Do you feel intense cringe when the novel MC swears?

Hobo_With_A_Scythe

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I don't mean swearing at the appropriate moments like if someone close died or something painful happened etc but just general swearing.

Example:
Yet, this was not the end.

('Hm?') John stirred as he felt a strange sensation enveloping him.

('Didn't I... die?')

John wasn't sure what was happening, but he was relatively certain he was to die when he last felt his consciousness slipping in the hospital, his last sight being that of hastened doctors injecting him with something or the other.

('I guess not? But what the fuck did they wrap me in? A jelly coated condom?')

He could barely move, yet could feel that he was in a fetal position though.

('I'm going to sue these motherfuckers so hard, there is no way this falls within ethical practice. Can't they just let me chill in peace for fuck's sake?') He cursed.

Just then, he felt a force pushing onto him, it seemingly pushed down on his butt attempting to push him through what seemed to be an opening of some sorts. At this point he was positive that something was definitely off, he was just far too bewildered and frightened to even attempt making heads or tails of this situation. A few seconds later, he felt his body being forced out of an opening, and that's when he panicked, calling for help.

"waaaaaaaaaa!" Was what actually escaped his mouth.

('Eh...? Did I just... cry?')

He opened his eyes, only to behold a giant woman holding him.

('No, she's not giant... I'm the one who's small!') He barely managed to glance with his stubbornly half-closed eyes, at his clenched folded tiny arms, horrified.

"Quick, treat her! Her breathing is dangerously shallow and pupils are dilated."

What ensued was a long session of attempting to stabilize his biological mother's condition. The presumed-doctors and nurses all diligently performed variety of actions with great determination, but alas, to no avail. Slowly but surely, her eyes lost their light, yet they never once turned away from John.

"Time of death, 17:42."

John didn't understand the language they spoke, but he understood what had happened. Although he still half-believed this was some hallucination, he felt a pang of grief even as his consciousness drifted away.

('Fuck me... Please let this be a drea...')

Alas, fate deigned to ignore his wish, yet again.

**********

He woke up later that evening in a daze, yet he needed only one moment to know that that was no hallucination. He really was reborn as a baby, despite how absurd the notion seemed to him. He was in a rather small medical room, waddled in a thick towel in a wooden cradle, the room had windows on opposite sides of the room, one leading outside and the other to the corridor where he could see nurses and doctors walking through occasionally through the gaps in cradle. He glanced around only to realize he was not alone, there were several other babies just like him in their own cradles.

('An incubation room.')

He sighed. He hadn't the faintest idea where he was, but judging from the foreign language they spoke in, as well as the difference in clothing and even architecture, he was far, far away from the US.

('It's not just that, the technological level of this place is really low. Incubation rooms like this are filled with devices that monitor babies' vitals, furthermore, there was no electronic technology when they delivered me either. Even this room doesn't have any lights, just lamps.')

That being said, the lamps were strange, the source of light was not fire, which flickered whereas the the lamp's light did not waver, it most certainly wasn't electricity. In fact, as far as he could tell there was no electricity in the room at all. It really was a bewildering notion to someone from the 21st century, was there really a nation with such primitive technology? John wasn't sure.

('This is insane, this shouldn't be fucking possible. What the fuck is happening?')

Dude's supposed to be 59 years old but I don't buy it.
Background:
By the age of twenty-five, he had obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics and a diploma in human anatomy, and a minor degree in statistics and probability. Armed with the knowledge of these three fields as his foundation, he spent all his time performing research on martial arts and combat sports. He would perform surveys, studies and experiments on different martial arts and gather data on several variables and attributes on them and draw conclusions as well as hypotheses based on them before publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals.

And then, he died. At the age of fifty-nine, his already-compromised lungs collapsed, and he passed away a peaceful death.

I don't mind swearing, it can be a powerful tool when used appropriately but when used so blatantly without a story reason [example: used to be a gangster], I can't help but think I'm reading something immature written by an angsty teen. It reads like cringe to be honest.
 

Daitengu

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Problem is, is that some people are like that. My aunt, a full on boomer white lady says ALL the swears and slurs. It's the weirdest shit to hear a boomer Karen talk like a black street thug.

Is it cringe? Very much so. Can anything be done about it? No. So I just haven't put up with her for over a decade.
 

Glitched

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Looks weird. I find it especially cringe if they do it continously just for no reason. I know hood people and most people can't replicate the way they curse without experience. It's not just throw curse word here because I can.
 

