Malik
Auror
I'm cool with this. You're at least acknowledging that the situation exists. I explain it in my second book that one reason the characters are able to pick the language up so fast is that originally we came from their world, and while the languages are different, the concepts are the same. (I'm a linguistic structuralist at heart; I believe our ideas shape our languages, and you have to understand how a culture thinks before you can understand how they speak. I did this backwards when I built the Faerie conlang, which gave me a whole new insight as to their thought processes.) The MC learns this as he's trying -- and failing -- to learn Faerie. The elves think differently than we do and it's reflected in their language. He can't wrap his head around their concepts, so he speaks their language like a little kid no matter how hard he tries.Heheh. I have fun playing with this. Sometimes I have portal fantasy where both sides speak the same language because the people in World 2 (eg. Faerie) were originally from world 1 (eg. Earth), and there is still some back-and-forth between the two, enough that the people of Faerie are (mostly) able to keep up with (a few) evolving languages on Earth. And sometimes I have magical translation in effect, which is pointed out with dialogue like, "How strange, the words you speak don't match the way your lips are moving." "Well, neither do yours." "...Let's leave off trying to explain this for now and just accept that we can communicate."
I try to avoid this trope too. In my main WIP the secondary MC is forced to kill in self-defense, and expresses remorse about it (doubly so when he learns that the woman he killed did not even have the hope of an afterlife, due to the nature of Fae souls differing from human souls). The primary MC also kills someone in self-defense, crying and apologizing as she does so.
My MC spends half of the first book trying not to kill anybody; he killed someone on Earth, and while he was acquitted in court, he was crucified in the tabloids and the evening news, which destroyed his career and ruined his life even though
we learn it was self-defense and accidental. Which, if I did it right, makes it even worse and drives home the golden spike of the subtext that we have lost all concept of the utility of violence.
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