What are some factors to consider if someone's deciding whether/how to use profanity in IF?

Question

Does it really make a writer look tough? When does it work, and when does it utterly fail? Will it totally turn people off? Is optional profanity an option?

(Note: this is a loaded question as I'm usually opposed to it unless there's a good reason.)

Comments

I try to avoid major profanity, as using it can show the author isn't in control of their characters or is just trying to force a reaction from the player.

I think it's much funnier to have implied profanity, or, at the very least, have a "lewd/tame" option at the beginning of the game. My style would tend towards using a profanity after a very bad joke, but I'm curious what others may think.

Also, I do have a thing for nonsense words that are meant as profanities. But the real profanities are mostly out for me.

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I think this is going to need to be closed as purely opinion based... but let's leave it just a little bit in case anyone can suggest any ways to refine it to be more objectively answerable.

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Would it help to say something like "What are some factors to consider if someone's deciding whether/how to use profanity in IF?"

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That's a better way to put it. I confess that my original question is kind of slanted--it shouldn't be there unless there's a really good reason for it. But people do have these questions.

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I think this is good question, and falls within the remit of this site, which says:

"Non-technical questions about interactive fiction are also on-topic. These questions could be about general IF design ..."

I appreciate questions like this are not allowed on stack Exchange, but if that is the case here, the welcome should be updated to reflect that.

Answer 1

This is purely an authoring (writing~writer's) question:

if the profanity serves a purpose (literary purpose), (just like nudity and~or sex, or graphic violence, too for that matter), then yes.

for example, having an individal character in your story using 'profanity', gives him 'character', makes him a special unique individual person, separate from the other characters. Same with giving a character different dialect and~or ways of talking. Also, if it's a historically accurate story, then you use (for example, Adventures of Tom and Huck Finn by Mark Twain, during the antebellum period in U.S history), using 'nigger', as that was the language at that time, for an african. Just as if you wrote a story of modern times, about gangs, you should have them using modern offensive slang as well towards the different ethniticies too. Lots of hateful ethnicity slang in modern times, towards europeans, asians, africans, arabs, hispanics~latinos, and etc (at least in the U.S., but hate is universally human, and so all other countries have their own offensive slang towards different ethnicities, I'm sure japanese in japan have their slang towards europeans, just as germans in germany have their slang towards french, and etc).

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as to children, that's for the parent of the child to.... PARENT!!!!!!... the child !!!! if a child is mature~intelligent enough to understand that the profanity~nudity~sex~violence is for a (literary) purpose (understanding themes and etc advenced literacy english classroom stuff about story telling significance), then, there's no reason why the child can't.

I was was mature~intelligent already as a very young child, and was an avid reader, reading very grown-up books (my reading level has always been like +12 age-levels of my age and when I took classes in business law and logic and philosophy 101, I had an extremely easy time with them), which had lots of violence and sex and etc grown up topics (including advanced sophisticated topics of themes and sociology~human behaviorism, and etc), completely unbeknown to my parents, who had no idea what I was reading in those books, as they didn't care, as I was reading, and reading was a good thing to them (amusingly, the same attiude with my teachers, laughs. Someone would be whispering with a friend while the teacher would be teaching the class, and the teacher would snap at them to pay attention, and at the same time, I'd be engrossed in reading a book, and the teacher gave me a total pass, laughs. By reading, the teacher gave me reign over ignoring her lecture and instruction, laughs. I once read through nearly the entire class, without any discipline by the teacher. Though, why would the teachers care, as I was smart from reading so much, and I getting an A in the class anyways, despite my reading through the teacher's lectures each day).

Maturity is NOT nature, it is socially learned. A 5 year old child can be more disciplined and responsible and mature and grown up than a 30 year old. Psychologist's saying that our brain's and thus us, aren't mature until we're over 30 is scientifically-delusional insanity.