Piisfun

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I don't mean swearing at the appropriate moments like if someone close died or something painful happened etc but just general swearing.

Example:
Dude's supposed to be 59 years old but I don't buy it.
Background:
I don't mind swearing, it can be a powerful tool when used appropriately but when used so blatantly without a story reason [example: used to be a gangster], I can't help but think I'm reading something immature written by an angsty teen. It reads like cringe to be honest.
Swearing like that is a good way to get me to drop a story instantly.
I don't care who or what the characters are; I tend to find it annoying and disturbing.

Most of the time, cutting out the swearing will only make the story better.
 

Beeteetee

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you
I don't mean swearing at the appropriate moments like if someone close died or something painful happened etc but just general swearing.

Example:
Yet, this was not the end.

('Hm?') John stirred as he felt a strange sensation enveloping him.

('Didn't I... die?')

John wasn't sure what was happening, but he was relatively certain he was to die when he last felt his consciousness slipping in the hospital, his last sight being that of hastened doctors injecting him with something or the other.

('I guess not? But what the fuck did they wrap me in? A jelly coated condom?')

He could barely move, yet could feel that he was in a fetal position though.

('I'm going to sue these motherfuckers so hard, there is no way this falls within ethical practice. Can't they just let me chill in peace for fuck's sake?') He cursed.

Just then, he felt a force pushing onto him, it seemingly pushed down on his butt attempting to push him through what seemed to be an opening of some sorts. At this point he was positive that something was definitely off, he was just far too bewildered and frightened to even attempt making heads or tails of this situation. A few seconds later, he felt his body being forced out of an opening, and that's when he panicked, calling for help.

"waaaaaaaaaa!" Was what actually escaped his mouth.

('Eh...? Did I just... cry?')

He opened his eyes, only to behold a giant woman holding him.

('No, she's not giant... I'm the one who's small!') He barely managed to glance with his stubbornly half-closed eyes, at his clenched folded tiny arms, horrified.

"Quick, treat her! Her breathing is dangerously shallow and pupils are dilated."

What ensued was a long session of attempting to stabilize his biological mother's condition. The presumed-doctors and nurses all diligently performed variety of actions with great determination, but alas, to no avail. Slowly but surely, her eyes lost their light, yet they never once turned away from John.

"Time of death, 17:42."

John didn't understand the language they spoke, but he understood what had happened. Although he still half-believed this was some hallucination, he felt a pang of grief even as his consciousness drifted away.

('Fuck me... Please let this be a drea...')

Alas, fate deigned to ignore his wish, yet again.

**********

He woke up later that evening in a daze, yet he needed only one moment to know that that was no hallucination. He really was reborn as a baby, despite how absurd the notion seemed to him. He was in a rather small medical room, waddled in a thick towel in a wooden cradle, the room had windows on opposite sides of the room, one leading outside and the other to the corridor where he could see nurses and doctors walking through occasionally through the gaps in cradle. He glanced around only to realize he was not alone, there were several other babies just like him in their own cradles.

('An incubation room.')

He sighed. He hadn't the faintest idea where he was, but judging from the foreign language they spoke in, as well as the difference in clothing and even architecture, he was far, far away from the US.

('It's not just that, the technological level of this place is really low. Incubation rooms like this are filled with devices that monitor babies' vitals, furthermore, there was no electronic technology when they delivered me either. Even this room doesn't have any lights, just lamps.')

That being said, the lamps were strange, the source of light was not fire, which flickered whereas the the lamp's light did not waver, it most certainly wasn't electricity. In fact, as far as he could tell there was no electricity in the room at all. It really was a bewildering notion to someone from the 21st century, was there really a nation with such primitive technology? John wasn't sure.

('This is insane, this shouldn't be fucking possible. What the fuck is happening?')

Dude's supposed to be 59 years old but I don't buy it.
Background:
By the age of twenty-five, he had obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics and a diploma in human anatomy, and a minor degree in statistics and probability. Armed with the knowledge of these three fields as his foundation, he spent all his time performing research on martial arts and combat sports. He would perform surveys, studies and experiments on different martial arts and gather data on several variables and attributes on them and draw conclusions as well as hypotheses based on them before publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals.

And then, he died. At the age of fifty-nine, his already-compromised lungs collapsed, and he passed away a peaceful death.

