What the Feth? Cursing in Games and Fiction

Thank God that I don’t have to run this by an editor. No doubt, this thought salad would end up in the circular file cabinet. If you understand that reference, raise your hand.

I have a problem with cursing. Sort of. I used to call it cussing, but somewhere along the line, it picked up an “r” and dropped an “s”. Now, if you think this will be a Bible-thumping tirade you either 1) don’t know me, or 2) have never read my blog. Since both instances are probable, a couple of sentences of personal history are in order. I’m a retired Navy diver. Young Navy divers curse like the curse words are going to be carved from their skin if not used.  I’m also a college graduate and college kids curse like, well… like they are trying to sound like Navy divers.  

Dredd and Anderson. Two judges you want by your side
when the drok hits the fan. Drok? Really?

This is the part of a column, or blog post (which emulate columns in an untrained sort of way), in which the writer provides detail. Here it is. My problem is not with cursing per se. My wife and daughters will be the first to tell you that our pool pump, rider lawnmower, and cats have elicited their fair share of F-bombs from me. My problem is with cursing in gaming and fiction. Science fiction. I don’t read any of that other crap. Okay, I did reread To Kill a Mockingbird last year. See what I mean about the thought salad?

First, games. There’s simply too much of it (cursing, that is). I remember playing several games in the Brothers in Arms franchise. Great games, but throughout the playing I wondered, did men circa 1944 really use the F-bomb this much? I asked John Antal, who wrote much of the script for the series, about it. John told me that the F-bombs were more for impact than historical accuracy. That bothers me.

Second, gaming blogs, vlogs, and audio blogs. These are a dime a dozen. Seems like everyone with a computer (including yours truly), a video camera, or recording software, has a blog. I get it. We all like to express our opinions, share our passions. But what good is an opinion if no one listens? Therein lies the rub. Sentence-opening conjunctions aside, bloggers want readers/viewers/listeners, and go to extremes to get them, extremes that include idiotically one-sided reviews, and curse-laced diatribes. I guess authors feel cursing make a blog different, edgy, real. No, it just comes across as inarticulate and repetitive.

Finally, science fiction. Feth, fething, Drok, Grud, Via, Yotz, are all curse words from famous science fiction literature, TV, and film. Gaunt’s Ghosts, Judge Dredd, Hammer’s Slammers, and Farscape, just in case you recently crawled out from under a fething rock. Well, at least they are famous in my mind. The point is, what’s the drokking point? I mean for the love of Grud, we all know what the characters actually mean, why not use the current, yotzing curse words?

One of the first written uses of the slang for fecal matter, as well as the four-letter word for intercourse, was in Chaucer’s The CanteburyTales, which was published in the late 14^th century. For those without calculators, that was approximately 650 years ago. If our cursing patterns haven’t changed in 650 years, what makes us think that humans will change their repertoire of four letter words anytime in future? My advice to fledgling and not so fledgling authors? If you write human based science fiction, either curse with human curse words, or don’t curse at all.

Either way it makes no fething difference to me.  

Mark H. Walker is the author of World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing. It's available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Just $3.99. Give it a try. What the feth?