: Re: In-universe swear, curses, similies and sayings, how to make them less cringeworthy Hold Your Hippogriffs: A (more often than not) cringeworthy version of a saying (though can be invented on the

@Speyer920

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Do:

research swear words and curses in real Earth languages and cultures.
identify how curses and insults are constructed and what's transgressive about them.
find appropriate equivalents in your fictional cultures.
construct some original insults following the patterns you identified.

Some common insult themes are bodily waste, personal failings, sexual behavior, dubious parentage, and religious standing.

Example:

In my story, which follows fantasy tropes as portrayed in RPGs, "bastard" is used as by a faction led by nobles and royals; other factions won't even understand the concept. "Damn" is used by worshipers of the "Good" gods; among their opponents, who don't subscribe to the doctrine of salvation, it is a sign you do, and a serious faux pas. Sexual swears imply nothing worse than laziness regardless of how horrible the act is, and mentions of excrement are common. Accusations of cowardice and stolen valor are very serious business (although what counts as cowardice varies between cultures).

Don't:

use fake minced oaths to disguise normal swear words ("drek" for "shit" and such), unless writing to conform to a rating agency's demands.
use direct substitution on real-world collocations, unless writing comedy, OR the substitution is an in-universe joke made by a character. The more specific the collocation or the replacement, the more cringeworthy the result.

Examples:

from the question:

"Flower Hill against the exterminators" is a strange case. It would work perfectly without context in any setting, but given that the source is North Korean militarist propaganda, I assume the inhabitants of the hill are more than qualified to deal with enemy humans.
"I'd rather watch an Orion-drive takeoff from below" strikes me as a bit too specific to flow well. To elaborate, suppose I wrote, "What? Anthem!? I'd rather play Big Rigs!" Appropriate on a gaming forum, but tortured if I had to elaborate, "Uh, you know, Big Rigs, that one racing game where, er, nevermind."

from the TV Tropes page linked in the question:

"Upload them all, the unborn god will know its own." (Charles Stross) - good, the speaker is making a deliberate historical reference.
"When I was a child, an uncle asked: what gift I wanted for my name day." (Game of Thrones) - not a trope, fine.
"Like an antelope in headlights." (the Black Panther 2018 movie) - bad, a realistic Earth civilization would have its own similes.
"The Bloodwing's share", and "like h'vart in an alley." (alien saying in a Star Trek novel) - bad, but compare with:
"The pin that broke the zipthar’s wing." (human colonist "saying" in a Star Trek novel) - fine, because it can be interpreted as the speaker deliberately poking fun at the strangeness and familiarity of their new home.
"Tending children is like herding Gammorean slime cats." (a Star Wars novel) - a particularly egregious example of overspecificity.
short invocations of deities (multiple examples): almost always fine, but check if it makes sense. A character could call his/her patron god, or the god of justice, or the trickster god as a witness, but a paladin on a holy quest to save the world from destruction wouldn't question if the omnibenevolent god of Good is "willing" to help.

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