Thoughts On Wolfspeak?

[kivr & fireflii]

I didn't see or find a thread on wolfspeak/horsespeak when I searched. If there is one, moderators, feel free to take whatever action necessary and I apologize beforehand if there was already a discussion thread on this topic.

- No spamming -
- No flaming, bashing, ranting, or cursing (keep everything child-friendly;; I'm curious about opinions, not examples) -
- No naming anyone -
And again, please do not quote wolfspeak and then rant about it. This is not the place. I'm not wanting to see examples, again, I'm curious about your personal opinion (small rants fine, but that shouldn't be your whole post and it shouldn't be about a certain example).

So, I've been seeing a lot of people list definitions of wolfspeak on the Role Play Vocabulary thread. What's your thoughts on this?

For those that don't know what wolfspeak/horsespeak is:

Wolfspeak/horsespeak is like a style of writing where people replace words with more "creative" and "fancy" words. For example: Orbs instead of eyes. Fae instead of female. Brute instead of male. Dial instead of head. Facade instead of "front". Vixen instead of female. Alphess/alphaess instead of female alpha. Banner instead of tail. Pillars instead of legs. Auds instead of ears.

It's my personal opinion that wolfspeak is improper and, again in my opinion, rather immature. I do not find it "elite writing" nor do I find it "creative and new". I find it rather silly and just... it really irks me. I really don't think that popping open the thesaurus makes your writing more creative and different and unique. Half the time it makes one sound silly, illiterate, and it's just wrong. >W< I would also like to point out that half of the words used in wolfspeak/horsespeak are not words. Auds is not a word. Alphess/alphaess is not a word. For those of you who do like and use wolfspeak, why do you use it? I really am curious. I understand perhaps that's how some of you learned, but when you find out it's not correct (For example: A facade is not a face, it is the front of a building. Banners are not tails. Etc.) what do you think then? Do you still use it or...? I mean, thinking logically, you wouldn't use that kind of language in an English paper. You don't call a guy a brute or a girl a dove.

[GlasgowSmile]

Out of curiosity, for those of us out of this loop, what on earth is wolf/horse speak?

[kivr & fireflii]

Whoops, sorry, forgot to put that. ^^; Wolfspeak/horsespeak is like a style of writing where people replace words with more "creative" and "fancy" words. For example: Orbs instead of eyes. Fae instead of female. Brute instead of male. Etc. I'll edit that in the first post. ^^

[GlasgowSmile]

Whoops, sorry, forgot to put that. ^^; Wolfspeak/horsespeak is like a style of writing where people replace words with more "creative" and "fancy" words. For example: Orbs instead of eyes. Fae instead of female. Brute instead of male. Etc. I'll edit that in the first post. ^^

Ah! Gotcha.

In literature, I'd find that something like this would be extremely irritating (probably nowhere near as bad as A Clockwork Orange, though) and hard to follow.

It might be beneficial in a role-play group that's into using specific lingo to communicate with one another.

[bliss.]

Wolfspeak doesn't really bother me. I see people use it all the time so I've grown used to it. I admit certain terms bug me such as pillars, auds, orbs, dial, banner, etc but I've never seen them used often and I had only heard of those terms when my friend who greatly dislikes wolfspeak ranted about it. Fae, brute, maw, alpha/alphess don't bother me and I even use them in my posts on occasion.

[Bluish]

Wolfspeak usually doesn't bother me. Like, when they use the words properly [eg. Optics instead of eyes]. But the examples you gave [Pillars for legs? Banners for tails?] annoy me, and I don't like them. One wolf-speak word that annoys me is brute. A brute is some sort of violent animal, not just a male.

[Araviir]

Wolfspeak is possibly the most immature and uncreative thing I've heard of, it really gets to me. I used to have a RP, and I actually made it against the rules to use it. (I really want to find that picture of wolf anatomy according to wolf-speakers XD it makes me laugh)

[Fiery Gatoh]

I thought wolfspeak was awesome when I first started roleplaying.
Then I realised what an idiot I looked like. I still use brute on occasion, although only if I think it would actually suit the character ( "the brute glared at her)

[Atwood]

For those wondering just what wolfspeak can look like in the extreme, here's a completely made-up example courtesy of a generator:

The muscled femmora poses 'pon slender pedates, her silken peltry colorless of tint... midnight luminaries reflecting with amore and auditors pricked atop her fragile bodice. You see gelid sunkissed oculars coruscate with luster 'neath cilia of sapphire. The fae rotates 'pon suant pillars... harks alert and options a-gleam... dusky canvas of ashen dye flickers o'er her sleek formation.

I really see no type of benefit to this type of writing - as pointed out, the wording is often ridiculously incorrect (bodice doesn't mean body, auditors doesn't mean ears, options doesn't mean eyes, etc.), it's unnecessarily complex, and it obfuscates the literary effort. X3 Often I see it used as a stand-in for actually writing something, too, so you might get a full paragraph of the above with just the character's description repeated over and over again with different words each time. In the end, it typically ends up all fluff and no substance. If you're writing to impress a high school English teacher with your descriptive writing, then you might go for that level of detail and excessive use of the thesaurus, but even then people should use real words and apply them properly.

I suppose my main objection to it (apart from it being annoying and difficult to read) is that it deceives people into thinking they are great descriptive writers because they can throw together a bunch of words that only vaguely approach what they mean to say and make a big long paragraph out of them. As a result, they might not bother learning how to write with genuine creativity or to find the perfect word that conveys their precise meaning with elegance. There's nothing elegant about 'gelid sunkissed oculars'. =/

[Fiery Gatoh]

The muscled femmora poses 'pon slender pedates, her silken peltry colorless of tint... midnight luminaries reflecting with amore and auditors pricked atop her fragile bodice. You see gelid sunkissed oculars coruscate with luster 'neath cilia of sapphire. The fae rotates 'pon suant pillars... harks alert and options a-gleam... dusky canvas of ashen dye flickers o'er her sleek formation.

What on earth does that even say? xD