Not Using the Z Word: Difference between revisions

A story has creatures that are obviously based on some sort of mythological monster, but goes out of its way not to call them that.

 

 

A subtrope of the [[Sci Fi Ghetto]]. Can be used to highlight how [[Our Monsters Are Different|their monsters are different]]. Suppose your monsters are rotting shambling undead that want to drink your blood. Call them zombies and every casual reader's going to assume they're after "braaaaaiiinnss," while call them vampires and, well... [[Anne Rice|Yeah]]. Of course, when it's used to force a sense of [[This Is Reality|"realism"]] (we don't call them "zombies" because zombies ''[[Not a Zombie|aren't real]]''), it smacks painfully of [[Genre Blindness]]. If ''you'' were confronted by what appears to be a member of the walking dead, how much effort would you spend coming up with an alternative name?

* In ''Defoe'', zombies are referred to as 'reeks', though Defoe himself has the title 'zombie-hunter general'.

* In ''[[Empowered]]'', reanimated supers really hate the "z-word."

 

== Fan Works ==

* In ''[[With Strings Attached]]'', the word [[The Beatles|“Beatles”]] rarely appears in the narrative; the author refers to them as “the four.” Almost the only time the name appears is when one of the four makes a sardonic or angry reference to it, or when one of the Fans mentions it.

** Justified in that the book is set in 1980, and the four haven't been [[The Beatles]] for ten years, and the author isn't trying to reunite them in that way.

 

== Film ==

** In the [[The Dark Knight Saga|the Chris Nolan Batman films]], Batman's [[Cool Car|Vehicle]] is never called the "Batmobile" because it would sound too silly.

*** As opposed to "Batpod" which doesn't sound silly at all...

** The cosmic cube in the [[Marvel Cinematic Universe]] is called the Tesseract.

* The protagonists of ''[[Kick-Ass (film)|Kick-Ass]]'' talk about superheroes all the time, but the Mafia-esque villains refuse to at first. The mob bosses don't believe an underling when he claims he didn't betray them, he was framed by some guy dressed like Batman. Since at this point there are no known superheroes in the world, we can't really blame the boss for his incredulity.

* In ''[[Braindead]]'', the one time the word "zombie" is used, the corpse of Lionel's mother immediately kills the hooligan who says it. [[Genre Savvy|Maybe she took offense.]]

* The protagonists in ''[[Primer]]'' never refer to their time machine as a time machine, nor do they use the words time travel to describe their time travel.

 

== Literature ==

* Kit Whitfield's ''Bareback'' (''Benighted'' in the US) is about a world where [[Our Werewolves Are Different|nearly everyone is a werewolf]]; they are referred to only as "lycanthropes" or "lycos." She discussed this in an interview, saying that [[B-Movie]]s have rendered the word "werewolf" [[Ruined FOREVER|utterly unusable]].

* The vampiric narrator of Steven Brust's ''Agyar'' never once uses the word "vampire," nor does he ever explicitly describe himself feeding on blood, though he does so many times. Agyar tells the story simply to put his thoughts on paper, and therefore does not explain anything that would be second nature to himself.

** Not to mention the fact that Zombies prefer to be called the [[Political Correctness Gone Mad|Vitally Impaired]].

*** Or the "Differently Alive." Though actually quite a few zombies don't mind being called zombies. Even Reg Shoe, the biggest undead rights activist in Ankh-Morpork, has never objected specifically to the ''word'' "zombie."

* Another [[Square Enix]] example, Humans in ''[[The Last Remnant]]'' are called Mitras.

* Link in ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' games is a Hylian by race or Hyrulian by nationality. The term "elf" is never used. Like ''[[28 Days Later]]'', this has resulted in some fan debate about whether he is actually an elf. Also used literally, as there is a race of living dead present through many of the games who have the appearance of corpses, no intelligence, and walk in a slow shuffle, yet they are only ever referred to as "ReDeads". ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'' even involves {{spoiler|a minor [[Zombie Apocalypse]], in which the entire of Hyrule town is infested by zombies, and we only see a small portion of its population evacuating to Kakariko. Nevertheless, all we hear is something along the lines of "Under Ganon, Hyrule became a land of monsters".}}

** The ReDead trophy in ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]. Melee'' clarifies that ReDeads are magical constructs made to behave and look like the walking dead as an exercise in psychological warfare.

* ''[[House of the Dead]]: Overkill'' uses this trope early on in the game, where G corrects his partner on calling the mutant enemies zombies, spelling out the trope's title. Of course, this is done with a wink and a nod, as the game is an intentional [[So Bad It's Good]] mixup of every zombie trope in the book.

{{quote|'''[http://www.egscomics.com/?date{{=}}2010-05-21 Susan]:''' You know what? Screw it. It was a vampire. [...] Not really, but it was a monster that used to be human, hypnotized young women, and sucked blood out of their necks. It doesn't matter what I say. You two are going to hear ''"vampire"''.}}

* Very, very much averted in ''[[Zombie Ranch]]''. Not only does the [[Show Within a Show|in-universe show]] have the same title as the comic, the characters are constantly referring to the zombies as zombies. Justified by it being over twenty years since the dead first started to walk. There's no denying their everyday existence, so why make up new words?

 

== Web Original ==

* In the universe of ''[[The Descendants]]'', there's a sort of culture war going on over using the term 'superhero'. As comic books exist in that world and there are presumably legal issues involved in using it, the media calls the real super humans emerging 'prelates' even though many of them call themselves 'superheroes' and their enemies 'super villains'. It gets better when you note the extent the series goes to to call their mutants anything but.

* To certain sects in the alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die USENET newsgroup and it's sister website The Jihad To Destroy Barney On The Web, use of [[Barney and Friends|It Of The Ol' One Tooth's]] name is blasphemous and is believed to give him power. Thus many derogatory names were invented to label that Purple Pedophile in place of the monster's name.

* ''[[How to Write Badly Well]]'' [http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/2010/08/beat-around-bush.html parodies it.]

* [[Xombie]]

* Averted by [[The League of STEAM]]; their zombie manservant is even ''named'' "Zed".

 

== Western Animation ==

** Considering that Bible comes from the Greek for "Book," maybe its just a case of [[Translation Convention]].

* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' "Treehouse of Horror XX" there's is a 'muncher' outbreak started by eating infected hamburgers. Notably, the segment is mostly an extended parody of ''28 Days Later'', listed above.

 

== Real Life ==

** Part of the reason for that is that the word slavery tends to imply that it's legally sanctioned. Human trafficking emphasizes the fact that it's done by criminals, like drug trafficking.

** At the start of the American civil war, slaves that fled over to the union side were refered to in offical reports and newspapers as "contraband".

** Also, there are slaves who are not trafficked, and some forms of human trafficking which are thoroughly evil are not exactly slavery. One of the leading researchers in the field, Siddarth Kara, relates the story of meeting trafficked and sexually exploited women who - though technically freed - still worked the sex trade they had been trafficked into. Likewise, debt-bonded villagers in South Asia are slaves to the owners of their debts, but they are usually not trafficked into the area. Their young children, especially girls, may be trafficked out of the area. Whatever you imagine comes next, the reality is worse. Trafficking and slavery are highly related but not identical.

* Writers of anything but media for DC and Marvel cannot use the term "Superhero" or derivative terms... on paper at least. In practice, the copyright is both relatively unenforceable and possibly illegal, but it does force people to use other terms for it in published media. See [[Differently-Powered Individual]] for some examples; though that trope and this are not directly synonymous, they overlap.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Tropes of the Living Dead]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Horror Tropes]]

[[Category:Name's Not the Same]]