Hello, Hivemind? Are You There? It's Me, Kaa.

[kaasirpent]

If you read my most recent post (and I know for a fact that you all hang on my every syllable, so of course you've read it), you know that I'm all a-flutter with a new idea I'm working on for a story or series of stories involving a Fairy Tale Private Eye (FTPI).

It's flowing (like buttah!) and I keep running into a problem. I kind of want these to be in the spirit of fairy tales. But noir detectives have a certain . . . patois.

They use words like 'toots' and 'dame.' Tend to leave off nouns and pronouns. Talk in fragments. Be terse.

I got all that covered. :)

What I need, though, are some words I can use for curse words. Not 'By the Black Beard of Baldur, I abjure thee!' curses, but 'stubbed-my-toe' curses. The kind of words a person says when they get up at 3 AM to use the bathroom and jam their toe into the table that clearly wasn't there when the lights were on, or when you step in something the cat coughed up en route to said bathroom at said hour.

Something . . . fairy-tale-y.

I'm having trouble with that, for some reason. I have the voice of the character (it's basically Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade) down, but . . . I need some believable curse words for him to use.

'Rats' doesn't cut it. And 'crap' seems too . . . this world. I used 'wolf bait' in this bit:

I'm the last guy in Fairy you wanna pull that load of wolf bait on.

You can probably guess which curse word it replaces.

I'm not sure I like 'wolf bait,' but it's good enough for now.

I'm not purposefully aiming these stories at a YA audience, but I am trying for the 'film noir' feel, and I don't believe they cursed much in those, either.

I'm asking for suggestions. Hit me!

Comments

[friend-soscho.livejournal.com]

crimey

bloody hell

farfegnugen or Fahrvergnügen

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.

Oh, fewmets.

Oh, dragon farts.

[(Anonymous)]

I like fewmets but it's very Mercedes Lackey. What's wrong with old fashioned: Curses! And "Drat it!" (very traditional fairy tale, to use Drat instead of Damn). Also, nothing wrong with using DAMN. Fairy tales are not just children's stories. In Grimm's fairy tales "The Fisherman and his Wife," they're so poor they live in a piss pot. Aschenputel (Cinderella) means: Cinder Slut.

[kaasirpent]

Nothing WRONG with "damn;" I just thought that from the tone of my story, it doesn't really fit. Perhaps in a darker story, it would work better.

"Curses!" sounds...Snidely Whiplash. :) I did think of other old-fashioned curses such as s'blood and zounds...

Not sure yet what I'll end up using.

once upon a *&^?@##$

[izmeina.livejournal.com]

Doomy gloomy fairy tales sound like lots of fun. As for curse words - not sure about the tone but here are some suggestions

Holy hen's teeth
Blooming bull's balls
Rat's arse
Witch's zits/tits/ warts
I don't give a tinker's wrinkle (this is a real one used by a work mate)

PS So when are we going to hear all the gory details of the Gruff case?