What Would Cordelia Say?

[Mal_Bey]

I have been searching for the right word for weeks and I have been coming up short. My posting here is waving the white flag.

Situation: The girl saying this is popular, well-off, and used to being the social queen in high school, with all the entitledness and ego that implies. She is saying this to a social peer, though one who is less ego driven. The situation is the first day of college orientation. So people are new to each other and still working out relationships. Both girls are currently paired with socially lesser girls as roommates, but the speaker has unconsciously reveled herself a bit high-maintenance, and the addressee is a bit reluctant, both because of the obvious ego issues, and the fact she is literally unpacking her stuff out of the car when the speaker chooses to say this.

To those of a certain age and fandoms, I can short-cut the personal descriptions, and just ask what would be the phrasing if Cordelia addressed a Buffy who she just met on a contemporary college campus. The story isn't Whedon, but the relationship between the girls is close enough to quickly paint the picture.

Totally over-written quote to clearly capture context: "I like your first impression and respect your obvious social standing and taste in fashionable clothes. As I don't like my roommate, and don't see how you could possibly like yours, perhaps we should try to be paired up as roommates to fix the obvious injustices of the current situation."

Current Quote I have written: "Say, perhaps we could try to become roommates. You are so much more fab than mine."

What I dislike about that quote: I have been positively hating the word choice of fab. It is an 80% word. If I left it as is, it would pass, but I know there has to be a much better word. Fab's main crime is being seriously outdated, and just rings hollow as the word a socially modern and trendy girl would use. If I can just get the right word in, i think I can paint the speaker properly.

So can anyone help me find that better word for fab? I'm not married to any of the phrasing, but I think the right replacement is likely just a single word replacement, but I am very open to suggestions. It is killing me I can't find the right word here.

 

[KeithD]

Probably already outdated, but newer than "fab," I think:

rad

Urban dictionary explanation: "When awesome and cool just aren't enough to describe something."

 

[ericrodman101]

sick, awesome, wicked?

 

[SimonDoom]

Assuming you are referring to an 18-something person in the USA, my answer is, I'm not sure what word to replace "fab" with, but I wouldn't use "fab." I have kids around that age and I've never heard them use "fab" or "rad." "Fab" sounds 60s and "rad" sounds 80s. I've heard them use "cool," which is a word I might have used back in my day and I think is still around. Or maybe "more chill." I'd also get rid of "perhaps" and I would use contractions, so it sounds more like something an 18 year old would say.

I'd just write it this way:

"Maybe we could be roommates. You're better than the ones I've got."

That way you sidestep the issue of contemporary jargon. But if you want the jargon, I might recommend "more chill" in place of "better."

 

[KeithD]

The Urban Dictionary dated "rad" to 2014.

 

[AlinaX]

We should share. My current roomie has zero taste. You should see her clothes - well, actually, we should burn them. It would be doing her a favour. They're offensive. Literally offensive. They're a crime against fashion. Anyway, what do you think?

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

"Hey, wanna be roommates?"

"Oh, um, don't you already have a roommate?"

"Yeah, but I want you to be my roommate."

Imo don't think you need to add slang to add cred to her character. Just give her a tone that makes her seem like a social queen aka assertive.

But if you really must add more contemporary slang,
An alternative to the last line in the exchange might be: "my current roommate is highkey kind of lame."

 

[TadOverdon]

As I remember it, Cordelia started out BTVS as a stereotypical Mean Girl and dismissive of Buffy rather than treating her as a peer and bonding with her over...anything. Buffy was the new girl, possible competition, and she hung out with nerdy social outcasts like Willow. Cordy would routinely greet Willow with put-downs about her style - "Willow, I see you're discovering the softer side of Sears."

The main thing about those characters' speech was that they used minimal contemporary slang - they spoke in this made-up, clever and hip-sounding patois that we called Buffy Speak. We started imitating them rather than the writers imitating us.

Buffy calling Sunnydale "this one-Starbucks town" was one of my favorite off-handed examples.

A Cordelia (Season 1, Version 1) would conceivably propose rooming with the addressee out of necessity with some imperious and dismissive observation.

