I promise, this isn’t turning into solely an anime complaining blog. This actually reflects more on general storytelling, but it’s come up most recently in season 3 of Sword Art Online. The subject is: making up bullshit names for things.
The title of the third series is Sword Art Online: Alicization. I bet you’re wondering how that’s pronounced. Well, if you watch it in the original Japanese, I don’t think you’d ever know, because it’s made up. Thankfully, the English dub (which I watch because it’s on in the background and I can’t read subtitles while doing other things) gives us the pronunciation. Several episodes in. Not a good idea.
On top of that, the show continues to use a term called “fluctlight”. That’s not a fluorescent duct light, it’s a fluctuating light. Neat, I guess, but what does a fluctuating light do? Is that a strobe light? Maybe a traffic light? No, that’s a human soul. They describe it as such, and once that’s done, they’re set to use their new term for soul, instead of just saying “soul”, for the rest of the show. And that bothers me, because there’s a perfectly good, shorter word for “soul”. It’s “soul”.
This is by no means unique to this show, or this genre. Sci-fi and fantasy are dense with just throwing names and terms at the wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes, like in RWBY, they have to spend minutes of screen time explaining how their world works. A simple term like “semblance” (a superpower everyone has that’s unique to each person…maybe) gets brought up halfway through the season, and then hammered home, breaking the “show, don’t tell” rule of narrative. Sometimes, like in Skyrim, they drop name after name, term after term, with no context, and expect you to keep track of all of them. A guy just lists off all the major deities before you’ve had a chance to move. He’s praying to them, and they’re called the Divines, so that’s all the clue you have to who they are, but that’s it. Hope you remember them 25 hours later.
Now, sometimes you do need to have a weird term for something. Your space drama takes place on another world and involves the mining of a material unseen on Earth? Sure, call it unobtanium, and the native population probably need a name too. But don’t get too carried away. Fancy names for spaceships, parts of spaceships, new technology, alien words, etc? That’s a lot for audiences to keep track of. (This is not an indictment of Avatar, they actually do a decent job, since most of the new things they do are visually explained as well, like the USB hair)
Another thing that helps is adhering to “show, don’t tell”. Need to explain what a “semblance” is? Zoom in on the person using their superpower, have it lead to a gap in the fight, and have someone get big excited eyes and go “a magnetism semblance? Wow…” Hell, if you want to get really obvious without being hamfisted, and your story takes place in a school because I’m using RWBY as an example, have Semblance Gym Class. Actually, come to think of it, they were at a school for fighting monsters, and the one time they actually fought a monster during class time, it was indoors in a lecture hall. That’s a lesson you can learn from Hagrid.
Am I guilty of this? Probably. The hard part about making up bullshit names is that they make perfect sense to you, because you thought of them. I could tell you all about my griznop, and you’d have no idea what a griznop is because I made it up. For times like these, I fall back on the Advice for Supervillains: employ a 5 year old to sit at your Evil Round Table. If they can see a flaw in your plan, take their advice. Alternatively, use a trusted parent. Trust me, if your mom can understand what you’re doing, anyone can.
Song of the Week: Genghis Khan by Miike Snow (not a typo). It’s got a very interesting music video lampooning James Bond-style spy thrillers, and is also pretty catchy. And the idea of “get a little bit Genghis Khan” to mean “so jealous I want to fight for you” is an interesting metaphor.
That's Pretty NEET 