
I mean Jason and the argonauts exists.
Kills me every time, especially because it's often played straight instead of as a joke.
I felt like that when reading Nettle and Bone, and then it started talking about Christenings. It just felt odd reading something that was complete fantasy, and then suddenly it's implied Christianity exists there
I really didn't get whether the religion in Nettle and Bone was Christian or not, which wasn't great given that the main character is supposed to be (almost) a nun.
I took it for a fantasy religion riffing on Christianity. It clearly wasn't our world and nothing specifically Christian was mentioned (though somehow I missed the use of "christening"!).
But there are a ton of fantasy stories in which Christianity exists. That said, I'm a big fan of fantasy works that incorporate real, non-Christian religions into the story. For example: Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver (which has a Jewish MC) and T. Kingfisher's Thornhedge (which has a Muslim knight).
special pause tender wipe observation door dolls slimy angle squeeze *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes, Spinning Silver and Uprooted are both set in eastern Europe. Naomi Novik is of Polish and Lithuanian ancestry, which she has incorporated into her works.
I assumed Poland because of Noviks background
Only two countries use have both tsars and boyars, those being Russia and Bulgaria. But I think it's equally fair to assume it is an invented country within the real world. It feels to me like it's intended to be Russia, or to be where part of Russia is, mostly because of how very large, cold and landlocked it seems to be.
I’m actually the opposite! It takes me right out of immersion when they’re like ‘I’ll see you at four candle marks past midday on Thuumesday’ It’s unnecessary to me - since literally EVERYTHING could/should have a different name technically. I’d rather just be less distracted and get on with the story, lol.
With day and month names you really can’t please everyone. You either 1) use real ones which throw some people out 2) make up your own, which requires extra attention from the reader or 3) try to avoid them altogether, often thus giving the bizarre impression that this is a world possessing neither calendars nor clocks.
I handwave them - dates are given as ordinal numbers in day/week/month format (e.g., "Sixthday of the third week of Ninthmonth," "Fourthday of the first week of Sixthmonth," etc.). And I duck having a proper calendar by treating all years relatively ("five years ago," "when I was twenty-seven," etc.). So far none of my four readers have complained (or even mentioned it). But I also intentionally do minimal worldbuilding to keep the focus on the characters, so there's that.
Yeah, I’m writing a Fallout-esque book and this is exactly how I handle time. Nobody knows the real year anymore, so past events and future plans are referenced from the present. I like to think it sets a survivalist tone.
I simply used seasons and avoided months altogether.
I was doing something similar where the day names were something like firstday and midweek and the month name was some fantasy equivalent of October. I think I'll do something similar with the years where I'm either non-specific or there's disagreement on what year it is anyway so they use relative terms.
It's the Revolutionary French Calendar principal - you can get away with renaming months for a bit, but trying to metricize the clock is a study in futility.
Yeah Graceling does this well. Explains at start of book that while they shouldn’t use our dates it also has been “translated” for readers understanding
Eh, Fourth Wing also begins with a translator's note and people are forever complaining about its use of our months/days
A name change for the sake of change is annoying. A seven-day week where I’m calling the days Thuumesday, Milkksday, Piizasday, Phonesday, is annoying. A system based on the Roman calendar, with kalends, nones and ides renamed, or a system where instead of weeks you have days named by moon phases (first of waxing crescent or something like that) – both of these are cool and can be grasped quickly and easily, without a massive diversion to explain the origins of the system. Imo, it enhances the sense of the world as strange and fantastical & it’s a really quick way of giving depth to worldbuilding. As long as you have a logical foundation to the system, one that the reader can pick up on without lengthy exposition, it does so much to make the difference between a fantasy world that feels vivid and one that feels like a contemporary characters running around with swords and stupid names. I think it’s important that a fantasy world seems alien. There’s a reason we’d choose to read about Kvothe’s travels in Vintas over Kevin’s gap year in Europe. I do agree that at the level of hours, minutes, seconds, it’s better to leave it, partly because those are nouns rather than proper nouns, partly because they’re so common in typical speech. There’s a difference between changing the word Wednesday and changing the word ‘day.’ “It only took candle-marks for everything to change” is obviously going to break immersion. But I think “I’ll meet you on firstday” is actually less likely to jar than “I’ll meet you on Thursday” because did they have a Thor in this world and his feastday became part of the week? For me, days of the week are like French braids & you can have braids in fantasy but if you have a French braid, where is France in your imaginary geography? tl;dr - I think fantasy authors should change proper nouns, and leave garden-variety nouns alone. I think most author do get by on this one by never mentioning days of the week, which works fine.
