Profanity

Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)	swearing, cursing, cussing, curse words, cuss words, swear words, bad words, dirty words, naughty words, foul language, expletives, obscenities, potty-mouth, four-letter word
Related tropes/genres	Created Curse Words, Ratings, Warnings, replonza, frak, ghod
Albert Dumblydore's most infamous line. Photo manip by unknown creator.
Related articles on Fanlore.

Profanity is the use of certain words that are commonly considered to be rude to use. These are often real life curse words, but there are also fandoms with canon-specific curses and fandom created curses.

Profanity may be more commonly found in fanworks where the characters curse in canon. An author may also choose to use profanity in fanworks for a fandom with little or no cursing when the tone, setting or scenario calls for it. Cursing can be used sparingly in fanworks to express shock or other strong emotions, even if the character rarely or never curses in the source material. However, when characters swear too liberally it may be considered out of character.

Fanfiction authors rarely use content warnings for swear words.

Attitudes and policies

Saying bad words can be considered appropriate when it suits the tone of a work, or when it's in keeping with a characters usual level of swearing. However, many fans feel that excessive swearing can be out of character and indicative of an immature writer.

Some fans may avoid using and being exposed to profanity for various reasons—such as Muslims avoiding profanity, especially while observing Ramadan.

In late May, 2012, FanFiction.Net admins suddenly started deleting stories (together with their reviews and comments) they considered too mature to be on the site. Reports in ffdotnetrants on LiveJournal and the fanfiction.net M-Rated Story Purge forum say that a "swear word" in the title or summary of a gen story was enough to get a story deleted without warning.

Content ratings and warnings

See rating systems.

Commercial media that contains very offensive profanity will often be restricted to older audiences. All-ages media features only the mildest of swears, if that.

Unlike commercial media distributed and regulated by professional industries, fan works generally have content ratings that are self-evaluated and labelled by the creators. Fan creators tend to be less strict about warning for verbal profanity, compared to other sensitive content such as violence and sexuality. While it is popularly thought that the professional movie industry only allows a single non-descriptive exclamation of the dreaded F-bomb (e.g. "Fuck you, asshole!" or "Fuck off!") in a PG-13 film, a fic reader can expect a rated T fan fiction to include as much or as little verbal profanity as the author so desires.

Many fan creators, some of whom are teenagers themselves, feel that profanity isn't inappropriate for a teenage audience, given that teenagers themselves often liberally pepper F-bombs into their everyday vocabulary. Many fan creators do not bother listing content warnings for profanity at all. Profanity alone almost never prompts a fan writer to label a fan fiction as M-rated. G-rated fics tend to feature little—if any—profanity.

the most unrealistic thing about young adult novels is that none of the teenagers swear

Fan works and fanon

Prevalence and purpose

A blood-spattered Goofy ominously assures, "I'll fuckin do it again." Source: Shigloo

Fan works may feature profanity despite the source material lacking profanity entirely; this can be found in darkfics of lighthearted canon, in futurefics focused on aged up child characters, etc. Characters whose swearing has been censored in canon can swear uncensored in fan works. Canonically potty-mouthed characters may swear even more in fan works (e.g. "Bakugo Katsuki Swears a Lot"). By adding profanity, authors may hope to add elements of humor, grittiness, and/or realism to their stories.

"Let X Say Fuck!"

Some fans have humorously called for particular characters to be allowed to say "fuck" in their source material. This meme is especially popular for characters who have been through frustrating situations in canon, and characters who would be expected not to swear.

“let X say fuck” is honestly funnier to me if the character its applied to doesnt seem at all like theyd ever use even mild curse words or if they ALREADY have said fuck in the past numerous times and no one is stopping them from saying it again “let kirby say fuck” is just as funny to me as “let batman say fuck”

Circa March 2018, the "Who Says Fuck?" alignment chart became a popular Internet meme, with Internet users ordering various media personalities and fictional characters according to their (speculated) tendency to say the word "fuck" or not.

On 16 June 2021, Tumblr user insanelyadd declared Let Papyrus Say Fuck Day for the Undertale fandom, challenging fans to create fan works in which the innocent skeleton Papyrus says the F-bomb.

Fanon swears

Invoking sacred figures

In common fanon, characters may invoke the name(s) of an in-universe god, saint, or other sacred figures, despite not doing so in canon.

• Avatar: The Last Airbender - Characters hailing from the Fire Nation often swear upon their fanon main god, Agni, named after the canon Agni Kai duels (e.g. "by Agni!" or "Agni's sake!"). Those from the Water Tribe may swear upon Tui and La, the canonical spirits of the ocean and moon.
• The Legend of Zelda - Characters swear upon the goddesses—Din, Farore, Nayru, and Hylia.
• My Little Pony - Ponies may invoke the name of Princess Celestia, and sometimes Princess Luna as well. Otherwise, they may invoke the name of Faust, understood to be the fanon creator deity, named after showrunner Lauren Faust.
• Pokémon - Characters swear upon legendary Pokémon, most frequently Arceus.
• RWBY - Characters have often sworn upon the fanon creator god of Remnant, Oum, so named after series creator Monty Oum. "Dust" is also a very popular swear word, probably even more so. After Volume 4 introduced the canonical creator gods of Remnant, characters may now exclaim "Oh my Gods!" in the plural, or something along those lines.
• Star Wars - Characters may swear upon the Force (e.g. "Oh sweet Force"; "Aw, Force").
• Tolkien - Dwarves were created by the Vala Aulë, who they call Mahal, the Maker. In fan works, this tends to result in dwarves swearing by Mahal.
• Transformers - The bots swear upon Primus, the canon origin of bot life.

Other

See Created Curse Words.

• Battlestar Galactica - frak
• Firefly - gorram
• Red Dwarf - smeg
• Sime~Gen - sonovabee and shen
• Splatoon : Profanity involves puns related to squids and aquatic elements—e.g. "squit" instead of "shit".
• Star Wars - replonza

NOT a Fandom Swear, But...

• Ghod is used in science fiction fandom, and has bleed-over in media fandom. It is a replacement word for "God."

Example Fanworks

Fanvids

• The Diamonds Call Bullshit | Steven Universe Animatic by Gemtrovert

External links

• Archive of Our Own (AO3) tags: Language, Mild Language, Explicit Language, Swearing, Cussing
• Wikipedia