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How necessary is "colorful" language for lending a sense of maturity to a story?

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Anyone old enough to remember Calvin and Hobbes might take it as an homage to that. (Scientific progress.)

Well, I did grow up with Calvin and Hobbes, but I am not sure why that is a reference. Is it Boink?


Those older fairy tales were products of their time, but they did not make it past Mr. Disney's sensibilities. If he had used the more gruesome versions, I dont think he would have kept the family friendly reputation. In fact, I wonder if many of those remained family friendly in their original form prior to Disney. I grew up with those tales as well from picture books, but none of them had Cinderella's sisters chipping off their toes, or other bloody events. I think parents would be rejecting them today, if not for Disney, and other similar versions.

Anyway, I probably said at the beginning that I dont feel these words make a story more 'mature', and their inclusion would just as likely think the story less mature than more. One of the reasons I dont like Steven King, is I think he uses bad language to relate, but it does not relate with me. I think more so, he is less mature.

For me, this would be a mixed bag. In some places it helps in others it detracts. I suppose my preference lies somewhere along okay to use them, but dont make me aware that you are using them too much.
 
Well, I did grow up with Calvin and Hobbes, but I am not sure why that is a reference. Is it Boink?

Yep. Scientific Progress Goes Boink is both a line in one of the cartoons and the title of a Calvin and Hobbes collection.

Those older fairy tales were products of their time, but they did not make it past Mr. Disney's sensibilities. If he had used the more gruesome versions, I dont think he would have kept the family friendly reputation. In fact, I wonder if many of those remained family friendly in their original form prior to Disney. I grew up with those tales as well from picture books, but none of them had Cinderella's sisters chipping off their toes, or other bloody events. I think parents would be rejecting them today, if not for Disney, and other similar versions.

Charles Perrault's fairy tale collection had some cleaner versions. Not as uber wholesome as Disney, but Perrault is at least lighter on the severed body parts. He's also the one who gave Cinderella a pumpkin coach and a fairy godmother and changed her fur slippers to glass (by mixing up homonyms). Disney draws more directly from Perrault than from Grimm's.
 
Remember the old woman who lived in a shoe? Nursery rhymes are notoriously dark.

L. Frank Baum, best known for creating the Wizard of Oz, fractured that tale and came up with a not so dark version. At least, it's not so dark given the cultural normalcy of corporal punishment at the time. The kids in his version have earned it, by playing a prank on the baker that resulted in no bread to go with the broth. It isn't just wanton cruelty.

The Woman Who Lived In a Shoe

Within forum rules to post that, since everything Baum ever wrote is now in the public domain.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
Colourful language isn't needed to make something adult, as I wrote earlier. What matters is how you write something. As an example, there is a childrens book called Brenda's Beaver needs a Barber, about a long haired beaver (yes, the mammal) which belongs to a woman named Brenda. It even has pictures suitable for young children. But reading the text from an adult point of view...
 
There are plenty of innocent titles that can be construed as something dirty. Like the TV show Leave it to Beaver. I guess that didn't land as an inappropriate nickname for a kid in the 1950s, when it originally aired.

Or the reading primer widely used in American schools in the same era, Dick and Jane.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
There are plenty of innocent titles that can be construed as something dirty. Like the TV show Leave it to Beaver. I guess that didn't land as an inappropriate nickname for a kid in the 1950s, when it originally aired.

Or the reading primer widely used in American schools in the same era, Dick and Jane.
If I were you I'd read the book. It's hilarious, possibly intentionally so (for adults, that is).
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
There are plenty of innocent titles that can be construed as something dirty. Like the TV show Leave it to Beaver. I guess that didn't land as an inappropriate nickname for a kid in the 1950s, when it originally aired.

Ill never see this the same again :bigtears:
 

BearBear

Archmage
If I were you I'd read the book. It's hilarious, possibly intentionally so (for adults, that is).
If we're talking that long ago, even look at the name Dick Van Dyke! He sounds like a confused lewd supervillian because we know "van" means "of".
 
If I were you I'd read the book. It's hilarious, possibly intentionally so (for adults, that is).

Definitely intentionally so! I just found a reading of it on YouTube. Every page is nothing but double entendres.

When the video finished, the other video thumbnails that loaded were all of illustrated books, apparently children's books, loaded with the same kinds of double entendres. Apparently there's a whole series.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
There is certainly a lot of stuff aimed at kids with hidden stuff for the parents.

As an adult, watching some of the shows I used to when I was young, like Star Trek, and Bat man....Just gonna say, I had no idea the adult stuff that was in it. And many artists have hidden pictures of naughty stuff in their animation work.

I dont mind the subtle stuff, sometimes its even clever, but I dont think I would buy one clearly meant to be a secret code for the adults, for my child.

I read my Kids Dr. Seuss, Gonna say I enjoyed doing that cause they were fun to read aloud. But even Mr. Seuss started off with erotica.
 
I wouldn't pick the Brenda's Beaver type books for a kid either. Dr. Seuss, sure.

Anyone here familiar with the movie The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen? I first saw it at the age of 12 or thereabouts, when it was in theaters, and it presents as a completely family friendly movie... but there's a little subtle innuendo in there that I got right away when I saw it again as an adult. I completely missed it as a kid.

The innuendo in Brenda's Beaver would go over the head of a picture book age child, but make twelve-year-olds snicker.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Not sayin it wouldnt but beaver did not enter my vocabulary until leslie neilson used it in a naked gun. Prior to that it was kind of way behind other terms i might have used. Beaver was just a beaver. I dont really go for crude vocabulary anyway so…
 
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