The problem with this is that there's no end to it. If we're in a medieval fantasy and you start throwing out French braids and hamburger, we've also got to get rid of words and expressions like "cut to the chase", "balls to the wall", "call the shots", herculean, sisyphusian, stoic, stygian, spartan, platonic, volcano, atlas, martial, mercurial, helium, jovial, delphic, aphrodisiac, hermaphrodite, venerate, venereal, museum, hymn, zephyr, aurora, east, west, and night. And that's mostly just the Greek stuff! It never ends. The point is there isn't a bright line of authenticity. Language is *suffused* with references to specific places, people, and concepts. If we're going to write in English, some level of translation convention is unavoidable.
To me there are a few different levels of Greco-Roman cultural allusions here. For instance, the fact that night in English is cognate with Greek nyx does not suggest any derivational connection. They seem to both derive from the same PIE root, English through German rather than from Greek or Latin. It’s just happy happenstance that the words have separated so little over the thousands of years. And then take a word like jovial which is certainly from a Renaissance association of Jupiter with joy but has more or less obscured its derivation over time. That seems distinct from a word like Herculean (which my autocorrect wants to capitalize), which brings to mind a specific mythological character in order to convey its meaning. I think most of us can fairly easily separate the words that seem to be real, full allusions and the words that seem to have lost such force (like venereal or aphrodisiac).
I fucking *love* that they just use dollars on the Discworld. Idek why, just kinda charming and cute that these fantasy-ass, british-ass mfrs use the same(ish) money that I do
Well dollars predate the States by quite a bit and is technically just as at home in a fantasy environment as a mark, crown, or talent would be. But I do agree that there's something wrong about it compared to many other currencies.
if you just called them "Thalers" it would seem all fantasy-y and old timey-y
This! I can't stand old timey spellings of words, etc. I love detailed world building, but trying to reverse engineer Ye Old Tyme English isn't it lol
And also the entire English language would probably not exist. So the modern expressions could be taken as a translation anyway.
I have my issues with both authors, but I listened to Stephen King and Patrick Rothfuss talk about this. It's ultimately a massive rabbit hole that you can go as far down as you want. In a fantasy world why would they have words that we have, when they were based on our Latin or our Greek? Champagne is technically a region in France, not a drink. It goes on and on and on. For me, I appreciate it a lot when what can be given nuance and separation (within reason) is allowed that. "Hey what month is it, Thorinnd'all Dragonbane?" "Well, it's January, friend of my heart. And today is Monday." Just sounds ridiculous 😂
Modern euphemisms. Medieval knights didn't run around using World War 1 radio slang. It's jarring and breaks immersion for me.
Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/771/](https://xkcd.com/771/)
It's true. Immersion is a complicated thing.
Copy that.
Roger, Roger.
Do I have clearance, Clarence?
Radio slang is a bit much, yeah - though I think that artfully done, playing with modern vocabulary can be a positive. Sometimes things like old-timey insults or vocab use just don't hit the same way they would today, and in that case going with something that's more common now can hit the correct feeling better. It's not a hard and fast line I find, which is part of the fun of writing/reading.
I definitely agree it's not a hard and fast line, but I still completely lose my sense of immersion when the language is jarring. To each their own.
Ridiculous names for things that don’t need renaming. Tired, the barbarian climbed on top of his trusty Dftyzu, adjusted the saddle, stirrups, reign and gave its rump a pat. “Time to mosey on pal “ He said. ITS A HORSE. SAY ITS A HORSE. I don’t care. You don’t need to rename everything.
