#I'll laugh if anyone complains about not liking pickles on my burger

[fluxxdog]

So browsing semi-random vids on YouTube (as you do) and came across the “Meet the Sniper” video. For those who haven’t seen it:

And I got thinking: In writing, how important is it to differentiate the different type of life-enders?

Like when you say “assassin,” it invokes the image of someone not only paid to kill but has standards, supply chains, contingencies, an odd sort of calm. Basically, if your assassin is unstable, you have to explicitly say or show that.

If you call someone a “butcher,” you think of movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Blood and guts all over the place.

“Serial Killer?” That’s more or less defined as a white male, mid 20s to mid 30s, intelligent, charismatic, tends to get personal with their victims in today’s media.

It just feels like if you use one of these terms, you really lock yourself into an image where expectations are set and that standard is high. You have to really put in effort to have a character be contrary to that term.

I mean, what would you call someone who has decoded an ancient book of prophecies only to discover that they’ve now started a countdown to the end of the world that can only be averted by going to different places and killing specific people in certain ways, all of them unique. “Killer” is too generic, it’s like saying candy tasted sweet. It’s correct, but doesn’t actually convey useful information. “Serial Killer” is technically correct as they have a pattern, even if that pattern isn’t known, but that’s expecting more for the character than what they are some linguistics expert who read the wrong book. “Butcher” doesn’t work unless the crime scenes are always haphazard and messy. “Assassin” is wrong as well as the kind of expectations that term entails isn’t present with someone who just found out they doomed everybody.

All these different terms have these pretty odd weights attached to them that kind of ruin effectively conveying what they really are. Assassins are people paid to kill. Butchers are those who rely more on dismemberment, like animal butchers. Serial killer simply means someone who murders multiple people over time.

It just feels like some things have too much attached to them when they shouldn’t and it makes writing difficult when a word used for its technically correct definition suddenly adds a lot of baggage that you don’t want. Like getting a hamburger with pickles when you didn’t ask for pickles and sure you can take the pickles off but the burger will still taste like pickles and disappointment.