Avellone obviously was not writing dialog. If he was, he would not have a barbarian woman saying anachronistic and frankly stupid words like "crappy."
Funny that you say that because words like "shit" were already very well in use in the middle ages (although taboo) and the word "crap" has its roots in Middle English ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Look I appreciate the effort you put into this post, but the word "crappy" is a decidedly modern sounding word. If she had said "shitty" I would not have made the comment; your two points don't follow each other. It just doesn't fit; in much the same way that "like" has been around a long time, but it would be ridiculous if a barbarian woman in Ye Olden Fantasy Tymes were to like, talk a bunch, like, about how, like big her like sword is. Just because a word has been around a long time doesn't mean you can just throw it in there.
I mean, the word "fire" has been around a long time too, but "firing an arrow" is an anachronism; arrows were not "fired," they were "loosed." "Firing" an arrow imposition of the procedure for using firearms on the usage of a bow. It's dumb, smart writers will avoid it.
Fucking hell, this is exactly what I'm talking about. This is bullshit.
While "shit" is definitely an older expression than "crap", it doesn't really matter, because have both been in use since well before we all were born. They are both not
modern words. Crap was first recorded (!) in 1898. The reason why you're preferring shit to crap (lol) is because one word is more
popular than the other, not because one is older and therefore "more historically correct". If fantasy book authors had somehow decided to always use the word crap instead of shit, you wouldn't be complaining today. It has nothing to do with anachronism, it's completely arbitrary. I would bet you a crapton of money that there is a crapload of words more modern than "crap" in the game that you would never identify as being anachronistic. You just notice "crap" because for
you it is specifically related to modern use of language. If you use the word "crap" a lot or are around people that use it all the time, that's the reason why you notice it. Not because it is itself a modern word.
Now, I agree with you on "like" in this case, but for a very different reason. "Like", the way you used it, has an established function in a sociolect that's very much in use today all the time. It's not the word itself that's modern, but the way it is
used in a sentence in a very specific sociolect.
This might all seem like giant nitpicking (probably also is, in a way) but criticizing writing should happen for the right reasons. Avoiding words that have a specifically modern function for an individual is impossible. Avoiding a modern sociolect associated with everything but Barbarians, however, is.