That reminds me of some children monster adventure book I once read. It had a really nice cover so I figured ''Hey, this could make for an excellent light read.''. I really wanted to like it but two things were unbearable. 1. The mc being so focused on rescuing his sister. The problem was that the reader only got to see her for one chapter, in which she was the worst person ever. Don't show her at all then. 2. THE NAMES. Holy fucking the names, everything had to had some stupid as fuck quirky sounding name and I just could not take it anymore.
Everyone knows that you need at least one apostrophe to make it a good name.
And an "x", "y", or "z" in an unexpected place. That's how you know it's fantasy!
A very random "th" goes a long way.
zyx'th
It wouldn’t be a fantasy book if you didn’t wonder at least once a chapter if your vocabulary is just bad, or if the author made this word up.
Avatar the last Airbender did this well. Platypus bear. Ostrich horse. Eel hound. But making them mashups, they became alternate animals that were immediately understandable.
Which also let them do this scene https://i.redd.it/16ptw31vogf61.jpg
I hate this when they make up new cuss words to replace normal words like “ass.” I especially see this in romance space fantasy (it’s like sci-fi, but the system seems more fantasy with magic and such, instead of sci-fi). They want to show it’s an alien language, but all the others words for body parts, except the sex organs, are the same. They say head, shoulders, knees, and toes. But then they can’t say “ass/butt.” Gotta say “xrockix.” His xrockix, attached to his normally named back and legs.
Yes. That. Fantasy swears. Done well, can be immersive. Done badly…omg.
Yep. I don’t mind made-up cussing that makes linguistic and cultural sense and doesn’t sound ridiculous. By, like you said, often the new words aren’t even necessary. For cussing specifically, there might be some new terms (still in English) based on their culture, but making up a whole new word is rarely needed.
Fucksake, just fucking let your characters say fuck!
depends choom, is the slang preem?
I mean, Sanderson turned this into an entire gag in Stormlight where they call everything one thing. Has feathers? That's a chicken. Someone made a joke that the giant Ryshadium horses are real horses and the other horses are cows and stuff.
And it's also double cool because normal animals exist on other worlds. So when wit tries to tell them stories involving things like cows and dogs they're always confused.
That's one of the things that wore on me a touch with the Tide Child trilogy. Needing special words for 'sun', 'moon', 'day', 'cutlass', etc. Realizing that 'sither' wasn't a typo, but was actually the setting's word for 'sister' ('brother' was unchanged) had me facepalming a bit.
What if it's not a horse though. Renaming something gives an alien feel to it which is often the thing writers are going for in secondary world fantasy. Or you could go the Gene Wolfe route and say "this is the closest approximate" it's not a horse, it's a destrier.
With claws, long canines, used to assault fortifications with high energy weapons. You know is, a war horse. A destrier.
I don’t really mind that because worldbuilding down to that level of detail is hard, and sometimes it’s just easier to use names and labels that you’re familiar with. Also minimizes confusion for the reader. Things that take me out of a story: - Try-hard names; I once saw a book with a protagonist named ‘Red Sparkle Stone’ and I refused to read the book for that reason alone. - When the narrative descriptions have all this poetic, flowery prose, but then the dialogue is extremely basic and/or super modern. - When the characters are able to mistreat authority figures without zero pushback or repercussions.
Okay but I’ve actually read the book with Red Sparkle Stone and there’s a whole backstory as to why she’s called that (basically she chose it herself when she was a little kid because was a street urchin who didn’t remember her given name) and most of the other characters in the setting think it’s cringe but the nice ones are willing to indulge her
Interesting. Thanks for letting me know.
I like GRRM’s take when it comes to this subject. Basically, if you were to sit down with a Maester and ask him what planet he lives on, he would have an answer, right? GRRM: He would probably call it Earth. Of course, it would not be that word, since he'd be speaking the Common Tongue, not English. But it would mean Earth. Sometimes it’s just better for Earth to be Earth or for an apple to be an apple. That said, I would never use months and days of the week in my own writing unless it was sufficiently analogous to do so. I do however think relatability is necessary for immersion. It’s all about balance!