I don't mind swearing, it can be a powerful tool when used appropriately but when used so blatantly without a story reason [example: used to be a gangster], I can't help but think I'm reading something immature written by an angsty teen. It reads like cringe to be honest.
you should meet my grandmother, I think the show golden girls gave her inspiration so many years ago to not give any care to anyone else's critique. This was after my grandfather passed so, it does happen - and frankly, it is normal to regress to ... more juvenile state as one reaches a more elderly age.
 

Succubiome

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Not particularly!

I think I've known some people of all ages and backgrounds to curse, and a lot of people do in some contexts but not in others-- it's more likely to come out in high stress situations where people's ability to fully elucidate the experience they are having falls to the wayside and they're left with emotions that their words can not easily express, so cursing a lot when being suddenly thrown into a reincarnation situation makes sense to me.

It's not generally a very highbrow thing to use them in excess in modern English-speaking culture, I think, but not all characters are highbrow, and not all societies are the same.

If someone uses slurs that can't be applied to them, though that often says something about what they think about people they're throwing slurs around about, though, so that can be uncomfortable, particularly if they're the MC.

I have exactly one MC who uses the word "fuck" fairly often, for emphasis, and to me it's a very fun bit of characterization-- they're the only person in the world who does, because they're the only person in the world who comes from a culture where that's a swear, and when they use it out loud, people get confused.
 

CarburetorThompson

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Swearing isn’t cringe when used in moderation. Not like those bad late 2000s action movies where the characters are like ‘fucking move the fucking car. Park the fucking car out behind the fucking house.’ Shit like that
 

J_Chemist

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The F word is one of the most versatile words in the English dictionary. Use it.

 

Kenjona

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I have more of an issue with the following:
By the age of twenty-five, he had obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics and a diploma in human anatomy, and a minor degree in statistics and probability. Armed with the knowledge of these three fields as his foundation, he spent all his time performing research on martial arts and combat sports. He would perform surveys, studies and experiments on different martial arts and gather data on several variables and attributes on them and draw conclusions as well as hypotheses based on them before publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals.

And then, he died. At the age of fifty-nine, his already-compromised lungs collapsed, and he passed away a peaceful death.
Then I do with his swearing, especially if its internal some people swear in their heads all the time <Me>, but not in real life. You might even think they are lily white pure. Some people don't swear, that's just people.

I reread what I wrote above and I should add an explanation to why it threw me off more than the cussing.

A Diploma <After High School> is usually some hands-on training with few classes and is commonly given out in specific specialized skill sets for certain industries. So besides the High School curriculum you have HVAC, Electrician, Auto Mechanic, Airplane Mechanic, Arborist, Hair stylist, Nail Technician, and so on. They are not full on College courses with a more spread out curriculum. Anatomy could be one, but that usually mean you took some online courses and got a certification (Diploma) that you took that course or courses for that certification.
A Degree is a structured program that includes a mix of core and degree-specific classes plus elective to broaden your education.
A Minor is a specialization in another area alongside or besides the major degree. So a Major in Physics and a Minor in Probability & Statistics is a good fit.

So for me it should have been "By the age of twenty-five, he had obtained a Bachelor's in Physics with a Minor in Statistics and Probability and had taken some certification courses in Anatomy. Armed with the knowledge of these three fields as his foundation, he spent all his time performing research on martial arts and combat sports."

Now I would still have given it a "huh" look as, the study of Kinesiology is a college level program that you can go all the way up to Doctorate with. Which includes the study of Human motion, muscles and cardiovascular system. A person with said degree depending on level is either anywhere from a Youth league sports therapist, School Gym teacher, Local Gym Trainer and all the way up to Athletic director, Sports consultant, Wellness director, Chiropractors, Occupational therapist, Physical therapist, Registered nurses, and Sports Medicine Physicians including researchers in Sports Medicine.

Which Covers what this guy was doing with his Physics, Math and Anatomy. However sometimes people end up in weird career paths and he might have been one of them.
 
Last edited:

ElijahRyne

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I don't mean swearing at the appropriate moments like if someone close died or something painful happened etc but just general swearing.

Example:
Yet, this was not the end.

('Hm?') John stirred as he felt a strange sensation enveloping him.

('Didn't I... die?')

John wasn't sure what was happening, but he was relatively certain he was to die when he last felt his consciousness slipping in the hospital, his last sight being that of hastened doctors injecting him with something or the other.

