I’ve been playing for a little over a month, and something keeps bothering me. I am constantly seeing names that are replaced by underscores. A for-instance comes from the notability card. The first sentence starts:
"The gentleman’s card reads: MR ____ ______, Assistant to"
This seems to happen a lot, and always draws me out of the game. Does anyone have an explanation?
Thanks!
edited by TheGlitchMob on 11/23/2017
Those indicate names that have been censored from the text, because they’d be too scandalous to publish. Except in the specific example you cite of Slowcake’s Amanuensis, who at one point mentions that he actually gave up his name, and now only has a name-shaped gap in reality to describe himself by.
I thought that was just a stylistic thing to allow use of real names in dialogue without breaking from the Adjective Noun identification?
I was under the impression that they were censored or deliberately left out as unimportant (sort of like if you were reading a book or essay about a subject and the author didn’t want to use someone’s real name).
Slowcake is an exception where the underscores actually exist in-universe, which I guess means that he has a standard mass produced business card but didn’t fill in a name in the box.
I think it’s done to make the writing authentic-seeming. It was a common-ish stylistic device of the times. It’s damnably hard to Google, but I seem to remember encountering names like that in the works of the real-life Mr Huffam.
Very common in Victorian and 18th century novels, especially when the suggestion is that the story involves real-life people or places, possibly members of the nobility. To be found in Trollope, for example – e.g. Barchester Towers, where the plot involves a change of “the Ministry”.
You see it with place names (______shire) and dates (18) in older fiction too.
Seems to me it was often purely stylistic, to create an impression of realism, rather than protect actual real people’s privacy. Similar to the device you often find today where an author will claim (not very seriously) a work is old discovered papers that he has edited rather than fiction he has written himself.
I was tempted to change my name to _______ and comment something like "I don’t know what you mean."
I might do it later, though.
edited by Tystefy on 11/24/2017
Doesn’t the game do the same with the Department of __________, in the University? The __________ is said with a wink and a meaningful glance, if I remember correctly. It deals with… a certain explosive language, if you catch my drift.
I think that’s a bit different though - an in-universe redacting of something Supposedly Secret, rather than a meta-level redacting to maintain the game’s style.
I think that’s a bit different though - an in-universe redacting of something Supposedly Secret, rather than a meta-level redacting to maintain the game’s style.[/quote]
The original example was from Slowcake which is also an in-universe rendering, he’s canonically given up his name along with ‘other encumbrances’
I think that’s a bit different though - an in-universe redacting of something Supposedly Secret, rather than a meta-level redacting to maintain the game’s style.[/quote]
The original example was from Slowcake which is also an in-universe rendering, he’s canonically given up his name along with ‘other encumbrances’[/quote]
Yes, that too. Most cases are meta-level though, such as Dr F________. He (probably) has a real last name in-setting, but we aren’t given one.