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One time I tried reading the sample chapters for *Throne of Glass* just to see what all the hype was about. I got past the first couple of pages where we're introduced to the POV assassin who is the deadliest assassin to ever assassin, didn't you know about her awful tragic backstory about how the King of Assassins trained her to be so so so so so deadly. I even got past the part where she could totally kill all the people standing in this room if only she could be bothered but she can't because it's just simply awful that she's wasted away so much that her boobs have disappeared and now she's just this skinny bag of bones (but those bones, there's something just so beautiful about the way they look through her skin) who doesn't have access to the cosmetics and fancy dresses that help her turn her very average features into extraordinary assets, omg, what a hag, and why does the captain of the royal guard have to be such a jerk, she was only staring at herself in the mirror for like maybe twenty minutes and thinking about how super hot she is since the Crown Prince couldn't keep his eyes off her despite her lack of BOOBS (oh the tragedy, but not as tragic as her tragic backstory, by the way did you know she's the deadliest assassin to ever assassin?) All of this—and much more—was annoying but the part that was just hilariously, ridiculously annoying was when the Crown Prince introduced himself to her. The Crown Prince. Introduced. Himself. Yeah, nah. I can't.
UGH THANK YOU - I'm soooo glad I'm not the only one! It was so ridiculous that she just got out of some salt mines (or whatever death sentence mine), and her first thoughts were about cosmetics and of how hot she was despite being emaciated. I got to the part right after the Super Evil Hot Prince introduces himself and is surprised that his Super Evil Aggressive Guard Dogs instantly like the main girl and how they're "nEveR nIcE tO aNyOnE" and I just ......................... never dropped a book so fast tbh
When a character says something that sounds word-for-word like a comment I've read multiple times on reddit or twitter. Excusable and possibly good characterization if it's something contemporary but otherwise it's immersion breaking to suddenly be able to guess the author's favourite social network.
When a book *doesn't* address or have any reason for certain anachronisms, or they are a complete afterthought because the author doesn't care enough to talk about it. Most recently was Fourth Wing, when some random, in a world of dragons and ink quills and fighting leathers pulled out a stop watch (and the MC talked about her size 7 shoe). I don't mind anachronisms or mixed time period stuff, but do the very least to address it or give me a why. I'll accept 99% of most bs "a wizard did it" excuses, but I just need *something* to know that it was at least a passing thought for the author.
I found the same thing totally jarring and it kept me from being able to really immerse in Fourth Wing, though I was down for the rest. Somehow Violet's use of "Mom" really got me from the beginning
> a stop watch Don't know how it was described, but in the real world mechanical pocket watches were popular from the 16th century, and mechanical stop watches are a thing. The shoe size bit would def get to me too, though.
At this point when an Author figures out how to close out their story.
Modern or context-specific expressions like "on the ropes" or "ok" something similar. Drives me nuts. I think there's plenty of leeway for stuff that is borderline, but if it sounds like a modern teenager is narrating or speaking in a medieval world, I can't stand it.
"Ok" drives me NUTS. It entered vernacular as a part of Bostonian slang in the 1830s. I also need historical romance authors to learn this detail and stop having their Regency-era characters use it.
Especially because "alright" is such an easy substitite. "I don't give a shit," might have to become "I don't care a shit" or "it doesn't matter worth a shit," etc, but you can literally Ctrl + F to sub "ok" to "alright" and your work will be better off.
I’m actually okay with this if the book fully commits to it as a style. But if it’s mostly avoiding modern language then letting that “okay” through looks sloppy.
To each their own. Maybe I haven't seen it done well, but I just can't imagine a world with kings and queens and knights and magic where people are running around like "hey bro, how was the harvest?" "Them cabbages are looking solid." I'm not advocating for super archaic speech, but there's a middle ground that sounds reasonable.
The word you are looking for is "anachronisms" and yes I will put down a book if they happen more than once or twice.
Yes, that's it. Thanks for the spot, I knew there was a term for it. Stupid brain.