('I guess not? But what the fuck did they wrap me in? A jelly coated condom?')

He could barely move, yet could feel that he was in a fetal position though.

('I'm going to sue these motherfuckers so hard, there is no way this falls within ethical practice. Can't they just let me chill in peace for fuck's sake?') He cursed.

Just then, he felt a force pushing onto him, it seemingly pushed down on his butt attempting to push him through what seemed to be an opening of some sorts. At this point he was positive that something was definitely off, he was just far too bewildered and frightened to even attempt making heads or tails of this situation. A few seconds later, he felt his body being forced out of an opening, and that's when he panicked, calling for help.

"waaaaaaaaaa!" Was what actually escaped his mouth.

('Eh...? Did I just... cry?')

He opened his eyes, only to behold a giant woman holding him.

('No, she's not giant... I'm the one who's small!') He barely managed to glance with his stubbornly half-closed eyes, at his clenched folded tiny arms, horrified.

"Quick, treat her! Her breathing is dangerously shallow and pupils are dilated."

What ensued was a long session of attempting to stabilize his biological mother's condition. The presumed-doctors and nurses all diligently performed variety of actions with great determination, but alas, to no avail. Slowly but surely, her eyes lost their light, yet they never once turned away from John.

"Time of death, 17:42."

John didn't understand the language they spoke, but he understood what had happened. Although he still half-believed this was some hallucination, he felt a pang of grief even as his consciousness drifted away.

('Fuck me... Please let this be a drea...')

Alas, fate deigned to ignore his wish, yet again.

**********

He woke up later that evening in a daze, yet he needed only one moment to know that that was no hallucination. He really was reborn as a baby, despite how absurd the notion seemed to him. He was in a rather small medical room, waddled in a thick towel in a wooden cradle, the room had windows on opposite sides of the room, one leading outside and the other to the corridor where he could see nurses and doctors walking through occasionally through the gaps in cradle. He glanced around only to realize he was not alone, there were several other babies just like him in their own cradles.

('An incubation room.')

He sighed. He hadn't the faintest idea where he was, but judging from the foreign language they spoke in, as well as the difference in clothing and even architecture, he was far, far away from the US.

('It's not just that, the technological level of this place is really low. Incubation rooms like this are filled with devices that monitor babies' vitals, furthermore, there was no electronic technology when they delivered me either. Even this room doesn't have any lights, just lamps.')

That being said, the lamps were strange, the source of light was not fire, which flickered whereas the the lamp's light did not waver, it most certainly wasn't electricity. In fact, as far as he could tell there was no electricity in the room at all. It really was a bewildering notion to someone from the 21st century, was there really a nation with such primitive technology? John wasn't sure.

('This is insane, this shouldn't be fucking possible. What the fuck is happening?')

Dude's supposed to be 59 years old but I don't buy it.
Background:
By the age of twenty-five, he had obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics and a diploma in human anatomy, and a minor degree in statistics and probability. Armed with the knowledge of these three fields as his foundation, he spent all his time performing research on martial arts and combat sports. He would perform surveys, studies and experiments on different martial arts and gather data on several variables and attributes on them and draw conclusions as well as hypotheses based on them before publishing them in respected peer-reviewed journals.

And then, he died. At the age of fifty-nine, his already-compromised lungs collapsed, and he passed away a peaceful death.

I don't mind swearing, it can be a powerful tool when used appropriately but when used so blatantly without a story reason [example: used to be a gangster], I can't help but think I'm reading something immature written by an angsty teen. It reads like cringe to be honest.
Typically I only have characters curse when in a stressful situation, in dialogue, and when overcome with emotion. I guess if you make is a character trait it might also make sense for them to curse casually, although that depends.
 

2wordsperminute

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Whenever I think of a character swearing an unnecessary amount, I think of kaine from Nier Replicant. So while I do generally think swearing should be used in moderation only when it fits the vibe of the moment, I also know that excessive swearing can be used to great effect as well.
 

BouncyCactus

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If the swearing fits the character, the setting, or the situation, like murmuring 'Great! Wonderful! Fan-fucking-tastic! Just what I need! Another asshole between me and my sleep,' when they are absolutely done, tired and exhausted, and are out of shit to give, then no. But if the f-bomb is dropped just because, then I do find it cringe. Granted, I do come from a culture where swearing IS part of the everyday vocabulary, and it just naturally translated when I speak English.
 
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