Meta: On cursing in canon and fanon

Seven People Who Can't Say Words On Television AKA Faith's Canonical Cursing

stormwreath posted an annotated version of his interview with Willow, which is a great read and you should check it out. But it also got me thinking and before I knew it, I had typed all this out.

One of his questions to Willow is whether she swears or not. She claims not to, and stormwreath comments:

Meta-joke here; of course non-British characters on BtVS never use real swear-words because they're on TV; but in my mind they also don't swear off-camera either.

I don't entirely agree – for starters, it's canon that they do swear, they just never manage to get all four letters out on-camera. (Part of the almost-metafiction-but-not-quite nature of BtVS; being fictional, they wouldn't know that they are following rules set upon them by the "real" world - but in typical Whedon "You-make-me-complete" fashion, the cut-offs are usually obvious enough to signal that Joss, to quote himself, likes him some cussin'.)

So I started thinking about just what our favourite characters' attitudes towards more R-rated words might be, what I think it's safe to get away with in fanfic, and eventually reached fir some sort of point about the nature of fanfic and just why the hell Faith gets to swear so much.

( Naughty words below this cut. )

Meta: On cursing in canon and fanon

Seven People Who Can't Say Words On Television AKA Faith's Canonical Cursing

stormwreath posted an annotated version of his interview with Willow, which is a great read and you should check it out. But it also got me thinking and before I knew it, I had typed all this out.

One of his questions to Willow is whether she swears or not. She claims not to, and stormwreath comments:

Meta-joke here; of course non-British characters on BtVS never use real swear-words because they're on TV; but in my mind they also don't swear off-camera either.

I don't entirely agree – for starters, it's canon that they do swear, they just never manage to get all four letters out on-camera. (Part of the almost-metafiction-but-not-quite nature of BtVS; being fictional, they wouldn't know that they are following rules set upon them by the "real" world - but in typical Whedon "You-make-me-complete" fashion, the cut-offs are usually obvious enough to signal that Joss, to quote himself, likes him some cussin'.)

So I started thinking about just what our favourite characters' attitudes towards more R-rated words might be, what I think it's safe to get away with in fanfic, and eventually reached fir some sort of point about the nature of fanfic and just why the hell Faith gets to swear so much.

( Naughty words below this cut. )