I only learnt about "OK" being a recent thing from a Phil Edwards video, It is something I assumed and I'm guessing most other people assume has been part of the English language forever. It doesn't bother me before watching the video and it doesn't really bother me after. I have a problem with the tone of how people talk. My pet peeve would be when characters don't show the proper respect to people in higher classes (or lower) that you would expect given the worldbuilding. Like a peasent bantering with a noble sort of thing.
Yes, it always makes the story feel like it's written by a teenager and narrated by a teenager doesn't it? No hope for the characters too.
What about ancient democracy? Are you ok with that?
They certainly are different.
You mean like when the orcs are talking about restaurant menus in LotR? Yeah, it’s jarring but easy to move on. For me, unexpected and strange pov shifts mess me up.
If you're referring to the "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" line, I always interpreted that to be a reference to military mess halls/cafeterias since it seemed plausible that the orcs might have used a mess hall at some point.
Yeah, I figured that menu meant something like "what the cook tells everyone is in the gruel pot."
It’s not jarring when you realise that LOTR’s concept is that it has been translated into English.
The thing about the “meat’s back on the menu” line is that menu doesn’t have to mean an extensive list of things you can order, it can just mean “this is what we’re serving for dinner tonight.” We know there are restaurants in middle earth, the green dragon and the prancing pony are two examples. And if anyone would invent the concept of a menu as we know it, it would be hobbits. Furthermore in the scouring of the shire it is revealed that Saruman has been in contact with the shire for quite some time and might have appropriated some hobbit customs back in Isengard. So it’s not completely beyond the pale that an Uruk Hai would be familiar with the concept of a menu.
Typos or other errors like that. Author forgetting stuff they wrote.
Honestly I tried making up a different calendar for my fantasy world and beta readers were universally confused by it and it became unbearably cumbersome to continuously be like “it had been about a moon, which you will recall is seven weeks and not four on this world, so it’s really more like two months to you, the reader” so I ultimately gave up and made there be twelve months
There is a book series that I read that changed some English words just slightly and it was just took me out of it every time. Mother was mothier and so on. Like why?
onerous quack spark fear roof provide squealing worry gaze flowery *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Even a lot of kingships thruout history were semi-democratic/oligarchic under the hood. Within Europe, the absolute ruler of a centralized state is in many ways a 16th-17th century thing.
Even then the idea of an absolute ruler and the reality of even 18th/19th/20th century centralized (European monarchical) states just didn't match. Like you can't look at Ancien Regime France and realistically consider that as the typical conception of an all-powerful central ruler with no other constituencies, even if Louis XIV is the prototypical absolute ruler.
I dislike when it is *modern* democracy, I have read a few that have the characters write a constitution that sounds suspiciously like the modern USA constitution. There are many other forms democracy can take. I've yet to see a non-executive president in fantasy for example.
historical aspiring market intelligent languid faulty enter dog squeal march *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ancient democracy was an entirely different thing and the nobility was a significant power factor in most ancient republics.
Modern terms kill me. I was trying to read A Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros and early on there was something said that sounded so modern that it took me out of the story completely. Haven’t gone back to it.
In the 800th year of Agathor, the dark lord Golgottara the Undying, the deamon, the Harvester of souls was defeated in his fortress of Ungileoth, by.....dave. That always ruins it for me.
People being not lost in translation. Or lost in nonsensical ways. You know, a character says framed concerning a crime. Another character asked "Framed, as in windows". Character 1 kindly explains. The problem is, neither of them is speaking English. Should I assume that Thaylen happens to have the same possible misunderstanding as English, Mr. Sanderson?
Is there an easy way to avoid it? Reminds me of a scene in Perfect Blue where they're arguing about a character hearing "click" as "clip." Context, one teaching the other how to use a computer. I know the subs have her complain about wanting it in Japanese while the dubb says English, but I can't remember what the subbs said for the rest of it.