"Clearly, you know Hermes from Vuitton and have no friends. Room with me."

That's...not good. But I think it's the general idea.

 

[AlinaX]

I don't think Cordelia was ever mean so much as self-obsessed, and her instinct was to befriend Buffy at the very start, before Buffy started hanging with Xander & Willow, etc. Although Cordelia had a circle of friends, they were not really worthy of her interest and for a brief moment she hoped that Buffy could be someone who understood her.

 

[SimonDoom]

The Urban Dictionary dated "rad" to 2014.

That was interesting. I think that's the date of the entry, not intended to be the date of original use. One of those entries says it was popularized by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was definitely an 80s thing. The first time I heard it was in the mid=80s, from high school students. It was short for "radical." I haven't heard it nearly as much since then, and I've been around kids a lot the last 20 years. I think of it as having a West Coast surfer vibe about it.

It might be a regional thing, too. I remember young people saying "wicked" and "wicked pissa" on the East Coast, but that term is much less common on the West Coast. I think of "wicked pissa" as something you have to say with a Boston accent to pull off.

Young people still use "awesome" as well.

I've used "cool" my whole life, which probably makes me uncool.

 

[Mal_Bey]

It makes me feel good so many people came back with suggestions I had already processed, from the 80's sounding rad and awesome, to the hyper-regional wicked, to exploring some of more intricate phrasing such Buffy-speak. Honestly, I do admire Buffy-speak, and wish I could claim some of the best, like Cordelia's "softer side of Sears" putdown. It has aged even worse than fab since Sears is now closed, but when it was first uttered, it was such a witty, original, elegant putdown.

I would like to thank everyone for their ideas. Removing the slang is an obvious idea that frankly didn't occur to me. I still would like to find the right word because just a dab of slang can do so much place-making without an explicit exposition dump. Especially in erotica, I like to leave exact details a bit fuzzy so the reader fills things in a way they relate to. But you can mold the environment with a few key words tucked in here and there. That is why I am so allergic to fab or rad. They may lead the reader to picture a different era that I may confuse with the next subtle reference.

I do have to cop to using the spirit of Cordelia as the basis for this character, but I am not writing Buffy Fan-Fiction. She is just so perfect for the role I foresee. I am a young writer, and part of my education with this story was to "lay pipe" to be able to write sequels to the story in a way that doesn't scream "This is here so the author can use it later!" Like the real Cordelia, my character Mallory is a natural friend-emy or rival to my protagonist Tara. While Mallory really doesn't have a major role in this story, I have an idea for a later story for her to have a bigger role in, so I am economically introducing her now. Like Cordelia, Mallory's self-obsession and manner allow her to be disliked by the reader enough that when the comeuppance comes, the reader enjoys it. However, there is room for redemption, or at least other roles down the line. Meanwhile, she makes a fun character to meet the first day at school. Because she is so arch, she doesn't require much to introduce her, and I can keep momentum in my story.

 

[KeithD]

You may be working this too hard. Avoiding getting on with something, maybe?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've used "cool" my whole life, which probably makes me uncool.

You'd get on well in Oz. "Nah, it's cool. Don't sweat it."

Suzie looked at her bro with a quizzical eyebrow. "It'll be 'yo, dude' next."

Carry on .

 

[TadOverdon]

It's pointless to think about "cool" as slang, no matter how annoyingly ubiquitous it is. It's become part of the standard English vocabulary.

I can imagine some gritting of teeth over that. But the overuse of words like "cute" is just as vexing to me as "cool," and no one says that it's not a real word or seems to worry about it getting outdated now. It's just a space-filling part of chatter.

 

[yowser]

Embarrassing

I saw this thread excited that someone was discussing Cordelia in Kierkegaard's work.

Appears I am in the wrong place.

Returns to Covid cave.

 

[oggbashan]

I saw this thread excited that someone was discussing Cordelia in Kierkegaard's work.

Appears I am in the wrong place.

Returns to Covid cave.

I am in the process of writing what could be a Valentine's day entry based around an amateur performance of Shakespeare's King Lear.

Seeing Cordelia in the thread title I thought...

I'm in the wrong place too.