I think what you have as Unusual Euphemism may actually be Curse of The Ancients. Unusual Euphemism is generally used for a euphemism, not a curse.
edited 7th Feb '11 12:40:17 PM by troacctid
I think Curse of The Ancients is a subtrope of Unusual Euphemism. The thing being euphemised in this case is the curse word.
edited 7th Feb '11 12:50:36 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Curse of The Ancients is for archaic oaths stereotypically used by old codgers, like "Heavens to Betsy!"
Unusual Euphemism is pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin, things like "polishing his spear" or "huge tracts of land". Incidentally, I don't think "Blood and ashes!" would count, since it's an actual profanity in universe, not a euphemism for anything.
Pardon My Klingon is for fictional curse words which don't get translated, despite the Translation Convention.
Not entirely sure... I'd probably say Pardon My Klingon (since it's a fictional profanity, just rather more elaborate than "frak") or perhaps Oh, My Gods! - it seems like a replacement for "bloody hell", since the local mythology doesn't use the term "hell".
Unusual Euphemism isn't just for sexual words. It includes this in the definition: "Many Science Fiction shows make up such curse words so as not to offend Standards and Practices, probably because these expressions can pass as Future Slang."
Pardon My Klingon is specifically profanity in a foreign language that is left untranslated, despite the fact that everything else the aliens say being translated perfectly.
The index for profanity-related tropes is These Tropes Should Watch Their Language
edited 8th Feb '11 5:25:50 PM by Madrugada
The description on Unusual Euphemism does seem pretty focused on "embarrassing." The examples for Curse of The Ancients seem to support it as the correct place for the "blood and ashes" variant. Should we tweak the definition to include it more explicitly?
I think it would go under Pardon My Klingon, due to the fact that in WoT, like most fantasy, Translation Convention is inherently in effect - we don't think these people are really speaking English, do we? Other phrases are translated into English equivalents, though with some use of Hold Your Hippogriffs in the process.
Curse of The Ancients and Unusual Euphemism are definitely not the case, I think.
I don't think it fits on either Pardon My Klingon or Curse of The Ancients. Curse of The Ancients is about how certain specific mild oaths have "old-person" connotations; "blood and ashes" isn't one of those oaths and carries no such connotation. Pardon My Klingon is about things that are untranslated, while "blood and ashes" is translated even if you do assume the use of a Translation Convention.
Also, IMO it really wants to fall in the same category as things like "stars and stones" from The Dresden Files. It similarly seems to be not, strictly speaking, a euphemism for existing curses, but a curse based on worldbuilding, but in a world that definitely does speak English, so Pardon My Klingon isn't really applicable. I could see shoehorning them both into Unusual Euphemism under the argument that the author made that particular worldbuilding choice for euphemistic reasons, but shoehorning one in but not the other looks like an untenable distinction to me.
132 is the rudest number.I think Unusual Euphemism works for both of those. It may not be a euphemism in story, but it is a euphemism to the reader.
Everyone Has An Important Job To Do

So, the more I look at the examples of these tropes, the more of a mess they seem to be — duplicate examples all over the place, a lot of examples that don't match the description, and so on. I want to try to clean them up, but first I'd like to make sure I'm not totally off-base about what their definitions are supposed to be.
We currently have four tropes that I'm concerned about. I think their definitions are supposed to be:
0. Narrative Profanity Filter: Swearing actually occurs in-universe, but there's some interposition that prevents the audience from hearing or seeing it.
1. Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Characters use unusually mild profanity or minced oaths like "gosh" and "drat".
2. Unusual Euphemism: Characters use actual English words which are not profane or obscene at all like "blood and ashes" or "shards".
3. Pardon My Klingon: Characters swear using made-up words like "frell" or "frak".
Does this sound right, or is there some other distinction I'm missing? There's also the distinction between universal examples (generally imposed by network standards, the Comics Code, and the like) and examples that are used as characterization detail, but none of the descriptions I've found seem to deal with that very well.
edited 7th Feb '11 12:03:24 PM by Micah
132 is the rudest number.