two questions of word choice

[swan_tower]

I have two questions to put to you, my faithful readers, regarding Midnight Never Come. Both are issues of word choice, but on a broad scale.

[Poll #1010219]

Comments

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I read a book years ago in which every character but one had a phonetic meant-to-be-Irish accent. They thought in these accents. It was just barely comprehensible, but then I'd be hit with logic and be thrown completely out of the book.
Besides saying 'Bob had an accent', I only denote them when I think it's funny-- a character named Venned in a land where B and V are very similar, so everyone calls him Benned (works better because Benned is so nice-sounding, and Venned is sort of cruel-sounding) and even though that might not stay, it's making me happy now.
Elves do slant Tolkien for me, though elfs is more shoemaker-style. I have no synonyms for you.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I actually need the singular more than the plural, so the usage would be an occasional fae identified as "elfin" or "an elf."

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Stupid words, having meaning and connotations. Weirdly, 'elf' or 'Elf' doesn't ping the Tolkien in me-- apparently, Tolkien wrote Elves, not elf-plurals. I'm still getting shoemaker from it, but now I'm also overthinking and the words are quickly drained of their meaning.
Words are *weird*.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I can see that. Words are indeed weird things -- which is why they're so much fun to play with.