And now back to our regularly scheduled programmin

or this:

Looks good.

This:

is also perfectly acceptable.

However this:

is the stuff of nightmares.

Give us a light socket? We see a face. It looks surprised to us. Maybe thoughtful.

Give us a robot head that emotes solely by flashing lights in the arrangement of emojis? Perfect, we know exactly which emotion is which.

Give us the front of a car? Face.  Give us a Rorsach Test? We’ll probably see a face.  A skull? That is ABSOLUTELY a face; we even often describe skulls as “grinning.”

Hell, even cartoon characters are an example of this – they look like no face we’ll ever see in reality, and yet we still see faces in them. We see emotion in them. We can empathize with them.

A “face” doesn’t need to look photorealistic to be recognizeable and acceptable as a face to human beings, and oftentimes we find more endearment in faces that don’t look like real faces.

Not to sound like a Crazed Communist~! here.

But if you have $131 billion you can probably afford air conditioning and regular bathroom breaks for everyday Americans that work in your stores. 

You’re still going to be ridiculously rich anyway.

- solve the Flint water crisis (50 mil)

- organize relief to be sent to Puerto Rico (that’s what? 500 mil?)

- pay for Little Miss Flint to go to college

- buy an apartment complex in 30 big cities around the US to create special communities for homeless queer teens where they can get a hs and college diploma and learn job skills, get access to health and psychological care, and have access to non-queerphobic religious services if wanted (90 mil to start?)

- buy my own house (at most 2 mil because I have to accommodate 3 family groups and I would want to make the house solar and wind powered; also the cost of my library and wait staff)

- pay the medical bills of every victim of a mass shooting or police brutality (including psychiatric care for the PTSD)

- give a 500k dollar grant to 4k minority-owned businesses (2 billion)

- pay my dad’s ex-wife’s care bills so my half-siblings don’t need to worry about it (she’s old; 1 mil would set her up for life with a cushion for emergencies)

- I’d have some kids

- I’d start a daycare/education center chain for sex workers with children that also provided medical care for kids and college opportunities for the parents that accommodated their work schedules

- I’d pay for young black kids to meet their book and movie heroes like Letitia Wright or Tomi Adeyemi

- I’d find impoverished US communities in need of “standard” meds like asthma inhalers and insulin and provide for them

- I would fucking bribe politicians to advocate for rape survivors, the disabled, and everyone else they fuck over on the Congress floor

- I’d go see Hamilton maybe

- I’d take my best friend to England and to Book Con

- I’d open up more shelters for domestic violence and assault victims that offered opportunities in education, counseling, job help, and child care

And after aaallllll that???

[Mild adult language ahead]

I don’t mind modern* swearing in high fantasy. But I also don’t mind authors coming up with their own words, using phrases like ‘she cursed’ or mixing swear standard words with fantastical/mythical words (e.g. “Tor’s tits!”). Sometimes long oaths shoehorned into the middle of action scenes can ruin the immersion for me. (Are you really going to bother saying “By the seven sons of Spiro” while running for your life?) But then there are other times that minced oaths, even long ones, can work really well.

Basically, different techniques work better for different authors/stories. So if swearing and modern linguistics feel more natural to you then I’d say go with that. If you try an force yourself to use language that’s unnatural to you, it’s probably going to come across as stiff and awkward to the reader.  

Personally, when I’m writing high fantasy I pretend I’m translating from the character’s native language to English. The advantage of this is that I don’t worry about how old the language I’m using is. Instead, I ask myself if my characters would have an equivalent of this word in their language. So, for instance, it doesn’t matter that the word “warlord” wasn’t coined until the 19th century because I say my world has an equivalent of it. But since my world doesn’t have an equivalent of “hell” phrases like “damn you to hell” don’t work.

That’s only my personal opinion though, and there are a lot of different opinions when it comes to swearing/modern language in high fantasy, so I invite my followers to share their thoughts on this one. 

All in all, I agree - the curses, much like any other words, should blend into the world. If they do, they’re fine. If they don’t, they’ll stick out and ruin the immersion.

You pass by a small crowd of hungry children, and decide you’d rather 455 apples go rotten than give them to some snotty brat who isn’t your problem.

It doesn’t matter how hard you’ve worked for your 500 apples, or that you aren’t the parent of any of those kids. in the moment you decide to walk away, it doesn’t matter why they’re hungry, or who owes who what.

You had the opportunity to help people, you had the ability to help people, you had the resources to help people. You had everything you needed to make a small, tiny little difference in someone’s life, and you decided not to.

Again, I don’t really think I was asked specifically, but hey, here ya go! ;D