The F bomb

[Dukayn]

I don't mind the idea of replacement curse words that aren't real words.

I do have to wonder at "Hutch" though. Is "vomit" now considered profanity?

[goldenmeanie]

(Goldenmeanie, pottymouthery doesn't bother me and I don't personally consider it a problem. Actually hateful speech is nauseatingly common on the Internet and within the subcommunities that MFØ synthesizes. I'm with Schoon that I want it to be a friendly environment.)

I wholeheartedly agree, I just prefer to treat everyone ( kids included ) as adults until it becomes necessary to modify that stance on a case by case basis. I also think that after a few first principles, better rules evolve over time. I am really looking forward to being a part of this community and hope that we don’t go overboard in the hopes of creating Total Safety.

[MittenNinja]

I am really looking forward to being a part of this community and hope that we don’t go overboard in the hopes of creating Total Safety.

This right here is most important. I think as long as no one is using profanity excessively, or in an aggressive or demeaning way we should be fine. The occasional "Aw Sh**, I forgot about that!" and the like I don't see being a big issue.

[Dukayn]

This right here is most important. I think as long as no one is using profanity excessively, or in an aggressive or demeaning way we should be fine. The occasional "Aw Sh**, I forgot about that!" and the like I don't see being a big issue.

Couldn't agree more.

[Ced23Ric]

Boop
- replaces the word "****", with all applied rules and scenarios for use.
- e.g.: booped up, booping stupid, booper, boopity boop boop.
- sounds a bit like a message in an instant messenger from '99.

[lumpley]

So kind of like this?

Grasher, noun.
Literally, the runt of a litter.
Someone who has had to fight for every allowance, who continues to fight when the fight's over (won or lost!), or who has a reputation for or air of inappropriate violence. Can be used to convey either disdain or grudging admiration.
"When the smoke clears, who's still crawling toward the cistern? That grasher." "So she buys him a beer, but she's such a grasher he's scared to even drink it."

-Vincent

[lumpley]

How about a general-purpose intensifier? It seems like we'll want one of those.

Chab, verb.

Originally, to overwork a stubminnow paddy, degrading it for future generations

To belabor, harass, harry, or work to exhaustion. "Captain Hattapon chabbed those poor souls halfway across Kelestin, and when they finally made their stand, everyone knew which way it would go." "Ugh this job. Our overseer's been chabbing us this whole tenshift."

"Chabbing" can be used as an adjective or an adverb, implying thoughtless excess, self-indulgence, or a disregard for the consequences. "Simol, back off. You can be such a chabbing grasher." "And what does she do? She just sits there and chabbing smiles."

The similarity to "Chub" is, I assure you, pure coincidence.

-Vincent

[Mantisking]

Chab, verb.

Might be too close to Chav.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I do have to wonder at "Hutch" though. Is "vomit" now considered profanity?

It's not to replace "vomit". It's to replace "****".

[Ramcat]

I've always liked "horq", as in, "he horqed the corner", meaning he messed up the corner. A horqed shot would also be a missed shot, but with a bad or unintended side effect, hitting an ally or a building you didn't want to. Two frames trying to do the same thing would "horq it" if their attempts blocked either one from accomplising the goal.

Don't horq the shot.
That was a horqing bad job.
What the horq were you thinking?

Some people spell "horq" "hork". Also looking on urban dictionary there are meanings in actual language other than how I have used it here.

As for why I would make this request of this community. I don't have the eloquence of Soren or Joshua, but here is my best attempt.

1) On the KickStarter:

Pledge $20 or more
1611 Backers

The Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack book, printed and glossy, and shipped to your door, plus the PDF as soon as it's finished! We're pricing it as low as we can to make it a kid-friendly price. You'll need dice and LEGO or another building toy to play. (please add $5 for international backers.)

Estimated Delivery: Jun 2012

As a "kid-friendly price" that would mean this game is targeted to kids. My kid.