If you let a person be immature into their 30s, then you created their long-lived immaturity.

if you demand maturity~responsbility from even a young age, then you create what will be their early and long-lived maturity.

humans (like all animals~organisms) learn very quickly and very young, we immediately learn whether our society has high standards or no standards. If society demands maturity and excellence, then its people are mature and excellent from a very early age. if society is a total loser, then you got the modern world of immature 30 year old losers, who have no worth to society and life itself.

as right in Sun Tzu's Art of War itself, paraphrasing:

The emporer was sceptical that Sun Tzu could train lowly peasants into a professional army.

So, Sun Tzu proved him wrong, by challenging the emperor, that he can turn the emporer's carefree immature giggly playful concubines into disciplined soldiers. The emperor greatly laughed, knowing how impossible that was, so he accepted Sun Tzu's challenge. If Sun Tzu failed, he'd be executed for trying to con~fool the emperor, and if he succeeded (hah!), he'd be the emperor's commander of his army.

Sun Tzu picked a concubine to lead the other concubines into getting into a formation, and she giggled along with the other concubines, finding this all silly, and not taking it seriously.

in failing to command the other concubines to get into formation, Sun Tzu chopped off her head. The concubines' giggling ended in dead silence, as they watched the blood from her severed head and neck run across the palace floor.

Sun Tzu picked another concubine to do the same thing, and lo-and-behold, the concubine leader and her concubine followers, were instantly a professional army, they snapped into formation at the leader concubine's barking orders, not a single giggle, all with stoic faces of asolute seriousness. The emporer, immediately made Sun Tzu his Commander to raise an army of peasants for his army against the coming invaders to attack his kingdom.

Sun Tzu understands human~animal~organizism behaviorialism SCIENCE (thousands of years ago), maturity is LEARNED~TAUGHT (nurture) with age having no bearing at all, not biological (nature) brain-developed past age 30 as modern psychologists spout their non-science drivel. I wish Sun Tzu was still around, chopping off these modern scientifically-ignorant psychologist lunatics, sighs.

Comments

Since you waxed on a bit about children, I will assume (perhaps wrongly) that you were responding to my comment about a child target audience. I will stand by that. While children may read more adult material (I myself stumbled across some of my dad's magazines that I doubt my parents wanted me to see), if your *target* audience is children - and you do have to get past parents, etc - then it makes sense to avoid profanity, lest you never reach your intended target audience.

Answer 2

I think it may apply the same way it does with writing in general: What is your target audience? Who is being profane and why?

If you're writing for a child audience, then definitely no.

If you have a gritty WWII in-the-trenches sort of piece or a high seas pirate adventure and the characters don't swear a bit, it might not seem realistic.

I tend to not use profanity (short of what people commonly say in times of distress) as it's usually outside the bounds of what I need or want as a writer. But if it made sense, I'd use it.

In the area specifically of text adventures, I probably would not have the PC swear, no matter what. (Although I guess it depends on the PC's "voice". But as above, I doubt I'd ever go there.) NPCs might depending on who they are. It might be part of an NPC's affect!

And I think gratuitous profanity is the sign of bad writing.

Answer 3

One thing to think about is that people vary widely in their comfort level with profanity. There are people who use it a lot and are used to hearing it all the time. Others consider it pretty rude, and it isn't so much in their usual vocabulary.

Another question is, who or what is being profaned? A slur that demeans an entire group of people can have a negative visceral impact on someone who identifies with that group, even if there's justification for using the term. Using "God" as a swear word can be hurtful to people who believe in God. For people who see human sexuality as sacred or something to approach with respect, crass terms for it or for parts of the body, or reducing a relationship to a swear word, can be very off putting.

It's a sign of respect for one's audience to acknowledge and be aware of the weight these words may have for others, even if a word doesn't seem like a big deal to the author, and to avoid casually demeaning things or people that others hold dear. But there are many variables, so exactly when profanity is justified is a judgment call.

Something else to think about: even if a character is someone who swears a lot, not every word spoken by a character needs to be quoted directly.