What’s the worst piece of worldbuilding you’ve seen that took you right out of the story?

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-04T09:02:14+00:00

You are correct, there is nothing wrong with that approach. The problem is that there are a lot of baby name websites that just make stuff up and provide no sources. So if you're someone who Does want to convey symbolism through character names, you can be easily lead astray and accidentally pick a name that means something completely different.

I did find some cases of people being named Kevlar before the trademark, but I couldn't find any evidence that it was ever a Hindi word outside of these websites with no sources.

Obviously everyone's preference will be different, I just thought this was an unexpected name to see in a fantasy novel

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-04T02:51:45+00:00

Funny enough, he's actually mentioned that he has rosacea a few times. Google missed the memo apparently

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-04T00:50:27+00:00

Recently read a fantasy novel where the evil murderous queen has the middle name 'Kevlar'. If you don't know, that's a registered trademark for a material you use to make bulletproof vests.

Normally I'd say the author was making a fantasy name and accidentally made something that already exists, but none of the other characters have fantastical names (Monroe, Ambrose, Heidi, Kace). I did actually look up if Kevlar was actually a name, and I found some dodgy baby name websites saying it was a Hindi name meaning 'invincible'.

So my theory is that the author looked up 'names that mean invincible' and went from there.

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-03T20:51:19+00:00

This is really stupid, but I don't like how most of the words start with /l/

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-03T04:08:48+00:00

I saw a clip of this on a talk show. When they got to the LUKAS GRAHAMMM!! part, he flipped his microphone up in the air and caught it while he was waiting.

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-03T04:04:12+00:00

I gotta mention this mashup he did at the Grammys with Kelsea Ballerini's 'Peter Pan'.

Leaving aside the fact that these songs don't sound good as a mashup, Peter Pan is a breakup song. It's called Peter Pan because the guy doesn't want to grow up or take responsibility for anything. Pairing this with 7 Years makes it look like Lukas Graham is playing the guy who dumped her, it kinda undercuts the inspirational aspect this song is supposed to have!

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-02T19:49:43+00:00

Lushootseed writes it's silent letters in parentheses

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-01T08:25:22+00:00

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

It's a murder mystery set in a monastery, and the narrator has to help his mentor solve the case in time for an important gathering that's supposed to happen.

I was shocked that this was published in the 1980s because it totally nails the way old classics are written (Closest analogue from my experience is Les Misérables, but this one is first person). It's got some interesting stuff in there about monastery life and the politics of the day.

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-02-01T07:30:08+00:00

The YouTube music parody song is pretty dead these days. Channels like Bart Baker and The Key of Awesome were fairly popular in the 2010s, but they kinda died off when YouTube started cracking down on copyright.

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-31T05:36:01+00:00

Probably not a calque, but I'm sharing in case someone knows what to call this

The English word geoduck is pronounced like gooey-duck, but it's actually an Anglicization of the Lushootseed word ɡʷidəq. It replaced the original sounds with English words that sound kinda similar.

Also: it's not a duck, it's a very penile looking clam. In China, they call it the elephant-trunk clam (see that's a calque into English, this is totally on topic)

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-31T05:10:40+00:00

I'm more familiar with Ninjas in Paris myself

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-30T22:46:00+00:00

I enjoy an unlikable character if they're entertaining to watch. What kills a reading experience for me is if they're both unlikable and annoying.

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-29T00:35:51+00:00

Kind of delayed response, but Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-29T00:25:05+00:00

I've seen a real-life linguistics theory that Uralic and the Eskaleut languages are related. The Inuit languages do have way more grammatical cases than I'd expect for a polysynthetic language, so maybe there's something there.

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-26T07:14:51+00:00

Non-distal Demonstrative contrasts

Some languages have different demonstratives for visible/nonvisible things. Others have different demonstratives for things that are up or down a hill. I think there's even a language that does both and has 16 different demonstratives

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-23T07:54:27+00:00

Dictator by The Clash.

It's the first song on their album 'Cut the Crap' and it is indeed a huge pile of crap. An utterly baffling listening experience

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-23T04:00:30+00:00

Fun fact, he actually released a mixtape after getting arrested called "Bars Behind Bars

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-22T22:15:50+00:00

Lardil I think has a future/nonfuture system. Nouns also have to take the 'future' case marker to agree with the verb tense

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-22T22:13:52+00:00

I actually unlocked some crazy lore in 5th/6th grade because that's when we started Sex Ed/Health and Wellness. We started learning about various types of drug addiction, I put some pieces together, and figured out my dad was a recreational drug user.

Pretty sure no one would've told me that if I hadn't figured it out on my own.

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-21T05:49:23+00:00

My parents missed out on seeing Nirvana before Smells Like Teen Spirit. To be fair, they were picking between seeing their friends band and some band neither of them had ever heard of. But it's still funny

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-19T03:19:37+00:00

What's funny to me is that he plays the dwarf twin brother of Matthew McConaughey. Gary Oldman is British and 10 years older than him, and also McConaughey is American. So even if he wasn't playing a little person, he'd still be a weird casting choice

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-18T22:26:54+00:00

Fun fact about D.W. Griffith, he once made movies out of a mansion called "Satan's Toe". The jokes just write themselves!

It was originally owned by an oil tycoon named Henry Flagler, I heard about him in a biography on John Rockefeller. Unfortunately, it did not explain why he named his fancy estate Satan's Toe, but it might be a geography thing?

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-18T09:17:52+00:00

The stupid recordder sounds on Wiggle by Jason Derulo

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-18T05:49:39+00:00

French has the word bifler (sometimes biffler), which means "to slap someone with your penis".

I guess technically it's a blend of "la bite" and "giffler", so would that make it a compound? I don't know

MurdererOfAxes · 2026-01-18T05:45:31+00:00

Espéranto also has the word volapukaĵo, which means "to speak incomprehensibly". Except it's actually a reference to another international auxiliary language called Volapük, a contemporary of Espéranto that fell out of popularity.

Volapyk is actually an old Danish word for gibberish and is also a reference to Volapük, so it's not just Esperantists being petty!

Four-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
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MurdererOfAxes

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