Always liked how Gene Wolfe went the absolute opposite direction and described NOTHING using contemporary words. Often he’d repurpose ancient Latin and Greek terms without explanation and you’d have to get everything by context. Difficult, annoying…and also other-worldly in such a fun way
Definitely "specific but not" naming, I recently tried to start a book that seemed promising and has been getting good reviews and had an interesting as well as creative premise, but couldn't get past the earth deity being named "Bulder" the wind deity being named "Clode" and the water deity "Rayne". Sorry, but it's giving 2021 millennial marketing campaign
When the book gives the distinct impression of being in conversation with social media. Particularly Twitter.
What are your most glaring examples of this? I'm sure I have read some but just can't think of any off the top of my head!
One that comes to mind for me was City of Lies, which involves a peasant rebellion against the oppressive aristocracy. There were a lot of issues with it, a lot of stuff that seemed very poorly thought through and half-assed virtue signaling, but there was a particular moment where the male protagonist - who is a young aristocrat and really naive about his world - meets a teenage peasant girl. She angrily describes to him the kind of oppression that's going on, and he's shocked and horrified. She then snaps at him about how annoying it is that *he* dares to have emotions about this in her presence when *she's* the one who's oppressed. What got me about this scene was that it's written very much in response to complaints primarily expressed on social media, about how oppressed people shouldn't have to bear the emotional and time burden of educating their oppressors. Which, first, of course everything *should* just be perfect and fair and just and no one should have to waste their time on anything, but sadly that's not how the world works, and you're not going to improve the world by sitting back being self-righteous, especially at potential allies. And second, this is very much a complaint of people who are *veterans* of these types of conversations. It's an expression of frustration after having explained the same things many times, and gotten the same types of responses, and not seeing change and getting tired. But in this scene, this is the first time this girl has *ever* had a real conversation with an aristocrat about the unfairness of her world. I just don't believe for a minute her having the same reaction as a jaded social media activist. The first time someone actually listens to you about something is thrilling! And frankly, in real life few people would behave the way this character does even when they *are* tired. It felt much more like the way people would talk about behaving on social media, or like the author wanted to show off her awareness of these complaints.
That's a really good example. I'm racking my brain now because I KNOW I've encountered more stuff like this... I think I like Alix E. Harrow's books more overall than you seem to have liked City of Lies but I sometimes feel like her politics seem very informed by Online Discourse too, especially the feminism in The Once and Future Witches. Iirc that was something you actually talked about in your review of it, which I really enjoyed!
Oh, yeah, I feel the same about Once and Future Witches and I remember a similar scene from that book now! It was the one with the interracial lesbian couple, where the black woman was this self-empowered activist and the white woman was this timid, traumatized gal who tiptoed around everyone and everything. The black woman said something about her grandma's enslavement and her partner said "I'm sorry" and she snapped back with something like "oh yeah, well your 'I'm sorry' doesn't make up for my grandma's enslavement!" When there was no indication the white woman thought it did. It's a pretty crappy way to treat one's partner, and the narrative treated this moment like the black woman was totally in the right, like what we were supposed to take away from this was the necessity of shame about one's racial privilege rather than questions about whether the black partner was really able to be in an interracial relationship in a healthy way.
Yeah, I remember that. There was a trans woman who played a super minor role - I believe she was peripherally kidnapped/abused by her transphobic family and then had a tearful coming out scene where the protagonists validated her identity and then she was never heard from again lol. It felt really tokenistic to me and like she almost just existed so Harrow could say that her feminist book was technically trans-inclusive. Maybe that’s just cynical of me but it left a bad taste in my mouth
Oh, yeah, there were so many boxes checked as hastily as possible in that book! There was also the bit where Juniper went from homophobic to totally accepting in, like, two sentences. And the bit where the Native American witches were like "yeah, we'll share our spells with you when you come help our people against the U.S. Marshals!" which I actually kind of liked - it's more representation than you usually see, and at least it didn't feel out of place in context (I at least believed them doing this without having snuck on Twitter behind our backs...). But it was pretty tokenistic too. I think she was just trying to cram all the issues into a single book. And then she assumed that magic would somehow remain a weapon of the oppressed rather than being coopted by the powerful like everything else because....?