2)

One of the things that puts me off from hanging out on the BrikWars forums more regularly is the bald-faced glee they take in using wildly inappropriate language. I like the BrikWars game, love the creativity that is on display... but I really dislike the vibe. I would be seriously disappointed to see that same culture develop here. I'm certainly not the type to tell people how to behave, but I whole-heartedly support the sentiment expressed by the OP.

3) 40K is dark and dreadful. I don't think we want to replicate that.

4) Joshua has so eloquently argued that his and Soren's creation not be turned into a platform to purvey or spread fashism, hate, sexism, violence. This thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=702 is reason enough (IMO) that we have higher standards, hold a value higher than common. Support good, honor, clean fun.

5) Children hear children swear in school. How would they learn unless we teach them.

6) Lastly, children do not see in a game the same things we do. My son sees "giant fighty robots". He sees the mechanics, the stations, the frames (which to him are robots without people in them). Some one on this board was laughing about men standing around a table going "pew pew pew". I aim to support such activities that would have men and boys standing around a table going "pew pew pew". What a value to families. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned about being nice to people I learned playing a game of Ogre. I was so good at the game I would let my friends play against me as a team. In one game I had them in a tight situation, but to do it I had made my right flank weak. If they could break that the game could turn. My only hope was to hold off their GEVs with my mobile howitzer (you laugh, I was dreadful) I fired and poofed one. Their turn, BOTH GEVs missed (I was in trees). They overran me AND MISSED! I did not miss. I held the right flank and won a game I should have lost. I learned that I am no Napoleon, you have to work with other people - be the peace maker. Help others when you can. All from the luck of the die. I am grateful for that moment. I was 16.

[Soren]

I think I've made my position clear, and this isn't an argument for or against what rules Sean wants in his house. Which, let me be clear, is why I acquiesce.

Sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, and violence have victims. 'Foul' language doesn't have victims. It's only problematic because a long time ago someone decided that certain words (not even concepts, but words) were crude - usually because they were common words among people who were poorer and belonged to a socially subordinate class or ethnic group (witness, our tendency in English to revile the plain Old English words for genitals and bodily functions - a legacy of the French-speaking Normans). I'm also not religious, and specifically not Christian, so 'damn', 'hell', and other religious curses are literally meaningless to me.

I've been called some really awful things by people who never 'cursed' as such - and thought themselves perfectly good and civil people, simply because they followed an arbitrary rule (which, by the way, was not religiously mandated, just a convenient piece of popular morality). I've been shown great respect and love by people who cursed up a storm while doing it. Civility is the willingness to acknowledge other people and their feelings as legitimate, if not necessarily correct. It doesn't depend on adherence to a particular set of ridiculous restrictions on what you're allowed to say.

Simple rules appeal to small-minded bigots with external consciences. I don't want to hang around with those people. I would rather we acknowledge that 'pew pew' results in death and screaming downrange, and that 'honor' is usually a shield that butchers hide behind.

[goldenmeanie]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, even before this topic surfaced, because my five year old asked me straight-up why some words were bad and others were ok. My answer was not as articulate as Soren's above but in the same vein.

I loved the brilliant Chinese sidestep of network censorship rules in Firefly. It accomplishes the emphasis that profanity is best used for and rings truer than the obvious substitutions like frak, for some reason gorram doesn't bother me. It does help when all dialog is actually scripted. It all hangs together so much more cleanly than in real life! I imagine that I'll just abstain rather than adopt a self-conscious substitution scheme (what is that actually accomplishing?), but I am enjoying watching the synthetic profanity being developed.

One thing I really appreciate from your last Soren: It had also never occurred to me to look at proscribed language as an enforcement of class before. Though in retrospect that makes quite a bit of sense!

Cheers, Alex

[shrimplor]

I think I've made my position clear, and this isn't an argument for or against what rules Sean wants in his house. Which, let me be clear, is why I acquiesce.

Sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, and violence have victims. 'Foul' language doesn't have victims. It's only problematic because a long time ago someone decided that certain words (not even concepts, but words) were crude - usually because they were common words among people who were poorer and belonged to a socially subordinate class or ethnic group (witness, our tendency in English to revile the plain Old English words for genitals and bodily functions - a legacy of the French-speaking Normans). I'm also not religious, and specifically not Christian, so 'damn', 'hell', and other religious curses are literally meaningless to me.

I've been called some really awful things by people who never 'cursed' as such - and thought themselves perfectly good and civil people, simply because they followed an arbitrary rule (which, by the way, was not religiously mandated, just a convenient piece of popular morality). I've been shown great respect and love by people who cursed up a storm while doing it. Civility is the willingness to acknowledge other people and their feelings as legitimate, if not necessarily correct. It doesn't depend on adherence to a particular set of ridiculous restrictions on what you're allowed to say.

Simple rules appeal to small-minded bigots with external consciences. I don't want to hang around with those people. I would rather we acknowledge that 'pew pew' results in death and screaming downrange, and that 'honor' is usually a shield that butchers hide behind.

This is exactly how I view "bad language." I have always been absolutely flabbergasted that some body could be offended by one word, then make up another word which (usually) sounds similar and expresses the EXACT SAME SENTIMENT, and not be offended by that one. Especially when the new word eventually becomes popular, and then it somehow becomes "offensive," and they make up another new one (or even better, revert back to the original word).

To clarify: I do understand why people do this (censorship), I just feel like the sentiment is what should count, not the word. Individual words have absolutely no power other than what we ascribe to them, and by changing one to another, all we do is now slowly make the new word have negative connotations.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

glomar

• n., v.
• A lie intermingled with truth told with the intent to mislead. Also, one who tells improbable or untrue stories.
• A campfire game from the colony of Glomar where competitors tell a story that starts off true and then gets increasingly fantastic. At the end of the story, players bid on the point that they think the story turned to fabrication (once they've finished mocking any participant who didn't realize they were one — a fact exacerbated by the prohibition of announcing the beginning of play). The player who's closest to the correct point without claiming that a truth was false, wins. Players lose their money to the storyteller if they claim that a truth was a lie, but all players lose their money to the player who got closest. To properly tell a glomar, one must know sufficiently improbable but true stories that the line between fantasy and reality is hard to perceive.

[Ced23Ric]

Cute, Josh, but you may want to rethink that. "Erguss" is German for outpour, discharge and, most prominently known and used, ejaculation. "Samenerguss", for example, is the medical term for "semen ejaculation". I leave it to you whether the cheek-in-tongue suliminal reference to some people verbally jerking off to their fictious stories was intentional.

PS: I am aware that ejaculation comes from the Latin eiacere, "to throw something out".

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Ha ha! It was actually a reference to Orguss. Renaming it now!

[Axhead]

I have always been absolutely flabbergasted that some body could be offended by one word, then make up another word which (usually) sounds similar and expresses the EXACT SAME SENTIMENT, and not be offended by that one. Especially when the new word eventually becomes popular, and then it somehow becomes "offensive," and they make up another new one (or even better, revert back to the original word).

Well in this case it will keep kids from getting in trouble at school. Any make-B-swears that are generated here are not likely to ever be any more in the public consciousness than peach jokes. Another reason to keep the profanity to a minimum is to prevent any issues with filters at work. This forum is a main form of coffee break and lunch time wasting for me and I would like to keep it that way.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

This is Schoon's house, so I'll do whatever he wants, but there's no way that, as a person, I'll tolerate misogyny, homophobia, and racism. Those things won't be caught by word filters, but I've seen that glomar infect many a forum with incredible virility. They're much worse than saying ***** or ******* or even *******************.

[randolph]

They're much worse than saying ***** or ******* or even *******************.

At first I thought you were making a Bloom County reference, but that's much longer than 14 letters

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I'm sad I missed the opportunity to make a Bloom County reference! I'm sure that, were Ed Meese to become aware of my existence, though, he'd take umbrage to my use of asterices.