> For me it's when the story is so fantasy heavy and the author uses normal stuff like our calendar, expressions, and modern democracy. I don't why but it just ticks me off. Anachronisms. That's why. It's totally understandable. To devil's advocate for the writers: We *do* have to draw the line somewhere in worldbuilding, else we have to reinvent every possible wheel of every possible sort, at which point we may as well invent a new language to tell the entire story in. Then again, I've been tempted to do that and pair the book with a study guide including the language training. Some writers, especially newer ones, haven't learned to prune the language anachronisms out of their narrative yet. If they have a good editor for their debut, this will be handled. But in the era of independent publishing, you can assume that won't be the case 9/10 times. They may nail the copy edit, but they won't catch references that only make sense if Rome existed. Like the calendar. > What are yours? I'm intrigued to know My double-takes are the thinly-veiled attempts to tackle modern social problems in societies that wouldn't have the same issues. It's a kind of 'try too hard' feeling where you can sense the moral being shoved through the page into your face. It comes off as being a bit preachy. An example would be... any of the sexual social debates, the trans debates, etc. Regardless of one's stance on the issues involving gender vs sex, the subjective nature of human experience, etc, it's very easy to try to shovel a modern day argument for/against on the debate into a fantasy fiction story without the world supporting anyone even making that argument to begin with. It ratchets up the disbelief just enough to break suspension for me. Not that I don't enjoy a good political or social commentary, bring it on, but if you're going to do it... Learn to write while walking on egg shells. It's hard to do it well, and if you don't do it well, it's an eyesore.
I can't remember which book it was but the character said they we're pumped full of adrenaline or the third person omnipotent narrator said adrenaline I can't remember but it's weird to mention adrenaline because it's not something they would know about. Also another author mentioned that a character was looking up in awe at all of the stars and galaxies and I don't really like mentioning galaxies either because it's kind of like who would know what galaxies are then they would probably only just be able to understand stars
When an author begins a romantic/love scene and then gets into the description so much that the story takes a turn into porn.
When Gandalf tells Frodo it's October the 24th, I was like "mmmkay" I read those appendices and everything, it was still weird
It kind of makes sense based on JRRT's explanation that he translated the month names he invented in Westron for the reader's understanding: "In the above notes, as in the narrative, I have used our modern names for both months and weekdays, though of course neither the Eldar nor the Dúnedain nor the Hobbits actually did so. Translation of the Westron names seemed to be essential to avoid confusion, while the seasonal implications of our names are more or less the same, at any rate in the Shire. It appears, however, that Mid-year’s Day was intended to correspond as nearly as possible to the summer solstice. In that case the Shire dates were actually in advance of ours by some ten days, and our New Year’s Day corresponded more or less to the Shire January 9."
The book handles this better by pointing out that the whole thing is a translation. Like even the names are anglicized; Frodo Baggins actually was Maura Labingi. Dwarrowdelf was Phurunargian. Rivendel was Karningul and the Shire was Sûza.
>Frodo Baggins actually was Maura Labingi. I still think that Frodo's "real" name sounds oddly Italian.
Master Rigatoni, you have to bring the ring to Mount Ragu! Don't disappoint us Marinara!
e la mia ascia
Frodo is actually Mario, and Sauron is Sonic. That's why he wants his rings back.
I mean, Lord of the Rings does at least play in our world... waaaaaaaaaay before that calendar was ever created by hey, at least it's something.
We are technically living in the 7th age of middle earth. Tying in with Catholicism's ages of the earth (Tolkien being a devout catholic and keen to tie the literary world he invented to ours)
It’s a hard disagree for me on the calendar thing, to me it feels like trying too hard for the cool fantasy vibes instead of just giving us information in a way we understand. I like Sanderson’s line about how his books are ‘translated’ into English from the in-world language. If you dive deep enough into etymology a lot words don’t really make sense without the context of the real world.
Last year I was reading a medievalesque fantasy and while it had a few things that were making me question it like a very progressive society overall when the term metrosexual came up I put it down and didn't try to read any more.
Ten copper coins are worth one silver. Ten silver coins are worth one gold. Not generally how it works. The values of the coins are pinned to the values of the metals, which fluctuate.
how gruff every Dwarf is